Local Search Puns

"You see that steeple on that church over there? Yeah, I hit it."

Picture it. June, 1971. London.

Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer are celebrating the release of their album Tarkus at the Seven Stars Pub.

Very quickly, both ELP and their BACs are riding high.

Nothing can spoil this evening.

Enter King Crimson, their bitter rivals in experimental jazz-fusion symphonic rock.

A chill hits the air, but they manage some level of civility.

Fripp even manages to put aside his seething anger at Lake for defecting to Emerson's new project and stands a round for all.

It's unclear exactly when Hawkwind arrives, but the strained emotions soon give way to genuine cheer and good will.

Lemmy, their basist at the time, could have that effect on people.

Unfortunately, he also later looks directly at Lake, points at Fripp and company and asks, "Waren't you wiv his lot?"

The police report explains that the ensuing fracas lasted for about 30 minutes at caused at least £4,500 (£56,604.93 in 2021, or $78,480.75) in damages, several broken bones and uncounted stiches.

The scrum finally calms down after Peter Gabriel, who was [throwing darts](https://darthelp.com/articles/the-history-of-darts/#:~:text=M

Trevor loved tractors. And I mean, really loved tractors. Forget any obsessions or high-level interests you may have, chances are they pale in the face of Trevor’s love for tractors.

Every day Trevor would get up, in his tractor-themed bedroom in his tractor-themed house, with its tractor-themed wallpaper and tractor-themed carpets, and he would make his bed with its tractor-themed duvet and tractor-themed sheets. He would go downstairs in his tractor-themed pajamas into his tractor-themed kitchen, with its tractor-themed tiles and cupboards, and he would eat his breakfast while perusing the latest tractor-themed magazine or annual.

Trevors’s degree in Agricultural Engineering hung on his living room wall, along with a copy of his thesis, which centred around (you guessed it) tractors. The living room was decorated with all sorts of tractor-related trinkets, including die-cast models, paintings and drawings.

The hedges in Trevor’s front garden were trimmed in the shape of tractors. His lawn was vividly decorated with tractor-driving garden gnomes, and his garden furniture was constructed from various parts from vintage tractor designs.

Trevor just had one thing missing from his otherwise tractor-centric life; he had never actually owned, nor driven, a real tractor.

Not for his lack of trying, of course. Trevor had been to many tractor shows over the years, and visited many farms with friends of his, but none of the tractors he had seen had ever been quite right. Trevor was so knowledgeable about tractors that every single one he had come across had possessed some hidden trait that he wasn’t keen on. His first experience of driving a real tractor had to be perfect.

One day, Trevor was flicking through one of his favourite publications, Powertrain Quarterly, when there was a knock at the door. Trevor answered, and it was his friend and fellow tractor enthusiast, Jeff.

Trevor welcomed Jeff in, and over tea and crumpets served on tractor-themed crockery, they discussed the merits of aluminium drawbars and front-end loaders. Eventually Trevor pressed Jeff to explain the reason for his visit.

“Well” said Jeff, “As I’m sure you know the convention comes to town later”.

The convention. Trevor had been thinking of little else the past three weeks. The neighbouring town annually threw a convention for farmers, particularly farmyard machinery. There would be combine harvesters, lawnmowers, and of course, tractors.

“Yes of course” replied Trevor

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

My grandfather was a farmer and he loved getting dressed up every year for the local fair and exhibiting his prize chickens.

For this occasion, my grandmother would spend the entire year searching through thrift shops looking for silly neckties for him to wear, and she loved finding ones with chickens on them.

When he died a couple of years ago, he bequeathed them to me in his will. When my grandmother handed me the bag full of them, my eyes welled with tears and I smiled thinking about my grandfather looking in the mirror and straightening his tie.

Why am I telling you all of this back story? Because the last time I tried to tell this to someone and I didn't give context, they thought it was weird that I was so excited about inheriting my dead grandfather's hen tie collection.

Today at the local toys'r'us with my SO and the kids. We approach two teenagers restocking the shelves from a pallet full of cardboard boxes. I hear one of them ask the other if she has seen the knife. The other says no, an I notice they're searching for it. As we pass i ask if "they're looking for one of them retractable knifes?"

Her: "Yes"

Me: "I think i saw a kid running around with it over there" *points with thumb over my shoulder

Her:...-...! *face turns white

My SO: I'm sorry he's joking. Arrrg! 2rgeir can't I take you anywhere?

Me: *snickering

Me: Donating to 3rd world countries does not always have good effects. It can hurt the local economy. Like if a local guy sells shoes and you donate shoes your hurting him.

Dad: Are you saying people should do some sole searching before donating?

My Mom is big into birds and my folks have a friend who works in our local (small town) air control tower that let them come up from time to time to search for Snowy Owls (apparently they like the open plains that an airport provides). Anyways this is the text exchange between me and my dad:

Dad: (pic of mom with binoculars looking out the control tower)

Me: great pic! Seeing anything?

Dad: airplanes

Lee County, FL, local news announced the arrest of Richard Freshwater.

Reporter: "Officials say they've been searching for Freshwater for over a month."

My Dad: "Damn, they must've been really thirsty."