Something You DEFINITELY Did Not KNow About Mastodons

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, AndyDisco on Twitter


While reading the new copy of Smitsonian Magazine I was checking out their article on Mastodons.

The article talks about how Mastodons first came to be known because in 1705 an upstate NY man found a Mastodon's tooth. Eventually the tooth found its way to Europe where speculation about what kind of titanic beast could possibly have teeth that large ran unbridled. This theoretical oversized creature was given the name Incognitum, because surely no one could fathom its enormity (I thought enormity meant 'evil' and not 'huge' before reading this. So I went with 'enormity'). Did they actually italicize the name back then? Probably.

But that isn't the part you definitely didn't know about Mastodons.

Anyway, keep in mind that dinosaurs were not yet discovered and wouldn't be for another 100 years, so this tooth represented something completely otherworldly and no one had a clue what it could possibly go to. A bit later on, similar teeth turned up in South Carolina where slaves noticed that it resembled the teeth of African Elephants. Scientists then began to assume that the teeth were that of a "mammoth" like the ones recently found in siberia. Eventually the teeth of elephants, mammoths and the incognitum were all studied side by side and found to be different. As the magazine puts it....

"European anatomists started to figure out the distinction by making side-by-side comparisons. The teeth of mammoths and modern elephants both have relatively flat running-shoe corrugations on the biting surface. But the teeth of the incognitum are studded with fierce-looking rows of large conical cusps. That difference not only indicated that Siberian mammoths and the incognitum were separate species, it also led some anatomists to regard the latter as a flesh-eating monster."

That is awesome, but it still isn't the part you definitely did not know. This is....

"Those teeth also eventually gave the incognitum a name. To the young French anatomist Georges Cuvier, the conical cusps looked like breasts. So in 1806, he named the incognitum “mastodon,” from the Greek mastos (for “breast”) and odont (for “tooth”). But laymen went on applying the name “mammoth” to either species—and to just about anything else really big."

That's how I roll.

On Race and Big Big Boobs

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, AndyDisco on Twitter

Harry Reid's recent remarks about Obama and his ethnicity reminded me of something. At first I realized that there have been a lot, "This is racially offensive!!! (Wait, is this racially offensive?? Hang on, I need to go ask my black friend if I should be angry about this or not.) You have Rush Limbaugh's offensive Barack The Magic Negro song, you have Harry's new comments, when Joe Biden called him a "clean" candidate during the primaries people assumed he was being racist, you also have Rod Blagojevich telling Esquire magazine that he's blacker than Barack Obama, etc.

It reminded me of when you have a female who has very, very large breasts.

I think everyone has had an experience similar to this: You have a friend with big boobs, or your girlfriend has a friend with huge boobs, and everyone knows she has big boobs, but it's not like you sit and talk about them all the time, but you've all acknowledged them in some way. Then there is a late night at a bar when you and a few other friends (maybe a group of 6 or 7) and she's in the group and the topic of her boobs comes up. Maybe she's showing a lot of cleavage that night, maybe a drunken member male member of the group mentions them, maybe a female squeezes them. Something happens. Then it's like all the air has been let out of the bag and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, then makes the comment they've always been thinking about making regarding her big boobs.

Everyone basically makes one comment about them and they run the gamut of appropriate enough, (do they hurt your back? do you always catch guys staring at them? do you ever wish they weren't so big?) to the possibly skeezy (I'm a total boob guy I just think your boobs are great. I've always thought that. So....keep up the good work) to the definitely skeezy, (Can I PLEASE motorboat them? No, ok then will you stand up on a chair so I can run, full-speed into them face-first? PLEASE. I am willing to pay for this privelege.)

Racial differences have been around as long as big boobs have been around but it's still something people notice, but aren't sure what is approrpriate to say about them, and what is better left unsaid. And the more people have to clam up about it, the more people just want to talk about it, and whenever there's the slightest opening, someone is gonna jump in with both feet and again prove the Mark Twain phrase about it being better to be silent and perceived a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

So stay strong, large-breasted women who are the only member of their race in a given social setting.











That's how I roll.

I Read a Funny Joke in This Month's Esquire

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com



It was told by this chick. Her name is Zulay Henao. Is it wrong that when I first saw her name I thought, "Henao, Henao, don't dream it's over, Henao, Henao, when the world comes in..."?

Anyhoo, the joke. I'll paraphrase it, since I'm not crazy about the exact wording of her version:









A guy gets arrested and read his Miranda Rights- Anything he says can and will be held against him in court.

He replies, "Breasts"