Greetings, with apologies for being incommunicado:

   Funsville has become too hot for us. For once, I mean this in the literal and not the figurative sense. As long as the heat was the product of prevailing meteorological conditions, and had nothing to do with law enforcement, we decided to tough it out as best we could.

   Eventually, though, our supply of dry clothes and wet refreshments ran out, and it all became too much. The Funmobile was packed and on the road for Parts Unknown and Cooler before even the vaguest idea of our destination had begun to coalesce. Then, with the speed of ominous yet comforting thunderheads during the most humid of the Dog Days, a brainstorm blew in out of nowhere.

   The national capital region of Canada straddles a provincial border: the provincial holiday honouring the patron saint of Quebec and the main national holiday for all of Canada are exactly one week apart. This year, both fall on a Sunday; since everything within a 50-mile radius of Ottawa is essentially a government town, this means a statutory holiday for both on the following Monday. The prospect of consecutive long weekends was just too good to pass up…so, a quick handbrake turn and some ad hoc navigation later, we fetched up in our hostelry of choice when visiting the area—The Cousins Family B&B&B (Bed & Breakfast & Berating).

   We were on the receiving end of plenty of the third ‘B’ before we had even set our suitcases down. The gentleman of the Cousins household let us know in no uncertain (and a great many ungentlemanly) terms that our presence was far from well-timed or propitious. My personal favourite of the many quotes that enlivened our check-in experience was “two’s company, but six is a crowd—no—actually, it’s TWO crowds.”

   Fortunately, no good guest arrives empty-handed (I try not to leave empty-handed, either), so we had a peace offering prepared for our gracious and unsuspecting host (or is that “ungracious and suspecting host”?).  Along with a selection of the finest products brewed in the sink of the utility room of the Ash Can Club (the mildly disreputable nightspot I still have title to, against my better judgement), we presented him with a list of suggestions for summer long-weekend activities, compiled by the ever-nimble electronic brain of CyberSparky. The utility sink brew proved to be the bigger hit, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t feast your eyes on all the things you could be doing, if you have the next three days off:

- Now’s the time to take the family on a cultural excursion they’ll never forget (and possibly never forgive you for, either). This year, Upper Haven Township (not too far from Funsville) celebrates the over-orchestrated glory of composer Gustav Mahler with its biennial Mahlerama. You haven’t lived until you’ve been followed around a 9 ¼ - mile nature trail while being serenaded by a 110-member choir belting out Das Lied von der Erde in its entirety. (Don’t even think of outrunning them—they’ve been specially selected for their proficiency and endurance by completing a series of grueling triathlons while singing German art songs.)

- Forget Disneyland, Disney World, and all those theme parks in Florida—take a road trip to an amusement park that really needs your business…like Spackle Town, U.S.A. (and its sister park, Grout City, “where caulking products come alive”), the Historic Colonial Village of East Flushing, N.Y., or Six Flags Over The Oakland Raiders’ Defensive Line (yeah, I don’t get that last one either, but I’m told it’s a hit with people who have low expectations for football-related jokes).

- Go to a strange town, put on hardhats, and spray-paint geometrical designs on randomly-selected streets. If anybody asks you what you’re doing, mumble something ambiguous about doing a geological survey for open-pit uranium strip mining.

- Whatever the summer function, be it a backyard barbecue, a pool party, a wedding reception, or a family reunion, chances are it’s going to get bogged down in at least one god-awful lull. Nothing gets the festivities rolling again faster than firing macaroni salad from a trench mortar.

- Confuse total strangers by asking them if they know what a “floy floy” is, and whether it’s necessary for a floogie to have flat feet to possess one.

- Do anything your heart desires involving pliers and a hand grenade.

- Make a list of things to do on a long weekend, and post them in a blog.

   On second thought, maybe Utility Sink Brew offers more bang for your long weekend buck, after all.

Uncle Fun

This week, The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan asks a vital question about the very nature of knowledge…

…or not, as the case may be.

The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan has sort of a Father’s Day theme…depending on how you feel about your father:

If the child is the father of the man, which one gets breakfast in bed on Father’s Day?

Hiya, dads, kids and none-of-the-aboves:

With Father’s Day lurkin’ round th’ corner like a stick-up artist that hazzent made his quota of muggings fer th’ month, I thot I’d help all’a ya out there who happens ta be fathers, or at least happens ta have one. A father is sumpin’ of which I don’t got one of, unless ya count Uncle Fun, who don’t qualify on account’a th’ facks that: a) he’s a uncle, an’ b) he’s more er less my imaginary friend. Mister Kuzzents likewise sez he himselft shooden be kunsiddered in loco parentis, which I think means it’s his opinyon anyone’d be crazy ta admit they wuz my dad.

B’fore ya get all misty-eyed over whutcha purseev ta be my orfinned kundishun, I wanna stress that I have a fam’ly of sorts, in th’ form’a my very own personal-type brainchild, th’ newly-upgraded CyberSparky. Now that Perfessur Proteus has finish’d unfixin’ th’ improvements Science Boy made, which meant that CyberSparky didden work no more at all fer a while, my one an’ only robot double is in peak runnin’ order again.

As a test of his reesuntly re-efficiented effishuncy, I had CyberSparky run a legorithm ta come up with th’ most bestest ways ta sellabrate Father’s Day with yer dad if ya have one, an’ someone else’s if ya hafta. (A legorithm, by th’ way, is like a logarithm, ‘cept ya use li’l blocks ta work things out with.) Here’s whut came outta his printout chute:   

- Show your dad that you value both literacy and thrift by giving him a cut-rate subscription to a lesser-known magazine, like Unpopular Mechanics (this month’s cover story: Corrugated Sheet Metal: 175 Household Uses We Bet You Haven’t Tried Yet).

- Any activity that has the words “glow-in-the-dark” in its name is a sure-fire Father’s Day winner. Glow-in-the-dark bowling, glow-in-the-dark miniature golf, glow-in-the-dark jai alai, glow-in-the-dark bog snorkeling, glow-in-the-dark blindfolded pub crawl…you simply can’t go wrong. If your father’s of a more sedentary disposition, even something as sedate as glow-in-the-dark forensic accounting has its attractions. (For one thing, it makes it easier to spot glaring errors. Get it? …“glaring errors”…“glow-in-the-dark”…? Okay, maybe don’t bother with that last one.)   

- Does your dad have lumbago or sciatica? Why not get him some?

- Better still, get him a membership in a tontine (if you don’t know what this is, look it up. It’s a gift that keeps on giving).

- If you don’t want to go that far, at least get him to make a bucket list (that is, a list of people he hopes kick the bucket before he does). If you find yourself on it, you’ll be saving a lot of money on Father’s Day gifts in the years to come.

- Sick of getting your dad ties, or is he sick of getting them? We have four words for you: moulded fibreglass zoot suit.

- If your dad’s a sports fan, ask him who the worst player in his favourite sport was when he was growing up. Then, get your dad a life-size cardboard cutout of that player, to give him that warm glow of reassurance that comes with the knowledge that even the top of every profession has its share of people who suck out loud at what they do. (If he’s not into sports, you can substitute a cardboard cutout of the head of any given brokerage firm or investment bank.)

- You could do worse than to give your dad an audiobook of the collected writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, as read by Howard Stern. We don’t know how, but there must be some way you could.

- Dads love barbecues, and dads love cars. Why not barbecue a car?

- Let your dad know how much you appreciate him by singing the Neil Young song “Old Man (look at my life)” at the top of your lungs from dawn to dusk, accompanied on whatever comes to hand.

Yeah, I dunno about a lotta these ones, either. There mus’ still be some residuywall bugs an whatnot in th’ system frum Science Boy’s not-so-handiwork. Still, as they say, it’s close enuf fer jazz. Do they still say that? Aw, who cares—Happy Father’s Day, anyhow.

Sparky

This week in The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan, we take you back to the harsh, yet comfortingly simple, days of the Wild West, when men were men, but everyone was still a critic:

You should see what they did to them there varmints that split infinitives.

Hello again, all of you who have been eagerly awaiting both the conclusion and dénouement of our ongoing saga:

   Our previous encounter with you revealed the reason for the unexpected appearance of that evil genius of all evil geniuses, Professor Proteus.

   Hearing that Sparky was trapped in an alternate universe of television programs, Professor Proteus planned to extricate him, using his latest invention—the Contrived Plot Device.

   A certain degree of skepticism was raised among us as to the efficacy of this method of rescue.

   Professor Proteus conquered our qualms with a stunning display of logic. “The fact that some sort of contrived plot device—say, for example, me and my Contrived Plot Device—has appeared at just this moment in the story means that my Contrived Plot Device is already working to perfection, n’est-ce pas?”

   As our heads were swimming from trying to grasp what he’d just said, none of us had a proper answer for that. Instead, we put ourselves—and Sparky’s fate—in the hands of the good (well, not-so-good) Professor, who outlined his scheme.

   “A lot of television series have had finales—episodes which close out their continuing stories, and take care of unresolved questions—shows like The Fugitive, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, Barney Miller—”

   “—oh, and that one with the senator who was all paranoid about Communists—” Science Boy offered.

   “You mean, the McCarthy hearings?” I corrected him.

   “Yes, WELL—” Professor Proteus cut in curtly. “What you need to do is to find a television series that should have had a final episode, but didn’t. Then I use the Contrived Plot Device to create one, lure your wandering urchin friend into it, and pull him back out here.”

   Alert to Professor Proteus’ careful choice of pronouns, I quickly cottoned on to the idea that the research part of this job was to be left to us. We immediately set about looking for a television show with a basic premise that cried out for a proper conclusion.

   We eventually settled on Hogan’s Heroes…

   …that heart-warming family-oriented sitcom set in a World War II German prisoner-of-war camp. It stood to reason that the POWs under the charge of Colonel Klink had to have been liberated during the mop-up operations by Allied forces at the end of the war: all that remained was for Professor Proteus and his technological marvel to make it happen.

   A quick calibration and the push of a button, and the Contrived Plot Device was set in motion. We immediately got the sense that all had not gone according to Professor Proteus’ design specs when we saw, at the head of the liberating troops, the Austrian-American cinéaste Otto Preminger.

   The Contrived Plot Device had apparently slipped a gear or something, and latched onto Preminger’s turn as a POW camp commandant in the classic film Stalag 17 as a point of reference. It misfired even worse than that, however, and lifted him, not from that role, but from his appearance in the 1960s live-action Batman TV series as Mr. Freeze.    

   Whatever happened, the whole distressing mix-up brought Sparky into range. I’m not sure the Contrived Plot Device was entirely responsible for that, though. The boy always finds a way to be first on the scene when there’s easy pickings.

   The final push to bring Sparky home again was an all-out effort. Science Boy operated the controls of the Contrived Plot Device, under the supervision of Professor Proteus, who barked orders and insults from a safe distance in case of an electrical discharge or an explosion. The picture on the TV set began to jump around, jumbling programs from different eras into an incoherent mess.

   With science faltering, magic took over, as M’Dear stepped in and took dead aim on the TV, catching it in a concentrated burst of finger-zapping.

   That little finishing kick was all the Contrived Plot Device needed to free Sparky once and for all.

  While congratulations and double entendres continued to be meted out all round, Moose ran to Sparky’s side. This involved more climbing and clambering than actual running—Sparky had been thrown clear over three adjacent fifty-foot-high mounds of clean fill.

   These bits of paper were hardly “nothing important”. In fact, they were an early draft of the Marshall Plan, the grand scheme for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. General Marshall and his staff must have felt that the loss of the documents was a security risk, because many of the key provisions of this original plan were markedly different from the final version. This was a pity, as I realized when my eyes lighted on one of the final stipulations. It was written in red block capitals, and underlined in several places:

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD the nations of EUROPE EVER SHARE A COMMON CURRENCY. THINGS WILL WORK OUT FOR A WHILE, BUT THE INEVITABLE RESULT WILL BE TOTAL DISASTER.

   So, if you’ve recently lost a lot in the European money and bond markets, now you know who to thank. A word of warning: if you want to “thank” Sparky in person, you’ll have to go through Our Miss Moose to do it.

   We couldn’t agree more. Still and all, we’ll try to keep civilization just a little safer from Sparky in the immediate future…or at least, keep close enough to him to see what he’s doing to it so we can head for the hills, if need be.

Uncle Fun

This week’s offering from The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan is actually a little closer to real life than you might think:

Anyone who’s had first-hand experience with these critters knows what I’m talking about.

«(Request Time again: if you have a personal anecdote about an encounter with raccoons, write it in the “Comments” box below. I have a hunch the little stripe-tailed rascals are going to take over someday, and we need all the advance intelligence we can get to learn how to find a niche in the new raccoon-dominated world. )