The Captain’s Log
Day 240 of 854
Same but different
We heard the most confusing, longest, pointless series of arguments between the human crew today. It all started when they had to pick someone to crawl in and clean an exhaust port for one of the machines. Every time this happens an argument starts up of who’s turn it was and that the designer was an idiot for putting the exhaust there, normally in more explicit language, as is the norm for mechanics and engineers. To solve this, we created an assigned order but that didn’t last long because of issues with the scheduling, unforeseen errors, emergency cleanings, and shift changes.
To decide the person who would clean this time they played a childhood game. The person who cleaned last called everyone else to stand in a row or in a circle around them. They would then start a childish chant to pick who was next to clean the exhaust. THAT frivolity is where the arguments started. The one began to sing the chant but then half way through, was interrupted with statements that they were saying the chant wrong. We eventually had to get involved and vote on which chant was the best.
It ended up being three groups that we have separated mentally by Tiger Go, Tiger Owe, and Monkey Owe. Each group presented their argument of why theirs was the best, with protest and boos from the other two. We chose Tiger Go chant as it made the most sense, even though really none of the chants did. To explain for others dealing with humans the rhyme starts the same way, about four people: Ennie, Mennie, Minny, and Moe, and the ending is virtually the same where the chanter’s mother tells them to pick the best one except the words might be flipped so they would be said as ‘and you are it’ or ‘and it is you’ whoever it or you lands on is therefore “it” or if they are doing eliminations “not it”.
The real issue of contention is the middle of the chant is where they all differ. The Monkey Owe middle chant to quote is, “Catch a monkey by the toe, if he hollers, make him pay, Fifty Dollars every day.” The Tiger Owe is the same but replace Monkey with Tiger. Neither of these made any sense. Why would you grab a Monkey or a Tiger by a Toe to make it yell. Also, how is the Tiger or Monkey supposed to pay you? They don’t have a way to make income and don’t even have the brain power to grasp the concept of money. This leads us to the last one, Tiger Go. This by far makes the most sense but you still have to grab the tiger by it’s toe to make it holler but in this case, if it does holler, you simply let it go. After some quick research on the topic to avoid future arguments, there is many animals you can put in, including humans. One iteration is a mouse which would be difficult due to the size difference but they are largely abundant on Earth so everyone should have an opportunity to catch the animal.
Once that matter was solved we asked if any of them knew where the cleaning supplies where, as we noticed they were not present. They all said the supplies were on Earth but in different places. One said in Nevada to which his brother replied he wished the brother would go to Nevada. Another said in Bumfucked, Egypt, which narrowed down the search to a town at least. Yet another said past the black stump. When asked which black stump, the member shrugged saying the stump may be in Nevada or in Bumfucked, Egypt. Another said it was in Timbuktu.
At this point our heads were really spinning. To make matters worse they started a new argument about which language is the hardest. It started when an English speaker said it was all Greek to them. Apparently, a Greek crew member overheard and said it’s speaking Turkish, then a Turk member said it was French to them. Then a French member said it’s Hebrew. Then a Jewish member said that all of this was Chinese to them. Lastly, a couple of Chinese members joined the argument, one saying it was spoken in Ghost Script, the other said it was like reading a chicken’s intestines. We are just so glad we have translators so we don’t have to learn any of the languages. We can’t understand why they were even arguing about it, they all just mean that they don’t understand, as if it was in another language.
When we asked if any work was going to be completed that day, we received more arguments of Flying pigs, Teethed chickens, Dancing cows on ice in the warm rain, Flower blooming owl’s tails, coughing cows, hairy frogs, and Whistling crawfish on mountain tops. The word crawfish started yet another argument on its own on what is the proper name of the crustacean, crawfish, crawdad, mud bugs, ditch bugs, fresh water lobsters, mountain lobsters, and yappies. We don’t know what any of these animals are or why they are telling us about them. But apparently the answer was No, because the exhaust did not get cleaned today and we have a headache in both of our heads.
(Special thanks to Soundimals.com, @chapmangamo, where I got many of these from which cut my research down immensely)
First Previous Next
