America has long been known for our innovation. Were it not for us, the world wouldn’t have Chinese food, Snooki, or hope. Some might believe that American innovation—via our constant war, startlingly low test scores, and crumbling economic security—is approaching its end. This, however, is far from truth. Below is a list of ten innovating innovations that one can be almost sure to see from we Yanks over the course of the next decade. Freedom—it tastes this good.
1) Disaster Couture. New York designers, responding to Japan’s nuclear catastrophe (in addition to numerous environmental violations by American corporations), get a jump on Paris and Milan with the creation of diamond-encrusted anti-radiation ware and gas masks that pipe in scented oxygen. Sean “Puffy” Combs, for his Sean John line, creates OhFockaWear, the first biohazard suit line that retains street cred.
2) Gang Members Get Smart. Tired of poisoning their own communities with crack cocaine and heroin, gang members across the country stop selling said illicit drugs and begin selling steroids. New sects of Crips and Latin Kings pop up wherever an expansion sports franchise begins. The anabolics garner street names that include Barries, Sammies and 40/40s. Additionally, the gang members begin to use base-running signs as a means of phone and person-to-person communication, baffling the police who, due to a combination of the rise in stadium ticket prices and salary reductions brought about by Republican governors, can no longer afford to go to baseball games themselves. Dominican superstars cruise the alleys of Watts past midnight, looking to score.
3) New Trends In Learning. As education budgets continue to shrink, public school teachers battle it out for their jobs in gladiator-style pit fights, armed only with outdated textbooks and writing utensils. The loser’s corpse is added to the National School Lunch Program’s Sloppy Joe Day. The winner keeps their job, leading classrooms of hyper-violent, quasi-literate doomed. Teachers make suicide pacts before entering the ring. Eventually, all classes are taught by Bill and Melinda Gates, via satellite feed from their mansion in the side of a cliff. Extra credit is given for Tweets with correct punctuation.
4) The Federal Government Legalizes Betting On War. Failing to garner popular public support for its continued conflicts, the Federal government sways the masses by marketing war as Las Vegas-style fun. In addition to the military industrial complex’s wealth of tax dollars, Americans now embellish that sum by wagering on how many limbs are lost over the course of a week, or how many Afghani civilians are killed in an air strike. As the Pentagon can massage the data at will, the odds always favor the house. Favorite games include Colonization Roulette and Drone Bomb Bingo.
5) All-Faith Confession Boxes. With subprime eroding city tax bases, officials look for new ways to gain. Cashing in on the country’s fear and its heightened use of religion-as-crutch to get through tough times, San Francisco and New York and Chicago and LA erect AFCBs. For the admission price of one dollar, the Boxes (which look similar to public restrooms) provide a cushioned seat and laser-cast image of the entrant’s faith-based leader. If one is Catholic, here is a priest; if one is Druid, here is a shaman. Every theology is represented, Shintoists and Wiccans and Zorastrians able to find relief after another week of fruitless job-hunting. Agnostics are offered a picture of a question mark that changes both font and color. Atheists are offered a black, blank wall.
6) The 1st Annual Oblympics. Unable to curtail America’s obesity problem, fast-food corporations pony up, creating the first multi-sport games for the nation’s fat. Events include Help Me Get to the Bathroom, Stroke Victim Wheelchair Pizza Equestrian, and the Lipole Vault, in which contestants must launch over vacuumed-out parts of themselves. While the intent of the games is to get its athletes to lose weight, the corporations, putting profit first, award coupons to their eating establishments, instead of medals. Events are conducted on lawn partitions adjacent to drive-thru windows. Hundreds die.
7) iLuddite. As even the broke and jobless purchase tablet computers out of a perceived and marketing-induced need to belong, consumer electronics multinationals are forced to look toward their last untapped demographic: those which would destroy their products at all costs. Born out of this is Apple’s iLuddite, a slim lightweight piece of plastic that implodes when the power is turned on. This anti-invention is followed by the Android CyberStratum, the Samsung Money Toilet and, finally, the Zenith Two Million Super Snow Job Hoax Con, a Styrofoam ice chest filled with discarded pieces from looms and ham radios and a gerbil on an exercise wheel that powers a light bulb that downloads porn.
8) Guilt Spas. The hyper-rich, unable to any longer cope with their decades of union busting, corporate lobbying, market fixing and general, loathsome greed, forgo their caviar facials and gold dust body polish in favor of frigid sandstone temples of Calvinistic self-abuse. Mogul-types fill condemned factories across the Rust Belt while the children of pink-slipped lathers gently massage their own tears into the fatcats’ pores. The day concludes with Anne Boleyn Dermabrasion, during which spa attendees feed cake to legions of poor while having their skin buffed off with sandpaper made from subprime mortgage contracts. The spas’ owner is eventually jailed on charges of white-collar corruption, serving six months in a minimum-security prison on the Florida coast.
9) Grand Theft Caucus. Made apathetic by a bevy of sex scandals, byzantine legislation, and simply not liking any of the candidates offered up, voter turnout for Congressional races dips to below 1%. In an effort to get the public reinvested, would-be Senators and House Reps invest lobbyist dollars in developing gaming software that supports their platform, while working on any platform that the voting consumer wants. Bestsellers include World of Weinercraft and Idaho’s Call of Duty: Airport Bathroom Stall.
10) Monuments of Monuments. With gas prices keeping Americans off the roads, our country’s national treasures go unseen. Combating this, and reinforcing patriotism, leading U.S. defense contractors, with taxpayer dollars, build alloy replicas of American monuments, airdropping two-ton sculptures of Mount Rushmore, the Washington Monument and the Liberty Bell into neighborhoods across the country. Whole communities are wiped out to prove that the country still is—and will always be—great.
Charles McLeod's fiction has appeared in many publications. A Hoyns Fellow while at University of Virginia, he has also received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and San Jose State University, where he was a Steinbeck Fellow. He is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western Illinois University. American Weather is his first novel.