I love looking through National Geographics. Bright, startling undersea photography of urchins - touching stories of suffering in third-world countries - long, detailed histories of religious/pagan meetings - wildlife that could easily eat you for breakfast up close and personal. However (ha! bet you saw that coming, didn’t you?) ... well, this entitles an entirely new paragraph.

I am always questioning the "and it happened such-and-such." If you were actually there as an eye-witness, okay, I’ll at least listen to your story. But if it’s second/third /fourth-hand story, or a "lost account found in the Smithsonian library" (what did they do, anyway, misfile it?) or the most infamous "and obviously what happened is...."

I may be super superstitious (can you say that?) and questioning after being married for three decades to an overly cynical and negative individual. But it irritates me no end when some action/event/incident is ‘clearly’ this way or that way.

And what got me started (for today, at least) was a gruesome N.G. article "Tales From The Bog," about bodies uncovered in the wetlands (I just love that expression - it doesn’t bring to my mind marshes, but my grandson’s bed for a few nights while he was experiencing diaper independence) of Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.

While the article freely acknowledges numerous "theory unraveling" (i.e. reversal of the original findings), it also speculates about one victim "learning his fate a few days in advance" (because he had a three-day stubble - maybe his wife used his razor for her legs!), and "one of ‘them’ (who is ‘them’?) pulled back (the man’s) head and, with a short knife (okay, how can you TELL it’s a short knife?), slit his throat (the body, not the guy with the short knife) from ear to ear."

SO - this is what I’m gonna do. I’m going to jump in time to the, well, let’s make it an even number, 26th century (wait, then it would be years like 2516, and that’s an odd number beginning.... gosh, guess I can’t get around that, so let’s just stick with it). And since I already know this current time pretty well, I am going to be the main forensic lead on this - and this is going to be my report:

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Uncovered in the area believed to be have been know in the 21st century as "Big Apple" or "Nueva York" was the body of what has been come to be know as "Chinless John." With a block of plastic with various buttons, it has been theorized that it was a primitive computer implant, designed to control either Chinless John’s bodily functions while sitting or delivery of a crude fermented alcohol called "Budd". John died from a ceremonial ritual where massive amounts of formally adorned foods, to include ‘cheese puffs’ and ‘extra pepperoni’ were washed down with the ‘drink of the gods’ (named by the historian Bronzo Telly as ‘Miller’) as an offering to the "Super Bowl" gods.

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I weep for our great-great-grandchildren.