I’m not posting this because of the “low brow humor” aspect, but because of the wittiness, intentioned or not, of the writer. Plus, I got a special email request to comment on this. It’s a story about the theft of bull sperm from the Washington Post:
In his nearly 16 years in the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, Detective Chuck Jenkins has seen a lot: old-fashioned cattle rustling, grand theft tractor and thousands of more-pedestrian crimes. But he’s never seen anything quite like his most recent whodunit: the case of the stolen bull semen.
The burglary took place Sunday in Smithsburg while Eric Fleming was away from his farm, Stonewood Acres. When he got home that night from a visit to relatives in Pennsylvania, he found that the 70-pound semen tank he had in an outbuilding was open, with the electrical cord pulled out of the liquid nitrogen refrigerator, Jenkins said. Sixty-five “straws,” containing the precious bodily fluids of 40 to 50 bulls, were missing.
Jenkins said they were worth $75,000.
“I will give a nice fat reward for any information on semen that was stolen from my tank today,” Fleming wrote in a message posted on the Breeders’ World Web forum this week. “It was a mother load of semen that I consigned to Denver sale.”
“How awful!!!” a member wrote back. “I hope you find who did it, and press charges. That is just plain disturbing.”
Now, I’m not saying we should mock the plight of Eric Fleming–that’s a lot of money he’s out if the oods aren’t recovered. But let me explain why WP staff writer Nelson Hernandez is my hero for the day: Dr. Strangelove.
Who can forget these lines from Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper?
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I… no, no. I don’t, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
…….
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
That’s why this is funny. I don’t know Mr. Hernandez, but I imagine that working at the WP he might have been hoping to get to investigate Scooter Libby’s leak or the Iraq WMD paper trail. Instead, he get’s a story on bull semen, but makes the best of it. Now that’s a good writer.