No, Ariel isn't a Disney creation
But first, a memory: 12 years ago I took my adopted daughter, aged one, to the swimming pool.
I was barely into the second minute of my fascinating introductory lecture when she got bored, jumped in the pool and started swimming widths (butterfly, olympic speed).
Clearly her biological mother had been a mermaid.
One day my daughter will return to the ocean, saying: “Bye, and thanks for all the Justin Bieber posters.”
I mention this because a dispute is going on between two big US organizations. Animal Planet broadcast (world wide) a movie based on “solid evidence” of the existence of mermaids.
The TV channel said they could make “a strong case for the existence of the mermaid, a creature with a surprisingly human evolutionary history, whose ancestral branch splits off from a shared human root.”
Surprised staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement denying this: “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.
Animal Planet’s claims are absolutely fine, except for being moronic garbage not worthy of toddlers, I respectfully suggest.
Here’s the real story.
In Asia, particularly in Korea and Japan, pearl divers were traditionally women who dived naked or in loincloths. They would emerge from the water and sit on rocks to hyperventilate and aerate their bodies before diving again.
They’ve been doing this for 2,000 years.
Anyone who has been to the Suzie Wong-type bars in Hong Kong knows what happens when Western sailors set their eyes on scantily clad Asian women: they lose their grasp on reality, their hearts, and the contents of their wallets.
Century after century, Western explorers encountered these naked women sitting on rocks and then disappearing under water for impossibly long periods of time—longer than they believed a human could.
The sailors decided they were magical fabled creatures, exotic and beautiful but also dangerous and unfathomable. Readers married to Asian women will realize they were exactly right.
In the 1960s, businessmen invented pearl farming and every single naked female diver in Asia was sacked.
Another reason to hate capitalism.
Incidentally, the absurd Western theory is that mermaids are mis-identifications of dugongs, a lumpy, blubbery creature. Imagine in a whale on a diet, or Oprah Winfrey not on a diet.
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NEWS IN BRIEF
A MAN “ATTACKED a woman with a sword and a peanut butter sandwich” last week, according to newspapers in Florida, US. The global spate of food-assisted assaults continues. No doubt he was thinking: “Hmm, this sword may not be enough, lucky I also have this peanut butter sandwich.”
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A SUICIDAL individual tried to kill himself by swallowing pesticide. But instead of dying, he just felt mildly bilious, as if he had eaten fast food. Furious, the man asked police in Shenzhen, China, to investigate. They said the product may have been fake, or it may just have been out of date, since it expired in 2008. This must be the first time something good has come out of a defective China-made product.
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HOW WONDERFUL that scientists in Geneva have finally found the Higgs Boson, a tiny particle smaller than a Myanmar general’s heart. My advice: tape it to a larger object, or you’ll lose it again.
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MY DISASTROUS attempts to dictate a novel (caught on video) last week prompted grandpa to send in a photo of a writer who instead uses a human secretary:
ALSO enjoyed Liftie’s account of him meeting a modern tech-assisted writer, after the Dragon Dictation revolution:
W: How-do-you-do-question-mark
LL: Good, thanks. I'm Liftie.
W: JOHN fullstop
LL: John Fullstop?
W: No comma just JOHN fullstop
LL: OK. (?!?!?)
W: What do you do?
LL: I live in Lifts. How about you?
W: I'm a blogger delete delete delete delete delete delete delete writer fullstop
LL: I have to go see you soon.
W: OK comma talk to you soon fullstop save
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HAPPY MONDAY.
