Pet Peev.

My original intentions for today's posting was to elaborate on the delicate nature of inter-species reproduction and the vital role Deloware has played in ensuring the maintenance of bilogical un-diversity in the contiguous 48, but something has happened that I feel I cannot allow to go undocumented.

Two days ago I climbed a mountain.

Sort of.

I have been spending the past month in Vermont, doing research along the Canadian border - a federally funded study of the "porous border" problem - and I had this week off. I had been staying with friends of mine (a People-and-Human Studies Professor at UVM and a Jew) in Burlington. On Wednesday they were both busy at work (at Old Navy and Taco Bell, respectively) so I had the day to myself. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take in the local landscape by climbing the highest peak in the county, Camel's Hump, and really see the sights. I looked online to find directions to the mountain but any direct help elluded me. I decided to just wing it and let my natural directional ability guide me.

Once on the freeway I could see the tall peak in the distance and guessed my way toward it. Across freeway and backroads alike I drove until coming on a sign pointing down a dirt road, "Camel's Hump 3 1/2". I took the long road for what must have been closer to six miles before coming on an empty parking lot with a sign "Camel's Hump State Park."

But there was a problem.

There was no mountain.

On some level I was immediately aware of what was going on, but my anger at the situation drowned out my better reasoning and I simply let myself get carried away. There was a small path which I followed, hoping that my instincts were wrong and that the big mountain was simply hidden behind one of the smaller ones. This, alas, proved not to be the case. Camel's Hump is a para-geologic formation.

NO WHERE online did I find this information! NO ONE ever mentioned anything about the mountain having any para-characteristics! NO WAY could I have predicted this!

Which brings me to that pet peev of mine. I hate it when people don't adequately make these para-formations a part of their everyday psychological lives. Everyone knows that the mountain is sometimes there, sometimes not, but the situation is too "wierd" to really think about and so no one does. The problem is just ignored by those whose imagination cannot take in the whole reality of the situation all at once and something in their small little minds fizzles out. For professionals like myself in the para-anything fields, this is simply unacceptable.

It is also, unfortunately, very common. Such a large part of the culture has no place for those things that cannot be understood VERY EASILY. My colleagues, specifically those regretable few in the high-publicity world of para-zoology, are constantly being attacked as "crazy people" because they are capable of seeing things others cannot because of their small minds and even smaller imaginations.

There is, I know, little I can do about the problem. One cannot be educated when one is completely empty headed. Writing here my emotions have moved surprisingly fast from anger to sadness at the state my fellow humans are in. The best I can do is teach who can listen and ignore the rest.

And warn anyone in the Burlington area to approach the mountain with caution.

Advice.

So, I'd like to return to my one-part, ongoing column about how to pick people up on the subway in Boston.

As you know, this is a subject that is very important to me and all other para-geographers around the world, for reasons that are simply too complicated to divulge in anything other than a language based on pictographs.

In today's installment, I'd like to examine what is widely regarded to be the best approach to the situation, the "caveman method." Put simply, this is when one acts like a caveman in order to pick up people. This practice has been descrbed as "progressive" by Professor Mickelsen of Otterbein College, Department of Music specializing in lyrical deconstructive methods of late reneisance Denmark of the 1400s as well as the band "Men Without Hats."*

But enough introduction (or I'll go on all day). First, an example, followed by an examination of the events.

A cute boy and a hot girl are sitting across from each other on the nine train heading uptown just before lunch. The cute boy notices the hot girl and, beginning to feel groovy, starts to plan his moves. He knows that there's no chance of using the Guggenheim method because of the bum down on the left, and knows that the Sarrafan Reaction is out of the question because of the over-whelming percentage of people on the train of German decendency. The only reliable answer left to him in the Caveman Method.

Without much hesitation the cute boy stands up and begins waving his junk in the general direction of the hot girl. The hot girl pretends to be reading her review of the Brazilian World Cup loss, but in reality, she has already noticed the cute boy and recognizes his actions as the precurrser to the Caveman Method. She feigns disinterest to spur on the cute boy's actions.

At that time, and quite serendipitiously, a mammoth gets on the train. The boy slowly stops waving his junk in the girl's face and approaches the mammoth with a spear hidden behind his back. He asks the mammoth for the time and, while the mammoth is looking at his watch, stabs the beast in the eye.

As the fur covered mastadon begins wailing about, the hot girl, signaling her interest in the hot boy, goes on doing nothing. Juices flowing and encouraged by the girl's actions, the boy begins to peel the animal's skin off with his bare hands (that would be the mammoth and not whatever dirty thing you were thinking, you filthy bastard).

AS the giant lies bleeding on the floor, the cute boy gathers the wolly pelt and moves back toward his seat as he realized that the hot girl's stop is coming up and she is moving toward the door. The cute boy then sits down and begins to examine the animal pelt (again, the mammoth).

The hot girl, recognizing that time is running out, attempts to attract the cute boy's attention by doing nothing at all, but as she begins to sense that she may lose to the flesh of a rotting carcass half-way down the asile, she rushes over to her Caveman and writes her phone number backwards on his forehead with a sharpie, because he's a caveman and doesn't have any paper, obviously.

The hot girl gets off. The subway (pervert). The cute boy waits and gets off at his stop, pelt in hand, informs the conductor that there is an animal carcass on the train, finds a mirror, programs the hot girl's number into his phone, and then goes home to show his boyfriend that he got a number, only to find that he, the shrewd swine, got three on the bus, and is still totally the mac-daddy, fag that he is.

That, my friends, is the Caveman Method.

Join us next time when we will examine the events here. In the mean-time, do yourselves a favor, take a lithium and watch the floor for a while.

----
* (7-15-06) It has come to my attention that I have mislabeled the specialization of Professor David Mickelsen of Otterbien College as specializing in the band "Men Without Hats." It came to my attention in the form of Professor Mickelsen calling me and telling me, "If you think I specialize in those one-hit-wonder assholes, I'll tell you right now I'm offended."
Professor Mickelsen, in fact, specializes in "Men at Work."