Shalampax Speaks

Today is Ocean Day in Shalampax.

Living on a tiny speck of an island in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean, we are ever-conscious of the enormity, majesty, bountifulness, beauty, power and, yes, often destructiveness of our oceans. That is why we honor, venerate, often immensely fear and, particularly on this day, greatly celebrate our planet’s seas.

We are especially appreciative of the fact that there are no more than a few hundred steps—if that—between the ocean and every point on Shalampax. This provides us with easy access to a massive liquid dumping ground where we can, without a care in the world, dispose of our raw sewage and garbage.

We are ever-thankful to Paahlm for having blessed us with this free garbage and sewage dump right on our doorstep. And we pity people in those poor countries where they have to pay to process their sewage and garbage or transport it somewhere far away for disposal. We are truly blessed by Paahlm in this regard.

Many Shalampaxians get into the spirit of Ocean Day by saving up their garbage for weeks. They then ceremoniously fling it into the sea on Ocean Day.

Of course, because of our almost constant gale-force winds, this ceremony often has to be put off for another day for safety reasons. However, our weather forecaster is predicting that this year there should be about an hour this afternoon when it will be safe enough to go outside, provided that you can quickly lash yourself to a tree before commencing the dumping ceremony. Your best bet is to stand on the leeward side of the island so the wind will do most of the flinging work for you.

Happy Ocean Day!

Today is National Aardvark Day in Shalampax. Just to be clear, there are not now, nor have there ever been any aardvarks in Shalampax. I doubt that any aardvarks have ever come within hundreds of miles of this island. And, if they had any choice in the matter, I’m sure the aardvarks would vote to keep it that way.

So, you may be wondering, why is today National Aardvark day here? That is a good question. The answer is much less good.

One of our Members of Parliament heard the word aardvark and, despite having no idea what it meant, he liked the sound of it. As a result, he put forward a motion to name today National Aardvark Day. Because all of the other MPs were asleep at the time, the vote on his motion carried with one for and none against.

To say the least, National Aardvark Day perplexes most Shalampaxians. I did an informal survey and found that 83.5 percent of Shalampaxians not only do not know what an aardvark is, but, when presented with a multiple-choice question, they cannot even classify aardvarks as animal, vegetable or mineral. This is surprising because, had they made random guesses, you would have expected about one-third of them to get it right.

Needless to say, no one here has any idea how to celebrate National Aardvark day, but they are happy for the holiday.

Happy Aardvark Day, Merry Aardvark Day or whatever the appropriate greeting for this holiday may be.

Rottentomato has almost recovered from eating his own food and he expects to be back in full swing coordinating the culinary experience at his restaurant, Shalampax’s Most Expensive Restaurant, by next week.

Rottentomato is very cognizant of the fact that his menu rarely pays tribute to, let alone even barely alludes to Shalampax’s status as an island nation. Recognizing this, on his return, Rottentomato plans to feature filet of sole as his special.

In the past, Rottentomato has occasionally been faulted for being a tad over-audacious with his cuisine. This audaciousness is best demonstrated by his recent stomach pumping. He promises that meals will be a bit more pedestrian in the future.

If my experience the last time Rottentomato featured filet of sole on his menu is anything to go by, if Rottentomato requests that you leave your footwear at the front door when you enter his restaurant, just say no. Otherwise, you might find the bottoms of your shoes a little lighter when you pick them up after the meal.

Next Wednesday, in meeting room 4C, Toiletoverflowing will present the next in his series of philosophy lectures. This time, he will dissect the philosophy of Kant.

Next Wednesday’s lecture will be somewhat unique for Toiletoverflowing in that it will be divided into three segments. Attendees will be served milk and cookies in the intermissions. Participants will also be encouraged to take brief naps during these breaks.

In the first part of the lecture Toiletoverflowing will present an overview of the philosophy of Kant. He will focus on the extreme negativity of the Kant viewpoint.

During the middle segment, Toiletoverflowing will question why so many philosophers, philosophy students, philosophers’ biographers and others insist on misspelling the word as “Kant.”

In the final part of his lecture, Toiletoverflowing will discuss opposing philosophies. In particular, he will examine one philosophy that he believes is the polar opposite of the Kant philosophy, namely the Can philosophy.

In this segment, Toiletoverflowing will present a case study that shows how the Can philosophy was put to practical use in real-life. This study will demonstrate how the philosophy was effectively employed by the Barack Obama campaign to win the 2008 United States Presidential election using the slogan, “Yes we can.”

We’re fortunate to have such a great philosophy scholar as Toiletoverflowing in Shalampax to help us to understand the Kant philosophy or, as Toiletoverflowing prefers to spell it, the Can’t philosophy.

Fridays are movie nights in the fourth-floor recreation room. The organizers of these events have been showing “feel good” movies exclusively. They believed that nobody would complain about feel good films. They were wrong.

Maybe they are simply objecting to the poor grammar exhibited in the use of “feel good” in this context, but a few women are upset about being felt, well or otherwise, when they go to the movies. Then again, most of the women who attend are good with it.

Admission to the Friday night films is normally $15 dollars per person, but braless women get in free.

The Shalampax Medical Clinic has decided to expand its mandate to include a public education component. Henceforth, the clinic will try to enlighten Shalampaxians on health-related issues. This element being added to the clinic’s mission because the medical staff there have come to believe that the happiest, healthiest and best patients are educated patients.

The doctors at the clinic have no idea why this could possibly be the case. In fact, they suspect that they are misunderstanding the concept, but one of the medical staff read it in a popular, mass-circulation magazine that even has its own Facebook page and Twitter account, so it must be true.

The first seminar in this new series, which is open to all Shalampaxians, will be held this Wednesday evening in the conference room at the Medical Clinic. The topic will be Effective Pain Management.

During this two-hour session, Dr. Crushedbirdbrain will discuss the most modern techniques for managing pain. He’ll review pharmaceutical options and describe how meditation and guided visualization can be used to reduce or even eliminate pain.

The lecture will be followed by a mandatory hands-on workshop. Staff from the Medical Clinic will repeatedly beat attendees with baseball bats and then assess how well the participants manage the resulting pain.

This just goes to show how important the medical staff believes this session to be. Nobody in Shalampax plays baseball. Heck, we don’t have enough room for a dugout, let alone a whole baseball field. Therefore, the clinic had to import the baseball bats just for this workshop.

This proves that the Shalampax Medical Clinic is determined to spare no expense in the cause of Shalampaxians’ health. Besides, it is receiving funding from the government, on the condition that Members of Parliament get to watch at no charge.

The lecture and associated workshop are free, but participants will have to pay for all medications they use. After the workshop, light refreshments will be served to all of the attendees who are not in the process of puking their guts out as a result of the beatings and pharmaceuticals.