Beyond Satire, Part IV

Now this:

The latest contribution to good government from Vice President Dick Cheney: preventing the implementation of rules to protect the endangered right whale.

Whales? Really? The guy’s got it in for whales?

This comes from a letter House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent to the White House today, requesting that the administration quit delaying the rules, which would restrict the speed of ships near American ports. Faster moving ships hit the whales, causing injury or death, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say.

But not so, says Cheney’s office and other White House officials, who have delayed approving the NOAA’s submitted rules.

If you wrote a villain this cartoonish into a summer popcorn flick, you’d be laughed out of the multiplex. As one of the commenters at the TPM story noted, perhaps Cheney is just hedging his bets in case whale oil makes a comeback.

America’s Preschools Address Smiley Face Inflation

Grade inflation at America’s colleges and universities has been a hot-button issue for at least the last two decades, but in more recent years the problem has spread to America’s preschools as well. According to a recent study, the amount of good behavior required to earn one Smiley Face sticker in the average American preschool has fallen by 25% over the last ten years, while the effort required to earn one ‘Nice Job!!’ has fallen by more than 40%. More troubling still, Helper Stars now are regularly awarded to America’s preschoolers for behavior that was once taken for granted, such as sharing, saying ‘please,’ and even napping.

Contacted for this article, Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, author of the best-selling book, The World is Flat, and all-around expert on just about everything, commented, “Will these American kids be in for a rude awakening when they enter the new, globalized, interconnected, borderless economy? I think so. In other words, it seems likely. Once they’re out in the real world, will these kids be rewarded with a Helper Star or a Smiley Face sticker every time they set up a new supply chain network? I don’t think so. In other words, it seems unlikely. Do you think the kids in China and India are getting any stickers in preschool? No siree. All their stickers are exported to the US, and their notion of preschool is two years of working in a bauxite mine.” Friedman concluded, “Have I mentioned that the world is flat?”

This Mustard Doesn’t Taste Stone-Ground to Me

I am not a man prone to over-reaction, nor the type to ejaculate baseless and inflammatory accusations, but this mustard does not taste stone ground to me. Where, I ask you, is the coarse texture, the bits of mustard seed, the distinctive, slightly pungent, cold-ground flavor? Certainly not here, on my sandwich. The mustard before me is thin and bland and colored a shameless bright yellow. No, let there be no doubt on the matter: these mustard seeds were conventionally ground.

So who is to blame for this condimentary contretemps, this mustardly mash-up? I shall not now — or ever — sink so low as to impugn the honor of the good folks at Plochman’s, for whom mustard-making is less a job than a divine calling. I suspect instead that I have been made the victim of a well orchestrated and nefarious lunch period prank, no doubt perpetuated by the very same person or persons unknown who last month in this very same cafeteria substituted my homemade, all natural ginger beer for a bland, over-sweetened mass market ‘ginger ale.’

Despite my vigorous protestations at the time, that particular foofaraw has never been resolved to my satisfaction, though I continue to harbor deep and abiding suspicions about one Mr. Reginald Dunham, a history teacher and relatively recent addition to the faculty here at St. Aldegundus High School. Mr. Dunham is the type who seems to revel in hijinks and shenanigans, and he was observed (I too have my spies) in the vicinity of the refrigerator in the faculty lounge shortly before the ginger beer incident occurred.

I shall not give him the satisfaction of reacting to his little provocation, and instead will relish my sandwich as though it were slathered with Plochman’s Natural Stone Ground mustard instead of this wan imitation. But know this, Mr. Dunham, I am watching you. I am watching you and waiting. Waiting for my chance to strike back.

So beware.

Signed, Milton J. Schultz, geometry teacher

This is Not a Glass of Water

The Kamper can remain silent no longer.

The scene: downtown Amherst, MA. I was walking down Main Street to the post office. It was a sunny afternoon and the college students were out in force. A college kid was approaching from the other direction, a young lady at his side. Nothing unusual or even especially notable about the dude: jeans, t-shirt, wearing a standard issue backpack. But just as they passed I noticed a tube running up over his right shoulder ending near mouth, and he’s sucking away at that thing like he was newborn baby and that nozzle was his first taste of his mama’s own sweet teat. Which was when I realized that he was not wearing a backpack at all, but rather one of these contraptions.

Now the Kamper understands the importance of hydration and topping off your fluids all that, and I’m sure these things are a useful (albeit still dorky) accoutrement if you are cross country skiing or hiking Death Valley. But this dude was doing neither. This dude was not engaged in any sport whatsoever, extreme or otherwise. This dude was walking to Antonio’s for a slice.

And now in looking at Camelbak’s website I see they have an entire line of these ‘hydration packs’ designed especially for kids, with names like the Jibber and the Mini-M.U.L.E. and the Skeeter and the ever-popular P.B.J. What in God’s name is your kid doing that he or she needs 50 ounces of water strapped to his or her back?! Is there a drought in homeroom? Does he walk to school through the Sudan? For heaven’s sake, can’t the kid just drink from the hose like we all did?!

And while I’m on the subject, when did women in this country become incapable of going anywhere or doing anything without at least 20 ounces of purified water within arm’s reach at all times? Most of the women I know can’t seem to sit through a two hour movie in an air conditioned multiplex without enough water on hand to wash a fleet of rental vehicles. The amount of water the average American woman today consumes in a single 24 hour period would have been enough, 100 years ago, to sustain your average pioneer family and their oxen along the entire length of the Santa Fe Trail, with enough left over when they got there to irrigate their crops.

All of which prompts the Kamper to ask an obvious question: Have we lost our freaking minds?!

What has happened to this country? Whither the grit and determination and pioneer spirit upon which this great nation was built? Have we really reached the point in our evolution as a society where a healthy adult male who has never known a moment of deprivation in his life honestly believes that he cannot walk the several miles from his dorm room to a pizza parlor without three full litres of water on back? (And don’t try to argue that maybe he was about to hop on his mountain bike and hit the trails. I saw him. Dude was wearing sandals.)

Now soldiers fighting in Iraq get complete dispensation from this rant. It’s hot there, man, and God knows they need their hands. But as for the rest of you — take off the hydration packs and drink a nice glass of water once in a while. And by all means kwitcher bellyachin’.

So saith the Kamper.

Brush Levels in Crawford Becoming Critical

With President Bush currently preoccupied with Iraq, the housing crisis, a recessionary economy, food shortages, record high crude oil prices, the falling value of the dollar against foreign currencies, and an ever-expanding federal budget deficit, another looming crisis has gone quietly unnoticed: the buildup of brush and undergrowth at the president’s private ranch in Crawford, Texas has reached critical levels.

The president bought the 1,583 acre estate, Prairie Chapel Ranch, in 1999, shortly before he announced his run for the presidency. After the purchase, Bush removed five hog barns from the property and added an 11 acre man-made pond stocked with large-mouth bass, bluegill, and red ear sunfish.

Since then, the president — no matter how pressing or urgent the numerous challenges facing his administration — has dedicated hour upon hour and day upon day to clearing brush in Crawford, often accompanied only by his chief of staff, various aides, his Secret Service detail, and a gaggle of journalists and photographers. Over the years, many interlopers have fallen to his match or his chainsaw: cedar and mesquite trees, cocklebur weeds, underbrush, thistles, anything that dared to encroach upon (or had the temerity to previously exist upon) this non-working vanity ranch. But with 1,600 acres to cover, deciding what to clear is often more art than science. According to a December 2005 story in the Washington Post,

there will be times when the president drives around his property and “will see a stand of cedar trees and say ‘Let’s clear those,’ ” said Joseph Hagin, Bush’s deputy chief of staff, who has been cutting brush with his boss all week.

Important work indeed.

But now it finally seems as though the plethora of crises facing this administration has forced this hands-on president to reluctantly scratch ‘brush clearing’ from his executive to-do list. A necessary decision, perhaps, but a recent visit to Crawford indicates that it is not without serious consequences. Groves of cedar trees, almost cheeky in their posture, grow unchecked across the vast unused acreage of Prairie Chapel Ranch. Thick, insolent stands of mesquite trees — long thought to be the sneakiest of all the leguminous shrubs — have sprouted up as well, along with underbrush and weeds and hanging limbs, all of them opportunistic intruders who, almost by their very existence, seem to mock the president’s once-mighty chainsaw. Will the president find time over the summer to squeeze in a fortnight at the ranch, and, if so, will there be time enough in his schedule to take out a grove or two of these leafy ne’er-do-wells? Only time will tell.

Gilligan’s Heist

From the fellers & smellers over at Superdelux.com comes this tale of a fateful trip. Props to Sweetmojo for the link.

Dumb Thick Dim-Witted Doltish Boneheaded

Perhaps you’ve made some stupid moves in your life — invested your retirement savings in Webvan, pissed off Vladimir Putin, paid cash money to see a movie by Roland Emmerich — but no matter the Mariana-Trench-depths of your own stupidity you can rest assured that there will always and forever be at least one guy out there dumber than you are.

I’m talking, of course, about the Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth™ .

In the Valley of Happy — One Year Later

One year and many yucks ago, our Kamper brought forth on this Internet, a new web log, conceived on the back of a napkin, and dedicated to the proposition that some things are just too damn funny not to make fun of. Now we are engaged in a great civil — oh, screw it. Listen, I started this blog one year ago, so to celebrate I have combed through its voluminous archives to pick my ten favorite posts. We’re just getting started around here; I hope you keep coming back — so that smart-assedness of the Kamper, by the Kamper, for the Kamper, shall not perish from this Internet.

Kamper’s Ten Favorite Posts of the Last Year

#10. Amherst Middle School Gender Sensitivity Program to Require Girls Pee Standing Up. Wow. A lot of you freaks out there seem to have an unhealthy obsession with girls peeing. This piece was meant to be a sly send-up of the current gender wars (though perhaps a tad too sly for the lone commenter), but several times per day a few wandering souls stumble upon this post after googling some variation of phrase “girls peeing standing up.” Whatever floats your kidneys, peeps.

#9. Revirgin Redeflowered. How long do you need to go without before you just naturally revert to revirgin status?

#8. Jute Advocate Feels Left Out at Hemp Festival. I’ve always found jute to be the loneliest of the natural industrial fibers.

#7. Dick Cheney Sends Terminator Back in Time to Eliminate Joe Wilson’s Mother. This one pretty much wrote itself.

#6. UMASS Establishes Chair in XTreme Mathematics & Local Mathematician Develops James Brown Numerical System. Absolutely no response to either of these, but I find them absurdly funny.

#5. CIA Admits it Destroyed Entire Third Season of ‘Saved by the Bell.’ A cautionary tale ripped from today’s headlines.

#4. My Cellulite Problem — And Ours. Huge hits on this one thanks to a link from Andrew Sullivan, who just couldn’t resist the allure of the accompanying photos. Helpful hint for all you web surfers out there — never, under any circumstances, enter the following search terms into Google: male liposuction buttocks before photos.

#3. I’m No Proust Scholar, But In Search of Lost Time is Nothing But a Lame Retread of Remembrances of Things Past. See, some Proust translator decided that Remembrances of Things Past was not an accurate enough translation for the title of Proust’s six volume masterpiece, and instead went with the vastly inferior In Search of Lost Time. But what if some not-so-bright Proust fan mistook the new translation as an entirely new work and reread the entire six novel series? Hilarity would ensue, right? Apparently not, given the response to this one. About once a week, someone will google ‘Marcel Proust’ and come across this post. I hope it gives them a chuckle. Or at least I hope they get it.

#2. Least Likely Christmas Specials. Inspired by a post at John Scalzi’s blog Whatever, my take on the Yule specials we won’t be seeing this year.

#1. The Unofficial Strategy Guide to ‘Pundit!’. Here it is, my favorite post of the last year. Perhaps it’s too long for this format, but it was the most fun to write — something to make you laugh and think.

The Sketchies

No, not my memory lately — the Sketchies is YouTube’s sketch comedy contest.

Here are the top ten finalists for round two. They all had to incorporate the theme of “living the dream” and the word ‘indubitably.’ Below is my favorite, though this one is pretty good as well. Voting ends tomorrow (April 15).

Cross Salamanders

I kid. It’s what I do.

But allow me to be serious here for a moment, because the Kamper had an encounter the other night with some of America’s young people — the future leaders of tomorrow — that has me gravely concerned for the future of this great nation.

Allow me to elaborate. On Wednesday night, the Kamper clan went out to watch the salamander migration. One evening every spring, when conditions are just right (rainy with a temperature above 40 degrees), the spotted salamanders migrate from their homes in the woods down to the vernal pools to mate and lay their eggs. About 20 years ago, the town of Amherst built a couple of tunnels in North Amherst to keep the critters from getting squished by the traffic on Henry Street (many still do). It’s an ideal place to observe the migration, because one can remain on the road and still get a good view of the salamanders without risk of interfering with them or, worse, stepping on them.

Conditions looked ideal, rainy but warm all day, but by evening the rain cleared and by nightfall it was too dry for the salamanders. We did see one salamander and a few frogs before giving up and heading home. Then a few hours later it started raining again, so around 11 pm I went back with a friend, Susan, while the kids and the missus stayed home. Right away we saw them, not the flood we had hoped but still a good half dozen or so spotted salamanders: going into the tunnels, coming out of the tunnels, skirting along the little plastic fence that is designed to prevent them from reaching the road. Small groups of people gathered at each tunnel entrance, and the tone was somber, almost reverential. You really felt like you were observing something special.

Then the college students showed up.

There were perhaps eight of them. And within five minutes of their arrival, I observed all of the following behaviors:

• They picked up the salamanders to show them off to their friends
• They held up the salamanders so they could take pictures with their cell phones
• They called their friends on same cellphones to loudly insist they get their asses over here right now because it’s fucking awesome
• They tramped about in the woods, directly in the path of the migrating salamanders

Earlier in the evening, when the crowd was mostly young children, no one needed to be told not to pick up the salamanders or to clomp around in the woods where the creatures might be hiding. But when Susan suggested to one of the college girls that she perhaps should stop taking flash photos (she’d taken half a dozen already), her response was, “A few pictures isn’t gonna hurt ‘em.” Of course not. Why would repeated flashes of blinding white light directly in its face cause consternation to a nocturnal creature?

But all of this idiocy pales in comparison to Torch Boy.

This is the kid who forgot his flashlight so instead fashioned a make-shift torch. And what, you ask, did Torch Boy use to make his torch?

Only this:

HIS OWN SOCK.

SOAKED IN MOTOR OIL.

STUCK ON THE END OF A STICK.

You read that right. This dim-wit was stalking around Henry Street with an oil-soaked sock burning on the end of a stick. Give him a pitchfork and he could have been hunting down Frankenstein. At one point he was holding the torch near the tunnel entrance, bemoaning the fact that no salamanders were passing through, and I said, “There aren’t many animals that move toward fire.”

Now this is a grown adult — an adult apparently capable of passing whatever rudimentary place-the-square -block-in-the-square-hole testing they require these days for admission to UMASS. Luckily, his attention span was as lacking as his IQ, so by the time his torch burned down he and his friends had grown bored with the spectacle. Which is when we left.

Later, it made me wonder about the ways in which we are all Torch Boy when it comes to the natural world.

The salamanders will survive Torch Boy. They’ll survive us all.