ASK DR. SCHUND
                    (C)1995 Alan M. Schwartz

Dr. Schund, what giant leaps of technology are the United States 
poised to actuate?

The darkest secrets of a corrupt and degenerate government - like 
just how many postage stamps Dan Rostonkowski spirited out of the 
Congressional Post Office - are forever hidden from public 
discovery by their classification as Top Secret/Lotus Eater 
files.  The remarkable coincidence of Dr. Schund's Marine 
military surplus super-heuristic interactive timesharing highly 
engaged autonomous device (codenamed North Oliver) being in exact 
resonance with the appropriate Top Secret/Lotus Eater Pentagon 
mainframes prior to data encryption has enabled him to open a 
window into the shape of things to come.  He has seen the future, 
and it is going to cost a fortune.  Here are some of the 
technological breakthroughs simmering on Federal back burners:

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:  As the nuclear family continues to decay, as 
moral degeneracy and societal anomie reach catastrophic 
proportions, and as the average operational cerebral vigor of 5-
year olds asymptotically approaches that of a rutabaga, we must 
do something to restore the moral and intellectual fiber of 
America!  Research grants have stoked the investigational fury of 
academic laboratories everywhere.  What is their answer?  
Recombinant Femininity!  Virulent filoviral vectors carrying 
Recombinant Femininity genetic code flanked by potent initiator 
sequences are as we breathe suffusing our biome, pouring oil upon 
troubled waters of hormonal storms and restoring traditional 
distaff doctrines of children, kitchen and church.  Failing that, 
a genetic auto-destruct is also contained within, known to 
security-cleared biological adepts as heretic engineering.  If 
women prove resistant to wearing pearls, makeup and shirt-waist 
dresses to breakfast, we simply burn them as witches and 
requisition replacements from Russian and Philippine mail order 
bride catalogs.  No problem.

COMPUTER SCIENCE:  Having conquered hardware, firmware and 
software, the nerdish products of tens of thousands of university 
computer terminals nationwide turn their attention to wetware.  
What is being hidden from our view?  Boolean sexuality!  
Generation X struts its stuff, piercing body parts, scarifying 
flesh, branding skin, tattooing torsos, writhing in mosh pits, 
smoking toad and otherwise shaking their little fingers of 
condemnation at Yuppie materialism.  Little do they suspect that 
our most determined military minds have requisitioned out the 
ORgasm to defense contractors, amplifying it beyond normal human 
comprehension with the addition of the ANDgasm, the NORgasm and 
the astounding, the conspicuous, the superlatively arousing 
Exclusive NORgasm.  Watch us eat hot ecstasy, unemployable Grunge 
scum!

Human Factors Ergonomics:  Automobile airbags proved to be a most 
felicitous strategy for separating car buyers from an extra 
couple of thousand of dollars while simultaneously creating a 
pervasive environmental hazard requiring Federal remediation when 
the cars are junked.  Interim difficulties of airbag deployment - 
broken forearms; thermal and chemical burns; burst eardrums; 
nitrogen anoxia; crushed chests and the like - prove to sustain 
considerable interim nuisance value.  Before lawsuits could bury 
Washington papermeisters in a media mausoleum, intense airbag 
engineering scrutiny by the folks who brought you the Edsel, the 
Pinto gas tank, and the V8-6-4 engine sought near-term conceptual 
improvements, hence:

     The waterbag:  Upon collision, the entire contents of the 
car radiator dump into your lap, protecting you from harm.  The 
need for passenger-side protection underlined the insufficient 
volume of working fluid available, even in a 1958 Cadillac, hence

     The steambag:  Upon collision, the entire contents of the 
radiator dump into a superheater and exit as 2000 times the 
volume of live steam into your lap, protecting you from harm.

     The sandbag:  A potentially catastrophic trade imbalance 
synergism with oil-rich Arab countries' ongoing exports was 
narrowly avoided.

     The recycled activated sludge bag:  Submitted by the 
Environmental Protection agency as an answer to some of its own 
niggling difficulties, this idea was found to possess "deficient 
temporally-parameterized motility fill form factor potentials."  
This is a $383 million way of saying "it won't work."

What is the answer?  Combine surplus Star Wars electromagnetic 
pulse cannon gigawatt microwave diodes with traditional 
Department of Agriculture grain surplus woes to get Puffed 
Wheatbags and Popcornbags.  Not only are they ecologically sound 
and remarkably effective, but everybody can enjoy a hot, 
nutritious snack while waiting for the tow trucks to arrive.

The contract has been sublet to the Peacetime Military Division 
of Jiffy-Pop.