The Scout Report

Is That A Gun in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

"Sekurrity!" squealed Jeté. She had just been read an article in the New York Times by Kristen Shaughnessy on NY1, from which she gleaned (after watching it several times) that Woolrich—inventors of loden fabric (the coarse, oily wool of mountain sheep)—was softening its image by introducing the Woolrich Elite Series, featuring the Elite Concealed Carry Chino. As the company boasts, "This pant is ideal for situations where discretion is important." Jeté, confused by "discretion" (a word she thought she had made up), now thought she was the victim of industrial espionage. After all, she is The Scout Report's stylist, the one who created the company's signature fashion strategy—sturdy, covert, and moisture-wicking. "I don't think it's a co-inky-dink that this company is using the same details my seamstresses use—secret pocket for handgun, comfy elastic waistband to accommodate holster, and other hidden pockets for knives and whatnot," Jeté lamented. TSR has lawyered up. 

 

Revealing digression. In 2007, TSR Board of Directors voted to issue a TASER C2 to each employee after learning that many of them spend a great deal of time alone in underground garages in the middle of the night. While it's true Tasers are not handguns, they build confidence in beginners as they don't require any skill. "Tasering 101" is the introductory course in TSR's Defense Without Consequence (DWC) curriculum. Staff members who master the TASER C2 advance to the next level and learn "How Not to Shoot Your Eye Out" with the Official Red Ryder, Carbine-Action, 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, taught sans ironie by Dick "Dead Eye" Cheney.

Controlled tangent. TSR has had a group membership in the NRA for decades. As a matter of fact, it was TSR's Chief of Protocol Enforcement and Defenestration, Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain IV, who convinced the lock-and-load lobby to invite her ersatz fiancé Charlton Heston (above) to be its spokes-fossil. Hessie, as Mrs. IV fondly called him, never "conceal-carried" his gladness to see her. Everyone at TSR misses just how glad he could get.

 

Bin Laden's Lair Receives LEED Certification

According to the U.S. Green Building Council's Web site, "LEED is flexible enough to apply to all building types." And to prove the assertion and further advance its mission of global domination, the Council has added a new building type, inspired by the understated manse from which slippery evil-doer Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011) was recently evicted. The following images represent the credits earned to date. TSR's chief of protocol enforcement and defenestration, Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain IV was quick to observe, "I swear to Allah, did you see the video? The place practically certifies itself. I don't know why those high-minded green people don't give points for benign neglect. In the end, Grey Gardens was the greenest house around."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revealing digression. "They say you shouldn't say nothin' about the dead unless it's good. He's dead. Good." Thank you, Moms Mabley, for always being relevant and spot on.

 

 

Bad Things Happen When You Read

Yes, The Scout Report (TSR) has risen like a reluctant phoenix from a second-hand smokey pyre of apathy and ennui. This rearing of the head may only last a couple of posts, but the TSR Board aims to reveal and jar in fits and starts. What woke the board from its Raymond Chandler-esque big sleep was the announcement that Alan Gribben, the (bobble) head of Auburn University's English Department, had edited NewSouth Books' edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, replacing the “n-word” with “slave,” “injun” with “indian," and "half-breed" with "half-blood." (We don't get that last one.) TSR board members read the official version from the Cliffs Notes Library of Long-Winded Literature in its entirety and have no problem with Mr. Twain's word choice. We often takes issue with the number of words an author strings together, but never the choice (except maybe Finnegans Wake, which Dr. Hervey Cleckley, in The Mask of Sanity, called, "a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital"). But we digress.

Twain was particular about word choice. In 1888, he wrote that the difference between the right word and the almost right one was "the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

High-mindedness notwithstanding, Professor Gribben has too much time on his hands. We suggest a better use might be teaching college students that "Me and Jennifer are going to the mall" is not proper grammar. Now that's offensive! While he's at it though, he might change "Miss Watson" to "Ms. Watson." Obviously, the author was promoting sexist stereotypes, which he emphasized by referring to her as "a tolerable slim old maid." Bless her heart.

Revealing digression. Everyone judges books by their covers. Why else would so much effort go into designing them? Book stores are a disorienting riot of colorful typography, and there is anecdotal evidence of customers having seizures. Perhaps books should also be judged by their titles. If titles were accurate clues to content, we wouldn't have to read the flaps, and Professor Gribben could move on to dumbing down something else. The blog Better Book Titles gives us those clues. Get the gist in a few seconds. Live better lives reading blogs.

 

 

Controlled tangent. TSR's chief of protocol enforcement and defenestration, Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain IV (Mrs. IV), issued this statement, "My family is alarmed that this dust-up will resurrect that specious theory that my ancestor, Nelson Herbert Walker Prescott VIII, a.k.a. Nelly, was the model for Miss Watson, Sambo's dour personification of religious rectitude. The very idea that Cousin Nelly and Sambo [as Twain was known to intimates] took a rowing class one summer means anything other than they enjoyed a school-boy romp is preposterous."

 

 

Documentary Series: "History's Most Intriguing Ironies"

Scarlett Billows Productions (SBP), the parent company of The Scout Report (TSR), feels the need to diversify in order to generate a profit for its shareholders. Okay, if not a profit, then the appearance of revenue of some sort, even if it's fiat currency from a zombie bank, which pretty much describes all currency these days. As irony—a.k.a. the derivative off of which TSR has been dining for years—would have it, the shareholders in question are also members of TSR's editorial board. Not since Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain, IV, TSR's chief of protocol enforcement and downsizing, made a few Benjamins selling defenestration kits to Wall Streeters in October 2008 has the board earned anything but scorn.

So, here we are. Scarlett Billows, acting unilaterally as always from the SBP bunker (upper left), has turned to film-making to keep TSR in mutton and mead, because if facile pilferer James Cameron can make a fortune, why can't she? Well, she can and will. Cherry Blossoms: the Double Agents of WWII is the first documentary in SBP's original, non-Cameronian series, History's Most Intriguing Ironies. The Texas Board of Education has already expressed interest in adding Cherry Blossoms to its history curriculum.

Controlled tangent. On December 11, 1941, someone chopped down four Japanese cherry trees in Washington in retaliation for the Japanese attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. government responded quickly and effectively to prevent more hatchet jobs by temporarily renaming them "Oriental" cherry trees, successfully fooling everyone under the age of seven.

The Best and Worst from the past few months: 4.10.10

TSR is not bound by the rigid Gregorian calendar with its sordid papal roots. Its addlepated staff reports on humankind's idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies as they are discovered, less they forget. Plus, the avalanche of weirdness makes producing an annual review overwhelming. Today we begin with WORST O.C.D. HYGIENE PROMOTION. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a guide to proper hand-washing (left) that makes memorizing the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales seem like good use of a high-school student's time. Actually, these instructions were prepared for surgeons who missed that day in medical school when hygiene was discussed. And yet, we've seen the same poster in restaurants and office restrooms. Seriously, it's a 12-step program, and TSR's editorial board doesn't do droghtes.

WORST HOLLYWOOD SWAG goes to Patty's "Royal Dandie" Miniature Pet Pig. The bonsai swine were offered to Golden Globe nominees and presenters at a "swag suite." Even though you might be able to get a couple of pounds of bacon from them, do you really want to spend the time curing it? (Paris Hilton had to buy her "Princess Piglette" [sic], because she was neither a nominee nor a presenter nor a ticket-holder nor an after-party invitee.)

Revealing digression. What happens when owners tire of their tiny, even-toed ungulates (right), and we know they will? Do they toss Babe in a canyon from their speeding Priuses. There's a hideous precedent. Burmese pythons, one of the world's largest snakes, have been dumped in the Everglades by owners after they get big enough to prefer children to mice. Now there are zillions of them. Piglets wouldn't do that, or so we've been told, but they might get mean like raccoons if they had to live off the land. Something to think about.

And we wrap up this installation with the BEST PULL-QUOTE of 2009 from Rex Reed in The New York Observer:

Public Service Announcement: Swine! What's in a Name?

The Scout Report 's editorial board, in its first-ever Public Service Announcement (PSA), would like to apologize to the even-toed ungulates of the family Suidae for the persecution they've endured at the hands of an hysterical, upright-walking, tabloid-devouring, prehensile-thumb-endowed public. First of all, "swine" is a derogatory term, and, until the family Suidae reclaims it as a politically empowering identifier of its own, TSR will refer to it as the S-word. Now that the ground(hog) rules are established, let's move on to the source of this so-called Pandemic-in-Gestation (PIG).

According to every not-yet-discredited scientific entity, including the acronyms CDC, WHO, and FDA, one cannot get the S-Word Flu from a member of the family Suidae. Each has issued similar statements, under-reported in the mainstream media (MSM) per usual: "[S-Word] influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get [S-Word] influenza from eating pork or pork products."

Controlled tangent. As unambiguous as the edicts above seem, TSR believes that they have not reached the citizens of Main Street, so the board has decided to lift its ban on PSAs and issue a more detailed list of what does not transmit the S-Word Flu. You cannot get S-Word Flu from watching Babe, rumbling with HOG's, matriculating as an Arkansas Razorb ack, or being drafted as a Washington Redskins offensive lineman (or even being a Hogette). Ladies, you will not acquire the virus from carrying a "silk purse made out of a sow's ear." Parents, your ostensibly talented progeny are safe and sound behind the walls o f the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so calm down. You couldn't retrieve them anyway. 

Revealing digression. Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain IV, TSR's chief of protocol and defenestration, has proposed  that the acronyms listed above rename the current medical pan-panic something with more literary flair, thus sparing the porcine population further persecution. As precedent, Mrs. IV cites Lady Windermere Syndrome. Two doctors, probably   gay, after attending a performance of the Oscar Wilde comedy, Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play About a Good Woman, hypothesized that fastidious behavior in Victorian women, typified by Lady Windermere, may have prevented them from expectorating frequently enough to clear their airways of infected secretions, and that this predisposed them to the development of bronchiectasis. They published their theory in the cardio- pulmonary journal Chest, proposed the name change, and the rest is thoracic history. Mrs. IV, no stranger to the irreversible dilation of her bronchial family tree, has focused her philanthropic work on renaming medical unpleasantries, because victims feel better about succumbing to illnesses with pretty names. And with that, we have answered the question, "What's in a Name?"

Stay tuned...Tomorrow, TSR's inhouse medical examiner—Myasthenia Gravis, RN—will help readers pick the right Pandemic Protection Mask for them and their families. 

    

Palin's Skool Daze: 9.9.08

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended five colleges in six years before graduating from the University of Idaho (Moscow) in 1987. She began college at University of Hawaii (Hilo) before transferring in a couple of weeks to Hawaii Pacific University, a private, nonsectarian school in Honolulu. She attended only as a freshman during the fall of 1982. From Hawaii Pacific, Palin transferred to North Idaho College, a two-year school in Coeur d'Alene, about 30 miles east of Spokane. She attended the college as a general studies major for two semesters, in spring 1983 and fall 1983. From North Idaho College, Palin transferred 70 miles south to the University of Idaho, the state's flagship institution. She majored in journalism with an emphasis in broadcast news. She attended Idaho, whose mascot is the Vandals, from fall 1984 to spring 1985. She then returned to Alaska to attend Matanuska-Susitna College in Palmer in fall 1985. Then she returned to Idaho, for spring 1986, fall 1986 and spring 1987, where she graduated. Whew!

Controlled tangent. TSR wonders what Governor Palin's parents thought about this itinerant matriculation. If she had been looking for a school that taught "intelligent design," she could've transferred among the 200-plus Christian colleges in the U.S. for decades, thus sparing the nation a collective cringe.

Jarring juxtaposition. Mrs. James Peregrine Leger-Demain, IV—TSR's protocol enforcer—was shocked at the uncanny similarity between the names of her children and Governor Palin's.

Sarah Palin's children: Track (named after high school track meets), Bristol (after Bristol Bay where they did commercial fishing), Willow (after a community in Alaska), Piper (just a cool name) and Trig (Norse for “strength").

Mrs. IV's children: Driveway (where she learned to ride a two-wheeler, pictured), Pee Dee (after a river running through the Carolinas), Waxhaw (after a community in N.C.), Chigger (just a cool name, not the parasite), 雞尾酒 (Chinese for "cocktail").

UPDATE: 10.2.08  NAMES TO NOWHERE. Parents, you no longer have to be as clever as Governor Palin or Mrs. IV to guarantee that your children grow up to be meth-lab entrepreneurs at an outpost near the Russian border. Let Poli Tsk Tsk Tsk's Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator do it for you. No need to limit this to the newly born. The governor herself could and should become Claw Washout Palin. John McCain would and should become Steam Fangs Palin, and, of course, Barack Obama would just add Palin. 

Greenwashing the Democratic Convention: 7.15.08

No one's more eco-conscientious than the good editors at TSR. We recycle, reuse, and whatever that third "R" stands for. We're even somewhat alert politically, which means we have an interoffice pool for betting on how the Democrats will blow the presidential election in November. Today, the cringe-o-meter points at the convention. Leave it to the Democrats to bring the food police up the mountain in solar-powered gondolas to mile-high Denver.
    Our beloved nattering nabob of negativism, that silky pugilist Maureen Dowd sounds the warning. "[Obama's] already in danger of seeming too prissy about food—a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to “measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.”
    The “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines, The Journal said, bar fried food (right) and instruct that, “on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include ‘at least three of the following color s: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.’ (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70 percent of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.” 

Controlled tangent. Will the proceedings begin each day with mandatory jazzercise? We think that instead of a flag lapel pin, everyone should wear a pin that lists his/her Body Mass Index (BMI). Delegates with a BMI over 25 will have to attend humiliation seminars. Of course, if you're a limousine liberal, you can purchase indulgences, uh, we mean, carbon offsets, and drive your SUV to the convention guilt-free. Those East Coast delegates who are riding bicycles to Denver had better get on the road.

Revealing digression. According to The New York Times, local caterers are reluctant "to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food..." TSR wonders what those struggling, middle-class Denver vendors think about all this high-mindedness. Might they be more interested in the color of money during this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
    The WSJ goes on to report: Joanne Katz, who runs the Denver caterer Three Tomatoes, will take one for the green team by removing her fried goat-cheese wontons with chipotle pepper caramel sauce from the menu. But she questions whether some of the guidelines will have the desired earth-saving effects.
    Compostable utensils, she says, are often shipped from Asia on fuel-guzzling cargo ships. As for the plates: "Is it better to drive across town to have china delivered to an event and then use hot water to wash it, or is it better to use petroleum-based disposables?" she asks.
    The convention's greening gurus say they're doing the best they can with the most current information available. Hmm. Wasn't that the rationale used to explain the Iraqi War?