With little fanfare or need, the Oregon Highway Division Whale Disposal Squad has won the prestigious Frostbite Falls Chapter lifetime achievement award. This marks the first awarding of the award since it was given to Leif Andressen, the television executive who canceled the "Dukes of Hazard." The Whale Disposal Squad was one of three finalists. Exact nomination rules are secret, so as to be more easily disputed in case of litigation, which means it's unknown exactly why the award was given. However, the list of standards is rumored to include: -Ability of him/her to irritate the authorities;-Inability to foresee the ramifications of his/her actions; -Refusal to consider the ramifications of his/her actions: -Pragmatic ignorance; and -Plausible deniability. Bonus points are thought to be given for level of cluelessness. And the winner is . . . Only recently did the nomination committee discover that the Whale Disposal Squad was not an urban myth, but the real thing. Stories about the squad have circulated for years, but have usually been relegated to the never-was bin, along with the kid who strapped JATO rockets to his Camaro and the acting skills of William Shatner. However, these guys rightly and truly earned their legendary status on Nov. 12, 1970, when they confronted a large problem: a 45-foot, multi-ton rotting whale carcass washed up on one of Oregon's beautiful beaches. What to do with it? Our heroes, under the leadership of George Thorton, hit upon a plan dear to the hearts of any true PRDA'er--they decided to blow it up. And they blew it up real good.
The extraordinarily high level of cluelessness exhibited by George Thorton and his team undoubtedly contributed to their success in claiming the award. The rest of the story: George Thorton was promoted. The state paid Walter full retail price for his car. And a new policy for dealing with beached whales was adopted: from that day forward, the state of Oregon has burned and buried any dead whales it finds littering the beaches. First runner up: George Goble, Charcoal Grill Lighter Extraordinaire
George warns that we shouldn't try this at home, but we suspect the lawyers made him say that. He also warns us that we should never, ever presoak the charcoal with the liquid oxygen. An explosion will be the result, George says. A big one, because a single presoaked briquette packs the wallop of one stick of dynamite. George scored highly with the nomination panel by actually using knowledge he picked up in college to improve on the time honored juvenile pursuit of playing with fire. He also received favorable nods for getting into trouble with the local fire department, who ended the practice because they considered his method to be ". . . playing with explosives." Second Runners up: Chris Gouge and Todd Stadler, Twinkie Scientists
For example, without their density testing efforts we would not know " . . . that a Twinkie is 68 percent air and only 32 percent Twinkie stuff." Nor would we realize that Twinkies are affected by gravity or that a Twinkie will " . . . not burn until the accelerant is added, thus removing the possibility of premature Twinkie combustion."
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The theory was to blast the whale out into the ocean and into smithereens small
enough to be edible by the local gull population. To that end they packed 20 50-pound
boxes of dynamite under the carcass and let `er rip. The explosion blew the whale to
kingdom come, alright, and it also blew it mostly straight up into the air. Disgusting,
reeking pieces of blubber large and small rained down over a wide area of the beach and
onto dozens of spectators. One piece six feet long and a foot thick flew over a police car
stationed inland. The cop tentatively identified it as a fin. Another large chunk landed
in the parking lot in a spot unfortunately already occupied by Walter Umenhofer's brand
new Oldsmobile Regency. It crushed the Olds and made a sizable dent in Walter's mood. 
George "No, Not That One"
Goble is a past winner of the coveted FFC Beavis Award for Playing With Fire. But George
is no ordinary firebug. George does it with style. He has been known to light a a charcoal
grill with 3 gallons of liquid oxygen. On that memorable occasion, he started with 60 lbs
of charcoal and one smoldering briquette, and dumped on three gallons of liquid oxygen.
Forty pounds of the charcoal disappeared in three seconds, but left behind a perfectly
prepared grill with all the old grease, etc, burned away. 
These dedicated men of science
filled a huge void in human understanding by applying the scientific method to a series of
experiments involving golden sponge cakes with creamy filling, also known as Twinkies. 
