A STONE AGE TOY AND TOOL COMPANY

By Tim Colin
Editor
Last week I went to a manufacturing company that is really rocking in these tough economic times. The name of the company is the Rock Crackers Toy and Tool Company. The company is located in the little town of Rock Crackers. Rock Crackers is located right on top of a hill which is almost completely made up of flint rock.

I met with Mr. Rock Crackers who is the president of the company and learned a lot about rock cracking and how important rocks will be to our new green economy. Mr. Crackers told me that Flint is the stone that has been used by humans for millions of years to make tools, toys and various types of ornaments and even as a building material. The first spaceships sent into low Earth orbit were actually carved out of various forms of stones including flint. A large flint rock was actually used to ignite the gun powder that propelled the first spaceships upward into outer space. Of course today our space program uses a chemical rocket propulsion system consisting of a mixture of baking soda and apple cider vinegar.

Mr. Crackers went on to say that “…demand for our tools has never been greater since Americans can no longer afford fancy tools and toys made overseas. Iron, aluminum, copper, zinc and every other rare earth element are being sent overseas where the economies are booming. Shoot, even our sewage is being sent overseas to make fertilizer. In America we have almost nothing left to use but, we have lots of rocks. Flint has always been one of the best rocks to make stuff out of so that’s why I built my factory here.”

After his brief combination tirade and advertisement, Mr. Crackers took on a tour of his plant. Although the Rock Crackers plant makes primitive tools it is nearly fully automated with all types of rock cracking machines made out of rocks. It seems in order to crack a rock you just need to hit it with a sharper and/ or heavier rock. This is known as the Negative Law of Thermo Dynamics, “Stuff gets smaller if you hit it long enough”. I guess that’s why my younger brother is such a little wimp. Of course he always told mom and dad that his older brother’s were picking on him by cuffing and slapping him but, they just told us to “stop it“. Who listens to their parents when they say the words “stop it”?

The kind of stuff being manufactured in the factory were tools likes hoes, rakes, shovels, wheelbarrows hammers, screw drivers and snow blowers. These were all the types of tools our ancestors must have manufactured for millions of years or until they invented wood. After they used wood tools for a few thousand years then humans started to use metal.

Most of the scientists that I talk to believe that making metal was not discovered by humans but was taught to humans by space aliens. Of course the last time space aliens were here they taught humans how to make plastic bags. Space aliens needed plastic bags to freeze fresh humans for long space flights. That way the humans would still be good to munch on back on the alien home world. Evidently, according to my sources of information, space aliens tried canning humans to take home but, it was tough to find enough mason jars and even if the aliens had enough jars it was really hard to find enough lids that fit. The aliens used mostly old mayonnaise jars and the lids are really wide and hard to come by. Plastic bags were just a lot more convenient and the main ingredient was oil and that is really plentiful here on earth. So, that is why space aliens taught humans how to make plastic.

Now the types of toys manufactured at Rock Crackers are baby rattles, baseballs, tetherballs, footballs, softballs and any other type of ball you can kick, hit or, bat. Rock Crackers is currently working to develop a line of water toys but so far none of their ideas have floated with tests groups. The water board Rock Crackers developed turned out to be a better anchor than a device to skim behind a watercraft. A line of water safety items has also not done well in tests. The life preserver tests are ongoing since it has been over a year and none of the test subjects have surfaced with any data.

The entire Rock Cracker plant is powered by elephant dung. Mr. Crackers told me that the elephants were actually ones he rounded up out in Montana. It seems that when the Spanish came to America they brought over horses that got away from them and went wild and, the Spanish also brought over elephants and many of them also escaped and therefore, not only are there wild horses but, there are herds of wild elephants roaming freely all over the Western United States.

Of course feeding the elephants would normally be a problem but, The Rock Cracker engineers thought of pretty much everything. You see there is a large forest full of oak trees nearby and oak trees produce acorns. The Rock Cracker people have trained an enormous army of squirrels to bring acorns one at a time to each of the several hundred elephants that make up the Dung Energy Complex PLC which is located next to the Rock Cracker manufacturing facility. Acorns really give the elephants some monstrous releases of gas. I suppose it is a bad idea to eat raw acorns before going out on a date or going on a long trip in a car with people you like. However, eating raw acorns and going on a long trip with family members might be kind of funny.

Overall, I learned a lot about human history and the latest techniques used by American manufactures who are anxious to be competitive in this new world economy. Cracking rocks, gathering nuts and, making dung flavored gasses are things we Americans do better than anyone else in the world.

GREAT LAKES SHARK SWALLOWS HEIRESS

A great white shark has swallowed famed heiress to the Bitter Boy Candy Company, Barbara [Bitter] Butter. According to Bernard Butter, Barbara Butters’ Husband and Becky Baker, Bernard’s’ personal business buddy, Barbara Butter was last seen swimming off the beach just south of Frankfurt Michigan. According to the couple, they both watched in horror as the great white shark sped toward the heiress and rose up underneath the poor lady with its mouth wide open. Bernard and Becky had to heroically hold each other back from the deadly waters as Barbara’s body was tossed into the air and then slipped into the jaws of the great white shark. Mr. Butter said is was just like in the movie “Jaws”, which he had watched the night before.

The coast guard and local authorities have initiated a round the clock search for any trace of the body or the shark. Bernard Butter said that the body was never going to be found in Lake Michigan. Mr. Butter went on to say that they had just come from the nearby Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. “You know,’’ he said, “The sand is so soft and light at the dunes that your body can sink right into it. You could dig a hole there six feet deep in no time and then fill it in and no one would ever know you dug it’”.

Barbara Butter was 43 years old and was preceded in death by two sons from a previous marriage, Basil and Benson Berger. The sons died tragically while camping in Montana with their loving stepfather when, they were eaten by alligators. Bernard Butter is the soul heir to 15 billion dollars. All other heirs died as a result of being eaten by various animals thus, leaving no trace of the bodies. It seems the luck of the Bitter Boy Candy heirs is bitter indeed. The tragic death of his wife but, the, huge inheritance, has made Mr. Butters’ life bitter sweet. He and his personal business buddy Becky have announced they are getting married in order to dull the pain caused by that monster of the deep, the Michigan great white shark.

MY FUNGI HUNTING BUSINESS HAS MUSHROOMED

By Tim Colin
When you live way up north you have to come up with creative ways of making a living. One business that I have done well at is giving city people backwoods tour guides. Last year I took people out to the swamp bogs so they could get a good look at quicksand. The funny thing is about half way through the tour everyone would disappear. I guess they thought my tour was boring and took off to the bar. I did learn to take cash up front before I gave a tour. Those people that lit out on me during my quicksand tours ended up not paying and they never answered their phones when I would call them.

This year I have a brand new tour. The annual Martin Mushroom Festival which I believe they have every year, seemed like a great backdrop for my new business, mushroom tours. All I would have to do is advertise in a big city that has a lot of rich people. Well, Detroit is broke but, Chicago has a lot of rich people so I decided to blanket that area with advertising. I did not have any money to spend but, my brother has a cell phone that has unlimited calling during the week provided you call after eleven o’clock at night.

I then offered a buddy of mine a free pitcher of OMB beer if could get me some people signed up for my mushroom hunting tour. He just had to make cold calls some night. It was only a couple of days later that my buddy got arrested for harassing people on the phone. But, before he went to jail he did hook me up with this couple from Chicago who were willing to pay me $500.00 to take them mushroom hunting for the Martin Mushroom festival. Now, not only was I about to make three months wages for just a couple of days work but, I got to drink the pitcher of OMB beer myself since my buddy was in jail and expected to stay there the rest of the spring and maybe part of the summer.

The Chicago couple had lots of bucks. He worked as a store manager and she worked as a nurse. They seemed nice. They were in their forties so they were too old for me to hang out with but, I took them to a nice sports bar where sometimes a former pro athlete drops by. I bought them each a shot of Absolute and then took them to their hotel and put them to bed. It was nine o’clock and I wanted these city slickers to get a good nights rest before I took them into the backwoods. They were both on the pudgy side so, I hoped neither of them would have a heart attack.

After I dropped the old folks off, I went to a topless bar. The next day when we got to the woods I regretted staying out until two. All the birds sounded like they were screaming in my ears and the swamp mold were doing a job to my sinuses. We walked through a swamp and then a black berry briar patch and then, we came across a whole slug of mushrooms. Since we were going to the morel mushroom festival, I figured these must be morel mushrooms. My brother once had his stomach pumped when he ate a mess of poison mushrooms. But, for $500.00 I was willing to take a chance that these were morels and anyway, these people should not be going mushroom hunting if they did not know what they were doing. Furthermore, the people at the mushroom festival would tell us if these were not morel mushrooms the geezers seemed real happy filling up their bag with the stringy pink capped beauties.

After we returned to the car we drove to Martin where the mushroom festival was held. Unfortunately, I was a bit off on my dates and the mushroom festival did not start until the following weekend. The couple was a little perturbed but, I suggested that they come back the next weekend and I would only charge them half price for my services. They agreed.

The couple returned to Chicago with their mushrooms. Three days went by and I had not heard from them in regards to their upcoming redeployment to the mushroom woods during the Martin Mushroom festival. Finally, on Thursday I gave them a call. Some strange lady answered the phone. When I asked to talk to my customers she said that she was their daughter and that her parents were both in the hospital. I immediately envisioned that my middle-aged meal tickets had been in some terrible accident. When I asked the daughter she said no, they had not been in a car accident. Instead, she said, her parents had gone up North to hunt mushrooms with some “creepy backwoods guy”. The daughter then told me that “the creep” had gotten her parents to pick some deadly poisonous mushrooms. She said her parents fried the mushrooms up like “the creep” told them to do and then, ate the mushrooms with steak and red wine. The daughter did say that her parents would be fine but, they would be turning “the creep” into the Better Business Bureau.

When the daughter asked who I was I decided I had better just hang up the phone. I decided that the next time I take people mushroom hunting I would first buy a bag of morel mushrooms and then just find a spot and stick them in the ground. (We do the same thing when we guide deer and moose hunters up here). The people would be happy to find the mushrooms and I would still get paid.