Working title 1: What if Harper had AIDS?

Thanks for the title, Boo. I suppose this is your way to get me to talk about the World AIDS conference that was held in Toronto earlier this month, which our PM avoided like the -- well, you know. Okay, Boo, I'll bite.

What if Harper had AIDS? I'll tell you what: Life as we know it would end. Gravity would reverse, and every molecule in the bodies of you, anyone named Madison, and three out of four dentists, would fly apart at eight times the speed of light. Chickens would talk with Estonian accents. Lou Reed would have a beautiful singing voice.

I mean, the very idea is just that preposterous. As any common-sense, god-fearing Canadian knows (and I mean really knows, like the way you know the world is 5,000 years old), Stephen Harper does not engage in any of the immoral practices that cause AIDS. You know the ones I'm talking about. Homosexuality. Shooting up. Or the ultimate perversion: hemophilia. Mr. Harper has always made the right life choices for an AIDS-free existence. Why, even as a zygote (a living, sentient zygote, albeit one with a bad haircut), Stephen had the good sense to not be born in Sub-Sarahan Africa to a mother with HIV. Talk about a leader with foresight.

All of which, to address the subtext of our title, is exactly why Stephen Harper should have been at the World AIDS Conference. Quite simply, Stephen Harper is the antidote to AIDS.

He wouldn't have to say a word. His very presence -- his mere uber-straight, ultra-sober, terrifically non-transfused (and not to mention, impeccably geo-maternally planned) existence -- would have stood as a beacon of non-infectiousness and immunosufficiency to the world. By just being there, Stephen Harper would have reminded us all that the key to stopping AIDS lies in stopping the lewd, opitated, easy-bleeding debauchery -- or, alternatively, the ill-advised choice of birth mothers -- that got the world's 38 million or so AIDS 'victims' into the mess they are in. (Or were in. Like, before they died. Whatever.)

Forget drug cocktails. You want to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS? Bottle Stephen Harper.

That's right -- take his Right Honourable ass on a world tour: India, Africa, and, er... some other places where people have HIV/AIDS. (It's not like he needs to actually know. He does have aides, people.) Anyway, have him walk among the infected, not unlike a modern-day Jesus. (But, for his comfort, lose the robe and sandals and give him a biohazard suit. Hey, Christ would have worn gloves in the leper colony if latex had been invented.) And let Stephen Harper just be Stephen Harper.

And lo, his innate anti-AIDSness (to coin a clever phrase. Yeah, it's a gift) will stem the tide of this global epidemic of sin and stupidity and set the stage for a Harperian tomorrow, a glorious age where nobody has AIDS and all the world's people live, disease free... long enough to be killed by global warming or an invading American army under Jeb Bush.

And, at the very least, the sick will be momentarily distracted from their plight by the sight of his khaki safari vest. Yes, worn over the biohazard suit.

Upcoming post: What if Harper had style?