“Next you’re going to tell me a school has a function other than storing weapons to use against Jews.”

Tehran, November 22 – Technical specialists in Iran’s capital sent a ripple through the country’s construction industry Tuesday morning with the revelation that cranes, from which homosexuals are hanged in public, can also be used in the construction field to move heavy or large objects. Who’d have thought it? It appears that somewhat miraculously they’ve discovered a way to move differing steel beam sizes. Gone are the days of donkeys and wood-rolling.

A group of engineers and architects published an article in a local Iranian technical journal this week to the effect that the physical properties and capabilities of construction cranes appear suitable for the lifting and moving of materials and equipment used in construction or renovation of tall buildings. In fact, they posited, such cranes might even find use in clearing large accumulations of debris, such as in salvage or mining operations. The article proposes allocating several of the country’s gay-hanging cranes for purposes of evaluation.

If confirmed, the notion carries the potential to save hundreds of thousands of man-hours each year, in addition to easing the process of erecting buildings. This morning (Wednesday) the Ministry of Housing announced that a team of government-appointed experts is expected to form and lead an investigation into the feasibility of adapting cranes to that secondary function.

Construction industry experts called the discovery earth-shattering. “Next you’re going to tell me a school has a function other than storing weapons to use against Jews,” blurted Hassan Saddegh, who has managed a construction company in Isfahan for twenty years. “I mean, I see the numbers work, and I think I’ve seen photos of cranes at construction sites elsewhere in the world, but I never really made the connection. This could be big.”

One the challenges, the experts note, lies in training crane operators to perform a function other than hanging gay men. “I could get retrained, I suppose,” offered Reza, 44, an operator in Qom. “But it’s a little more daunting than the retraining I had to undergo a few years ago when we started hanging not just gay men but transgender and lesbian people. It’s possible some of the guys, especially the older ones, won’t want to go through the course, since it’s such a departure from everything they’ve ever done, but I’m open to it. More work opportunities, right?”

Some voiced confusion at the technical aspects of the change. “So do we take the homos off the cranes first, or what?” wondered Ali, 38, of Meshed. “Do we wait till they’re dead? I hear talk of using cranes to demolish condemned buildings, and I’m unclear on whether the gay guy is attached to the wrecking-ball thing or what. I’d be grateful to get clarity on this.”

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PreOccupied Territory

PreOccupied Territory writes the news a few days in advance, because nothing we can think of is too absurd to happen in the Middle East.