All Entries Tagged With: "miners"

HISTORY OF THE CLAP

Ever since homo erectus strolled these shores ritual of clapping in approval and/or appreciation has been with us. Why did such an odd ritual gain such favor within societies as remote as the Maori in New Zealand and the Utes in North America? Were ancient peoples really only trying to kill flies when the curtain went down? What did early entertainers from places like the Fertile Crescent think when the audience began slapping their hands together at a particularly moving moment on stage? We have no idea. Maybe they thought it was locusts. Nonetheless, here are some of the more pronounced developments chronologically introduced through the ages.

5000 BC a clumsy Bornean orangutan (spanking monkey) falls from a branchwater eucalyptus tree while applauding a traveling mango juggling troupe near the Mount Kilimanjaro. Millenniums later, his straw-hatted ancestors ritualistically repeat a version of the same act at national political conventions.

2750 BC   Early Hitites disguised as edible crustaceans receive the first recorded standing ovation after a lackluster performance of Don’t Cry For Me Hattusa!

1523 BC Nefertiti is applauded by Egyptian talisman after acquiring her own checking account despite the protests by hubby and noted Vaudevillian, Akhenaton. Popular Nile Valley punk band, The Pharaohs, jam for an additional fourteen hours after a third ovation (or was that played for three after 14 ovations). Sadly, fruit loops and canned laughter were hurled at the musicians toward the end of the performance, resulting in injuries to the fourth buffoon and the bass player.

900 BC Sumerians invent beer and sell it in cardboard 6-packs to the chagrin of many who have not yet mastered mathematics or the Mesopotamian shekel. Profits were said to be “immoral”. Gobshites with cumbersome wind-generated clapping and stomping machines first appear on the Peloponnese.

401 BC Xanthippe, wife of Socrates appears in public wearing kid gloves made from Cyprian bat guano and impotent polyester. While stifling unwanted crowd noise, the fashion accessories effectively limit the pain inherent to excessive clapping by other Greek philosophers. In 402 she showed up with Khandian ear plugs hurling her and her entourage into periods of scorn and insignificance while in exile in the mountains of Karpathos.

559 BC – Confucius releases his classic One Hand Clapping Backwards. 2500 years later it becomes the film Karate Kid.

522 BC Prophets Ezekiel and Zoroaster simultaneously predict the emergence of Elvis and snow making. Spanking, called subdued applause by the Druids, replaces crucifixion as punishment for misdemeanors on the Isle of Man.

200 BC After a tedious reading of Reconnoiter My Arse, Gaelic warrior Courvoisier, bows from the waist and is beheaded by Roman legions. The clapping lasted well into the next century.

11 BC First case of fruit throwing at in indoor venue, Carthage. See The Pharaohs above. Perpetrators were arrested after Cairo police performed a juice scan and a mean soft shoe. Wordsmiths in Constantinople disavow crude slang words associated with an appreciative audience.

2 AD Invention of the trash bag heralded as man’s finest achievement up to that point in history. Clapping after the main meal gradually disappears in the Urals, replaced by a convivial, boisterous burp.

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Anglers over 80 must undergo tagging in 2021

(Taylor Canyon) Elderly fisherman must submit to stage one tagging if they seek the plateau of legality in cold-water pursuits this year. The labeling, promoted as a cost-saving inventory, is in actuality an attempt to keep from losing people on the banks.

“We love it that these charming old farts are out there catching fish,” said Ernestina Perch of the Colorado Dorsal League, the entity responsible for safe tagging. “The tagging is only a precaution. It allows us to monitor movements of the tagged and facilitate pinpoint searches if someone wanders off.

Most of these seniors lose sensitivity in their earlobes long before anything else goes according to Perch.

“It’s no more than simple vaccine, except that instead of a shot the unsuspecting quarry suffers a small incision in the fleshy part of the ear,” she smiled. “The slight sting is similar to the pinch of a staple gun and often stops bleeding within hours.”

All Colorado trawlers and casters should expect to be tagged before 2025. An in-home tagging kit is expected to be available by snagging season. Advocates of the program are pretty exited about the possible results.

“For now you should do nothing,” flipped Perch.

Next Time: “Do Fish Cry?”

Ice Fishermen Glimpse Rare One-legged Iola Mackinaw

(Venison, CO) Although quite relaxing and lucrative, ice fishing in the frigid air and winter sun requires serious preparation. But no one was prepared for what they saw at Blue Mesa last Tuesday.

At about noon, just as the ice was sweating and the sky was calm a long-thought extinct one-legged mackinaw (unos tripodes tructos) was viewed bobbing in the shallow water at the east end of the lake. Pursued by anglers in boats and along the shore, the mackinaw emerged again in the river then disappeared into the deep inlet leaving fishermen holding their hooks.

Biologists think this rare lake trout evolved as an amphibian in the harsh climate of Gunnison County. Notice the stiff posture and limited leg capacity thought to have developed due to social ties and the presence of hungry raptors in the region.

“We’ve seen the magnificent gifts of nature materialize out of thin air before,” said Treble Bagre, an avid fisherman and outdoorsman, “but this was really special. “Now every time I put my auger to the ice I’ll be wondering who or what I might meet next.”

Why this particular species evolved in such a wasteful way is still a mystery. As most people know fish do not generally have proper legs since they don’t need them to get around. The appearance of healthy one-legged mackinaw sent shock waves through the local cold-blooded vertebrate community and left fishermen wondering what else might reside in the frozen depths of Blue Mesa.

“The creature seemed intent on diving in the river and got on pretty well despite suffering from what looked like a slight limp,” added Bagre. I only saw it for an instant. It was gray-blue in color, bigger than my pickup and had eyes on both sides of its head. I thought I’d met Moby Dick!”

State biologists, while not discounting the sighting, say the fish probably migrated from over to Colorado in so many streams and creeks from the Green River in Utah, where one-legged fish are more plentiful. They were quick to point out that fish don’t limp.

“There was enough meat on that plankton muncher to feed Hinsdale County for Fourth of July Weekend,” said Bagre. Our challenge would be to haul that monster across the raging Cebolla without it repatriating.”

Woodsmen are warned no to confuse the one-legged Makinaw with other hairless and less gimpy fish like perch and pike that frequent these waters.                     – Conor Sturgeon

“How sad it is to think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew there was a hell.” – Mark Twain on the horrors facing the pagan population of Hawaii, 1866.

Vladimir and Putin agree to power sharing

(St. Petersburg) In what some consider a shocking twist, both Vladimir and Putin have initiated a process aimed at allocation of sovereignty within the Russian state.

Mr. Vladimir

The schematic for transfer and cooperation between the two former rivals includes a step-by-step shift to a coalition government controlled by the two men. It is surmised that the former Soviet system will remain in place.

“Double agent tactics and diluted arms races be damned. We finally have a stable government west of the Urals,” said a party mouthpiece.

Mr. Putin

“Call it what you will but it is still a government reminiscent of the Cold War potato heads and infused with former KGB agents,” said one political opponent currently recovering from an alleged poisoning attempt last October.

In a related statement the Kremlin vehemently denied rumors that the two leaders would appear as World Wrestling Federation combatants joining an assortment of Trump family standouts in that capacity.

-Conor Sturgeon

Smart Phones Not Helping Says Study

(Palo Abajo) The wide use of what the communications industry calls Smart Phones has not resulted in an increase in intelligence according to Mensa, the high IQ society that often monitors cerebral behavior patterns.

According to the most recent study the use of the Smart Phone has resulted in the marginal loss and de-evolution of applied logic, the quasi-disappearance of social exchange and sometimes lower test scores among the control groups engaged. These interface maladies are becoming more and more common and threaten to disrupt the onion cart in the very near future.

The institute did not elaborate further.

Missing Mule Deer Program Nixed

(Manana) A fledgling search effort aimed at locating and returning lost or runaway mule deer to their homes has been scrapped after only two seasons. The well-financed plan ended without fanfare after biological social workers failed to impact the status of so much as one of the forlorn.

In its defense, the recovery strategy was hampered by savior syndrome with a side of pettiness. Like many upstart directions the program seemed more about pecking order and hierarchy than desperate mule deer. After a few months insiders were asking whether anyone was taking the matter seriously at all.

Now most of the sensitive date is stored in sugar beet crates in an unmarked basement office of some grandiose cathedral to implied democracy.

Many good Samaritans, working overtime, say the problem lies within familiarity in that every mule deer looks the same.

“There are large and small, fat and lean, young and old but basically they all have that same stupid look on their face,” said Alana Jardin, an animal behaviorist on loan from Colombia. “We used to have deer problems too but in 1600 we relaxed our hunting restrictions and allowed the second generation of Conquistadors to “have at it”. Clearly after 400 years there are almost no deer and almost no deer to locate or recover,” she said.

“Flank ‘em,” says Antler Tom Gilhooley, who favors putting a mule deer in charge of the entire investigation. “Contending that all mule deer look the same is the most ignorant, bigoted, sexist, even polarizing statement I have ever heard. I intend to go home, tune up my Martin, and write a country song about it.”

-Tommy Middlefinger