North Dakota is Technically Not a State, Also Technically Not Interesting
All states marked in red are boring and bad at writing constitutions.
Warning: The following post contains graphic taunting of the state of North Dakota. I would like to apologize to each and every North Dakotan (all eight of you) in advance. This is not directed at any of you, but rather at the incredibly dull and lifeless area of the country that you have chosen to make your home. Seriously, it is a giant snoozefest.
As a Kansan, there are not a lot of states we can make fun of. Both coasts are better, so they are off limits. Illinois has Chicago, so that’s gone as well. Most of the other states at least have a nice landscape, totally destroying western Kansas’ endless flat farm land.
That is why I was very happy when I became friends with some North Dakotans. North Dakota is almost the only state that makes Kansas look like a fun place to be. I would consistently laugh at their mentions of their hometowns knowing that Kansas had this state beat.
We would debate the validity of North Dakota as a state with me taking the stance that we might as well sell it to some other country because no one would miss it. “It doesn’t really count as a state at all,” I would say to varying degrees of disagreement.
It turns out all this time, I was right.
North Dakota is not actually a state.
(North Dakota Fun Fact: The population of the entire state is 672,591 making it roughly the same size as Poughkeepsie, New York!)
For years, 82-year-old John Rolczynski has insisted that there was an error in the North Dakota state constitution. All of the North Dakota state politicians said, “Old Man Rolczynski is a nut job! Just ignore the crazy fool and get back to your beet farming.”
Finally, state senator Tim Mathern looked into the matter. What he found was that the state constitution did not require officials to be sworn in, a requirement for a state to be ratified.
North Dakota was never officially a state.
(North Dakota Fun Fact: The official state beverage of North Dakota is milk! They have not specified what animal’s milk they are referring to, but I assume, since it is the STATE beverage, it must be from the official state animal, the Nokota horse.)
So now that North Dakota is a territory again, what should we do with it? I think everyone can agree there is no reason to make North Dakota a state again. All they do is provide us with beets, lentils and honey. Beets are gross and the lentils and honey can come from elsewhere.
One possible solution is to sell it. America has a $14 trillion debt, meaning we owe people the equivalent of 933,333,333 Honda Accords. That’s a whole lot of sensible sedans.
Selling the North Dakota Territory would be a start. We paid $1,260,000 for it originally. That means it has to be worth a solid $1,500,000 now. If we can just find some sucker country willing to buy it (Check with the Netherlands. They’re always high, so they’ll definitely take it) we’d start getting some of that paid off.
(North Dakota Fun Fact: Bismarck, North Dakota has been named the safest place to live in America! It’s difficult to have a rash of crimes when your entire population is made up of livestock.)
Another option is to just combine it with South Dakota, making one boring state called Dakota.
The issue this brings up is our flag. We have 50 stars, but we’d only need 49. People would be cutting out one star on all of the flags to make it accurate, leading to a great influx of flag stars in our city dumps. Eventually our dumps would be over filled, causing America to become a giant trash heap. Our country would look like the set of Sanford and Son, but with no Redd Foxx to amuse us.
To offset this, we could annex Mexico. It’s a lot warmer than North Dakota, plus drug wars are a lot more interesting than the North Dakota State Fair. Who wants to go Minot, North Dakota anyway?
(North Dakota Fun Fact: North Dakota is home to the Norsk Hostfest, the second largest Scandinavian festival in North America! It is also home to… well, nothing else really.)
Both of those ideas, though, pale in comparison to my final and best idea: make it an island.
People love beach front property, but America only has one island state to take advantage of this.
Before we allow North Dakota back into the country, they will have to carefully chisel out along the state boundaries. Then giant cranes will have to lift the state off of the ground, carefully carrying it across the country to its new home in the Pacific Ocean. Not only will this make a great new island state, but it will create a sixth great lake.
(North Dakota Fun Fact: A popular winter time sport is raccoon hunting! You may fill in your own joke right here…)
Mathern, though, is trying to poop on my party (Figuratively, of course. Mathern has never been to any of my parties, nor has he defecated on them). He has introduced a bill that will change the state constitution, allowing them to quickly become a state again.
This means we have a short amount of time to make a ruling on what to do before things are back to normal.
The only possible way to delay the state’s decision is to get everyone out of the state. It shouldn’t be hard. There aren’t all that many of them.
We need to find one thing all North Dakotans like. I vote the state fair since it gets 250,000 of the 672,000 people to arrive. Having chosen a favorite North Dakotan item, we tell them that it has moved into the state of Michigan for the next few months.
The North Dakotans will have mass exodus from their state. With at least 250,000 people gone, chances are that a good amount of government officials have left the state as well. This will keep them from voting, giving us more time to put North Dakota up on Craigslist or whatever we decide to do.
(North Dakota Fun Fact: The state motto is “Legendary!” Apparently in North Dakota, motto is defined as “a single word.”)
To any North Dakotans reading this (I don’t know if any of them are actually literate), it has been a great run. It was fun having you in our country for a while. We shared some laughs and some tears. You can’t figure out how to write a state constitution, though, so you’re out.
We will miss your dry edible peas, though. Those were delicious.
Related articles
- Technically, North Dakota Might Not Be A State (outsidethebeltway.com)
