The Ancient Origins

The Ancient Origins of the
Bicentennial Underwater Quarter Toss

SPACE is big, really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind–bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to SPACE.

Listen. SPACE is not merely an intellectual concept in the variation in relatedness of universe objects… but the SPACE potential is truly ultimate only on the absolute level.

SPACE is more than 800,000 years old.
Relatively, the underwater quarter-toss is a recent innovation.

The modern version of the quarter-toss began almost inadvertently, but first some background.


SPACE began early in human history; the year was roughly 933,156 BC.

Under the lush palms of Ma´tan Bishãrah, three beings entered into an unprecedented agreement.

One was Eieio, the Cyclops, who watched over many men near the western edge of civilization.
Also present was Lilith, who was said to share powers with the Ancients of Days.
Finally there was Gern, a wandering Badonan.

For reasons quite their own, each desired the answers to certain ultimate questions.

Knowing full well what lay beneath the ground on which they were standing, the three took a solemn oath to unearth the answer to life, the universe and everything, no matter how many incarnations it might take.


The next crucial incident occurred in 35,915 BC in Macias Nguema Biyogo.

Little is known about this singularly significant event; nearly all records were lost, buried forever under the sea.

We do know that three prominent citizens, Kerapht, Ingel-rild and Velkor, devised a plan by which they, or those who came after, would be able to decode the answer when it appeared, and that they left behind forty–two round metal objects glistening in the garden mist.

Some point to this as the beginning of the coin–toss ritual, but that argument is fellatious.
We don’t known what those objects signified, but they were not coins.
This incident predates the use of money by nearly 13,000 years.


The coin-toss actually dates back to 356 BC and the village of Poti, in what is now the Republic of Gruzinskaja.

Thesben, an absurdist, and Flaxseed, a sentry, were examining an ancient scroll that Figlett, an early carpetbagger, had brought from distant lands.

In a strange and nearly forgotten tongue, it described the search for the answer to life, the universe and everything.

As far as they could determine, some sort of underground mechanism had been working on the problem for some time.

Based on an unfortunate misreading of a particularly subtle idiom, Thesben and Flaxseed thought they were supposed to toss forty-two sheckels on mid–summer’s eve in order to find out the answer.

Without dwelling too much on tedious details, suffice it to say that this ritual was repeated on the banks of the Black Sea for hundreds of years.


On June 21, 1974, exactly seven years after the most recent inception of SPACE, three Spaceniques gathered in the big meadow of Shenandoah National Park.

It was raining like crazy, a dreary reminder of times past.

Amid the rain and smoke it was decided that flowers should be planted here, as well as fruit trees, hemp, dogwood and sequoia.

We searched our pockets, and finding not the proper seeds, we decided to substitute some other commodity “just this once.”

And so, dripping wet but not discouraged, mumbling something about rendering unto Caesar, we cast our commemorative coins toward the overcast heavens, mimicking the ancient ritual!

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