“And lo there will be tragedies, from the earth and from the sky and from the field, and nothing made by man will stop them.  Not even a fence.”- as told to the Prophet MO by the FSM.

Did you ever wonder what happened to the cellist (Mike Edwards) from the Electric Light Orchestra?  Wonder no more, my friend.  After hours of painstaking research, the Prophet MO has found the answer for you.  He’s dead.  Sorry to disappoint you.  But I have something that might cheer you up a bit.  He was killed by a round bale.  This is a true story.  I am nothing if not a teller of the truth.

Anyway, he was driving down a road in rural Minnesota.  I don’t know why.  One can safely assume he was headed elsewhere.  So, he’s driving down the road when a round bale comes rolling down a hill, crashes through a barbed wire fence and smashes him flat.  His last words were “I can’t get it off of my head.”  Not really.  Though I would have respected him a great deal if those had been his last words.  I mean, all of us have it coming one way or another.  You might as well retain your sense of humor on your way out.  I’ll try to remember that if I am ever lying on my deathbed.  Or being suffocated by a 1300 pound round bale.

I suppose you are thinking that death by round bale is an unlikely way to go.  Well, in the state of Minnesota at least seven people were eliminated by round bale in the years 1994-96.  That is way more than were killed by grizzly bears in the whole country during that span of time.  Yet, what are people more afraid of?  Grizzly bears.  This tells you the power of propaganda.  If I was a grizzly bear I would start an anti-round bale campaign on Facebook in order to set the record straight.  And this grizzly should send a link to my wife.

My wife is very fearful of grizzly bears.  Ironically, we don’t live within 1000 miles of the nearest grizzly bear.  Anyway, I suppose this is all moot as grizzly bears do not possess the manual dexterity to use Facebook.  Their exceptionally long claws are meant for digging and tearing, not checking up on what their old high school boyfriend is up to.

I wonder if Mike Edwards ever wondered how he would die.  Assuming he did, I’d bet a large sum of money that he never would have picked “Crushed to death by out of control round bale.”  It is much more likely that he would have chosen “Eaten by grizzly.”

Which just goes to show you the difference between perception and reality.  As a sidebar, Leonardo DiCaprio could make a sequel to the Revenant.  It could be called the Haymaker.  In this movie, an Amish man is run over by a round bale and left for dead by his Amish extended family.  Miraculously, this man survives his smushing and begins the long trek back to Pennsylvania to get his revenge.

The movie could also be called Revenant 2: The Retribution of Habbakuk.

Speaking of perception, Habbabuk isn’t even on the list of the top ten Amish names.  They are named Samuel and John and Leroy.  And occasionally Iddo.