The Origin Of The cliptractor™️

By now the question that must surely be on everyone’s mind is going to be answered.  The uses of the cliptractor™️ are so numerous.  Of course there are the gematria applications.  You never know when you might need to get a rough idea of a Freemasonry compass not being close to 47 degrees.  You never know when a golf green claimed to be flat is actually shown by your cliptractor™️ to be anything but flat.  Then there’s cleaning earwax (not recommended), stirring soup, a toy spaceship substitute (not recommended for young children), a paperweight, etc....  Oh, and clipping toenails.  But how did this remarkable invention come to be?

The big clue is in the name, taking heed that indeed it is the cliptractor™️ and not the more natural Cliptractor™️.  Sir Francis Bacon.

One day while golfing with his buddy, Sir William Shakespeare, Francis came upon a golf green that was in particularly shoddy condition.  It seems the greenskeeper had not had sufficient time to sober up and had left the green of the 13th hole at Emsworth Commons half mowed.  There was a lot riding on the outcome of this game - namely a shopping spree at CastleMart.  A wager that had arisen after an argument over whether the proper spelling was Castlemart or as Bacon insisted, CastleMart, due to the enormous gematria implications of capital letters in the Bacon derived ciphers.

The greenskeeper was at the course, yet in no condition to manicure the 13th hole.  As it was still only 5am in a time zone SOMEWHERE in the world, no other grounds maintenance crew was available and Castlemart, or CastleMart, was closed.  Therefore, no chance to make a quick trip and buy a gas powered John Harte riding tractor to finish the job themselves.

Both Bill and Frank (which he hated to be called, so Bill made a point of using at every opportunity) agreed it would be an unfair test of skill to have the unlucky 13th hole maybe decide the wager by not being “up to snuff”.

Fortunately for the world Francis had his battery operated toenail clippers with him.  As the only thing between the two of them having something close to a grass cutting edge, the cliptractor™️ was born.  After laboriously cutting down each remaining uncut blade on the green the match proceeded.  And in the gematria tradition of ignoring misses on different elisions, ironically ended in a tie.  Further irony was provided by the cutting taking so long that not only had Castlemart, or CastleMart, opened hours before the resumption of the game that the entire Castlemart, or CastleMart, staff had gathered to watch.  In fact, the phrase “grass clippings” is a shortened version of the formal and more correct, “grass cliptractorings”.

The use for measuring angles came later.  To commemorate this day and the return to speaking terms Bill and Frank reached, Bill commissioned the painting as seen in this post:
The hills are alive with the lack of visual acuity
A further rift in Bill and Frank’s relationship was avoided after they began to bicker over whether the green was sloped or not.  By simply lining up the file component of his wondrous cliptractor™️ with the base of the painting they could see a quite prominent, hilly slope.

——————————————————————————-

At best you can argue how much slope there is close to the hole, but to make it challenging I doubt truly flat, level golf greens exist.  Between Glass Wizard’s Ivanka’s flag pointing misfire, the degrees in the compass and this I’m really worried if you actually can’t see properly.