Posts Tagged With: mastodons

Why Neanderthals Went Extinct

Posted on June 27, 2025 by pauldelancey

If only they could have hit the curveball.

The following is an extract from the best-seller, We’re French and You’re Not, so it must be true.
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“Robert, I wonder why Cro-Magnon survived and Neanderthal died out.”

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“Let me tell you ma chérie. My five-hundredth great grandfather was there.”
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“Your five-hundredth great grandfather?”
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“Yes, his name was Henri Ogg. Henri was upset that the Neanderthals didn’t properly spice their mastodon steaks. So, he started boycotting Neanderthal restaurants. Other Cro-Magnons followed suit. The Neanderthals retaliated by banning us from their hot springs. Fights started here and there. Soon, a stone-axe race began.
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“A war of annihilation nearly broke out. Instead, Monsieur Ogg tactfully suggested a baseball game to determine the extermination.“
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“Baseball was much different then, with bats fashioned from enormous twigs and five balls needed to get a walk. Both sides played this game of extinction in typical, jovial dawn-of-mankind fashion. Hunter-gatherers supplied food to the enormous crowd.
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“It was an exciting game. Many fans forgot to breathe and died. It all came down to the bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded with the score: Cro-Magnons: All fingers of five men and three fingers of another, to Neanderthals: All fingers of five men and two of another.

“The Neanderthals had their best batter at the plate, Craggy. He sneered at our pitcher, Henri Ogg. Ogg hurled a blood ball, it was legal then. Craggy sneered and stepped away. Strike one!

“Henri hurled an anthrax ball. Craggy yawned. Strike two!
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“The crowd tensed. The Neanderthals smiled. Surely, Craggy would win the game now.

“Henri hurled a plain fastball. Craggy shattered the air with his mighty swing.

“Oh, somewhere the sun was shining and the people laughing, but there was no joy for the first cavemen; mighty Neanderthal was wiped out.”

“How do we know the Cro-Magnons were truly ahead?” says Harriet. “After all, cavemen were often missing fingers.”

“Hush.”
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

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World Marbles Challenge

Posted on August 18, 2023 by pauldelancey

Akeem “The Thumb” Hassan, this year’s favorite

Yes indeed, sports fans, the 47th  World Marbles Challenge starts tomorrow in Kotzebue, Alaska and ends in Durban, South Africa. This course shall be quite the challenge for the globe’s top marbleists with: freezing blizzards, snow blindness, sheer icy cliffs, thirst, starvation, encounters with the Yukon’s very few remaining mastodons, rapids, rush hour in Seattle, cars passing them at 90 miles per hour on freeways, lutefisk vendors, border walls, Black Friday sales, jungle diseases, boa constrictors, gangs of apes, the New York Times(tm) sunday crossword, poisonous snakes, terrorists, pandemics, kidnappers, blow darts, storms in the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the Atlantic in tiny rafts purchased by collecting labels from Ovaltine jars, collisions with oil tankers millions of times larger than the tiny rafts, fishing for fish and pulling up sharks and killer whales, bicycle couriers, more jungles, traversing lands bloodied by unrelenting civil war, Walmart(tm) parking lots, carrying the tons of water needed to cross the Sahara dessert, salesmen, plunging down the world’s greatest waterfalls, poisonous spiders, scorpions,getting eating by crocodiles, getting crushed by hippos, lack of internet connection, and murderous gangs.

Then the Marbles Challenge gets difficult. It’s no picnic moving your marble forward twelve hours a day for six months. What if you lose your shooter? What if you get thumb-tunnel syndrome? It’s best not to dwell on this.

Go luck marbleists! May this be the year that one of you crosses the finish line.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

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SPAM Fried Rice

Posted on October 8, 2017 by pauldelancey

Guamanian Entree

SPAM(TM) FRIED RICE

INGREDIENTS

1 cup rice
2 garlic cloves
1 small onion
1 12-ounce can SPAM
2 tablespoons oil
3 eggs
¼ cup soy sauce

Serves 4. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on package. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Cut SPAM into ½” cubes. Add garlic cloves, onion, and oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Remove garlic and onion and set aside. Keep any oil. Add eggs to pan. Scramble eggs at medium heat for 2 minutes or until eggs are done to your liking. Remove scrambled eggs and slice any large bits into ¼” wide strips.

Add SPAM cubes to pan. Cook at high heat for 3 minutes or until SPAM starts to brown. Stir occasionally. Add garlic, onion, and eggs back to pan. Add rice and soy sauce. Cook at medium heat for 2 minutes or until all is warm and the rice is brown.

TIDBITS

1) Guamanian is the adjective for something from Guam. Ché Guevarra–If this is spelled correctly, it is purely by chance–was a revolutionary.

2) A Guavanian is someone from Guava. Well no, it isn’t. Guava is a bush. The guava bush’s fruit is a guava. No, people live in or around a guava bush. Thus, there are no Guavanians. Indeed, there is no guavanian anything. The adjective for guava is guava.

3) Indeed, this has been the case since prehistoric times. Exactly sometime ago, Cro Magnons switched from herding mastodons and sabertooth tigers to herding the rather more stationary and easygoing guava bush.

4) Che Chevarra–How the heck do you spell his name?–loved sedentary guavas. You can tell he was direct descendant of Cro Magnons. However, Ché didn’t know how to spell guavas. So, if he couldn’t spell guavas, you can’t really expect people to spell his last name correctly. It’s kinda like spelling Benadryl(TM) Cumberbund’s name correctly, who by the way also descends from Cro Magnons.

Chef Paulcookbookhunks

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with 180 wonderful recipes is available on amazon.com. My newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, is also available on amazon.com

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