By Gina Angostura
Columnist

Where are this country’s priorities? Can someone please tell me?

We’re spending billions on the military and space programs and making strides in science and industry. But that doesn’t help me when my body is rapidly deteriorating. The money used to launch the next space shuttle would go a long way in developing something that will make my stretch marks disappear.

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I’m telling you, trying to look younger is taking a huge chunk out of my budget. I’m thinking of applying for a government grant. You know, a small business thing. It’s my business to look good, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t the government subsidize it?

I recently spent money to sign up for a 17-week body transformation class with a personal trainer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to transform into. Maybe Optimus Prime. Didn’t really read the fine print.

But I’m in week three, and I’ve never felt better. Well, one time I did, when I was eating chocolate cake, watching a Mel Gibson flick and getting a foot rub all at the same time. That was pretty fantastic. But exercising is good, too. I can already feel my thighs tightening, which, believe me, is no small engineering feat.

As helpful as exercise is, it only scratches the surface of the work that needs to be done on Project Gina. Hence my need for a loan.

If I could get a nice chunk of change, the first thing I’d do is quit my job. All my gray hair and furrowed brow issues come from work.

It’s obvious women with more time on their hands have less time on their faces. I always imagine rich women lying for hours a day in a huge vat of expensive designer body cream. (Ad slogan: Now with magnesium biscuits and puvonium skin jelly ... because you’re too dumb to realize we just made that up!)

They have money to pay people to wash their dishes, scrub their tubs, haul their laundry, raise their children – all the things that trowel the years on our faces like mortar on bricks.

Hell, they probably pay people to age for them. Take a drive around Florida. Lots of pretty rich women. Lots of old women waiting in line for the early-bird special. Coincidence? I think not.

Think of the technology we’d have if the government just poured research money into antiaging devices – a scalp implant that would automatically color gray roots as they grow out, tiny invisible steel pulley systems to hold our faces – and other body parts – up where they belong. The possibilities are endless.

Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Or does it? I never paid attention in physics class. One purpose of scientific research is to better our lives, right? So get on it, NASA. Or just get me a ride on that space shuttle thing and send me back in time. I think that’s what Einstein was working on, anyway.