These articles previously appeared at the currently lamented Rake & Herald, out of Cornwall. Founder, publisher and part-time mandrill sympathiser Ignatius Rake is well-considered by me as the one and only employer I have ever dealt with who at least tried to do alright by me. The goal of the bullpen was to make ourselves chortle, by scribing anything from credible coverage of eating competitions to debunking UFO sightings to outright making up stories from thinnest of airs. But most often, we sought to find humorous takes on real news stories from around the globe, specifically in a manner to show the underlining reality of the tale, something I found great relief from in the doing. I notoriously do not save 78.023% of my online writings of the years gone by, and the Wayback Machine captures so very little of the volumes of virtual craziness generally, but presented here are a sturdy troika of samplings to suggest what I was doing with myself back when. Do this, in memory of me.
Darwin reincarnates, tantrum ensues
Published December 08, 2015
Charles Darwin, the well-noted naturalist whose 1859 tome On the Origin of the Species paved the way for Evolutionists and Creationists to go all Sharks versus Jets, has evidently been reincarnated into an adorable little gibbon.
Or some-such.
DEVOUT MAN OF SCIENCE
Being a devout man of the sciences, undergoing the experience of having religious belief verified to such howling extent, the old man abruptly took out his frustrations on the nearest man-of-the-cloth around, a priest named Munna Mishra somewhere in the Patna villages of India.
Or perhaps we are interpreting this article from Lena Reynolds all wrong.
Suffice to say a monkey has stoned a priest to death, inadvertently reigniting the Evolutionary War.
Our bitcoins are on Christopher Hitchens next finding reincarnation as a duck-billed platypus, with a likely Disney contract to follow.
FIGHTING DIRTY
Not to make light of Mishra’s end, but no matter if he was a Christian priest or a Hindu priest, he should have known how scientists are willing to fight dirty.
Really, the whole Creation versus Evolution debate has already brought the world many an inflammatory YouTube video, as well as the Creation Museum in Kentucky (one of my cousins worked there as an interior decorator, because Kentucky).
This has all gone on quite long enough.
The obvious conclusion would be to ban the stones.
They are far too old to be touring anyway.
Obama declares war on Minecraft
Published December 23, 2015
In a bid to counter the popular success of the Minecraft video game franchise, noted golfing enthusiast and teleprompter reader Barack Obama has kindly signed into legislation a new law, the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, opening the doors for interstellar mining operations.
“Look here,” Obama told a packed press conference in Washington, Tyne and Wear, “I can’t even carry a conversation with my daughters anymore.”
“Not because I am just oh so busy as placeman leader of the free world.”
“But because all they do is go on about their apps and their gaming platforms, add-ons and plug-ins and widgets and what have you.”
“And enough is enough.”
“So I am hereby utilising the powers invested in me for privatising off-world mining so that multinational conglomerates can steal what does not belong to the Earth.”
TELEPROMPTER
“Companies love making money,” he continued after a brief hitch with his teleprompter.
“And in the doing, they will be doing my work for me, re-appropriating the Minecraft name for literal meaning in global lexicons with the now obviously inevitable creation of actual mining spacecrafts.”
“Whether or not I have the authority to sign and pass an international law is beside the point.”
“I hope to change minds about Minecraft, after the public sees these radical new designs our friends at Lockheed Martin have come up with, craft actually purposed for mining, with these crazy big drills on the front and tractor beams and stuff like that.”
“Amazing work.”
“That blasted game will be left a thing of the past, as relevant as Windows 95, mark my words.”
“In four years’ time, when people hear the term Minecraft they will think only of these Star Wars-type spaceships piloted by brave, hard-working men and women who are only trying to add to the wealth of corporations.”
“And I believe that’s something everyone can believe in.”
Readers may recall Obama’s earlier War on Angry Birds, where he allocated special funding to the Center for Disease Control to cultivate the H5N1 Avian Influenza, to varied results.
Hitler’s pants
Published October 12, 2017
Because this is precisely the sort of thing that occurs in our world, the underpants of Adolf Hitler, themselves approximately 80 years of age, have recently gone to auction in the States, fetching around 5,000 quid ($6,737).
The embroidered, initialed shorts, measuring a 39″ waist, were evidently left behind in an Austrian hotel following a stay in the late 1930s by the man who single-handedly ruined a mustache before changing hands repeatedly over the ensuing decades.
NAZI NAD RAGS
Despite changing hands like so, auctioneer Bill Panagopulos, owner of Alexander Historical Auctions in Chesapeake City, Maryland, described the über-white linens as “pristine”.
Yet as famed chef and cookbook author Johnny Iuzzini once said:
“As chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.”
While it may be true that Iuzzini was by no means referencing the underwear of Hitler, it is also true that leaving motorcycle tracks all over the personal belongings of someone whose nationalism resulted in the torturous deaths of tens of millions is probably quite gratifying.
