[Blogger’s choice #1: Submitted by zachb@zachbolinger.com]The Mind of Mado
by Zach Bolinger
Mado should have been at ease when Gulor was around. Everything just worked when Gulor was there to watch.
Gulor didn't pick up a spear when the tribe went hunting. Mado recalled his first hunting trips when his chest started to grow hair. The brother of his father never carried a spear, but he barked out signals that the other hunters understood. The pack could converge on an ox and take it down, with only a few injuries, if the right signals were barked out. A man who was too old to effectively use a spear was even more valuable to the team if he knew how to lead. The brother of Mado's father died in a hunt, though. After that, Mado's father started painting his face like his fallen brother used to. Father then barked out the orders.
When Father fell, Mado painted his own face as father did. The same day, Gulor woke up with 12 hairs on his chest. Mado would have to start barking orders and teach his younger brother to be a member of the pack. Gulor had yet to speak. Mado could be forgiven for shirking his training duty.
Mado barked the order that started the day of hunting. Gulor was distracted. He moved slow and deliberate. His level of focus was obvious. The pack was mystified with the seeping motion of his arms, and the straight line he walked, ignoring the paths and hills that should have dictated where he trudged. It was new and foreign behavior. But it was also deliberate, confident, and comforting. The pack followed him. As it would turn out, Mado had already given what turned out to be his last order. The pack followed Gulor now.
Gulor lead them to a spot that felt right. He waived his arms, pointed at hunters, and they moved into position as if Gulor was pulling strings. Gulor crouched, and everybody crouched. A goat wandered among them, but all hunters focused on Gulor. Each hunter could feel what Gulor was feeling. Each knew that the boy didn't want to see the goat hurt, but he also knew the tribe had to eat. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. The hunters snapped out from a daze, and now did what they were trained to do. The goat was surprised. But then the goat was dead. Gulor walked back to the women with his eyes closed, and did not open them until the goat was served. He walked the same straight line that had just led them to the goat.
Mado was glad to have food so easily, but he missed the ritual he had grown up perfecting.
Every hunt was now like this. No wasted steps. A straight line. Stopping and crouching. The prey wandering into position. The hunting ground was always a different spot. The arrangement of the pack was always ideal for how the prey happened to behave. The hunt always finished before the sun climbed to its highest spot in the sky. Sometimes Mado would feel that something had just gone horribly wrong. That he had lost a member of his pack. An unbearable grief would overcome him. He would then be struck by a feeling that everything had changed. The hunters each crouched on different marks. Gulor was not where Mado thought he was. The hunt would go perfect, like every hunt Mado inspired.
Gulor's first word was a barked order. It was the order to start the hunt, and it came in the darkest moment of the night. The hunters still remembered what the order meant, and they were sufficiently surprised by the invocation, and they were ready in an instant to follow the order. Gulor was not at ease. He gave each hunter a mark to crouch on, and then started walking away from the fire. As a goat would walk into the pack's ambush, Gulor walked to the edge of the fire's light, and waited. As the hunters watched, Gulor was felled by a bear. Each hunter threw his spear, and the bear charged the hunters. Each hunter found rocks by their mark, and began to throw them at the bear. One rock hit the bear in the eye, and it stumbled. A spear that had barely broken through his fur caught on the ground and was pushed into the bear's heart. The monstrous beast fell a forearms length from the closest hunter.
Mado felt his familiar grief, and looked around for Gulor to be standing anywhere other than the spot at the edge of the firelight. Gulor still lay in a devoured heap where Mado had last seen him. Gulor was no longer with the tribe.
There is no way Mado's mind could comprehend how Gulor's mind worked. For Mado, the sun came up every day, reached its highest spot, and went down behind the other horizon. It was always in that order. A man could not wander the wilderness, plan his day, and then go back to where the sun was rising. For Gulor, that was routine. His mind was in the future, the past, and the present at all times. He knew where the goats would wander. He knew what dance was going to inspire the hunters to take the optimal positions. He knew the consequences of every action taken or word spoken. He knew the only way to handle an approaching bear that would result in the fewest deaths.
In Gulor's day, many minds developed the way his did. They all chose self-sacrifice when the time came. We are descended from the cavemen who had crippled minds. Minds that were limited in how they perceived time. We have the mind of Mado.
[Blogger’s choice #2: Submitted by Anonymous]
There once was a caveman named Fred. One day Fred heard a woman voice yelling for help and how she needed to be saved. He ran as fast as he could toward the voice to find the woman trapped by a T-Rex. Fred tried to think of ways that he could save her. His best idea was to lure the T-Rex away from her. So... Fred made an awesome pinata shaped like another T-Rex (because we all know how much T-Rexes like candy!). As soon as the dino saw it, he went running toward it. What the dino didn't know was that the apparent candy-filled pinata was actually filled with rocks! When the dino caught the pinata he bit into it expecting to find the candy, but he really bit into rocks. The dino lost all of his teeth and was so sad that he spontaneously combusted. So... Fred went to the woman's rescue, but she was gone. He ran all over the place looking for the lovely cavewoman. After hours and hours of searching he found the woman running toward her cave. What he also saw was the woman stripping off her now apparent wig, and he saw that his lovely maiden was a man. Disgusted by what this guy had done to him, Fred went to the cave to confront the caveman. When he entered the cave he saw that it was Chi-Cha, the caveman gang leader. When he dressed up as this woman, he was expecting all of his gang members to come and save him. Sadly it was Fred that saved Chi-Cha and now this massive gang leader was very angry. He went to the members of his gang and sentenced them all to death. After they were all dead from the poison that was given to them by Chi-Cha, they all returned and haunted Fred from the grave. They told him how angry they were at Fred because he saved Chi-Cha. But what they didn't know was that Fred knew witchcraft and he sent all of their spirits to the black realm. So... Fred lived a happy life after he got rid of the ghosts..... until he got stepped on by the T-Rex’s wife........
[Blogger’s choice #3: Submitted by Zach Hayman]
Little do most people know that cavemen are actually theoretical ideas created by future generations not even conceived yet. Their purpose was to give the people throughout time an excuse for our existence. You see, the people of that era believed in a thing called coexistent times and events, in which something had occurred in the past thus leading to what is today. Some say that this was more of a coping mechanism for the people after the outbreak of the Nerps War. The Nerps War lasted over a millennium and inevitably caused the civilization to become disconnected from their past. In an attempt to satisfy the people a top secret committee, funded by our very own government, was created to developed a set of ideas that the people could study and believe in. This is where we got dinosaurs, knights, gods, and most importantly cavemen. Now, you’re probably wondering why we know about these cavemen if they were created in the future. Well, the people of that time had not expected this, but after creating the idea and embedding it into the very fabric of their civilization it was transposed onto time itself and thus can be known and studied during our time. It's a wild idea that we openly study and understand such a unique idea that was indeed created millions of years in the future.
