Dear Doctor Down-Down,
Help! I’m currently hashing with Tulsa HHH. I thought maybe you would be able to help my hash with the biggest problem ever they are facing on the face of the earth. Their biggest concern is how to be politically correct, discreet and how to do down-downs (I mean what size vessels to use) and what to have for a down-down and how many to have. I can understand how many, since we have to drive at some point, but. . . . We have this e-mail list they have been flooding with repetitive and similar complaints. This is getting hashers like me highly disgusted. So, Dear Dr. Down-Down, could you please pleeeese tell them what hashing is all about and help them see that size and contents of the down-down vessel is not the point.
About to Throw Up in Tulsa,
Sweetcheeks
Tulsa HHH, Oklahoma
Dear Sweetcheeks,
What a coincidence! My own hash recently went through a spasm of political correctness, and it was not a pleasant experience. Maybe by relating what happened in my hash I can show the members of your hash the danger of following the PC trail.
It started one night when the hares announced that On-Afters would be held at Hooters. One harriette objected loudly, saying that Hooters’ exploits womyn. For those of you who haven’t been to Hooters, it’s a chain sports bar featuring young female waitpersons in tight T-shirts. Well, other harriettes took up the cry, and within three short weeks our hash had mutated beyond the point of recognition.
Down-downs were the first thing to change. We began gender-norming the amount of beer in the down-down receptacle, based on the down-person’s body mass, but as soon as we did a new faction accused us of beerism and we had to begin offering wine and wine coolers to the hop-intolerant. Pretty soon some womyn pointed out that the White Power Elite historically uses alcohol to suppress economically- and educationally-disadvantaged peoples, so water procured from non-endangered springs and streams with names that are not disrespectful to aboriginal inhabitants became the beverage of choice. Of course by then we no longer separated ourselves by artificial, restrictive labels such as “harriers” and “harriettes,” but had become gender-neutral “people of shiggy,” except that we no longer laid trails in shiggy out of deference to our goal of saving the planet. Giving up shiggy led to the abandonment of flour to mark trail, since the wasting of food was perceived as a slap in the face of people of hunger, and from there led to letting go of the concept of “trail” entirely, since following trail is implicitly ruleist. Rules, it was rightly perceived, are enablers for rigid hieratic and hetero-rapist structures such as the one we once called “mismanagement,” which we cheerfully abandoned. Although by then we could truthfully proclaim there were “no rules,” members of the hash were expected to wear garments made of natural unbleached cotton, to pronounce Hispanic words in thick Guatemalan accents, and to limit the recruiting of new members to persons of color and the handicapped. Before long we melanin-impoverished oppressor class hashers found ourselves unwelcome intruders at hash events. Eventually the cry of “speciesism” was raised, and six dogs, one goat, and two hamsters became regular members.
As you may have suspected, we sensitivity-impaired and vaginally-deprived members of the hash had long since departed and had formed a splinter hash, reintroducing ignorant sexist non-alternate lifestyle tolerant attitudes to our gatherings. Down-downs featured beer, cigars, and a block of ice, and the jokes and songs disdained diversity. Most importantly, we were running trails again, cheerfully defiling the earth with enriched flour and crumpled beer cans. And before long the survivors of the Great Experiment, full of self-esteem but thirsty and in dire need of good times, came back to the fold. We made every one of them sit on the ice, repeat “No Poofters” ten times, and quaff a man-sized down-down to a chorus of “Tits out for the boys.” Life makes sense again!
On On,
Dr. Down-Down