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.

Sir: I write to address the most egregious example of senseless discrimination and thoughtless bias in the modern United States. I refer, as your readers will already have surmised, to the naming of sport utility vehicles, or SUVs as they are known in the trade.

Just run down the list of SUVs marketed in the United States. Chevrolet Tahoe, Hyundai Santa Fe, Jeep Wrangler, Kia Mohave, Hyundai Tucson, Toyota Sequoia, Kia Telluride—one after another, we find vehicles named for places in the American Southwest, or for things associated with the Southwest.

Where are the SUVs named for places and things in the American Northeast? It is the most populous part of the country, and yet in the whole list of names I could only find one, Acadia, that might arguably have something to do with the Northeast. We search in vain for a Buick Utica, or a Subaru Sebascodegan, or a Hyundai Connoquenessing. We find no Jeep Stockbroker or Toyota Prothonotary to romanticize the typical native occupations of this land of legend and adventure.

Now, I could make the economic argument. I could point out how citizens of northern New Jersey would flock to dealers to be first in line for a Nissan Perth Amboy. I could enlarge upon the surefire appeal of a Chrysler Throop in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. I could make an unanswerable argument that a Kia Nantucket would revitalize the languishing limerick industry not just in the Northeast but nationwide.

But I prefer to stand on the moral high ground. This is a matter of elementary justice. A whole quarter of the country is suffering, and what shall we do about it? Shall we not say to the people of Fitchburg, “Yes, you are good and valuable people, and worthy of having an SUV named after you”?

And also, can we please stop beating around the bush and just call them station wagons? We’re not fooling anybody, you know. —Sincerely, Anne-Louise Cabot-Lowell, President, Acmetonia Chamber of Commerce.

On the advice of expert consultants in law enforcement, your Grant Borough police department has decided to implement Broken-Windows Policing. The results have been gratifying. So far we have broken the windows of five stores on Grant Avenue, all of which had failed to contribute to the Police and Troopers’ Lifestyle Improvement Fund in January. In related news, we are pleased to report that contributions to the Police and Troopers’ Lifestyle Improvement Fund for February were up 238%.

Unusually cold temperatures caused a water-main break in the Twenty-Second Ward early this morning. The Water and Sewer Authority has sent a truck full of cheap red wine for affected residents to drink until the situation is resolved.

The Allegheny Extinguisher, Document Safe, Fireproof Tile, and Asbestos Safety Curtain Company warehouse in Chateau burned last night with a loss of all contents.

Two employees of the city accounting department, fired on Thursday, were reinstated this morning after it was demonstrated to the Deputy Director’s satisfaction that “percolation” and “peculation” are not the same thing.

In the latest reorganization of Catholic affairs in Pittsburgh, all Latin Rite churches are scheduled to become Byzantine Rite on March 14, and all Byzantine Rite churches will become Latin Rite on the same date. Maronite churches remain unchanged for the present.

Acrisure yesterday terminated its agreement for naming rights to the football stadium. The naming rights were purchased on the same day by the China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products Import-Export Corporation.

Sir: Owing to some embarrassing misunderstandings, it has become necessary for us, the members of Citizens Against Poverty, to explain our organization’s purpose and goals. Misinterpreting the name, some people have conceived the notion that we intend to fight poverty by making everyone uniformly prosperous. If we indeed held such a risible notion, we should deserve all the derision they could heap on us. Even if we lived in a science-fiction socialist utopia, it would still not be possible to make truly uniform prosperity a reality. Instead, it is our purpose to address the problem of poverty in a much more practical-minded and feasible manner by killing all the poor people. Some may call our program cruel, but a thinking citizen will see that it is in fact the opposite of cruelty to put the miserable out of their misery—to remove them from a world that has demonstrated that it has no use for them in the most concrete and unambiguous fashion possible: namely, by making them poor. If there are among your readers any forward-thinking, compassionate, and above all rich citizens who would like to see an end to poverty in our lifetime, they are earnestly invited to submit a membership application with signed credit report to our secretary, Mr. Grenville Handel-Barre, in care of Citizens Against Poverty, Fox Chapel. —Sincerely, Astoria Handel-Barre, President, Citizens Against Poverty.

Sir: After what I have been through, I have a right to speak out. After the things I have suffered, to remain silent would be simple dereliction of duty to my fellow human beings. It would be nothing short of irresponsible for me to fail to warn the world. No one ought to suffer what I have suffered when the means of preventing such suffering could be so easily made available. Our great nation must surely have the manufacturing capacity to produce enough posable James Buchanan action figures to render it unnecessary for any other soul to be put through what I have endured. Instructions for the poses could be distributed in a smartphone app automatically downloaded by every mobile operating system, so that citizens would be prepared in case the worst should come to pass. Posters could be placed in subway stations and post offices and pachinko parlors and other places of public resort to show what the danger looks like and the five warning signs to be observed in the neck hairs of otherwise normal persons. Schoolchildren could be taught mnemonic rhymes, such as “If it’s blurry, make a slurry,” or “Always drink before you blink.” Most importantly, mental-health professionals must be taught the difference between a well-informed citizen and a delusional nut case with no grip on reality, because no one ought to suffer what I have suffered. —Sincerely, The Man with the Fax Machine on His Head.

City police responded to a report of a robbery in progress at Big Tony’s Muffler & Exhaust on Bland Street yesterday afternoon. Responding officers did not arrest Big Tony, explaining to the citizen who had dialed 911 that mufflers really do cost that much these days.

City police responded to reports of gunfire in the 3700 block of Guthrie Street. Arriving officers found Miss Elzevira Pockett popping the bubbles in a roll of bubble wrap. Officers asked her if it would kill her to take up knitting instead.

Bozar the Clown was arrested at his home last night. He was charged with being quiet and law-abiding in a suspicious manner for more than six months.

Artist Eli “Bonkers” Johnson was arrested in Stanton Heights and charged with being weird in a normal neighborhood. He was released without bail on the condition that he would go somewhere artsy like Lawrenceville if he wanted to be weird like that.

Police are asking witnesses with information about the theft by embezzlement of the Police Informant Reward Fund to keep their mouths shut if they know what’s good for them.