"... Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a 'beetle'."

Philosophers Wax Aporetically at State Park Dung Beetle Contest

By James Egan

Dung beetles - for the nomenclature-inclined, taxonomic subfamily Scarabaeoidea (alternatively, groups (f), (m), and (n)). Worshipped by the ancient Egyptians; respected as nature's mobile waste treatment plant - and to the delight of multiple esteemers, the featured attraction in a robust competition held at the Minnewaska State Park near New Paltz, New York on Saturday (and very early Thursday morning).

According to Park officials, the second annual staging was expected to be trouble-free and, accordingly, park police were assigned to regular park patrols, with minimal security staffing at the event staging area. In hindsight, perhaps not a fully-tarded expectation.

We spoke to Gilbert Cranbonge contest coordinator and President of the Cirellium Bachus Society's North American and Isle of Jersey - Shore chapter.

Cranbonge:  We thought we had every contest issue resolved after last year's event. Some people didn't read the rules which required all entrants - that's the beetles - they have to be rollers. That was the problem last year. Some contestants were tunnelers and buried the defecal rolling object (DRO, aka 'dung ball') where they found it - usually the starting line, so they didn't roll it anywhere, unless it was underground, but, of course, we couldn't see that. Then there were what we call the "neither nors" - didn't roll and didn't bury - actually they sort of did both - they climbed inside the DRO, which technically disqualified them because the contest required exterior traction, and if they moved at all they sort of rolled around in every direction disrupting the proceedings. Several died tragically underfoot because they ambulated into the crowd. It was all so unnecessary. If they just followed the rules.

GvJ:  So?

Cranbonge:   What do you mean 'so'?

GvJ:  Well, if you had moused-over the Staff link on our Contacts page you would be aware that we are aware – and apparently our awareness of your lack of awareness precedes your awareness of our awareness - that we are aware – it's almost a belief actually - that 'questions are a burden to others' and 'answers a prison for oneself' - metaphorically speaking, although a few of the nattering nebulons lingering about our rather thread-bare facilities – and who insist on referring to themselves as staff-like - may have more personal reinforced concrete experiences in that regard.

So? So rather than ask pointedly intrusive questions, we prefer to let the interviewee prattle on, believing – it's almost a fact actually – that something usable or useful, or a combination thereof, will be revealed eventually – provided we're still awake, haven't finished the contents of the interviewer's flask, or wandered off to follow some silkened distraction.

So, you were saying.

Cranbonge:  Nice attitude. OK, where was I?

GvJ:  We believe you were about enthrall us – hopefully during the current lunar cycle - with intimate details of this year's event, which we understand resulted in an unseemly show of possibly homoerotic masculinity on the part of Park security.

Cranbonge:  Not so fast Gunky, we'll get to that. And there wouldn't have been any problems if wasn't for the contestants.

So, once we thought we had the entry rules clear, we started admitting the beetle owners (BOs) into the competition area. We had enrolled about 30 BOs when in rushed about 15 new entrants representing the Ludwig Wittgenstein Semantic Rodeo Club out of Fond De L'Etang, that jumped-up private school in Accord, New York.

GvJ:  It's pronounced 'Ack-cord.'

Cranbonge:  OK, the Ack-cord Wittgenstein Club. Anyway, they said they were student philosophers and philosophesses – I guess a few looked like women – I was busy looking at what they each were holding - small boxes - which they said had beetles in them, When I asked to see the beetles, they said they couldn't talk about it. But they did finally agree that if the definition of beetle meant the contents of the box, they were willing to put their boxes on the starting line. Well, that obviously wasn't going to work. We now had 30 beetles-that-we-could-see on the starting line and 15 boxes. Right away, it was obvious the boxes were at a huge disadvantage, since this was dung beetle rolling contest. It was clear that even if we agreed that the word beetle meant the contents of the box, which we couldn't talk about, the boxes alone weren't going to be very good at rolling a DRO.

GvJ:   What color were the boxes?

Cranbonge:  What difference does that make?

GvJ:  We like pretty things. Besides, it might affect a beetle's self-esteem.

Cranbonge:  Yeah, alright. Meanwhile, it was getting hot, and some of the contestants with beetles-that-we-could-see started complaining about heat deformation of the DROs, Now that's a common problem in contests like this. We had similar complaints last year, so to avoid a repeat we engaged the services of an expert in excremental geometry to insure that each participant had a similarly-shaped DRO matched to the skill level of the contestant - the beetle - as determined by a set of strength and mobility metrics developed by the Bronx Zoo and the Botswana Dung Beetle Conservancy. But the effects of heat, well, we had to move this thing along, so I told a bunch of the philo' dough boys that we'd have a separate match for them and their boxes called beetles.

GvJ:  Hobbling, but nonetheless, an interesting rationale. It was well-received?

Cranbonge:  Well, I was hoping that offer might fledge, but one of Witties said that they were being treated unfairly, and in the absence of an ethical authority that they could trust external to themselves they felt abandoned and could not participate at all.

Now, a few of the BOs were apparently physics grad students. They started complaining again that the continuing delay was causing the DROs to be messed up and ruining their experiments. Then another Wittie, I guess he was trying to be helpful, started going on about how Heidegger's claims about the elements of the abandonment - calculation, acceleration and massiveness - might be rhetorically useful in the design of a DRO. That made the physics students angry and they went all Hard Times on him, yelling that they required facts, not petits fours and metaphors. The response was a reality check to the nose of one of the physics students. After that, there was a lot of pushing and enthusiastic insults going back and forth, which we mostly didn't understand.

We called security.

A Park Police (PP) spokesperson discussed the incident.

PP:  I told them: 'Look, you people need to disperse, or we'll have to make you. I can't make it plainer than that.' Then some dude wearing a see-through hoodie said: 'Well, perhaps you can, we're not sure.' They did a quick gab, then the hoodie guy said: 'We'd like one question answered.' I said: 'Only one and make it quick.'

'What is the ordered pair whose first member is the best question to ask, and whose second member is the answer to that question?' I told them: 'It is the ordered pair whose first member is the question you just asked and whose second member is the current answer, and it includes the word Taser^®'.

PP:  I honestly don't know that I understood what the heck I said just then, but they were knocking each other over to get out of there, until some woman named Creamy Cheung ¹ showed up hawking stuff called Rapture Cream. She started yelling to them it would make them look nice even if they resisted and suffered a loss of being, or just electric burns. She invited survivors to an 'après-dung' Rapture Cream party. She was a nuisance - smearing on samples, and getting the boys worked up in a weird way. We arrested her for disorderly conduct. But the logic heads did eventually disperse, so, unfortunately, we didn't get to, as Peter Gabriel put it, Shock the Monkey. ... I heard later that it was a wild party.

GvJ:  Yes it was.