Shalampax Speaks

Today is National Personal Hygiene Day in Shalampax. To celebrate this holiday, all Shalampaxians are expected to shower or take a bath today. National Personal Hygiene Day comes but once a year, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask Shalampaxians to make the effort required to bathe on this special day. Your family, your neighbors and, if you work, your coworkers will thank you.

Washing your clothes and bedding is not mandatory, but if it’s been a year or more since you’ve last done so, it is strongly recommended.

Shalampax’s parliament is into its seventeenth consecutive day of debate on a proposed bill. If passed, the act will require that all dog-owners pick up and dispose of any poop that their dogs drop on the hallways and other public areas of Shalampax’s building. All other parliamentary business has been suspended until the current debate and, presumably, the eventual enacting of the bill, is complete.

There is little doubt that the, as it is called, “Stoop and Scoop the Frigging Poop Act” will eventually be passed in some form. The debate now revolves around the details.

What grade of plastic should be required in the bags that dog-owners use to pick up and transport the poop? How should the bags be fastened shut so as to minimize the odors emitted before the bags can be dropped down the garbage chute? How large should the fines be for people who fail to comply with the law? Should repeat offenders receive jail sentences? And so on.

Approximately one day was spent debating whether the law should include a “three strikes and you’re out” provision. Under this proposal, anyone who is convicted of failing to pick up his or her dog’s poop three times would be sentenced to death. Discussion of this proposal was halted when parliamentarians were reminded that Shalampax had taken a strong stand against the death penalty. There were many dissenting voices but, in the end, the majority agreed that this was probably not the best offense to use as a trigger for reversing Shalampax’s anti-death penalty stance.

During one of the many long breaks in parliament’s debate I was able to make contact with a Member of Parliament. She agreed to talk with me on the condition of anonymity.

I asked this Member of Parliament if, should the Stoop and Scoop the Frigging Poop Act become law, would parliament then repeal the existing law that strictly forbids all pet ownership in Shalampax?

She responded, “Are you out of your frickin’ mind? We barely have room for all of the people here and you want to allow pets? That’s just plain crazy!”

The debate continues.

Mothsmating is Shalampax’s only computer hacker. To be honest, the rest of us are challenged by the on/off switches on our computers.

Not satisfied with the hundreds of millions of dollars she has earned by hacking into the computer systems of banks around the world, and inspired by the enormous success of Shalampax’s cult religion industry, Mothsmating has initiated the planning phase of a scheme to launch her own cult religion.

She is still in the early stages of the design of the cult religion, but the basic premise is that, despite appearances to the contrary, none of us are of flesh, bone and blood. Instead, we are all characters in a massive computer game.

Naturally, the deity in this cult religion is the game’s programmer, who just happens to be Mothsmating.

Mothsmating claims that the programming logic of the game requires that all of the game’s characters—us—eventually die. However, each character can effect the quality of his or her life by giving financial offerings to the cult’s religion’s deity. The larger the offering, the better the life.

Characters who send particularly large financial offerings to the deity will still die, but, before they do, all of their memories will be cached and then loaded into the memory of a new game character that is “born” (generated via the program code) later. Large donors can thus achieve a form of immortality of the soul.

According to the teachings of Mothsmating’s in-progress cult religion, because we are all just computer characters, our wealth is virtual, not real. Therefore, we should suffer no regret when we send it to her.

The working title of this cult religion is Bittianity. Adherents are likely to be called Bittians, or maybe just Bit-heads.

That’s all she has mapped out so far. If you’d like to get a jump on the other future adherents, you can give your offerings to Mothsmating now. Don’t worry about writing a check. She’ll hack into your bank and credit card accounts to get it.

Jealousy does not arise often in Shalampaxians. We’re usually much to lazy and apathetic to bother being jealous.

Nonetheless, Emptybucket has become intensely envious of the success of Toiletoverflowing’s philosophy lecture series. (In Shalampax, a lecture is considered to be successful if two or more people attend, at least one of whom stays awake for 40 percent or more of the lecture.)

To get back in the game and attempt to rival Toiletoverflowing’s success, Emptybucket has revived his intermittent lecture series. Unlike Toiletoverflowing, Emptybucket does not have an overarching theme for his series. Instead, he talks about any thoughts that manage to penetrate his head at the time. Knowing Emptybucket’s mental capacity, it is hard to imagine that he’ll be giving any more than one or two lectures per month.

If Emptybucket can maintain the quality that he demonstrated in his most recent talk, I think he can give Toiletoverflowing a real run for his money.

Yesterday evening, I had the near pleasure of attending a lecture by Emptybucket titled “Drinking Responsibly.” I’m pretty sure that I was awake for not just 40 percent of the lecture, but probably almost 50, maybe even 55 percent of it. Despite the fact that, judging from the snoring, I can’t say the same for the other two audience members, my duration of consciousness was definitely sufficient to award Emptybucket’s talk a “success” label.

Don’t take my word for the worth of the lecture. Consider the following pearls of wisdom that I learned at Emptybucket’s session on drinking responsibly:

• Drinking massive quantities of alcohol will lead to peeing massive quantities of urine. It is irresponsible to pee on the floor. Therefore, when you’re doing a heavy bout of drinking, make sure you leave for your washroom breaks early enough such that you won’t have any accidents on the way. Either that or use a catheter that empties into a large jug positioned beside you. Better yet, use a catheter with a long tube that will carry your pee all the way into the washroom.
• Toilets have a finite capacity. Therefore, if you use the long-tube catheter method of disposing of your urine, appoint a designated flusher who will agree to remain sufficiently sober to walk to the washroom every once in a while in order to flush the toilet.
• It is irresponsible to ignore the needs of others. Therefore, a few days before going on a drinking binge, call the bar and let them know you are coming. That way, the bar will able to lay in an adequate stock so that there will be enough for the other patrons as well.
• Alcohol evaporates very quickly. Therefore, once you are so intoxicated that you have trouble finding your mouth, ask someone more sober than you to help you pour the booze down your throat. Remember, in the challenging economic times that the rest of the world is experiencing, all waste is irresponsible.
• If your blood-alcohol level rises to the point where your bloodstream is 50 percent or more alcohol, the stuff flowing through your veins will be flammable. Needless to say, this is very unhealthy. Therefore, for health and safety reasons, long before you reach this point move far away from any open flames. Otherwise, even a minor cut could be catastrophic.

By taking these few tips to heart—not to mention the tips that I slept through—we can all learn to drink more responsibly.

Thank you Emptybucket. After that almost stirring lecture, I’ll make every effort to pretend to look forward to your next one. Oh, and the alcoholic beverages that you served before, during and after your talk were greatly appreciated. Be sure to provide the same libations at your next one.

Hey peeps, I have news from Shalampax’s performing arts scene, such as it is, which is not very much at all.

Word is that Shabbycardigan is getting ready to start rehearsals on a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There’s no news yet on when, if ever, she expects it to open or begin previews.

To say the least, this is a questionable undertaking. The attention span of most Shalampaxians is not adequate to carry them through to the end of a four-word monosyllabic sentence. (This partially explains why almost no Shalampaxians read Shalampax Speaks.)

Under the circumstances, mounting a successful staging in Shalampax of Hamlet, or any of Shakespeare’s other plays for that matter, would be a challenge for the most innovative of directors. And Shabbycardigan is definitely not the world’s most innovative of directors. Hell, to-date, her mind has shown little indication of even being from the same galaxy as directors who are capable of demonstrating the slightest of inventiveness.

I don’t know who gave her the idea, but Shabbycardigan is expected to adapt Hamlet to accommodate Shalampaxians’ mind-boggling attention deficiencies. Rumor has it that she intends to modify the play so that, very early in the Act I, scene one, Hamlet will quickly and resolutely decide to not be. The audience is then expected leave and go to the bar for an after-theater drink or ten.

It is not widely known that Shalampaxians have long been paying much higher than necessary food prices to compensate the Shalampax Grocery Store for its disorganization, inefficiency and ineptitude.

When food is imported into Shalampax, before going onto the shelves at the Shalampax Grocery Store, it goes into the store’s stockroom, where much of it is forgotten. Out of sheer incompetence, considerable quantities of food are left in the stockroom well beyond the point when the clerks can still disguise the decay with food dye and acrylic, as is the store’s policy for groceries that have not yet reached that point.

These appallingly wasteful practices are about to end. The Shalampax Grocery Store is getting ready to implement a computer-based inventory system that should guarantee that perishable goods are moved out onto the shelves before they rot beyond repair.

In addition to industry-standard program logic, the system will incorporate some of the most advanced and innovative of fuzzy logic, a technology that has gained much note, but, until now, has seen little use in commercial software.

The incorporation of this still untried fuzzy logic is necessary to account for the large quantity of food that spends much of its time being kicked around the stockroom floor, where it picks up many dust bunnies and other fuzzy substances.

Thanks to the efficiencies and dramatically reduced spoilage that the new system will make possible, Shalampaxians should soon see either much lower food prices or much higher profits at the Shalampax Grocery Store. I’m guessing it will be the latter.