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.

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.

Today is National Leave Your Kid at Home Day in Shalampax.

With school out, many parents have been bringing their kids to work, locking them in the supply closet, and then taking them home at night. Parents are doing this to save the cost of sending their kids to camp or hiring someone to police their kids during the day.

Shalampax childcare experts state that this is a very highly recommended parenting technique, but many employers say otherwise. It seems that, when they leave the supply closets, many kids are taking some of the office supplies with them. Actually, they’re stealing as much as they can carry. Some kids even bring wagons to cart their loot away.

Most employers are unhappy with this because they restrict office supply theft privileges to employees only, not their dependents. In response, the Employers’ Association convinced the government to declare this to be Leave Your Kid at Home Day. Consequently, all parents are required to leave their kids at home today.

If you have children, don’t despair. The same childcare experts assure me that the best thing for your children is to leave them at home, turn on the television, leave a few scraps of food on the floor, and then padlock the door from the outside when you leave.

Happy Leave Your Kid at Home Day! Unfortunately, with the weekend coming up, your kids will have to curtail their theft activities until Monday.

Today is National Do Nothing and Don’t Give a Damn Day here in Shalampax. On this day every year we commemorate everything that it means to be a Shalampaxian. Our festivities include a 24-hour-long group nap.

If I gave a damn, I’d tell you to celebrate the day and have a great holiday. But I don’t, so I won’t.