TSR's editorial board members are heirloom rich and cash poor, as mandated by company bylaws. Members exude a snarky gentility and have impeccable manners. During recent weeks, however, when the board witnessed the value of its meager assets morph into Confederate dollars, it assumed the wartime position: Contract the vapors. Second, follow emergency procedures for Continuity of Government (CoG). Convert to modest suppers of root vegetables and kidney-bean rabbit (left) or mutton. Dignify meals with great-grandmama's discontinued Haviland and unnecessarily ornate Chantilly. Third, maintain a stiff upper lip and stiffer drinks until fortunes reverse.
Revealing digression. Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain, IV, TSR's chief of protocol enforcement and defenestration, was reading her favorite Charlotte Perkins Gilman poem, "The Wolf at the Door" (left), to her children—Driveway, Pee Dee, Waxhaw, Chigger, and 雞尾酒—as she does every night at bedtime. "Children are more malleable in the morning, if they lay awake all night trembling." Suddenly, she realized that being torn apart my a pack of rabid wolves was an apt analogy for TSR's current economic downturn. Mrs. IV pulled out her signed copy of M.F.K. Fisher's wartime classic, How to Cook a Wolf (1942), and began planning supper.
Jarring juxtaposition. TSR invited Joe the Aerial Wolf Hunter (right) for cocktails last night. (He preferred the six-pack
the board happened to have stored in the bunker its members sometimes share with Dick Cheney, another talented marksman.) Joe argued eloquently that shooting wolves protects the moose and caribou herds, and the bounty he receives
pays the legal fees to fight Joe Junior's meth-lab conviction. Mrs. IV, always nonpartisan, commented, "I don't imagine that makes the moose feel any safer, since the governor herself is quite the moose slayer. On the other hand, killing wolves does reduce the competition. I dunno, though, sounds a little like socialism to me."
...The 180 volunteer pilots and aerial gunners
who are the backbone of the program can get $150 in cash for turning in
legs of freshly killed wolves, Gov. Sarah Palin's office announced
Tuesday. Previously, the only reward was a wolf pelt
they could sell, usually for somewhere between $200 and $300, said
Bruce Bartley, Department of Fish and Game spokesman.—Anchorage Daily News
Again, The Scout Report delivers an unapologetic view of the world as we know it, or more aptly, the world to come.
Posted by: James Topping | October 27, 2008 at 22:08