Tag Archives: farmers

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I Back This Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 frolicked far and free, to ferret out these foreign terms.  They’re all Greek to me – so I’m keeping my back to the wall.

  1. Novalunosis

This is a condition sometimes suffered by American tourists in Britain.  Used to homes and buildings with 7 and 8 foot doorways, they rent a Hobbit Hut of an Airbnb cottage.  The first time they head to the loo in the dark, they smack their forehead on the low clearance, and see all those rainbows and stars and moons that cartoon characters see.

2.  Wundervei

This is a word/phrase often heard from my German immigrant neighbour.  He married a controlling bitch assertive feminist Canadian bride.  Meine Frau says that I may not play golf – watch World Cup – play meine accordion – on Sunday.  I wundervei.

3.  Eramnesia

What is the term for the condition that the hapless tourist in question one gets, when he smacks his head into a stone wall, and then has a loss ofi memory?  Er, amnesia!!

4.  Witnessoja

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, doesn’t just happen to people like mugging victims.  It happened to me, because I was close enough to see what happened, and got a good look at the perp.  When his case came up, I was subpoenaed.  I don’t even know the victim, but I must want to be a good guy, and do my civic duty, ‘cuz this $24.75 daily witness fee ain’t cuttin’ it.  $24.75??!  😕  What genius bureaucrat dreamed that amount up??  It doesn’t even cover my parking.

5.  Sundreesorro

I tried to convince the wife to become a nudist.  Every time she buys a new dress, my bank account thinks that I adopted another family in Thailand.  $229 for a dress??!  If only it stopped there.  I’d like to say that I’m nickel and dimed to death on the sundries – but this isn’t dimes.
You’ll need a new pair of matching shoes – and a belt, to set it off.  A belt??  It doesn’t even have belt-loops!  And a nice brooch, and some ear-rings…. and perhaps an ivory hair-comb, to hold your coif.  Coif??! – cough, cough!!  How many zeros on that receipt??

6.  Livilence

Livilence is the working to ensure that you enjoy your existence to the maximum.  Don’t be glum, chum.  Don’t take life too seriously; none of us get out of it alive.  I have bad days – or weeks – but I don’t want to always be the bug.  I want to be the windscreen, as long as someone else gets to clean it.

7.  Seatherny

This is the official medical term for hemorrhoids.  The wife’s pet name for me is Himorrhoid, because she says that I’m a constant pain in her butt.  I’m lucky she doesn’t call me an ASSteroid.

8.  Drizzlosis

In America, they say that the Mississippi River is too fast to walk on, too thick to drink, and too thin to plow.  The British have the same kind of problem with their persistent weather.  It tried to rain, but it mist.  The entire country is so chronically damp that you can hear mushrooms grow.  In America, moss grows on the north side of trees.  In England, moss never sees the sun long enough to know where North is, so it wraps completely around trees, like a May-Day sash.  Washington State sends its condolences – and some sponges.  When If the clouds ever part, Brits are confused and frightened.  What is that strange yellow, glowing orb in the sky??  My Grandfather told me that he saw one, a long time ago.  😎

9.  Zirgwè

Zirgwè is the official currency of Zimbabwe.  There are thirty-seven and a fifteenth ffsnargs in a Zirgwè – which, in real money – isn’t!!

  1. Teresaurum

It’s a glass box, like one you would keep fish in, only you can add sand and perhaps some pebbles and make a miniature Zen garden.  Mine has some Singing Sand that we stole liberated from a beach in Myrtle Beach.  A true teresaurum is when you xeriscape it by adding some vegetation that thrives with very little water, and put a small pet bearded lizard in.

Just because all you lovely people are such great followers and readers, here’s a bonus.

What three books have made the greatest impression on you, and why??
Men Are From Mars – Women Are From Venus, A tale Of Two Cities, and Fifty Shades Of Gray….until I was gaining speed, duckin’ and weavin’ – ‘cuz the wife can’t throw that far, that accurately.  😉

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Smitty’s Loose Change #15

There are many people in this country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane.  Most of them are Atheists.

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And God created the universe it expanded exponentially. Then god divided this sky from the sea that then created life and he told it to multiply. After this he added man and subtracted his only son.

Standing back he looked on in confusion and wondered why this equation didn’t work… At this point a mathematics teacher came over and said, “You forgot the brackets ( ).”  And that was the last time God worked with BEDMAS.

***

I recently got within touching distance of two original Volkswagen Beetles, within hours of each other.  I found the first at a French fry wagon.   (Don’t tell the wife! She thinks I’m still on my diet.) It was greenish-yellow, in decent shape, with a little rust, mostly in the rain-gutters above the doors.  The owner said that it was a ’75 model, and it had custom license plates that read KAFER VW.  That’s a deficiency of the License Bureau.  Kafer, translated from German, means ‘coffee(maker).’  What it should have read, was KӒFER VW.  The addition of the umlaut over the A, changes the meaning to ‘beetle.’

The next one I saw was Fire-Engine Red, and in pristine shape.  I saw no rust.  Even Beetles had year-to-year (tiny) model changes.  Slightly smaller and different-shaped tail-lights told me that it was pre-’73.  It had Historic license plates, and its owner said that it was a ’68 version.

FUN WITH NAMES

The service tech at my Kia dealership is named Faucher.  It’s a French verb that means to mow (grass) the lawn.  His Father worked for, then purchased and ran, a landscaping company, all his working life.

A farm boy that the school bus picked up on one side of my town, was/is named Coulter.  I recently discovered that a ‘coulter’ is a plowshare, a cutting wheel or bar, in front of an actual plow.

A farm girl that the school bus picked up on the other side of town, was/is named Collard.  Back then, I did not know of the cultivation and, mostly Southern culinary, use of collard greens.

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To err is human, but to really fuck up, you need a computer – with a bureaucrat running it.  Locally, we have been blackmailed into recycling green waste.  Garbage pickup has dropped to every two weeks, but blue-bin and green-bin waste is collected every week.

The region has issued every dwelling two green bins – a small one to put kitchen scraps in, and a larger ‘garage’ one to repeatedly dump the smaller one into.  Compostable-plastic-lined paper bags to hold wet waste are available at all local stores.

The larger bin is 12” X 13 ½”.  The Region-approved bags are 8 ½” X 12 ½”.  No wonder it must be dragged to the curb each week – the bag isn’t big enough to fill!  The smaller one, which I use for cat-shit – (it’s compostable) – is 6” X 7”.  The bureaucrat-authorized bags for it are 3 ¾” X 7 ½“– so long that they partly collapse when inserted, causing loss of volume, and barely half wide enough, causing more lost space.  I sense two different departments, each too self-important to communicate with the other, (You change!  No, You change!) involved in this, and Dilbert in the middle, shaking his head.

***

We’ve all seen the movies, or TV shows…. The CSI forensic technician enters the crime scene.  He/she plucks one dust mote from the air, and a couple of tension-filled moments later, gives the age, sex, name, address, phone number, and shoe color of the culprit.  What then to think of this newspaper story??!

A body was pulled from a lake.  She (at least they got the sex) was 28 to 50 years of age.  28??!  Why not 25?  Or 30??  How in Hell did anyone come up with 28?  Was someone converting from metric??  She was between 4’ 5”, and 5’ 1”.  😯  😳  Put her on an autopsy slab and measure her!!

They didn’t give her weight, but did publish a nice photo of a bead bracelet she was wearing…. Oh, and she might have been Asian, based on the keen observation of her yellow complexion, and lycanthropic epicanthic fold at the eyes.

Remind me, if I die of suspicious causes, I should do it in the big city, not in West Hickstowne, where an exciting day for police is one that has a moose fall into someone’s pool.

***

N.B.

In the above VW story, I downloaded a capital A with an umlaut over it, and put it in my post.  For some reason, WordPress separated the A and the two dots, into two adjacent spaces, and I don’t know how to get them back together.  Just try to visualize it correctly.   😳

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WOW #70

I was recently reading an historical novel.  In it, a commoner performed an uncommon act of intelligence and bravery.  As a reward for this selfless act, the Grand Panjandrum – or Grand Poobah – they both indicate a pretentious or self-important official, like a High Muckedy-Muck, bestowed upon him the reward of a

Carucate
[keyr-oo-kate, (yoo)]

Because I was reading a dead-tree book, I couldn’t just tap the Kindle screen to find out what a carucate was.  I had to play Twenty Questions until I got upstairs to the computer.  Was it a gem – a jewel, like the Blue Carbuncle in the Sherlock Holmes novel?  Was it a lavish dinner in his honor?  Was it a warm, if not willing, bed-companion?  Was it a mani-pedi down at Omar’s Tent and Sail Shop, and Spa?  Don’t ask – don’t tell.   😉 

It turns out that it’s another archaic measurement quantity, equal to 40 acres of land, or a quarter-section – one quarter of a square mile.  It was the amount of land that a team of oxen could plow, and the amount of tilled land that it took to produce enough food for a farm family.

While the measurement is described as square, especially those with water frontage, were a mile long, and a quarter-mile wide, farming spaghetti, or rhubarb.  It was hard to turn an ox-team and unwieldy plow around. It was easier to let the team catch their breath, and just start another furrow in a straight line, for eight furlongs, and this gave more tenants shipping/travel access . Quebec’s Eastern Townships, in Canada are like this, only larger, all fronting on the St. Lawrence River, and looking like a bowling alley on a map. 

Was it possible that this Grand Vizier – Why do all these $3 potentates describe their titles as Grand??! – wanted this potter…. or leather-worker…. to leave the city, and become just another subsistence farmer??  He could sell it, or lease it to a share-cropper.  At least he took his dictionary along, and I learned a new old word.  😀

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Book Review #22

Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

Mark Twain, making fun of Christians’ beliefs about heaven. 

The book: Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven

The author: Mark Twain = Samuel Langhorne Clemens

The review: This is a short story written by Mark Twain, about 1868. It was not published until 1909 – 41 years later – because it was thought to insult all the Good Christians.

The story follows Captain Elias Stormfield on his decades-long cosmic journey to Heaven; his accidental misplacement after racing a comet; his short-lived interest in singing and playing the harp (generated by his preconceptions of heaven); and the general obsession of souls with the celebrities of Heaven such as Adam, Moses, and Elijah, who according to Twain become as distant to most people in Heaven as living celebrities are on Earth (an early parody of celebrity culture). Twain uses this story to show his view that the common conception of Heaven is ludicrous, and points out the incongruities of such beliefs with his characteristic adroit usage of hyperbole.

Much of the story’s description is given by the character Sandy McWilliams, a cranberry farmer who is very experienced in the ways of Heaven. Sandy gives Stormfield, a newcomer, the description in the form of a conversational question-and-answer session. The Heaven described by him is similar to the conventional Christian Heaven, but includes a larger version of all the locations on Earth, as well as of everywhere in the universe (which mention of, albeit as a backdrop, is the last science fiction element).

All sentient life-forms travel to Heaven, often through interplanetary or interstellar space, and land at a particular gate (which are without number), which is reserved for people from that originating planet. Each newcomer must then give his name and planet of origin to a gatekeeper, who sends him in to Heaven.

Once inside, the person spends eternity living as it thinks fit, usually according to its true (sometimes undiscovered) talent. According to one of the characters, a cobbler who “has the soul of a poet in him won’t have to make shoes here,” implying that he would instead turn to poetry and achieve perfection in it.

On special occasions a procession of the greatest people in history is formed; on the occasion of Stormfield’s arrival, this includes Buddha, William Shakespeare, Homer, Mohammed, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah plus several otherwise unknown people whose talents far exceeded those of the world’s pivotal figures, but who were never famous on Earth.

As Stormfield proceeds through Heaven he learns that the conventional image of angels as winged, white-robed figures bearing haloes, harps, and palm leaves is a mere illusion generated for the benefit of humans, who mistake “figurative language” for accurate description (the wings are part of their uniforms, and not functionally wings); that all of Heaven’s denizens choose their ages, thus aligning themselves with the time of life at which they were most content; that anything desired is awarded to its seeker, if it does not violate any prohibition; that the prohibitions themselves are different from those envisioned on Earth; that each of the Earth-like regions of Heaven includes every human being who has ever lived on it; that families are not always together forever, because of decisions made by those who have died first; that white-skinned people are a minority in Heaven; that kings are not kings in Heaven (Charles II is a comedian while Henry VI has a religious book-stand), etc.

Making fun of slavery was one thing, but making fun of people’s cherished Christian beliefs was something else entirely. This book never did well, and even many Twain aficionados are not aware of it.

 

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THAT GETS MY GOAT

Goat

Two guys are walking through the woods and come across this big deep hole. 

“Wow…that looks deep.” “Sure does… toss a few pebbles in there and see how deep it is.” 

They pick up a few pebbles and throw them in and wait… no noise. 

“Jeeez. That is REALLY deep… here.. throw one of these great big rocks down there. Those should make a noise.” 

They pick up a couple of football-sized rocks and toss them into the hole and wait… and wait. Nothing. 

They look at each other in amazement. One gets a determined look on his face and says, “Hey…over here in the weeds, there’s a railroad tie. Help me carry it over here. When we toss THAT sucker in, it’s GOTTA make some noise.” 

The two drag the heavy tie over to the hole and heave it in. Not a sound comes from the hole. 

Suddenly, out of the nearby woods, a goat appears, running like the wind. It rushes toward the two men, then right past them, running as fast as its legs will carry it. Suddenly it leaps in the air and into the hole. 

The two men are astonished with what they’ve just seen… 

Then, out of the woods comes a farmer who spots the men and ambles over. 

“Hey… you two guys seen my goat out here?” 

“You bet we did! Craziest thing I ever seen! It came running like crazy and just jumped into this hole!” 

“Nah”, says the farmer, “That couldn’t have been MY goat. My goat was chained to a railroad tie.”

***

Scottish Flag

A Scotsman walks into a Glasgow library and says to the chief librarian,

‘Excuse me Miss, dey ye hae ony books on suicide?’

To which she stops doing her tasks, looks at him over the top of her glasses and says, ‘Bugger off, ye’ll no bring it back!’

***

A thoughtful Scottish husband was putting his coat and hat on to make his way down to the local pub.

He turned to his wee wife before leaving and said, “Maggie — put your hat and coat on, lassie.”

She replied, “Aw, Jock, that’s nice, are you taking me tae the pub with you?”

“Nae,” Jock replied. “I’m turning the heat off while I’m out.”

***

A clearly inebriated woman, stark naked, jumped into a taxi in New York City and lay down on the back seat.

The cab driver, an old Jewish gentleman, opened his eyes wide and stared at the woman. He made no attempt to start the cab.

The woman glared back at him and said, “What’s wrong with you, honey? – Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman before?”

The old Jewish driver answered, “Let me tell you sumsing, lady. I vasn’t staring at you like you tink; det vould not be proper vair I come from.”

The drunk woman giggled and responded, “Well,if you’re not staring at my boobs or ass, sweetie, what are you doing then?”

He paused a moment, then told her…”Vell, M’am, I am looking and I am looking, and I am tinking to myself, ’Vair in da hell is dis lady keeping de money to pay for dis ride?’

***

A boy was bagging groceries at a supermarket. One day the store installed a machine for squeezing fresh orange juice. Intrigued, the young man asked if he could be allowed to work the machine, but his request was denied.

Said the store manager, “Sorry, kid, but baggers can’t be juicers.”

—–

One caller to our answering service gave me his name, number and message and then said, “You know my name. What’s yours?”

“4136,” I replied, since we were allowed only to give our operator numbers.

Sounding disappointed, he said, “May I call you by your first digit, or would that be too personal?”

—–

As we stood in formation at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, our Flight Instructor said, “All right! All you dummies fall out.”

As the rest of the squad wandered away, I remained at attention.

The Instructor walked over until he was eye-to-eye with me, and then just raised a single eyebrow.

I smiled and said, “Sure was a lot of ’em, huh sir?”

—–

The chairman of the board of our company called me into his office to tell me the good news. I was being promoted to Vice President of Corporate Research and Planning.

Of course, I was excited, but that didn’t stop me from asking for my new title to be changed to Vice President of Corporate Planning and Research.

“Why?” asked the chairman.

“Because,” I said, “our organization uses abbreviated job titles, and I don’t want be known as VP of CRAP.”

***

 

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Flash Fiction #188

Lilliput

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

His grandfather had this house built, over a century ago. It had been a proud mansion, 2-1/2 stories of fieldstone, a mile and a half from town, dwarfing nearby one-story wooden farm houses.

Times changed. Commerce changed. Businesses started up, and workers moved in. The city changed. Steadily it bloated out towards him, into pristine Mennonite farmland.

Now, the house was the last of its kind, on a busy street, a Lilliputian, towered over by apartment buildings. Developers constantly hounded him to sell. He would mourn the loss of his heritage, but it was time to surrender and move on.

Mennonite

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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Friday Fictioneers

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’18 A To Z Challenge – H

Challenge '18Letter H

HERMIT definition (for 10-year old boys); a man who goes off by himself

We live in a medically marvelous age.  Average life expectancy has almost doubled since my birth.  It was not always thus.

Once Upon A Time in the Old West, Ben Cartwright lived on the Ponderosa ranch, with three sons and a male cook, and not a woman in sight.  Life was particularly hard on women, especially during childbirth, with no doctor handy.

Old Ben had three very different sons.  There was handsome, intelligent Adam.  There was big Hoss, strong as an ox, and almost as smart, and there was smartass, ADHD Little Joe.  The writers may have had a back-story which explained the vast variation among My Three Sons, but many who watched the TV series were baffled.  Finally, several seasons in, they had Ben explain the history and reasons, to Joe (and the audience).

Ben brought an Eastern bride with him when he moved west to achieve fame and fortune.  She gave him Adam, and died.  Ben then married a strapping daughter of a Swedish family from Minnesota, who were moving to California.  She produced Hoss, and also died.  Finally, Ben married the daughter of a town merchant.  She died in childbirth, producing Joe.

My paternal grandfather also experienced similar heartache and heartbreak, but he didn’t have Ben Cartwright’s grit and tenacity.  When the going got tough….he became a hermit.

He married early, and had three kids, two girls, and a son whom he named Cecil – and his wife died.  With the help of an older, unmarried sister, he took care of them until the wife’s clan took them in.  This was a family that my Father was totally unaware of, until his half-brother tracked him down, after he was 65.

After a couple of years, Grandpa remarried, and again, had two girls, and then a boy, my Father, whom he named Cyril. Four years later, his second wife died while delivering another daughter.  Grandpa just disappeared, leaving the older sister, and the rest of his family, to take care of 4 kids, including a baby.

I met never-married ‘Aunt Jesse’ (actually my great-aunt) later in life.  She may have been the first instance in my life of, Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.  Her actual name was Jezebel, but the devout Baptist would never let it be used.

I don’t know if my Father knew where his father was for almost 20 years.  When I was 4 or 5, my Dad began to take me to visit him, two miles up a concession road, off a nowhere highway.  He was living in a wooden, 2-man logging shack, by the side of the road.  It had a two bunks, a table and two chairs, a latch-string door, (look that one up) one tiny window, a wood-burning stove, no electricity, and a hand-pump for water.  The sink drained outside, but there was no bathroom….and I don’t remember an outhouse.  I used to water a nearby Maple.

After ten years of this, my Grandpa got an offer from a nearby farmer.  The farmer had bought the adjoining farm.  Now he had two farm houses, two barns, and two sets of animals, so he paid my Granddad a little, to live in one farm house, as a caretaker.

As a house, this was a big step up.  This one had central heat, hot and cold running water, a bathroom, and lights.  There was no radio, and no TV.  He had copies of the weekly paper from the nearest small town, but I never saw magazines or books.

Probably, after Dad located his Father, his three sisters (and their spouses) must have visited him from time to time, although we never met anyone else when we visited.  The farmer may have at least passed a little time with Grandpa when he came over to do chores, but he must have been alone for days – weeks – at a time.  As a loner, he makes me look like a rank amateur.

I look forward to your company here, again in a couple of days.  Recommend me to a friend – or an enemy.   😳

 

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Easy Money

American money

There was a mean boss in a factory.
The boss liked to watch the workers.
He wanted the workers to work hard.
One morning the boss came to the factory at nine o’clock. A man was drinking coffee.
The boss came back at nine thirty.
The man was still drinking coffee.
The boss was angry. “How much do you make a week?” he asked the man.
“Three hundred dollars.” the man said.
The boss gave the man three hundred dollars.
“Take the money and get out of here!” he said.
Then the boss asked another worker: “What was that man’s job?”
“He doesn’t work here”, the worker said, “He came to pick up a package.”

***

A Rabbi, a Hindu Monk, and a lawyer are driving down the road when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
Spotting a farmhouse they walk over and tell the farmer they need a place to stay the night while they wait for a tow.
“I’ve got room in the house for two of you but someone’s gonna have to sleep in the barn.” says the farmer.
The Rabbi says, “I’ve no problem with that, I’ll go.” He leaves.
Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door. The farmer opens the door and the Rabbi is there.
He says, “Sir there is a pig in that barn; in my religion pigs are unclean, I cannot sleep under the same roof with a pig.”
The Monk speaks up and says, “I have no problem with pigs I’ll go sleep in the barn.” He leaves.
Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door. The farmer opens the door and the Monk is here.
“Sir there is a cow in that barn; in my religion cows are sacred, I cannot sleep under the same roof with a cow.
The lawyer responds, “I’ll go sleep in the barn, I’ve got no religion.” He leaves.
Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door. The farmer opens the door and the pig and the cow are standing there.

***

A: Why are you late?
B: There was a man who lost a hundred dollar bill.
A: That’s nice. Were you helping him look for it?
B: No, I was standing on it.

***

Becky: Simon, your father is a teacher but you can’t read and write.
Simon: So, your father is a dentist but your little brother Bill still has no teeth.

***

An art collector is walking through London looking for a Christmas present, when he notices a mangy cat lapping milk from a saucer in the doorway of a shop. He does a double take when he notices that the saucer is extremely old and very valuable, so he walks casually into the store and offers to buy the cat for two pounds.
The shop owner replies, “I’m sorry, but the cat isn’t for sale.” The collector says, “Please, I need a hungry cat around the house to catch mice. I’ll pay you twenty pounds for it.” And the owner says, “Sold,” and hands over the cat.
The collector continues, “For twenty quid, I wonder if you could throw in that old saucer. The cat’s used to it and it’ll save me having to get a dish.”
The owner says, “Sorry, but that’s my lucky saucer. So far this week I’ve sold sixty-eight cats.”

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Flash Fiction #93

Barbed Wire

PHOTO PROMPT © Madison Woods

IMPRISONED INFINITY

Barbed wire tamed the Wild West. It had been Terra Incognita – the land beyond the law.  Its business was Beef.  Myriad cattle grazed millions of open acres, giving birth a century later to McDonalds and Burger King.

Then came the farmers – Sodbusters.  The cost of enough lumber, on the treeless plain, to keep cattle from crops, was exorbitant.  But then came the wire salesman, offering a cheap solution that was horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight.

Even men with no property deeds objected to being fenced out of once-open land. Wire wars were fought, but eventually, civilization moved west, and peace prevailed.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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Evolution of Intelligence

 

Bible

 

 

 

 

 

Is Evolution Proven?

A reader complained that two Provincial politicians have gone out of their way to deny evolution.  These politicians are correct.  The root word for evolution is evolve, and the word evolving means an on-going process.

Taken in that light, are those who believe in evolution not humans, or are they not humans anymore?  When a farmer plants corn seeds in the spring, does evolution – an ongoing process – yield a different crop?

And by the way, did corn, trees, weeds, flowers also originate from the same cell that developed monkeys, humans and animals?  Did stones also originate from that same cell?  Is evolution a proven fact? (1)

The writer also stated that politicians cannot express their Christian beliefs because, “their religion does not belong on Parliament Hill.”  Yet he implies that it is OK to bring his religion to Parliament Hill, because, when I do a Google search for a definition of religion, among the Oxford Dictionary meanings given is, “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.”

This man puts his trust in man, and believes that man can save himself, and Christians believe in God, knowing that God is the only one who saves. (2)

Ignorance is not a quality I value in my government, nor should you, yet this letter writer demonstrates that very ignorance.

Faithful Christian

dinosaur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evolution Not Debatable

I wonder if Faithful Christian’s anti-evolution objections are cynical, straw-man arguments, or merely the ignorant type.

To even suggest that crops would evolve in a single growing season displays a disturbing ignorance of the mechanics and time-line of evolution.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  It usually takes millennia, or eons.  Guided by farmers, knowledgeable in its workings, the corn grown today only vaguely resembles that found by explorers, 500 years ago.

The intelligent humans of today who believe in evolution, evolved from ignorant Neanderthal cavemen.  And yes Faithful, the first living cell, produced by God, obeyed His directives, and split many times, in many ways, to evolve into the almost infinite range of life here on His Earth.

To speak of stones having cells is, at best, hypocritical, but even stone evolves.  Spewed lava eventually evolves into basalt, and plain, loose sand, crushed beneath the weight of miles of seawater, evolves into firm sandstone.

“Evolution” is not a test of faith; it’s a test of intelligence.  God is not lying to us.  Fossils really are millions of years old.

Grumpy Old Archon

 

So, I was forced to miss yet another chance to keep my mouth shut.  Several newspaper readers had been writing about how much salt they had to use to achieve the municipally-mandated ‘bare concrete’ walkways in front of their houses.  Salt kills grass, pollutes waterways, ruins shoes and rusts out cars.

I was going to send in a letter suggesting that people try Urea crystals.  It melts like salt, but is a fertilizer, without salt’s bad side effects.  The biggest problem is finding it, and cheaply.  As a fertilizer, summertime and agricultural Co-ops yield the best results.

When I saw the above letter, I couldn’t resist tweaking the nose of another ‘Good Christian’, especially when he claimed to decry ignorance, and then asked such ignorant questions, and made such ignorant claims.

(1)

I cringed when I read the original subject letter, with its claim that evolution is a ‘fact.’  It appears to have more supporting evidence, but must still be taken on faith, just like religion.

(2)

This passage has absolutely nothing to do with the validity, or lack, of evolution.  The letter writer just throws it in to provide an emotionally-charged, fear-of-Damnation-raising, broad, believable base, for his otherwise baseless objections.