The Long Sunset

One day Bohan Dillon approached the Ocean. The Sun looked at him and said, “Bet you can’t stop me settin’.”

Well, Ol’ Bohan looked right back at the Sun and he said, “Reckon I can.” And with that he done put on his wolfskin mitts, grabbed him a-hold of that there Sun, and he held her up in the sky for hours.

That’s the day ever’one knows as the Long Sunset.

Oysters

Oysters used to be land critters. They scurried, they brayed, they woke before the Sun.

That got to Ol’ Bohan, though. Y’see, he usually wasn’t no early riser iff’n unless something needed doing. But them oysters, they took up in front of his cabin and didn’t quit. Bohan, he had a lick of patience, but after months of this he’d had enough. One morning the oysters was lowing just a mite too loud and out stormed Bohan.

For hours and hours he hurled the oysters into the sea. Their cries attracted their brethren to the ocean until they was just one big floating mess. That’s when Father Fish waggled his weedy beard and turned them oysters into what you see today.

And Ol’ Bohan got some rest.

Ask Montezuma: Hammers

Montezuma II

The Answer Man from Tenochtitlan

Dear Montezuma,
My neighbor is constantly trying to borrow my hammer. Just in the past three days, he has asked me once. I know that if he borrows it he’s going to use it to hammer things such as nails and scuff it up. How can I politely decline his request?
Thank you.
George Osborne
Chancellor of the Exchequer
11 Downing Street, London UK

My Dearest Georgie Pie,

My but it has been ages since you last enclosed a missive within the confines of the electromellifluous aether. Why, the last time one of your communiques reached me my assistant at the time, Gregory, was still using Eudora to check the electronic mails and delaying completion of his work tasks via the Prodigy service!

As for your noisy neighbour, have you considered not lending him the hammer? That way you will not be subject to his weekend projects such as the 1/72 scale stack of wooden oranges or his continually-expanding art piece “Hammer Head Circles in Wood.” You might at once also consider lending him your ball peen rather than claw hammer. Certainly I would not suggest the lending of the sledge.

Yours in quietude,

Monty

Dear Montezuma,
What happens when you microwave Oliver Cromwell’s skull? Also, where is Oliver Cromwell’s skull buried? Also, what is a microwave? Who am I? What?
Unknown.
Via the Post.

Sir,

Frankly I am simply aghast at your suggestion that I might microwave the skull of Oliver Cromwell. If I weren’t publishing your letter myself I might consider it slander. When I microwave skullparts, such as brain pans, occipital lobes, supra-orbital ridges, or mandibles, I choose only the finest in monarchist pates!

Good day!

Montezuma II

Montezuma,
Recently my Supergrip 9000 failed to bend paper. I believe it is defective. Does this mean my wife is two-timing me?
Senator John Edwards
North Carolina, US

Dear Johnny,

Yet another letter arrives from you on the subject of paper bending. First you wanted advice on the proper folding of origami swans using Wolframite-coated papyrus. Next you wrote seeking a hint or two on the proper techniques for bending, if not folding, newspapers using the rear left wheel of a Bester Motors Flechette. Not two months ago you were concerned about drying a stack of wet napkins and their un-folding of all things!

As you well know the Supergrip 9000 was not actually designed to bend paper, it was merely found to be capable of doing so in the right laboratory conditions. The marketing team at Supergripsco of course set upon this as another selling point. Most of the footage one sees on the televisual radio is doctored.

Love,

Montezuma II

Dinosaurs are what?

Over the years I’ve thought many things about dinosaurs. They’re big (mostly). They’re scary (usually). If I ever ran into one I’d probably simultaneously wonder if physics had been violated in some way and soil myself. And they are definitively cool.

So when some egg-headed scientician tells me that this:

is the same thing as this:

I get a little pissed off.

Over the years even friends have gotten scientists to email them and “prove” that birds are dinosaurs. Maybe cladistics says they are descendants of theropods, but theropods they ain’t.

Dinosaurs are rad. They were mean.

They were huge.

And they were weird.

Birds are barely any of those things. They may have scales. They’re definitely warm-blooded. Of course they have feathers. But they’re missing that crucial hip factor present in our friends the dinos.

Occasionally you get something cool like an eagle.

But most of the time you get something dumb looking.

Any time you get into thinking that the thing you came form it’s the thing you are, you get into trouble. We are not our parents and we’re certainly not squirrel-like animals hunting for insects through the pines. We may be descended from something like plesiadapis, but I have more ruthlessness in my little toe and more brains in my humongous skull.

So, yeah, next time someone tries to tell you birds are dinosaurs, feel free to call them out for being the dunderheaded nincompoop they are.

After all, running into this in the dark:

will never inspire anything near the feelings your amygdala would initiate if you met this at 1 AM: