Hypothetical: Your visit to Stingapore

[Rain Man]

Hypothetical situation: You're single and unattached, and despite all of your hours at Burger King, it's very hard to meet quality people. On a quiet Sunday morning, you reheat the previous day's leftover Whopper, wander out to your veranda, and read the Sunday paper.

On page J13, deep in the heart of the Travel & Leisure section, you suddenly see it. There, in the middle of the page. No, a little lower. A little lower. Further right. There. An ad. An ad by the famous travel company, Crabberzombie and Bent, displaying a special price to the Southeast Asian wonderland of Swingapore. Ah, Swingapore, where the hotels are nice and the women are naughty. Swingapore, where women outnumber men three to one, and will do exactly that for twenty dollars and a piece of cheesecake. Swingapore, where every GI since the Spanish-American war has left illegitimate dependents in small jungle villages where they're cared for by non-self-immolating Buddhist monks.

You call up Crabberzombie and Bent, and Gladys, the 87 year-old Swingapore travel consultant, punches you up some tickets in brave defiance of her increasing senility that can’t quite be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s so she has to work instead of being institutionalized. Three weeks later, you're off!

14 hours after takeoff, after three bags of airline pretzels and two movies that barely avoided direct-to-youtube status, you land in your sophomoric wonderland. You pop off the plane, retrieve your luggage, and wander into the airport bar. There are women there, lots of them, and you coyly make eye contact with one of them, just like you do at the Burger King back home.

Suddenly, there are sirens and police and old guys with black hats and bushy beards. They taser you and beat you with their batons and use that police choking technique that you must admit is really very effective. Ten minutes later, you're hauled before a stern-looking judge in a turban that you must admit is a nice shade of greenish-gold and really flatters his complexion.

What is this? you wonder. Swingapore is the most lax nation on earth. You can do anything in Swingapore. Men have been known to marry household appliances in Swingapore. What happened?

And then you see it: behind the stern-faced judge is a flag that shows a red crown on a gold field of daisies in front of a blue background. Swingapore's flag is a blue crown on a red field of daisies in front of a gold background. With a start, you realize that Gladys made the reservations improperly. You're not in Swingapore, you're in Stingapore!

Stingapore is in southwest Asia, not southeast Asia, and it’s the strictest nation on earth. People here are electrocuted for wasting electricity. People here are hanged here for commenting that they don’t like hanging. They’re shot here for saying that they don’t like that episode of WKRP where everyone was all sad because of the trampling deaths at the rock concert. Damn that Gladys and the doctor who diagnosed her!

There is no jury for your trial because they’ve all been hanged. There is no defender because he’s been shot. The bailiff is being stoned to death as you approach the bench. The judge, whose nickname is Hangin’ Shootin’ Stonin’ Draggin’ Behind Horses ‘Til You’re Dead Judge Baktalavi, pronounces you guilty of “looking at a women with intent toward perversion”, and bangs his gavel on the head of a guy who was sentenced to be the judge’s gavel base as a result of making incorrect change at a Burger King.

However, Stingapore has a new president, and he’s a lot more liberal than the old one, who was executed for being too strict. Under the new system, first-time offenders get to choose their punishment from a list of options to be provided by the judge. The judge hands you a list, and you have two minutes to decide. That list is in the poll to follow.