Hammer Review
Now for some helpful user advice from deep in the history vault, when cavemen and dinosaurs frolicked on the landscape. Or were they sabertooth cats and mastodons? Who can say? If you can’t prove you were there personally, your claims to the contrary will have to be rejected.
Gogg’s Tool Reviews
For today’s useful gadgets column, I took the advice of Totha down at the watering hole and obtained one of these new inventions which Gleedel has been calling a “hammer” for some reason. I can attest that it is entirely free of ham, though. Yet this weakness may be a hidden strength.
Gleedel plausibly claims that his friend Plyx was the one who came up with the idea. The claim itself has become mired in controversy, seeing as how Sprugg has engaged a patent attorney who is now threatening litigation for alleged IP theft. But that isn’t something this review will sort out. Whoever it was that came up with the idea, Sprugg is the one who now manufactures these clever gadgets and makes them widely available, albeit at a price.
To state it in the simplest terms, Plyx (or Sprugg or whoever) found that you can take your favorite rock that you use for smashing things and combine it with a strong stick to make a tool of even greater utility. I wouldn’t have believed it myself until I witnessed a live demonstration, and then got to try it out for myself, too. By holding the stick end firmly in one hand, you can swing this hammer with greater force, and you can apply that force to the object you aim to smash with your rock—but with several times the effect! It is truly quite remarkable.
The new tool is a direct competitor to the rock, of course, and the rock’s sellers at the waterfall, Skunkworks LLC, have gone out of their way to denounce this new gadget as dangerous and irresponsible. But Sprugg makes his wife Juniper available to each new owner for a certain amount of time in which she follows the newbie around and recites the material data safety warnings and precautions along with the general instructions. She has quite the piercing voice and repeats the warnings in an increasingly shrill tone until new users get the idea and chase her away.
In my own experience, the device did in fact prove somewhat dangerous, in particular if you find yourself having to hold down the item you want to smash with your free hand. Luckily enough I was not swinging it too hard as I learned when a blow landed on my other hand. Juniper’s shrill cries probably saved me from a worse fate. While Skunkworks concede the utility of the new apparatus and its accompanying safety warnings and user guide, they point out that unscrupulous third-party salespeople and unlicensed vendors are unlikely to furnish such essential information unless required by strict regulation.
Setting such issues aside for now, suffice it to say that this “hammer” is in fact quite handy. Your humble reviewer swung it and struck it against a tree, where it left a considerable gash in the bark. Attempting to achieve the same effect with a traditional rock resulted in only a small fraction of the damage, after which the rock came free of my hand and smashed my toe. (In a comparison test, the ham was so ineffective at the task that I eliminated it from this discussion altogether.)
When it comes to getting lunch, the hammer is much better at helping the user gain the element of surprise over most small living quarry. The quarry genuinely appears not to expect such quick motion from what appears to be a humble rock merely tied to a stick. The smashing effect also helps to tenderize the flesh better. However, it does make separating the unwanted fur, bone, and innards from the preferred edible bits of meat more time consuming.
In sum: at the very least, Plyx/Sprugg/whoever has clearly earned bragging rights for inventing the hammer. This early in our species’ development, it is really hard to gauge where this new technology will take us. Other continents? The skies? The stars? It will certainly simplify the everyday chores of killing and tenderizing game. Some see a potential for further developing the stick end of the hammer to make the tool even longer and more powerful, although there have not been enough tests on the fibrous strings and leather strips that bind the stick to the rock.
Unresolved liability issues also continue to loom. Word at the watering hole is that Totha’s husband Plugg experienced a mishap when the binding came lose in midswing, allowing the rock to soar over him in a high arc before it fell to bash him in the head, ever since which he has walked funny. Yet many gossips point out that Plugg is all to eager to move in funny ways so as to draw attention to himself. Others think he’s a son-of-a-neanderthal bastard anyway. But don’t tell him you heard that from me.
Bottom line: The hammer earns four-and-a-half out of five opposable thumbs.
Nice time at horse farms. The horses like me because I scratch their heads and tell them they're wonderful. They chomped on my jacket: I'll have to wash it when I get home.
That is wonderful! I’m really tired this afternoon, and just decided to take a break to check email. I hadn’t gotten to The CSLF yet. 😂 Thank you, Marque!