FFWD Weekly
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Mr. Smutty by James Martin In this heady post-Oscar clime of speeches & thanx & no-thanx – now more than ever, really – we should remember the little guy. No, I speak not of agents & managers, nor of bottomfeeders such as family & friends, but of the thumb-sized primates recently discovered in China. (Lest ye become too excited, some clarification is in order: it was only fossils, not the flesh ’n' blood real deal. So sorry.) Garbage-pickers unearthed fossilized foot bones whilst nosing around an old limestone mine, and were quick to trade their finds for a shopping cart fulla beer bottles. Now here's the shocker: believed to have belonged to a previously unknown branch of higher primates (homo half-pintus, nicknamed "teenies"), the foot bones are no bigger than a grain of uncooked rice. "The bones date back some 45 million years," explained an unidentified gent, seen scraping out his rice-cooker near the old mine. "This discovery represents a major leap in bridging the hazy evolutionary gap between lower & higher primates, not to mention the link between science & kitchen scraps." It is believed that, 45 million years ago, a full-sized miner brought to work what anthropologists now call a "snak pak," a flimsy cardboard box containing three of the tiny primates and sides of both fries & coleslaw. The bones were then casually discarded on the trash heap. The scientific community has been turned on its ear by the revelation that, even after all those millions of years, the fries aren't half-bad. However, carbon-dating reveals the coleslaw to have "turned" sometime around the Crusades. Scientists now believe the teenies were likely "cute, but weird. I mean really weird. Creepy-weird, in fact." In all likelihood, relentless teasing would have forced the primates to hide by day and sing sad songs by nite. Hierarchically speaking, the mini-primates were to monkeys as monkeys are to today's humans, operating in a largely "cheap laffs" capacity. "Just as we rely on monkeys to wear small versions of human clothes," explained a Harvard professor identified only as Doctor Love, "and to ride around in little pedal-cars, so too did the monkey employ – and dare I say 'enjoy' – this smaller primate. It is not only a necessary part of evolution, providing the more evolved primate w/ moments of we've-come-a-long-way-baby reflection, it is also simply hilarious." (The professor backed his claim by citing the discovery of a tiny fossilized tricycle, found w/in mischief distance of the bones. Sadly, a recently unearthed tiny fez proved to be a cruel hoax.) Given the leaps/bounds made in cloning, it is hoped that researchers will give the Shroud of Turin "a fuggin' rest already" and instead concentrate their efforts on the teeny fossils. The acute sweatshop owner will have already calculated the obvious economic benefit of bite-sized workers (regardless of startup expenses, such as building tiny little looms and miniature gruel cups). Similarly, sporting experts predict "big things" to come out of teeny-cloning, specifically in the area of dwarf-tossing. Much in the way that 5-pin bowling serves as a good primer for children and those not quite ready for 10-pin's "big ball," teeny-tossing would allow even the weakest pansy to experience the ass-patting satisfaction of team camaraderie, the thrilling violation of another human's basic dignity, and the druggy rush of a game well played. The first fully reconstructed teeny skeleton, a sprightly little fella nicknamed "Uncle Ben," will be touring N. America later this year. At press time, it was uncertain whether "Ben" would be joined by the year's other anthropological break-thru, the macaroni-like remains of what scientists believe to be an angel, discovered in a mud puddle less than a block from a local kindergarten.

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