Dark Skies Puns

And on waking discovered himself to be on a beach. The sand is dark red. He can't believe it. The sky is dark red. He walks around for a while and sees dark red grass, dark red birds, and dark red fruit in dark red trees. He is shocked when he finds that his skin is also dark red. "Aaargh!" he cries "I've been marooned!"

My dad emailed me that one back in 2009.

I wrote a little skit for my grandkids let's see how much I remember. CHUM 8 news Ted Hammerhead reporting with sky Chompter traffic report. Top story, a lone shark, who is a loan shark is alone in the dark making loans to sharks! There is a new place to gamble, the place is full of sharks who turn out to be card sharks playing card games with sharks on the cards. Imagune the dogs playing poker for this story, but it's sharks. The other reporter asks Ted Hammerhead how he did on his recent drivers test, Ted responds "nailed it". Crime scene where a clown has been killed and the Detective states, " No way a shark did this as they taste funny". On a comment about the victim. I never did the weather or figured out names for the other reporters we used to laugh and laugh at my stupid puns.

Edit: I can't spell fixed typos

A man swings his club and fails to hit the ball.

Man: God damnit, I missed.

A nun shakes her head in disapproval. The man swings again and misses yet again

Man: Damnit, I missed again!

Nun: Sir, if you keep on swearing like that, you're gonna go to hell.

The man then laughs and dismisses the nun's comment. He makes one more attempt at hitting the ball, but to no avail.

Man: God fucking damnit!

The sky then goes dark, a lightning bolt strikes the nun, and you can hear a thundery voice say, "God damnit, I missed."

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out