Stone Pigs

Posted By Alan Partis on April 1, 1995

I just sat through an hour of North American Championship Lumberjacking on ESPN2 with my jaw hanging open and my heart pounding. Never have I witnessed such raw power (pardon the pun) and talent — not to mention the 300cc motorcycle engines attached to chain saws that really DID saw through wood like a “hot knife through butter.” These were the men (and women) forever immortalized by Monty Python and I’m here to tell you that America needs more Lumberjacks.

Lumberjacks don’t give a spotted owl’s hoot about needing a level playing field. Women compete alongside men and no one laments the fact that women carry their weight lower. In a race, no one cries about soft wood catching the ax or hard knots slowing the saw. Nope. To lumberjacks, that’s part of the beauty of real wood trees. Besides, those perfectly uniform plastic trees (most commonly used for Christmas trees) are real difficult to grow.

Lumberjacks know what to do with a good forest. It’s a darned good thing too because I’m sure that if pencils had always been made from stone we’d all have forearms like Popeye the Sailor Man. With a world like, that the stress on spinach growers would just be too great. No, it’s much better to cut down some of Sherwood Forest for the Sheriff of Nottingham’s fireplace. A lumberjack knows how to cut the deficit. Actually, there’s nothing a lumberjack doesn’t know how to cut. When they’re done, there might be nothing left but a pile of sawdust, but that’s better than what’s lying around Washington. From where I sat, I’ll bet it wouldn’t take a hundred committees and 5 years to do it either.

Two words: health care. This is a healthy bunch who has no use for lawyers (that puts them on my good side right away). You show me someone who thinks it’s unhealthy to “sleep all night and work all day” and I’ll show you an insurance salesman. After swinging an ax all day there’s no energy left for anything but “putting on women’s clothing and parading around in bars.” That goes on all the time today, but people are more concerned about the social impact of Super Soakers.

Lumberjacks don’t endorse the actions of Lorena Bobbit. They don’t chop anything down until it stands at least 6 feet tall. At 6 inches it’s just a weed and you would need a weed whacker for that. Lumberjacks don’t use weed wackers. For things that small, any good chain saw would simply pulverize it and remove all hope of reconstruction. Lorena Bobbit is obviously nothing more than a common gardener gone glassy eyed to emulate Edward Scissorhands.

America needs more lumberjacks. Al Gore could be a fine wood grain dashboard in a thousand new ozone depleting, greenhouse gassing, Detroit built cars. Any tree that thick and tall can be cut down and put to better use than to appear on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and break glass ashtrays. Lumberjacks would make a new sport popular — Lumberjack Golf. Lumberjack Golf allows players to remove trees that sadistic course designers felt compelled to leave growing majestically in the middle of an otherwise passable fairway. They’d score much lower given the advantage of driving for the green on those now reachable par 4’s without the trees on the inside of the dogleg.

Lumberjacks wouldn’t be difficult to buy gifts for at Christmas time. They don’t wear ties. They wear any color shirt you buy them. They don’t have computers and can always use a good chain saw.

America really does need more lumberjacks. We need people to make room for the relentless expansion of our cities. We need people to excel in what’s sure to be an up and coming Olympic sport right on the heels of curling and bowling. We need people to wear all the plaid flannel shirts we make every year from our abundant cotton crops. We need backup singers for the occasional Monty Python skit. We need more lumberjacks.

Category: Funny Stuff, Health Care
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