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Sporks: The Forgotten Utensils
 | | This is a spork, and this is how you use it. | Many many years ago, a man named Lewis Carrol wrote a book called "Alice in Wonderland". As you may know, this book contained the first mention of what is now known as the modern day spork. However, back then, it carried the name of "runcible spoon". Today, spork technology has increased to the point where sporks are aggressively used to dominate market share in fast food restaurants. In fact, some restaurants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell use sporks almost exclusively. As you can see, the spork is very much an important part of 21st century life. A spork is an unusual dining utensil that is a combination of a spoon and a fork. Essentially, it is a spoon with several tines at the end, making it useful as both a spoon and a fork...in theory, anyway. However, a spork can be more difficult to master than even the formidable chopstick. It is difficult to use for eating noodles, because the tines of a spork are not long enough to grasp the noodle properly. Similarly, it cannot really be used for beef, because the tines do not penetrate the meat deep enough to have a firm grasp on it. Even so, the spork has many day to day uses, such as creating spoon men with hair, eating semisolids such as coleslaw, and simply playing around with.
 | | Even prominent politicians can be found using the spork. | Many theories have been created to explain the origin of the spork. One theory is that in the forties, after the US had occupied Japan after WW2, General McArthur declared that the use of chopsticks was "uncivilized", and that the conquered Japanese should be forced to follow the rest of the world in using the spoon and the fork. US and Japanese hostilities were high, naturally, and fearing that the Japanese might revolt using forks, dedicated scientists devised a new eating utensil that was useful, but harmless. Another theory is more insidious and sinister. In the sixties, sporks simply started appearing in restaurants. They first spread to KFC, then to Taco Bell, and even appeared in some chains of McDonald's. Nobody knew where they had come from. Nobody knew when they would leave. Something had to be done, but everyone was too afraid of looking stupid to do anything about it. Then, sporks disappeared from restaurants again. Nobody knows why, but it seems that the sporks began to disappear after PepsiCo's buyout of all these restaurants....
Like the world of computers, the world of sporks has many terms and philosophies unique to itself. The most important of these is the term "NSU". NSU refers to the non spork users. It doesn't really refer to those who don't use sporks, but rather, refers to those that cannot use sporks and ask for forks and spoons instead. Another important term is "fooning". Fooning is a process where you carefully invert the spoon part of the spork. When done correctly, the spork will retain its foon shape. Similarly, spacking is the term referring to the cracking sound after unfooning a spork. In addition to spork terms, there are numerous spork philosophies. Here are some haiku poems written by spork diehards: All bow to the spork
Lovely plastic work of art
In rainbow colors
--Eric Sharwell
I am the spork man
Missing my odd-numbered teeth
Left by the wayside
--Captain Sarcastic
Because spork users are easily offended (mainly because they do nothing but analyze various ways of using<
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