THE TWISTED-TONGUE TOURNAMENT

-- Or, Help Wanted: Weird Word Whizbangers Unite! --

By Adrian Air-of-Sleet, a pleasure-seeking, mandolin-playing, maroon-hairpiece sort of fellow who enjoys Italian weddings, spelling bees, and Calgary Stampede

While I was perusing several dog-eared magazines hanging from racks of a 24-hour convenience store in middle of an odd place named Billy Butts Pond, my enlightenment bulb went off.

Curious as to why this power of positive thinking outage had occurred, I put on my dunce cap in order to gain a new perspective on this perplexing problem.

I ascertained from rather bleak-looking landscape that this ghastly glitch probably had something to do with being shipwrecked on “The Rock”, (a weird island in Canada called “Newfoundland” which is also home to such strange towns as Ass Hill, Bareneed, and Dildo).

Now I know what it must have been like to live as my Celtic ancestors had in “Dark Ages” without access to Internet, i-pods, and personal digital assistants, not to mention vampire video games and vapid virtual reality TV shows.

With precious little to do while waiting for Godot to show up, I decided to organize and host a "Twisted Tongue Tournament" for locals and any aliens who might be in vicinity.

The purpose of challenge was to light a fire under everyone by asking them to marry animal names with human characteristics to give birth to new beasts. (This seemed like a good idea at time, as there wasn’t even a zoo let alone pet-friendly robotic animals in blinking place).

So here are a few of submissions received by judges:

Bedspring Peeper – a naughty tree toad that refuses to turn into a Prince at midnight

Boo-Hoo Gnu – an ugly, unhappy ungulate that doesn’t stand a hope in hell of retiring to a stud farm thank you very much

Buffelope – a bare essentials male beast with no hang-ups about naked truth (see Scantelope)

Botchfly – a stout, hopelessly clumsy, winged creature that has difficulty with takeoffs and landings

Bush-Twit – a timid Texan titmouse

Chumpanzee – not your average high-flying jungle bunny

Cramanatee – a gormandizing male golf-ball eater that lives in tidy little green holes

D'orca – a fashion-conscious killer whale

Ficklefish – a two-timing Piscean creature with an unhealthy attachment disorder

Gemsbloke – a large, young buck with lots of bling bling

2. Bale surfing The new shape of hay bales has created little known country sport of 'bale surfing'. Please note that this is a dangerous countryside activity that should not be undertaken without proper training. Square bales have all but disappeared from countryside, giving way to much larger cylindrical bales that are stacked using machinery, rather than tossed into hay loft with a pitchfork. The loss of machismo activity associated with this tossing has been replaced, in hillier regions of UK with new sport of bale surfing.