Summer sneeze
Execution is an effective cure

August 1, 2005
iranian.com

Sneezes in the summer can be due to hay fever or a cold. A cold can be due to having caught a cold or walking around in wet clothes. Clothes become wet when you are thrown in a swimming pool or a river. This can happen if you’ve upset someone who is bigger than you. Drowning is worse than catching a cold.

In the summer people wear less. This makes them more susceptible to catching a cold if the temperature drops.

Sneezes come in different shapes and sizes depending on the shape and size of the sneezer. If you are very big and fat your sneeze is likely to reflect this. If you are small and mousy so will your sneeze be. The first person that sneezed was an Eskimo.

Nowadays Eskimos sneeze less because they are not called Eskimos anymore. Nor do they live in igloos. Instead they wear high-tech fabrics and visit the liquor store. They tend to sneeze more in the winter than they do in any other season because it is fashionable. Sneezing for them is a social requirement that identifies their class. When young people go on dates they get the sneezing out of the way first. Then they talk about each other’s propensity to sneeze.

In the summer they talk about politics because this is when they sneeze least. In Western countries such as Eastern Samoa, people tend to sneeze from July to August because they have for centuries and why break an old habit. In India, however, they cannot sneeze in the summer because monsoon rains cause floods and drown people. These were started by a king called Mon Soon III, who was Korean. He ordered the clouds to break in the summer so he could break wind in winter. When he broke wind everyone in the court laughed and was executed. Execution is an effective cure for sneezing. Doctors, still baffled by the common cold, all agree that execution solves that problem too. It is also a good for diabetes.

Summer carbon monoxide poisoning
Managers prefer staff not to be poisoned as poisoning has been proven to affect productivity. Productivity is key to ensuring a company stays profitable even if that company produces cars whose emissions poison its workers on the way to work. In China, where there are no cars or Mexicans, people cycle to work and poison each other by other means. The biggest industry in China is bicycle manufacturing. Most of these bikes are sold to workers so they can cycle to their bicycle factories.

The Chinese built a Great Wall that you can see from outer space -- compare this with Israelis who have built a wall, which you cannot see from outer space. Quite how anyone knows you can see the wall of China from space is a puzzle. Not many people have been to outer space and those who have had no time for sightseeing. In outer space, where coughing is impossible and there are no cars, astronauts are paid to dangle from cables and wave. NASA provides years of training in the art of dangling from cables and waving. The first Chinese man who attempted to get into space used a bicycle. Needless to say he did not get very far. He stopped at a 7-Eleven midway and ordered a Slurpee, which they don’t have in China.

The summer foot sore
A result of excessive walking, foot sores are a relief for most because they are on the foot and not on any other part of the body. Feet are the least loved aspect of the human anatomy except in China where they love their feet. Elsewhere feet tend to smell and most given a choice would happily amputate theirs rather than, say, an elbow. Elbows are extremely useful in the city because you can elbow people on public transport. In China they are not so useful because people have bicycles and prefer to kick each other for right of way. This is why the Chinese love their feet. People on bicycles developed the art of kung fu.

Ducks are the main ingredients in Peking duck, which means in parts of the city there are no ducks. Instead they have sheep in ponds. Nobody eats sheep and people think they are cute. But sheep do not like to be in water for long because they get sore feet and kick each other. The Japanese, on the other hand, do not like sheep because they make poor sushi.