PASS IT ALONG

Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99

A Thought for Today

Unhappiness owes its origins to weakness of decisions.

Every Friday is Pass It Along Day and today is no exception. Here’s some recent mail.

GOOD SCOUT

A few decades as a scoutmaster have given Wes lots of important information to pass along to all of us. Keep this list handy, you might even put it with your brand new flashlight and the other hastily assembled stuff for your Y2K Kit.

AH WILDERNESS!

Lint from your navel makes a handy fire starter. Warning: Remove lint from navel before applying the match. (Editors note: Whatever happened to rubbing two sticks together.)
           
Get even with a bear that raided your food bag by kicking his favorite stump apart and eating all the ants.
           
A hot rock placed in your sleeping bag will keep your feet warm. A hot enchilada works almost as well, but the cheese sticks between your toes.
           
The best backpacks are named for national parks or mountain ranges. Steer clear of those named for landfills.
           
While the Swiss Army Knife has been popular for years, the Swiss Navy Knife has remained largely unheralded. Its single blade functions as a tiny canoe paddle.
           
Modern rain suits made of fabrics that "breathe" enable campers to stay dry in a downpour. Rain suits that sneeze, cough, and belch, however, have been proven to add absolutely nothing to the wilderness experience.
           
You'll never be lost if you remember that moss always grows on the north side of your compass.
           
You can duplicate the warmth of a down-filled bedroll by climbing into a plastic garbage bag with several geese.
           
The canoe paddle, a simple device used to propel a boat, should never be confused with a gnu paddle, a similar device used by
Tibetan veterinarians.
           
When camping, always wear a long-sleeved shirt. It gives you something to wipe your nose on.
           
Take this simple test to see if you qualify for solo camping. Shine a flashlight into one ear. If the beam shines out the other ear, do not go into the woods alone.
           
A two-man pup tent does not include two men or a pup.
           
A potato baked in the coals for one hour makes an excellent side dish. A potato baked in the coals for three hours makes an excellent hockey puck.
           
In emergency situations, you can survive in the wilderness by shooting small game with a slingshot made from the elastic
waistband of your underwear.
           
The guitar of the noisy teenager at the next campsite makes excellent kindling.
           
The sight of a bald eagle has thrilled campers for generations. The sight of a bald man, however, does absolutely nothing for the eagle.
           
It's entirely possible to spend your whole vacation on a winding mountain road behind a large motor home.
           
Bear bells provide an element of safety for hikers in grizzly country. The tricky part is getting them on the bears.
           
When using a public campground, a tuba placed on your picnic table will keep the campsites on either side vacant.
           
In an emergency, a drawstring from a parka hood can be used to strangle a snoring tent mate.

TOP 20 BAD ROMANCE NOVEL METAPHORS

Coral writes:

“Now THIS made me laugh, because I have, God help me, worked with writers who write like this. Hey, maybe we could put all these together in one book and have a best-seller. ? It's faster than having talent. It’s courtesy of Chris White's Top Five List."

WHAT’S THAT LIEING IN THE ROAD, A HEAD?

20.    His body was hard - not hard like Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, but hard like the marble on your shower floor, when you fall and bang your knee.

19.    Her shoulders heaved like the tiny sobs of Snuggles the cat being run through with a roasting spit.

18.    Her embrace made his manhood swell like week-old roadkill on hot asphalt in the Georgia sun.

17.    Her petticoats dropped to the ground, rustling like a
cockroach in a sugar bowl.

16.    As she kissed her way down his manly chest, he felt his
Amalgamated Crane Company stock increasing in value.

15.    Beatrice was on him like a piranha on a corn dog.

14.    ...then he kissed her, like a butterfly kisses the windshield of a Porsche on the Autobahn.

13.    Her breasts heaved like a stormy ocean, and her pointed
nipples were like hypodermics washed up on the shore.

12.    With his broad shoulders and slim waist, he was a yield sign - yet she could NOT!

11.    He tore open her blouse like a Publishers Clearing House
letter in which he, and some guy named Steven Bouber from Stockton, California, were potential finalists for the ten million dollar prize.

10.    His manhood stood at full attention, stiff and stony like the vice president.

09.    Sleekly malevolent, driven by a violent hunger, Donovan glided through the chum-filled waters of the singles bar, oblivious to the remora of Annabelle’s adoring gaze.

08.    Like the wind, she ran, her breasts lurching like a motor boat over a wake, and then, as fluid as a fine imported transmission, she whipped out her man-organ and pissed away his dreams.

07.    Her sun-glazed back formed a golden arch as he moved his face toward her happy meal.

06.    With each breath, her chest heaved like a bulimic after
Thanksgiving dinner.

05.    He Beatty-ed her shamelessly, making her squeal like Ned
and hallucinate like Warren.

04.    He awoke my slumbering womanhood with his double tall loin latte. Starbucks!, I cried.

03.    His chest was her pillow, and oh, did she drool.

02.    Claire felt swept away by this dark stranger, a helpless dust bunny in the roaring cacophony of his gas-powered leaf blower.

And the Number 1 Bad Romance Novel Metaphor or Simile is . .

01.    His finger, weathered and rough from years on the ranch,
danced in and out of his nose like a slimy ballerina.

FAITH, HOPE & BEST OF ALL CHARITY

Bablaca reminds us that in this season it is more blessed to give than receive.

THE GIFT

Rabbi Schwartz answers his phone.

"Hello is this Rabbi Schwartz?"

"It is"

"This is the IRS. Can you help us?"

"I can."

"Do you know a Sam Cohen?"

"I do."

"Is he a member of your congregation?"

"He is."

"Did he donate $10,000?"

"He will."

OH NO, NOT SANTA

For those who haven’t yet heard the news Dwight sends the following bulletin.

A LETTER FROM SAINT NICK

I regret to inform you that effective immediately, I will no longer be able to serve the Southern United States on Christmas Eve.

Due to the overwhelming population of the earth, North American Fairies and Elves Local #209 renegotiated my contract. I now serve only certain areas of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. As part of the new and better contract, I also get longer breaks for milk and cookies so keep that in mind. However, I am certain that your children will be in good hands with your local replacement who happens to be my third cousin, Bubba Claus.

His side of the family is from the South Pole. He shares my goal of delivering toys to all the good boys and girls. However, there are a few differences between us such as:

1. There is no danger of The Grinch stealing your presents from Bubba Claus. He has a gun rack on his sleigh and a bumper sticker that reads: "These toys insured by Smith and Wesson."

2. Instead of milk and cookies, Bubba Claus prefers that children leave an RC cola and pork rinds [or a moon pie] on the fireplace and Bubba doesn't smoke a pipe. He dips a little snuff though, so please have an empty spit can handy.

3. Bubba Claus' sleigh is pulled by floppy-eared, flyin' coon dogs instead of reindeer. I made the mistake of loaning him a couple of my reindeer one time, and Blitzen's head now overlooks Bubba's fireplace.

4. You won't hear "On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen..." when Bubba Claus arrives. Instead, you'll hear, "On Earnhardt, on Wallace, on Martin and Labonte. On Rudd, on Jarrett, on Elliott and Petty."

5. "Ho, ho, ho!" has been replaced by "Yee Haw!" And you also are likely to hear Bubba's elves respond, "I her'd dat!"

6. As required by Southern highway laws, Bubba Claus' sleigh does have a Yosemite Sam safety triangle on the back with the words "Back off". The last I heard it also had other decorations on the sleigh as well. One is a Ford logo with lights that race through the letters and the other is a caricature of me (Santa Claus) peeing on the Tooth Fairy.

7. The usual Christmas movie classics such as "Miracle on 34th
Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life" will not be shown in your
negotiated viewing area. Instead, you'll see "Boss Hog Saves
Christmas" and "Smokey and the Bandit IV" featuring Burt Reynolds as Bubba Claus and dozens of state police cars crashing into each other.

8. Bubba Claus doesn't wear a belt. If I were you, I'd make sure the wife and the kids turn the other way when he bends over to put presents under the tree.

9. And finally, lovely Christmas songs have been sung about me like "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" and Bing Crosby's "Santa
Claus Is Coming to Town."

This year songs about Bubba Claus will be played on all the AM
radio stations in the South. Those song titles will be Mark
Chesnutt's "Bubba Claus Shot the Jukebox"; Cledus T. Judd's
"All I Want for Christmas Is My Woman and a Six Pack", and
Johnny Paycheck's "If You Don't Like Bubba Claus, Shove It."

Sincerely Yours,
Santa Claus, (Member) North American
Fairies and Elves Local #209

TOUGHER SICK POLICY

You think things are bad where you work? The following notice was posted recently at Beth’s place of employment.

NOTICE TO EMPLOYEES (INCL. PART TIME WORKERS):

SICKNESS  

We will no longer accept your doctors’ statements as proof. We believe if you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to work.

LEAVE OF ABSENCE FOR SURGERY

We are no longer allowing this practice. As long as you are employed here, you will need all of whatever you have and should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are, and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for. Anyone having operations will be FIRED immediately.

PREGNANCY

In the event of extreme pregnancy, you will be allowed to go to the first aid room when the pains are FIVE MINTUES apart. IF it is false labor, you will have to take an hour's leave without pay.

DEATH

This will be accepted as an excuse, BUT we would like two weeks notice, as we feel it is your duty to teach someone your job.

Very Truly Yours,

THE MANAGEMENT

THE SANITY CLAUSE

Only Bob Gentry and his mathematics for brains mind could have come up with the following.

AND THERE AIN'T NO EASTER BUNNY EITHER

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).

This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3, 000 times the speed of sound.

For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance-this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's.

A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas.

Same to you, Buddy. Thanks go out to Wes, Coral, Chris, Bablaca, Dwight, Beth and Bob for today’s goodies. Tomorrow join me for Sentimental Saturday or something. If you’re decorating the tree this weekend, remember to make it a family project. Sleep warm.

                                  - 12/17/99 Previously unpublished.

THREE CHRISTMAS POEMS