CATTLE GOT YOUR TONGUE?

by Cynthia MacGregor

(cont'd from yesterday)

By the way, speaking of Washington, which we sorta were, it’s interesting how Washington D.C. got the latter part of its name. It got that appellation (and pearlation and plumlation) because it was the home of most current events, and D.C. is a type of current. (The currant farmers got a subsidy every time it was used.)

The wheat, which we were talking about just a few minutes ago (are you paying attention?), would have been harvested with wheat-whackers, except that those didn’t get invented for another century.

Meanwhile the fruit farmers were up in arms that they were being ignored in favor of the vegetable farmers and the cattlemen, so they invented Steve Jobs, who pays the apple farmers a royalty for every picture of their product that he uses on his product.

This treatise is being written on an Apple Macintosh. That’s why it’s so juicy. (Did juicy what I wrote earlier?)

Some of the other fruit farmers were plum disgusted at being left out of the loop. A pear of them marched on Washington together, but they were two small a group. They had a grape deal of difficulty getting heard, despite raisin their voices, so they decided to go home and send in their complaints by post. After a while of fruitless (pun intended) labors, they despaired, “Watermelon in all these letters going to accomplish?” they sighed. They suspected that the mail carrier wasn’t even delivering their gripes (or grapes), he being too busy going for fittings for his new bulletproof vest, a requisite if you’re going to work for the Post Office. Thus was born FedEx.

The chicken farmers thought the name was FedEggs and decided their product was finally being recognized by the government. They wanted a royalty or subsidy for every time the name “Eggs” was used. A lot of eggs-husbands got upset at that. They thought their divorces were costly enough already without this additional burden.

“Go lay it on the camels,” they said. “They’re used to being beasts of burden.” Unable to find a camel in the U.S., the farmers invented cigarettes.

Meanwhile, over in Rome, the Pontiff issued a papal bull. The cattle ranchers threw up their hands in despair, crying, “Everyone wants to get into the act!” They retaliated in a number of ways. First they tried to make the meat of their young cows more universally popular. They did this by selling the meat in calfeterias. Second, they got into the beer-and-beef-restaurant business, joining the many popular chains already in existence, with a new one of their own, which they named Whole Stein.

Gertrude Stein immediately sued for royalties.