Town of Lamont Wisely Changes Name To Reduce Potential For Spelling Errors

The Town of Lamont, a humble, unassuming, decidedly educationally challenged hamlet nestled up against the icy, unforgiving bosom of the Jurassic Park-like Scablands in the otherwise beautiful and fruitful Palouse region of Eastern Washington, has decided to adapt to the harsh taskmaster known by the name “Reality” and address a long-standing problem related to the general education level of the area citizenry – a chronic and pervasive inability to spell, do math, comprehend history, embrace the modern era and basically adapt to the Industrial Age, insiders report.

“Well, let’s be honest here, we have a local School System run by ranchers at the School Board level, and any dern fool knows that in these parts, the dumbest son inherits the ranch, so you don’t have to be some genius to realize that after a very few generations of bad decision-making that the whole educational arrangement would go to hell in a hand basket…” said Clem Festoon, an area rancher and obviously a man who knows of what he speaks, given that he inherited his daddy’s ranch in 1996 after all the smart brothers moved away. “Anyway, after we got done educating (pronounced ‘Ed-U-Cait-In”) them little rascals, we realized that not a one of them could spell worth a dern– and that led to them not even being able to tell folks like the police or whoever where they lived when they get arrested 8-10 times a year, (whoa, that seems a tad light!) not if they had to write it on a police report, anyway. It was just a mess. Sure, Lamont has a whole bunch of letters in it, so it only made sense to tighten the thing up a bit to cut down on those all too frequent mistakes that made the American education (pronounced “Ed-U-Cay-Sion” Whoa!) system look bad, that’s all!” he rambled on, looking like an old Billy-goat chewing on a hornet or something. “So we all got together and decided to jettison one of them dern letters and to see if that solved the problem. We were going to get rid of 4 of them, but some smarty-pants pointed out that there is some town somewhere called “LA”, so we figured we’d start off small and modest, as is our nature” he said expansively.

“Well, statistically speaking, by Lamont discarding just one of the letters in their name, that reduces the chance of a spelling error by a whopping 16.67%. That may not seem like a huge percentage, but 16.67% is 16.67%, any way you slice it.” said Dr. Winston Finklemeyer, an area mathematician and the guy who helps the area ranchers count their cows when it is ‘cow counting time”. “So, anyway, this may seem like a quite unnecessary gesture by an educationally challenged town, but changing the town name from “Lamont” to “Lamon” can only reap dividends in the long term, especially since the farmers and ranchers on the school board spend a vast majority of available discretionary funds on sports as opposed to the “3 R’s” (Reading, writing and ‘ranching’?)” he said, putting his handy solar powered calculator back in his plastic pocket protector with the little atom logo on it. (Atom as in atomic – not Eve’s husband from the bible or whatever!)

Thanksgiving Miracle: Entire Day Passes Without Single Reported Incident Of Parrot-Related Mischief Or Holiday Destroying Shenanigans

In the first reported reprieve of its kind since the thankful Noah and his beleaguered brood quite gleefully and with much relief and thanksgiving released those paragons of avian troublemaking – the parrots – from the Ark after the Lord destroyed most of mankind for its unrepentant wickedness (Editorial Note: Why didn’t Noah release a parrot instead of a dove and that other bird (whatever it was!) to see if there was dry land? Did they refuse to go? Was such a mission beneath their dignity? Did he ask them and they gave him a whole lot of lip (beak??) like they are prone to do? Biblical scholars appear to be divided on this point, unfortunately! Anyway…) – an entire holiday seems to have passed without parrots using their unique and decidedly meddlesome abilities to somehow throw a monkey-wrench in their human companion’s holiday revelry, experts report.

“Well, although I have several PhD’s and wear decidedly academic sweater vests and imposing horned-rim glasses, I am just as perplexed as the rest of you unlearned heathens with mere Master’s degrees or, heaven forbid, a measly 4 year degree from a non-Ivy league school!” said Dr. Thurston Maxwell Vanderbilt III, PhD, a renowned parrot expert and Dean of the Harvard School of Birds. “All of us in the Avian Sciences community await this time of year with foreboding and apprehension, just hunkered down behind our desks, waiting to see what those winged miscreants will unleash on what appears to be a hapless mankind! Just last year, there was that parrot in Spokane who imitated the oven timer on Thanksgiving as some sort of dramatic show of inter-species solidarity, causing the usually savvy Erika of Century West Engineering fame to remove the unfortunate dinner centerpiece, the turkey, from the oven over an hour early, thus ruining the festivities and giving her mother-in-law even more ammo to use against her in the decades to come. Sadly, incidents like that tend to occur across the globe on an all-too-frequent basis. So going an entire Thanksgiving day without a single reported incident of provocative parrot pandemonium cannot but forebode ill for the coming months. That tells me that they are planning something big, really big, and may the Lord help us all when that is unleashed upon us!” he shuddered in an Ivory Tower sort of way while pushing his glasses back up his beaky nose in a decidedly dramatic and haughty fashion.

“Well, all I have to say is the Lord has blessed us this day, and we do indeed have so much to be thankful for!” said the so-called Erika of Century West Engineering fame, the uber-goddess of efficiency and world famous parrot rescue maven. “After the last several years of unremitting parrot-inspired holiday disasters, you will forgive me for dreading the holiday season, and it doesn’t help that my mother-in-law just seems to come alive at this time of year, eagerly anticipating another domestic calamity that she can use against me for the rest of my life, given that it is almost a certainty that the woman will outlive me, if for no other reason than spite!” said Erika while expertly changing the newspaper in the bottom of one of her several quite roomy and expansive bird cages. “Oh, I was on pins and needles all day, just waiting for the parrot’s well conceived plans to come raining down on all of us. It was horrid. But when I served the last piece of pie and was able to sit down for the first time all day, I realized that no hideous disasters had befallen me and my social reputation had dodged the bullet for 2011, but that is when I really began to worry. Those darn birds are planning something. You can just see it in their beady little, dinosaur-like eyes. Even my bon-bon making sister (who hardly ever shares with anyone, particularly people who just happen to live in the high desert of New Mexico! Shame on you, Baroness d’Bon-Bon! Shame!!) – even she felt the presence of impending doom! Oh, in so many ways I just wish that the darn birds would have just gone ahead and gotten it over with this Thanksgiving! This waiting is going to put a real crimp in my normally over-the-top Christmas cheer, let me tell you!” she concluded solemnly while going to the garage to set up the 'Rump Shaking" Santa display.

Local Man Ostracized After Developing Life Coping Mechanisms That Don't Somehow Include Consuming Mass Quantities Of Cheap Booze

In a social development that has the nation’s sociologists bristling with academic excitement and egghead-like verve, an area man, Festus Bodine, 43, has had the entire Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) turn their backs on him and slam the doors of social acceptance in his face after word leaked out that he somehow manages to cope with his crushing failure, utter hopelessness and dismal future prospects without hitting the bottle or guzzling a couple of cheap twelve packs of beer by noon on a typical work day, insiders report. Mr. Bodine, a farmer/rancher and proprietor of the “Dopey Z” ranch that he inherited because he was, of course, the dumbest son and the dumbest son always inherits the ranch in these parts. Anyway, although he has every reason to hide from himself and his almost unbelievable dysfunction in the bottom of a glass of cheap hooch, instead he likes to tie knots, shovel manure and cut his own hair when the weight of his collective failure comes crashing down on him like an avalanche of all consuming human hopelessness.

“Well, it just ain’t natural, that’s all” said Wilber Festoon, an area rancher and ironically also the dumbest son of the somewhat questionable “Festoon brood”, although his parentage has been in question since he was born with reddish hair in a family of brown eyed, dark haired males. “I mean, I just don’t see why he has to go putting on airs thinking he is all better than us as we drink ourselves blind and our collective livers are the size of a school bus!” fumed the indignant rancher Festoon. “If he had a lick of social decency, he would hide bottles of rot gut all over his ranch like any normal rancher does in these parts and have an almost unlimited supply of $1.99 six-packs stashed up in the hay loft like any normal person would. Sure, he is just as goofed up and dysfunctional as the rest of us, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but he ain’t winning himself any favors with that holier-than-thou attitude and snooty inability to go thru life three sheets to the wind and in a reeking, mind-numbed blur like any half-way decent American rancher worth his salt would do! I just find his haughty attitude about pickling his innards a tad pretentious and ‘off-putting’, that’s all!” he raved drunkenly. “Sure, it is hell being the dumbest son and being forced to look at the backside of a cow from dawn till dusk for one’s entire life, that is the price we pay for rejecting education and dropping out of school in the 8th grade, but the least the man could do is join into the collective misery and get sloshed like the rest of us. I just can’t stand to be around a man who can’t gulp a 16 ounce beer then burp the Star Spangled Banner. I’m starting to wonder if he is really an American at all but instead is one of them Commie plants sent here by the Russkies to undermine our way of life or something!” he stammered boozily before wiping his stubbly chin on the sleeve of his quite malodorous work shirt that has the unfortunate byproducts of at least 20 head of cattle worked into the fibers at any given moment and that is in desperate need of a good washing, although his wife is usually too sloshed to work the controls on their 20 year old washing machine.

When asked for comment, the big sissy ‘goodie-two-shoes’ Festus managed to mutter “Well, it ain’t like I got nothing against drinking or nothing, but the wife is as crafty as a dadburned fox and discovered all my hiding places years ago and I’ll be derned if that woman don’t ferret out and guzzle any booze I got hid before a man has a decent chance to partake in its deceptively destructive pleasures and liver taxing goodness, if you get my meaning” he said while winking awkwardly. (Editorial Note: Oh, the humanity!!! People please, stay in High School until you graduate or you, too, might end up crafting sentences like that! You don’t have to go to college – but at least graduate from High School! Please! Thank you!!! And whatever you do, don't EVER wink for added emphasis for a weak, unsupportable point that makes almost no sense whatsoever! Come on!!)