Hi, I’m Tom, (not to be confused with Thom) and I’ll be your contributor for today. I’ve got a piece of short fiction for you:
(NB: I have no idea how to do page breaks in tumblr so you’ll have to tolerate this monstrous wall of text untill one of my co-conspirators helps me fix it)
The following is an interview I conducted during my tenure at New Scientist Magazine. The interview was with Dr Loquacious Everlast, author of the study “On the obstacles of undersized upper limb appendages in the donning of millinery attire in saurian reptiles.” The article was never published, as the editor rejected it for being “too silly” the unedited transcript is reproduced here for your reading pleasure.
NS – So Dr Everlast, could you give our readers an outline of your study to begin with?
Dr E – I certainly could.
[Pause]
Dr E – Oh, you mean now? I thought you meant when we began recording.
NS – We are recording
Dr E – Oh right. Well… er… can we start again.
NS – It’s probably best if we carry on, we’ll fix it in editing.
Dr E – Editing, oh yes. Wonderful what they can do these days isn’t it? With… er… words.
[Pause]
Dr E – Where was I?
NS – Introducing your study.
Dr E – Ah yes, well “On the obstacles of undersized upper limb appendages in the donning of millinery attire in saurian reptiles.” is primarily… that is it’s primary objective, is understanding, if you will, the obstacles that would theoretically, that is in theory, be encountered by said saurian reptiles when they attempt to don millinery, ahem, attire.
[Pause]
Dr E – Is that it?
NS –Er…perhaps if you’d like to do into more depth on the experiment, explain some of it to the layman.
Dr E – Oh yes of course, well let me assure first that we tested a large sample size of saurian reptiles, some four hundred in fact, and of course a control group.
NS – A control group? Of non saurian reptiles.
Dr E – Oh no dear boy, we felt a wide range of organisms were required in order to offer a fully diverse control group. We used many different species; primates, canines, arachnids, humans, bacterium, the welsh. All were required to participate in the donning of a variety of pieces of millinery attire.
NS – Yes, perhaps you could explain exactly what you mean by ‘donning millinery attire’ it’s not really a term our readers are familiar with.
Dr E – Really? Standards really are slipping, very well, ‘donning’, from the Latin donye refers to the act of insinuating oneself within a piece of ‘attire’, or garment. ‘Millinery’ of course has it’s roots in the ancient proto-Italian tribe, the Millinieri famous for the decorative headwear they wore into battle.
NS – Hang on, so what you’re saying is that you investigated their ability to wear hats?
Dr E – Of course not.
NS – Oh good.
Dr E – Their ability to dress themselves in hats. There’s a subtle difference, they were not permitted outside assistance in placing the hats on their heads.
NS – I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I see the scientific value in dressing a load of iguanas in hats.
Dr E – Iguanas? My dear boy I think you must have misunderstood me. By saurian reptiles I refer of course to the terrible lizards.
NS – Dinosaurs?
Dr E – Indeed! Specifically those of the ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’ as it is commonly known. I say! I’m getting the hang of this ‘dumbing down’ lark, aren’t I?
NS – I’m sorry, just to clarify, you have spent the last six months studying whether T-Rexes can wear hats, correct?
Dr E – Very much so, the common theory is that their abridged appendages would prevent such action, we set out to find out for certain.
NS – Abridge…
Dr E – (interrupting) Tiny arms.
NS – Okay.
[Pause]
NS - Don’t you think your time might have been better spent finding out if a non extinct creature could wear hats? Or doing something with actual merit?
Dr E – I’m sorry? I don’t follow.
NS – Well I mean, you go to all the trouble of putting together a simulation of T- Rex movement, in order to…
Dr E – (interrupting) I’m sorry? Simulation?
NS – Well yes, I assume you used some sort of computer simulation of a dinosaur for testing purposes.
Dr E – Oh no, not at all, can’t trust simulations old boy. No I insisted on using actual biological samples, it’s the only fair way.
NS – Actual Bio….but there aren’t any T-Rexes; they’re extinct.
Dr E – Yes that was a bit of a sticking point there, many was the time I said to my research assistant, Jebidiah Jeffries; “Jed” I call him Jed you see “Jed, I just don’t see where we’re going to get these samples my boy. But Jed, god bless him, he came through for me.
NS – How exactly?
Dr E – You see he found another project, part of the biology department, that was getting some very promising results in the area of DNA synthesis, specifically that of extinct species. Well, of course that was something of a godsend to be, so I spoke to the Dean, he’s and old friend of mine, we play golf together, and Bob, as they say, is your proverbial mothers brother. The project was rolled into our department, under my jurisdiction, and we were good, as you might say, to go.
NS – And they managed to clone a dinosaur?
Dr E – Oh yes. Not overnight of course, but after several attempts they finally managed it. It took them three months to begin mass production, they’d already done most of the legwork before I came on to the scene you see, then of course, it was down to my team and our hats. We used predominantly top hats for this experiment, you see they have a unique density…
NS – (interrupting) I’m sorry, you say you had four hundred T-Rexes here?
Dr E – Well not here obviously, we housed them at a stable just outside town.
NS – Can I see them?
Dr E – Why my dear boy of course not. Once the experiment was concluded all biological samples were destroyed.
NS – You… you managed to clone four hundred T-Rexes and you just killed them?
Dr E – Well we had the data we needed, it wasn’t an easy decision you know, we would have liked to keep them in case we needed a repeat study, but housing them was simply exorbitantly expensive, not to mention dangerous. I lost three grad students before we figured that one out.
NS – You had what you… you mean your stupid hat thing?
Dr E – Indeed. A mere zero point two five percent of test subjects managed to don a hat to standard, compared to seventeen point five percent of the control group.
NS – But you could have… hang on, doesn’t that mean one of the T-Rexes actually managed to put on a hat?
Dr E – That’s a very literal interpretation. Our current working theory is that that was just a statistical anomaly. It’s well within our margin of error.
NS – But… surely at least the cloning team are planning to publish their data?
Dr E – Funny enough their project lead, Dr Validima Silverheart, had the same notion, she’d got her feathers a bit ruffled over the merger see, and she approached me to do so.
NS – And?
Dr E – Well of course I told her “Liddy” I call her Liddy you see “Liddy; I understand you position here, but this is my project, I can’t have people publishing minor findings. Now I know you want to talk about this, but my feeling here, my gut feeling, is that it should be about the hats, after all that’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?” And do you know what she said?
NS – You bastard.
Dr E –Exactly! How did you guess?
[recording becomes unintelligible at this point]
