This is the Rubbery Shrubbery (RS) blog, your update of the efforts of Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)—to acquire a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats, please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
As you can see by the dateline (sans date), today’s post comes to you from Duck Egg, Oregon, where Edgar Allan Spindlehopper reports on that town’s petition to field the first farm team of the Yachats Smelt.
Duck Egg Is the Early Bird
by Edgar Allan Spindlehopper
DUCK EGG, OR — This quaint town sitting on the banks of a historic log pond is widely recognized as the unguent capital of the world. A dizzying array of ointment factories cranks away night and day (see Fig. 1), and the consequent great billows of smoke places Duck Egg among the top producers of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Thus, it is one of the leaders in the manufacture of benzo[a]pyrene, an important industrial additive to DNA.
But perhaps Duck Egg is best known for another delightful feature—it’s the only town in the Pacific Northwest with its entire populace in witness protection programs (WPPs). Even the name “Duck Egg” is an alias.
Add to that the charm of having no roads in or out of town. This feature is one of the reasons Duck Egg is so popular with WPPs. With no roads, Duck Egg isn’t shown on any road map! If there were a sign to greet visitors coming into town, it would read: “The nation’s finest city without a dot!”
Yet, despite these amenities, Duck Egg has failed to acquire a baseball team of any real dimension. You can imagine the squeals of delight when Duck Eggians learned the Yachats Smelt had been conceived. A major league team just over yonder a piece! Immediately they went into a huddle, scheming to get themselves one of the Smelt’s farm teams.
While huddling, the Eggites chose themselves a leader, Dr. Felix Hoenikker** (not his real name, of course), who swore to do whatever it takes to bring baseball to this town. I spoke with Dr. Hoenikker about the future of Duck Eggish baseball. (In this interview, Dr. Hoenikker is the one on the left.)
Spindlehopper: Dr. Hoenikker, where (cough) are you planning (sniffle) to play your games? (Cough, pant) I haven’t seen (rasp) a ball field here (wheeze, choke, croak).
Dr. Hoenikker: Well, there’s a large vacant lot (cough) about three factories (gwawk) to the west of here (gag, wheeze, gork). Covered with brambles now, but it could be (hack) fixed up to be a spitting (croak) image of the Yachats ballpark (choke, sniffle). Let’s step into this beauty shop where we can (snurgle) breathe (snort, grack, whiffle).
[To grasp what downtown Duck Egg looks like, see Fig 2.]
Spindlehopper: (Hack, gag, gulp!) (Wheeze?)
[Safely inside the Oeuf de Canard Hair Salon, Dr. Hoenikker and I wiped our eyes, blew our noses, and recovered.]
Dr. Hoenikker: But we don’t want to play our home games in Duck Egg, anyway. It’d be hard to play ball wearing gas masks. Also, with no roads in or out, teams would have a transportation problem. By the way, how did you find Duck Egg?
Spindlehopper: I noticed the smudge on the map. Then I hiked through the magic forest from Jezebel City.
Dr. Hoenikker: So you walked here, eh? Not an easy hike. I’m glad the cougar didn’t…never mind. As I was about to say, we plan to play our home games in Wart Wallow—a bedroom community just over those hills.
Spindlehopper: It’s Duck Egg’s bedroom community?
Dr. Hoenikker: Nah. Just a bedroom community.
Spindlehopper: Well, have you picked a name for your team? I assume “Duck Egg” will be the team’s first name.
Dr. Hoenikker: Oh, sure. Can’t beat that “Duck Egg” branding power. But it’s tough agreeing on a nickname. There’s a large faction that favors the “Omelets” and a smaller bunch likes the “Humpty Dumpties” and I’m partial to the “Pythons.”
Spindlehopper: No, no! The nickname’s job is to direct the threat of violence toward your opponent. All those nicknames suggest doing violence to yourself. That’s counterproductive, that is.
Dr. Hoenikker: But we really don’t like ourselves very much.
Spindlehopper: Can’t you think of one that isn’t self-destructive?
Dr. Hoenikker: Well, yesterday a guy named Larson called to suggest the team be named the “Anatidaephobics.” He explained that “anatidaephobia” is the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.**** That doesn’t seem self-destructive.
Spindlehopper: I guess “Anatidaephobics” is better than “Omelets.” Umm…I know this takes a different tack, but have you thought of calling the team the “Aliases”?
Dr. Hoenikker rejected my suggestion, and we tried out several more names, such as “Chameleons” and “Octopuses,” without success. Since the Oeuf de Canard Hair Salon is actually a café, we ate breakfast as we mulled further. All the menu items had phony IDs, of course, so I wasn’t surprised to be served porridge when I ordered steak and sea beans.
I was on my third bowl of porridge when we finally narrowed our search to the Smog Sox, Toxic Sox, and Soot Sox. At that point we flipped a coin, comparing two at a time. Here are the results: Soot Sox better than Toxic Sox better than Smog Sox better than Soot Sox. A three-way dead heat! Go figure. Nothing to be done.
I selected a backpack, a hiking stick, and a gas mask (see Fig. 3), paid the waitress, and began my trek to Wart Wallow, keeping my eye out for the cougar.
* From HurricaneCandice.wordpress.com.
** Dr. Hoenikker has gained fame through his paper, “A new massless, figmental thingy,” recently published in the Journal of Capricious Studies. This ground-breaking article describes the noom, a fictive subparticle that only interacts with other nooms, and then only before breakfast.
*** Claude Monet, Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard, 1904, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
**** From The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, © Universal Press Syndicate.
***** Photo by Mutante. From Wikipedia.
Next time: We’ll take a look at Wart Wallow and ask a few Wart Wallowers pertinent questions. For one thing, do they know what baseball is? For another, bedroom community?
NOTE: Although ”Anatidaephobics” would have been an excellent nickname for the Duck Egg team, anatidaephobia is a much rarer condition in these parts than megapedosmackophobia—the fear of being kissed by a Sasquatch.
NOTE AGAIN: Dave Baldwin and Eric Sallee are still waiting patiently for guest celebrities to grab the bull by the horns and contribute posts for the Rubbery Shrubbery blog. Candidates must be funny enough to not disappoint the blog’s faithful and discerning readers. We’ll let you judge how funny that is.