This installment of “This Month In Pun” is brought to you by Omar Akin Bach, Chiropractor. Bach says, “Forget what you might have heard; we’ll straighten you out.” Located at the corner of Twist and Popp in Back Bend, Pun.
July 4-9: A surfing competition and subsequent crowning of the “Chairman of the Board” are part of the DeGraydis Capers week at (where else) DeGraydis Cape on Pun’s southern coast. Please note that although the surfing competition is still scheduled, the event is subject to postponement due to the presence of sharks in the area. Recent sightings of Lone, Card, and Poole Sharks have festival organizers worried.
July 9: Northern Pun’s city of Smorgasburg hosts its annual Rat Race (also known as the C.Howdy Run), a 10-K event held each July along the shoreline of Betonda Bay. Last year’s winners were Mary Thon and Gaspin Ferrer. If you like to get your exercise on the dance floor, you might try Smorgasburg’s Swedish Meet Ball, held in conjunction with the Rat Race. This marathon dance is held in the ballroom of the Swede Dreams Hotel. While in Smorgasburg, we recommend dining at The Shipyard. This converted dockside warehouse, formerly known as the Barge Inn, is owned by Abel Seaman, a former whaler captain and current president of the Pun Sperm Bank. The Shipyard’s menu includes subs, steamers of clams, and a ketch of the day, all of which can be washed down with a schooner of ale. Yawl come out for launch and eat a yacht.
July 15-17: The local mental health clinics of Grape harbor benefit from the proceeds of a wine-tasting celebration during the Days of Wine and Neuroses festival kicking off on the 15th and running through the weekend. Grape Harbor and the Rio McCoy valley to the northeast comprise Pun’s wine country Vineyards are everywhere and produce wines for every taste. A partial listing of those available at the wine tasting include Bridgette Bordeaux – a light French-style wine that ages beautifully; Hello Madeira – a good introductory wine, light, pleasant, complimentary, promising better things; Wotz-Rongwitt Medoc – A curious wine, hard to define, tasting expensive but leaving a question on the palate; Garland-Avery Port – a low-class wine for the non-discriminating wine drinker; Madam Moselle – an exciting but underage wine that makes up in vitality what it lacks in depth and maturity; and Ringsov Sauterne – one of Pun’s most potent wines – one or two glasses will knock you flat on Uranus.
July 25-29: The Pun National SETI Conference opens in St. Spreservus in southern Pun and is open to the public. SETI stands for Search for Evidential Traces of Ignoramia. The conference offers lectures and exhibits about the curious island of Ignoramia. Don’t bother looking for Ignoramia on any recent maps of Pun and the Free Association Islands; it isn’t there. Ignoramia is is a legendary lost island, said to have sunk into Luna Sea under the weight of its own ineptitude.
Little is known about the land. Its form of government appears to have been an idiocracy – government by the stupid. Its Parliament, known as Fools’ Circle, was made of of 1000 Ignoramuses who met on the Asinine Heights mountain top of Numm’s Skull (also known as Bone Head and Addle Pate). So incompetent were its leaders that Ignoramia was also known as the Land of 1000 Dunces. Even the island’s forests were dense. The Black Forest, for example, was so dense that not even light escaped. Ignoramia had few cities. Those that did exist (Simpleton, Slow Downs, Oaf) were surrounded by thick walls, set at obtuse angles to one another.
There is some evidence that some Ignoramuses made their way to Pun, apparently brought in by dope smugglers. No other flora and fauna are known to have survived. Animals thought to have lived on the island include the Sillee Ass and the Lumm Ox. In addition, scientists have found on small isolated atolls in the region Dodo droppings and Ninkum poop, which would indicate the these species might have been there also.
Periodically, adventurers will get it into their heads to go search for Ignoramia, but the dark, muddled waters of the sea make this an extremely dangerous undertaking. The bottom line is that only someone whose heritage can be traced back to Ignoramia would attempt such a foolhardy enterprise, so if you’re actively searching for Ignoramuses, you probably are one.