In the wake of the scandalous discovery that Democratic state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz of Waterville is a devotee of the online game “World of Warcraft,” the Maine Republican Party has prepared a list of acceptable leisure-time activities for its members, so they can avoid similar public embarrassments. GOP state chairman Charlie Webster said it was necessary to distinguish between those hobbies that are consistent with conservative values and those that foster a sense of dependence, an attitude of entitlement, and a tendency to allow the culture of foreigners with green skin, odd clothing and anachronistic weaponry to subvert the American way of life.

“That video-game stuff isn’t how working folks relax after a long day on the job,” Webster might have said, but didn’t. “The truck drivers, factory workers and call-center representatives who’ve been the backbone of Maine’s economy since 1820 all go home, crack open a cold one and turn on the tube, just like their ancestors did.”

The chairman also made it clear he was upset by rude comments Lachowicz made on discussion sites. “She was disrespectful,” Webster said. “Almost as bad as Paul LePage.”

Republicans haven’t yet released their list, but a copy was leaked to me by a dissident orc (actually an unemployed 20-something living in his parents’ basement, where – when he’s not too busy skewering night elves – he hacks into Webster’s laptop and plants phony information about trolls disguised as out-of-state college students registering to vote in Maine).

Here’s the uncensored guide to GOP-sanctioned recreation:

1. Read the complete works of Adam Smith. Smith is revered by right-wingers as the 18th-century patron saint of free-market economics, but the closest I’ve come to picking up his books is P.J. O’Rourke’s distillation of his major points. Considering that Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” is 900 pages of impenetrable prose, that volume alone should keep Webster’s working folks occupied through a long winter. And if modern readers find Smith to be less than entertaining, they need to be reminded that he once wrote, “The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people.”

2. Watch movies based on Ayn Rand’s books. Rand is the other icon of Tea Party philosophers (could someone turn off the oxymoron alarm), but reading her books might be disconcerting for them, since she favored abortion and was a militant atheist. “The Fountainhead” skips over all that cognitive dissonance by stressing individual initiative. I haven’t seen the new “Atlas Shrugged” film, but I suspect it’s not nearly as heavy on rejecting the tenants of Judeo-Christian morality as Rand was in print.

3. Visit recent immigrants from places like Somalia, and explain to them why their culture sucks. For one thing, it almost certainly lacks high-speed Internet connections, which would allow them to play “World of Warcraft.” If the wretched refuse appear to be having trouble understanding you because of a limited grasp of English, remember that shouting and waving your arms always helps convey your message.

4. Bundling. Not the phone-cable-Internet kind. This colonial practice involved unmarried sweethearts attempting to keep warm during the winter by wrapping themselves together in blankets, chastely separated by a wooden board. Bundling did wonders for increasing the birthrate among white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and there’s no reason to think it couldn’t do so again. Obviously, no same-sex couples need apply.

5. Lawn care. For some unfathomable reason, points for patriotism are awarded based on the quality and quantity of one’s grass. (And not that kind of grass, either, vice-of-levity indulger.) Extra credit is given if you mow the yard into a representation of the American flag. Of course, once you do that, you’re not allowed to walk on it.

6. Listen to really bland popular music – but no trace of irony allowed. It’s time for red-blooded citizens of these United States to wrest our heritage of inconsequential 1950s tunes from the liberal hipsters who claimed it in the 1990s and called it “lounge.” They thought it was cool to like stuff that was just plain awful. Good Republicans know that jazz, rock, hip hop and alt-country are all fundamentally un-American – practically Somali, even. This country’s true musical history runs from Perry Como to Billy Vaughn to Mantovani (oops, it turns out he’s an anglicized Italian).

7. Buy a sugar-laden soda the size of an elephant’s bladder. This stuff about calories is junk science from the same people who gave us global warming and evolution. Lots of the Founding Fathers were fat. Ben Franklin still got the hot chicks.

8. Play tackle football without a helmet. The medical profession’s newfound concern with concussions is just some left-wing plot to turn us all into pussies. Those shots to the head haven’t done Charlie Webster any harm.

9. Pong.

Contact me through the Dark Portal (also know as email) at aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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