Hello family & friends,
That's right folks, the big two-zero is this summer. A milestone in camping history. You miss this, you may as well sell your sleeping bag on Ebay and move to Iraq.
Where are we going? Here's a hint below.
If you can't figure it out, next month's web-site announcement will divulge the location in detail.
The date will be the second weekend in August. No, really. (That's August 11th, 12th, and 13th.)
Sincerely,
Jeff Myers, Director of Photography for "Death Camp 2000 BC"
Now on with the fun...
Jeff "S
Top
Ten Signs You're At A Bad Barbecue
10. Guy at the grill asks if you prefer salmonella or E.coli.
9. Video of barbecue airs that night on CNN as an Al-Qaeda training video.
8. Grilled chicken still has razor attached from cockfight.
7. "Hors d'oeuvres" are whatever was scraped out of the bug zapper.
6. The Memorial Day potato salad is leftover from Labor Day.
5. Al Gore drops by to lecture you about charcoal's effect on global warming.
4. NSA has wiretapped the corn.
3. There's more chlorine in the lemonade than the pool.
2. Wake up hung over with grill marks on your ass.
1. You walk in on neighbor giving your wife a foot-long.
Click here for a special edition of Camp Chaos Horoscopes
Click here for the 2006 Camp Chaos Gazette
RACOON BAIT
By Dave Barry
Raccoon bait
There's nothing like taking your family on a camping trip -- getting away
from civilization, sleeping under the open sky, looking up into the heavens
and gazing upon an awe-inspiring vista of millions and millions of ... what
ARE those things? Bats? Very large mosquitoes? Oh NO! They've taken little
Ashley!
So perhaps it's better not to sleep under the open sky. But you should still
go camping, because it's the best way to get close to nature, with ``nature''
defined as ``anything that you would kill if it got inside your house.''
That's why I say: So WHAT if North America has more than 30 species of rattlesnakes, as well as 60 species of spiders that inflict what are classified as ``medically important'' bites? Let's start planning your family camping trip right now, using the ``Q'' and ``A'' format!
Q. WHAT EQUIPMENT WILL I NEED TO GO CAMPING?
A. You need a tent. Tent sizes are measured in units of men, as in ``a three-man
tent,'' a ``four-man tent,'' etc.; this tells you how many men are required
to erect the tent if they are all professional tent engineers equipped with
Tent Viagra. Even then, the tent will collapse under unusual weather conditions,
such as rain, or nightfall. You will also need a hatchet, for the spiders,
and a credit card, for the motel.
Q. WHERE SHOULD I GO CAMPING?
A. The United States has a spectacular national park system with millions
of unspoiled acres, where wildlife is protected by strict federal laws. So
unless you want to become Purina Bear Chow, you should avoid these places.
You want a commercial facility with a name like ``The Stop 'n' Squat Kountry
Kampground,'' where large animals cannot penetrate because they won't fit
through the six-inch gaps between the Winnebago recreational vehicles. When
pitching your tent, remember the ``old woodsman's'' rule of thumb: You want
to be upwind of your neighbor's generator exhaust, but able to see his satellite
TV.
Q. HOW MUCH FOOD SHOULD I TAKE?
A. A lot. You'll be providing food not only for your family, but also for
the entire raccoon community. And please do not be so stupid as to think you
can keep your food away from the raccoons. Raccoons are the most intelligent
life form on earth, as was proven in the October 2000 world chess championship
match in London, where a raccoon not only defeated reigning champion Garry
Kasparov in six moves, but also took his sandwich.
I know what raccoons are capable of. When I was a boy in rural Armonk, our
garbage cans were regularly terrorized by a gang of brilliant criminal raccoons.
I recall being awakened at 3 a.m. by loud noises, and looking out the window
to see, by moonlight, my father, a peace-loving Presbyterian minister, charging
around in the bushes in his pajamas, wildly swinging a baseball bat and saying
non-Presbyterian words. Of course he did not get the raccoons; you NEVER get
the raccoons. The raccoons were safe in their secret headquarters, recording
my father via high-resolution night-vision videotape technology that humans
would not develop for another 25 years. That particular video is still hugely
popular on Raccoon Entertainment TV (``Tonight we present the classic episode,
`Crazed Minister in Pajamas' '').
Ten years later, I was a counselor at Camp Sharparoon, which meant that I
had to go camping in the woods with a group of boys and a nutritionally balanced
food supply consisting of 75,000 small boxes of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.
I tried to protect our food at night via the Boy-Scout-handbook technique
of suspending it from a rope strung between two trees; the raccoons, who were
monitoring me via tiny cameras hidden in pine cones, thought this was hilarious.
When darkness fell, they got the food down in seconds, using lasers. It would
not surprise me to learn that they had paid the Boy Scouts to put that technique
in the handbook.