Camper's Guide (Part 1)

Camping is an outdoor activity that is very popular among parolees from mental institutions. These camping aficionados camp with the same enthusiasm they used to apply to their search and destroy chihuahua missions, or whatever it was that got them committed. But camping is legal because woodland creatures are more likely to terrorize you than be terrorized themselves, although this does not apply to squirrels who live in a state of perpetual terror.

There is also a small section of the population that thinks camping might be fun to try. For most, it does not take long for them to realize their error. The rest have to be taken to places like Happy Dale to "rest" for a while, but it's too late for them. They are already avid campers.

My friend Fred, who is coincidentally residing at Happy Dale, is a true camper. I have asked him to write a brief tutorial for you neophytes out there who are ill-prepared for the adventure that lies ahead. Be advised that not everything Fred says is, strictly speaking, sane. But he knows camping.

Equipment: Every successful camper knows that proper equipment is essential for an enjoyable camping experience. While I find it important not to bring too much, if you insist on bringing a TV and microwave along, do not forget to bring a long enough extension cord. If you are going to an official campground, just bring jumper cables and a small transformer and hook up to any one of the available cars, provided it isn't yours.

Camper's Guide (part 2)

Commercially-available camp stoves have the heating power equivalent of a moose's armpit. You have to decide whether you prefer the flavor of propane or moose sweat. No contest. It's easier to get the moose heated up. Just whistle "Baby Love" by the Supremes. Moose seem to react very warmly to it.

No camping experience is complete without a fire, so be sure to bring a chainsaw and a gallon or two of gasoline. Be sure to select a campsite a good distance from the ranger station, as park rangers can be real spoil-sports.

Since it almost always begins to rain within minutes of pitching your tent, bring a tall metal pole in case there is lightning. This will insure that you can still get a fire going, or at least gets you invited inside a nearby RV if you agree to put it away.

Finally, bring a large knife and sharpen it frequently and obstreperously. This will keep away undesirables like rangers and nosy campers who might want to know what you're doing to that moose.

Camper's Guide (part 3)

Timing: Although any time is a good time to camp out, I find the best time to be just after people notice that a lot of their chihuahuas are missing. But this is a personal decision. My cellmate, I mean, friend, Bob "Frank" Purdue prefers to go when boneless chickens start turning up, but I think that's really odd.

Location: Many people prefer official campgrounds for their camping experiences, but there are hidden bonuses to camping on public property near a residential area. In many places I have been offered large sums of money just to leave. It also enables me to stalk those little yapping demons more effectively.

Travel: You can camp very well in your own back yard, although city dwellers may have to travel a little in order to be able to commune truly with nature. I enjoy talking to the animals, most of whom are pretty good listeners. The others are not so bad once you get their attention, for which I recommend a good .30/06. Sometimes I find it practical to cross a state line on my camping trip.

Remarks: Get out there and try it! There's nothing like proving to yourself that you can cope in a hostile environment, that rain, hail, insects, park rangers, and wild beasts don't really bother you. Yes, enduring wet, cold, and uncomfortable sleeping; biting, clawing, and kicking your way to survival. This is the essence of the camping experience. Enjoy!

Playing Squash (I)

Squash is a complicated game rich folks play. It is played in a bare room with one glass wall where players knock a rubber ball off the walls scoring points in ways I don’t understand. Clearly, squash was invented by someone doing time for insider trading, and the criminal mind is a dark and mysterious thing. I’ll stick to badminton, which is far simpler and less stressful. It was invented by a British Lord and follows the fine English tradition of sports which do not involve exercise.

However, there is a much more challenging game with much higher stakes that I want to talk about, and it is truly a game of squash. Squash is a vegetable of the cucumber family used exclusively by parents to torment their children. People have been known to starve to death on a desert island in the middle of a squash field, and this is understandable. Squash grows in large quantities in any kind of soil including granite, but its edibility has been compared to old lithium batteries. Unfavorably.

But everyone who has a garden in the back yard grows squash, particularly zucchini. They do so because the whole point of having a garden is that there should be green things growing in it, but most plants require good soil to grow in. The average Maine garden spot is suitable for growing rocks and withered tomatoes, presenting a discouraging faded-brown appearance. Unless you plant zucchini in it, in which case your garden becomes a lush green jungle with tentacle-like vines creeping out into the yard as the zucchini attempts to expand beyond the borders of the garden.

Playing Squash (Part 2)

While this is very satisfying to the gardener, it soon presents a problem: Zucchinis. Thousands of them. Along with being very hardy, each zucchini plant produces seventy-five zucchinis, which have to be harvested. Otherwise you end up with a yard full of rotting zucchini, attracting insects that have not yet been classified, from places that have not yet been discovered. An entomologist's delight, sure, but the neighbors will not be pleased when their dog is eaten by newly-arrived Goliath beetles.

Thus every summer zucchini growers are faced with the daunting task of figuring out what to do with all of their wonderful home-grown zucchini. They can it, puree it into zucchini relish, bake it into breads, serve it at dinner every night, try to pass the small ones off as pickles, and turn it into many other delightful dishes no one can stand. This takes care of the first few tons.

Playing Squash (Part 3)

The growers turn to the community for help. At first they go to their friends, giving them shopping bags full of zucchini so their families can learn to loathe it too. Early in the season, they still have time to turn the raw zucchini into more useful nauseating items such as jelly. But soon, harvesting a fresh crop of zucchini every eight hours, they are too busy for such niceties.

Gardeners soon find their circle of friends narrowing to include only other zucchini growers, and they hold ritual zucchini exchanges wherein they swap grocery bags full of them. Soon they realize that they are not reducing the overall quantity of zucchini in their houses. They are forced to take drastic measures.

Zucchini begins to be found abandoned on doorsteps, in the back seats of any cars foolishly left unlocked in zucchini season, and occasionally even on park benches. Gardeners generally want their produce to be given a good home, but sometimes desperation gets the better of them. At this time of the year, members of the clergy are deluged with gifts of produce from their parishioners, and there is no gracious way to stop them. Many clergymen are forced to take up gardening so they can say truthfully that they have more than enough zucchini of their own. But then they have to find a way to get rid of it so it won't go to waste. Lock your doors.

Humor in the Fields

Ah, gardening. You plow up a section of your yard, remove twenty-seven wheelbarrow loads of rocks, buy a truckload of topsoil, and spend the next six weeks on your knees in the dirt pulling up weeds. But it's all worth it, because in the end you have a big patch of brown dirt where there used to be grass, and one head of lettuce.

Make sure you do not harvest the lettuce, as it has a higher insect density than the board of a major oil company. Mostly these pests are slugs (in both cases), which may not technically be classified as insects, but really should be. The dictionary says they are gastropod mollusks, the same family as snails and certain seafood, which probably means you can eat them. If you like eating really gross, slimy things like tofu, you will most likely enjoy slugs. You don't have to admit to it either. Just say you like "escargot sans coquille." Yum.

If instead you decide your garden is to be kept solely as a place where you will work on developing lower-back pain and arthritis in the process of raising vegetables, stop being silly. You will never be able to grow any vegetables aside from zucchini, which is a type of inedible squash (although this is a bit redundant). But since you insist on trying, You'll have to get rid of your slugs.

One way to destroy slugs is to put salt on them. Unfortunately, this method requires you to stand sentry in your garden twenty-four hours a day with a saltshaker. This allows some people to combine their favorite hobbies: camping and gardening. Normal people look for an easier solution.

Luckily there is another way to do away with slugs. If you put out a bowl of beer (or other alcoholic beverage), the slugs will drown themselves in it. No, not like your college roommate. I mean literally. Oh, you did too, huh?

Humor in the Fields (Part 2)

The problem with the beer method is that woodland creatures are all hapless lushes. Putting out bowls of beer will soon make you responsible for supplying booze to a whole host of drunken squirrels, rabbits, skunks, deer, and slugs. Yes, once the word is out that you are providing free beer, critters will begin trekking to your yard to party. Things will be pretty quiet until the college students begin to arrive. Then it is time to break out the shotgun.

To avoid all of this hassle, the best thing to do is to let your garden patch grow over with weeds. Weeds are plants that are strong and vibrant and clever enough to taste terrible so no one will want to eat them. This includes your slugs, who will be forced to find food elsewhere. To insure their departure, you might try to convince your neighbors to take up gardening.

If you still insist on growing vegetables, you have one more option. Cash in you IRA and any other investments you may have, and take the money down to your local hardware store. Buy all of the insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, pesticide, and whatever else you can find that ends in "ide." Most hardware stores will offer you a special trade-in deal on your car in case you run out of money.

Take all of these hazardous chemicals home and spray them all over your garden area. I find that it is cheaper just to invite the DOE to use your yard as a disposal site for high-level nuclear waste, which has the same effect. Not only will nothing come anywhere near your yard, but you will be able to buy up all of your neighbors' lots dirt cheap to expand your little "garden." You may even get government subsidies for this.

Also, vegetables seem to thrive in this sort of environment. And remember, radioactive tomatoes have a shelf-life of over nine thousand years! Isn't it wonderful how technology can improve even the simplest task?

Beating the Heat

Every time summer rolls around, people start talking about ways to "beat
the heat." Every time Oprah rolls around, the earth's oceans slosh over.
(Depending on your taste in talk show hosts who think the world revolves
around them, you may wish to replace "Oprah" with “Rosie O’Donnell” or
“Dr. Phil” in that last semi-joke.) Anyway, here are a few tips on how
to stay cool.

We here in Maine generally do not have a problem with trying to keep
cool in the summer, as heat is not usually part of the equation. Summer
is merely a period without snow that affords myriad insects the
opportunity to hatch, suck a little blood, breed, and die. Just like
Congressmen! This, of course, would be perfectly fine if there were
fewer of them. But during the summer the mosquito population density far
exceeds the legal limit of nine thousand per square inch. Sadly, this
limit is seldom enforced since it is impossible to count mosquitoes and
still have enough blood in your veins to fill a fountain pen.

Anyway, I understand that people in other states find that it often gets
very hot. One common solution is to travel to Maine. It would probably
be easier (and less itchy) to buy an air conditioner, and recently it’s
been pretty darn steamy here anyway, although the tourist bureau can
rest assured that I would never say so.

A common mistake is going outside. Many people even deliberately seek
bright sunlight to lie in for hours, a habit known as "baking the brain"
or "flirting with skin cancer."
Then these people have the nerve to complain that it's too hot. Of
course it is! That's like complaining that you get all wet every time
you go swimming. Stop whining and go sit in front of the air
conditioner. Or come to Maine, where it’s always pleasantly cool
(Disclaimer: The Chamber of Commerce paid me to say that).

In the days before technology gave us the convenience of
ozone-depleting, Legionaire's Disease-breeding air conditioners, people
were forced to use fans. Before that, people were forced to live in
places with moderate climates where it never got very hot or very cold.
Naturally there are always contrarians, and a few people insisted on
living in the Arabian desert, wandering from oasis to oasis. They were
called "nomads," a compound word created by the joining of "no" which
means "without," and "mads" which means "brains." They probably
complained a great deal about the heat, but nobody cared. Now these
desert-dwellers have oil wells and drive around in air-conditioned Rolls
Royces and are called "sheiks," which means "not worth it."

Similarly, some other folks headed to the Arctic, where summer is never
an issue and no one ever needs a refrigerator. Of course, you must also
learn to enjoy the taste of raw whale blubber, which helps reduce
tourism greatly. Some scientists show up once in a while to measure
something or other, but scientists also are known to go inside the
craters of active volcanoes to measure something (presumably the
“something” is not their sanity). Neither destination is likely to be
called “Vacationland” anytime soon.

The Arctic serves as inspiration for one summer technique of keeping
cool, based on the principle of mind over matter. Put on a parka and
think, "I'm cold, I'm freezing cold." Soon you will collapse from heat
exhaustion, whereupon you will be rushed to a wonderfully cool,
air-conditioned hospital. See? It works!

Alternately, you can put on a fur coat, and as you walk around you will
be repeatedly doused with red paint by animal rights activists, cooling
you off. You may even get them so heated up that they begin dropping
like flies from heat stroke. This is fun to watch especially since their
ethics do not allow them to do so. They must drop like over-ripe,
organically-grown tomatoes instead.

It should be clear, then, that there are as many ways to beat the heat
as there are lunatics to dream them up. It is also clear that you would
be wise to consult someone else for ideas on how to do it. #

Life's a Beach

Ah, summer. Every time the mercury pushes over 70 I feel the need to dash to the beach. I must go at least seven or eight times a year on average (I live in Maine, remember). Of course, when it’s over 90º I go down to the basement and crawl into the freezer. Maybe I should just buy an air conditioner. Anyway, beachmeister that I am, I also monitor the ocean water temperature, and when it breaks 60, I'm there, dude. I go at least twice a year.

Some of you out there are thinking this isn't very often. That may be true, but when I go to the beach, I go swimming. I do not go to lie in the sun listening to my brain bake, like most avid beachgoers. Sure, I shine blazing white in the sunlight, but women find that so attractive. I discovered many years ago that I have two options in the skin tone department: fishbelly white or lobster red. This would not be an easy choice, were it not for the pain factor, which makes paleness look pretty good.

Besides, this whole skin cancer, ozone hole thing is starting to make people think I'm an environmentally health-conscious guy instead of a pasty white geek. (And women seem to like the smell of SPF 90 sunblock.) Soon there will be more non-tanned individuals around. Then you will need wrap-around opaque sunglasses if you wish to ogle the bathing beauties. Not so they won't see your eyes following them, but just so you can stand the glare off their bodies.

Speaking of which, how do you like the new suits the girls are wearing these days? Last year I thought it would be fun to challenge designers to create a suit using only one square foot of material. Now I see that it wasn't much of a challenge. They can make two suits with that much cloth. So this time how about trying a six-inch by six-inch square. They have apparently been doing it with this little material for years in Brazil.

Now that I have raised the issue of bikinis, perhaps I should mention the rules about wearing them. There are only two: You must be a woman of the female persuasion, and you must be a model.

Rule one is well known in the U.S., where men's swim suits have been getting longer and baggier, while the women's get shorter and skimpier. (Who says men have no fashion sense?) But judging from the attendance at Maine beaches, Canadian men are unaware of this rule. They seem to be exceptionally fond of wearing those little Speedo things, which display their--ahem--wares rather prominently. (Well, not all that prominently, if you know what I mean.)

I suspect that there is a shortage of full-length mirrors in Canada, and since most of the Speedo wearers cannot see beyond their pot-bellies, they are unaware of how indecent they look.
I have considered bringing a large mirror to the beach to show them how they really look, since I have no power to call for Canadian government action, but I'm not sure this would work. It is possible that the Speedo crowd would wander up to it and admire their profiles, making sure they had at least three inches of flesh bulging over their waistbands. Then they would turn for a frontal view, to make sure their appendages were properly appended. Somebody tell them they are breaking the rules. I can't stop laughing long enough to tell them myself.

The second rule is the more often flouted of the two. It is okay, even desirable, for young coeds to prance about in tiny bikinis. Bikinis were in fact invented specifically so that they would do this. However, if you have even a micron of body fat, it will be highlighted dramatically. This was the swimsuit designers' intention, the idea being that no one except nubile under-25-year-olds would wear them.

Unfortunately, this scheme backfired, and bikinis have become the outfit most often ticketed by the fashion police. This should not be taken as an insult by you slightly-less-than-perfect ladies out there. We men would never wear anything like that because it would make us look terrible. We have seen the Canadians.