Across Difficult Country

You’ve seen him - that hobo pushing an overloaded cart full of stuff around town. Today as he passed me some items fell off, but he didn’t notice and continued down the block. “Sir“, I said, “I believe you dropped your miniature globe, and your phone, and your dolls head stuck on the end of a stick .” He came back and retrieved the orb and scepter.                                                     

Researchers at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki discovered a new benefit to smoking  that may prevent the sort of insufferable, overwrought rhapsodizing about food amateur gluttons and professional restaurant critics indulge in. Researchers not at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki found a “ space giraffe ” frolicking on the lunar surface. Does this mean NASA’s plan to bomb the moon violates the Endangered Species Act? Lawyers for the space agency refuse to comment.

High atop a lonely mountain, deep within the Philippines jungle, a carnivorous plant that eats rats has been discovered, by a crack team of British carnivorous plant experts who just happened to be in the area. Giant carnivorous plant Nepenthes Attenboroughii Remember the cow eating tree in India known as the pili mara ? Hopefully this amazing find will force establishment botanists to reconsider the evidence for its existence.

The summer of the present is not the summer of the future we daydreamed of in summers of the past.

XII. What is the Forest of the King, and what the reason of this name. M. The forest of the king is the safe dwelling-place of wild beasts; not of every kind, but of the kinds that live in woods; not in all places, but in fixed ones, and ones suitable for the purpose; whence it is called "forests," the "e" being changed into "o," as if it were "feresta" . i.e., an abiding place for wild beasts. D. Is there a forest of the king in each county? M. No; but only in the wooded ones, where the wild beasts can have their lairs and ripe nourishment: nor does it matter to whom the woods belong, whether to the king, or to the nobles of the kingdom, the wild beasts can none the less run around everywhere free and unharmed. - from The Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer (c. 1180).