Shalampax Speaks

Is the Shalampax parliament productive or what? Our Members of Parliament have been back for only a week after the more than two-months-long prorogation of Parliament and they have already passed a new law.

Effective immediately, it is illegal to keep a live woolly mammoth in your apartment in Shalampax. An exception is granted if, when treating an emotional disorder, a psychiatrist or psychologist prescribes the keeping of a live woolly mammoth for companionship.

It’s great to see that our Members of Parliament are scrupulously ensuring that they have all bases covered, no matter how unlikely the contingencies may be.

Government wooly mammoths

OK folks, here’s a little trivia question for you: What do Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Gauguin, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, Wagner, Genghis Khan, Freud, Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy and Obama all have in common?

Give up? The answer is that they are all famous names that are totally unfamiliar to more than 90 percent of the Shalampaxian population.

Here’s a follow-on question: What other world-famous, non-Shalampaxian names belong on that list? If you answered, “all of them,” give yourself some bonus points. Oh, what the heck? Seeing as though they have no monetary value and can’t be redeemed for anything whatsoever, give yourself a million bonus points. I’m feeling generous today.

If this leads you to believe that Shalampaxians are the least informed people on the planet, I have one question for you: You haven’t been paying attention all this time, have you? Either that or you are new to this blog. Get with it.

Miscellaneous famous people

A new service was recently introduced in Shalampax. You can now call a special telephone number to hear the time.

This is a fully automated system, so operators don’t need to be standing by. Exceptionally sophisticated speech synthesis software, running on an extraordinarily powerful computer, speaks the time whenever someone calls the number attached to the computer.

The number to call is 0-600. This number is accessible only in Shalampax. The unavailability of this service elsewhere is not much of a loss to the rest of the world because Shalampax is in a unique time zone that gets reset each morning when Manexposinghimself, our Prime Minister, wakes up.

When the time zone is reset in the morning, all clocks in Shalampax are automatically synchronized with the new time. Thus, this phone service is of use only if you are near a phone, but not near a clock.

One drawback of the new system is that the computer is programmed to only say “at the tone, it will be exactly six p.m.” Shalampaxians are, therefore, asked to be careful to call in only at that time.

Miscellaneous time, time zone

Less than a month from now—if we should live that long—April 2, 2010, to be precise, will be the one-year anniversary of Shalampax Speaks. We think we should do something to celebrate because we will probably be able to get one or two blog posts out of that event, whatever it may be, without having to do too much writing work.

Unfortunately, we’re not very creative people and we we’re having trouble coming up with suggestions our own.

We did think of one idea for celebrating our one-year anniversary: Burn the Shalampax building down and collect the insurance. Everyone loves a good bonfire. And everyone loves collecting millions of dollars from faceless insurance companies too.

Unfortunately, some people pointed out a few problems with our celebration plans. First, our building isn’t insured. We don’t like giving money to outsiders if we don’t absolutely have to and we don’t have any insurance companies here. So there would not be any insurance money to collect.

Second, we wouldn’t have anywhere else to live if our building burned down. We have only the one building here and migration to anywhere else in the world is out of the question because of all of the international arrest warrants sworn out against most of us.

And third, the exterior walls of our building are rock; the interior walls are metal; and all of our furnishings are made of non-flammable materials. This was done specifically because the lack of any other living quarters mean that a fire would be ruinous even if everyone escaped. We couldn’t start a fire here even if we had a military-grade flame-thrower.

Consequently, a major conflagration to celebrate our anniversary is out of the question.

With our one good idea shot down, we’re left with no good ways to honor our upcoming one-year milestone. Do any of you have any suggestions?

Events anniversary, fire

Looking ahead to the remainder of this week, the big excitement here in Shalampax is that Parliament will be reopening on Wednesday, March 3 after an extended National Democracy Month prorogation. (Prorogation shuts down Parliament and all of its committees. Considering how much our parliamentarians hate serving in our Parliament, it is surprising how infrequently prorogation is used here. However, I’m told that proroguing Parliament is a favorite practice of Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.)

All Shalampaxians are greatly looking forward to having our Parliament in session again because, with our Members of Parliament finally back in their chairs snoozing away, there will be much more room for the rest of us at Shalampax’s bars.

As is customary, the new session of Parliament will open with “the speech from the throne.” Many past Prime Ministers have found this to be rather embarrassing because, in Shalampax’s case, the throne is a toilet. However, Manexposinghimself, our current Prime Minister, has always taken this in his stride.

There have been rumors that, immediately following the throne speech, a Member of Parliament—the rumor mill isn’t saying which one—will rise on a Point of Privilege. Rumor has it that this member will then present a motion accusing Manexposinghimself of contempt of Parliament for farting loudly during the throne speech, as he inevitably does on these occasions. If the motion is presented, Manexposinghimself is expected to be cleared of the contempt of Parliament charge because all of the other Members of Parliament will certainly have fallen asleep by the time the vote is taken.

Government parliament, prorogation, prorogue, proroguing, Stephen Harper

Those silent movies were really something, weren’t they?

Yesterday, I attended a six-hour silent-film marathon. The films were modern, but the theater’s sound system was broken. The theater has a no-refund policy, so I stuck around.

Actually, it wasn’t quite a movie marathon in the usually sense. There was only one two-hour film, but I couldn’t follow the plot worth a damn without the sound and, as best I could tell, the film was horrid, so I sat through it three times to make sure I got my money’s worth.

Entertainment film, movies, silent film, silent movie