CARS TO RUN ON OLD CLOTHES

[An op ed in the Times warns against raising the permissible ethanol content of gasoline]

The Garment District, New York City November 28, 2009AP). The United States Department of Agriculture announced today a program to subsidize development of an automobile fuel made from gasoline and shredded old clothing, to be called “shmatanol.” Preliminary studies have shown that a “rich fuel” mixture of one part Dacron polyester and three parts 87 octane gasoline would be as efficient as the gasoline alone. This mixture would be called “25% rag content shmatanol.”

The developer, Gregor Grossman of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, said the idea came to him when he tried on a pair of his old Dacron bell-bottoms and a stray cigar ash burned a hole in them. “The material just disappeared,” he said. “Nothing burns cleaner or quicker than polyester.”

Vintage clothing shops, movie costume departments, and affluent former hippies are hurrying to incorporate and offer their shares to the public. Financial analysts guessed that the recently announced Salvation Army IPO could result in record sales.

On his radio show, the conservative pundit Russian Limburger (“The Big Cheese of Talk Radio”) angrily denounced “this socialist inspired raid on America’s attics,” and Glen Blech suggested that many of our vintage clothes were made in foreign countries, like China and Malaysia, while gasoline is made in the US by our patriotic American oil companies. “Just saying,” he said.