Why do our brains do this? Or is it just me and The Oatmeal?
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Thag Go Grunka Gathering!
Everyone at the Grunka Gathering was in good spirits, except Thag.
Every fifth or sixth summer, depending on the position of the stars, all of the Grunka clans would gather and share their stories, swap items (sometimes mates too) and have a bit of a prehistoric party.
It was a grand affair, and luckily for Thag’s tribe, the Thunka Grunkas, they only had to travel five or six days to join in the festivities.
But Thag was not having as much fun as he hoped. First of all, nobody was willing to swap for Onga, despite her beauty and physical charms. Her affair with the Thunka Grunka shaman, Weasel-Scratch-Face-Brother, had become somewhat of a Grunka legend, and nobody wanted that kind of trouble. (Even though there were lots of mates willing to be swapped to Thag, despite his lack of physical beauty and charm. His cleverness as a hunter, and even more importantly, as an avant-garde cave painter was also something of a legend.)
Worse than all of this though, was the new respect shamans had for Weasel-Scratch-Face Brother. They were all quite taken with the idea that there were supernatural beings who controlled the element, and that only they had the magic to communicate with them. In fact, they had spent most of the Gathering eating mushrooms that made them act quite strange, and coming up with a list of these new “gods”.
Thag had taken to heckling them during these psychedelic meetings.
“Where god? Thag see no god. Show Thag god!” he demanded. Eventually the shamans had had enough and the Grunka elders told Thag to desist.
Then the Drunka Grunkas arrived to the Gathering with a new invention they were very excited about sharing with the clan.
“What be?” Thag asked his colleague, the leader of the hunters from the Drunka tribe, Barga.
“We drop barley in water, let sit sun. Good. Try. Make you feel all squiffy.”
Thag took the proffered skin, filled with this new drink Barga and his tribe had invented. It WAS good. A bit bitter, but there was something nice about it. And what was that delightful feeling in his head?
Suddenly, the shamans and their invisible gods didn’t seem so important.
“You show Thag how make? What called?” he asked Barga.
Barga nodded. “We show all Grunkas how make. We call beer.”
Barley and blue sky by illum123. More things that will make you feel squiffy can be found at humor-blogs.com and Alltop. Originally published in 2006.
Thag do meditation!
Every morning before they started the hunt, Thag would sit down away from the others, close his eyes, and listen to the wind. It was more than that, but that is what he told the other hunters. Really what he did was sit, and let his mind go blank.
At first it would be filled with thoughts and concerns — mostly about Onga, his mate, and his running feud with that phallus-with-ears shaman, Weasel-Scratch-Face-Brother. He would not concentrate on those thoughts, but let them wash away, and eventually, his mind would loosen, and he could hear the wind distinctly; its whooshes and gusts, its whispers, and then the smells would come to him.
This morning ritual heightened his ability to sense the prey.
In stark contrast to Thag, Gnock had another way of preparing for the hunt. This ritual involved a lot of shouting, and banging the shaft of his wooden spear against his head, numbing himself to pain, and more importantly, fear.
Gnock had been doing this since his brother Grunk had been killed by the wooly rhino.
One morning, Thag came back from his meditation earlier than usual, and told the other hunters: “go higher ground, upwind. Smell cave lions. Many.”
“Many hunting us?” asked Vlog, one of the sharpest hunters.
“Un,” Thag confirmed.
This was bad news indeed. Cave lions did not normally travel in groups, and they would not fear the humans if they had numbers on their side.
“Much goodly!” Gnock, who had stopped bashing his melon long enough to hear this news, said.
“You mammoth gas sniffing?” Vlog asked Gnock.
Gnock just grinned insanely, and said, “hunt us cave lion!” Then he started shouting: “here cave lion. Lion, lion, liiiiiii-on!”
“Gnock be quiet,” Vlog hissed.
Gnock ignored the sensible suggested: “Lion, lion, liiiiiii-on!”
Thag had been meditating, but if anything it made his reaction quicker. He used his own spear to whack Gnock on the back of the head, much harder than Gnock had been doing to himself.
The shouting stopped, but the trouble was just starting. The wind stopped blowing for a moment, and Thag heard something. He told the others: “they come. Climb trees.”
Vlog looked at Gnock and said, “what him?”
Thag looked down sadly at Gnock, and just shook his head. “Not time carry up tree.”
Scientific evidence: Meditation builds up the brain | Gene turnoff makes meek mice fearless. Other head-knockers and skull bangers here. Originally published 2005.
Thag not like cut his toenails!
Onga was always asking him to cut his toenails, and it made Thag crazy.
If he cut them too close, then he had nothing to protect the end of his toes. Good nails were especially important when you jumped on the back of an auroch during a hunt. If you didn’t have long enough nails, you might not be able to hold on.
Then again, he had to admit it was not auroch hunting season.
She could get really insistent, making veiled references to how well-groomed Weasel-Scratch-Face-Brother’s toenails were. (The shaman was always trying to one-up Thag in any way he could.)
In fact, it was the shaman’s adroitness with cave art that got Thag started on it.
He couldn’t help it that all he could draw well were aurochs — which were an important religious symbol, of course, and the representation of which got under Weasel’s skin — and toenails.
Actually, it had taken him a while to perfect the representation of toenails, but eventually he got it down, and filled an entire cave with them (and aurochs).
“What?” he asked Onga. “I cut them off; I can’t paint them either?”
Modern long-nailed auroch-lovers exist too.
More about the discovery of Lascaux cave paintings. Originally published in 2005.