City police failed to meet their quota for jaywalking arrests in August and are asking public-spirited citizens to cross in the middle of the block this month to help us get back on track.

Bozar the Clown was arrested on Labor Day and charged with six counts of misdemeanor classicism.

A number of teenagers were reported walking on Bland Street without their eyes glued to phone screens. Police are investigating, but meanwhile residents are advised to stay inside and lock their doors.

Police have asked the public to be on the lookout for two women claiming to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is alleged that the women stand on street corners and lure passers-by with colorful Watchtower Bible & Tract Society literature, but, once the victim is reeled in, subtly redirect the conversation toward Presbyterianism.

Officer Martina Smirch won the Police Department Texting-While-Driving Derby by successfully completing thirty-four texts on the five-mile course through city streets while only grazing a Mini Cooper. Way to go, Martina!

Sir: So here we are again celebrating Labor Day, when all the yammering imbeciles in the country hop up on their soapboxes to declaim upon the virtues of the humble worker, etc., etc., and another year has gone by, and there is still no federal holiday for the exploiters of the masses.

Yes, these working stiffs put in long hours for low pay in degrading and often dangerous jobs. But who puts up the money for the hot and grubby factories they toil in? Who signs their meager paychecks? Who has the sheer courageous determination to ignore the hazards and if necessary cover up safety violations and workplace injuries so that the wheels of industry can keep turning? Wherever there are workers, one of us is exploiting them, or there would be no workers. Yet here it is, the first Monday in September, and still no holiday for us!

And what about the gentlemen and ladies of leisure who never lift a finger because they have inherited a pile of cash from their finger-lifting forebears, or because, having squeezed millions out of the lowly workers under their command in past years, they are now placed beyond the need for finger-lifting? Without their constant demand for luxury goods, the toiling workers would have no toil wherewith to toil!

Well, this is the last year we in the labor-creating classes are going to be ignored. Beginning tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. (the earliest any of us were willing to get up), we, the members of the Amalgamated Federation of Exploiters, will hold our breaths until we turn blue, and we will not stop until the President of the United States signs the bill currently before the Senate of the same declaring the first Thursday in June a federal holiday under the title Exploiters Day. Collective action such as this is necessary to assure the well-being of those of us who are privileged not to have to care about your well-being. You have been given fair warning; now it is up to you, the exploited masses, to make sure that your hired toadies in government do the right thing. —Sincerely, L. Wickerseat Brougham, Secretary, Amalgamated Federation of Exploiters.

Sir: I was walking past the St. Aloysius parish school this morning, and I noticed that they had a banner up: “Training Tomorrow’s Leaders.”

Well, I thought, that’s nice. Tomorrow’s leaders have to come from somewhere, and it might as well be St. Al’s as anywhere else.

But later this morning I passed the Ninth Ward Public School, and they also had a banner about “leadership.”

I started looking around. When I passed the Remnant Christian Academy, they had a big sign out front: “Educating Godly Leaders.”

The Hillel School was “Preparing Children for a Lifetime of Leadership.”

The Allegheny Catholic Girls’ School was “Building Up Leaders for a New Generation.”

Blandville Elementary School was “Teaching Today’s Scholars to Be Tomorrow’s Leaders.”

We are heading for the edge of a cliff here, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. We are raising a generation of leaders, and there will be no one to follow them.

When we have brought up an army of generals, where will they find their infantry? While they sit behind the lines drinking port and playing whist, who will be at the front? Who will fight the war? Who will carry the packs? Who will fill the generals’ boots with mashed potatoes? In a world with no regular soldiers, none of the essential tasks will get done!

It will soon be too late, so immediate action is called for. A new school year is beginning, and children entering school should be tested for their natural followership aptitude. Those who demonstrate a talent for following should be sent to specialized academies where they can learn to be tomorrow’s followers. We will separate out the children of below-average intelligence, the ones who have trouble finishing a simple task, the ones who are prone to behavioral problems, the ones who have no patience for accurate knowledge, the ones with sociopathic tendencies, and they, having already demonstrated their qualifications, can be trained to be the leaders. The rest of our children must be taught to follow, and they must learn to do it well.

Sincerely,
Admiral Hagsworth W. Foremost (retired)
Avalon Heights

Sir: Do you know what’s wrong with the world today? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the world today. People keep telling us what’s wrong with the world today, but they never do anything about it.

Take these kids today. Everyone knows what’s wrong with them: they’re always fiddling with their phones, posting on social media and texting their friends and taking pictures of things and suchlike, instead of sitting inert in front of the television like I did when I was their age.

Yes, everybody knows it, but nobody does anything about it!

Well, I’m doing something. I’ve built a reeducation camp on my mountain property near Wheeling, and every time I come across one of these kids who are more interested in their phone screens than they are in me, I bonk the said kid on his head and carry him off to camp to be educated. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but most of them come around just fine after the bonk, and the ones who don’t weren’t much use to anyone anyway.

So, you see, I’m doing my bit to save the coming generation from themselves. But I could use some help. First of all, I can only bonk so many, and it would help if other patriotic citizens would follow my example, until we can truly say we have left no teenager unbonked. But secondly, I have about a gross of kids in an undisclosed location, and any donations of canned goods and non-perishable foods would be appreciated. Thank you very much for giving me the forum to announce my message of hope for the future.

Sincerely,
Gaston de Bonque,
Edgeworth

The China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products Import-Export Corporation having chosen not to renew the naming rights to China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products Import-Export Corporation Stadium, formerly Acrisure Stadium, formerly Heinz Field, the Stadium Authority has sold the rights to Canabeer Corporation, which plans to name the stadium for its moderately priced higher-alcohol brand, Pansy Malt Liquor. If the sale is finalized, the Steelers will be playing in Pansy Field beginning this fall. Team sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, report that several members of the team have been placed on suicide watch.

Sir: It is very clear that a lack of kindness is the fundamental problem facing society today. All the violence, all the ill will, all the political gridlock and mutual suspicion could be cured by a little kindness spread out through the general population.

How shall we deal with this problem? Clearly the time for timidity has passed. If Americans will not exercise a little kindness on their own initiative, then kindness must be rammed down their throats.

To make a beginning, much can be accomplished even without government action. I am a firm believer in the power of volunteer work. When enough of us have decided that kindness will be expected and demanded from the people around us, we shall quickly see the effects of our new attitude. But those effects will manifest themselves only if we are consistent and inflexible in our intolerance of unkindness in the people we meet. I recommend sarcastic mocking as a start. If that fails to produce kindness in the subject, shouting is the obvious next step, and for intractable cases physical violence should not be ruled out.

Ultimately, however, the problem affects us on a national scale, and therefore the national government will have to take responsibility for it sooner or later. A useful beginning could be made, and volunteer work toward our goal encouraged, by establishing a national register of unkind persons, so that ordinary citizens can check the register and see which of their own friends and neighbors are to be treated with contempt and disdain. That is only a beginning, however, and I think it is high time our government took the example of Singapore to heart and instituted a schedule of corporal punishments for stubbornly unkind persons. I do not mean that first offenders should be caned, of course; for first offenders, it should be sufficient to empower our fine police officers to give them a warning in the colorful language that comes so naturally to law-enforcement professionals. After that, though, bring on the birch.

Are these strong measures? Yes, they are. But this is a national emergency. The very future of the Republic is at stake. At this crossroads in our history, it will not be possible to solve our problems if we continue being nice to unkind people. If they will not conform to the grand old American tradition of kindness and polite decency, then they must be made to suffer. —Sincerely, Natalye Paquin, CEO, Points of Light Foundation.

It has been reported that the four scoutmasters at Camp Rusty Waters have been freed without serious injury. Forty-three Cub Scouts have been sent to bed without supper, and the camp’s supply of duct tape has been removed to an undisclosed secure location.

Sir: Last night I purchased a bag labeled “Everything Salad” from a certain supermarket which I shall call, for the sake of convenience, “Whole Foods.” A superficial examination of the contents through the transparent plastic was, of course, all that was permitted me by the packaging, but I took the label at its word and spent my $5.95.

When I opened the bag at home, what did I find? Not a single 1957 Dayton trolleybus token in the package! I carefully sifted the contents, but there was not a Ruckers harpsichord to be found. If the Virginia House of Delegates was hidden in that pile of lettuce and cabbage, I certainly failed to locate it. I did not see a badminton shuttlecock or a terrarium. I did not even find a single pulsar, which ought to have been quite easy to locate if it had been in there at all.

In short, the salad, in spite of its deceptive packaging, did not contain everything. I will say that I do not blame the manager of the store. He agreed to refund my money after I had spent half an hour explaining the problem to him, and indeed he seemed quite eager to make sure that I left his store happy, or at least that I left his store. But still, fraud is being committed in the packaged-salad industry, and I think it my duty to inform other consumers that packages labeled “Everything Salad” may not in fact contain everything. Thank you for providing the forum in which to do so. And, by the way, just how celebrated is this magazine? —Sincerely, Melville P. Gaspipe, East Liberty.

The De Fitte Motors Corporation has announced a recall of all De Fitte De Lay sedans, coupes, and station wagons for the years 1963 through 2024 inclusive. Consumer organizations have reported numerous incidents of brakes failing, axles rolling away, steering wheels breaking off at the stem, and rhinoceros attacks on De Lay vehicles. Owners of vehicles affected by the recall are instructed to return their vehicles to the nearest De Fitte dealer, where an interlock will be installed that will prevent drivers from operating the vehicles if they (either the drivers or the vehicles) have been in contact with a liability attorney.

Sir: I am appalled. I am also outraged. It would not be too much to say that I am incandescently furious.

What is the object, you ask, of my white-hot indignation? I have forgotten. It has been years since I was able to specify the cause of my appalledment. All I know is that I have been appalled for a good long time now, and in those years I have built up heaps of appalledness, a fortress of appalleditude, an appallation mountain as it were. I am appalled when I rise in the morning. I am appalled while I eat breakfast. I am appalled at work all day; I am appalled when I come home to my efficiency apartment; I am appalled when I lay my head on my pillow.

It is, in short, my state of unrelenting appalledification that gets me through the day. But I was not always so fortunate. I had to teach myself the skills I have so laboriously built up: no one taught me to be appalled this way. In school, outrage was not even a whole class, let alone the main focus of my education. Only in history classes was any kind of outrage specifically taught, and even then only in conjunction with very limited subjects, like slavery. Anyone can be appalled by slavery! Where’s the skill in that? It would not be too much to say that it took a lifetime of careful training and desensitization for the slaveholding classes not to be appalled by slavery.

What we need is a complete reform of our educational system. Throw out all the useless detritus of the past, which only a misguided reverence for tradition keeps alive. Children don’t need to learn math, because we have calculators on our phones. Children don’t need to learn to write, because we have artificial intelligence. Children don’t need to learn to read, because we have YouTube. What children do need is the skill to be appalled all the time, without the need of a particular subject to be appalled about. They need to learn the art of nonspecific outrage. Perhaps, if I may offer a suggestion, they can be taught to be appalled about their own education, and then it will be easy for them to generalize from there.

—Sincerely,
“Mad Marvin” Blitzmueller, M.Ed.