WTF-ING F-ITTY F?

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051223/sc_nm/life_spoons_dc

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)

n a study at their own facility, a group of scientists from the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Melbourne secretly numbered 70 teaspoons and tracked their movements over five months.

Supporting their expectations, 80 percent of the spoons vanished during the period -- although those in private areas of the institute lasted nearly twice as long as those in communal sections.

"At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a workable population of 70 teaspoons," they wrote in Friday's festive edition of the British Medical Journal.

They said their research proved that teaspoons were an essential part of office life and the rapid rate of disappearance proved that this was under relentless assault.

Regretting that scientific literature was "strangely bereft" of teaspoon-related research, the scientists offered a few theories to explain the phenomenon.

Taking a tip from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, they suggested that the teaspoons were quietly migrating to a planet uniquely populated by "spoonoid" life forms living in a spoonish state of Nirvana.

They also offered the phenomenon of "resistentialism" in which inanimate objects like teaspoons have a natural aversion to humans.

On the other hand, they suggested, people might simply be taking them.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:18 (twenty years ago)

i can't believe this is a real article

― tres letraj (tehresa), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:21 (twenty years ago)

I can't believe I just read this. Insomnia's a bitch.

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:22 (twenty years ago)

yeah i saw this in the paper

― jim p. irrelevant (electricsound), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:23 (twenty years ago)

nathalie just read my mind. somehow i thought the thread title was about 50 Cent.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:24 (twenty years ago)

hey why begrudge people their desires to become CRAZY PERCUSSIONISTS ON A WHIM????

― maura (maura), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:32 (twenty years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/Spoonman.jpg/225px-Spoonman.jpg

― maura (maura), Saturday, 24 December 2005 05:32 (twenty years ago)

there was a thing about this on the radio yesterday. i was half-listening and half-amused, pleased to hear less spoons went missing from shared communal places than privately-owned ones, but i regret i was on the way out the door and turned the radio off just as the interviewer said "why are you so obsessed with spoons?" i turned it back on straight away but i was laughing too much and missed the answer :(

― emsk ( emsk), Saturday, 24 December 2005 09:23 (twenty years ago)

It's the other way around, with regard to private/communal losses.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 24 December 2005 09:47 (twenty years ago)

was it? i'm sure on r4 they said the other way... but i was only half-listening; perhaps i just heard what i wanted to hear.

― emsk ( emsk), Saturday, 24 December 2005 09:55 (twenty years ago)

I'm just going by the news item posted above.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 24 December 2005 12:35 (twenty years ago)

Maybe y'll are swimming in spoons and can afford to be so fucking blase about it all, but it's a serious problem here. I've had to make tea with a fork.

― Sasha (sgh), Saturday, 24 December 2005 13:14 (twenty years ago)

Did you also eat scrambled egg, with a comb, from a shoe?

― Trayce (trayce), Saturday, 24 December 2005 13:18 (twenty years ago)

NOT EVERY DAY

― Sasha (sgh), Saturday, 24 December 2005 13:20 (twenty years ago)

How many forkfulls of sugar do you take in your tea?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 24 December 2005 13:54 (twenty years ago)

There was this coffee bar in Detroit where I used to go and all the spoons kept disappearing there also, but that was because everyone who worked there had a drug problem.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Saturday, 24 December 2005 14:09 (twenty years ago)

clearly the elves (or possibly gnomes, but don't quote me on that) that steal these spoons are also heroin addicts, then.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 December 2005 14:19 (twenty years ago)

"And on the lighter side, Ling Ling, everyone's favorite panda, masturbated in front of visitors at the zoo tonight. And that's...the news."

― 'Twan (miccio), Saturday, 24 December 2005 14:22 (twenty years ago)

but did ling ling masturbate into a spoon? i hear its hard getting those crazy pandas to reproduce.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 December 2005 14:31 (twenty years ago)

Has anyone here actually stolen a spoon? I've taken napkins, maybe a beer glass or two, but a spoon?

― paulhw (paulhw), Saturday, 24 December 2005 21:53 (twenty years ago)

A friend of mine once stole silverwear for four people (as well as a teapot) from Bickford's over the course of a year.

― Laura H. (laurah), Sunday, 25 December 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

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