Ancestral Ge(n)eology

In a recent Facebook comment, Seymour -- my delusional pet rock ("am NOT!") -- made the claim that he was once a part of the walls of Troy, the city that centerpieced Homer's ancient epic, Iliad.

And I don't mean the Homer depicted on the right.

So, I decided to have Seymour explain how he -- a measly pet rock the size of a grapefruit ("am NOT...measly!") -- managed to get from the walls of Troy, over a thousand years before the Christian Era was born, to a humble apartment in the Green Mountain portion of Lakewood, Colorado, more than 3,000 years later.

This oughta be...something. Take it away, Seymour.

Thank you for that underwhelming intro. Don't quit your day job *BONK*..ow.

Yes, I was once part of the walls of Troy, back in what you all refer to as approximately 1600 or 1400 or 1200, something like that, BC (Before Colorado). I just made that up...*BONK*..ow..

Anyway, I was there as Helen was fought over by Paris Hilton, Ajax and other cleaners, and the funny-helmeted dudes that eventually invented tampons, condoms, whatever it was. One or the other. It was so long ago. Anyway, after the Trojan Whore was wheeled inside the city and seduced the Troyites, departing soldiers took souvenirs from the walls...I wound up as ballast in a pentekonter -- a Greek ship with enough oars to look like a caterpillar -- that was wrecked and washed ashore near somewhere Mediterraneanesque, laying about on a beach filled with my geologic brethren, for what seemed like forever.

It sucked.

But it was a busy place, what with invading armies going east and west like daily commuters going to work on Monday, all grumpy and hurried, sometimes coming back with more booty than from a post-Christmas sale. Those musta been some Walmarts back then.

At some point, I got picked up by a soldier who I would later understand to be from Sparta, and I was used to *BONK* a Persian Immortal on the head during the Battle of Thermopylae, in 480 BC. It was a sucky journey, being bounced around in a pouch with a bunch of my kind, only to get used as a projectile to *BONK* people. But I digress.

Anyway, I got picked up by another Persian, and used again as a hand-throwd projectile at the Battle of Salamis, when the Persians got sent packing by effete-looking Athenians who actually routed the more numerous Persians because of all the garlic they ate, and the gas they let. I didn't like it there much. Kinda like around here now *BONK*...ow...okay, back to my story.

From there, I got used again as ballast in a Greek trieme, and wound up getting rowed all over the ocean in that region, again for what seemed like ages. The ships then rather sucked, and frequently got wrecked in storms, when they weren't full of what them folks called "commerce": corn and livestock, crappin' all over everything, including me. But I always wound up on wrecks that beached, so some other yutz could come along and load me up as another friggin' piece of ballast in another trieme, only to get all sea sick and get wrecked again. If these people didn't know how to row a boat ashore, why didn't they just buy a car?

Seymour, there were no cars then.

Simpletons. Anyway, somehow I wound up on a beach near where a new city was being built on an old city, or something like that. What had been a place called Byzantium, now was being renamed Constantinople, and I was, again, part of a city wall. Ancients had no appreciation for my finer qualities, but then again, some current people don't, either...*BONK*..ow.

Anyway, I was stuck in the walls of this Constantinople place for, to you all, hundreds of years; to me, it felt like...hundreds of years. Of course, I'm billions of years old, so it's all Greek to me, nyuk nyuk..*BONK*...ow...one day, these people called Turkish Mollusks, or something with an "m", came along, smelling of camels and cous cous, and had this new invention called a "cannon". Until then, nothing anyone had tried had breached the walls of Constantinople. Of course not, because of me.

Then that damned cannon punched all kinds of holes in the walls -- I think they were using regifted fruitcakes as ammunition, the WMD of their day -- and the Turkeys flocked in, overrunning and sacking Constantinople. It blew goats, I'm here to say. And so did those Turkeys, but there's no accounting for taste in some cultures, and I digress some more.

And so, once again, I wound up as a friggin' piece of ballast in a newer-fangled ship, but not one propelled by oars as much....this one had a giant table cloth that helped it move with the wind, and I eventually wound up shipwrecked in a place called New Carthage, in a land called Spain, where they spoke funnier than I was accustomed to. I tried to ask them why they couldn't sail any better than they rowed, but either they didn't pay me any mind, or didn't understand what I was saying. At any rate, I wound up as MORE BALLAST (no imagination at work here, y'know?), aboard a ship that was called the Santa Claus...or maybe it was the Santa Flush...er....well, it was something funny-sounding, with a captain and crew looking for a "new world". And in what their calendars called 1492, we found a "new world" on some island with a lot of trees, naked locals, and absolutely NO amenities.

All together now..."it sucked".

Some local souvenir hunter then heisted me from the ship, and I wound up as a beach ornament for a while, which was okay, other than when hurricanes went through. Then -- you'll never guess this -- I wound up as BALLAST AGAIN. Great Geologic Constipation, Batman! Had these people no imagination? I wound up in another place where, again, people talked funny, and wore iron suits over pantyhose, and looked like escapees from a bad Shakespeare play that was panned by Simon Cowell or something. Minerals like gold and silver -- both highly overrated, I'm telling you -- were coveted by them, while me?

Pfftt...consigned to ballast. Where were lawyers of geologic rights when I needed one?

By one way or another, I eventually wound up in what passed for a grog and gift shop in a disease-ridden place with no good take-out food delivery service whatsoever, just cannon balls and all kinds of shooting going on, and armies marching one way and running another. I think the place was called San Jacinto or such. There I sat, through pestilence and being covered with dust, until some rather peculiar chap bought me -- people were gullible in gift shops then, too -- and took me to and up a river, to a place he called St. Louis, after something he called the Texas Revolution. From there, I wound up rather happily being a "pet rock" to a very kindly 5 year old girl and her family. SHE I liked. Her name was Tamra, and I think she's a distant ancestor of another Tamra who's one of my current-day favoritest people, but I digress...anyway, they took me overland in a conestoga wagon, to places they said would be the "new promise land".

What the promise was, I don't know: but one stormy day, the wagon got overturned crossing a river during a buffalo attack or Indian stampede or prairie chicken hazing...whatever it was, it was something like a current-day mosh pit -- and I got spilled out, and wound up in a stream, watching fish make faces at me. I never saw my friend Tamra or the family again, and I was bummed.

All together now..."it sucked".

Eventually, things built up around the stream I was being gradually sedimented in, and somehow I got plucked from the stream one day, apparently for the prized duty of being a landscaping rock, at the base of a rain gutter.

Me...with MY HISTORY. To be designated MERE LANDSCAPING?? To meet an end like that??! Phfffffft!

Finally...to one spring day in what you all call the year 2000, this exceptionally peculiar fellow plucks me from the landscaping, and thankfully DOESN'T use me as ballast in a ship or put me on display in a gift shop. Oh nooooo...this yutz USES ME AS A DOOR STOP!

Yeah, Skunk...I'm talking to YOU! A DOOR STOP!!! I WANT THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW YOU USED ME AS A DOOR STOP!!!

Uh huh...and where have you been SINCE, Seymour?

Well, okay...you didn't put me back out in the rain gutter. You let me watch TV. You let me share some (not enough) of your Chinese delivery and pizza. You even let that sweet Amy Chavez take me to Japan and Ohio, and might send me to Texas or North Carolina. BUT...

Yes?

BUT...you disrespect me by making me shovel snow, and throwing me in a snowbank, and diluting my authentic song lyrics, and *BONK*ing me when I don't deserve it, and make fun of me during meteor showers....

While Seymour digresses with his diatribe of my apparent and many transgressions, you all now know Seymour's claimed ancestral ge(n)ology, in his own words.

From Troy to Green Mountain, in 3000 years? What do YOU think? *BONK*..ow...give me that, Seymour...