Happy Birthday, you malicious killer!

In honor of AIDS's silver anniversary of death and scaring girls in my high school into forced celibacy, the Boston Globe has unveiled its Top 10 Steps Africans can take to curb the AIDS Epidemic .

I hate to be Oscar Obvious here, but shouldn't #1 be to stop having unprotected sex? Despite the obvious slight, I've reprinted the list below, and though AIDS is no laughing matter, I've given it my best shot. It was, after all, the unfunniest Top 10 List since, well, last Thursday on Letterman.

1) Make HIV testing part of regular health checkups – you know, because the free clinics are inundated with supplies and the required funds to run a safe and accurate test on the tens of thousands of refugees they see each month

2) Test Couples Together – the Globe actually suggests AIDS testing as a first date activity. And they say romance is dead…

3) Promote male circumcision – besides, chicks don't dig Peelers

4) Focus the public health message – the "solution" sounds a lot like what is currently being done…make condoms readily available, teach abstinence and monogamy. And how exactly is this any more of a "focused message"?

5) Make Africa a sports mecca – an actual quote: "Young people have time on their hands. They need something besides sex that is free and fun."

6) Enforce drinking laws –

During weekend nights in Livingstone, one bar stays open until 3 a.m. and another until 5 a.m. Bartenders serve beer to children as young as 10. And yet the law calls for shutting down bars at 11 p.m. and no sale of alcohol to minors. ``Young boys who never used to drink or smoke are out playing eight-ball pool and drinking and smoking," said Chris Lubasi, 24, who runs youth programs in Livingstone. Drinking to excess clouds judgment, increasing the risk of unprotected sex.

Are there a lot of 10-year-olds getting drunk, fucking random women and contracting the AIDS, or are we losing focus?

7) Protect the babies – Won't somebody think of the children?

8) Encourage men to communicate – next thing you know, they're going to try to tell us that if we stop and ask for directions we won't get AIDS. I say NEVER!

9) Build networks of hospice workers – uh, that actually makes a lot of sense. Paying these people, however, would take money directly out of coffers reserved for medicine.

10) Support local journalists covering the problem – so American journalists (and bloggers) don't have to waste any more time pretending to understand the problem and offer ridiculous solutions.