Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

---

The skinny on overweight offset credits

I'm trying to track down some skinny, underweight people so I can buy Fat Retention Credits from them. See, overweight people are responsible for all kinds of bad things in the world, from high medical insurance costs to Global Massiveness Change. I'm a tad overweight (actually I'm just a tad too short for my weight, I should be 7 foot 3).

But since I can't lose enough weight to get down to what delusional doctors say is the perfect weight for a 6-foot-1-inch man (112 pounds), I need to buy Fat Retention Credits from a severely underweight person to balance out my contribution to the Global Weight Index. Buying Fat Retention Credits is a win-win-win situation because a skinny, likely undernourished individual will receive enough money to buy a couple of cheeseburgers, I won't have to go on another hopeless diet and, yet, the net increase of global massiveness and other societal impacts caused by my slight weight problem will be zero.

If this doesn't make any sense, you haven't heard about the new scientific breakthrough called "offsets."

Offsets are a way to make the world a better place and help more people live rich, guilt-free lives by striking a balance in the management of earthly resources, energy and pollutants. Offsets first arose regarding air pollution. Companies that caused more pollution than allowed by law were able to "purchase" air pollution credits from companies that underpolluted.

The real breakthrough came when multimillionaire global-warming guru Al Gore announced that he had nullified the harmful environmental impacts of flying around in private jets and keeping his Nashville mansion heated and cooled by purchasing "carbon offset credits" from, presumably, homes and businesses that use less energy than his mansion and jets do. It's a great system because it means Gore can still keep his mansion toasty warm in the winter and fly in his private jets, but his personal net impact on global warming is zero.

THE OFFSET system can be applied to all kinds of problems, like that of Global Massiveness Change. To keep the earth from getting heavier, fat people need to balance out being overweight by buying Fat Retention Credits from skinny people through "fat brokers." The brokers act as middlemen between the fat and skinny, assuring that certain countries full of skinny people, like Bangladesh, will get rich.

But offsets won't stop there. All the major TV news shows are dominated by Caucasian men, like Wolf Blitzer and Bill O'Reilly. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson pointed out, network and cable TV is "all white, all night."

The major TV networks soon will be able to make their organizations "color neutral" by purchasing Skin Pigment Offset Credits from local TV markets with numerous minority on-air personalities.

Just think, with the Skin Pigment Offset Credits, CNN's Blitzer won't have to give his job to a person of color, and with the Fat Retention Credits, CNN's hefty reporter Candy Crowley won't have to go on a diet. It's a great world.