NEW ORLEANS-A consortium of engineering, plumbing and naval scientists are working on a number of possible solutions to the inundated Mississippi River delta region. Chief among them is the installation of an enormous sump pump on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Panama Canal to pump the excess water to the Pacific Ocean side.
Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) Team Katrina workers, whose search strategy was based on plans drawn up by the Acme Very Big Drain Plug Company, were unable to locate the very big chain attached to the very big bathtub type drain plug that allowed the water to well up as Katrina blew through the area.
When asked by Spoof News to comment on the reliability of drain plug plans, Acme Executive Director Y. Lee Kioti made it clear that they've been out of the really big drain plug business since they began their cooperative effort with the national environmental effort to rid the country of irksome roadrunners.
Proctor & Gamble, stepping up to do their part to bring alternatives to the table, have suggested it might be possible to use a massive collection of sanitary napkins or tampons to absorb the water. Because they have strings, which could be used to drag the water-soaked masses back into the Gulf of Mexico, using tampons was favored over their free-floating predecessors.
Gold Metal Flour manufacturers offered to donate several thousand tons of their familiar baking product that could be aerially dropped into the saturated zone. Motorboats could then be used to blend the flour with the water to produce a tremendous quantity of gravy. This would serve two purposes in that it would absorb a significant amount of unwanted water, and at the same time it could provide a source of food to starving hurricane survivors.
Nabisco has also donated an equal amount of its Bisquick powder to produce millions of biscuits on which to ladle the gravy. As a finishing touch, McCormick Spice Company has promised to provide salt and pepper on request to season the breakfast feast, though it is believed that the water to be used, being brackish, would already have enough salt content.
Skeptics are quick to point out that the screwy solutions and the problem they're designed to solve have one thing in common: they're ALL WET.