Wordy Wednesday: Ancestors

Update

Before we progress to the "mainstream of today's symposium", I must just give you an update on the supermarket situation.

When you spend £50 or more in Sainsbury's, you get a fuel voucher that gives you money off overpriced "black gold". The elderly couple in front of me had got enough shopping to get over the magic £50, but reckoned without some special offers, which meant that they were in fact £1.13 short. So they went round the shop trying to find enough things that they wanted, but not too much, of course. Luckily I was feeling particularly patient today...

Oh yes, and one of my reusable bags has split after three uses. It says that if you take it back they'll replace it free, so that's another hassle for the next shopping expedition.

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Ancestors

In Princess Ida, W.S. Gilbert explains the evolution of man as seen by man-hating women's libbers. The story begins with the reason for apes evolving in the first place:

A Lady fair, of lineage high,
Was loved by an Ape, in the days gone by.
The Maid was radiant as the sun,
The Ape was a most unsightly one-
  So it would not do-
  His scheme fell through,
For the Maid, when his love took formal shape,
  Expressed such terror
  At his monstrous error,
That he stammered an apology and made his 'scape,
The picture of a disconcerted Ape.

This, is of course nonsense. As mentioned previously on this blog, scientists (who ought to have been doing something useful such as growing courgettes with barcodes) have discovered that the reason women like Brad Pitt is that he resembles a Neanderthal. And it works - All the women on Chris' blog went mad and clicked some link just because he mentioned the guy's name.

So perhaps we shouldn't be too proud of having evolved so far. You may have seen the story about monkeys who are working as waiters in a Japanese restaurant. Next time you get rotten service somewhere that claims to welcome customer suggestions, I think you should suggest that they trade in their useless human staff for some chimps. Perhaps if enough people do this, it might actually happen.

At the same time there is a campaign to get a BAFTA for Cheetah, the tarzan monkey. The monkey has a lot more experience in the movie business than Mr Pitt, and is also a very good actor - for years no-one realised that "he" was being played by a "she". That's impressive. Nevertheless, I bet the judges ignore this and give the award to Neanderthal Brad.

How does the feminist version of evolution end? Not happily, I'm afraid:

And to start in life on a brand-new plan,
He christened himself Darwinian Man!
  But it would not do,
  The scheme fell through-
For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey craved,
  Was a radiant Being,
  With a brain far-seeing-
While a Darwinian Man, though well-behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved!

Perhaps the customers in that Japanese restaurant would agree with the last couplet, though...