Just before Thanksgiving, the entire October and November runs of Organic Hills brand Free-Range Tofurkey Dinners were voluntarily recalled by Organic Hills, LLC. A spokeswoman for the company told reporters that the “difficult decision” had been made after the company had discovered that the tofu from its suppliers did not meet the strict standards for “free-range” that Organic Hills products promise. Shockingly, the soybean plants from which the tofu was made were kept under conditions that the spokeswoman described as “amounting to nothing less than being rooted to the soil.” Customers who bought Organic Hills brand Free-Range Tofurkey may return the unused portion for a refund, or may exchange it for an equal amount of Organic Hills Broccolurkey, which the spokeswoman explained is just as good but carries no “free-range” claims.

For the first time in its history, the All-Asian Tai Chi Open in Hong Kong has been won by a member of the vegetable kingdom.

Judges awarded first prize to a prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura) in the possession of Mr. Winston Leung, following a month-long demonstration in which all the other competitors had dropped out by the third week.

Judges praised the plant’s “impeccably smooth and slow” movements, adding that the plant “demonstrates extraordinary dedication to the fundamental Tai Chi principles of flowing and deliberate action.”

Mr. Leung told reporters that he plans to spend the prize money on compost.

Sir: As a culture, we are dangerously shortsighted. We make no plans for the long term. We just waltz along, or sometimes Charleston along, whistling a carefree tune and trusting that the future will take care of itself. That is what our forefathers did before us, and look what happened. It is therefore the duty of every forward-looking citizen to point out looming catastrophes that will come crashing down on our descendants. Otherwise our civilization will march off every cliff and tumble into every crevasse.

This is why I am writing to you today: to point out that we are leaving a mess that will cause headaches and possibly indigestion and scalp itch for our children’s children. I am speaking, of course, of the matter of dates. In every way we use dates as one of the principal organizing principles of our affairs. Databases are sorted by date. Birth dates are the form of identification universally required in the health-care industry. Yet no one seems to have taken into account the fact, which one would have thought was obvious to a six-year-old, that, in only 7,975 years, the year will have five digits.

Fortunately, it is not too late. We have a little less than eight millennia to address the Y10K problem, but if we start early and put our backs into it we should be able to get the work done in time. We need to begin at once, however, because it is a titanic task. Every database on the planet must be migrated to a new system that has space for six digits. I say six because it is obvious that, if we added only one more digit, we would merely be buying ourselves a temporary reprieve.

Of course there will be pedantic types who will point out that, in 997,975 years, the year will have seven digits. But I think it is silly to worry about problems so far in the future, and we can dismiss those pedants as the cranks they are. —Sincerely, Dr. Marcus Wudge, Ph.D., Executive Director, Int’l Ass’n of Pedantic Cranks.

From 1915, a small newspaper story proving that everything Pitts­burghers say about the borough of McKees Rocks is true.

Pittsburgh Post, September 9, 1915.

Sir: I was walking on Butler Street this morning when, quite suddenly and without any warning that I had noticed, my phone screen went blank.

This was the most appalling catastrophe I could remember, although I couldn’t remember much because how could I without my phone? Suddenly the familiar real world, the world I live in every day through my phone screen, was snatched away from me and extinguished, and in place of the rational digital universe that makes sense to me, I was plunged into a nightmare realm cobbled together from primitive material parts. Human-like creatures made of some sort of meat-like substance were marching up and down the sidewalk, some rationally gazing into phone screens, but others staring straight ahead of them like beasts, as though navigating in this surreal world of flesh and dirt could be accomplished with the eyes alone, without the assistance of Gemini or Siri. Most horrifying of all, some of them appeared to be engaging in unmediated conversation, mouth to ear, without the interposition of cameras and microphones.

What a dreadful state of things! I saw colors and heard frequencies the human mind was never meant to process. Above all, the mad world I fell into was appallingly huge, with a hugeness that could never be compressed into the sane dimensions of a phone. I felt cast adrift on some kind of body of water so enormous that one could not even see the other side of it, if such a thing were possible.

Now, my terror was brief, as moments later my phone started up again, and a reassuring message appeared on the screen to say that my operating system had been updated.

But what if it had been a real failure? What if the battery had discharged completely? What if one of the internal components had failed? The universe would have been destroyed at that moment, and I would have been forced back to the animal state of poking my way through a world of material objects by instinct!

Clearly there is a weak spot in the fabric of our reality that requires reinforcement. Immediate action is essential if we are to prevent tragedy. First, and most importantly, we must take steps to make sure phone screens are no longer capable of going blank. Even the thirty seconds during which my screen was black plunged me into depths of terror that must have taken years off my life. But second, while we are strengthening our electronic infrastructure. some temporary measures must be taken. I suggest that, if it is possible for government agents to venture into the world of the material without losing their sanity, the government should undertake to drape the most terror-inspiring sights, such as the uncanny bipedal meat agglomerations, with some kind of material popover, so that they cannot be seen without deliberately tapping on them. It may require effort, but think of the consequences if the effort is not made! Any mass-blanking event in our phone population would result in a epidemic of insanity, and insanity is fun only when it is experienced through social media. We must take steps now to prevent good sane Americans from falling out of the real world into the material world, and we must do it before the insidious forces of materiality have a chance to sneak up on us. —Sincerely, Japheth22843, Facebook.

The Rev. Dr. Gug of the East Allegheny Primitive Methodist Church discovered fire Wednesday evening. He was discharged and excommunicated for heresy, and the church council has formed a search committee to begin the process of calling a new minister.

St. Britney Church of St. Brielle Parish will be presenting Ecumenical Music Night, featuring popular Evangelical Christian pop group The A-Tones, who will be attempting to navigate the intricacies of Dan Schutte for the first time. Come cheer on our separated brethren! The music starts at 7 p.m., and ends at 7:30 if anyone is still around.

The Pennsylvania 911 system is experiencing intermittent statewide 911 outages as a result of hundreds of thousands of people calling 911 to report their mobile phones screaming at them. The alarming sound was reported by customers on every major mobile network in the Com­mon­wealth of Penn­sylvania. According to state officials, the sound was an alert sent to every cell phone to notify Pennsylvanians that the Penn­sylvania 911 system is experiencing intermittent statewide 911 outages. Citizens who hear loud shrieking sounds emanating from their phones are requested not to dial 911 for the love of Mike.

Sir: I was just in the public library this afternoon. Now, I would not like it to be supposed that I am in the habit of frequenting such dens of iniquity. In fact I had the wrong address: I was looking for a massage parlor. But anyway, once I was there, I found a table right inside the door with a prominent display of “banned books.”

There were two appalling things about this display, and I shall enumerate them from 1 to 2.

First (1.), the so-called ban on these books is completely ineffectual. I mean, it said right on the sign that these were banned books, but there they were in the public library, a place that is by definition not only a library but also public. Whatever bureau or authority or subcontractor was responsible for banning these books botched the job completely, and everybody involved should be fired.

But second (2.), and more appalling, these books were mostly fiction, much of it by recognized fictionmongers like Mark Twain and Daniel Defoe. Fiction is by nature harmless, because we know it is not true. There is a kind of implied contract between the author and the reader, under which the author agrees to narrate events that never happened, and the reader agrees not to expect anything true in the book. Whoever tried to ban these books had no understanding of what makes a book dangerous, and therefore should not be attempting book-banning at all. What makes a book dangerous is truth, and books that contain true assertions, and especially books that encourage their readers to act on those asserted truths, are the ones that need to be banned.

Since it is obvious that the people in charge of banning books are incompetent, I have taken it upon myself to devise a list—not of books to be banned, since new books are still being produced and may continue to be produced in the future, but rather a list of criteria by which it may be determined which of all present and future books are to be prohibited. In making my list I have assumed that the goal of banning books is to preserve good order and to promote correct Christian religion.

Therefore, I would begin by banning all books that teach the principles of arithmetic. It is an axiom of both good order and good religion that the duly elected governing powers are to be respected and obeyed, but obedience is difficult and respect impossible when anyone who knows how to operate a pocket calculator can prove that the duly elected governing powers are all dunderheads. Therefore it is necessary that the young people of the future should be ignorant of the basic principles of mathematics. Fortunately we have already made great strides toward that goal, but all our progress in ignorance could be undone by a few deviously well-edited books.

Second, I would ban all books that teach science, such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, and above all biology. If our young people get their heads filled with such seductive certainties as science promotes, they will begin to suggest or even demand that matters of public policy should be decided on a scientific basis, which once again would put an end to respect and obedience.

Finally, I would ban the Bible, at least in its unexpurgated form. Can anything be more contrary to good patriotic American Christianity than the teachings of Christ? Could our virtuous and correct capitalist system survive if our young people took “woe unto you that are rich” seriously? Is there any more direct assault on the very idea of order than “the last shall be first, and the first last”? If we must have Bibles, let them be purged of such anti-Christian rabblerousing. But it is my belief that most good and honest Christians buy Bibles only to display the bindings and would never think of opening the book. My suggestion, therefore, would be to use the space inside the binding for something other than pages, such as candy or a flask of bourbon. In fact the same could be done with the other books on our banned list, and thus honest booksellers could continue to peddle their wares without spreading the contagion of dangerous ideas.

Your readers may have noticed that I have left books of history off the list. That is a conscious omission, since experience has proved that no one ever learns anything from history.

At any rate, the book-banning business is obviously in need of a thorough reform, and I believe my suggestions, if they do not solve every problem posed by the menace of nonfiction books, would at least go a long way toward reassuring honest and patriotic citizens that the problems are recognized and are being addressed by competent authorities.

Sincerely,
Arvin L. Finial,
Library (the town)