Just who is "Tom" Holtz, anyway? (part 1 of 1)

[Larry Dunn <majestic_cheese@yahoo.com>]

This is part one of a one-part report on "Tom" Holtz.  You should read
this before you read part two, which does not exist.  Then go on to
not read part two.  Do not read the non-existant part two first.  I'm
serious here.

Tom Holtz.  "Tom" Holtz.  Yes, we know him as one of the
paleontologists on this list, a scientist with an especial interest in
legs, long ones, a researcher who found out some thing or other that
is rather difficult to understand about T. rex, and someone who
actively contributes his knowledge to this list.

Yes, actively contributes ... "knowledge."

Just who is this "active contributor?"  Should we not know something
MORE about him in order to better assess his "input" to this list?  To
put his discovery of that thing about T. rex, whatever it is, in
perspective?

(Diabolical laughter.)

Well, I, Ed DoberMan, have delved into the past, the archives, the
reports, classified government documents, the legends of certain South
Pacific Islanders, and the Newark Star Ledger.  I got results, and
here ... they are.

Holtz's early life is shrouded in mystery.  Some note that he first
appears on the scene with the passing of Willi Hennig -- coincidence?
-- and darkly opine that he is in fact the latest manifestaion of an
immortal being, living off of the blood of evolutionary taxonomists to
maintain his unnatural lucre.  Tellingly, he apparently sleeps in a
special sarcophagus constructed of burlap and plaster.

He first definitely emerges, under the name of "Big Tom Holtz," as a
member of an elite counter-terrorist unit.  His reasons for leaving
that unit are unclear, but he is rumored to have been ordered during a
museum hostage crisis to take a clear shot through the metatarsal of a
basal coelurosaur.

He next appears, as "Tom Holtz," known to the media, for some reason,
as "Tim Holtz," in the employ of the U.S. government, wearing
sunglasses, a dark blue suit and a SiG-Sauer in the field, and arguing
forcefully for the endothermy of certain planktons, announcing in an
outraged voice that "this should have been clear all along."

Apparently this did not annoy his co-workers and supervisors quite as
much as his constant calls for their undressing so that he could
ascertain "how their characters are distributed," and, most
unfortunately, the paper in SCIENCE concerning his study of his
disrobed supervisor, whom he referred to as "parsimonious in the
extreme."

Holtz soon found himself in Maryland, which he claimed was his final
true home, because, "as we all know, Catholics love dinosaurs."

Student testimony refers to him sometimes teaching in a Tyrannosaur
mask and threatening to "end the whole hunting/scavenging debate right
here and now" if the quality of student answers did not improve. 

One student alleges that another, a good friend, once let the word
"phylum" slip out in class and was found the next morning impaled on a
triceratops horn, quite quite dead.  Yet another student who
prematurely referred to "ornithomimids" in her final regularly writes
to her parents from the Gulag Archipelago.

Along the way, Holtz seems to have snared a wife, who he wooed with
such language as, "ah, what a gracile morph you are, my sweet" and
"your skull is so exquisitely preserved."

Finally, this reporter has himself channeled with Ramtha, who revealed
that Holtz has living trilobites in his septic tank, but will not
share the information with invertebrate paleontologists -- apparently,
he is still waiting for a grant to dig them out himself.

Needless to say, I do not reveal all of this in a bald attempt to
smear the "doctor" -- after all, I am posting this under a pseudonym
and not mentioning anything positive he's done in his entire life.  I
do this only in a quest to better understand his "contributions" to
science.  Got it?

Next hatchet job, I mean, exploration: George Olshevsky, who, I have
discovered, regularly votes for Lenora Fulani ....

Ed Doberman
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