King for the day would get a lot done, before his afternoon golf round

Back in the 1980s, the Thompson Twins had a song called “King for a Day.” It was not a very good song, but then again they weren’t twins. There were three of them, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t identical or even siblings. They weren’t even named Thompson. If they can’t even name their band correctly, they certainly wouldn’t know what to do if they were king for just one day.

The song devolves into a bit of a ripoff of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” which is basically what the Thompson Twins would tell folks if they were “king for just one day” as the song goes. Baloney. I mean, love is cool and all, but if I were king for just one day, some serious stuff is going down.

If I were king for just one day, I certainly wouldn’t waste time riding around in a horse-drawn carriage and waving at my hordes of admirers. Heck, I already wave at my hordes of admirers from my pickup truck.

“Why is that guy waving at us?”

“I don’t know. Just wave back and avoid eye contact.”

I would spend my day as king correcting some serious problems in this country. And I would do it for the good of the country, not just for myself. In fact, I’d release my tax returns so you would know I was not doing king stuff to benefit myself.

“Wow, that’s all that guy makes? No wonder he’s weird.”

As king, I would throw everyone who litters — a plastic cup, a cigarette butt, a gum wrapper, whatever — into a dungeon. I’ve never seen the land as littered as it is today. I’m not sure what made folks so lazy and selfish, but I think a day in a dank, dark dungeon might cure them of it.

I would ban pharmaceutical companies from paying other companies to keep competing cheaper medicines off the shelves or from interfering with generic options. Big Pharma’s lobbyists are good at keeping these bills from making it through the Congress, but I’ll do it by decree. Fleecing the sick for the sake of huge profits and blocking them from medicines that could help them is borderline manslaughter.

I would end the college bowl system. You can’t do that now because there’s almost as much money in having the Belk Bowl, the Cheez-It Bowl and the Gasparilla Bowl as there is in fleecing sick people and those with student loans. But I could do it as king. Besides, a 16-team playoff may be the only way my Georgia Bulldogs get back in the playoff.

I would ban Christmas music before Thanksgiving, and require the Beach Boys to rewrite the lyric from “Little Saint Nick” that goes “Christmas comes this time each year.” Really? It comes this time? Each year? Like Dec. 25? You don’t say!

I’d put a billion-dollar bounty on the head of every disease. There’s no money in curing diseases — only in treating them. I’d change that.

I’d make 14-year-old Jackson Oswalt, of Memphis, head of the Department of Energy. The kid built a nuclear fusion reaction in his house. At 14, I was playing Asteroids on my Atari. Granted, that made me as qualified than Rick Perry, but not as qualified as this kid. Besides, when we finally perfect fusion and don’t need oil, we’ll quit worrying about the Middle East overnight, and an awful lot of terrorism will lose its funding sources.

I would ban TV networks from using the term “Breaking News” unless they had actual news. And it was actually breaking.

I’d end the decades-long drug war that hasn’t put a dent in the problem and treat it as a health issue. The drug war also keeps the drug trade profitable with its high-risk/high-reward formula.

And I’d do all that by noon. This king plans to play golf in the afternoon with the course all to himself with no waiting. Might even squeeze in two rounds.

Get more from Chris Johnson at KudzuKid.com.