on the ancient Jailun

(This excerpt is said to belong to a lost passage of Herodotus's book, the Histories, regarding the Yaelong tribes that reside in the country known today as Grigovia.)

And then, after the emissaries from the East had finally left, and while our party was preparing to make camp for the night, men dressed in strange garb – brightly mottled animal skins – stole silently from the brush, as if they were spirits. We had chosen the grounds to rest because they neighbored cool, flowing springs, and because they sat in a small valley that our native guide said would shelter us from the heavy, dangerous winds for which the region is known. As soon as these men appeared, our guides' women, who otherwise never spoke, wailed in unison, and, cowering fearfully, begged us not to touch them, lest, the women claimed, we become tainted by their strange and powerful sorcery. After much difficulty in finding a common tongue, we, however, were able to speak with these spirit-like men, who called themselves Jailun; they were interlopers just as we were, and had no plans to kill us for trespassing on sacred ground, as we had initially feared. They told us of their home in a mountainous region with many valleys that lay north of the lands of the Eastern emperor, whom they knew well, as he had tried, they said, repeatedly yet each time unsuccessfully, to subjugate them – first by warfare, then by bribery, and then by arranged marriages. Each time they had denied the emperor his advances, and stayed always free of the yoke of foreign rule – by warring with him, by refusing his gifts, and by putting to death the women he sent. While we were breaking bread with these quiet men who were all armed with long, slender poles-axes and curious weighted throwing ropes, a male child – the son of a lesser guide – was carried off in the talons of a mighty eagle, and never seen again. All who had witnessed the event agreed that it was a bad omen, and a warning not to walk with a loping gait similar to that of the abducted child.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

goodbye, national victory garden month

Contrary to attempts by lobbyists hired by sellers and manufacturers of grilling-related materials, they who make and market charcoal, compressed natural gas, roll-away cooking tops, and the flesh of animals, to have the federal government of the United States of America officially designate the month of May something as utterly foolish as National Grilling Month, that selfsame government has come to its senses and passed such legislation as is necessary to promote the common citizen's assistance in her nation's various war efforts. By designating May as National Victory Garden Month (and striking down previous efforts to hoist aloft such a petty, consumption-driven, non-victory-related activity as lighting a fire in one's yard and heating upon that fire meat, or vegetables), the federal government has recognized, and dutifully underlined, the role that each and every citizen in expected to play in helping her nation to end the multiple acts of aggression it initiated – against sovereign foreign peoples who had not really done anything bad – swiftly and without too much additional bloodshed.

Championed via a bi-partisan panel filled with the more intelligent, forward-thinking, non-corruptible members of the U.S. House and Senate, National Victory Garden Month (NVGM) will feature a nation-wide series of classes (held at most United States Postal Service locations) to teach the People how to grow sustainable, organic foods in Their own square-foot gardens. Furthermore, NVGM will feature the distribution of organic, heirloom seeds and the distribution of high-quality gardening tools made in America by proud, upstanding, victory-conscious citizens, not by aloof foreigners who care nothing for this nation's success in her armed conflicts. Additionally, good, dark soil, and the materials needed to make raised beds, will be available for pick-up at any of the NVGM certified, small-scale mom-and-pop stores that have survived, over the last decades, the Assault of the Big Discount Retailers, which have reduced our once-high wages, lessened our once-high standards of living, and generally helped to make America a more homogeneous, worse place, a place all but devoid of self-sufficient, self-respecting individuals who actually reuse things.

Gone are the days when the good honest people of this nation were asked to do little else than to burn things and to stand around eating fatty burgers and drinking warm beer; arrived are the days when we as individuals are given the tools to guarantee victory, when we are expected to do our part in shaping for America, for ourselves, for our children's children's children, and for the world, a better, greener, and more sustainable future. So please, my good honest fellow ketchup-eaters – rip out your backyard BBQ and plant a garden in its place; sink your hands into a cool heap of soil instead of digging those hands into the couch cushions in search of your TV's remote control. Every piece of steel you do not absolutely Have To have made into a ride-along lawnmower can be used by our brave warriors overseas; every scrap of leather you don't absolutely Have To have made into a reclining armchair can benefit our proud claw-lads and talon-lasses. Together, we can fight the dangers of consumption for the sake of consumption while helping our boys and girls to win the wars we have asked them to fight for us. Arise, masses chewing lazily at your bits – together, we shall can make America a better place for all.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

creativity supposedly ”still valid”

According to a report released recently by the office of the rear-secretary for Art-Specific Studies Among Urban American Populations (ASSAUAP), spontaneously occurring artistic creativity performed by individuals who are not paid specifically to be creative is still necessary for sustaining an upbeat, positive national consciousness. “We could not believe it, either,” said the project's lead researcher, Charong K. Charondibadi. “It did not matter how we tried to skew the numbers, or how many times we had those Bangladeshi typists re-enter the data – it turns out that uncompensated creativity matters, somehow.” The study, which bears the title, “Is creativity still valid?” furthermore indicates that works of art made and applied by individuals known as street artists enliven the General Public and enhances Its mood to such a large degree that all efforts to date to eradicate graffiti have been more detrimental to the continuing economic survival and spiritual buoyancy of the U.S.A. than the rise of the military industrial complex (which demands a state of perpetual war), the proliferation of the television (which has destroyed the art storytelling in this country), and the presidency of George W. Bush (which, via the Patriot Act, annihilated the Constitutional protections), combined.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Woman, mother, “Has things sewn up nicely.”

Reading from a prepared statement to an unsuspecting crowd of her siblings and other relatives who had gathered in commemoration of one death or another, Violetta D. Juk, 28, mother of two girls and a boy who now lives outside of Wilkes-Barre Scranton, Pennsylvania, said, with due gravity and poise, “Yes, you all heard correctly, and this is not a hoax or a joke, nor is it vainglorious bluster. I, little old cousin Vio – buddy, crying-shoulder, and confidant of yore – I have reached a plateau that I have been striving for for some years now, and things are nearly completely sewn up.” With a nearly invisible flick of the hand, Violetta signaled to her two girls, who swept in from a side room – where they had been obviously waiting – carrying their toddler brother, Fredirik, on a chair between them, paraded with him around the table of seated and perplexed adults, and exited without explaining themselves or making much in the way of unnecessary noise.

“Do you see?” Violetta said into the void left by her children's nearly silent passage. “Do you all get it now? I am telling you guys, this is what I have been trying to make clear to you all these years. It is, truly, possible, and, do you all see how very happy I am? How well Hildebrand and June managed with their little brother on that chair? Yes, dear family mine, yes, it is all coming together nicely.”

After the get-together had broken up, while everyone was packing up their cars and generally getting ready to disperse, Violetta was waylaid by a certain Uncle Darius, who was more interested, however, in obtaining her recipe for light and flaky pie crust than in listening to her nuanced, mysterious, and apparently sewing-related proclamations.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on 5

Five fingers make the hand, five toes the foot, and five senses cloud the cerebral interface. Can we expect this crazy world to stop turning? Or, perhaps, let us simply wait five minutes and remind ourselves that everything is as it should be, the perfect expression of That Which Cannot Be Named. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

MTV 4 re-airs "Corn-Cribs"

This past Mother's Day weekend, slotted in prime-time advertising segments across its various networks, MTV ran a series of ads promoting the re-release of its semi-hit-series, Corn Cribs. A show that focuses on revamped, and, sometimes, even completely rebuilt, bins for keeping and for drying entire ears of corn (so as to improve their self-life and to reduce moisture-related transportation costs), Corn Cribs has been derided by critics for the fact that financial and temporal resources that could have been spent uplifting the poor or feeding the hungry was instead wasted following camera-unready non-celebrities around and filming them as they pointed out various features of their supposedly interesting maize-retainment-structures. Fans of the show, who hail predominately from the Southern and the Midwestern states, praised MTV networks on agriculture-related web-sites and entertainment-related, Internet-based message-boards alike for taking the chance on such a far-out concept that focuses on such a seemingly mundane aspect of everyday farming life. Said MTV chief executive Brandon D. “the Hiff” Hiffelbottom, “We realized that, due to the fact that Americans have become such worthless pieces of shit with so much free time on their hands that they will actually sit down and watch a show about, of all things, spruced-up and pimped-out corn silos, we decided to re-air all seven seasons of Corn-Cribs.”

According to unconfirmed reports, upon hearing the news, America's more upstanding and self-respecting citizens wept openly, with shame.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

in labyrinthine Grig

A vast, interconnected network of tunnels stretches underneath this bustling city of 1.75 millions of industrious Grigovians. In nearly every possible direction (except, generally, up) run an unknowable number of branches, tunnels, shafts, holes, pits, pit-falls, and dead-ends that are not mapped, well-ventilated, secured, water-tight, stable, or safe. While these tunnels are a boon to this metropolis that is bisected by the meandering, brownish-gray Yalung River, drawing tourists in search of mythical cities of the underworld, their great extent and sheer length have proven a nightmarish hindrance to every military force that has tried to take Grig during its nearly eight-hundred-year history.

Rolls of vellum discovered in a walled-off section of tunnel in the mid-1980s during construction of a Soviet-style housing block in Grig's Old City hint that the first tunnel may have been dug by Grigov the Watchful himself. The man in whose honor the nation is named, according to a new translation of these recently-restored vellum sheets, dug “a small recess in the larger mound by the four oak-trees so as to have somewhere to store all of these good and shapely tubers.” It is not clear from the ancient texts just what type of tubers he had obtained, but what may have started as a small recess now stretches from the banks of the Yalung to the very foothills of the Yiptlong massif itself. So extensive is this network, and so wide some of its larger tunnels, that it serves as bazaar, swap-meet, and marketplace for much of Grigovia's gray economy, which is suspected to be at least three times larger, and far more lively, than all of the country's above-ground, legitimate economic activity combined. Unconfirmed reports leaked by the U.S. State Department indicate that a majority of the fuel, mounts, firearms, provisions, and other such military gear that reaches the brave and heroic warriors of the various Yaelong tribes travels through the innumerable branches of this vast underground network of passageways.

While the Yaelong tribes were known even to Herodotus, who mentions them in his book, the Histories, a reference to the country now known as the Glorious Republic of Grigovia first appears in a Pashtun census from the year 1256, which says, roughly, “Avoid traversing the north-western Yplyn mountains, as a fierce people led by a priest-king named Krykuv guard all passes there with great diligence.“ Grigovia's Ministry of Internal Information Gathering, or MIIG, in a recent statement broadcast via short-wave radio, has warned all foreigners – especially foolhardy Americans – that any and all attempts to take the city of Grig, or to invade Grigovia, are, because of the all of the tunnels, and due to Grigovians' inherent fierceness and proven ability to resist invasion, doomed to fail. The statement concluded with, “Do not even try, you stupid, imperialist, capitalist, Yankee swine, because we, and our cozy tunnels, are ready, and waiting. Do you remember Viet-Nam? Imagine everything brown and covered in snow, and children leaping at you with knives in their teeth.”

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Man, 34, “Sees clearly, now.”

In the wake of his first ever solo spring-cleaning (during which, however, according to a subsequent eye-witness report, only a few of the dirtiest windows were washed, and only some portions of the wall-to-wall carpet received a merely mediocre vacuuming), Darius Gordon Crickleburg, 34, of Waynesboro, NC, finished feeding the spring-loaded electrical cord into the built-in storage compartment of his brand new vacuum-cleaner, and stepped back to view his handiwork. “The rains are gone, now, and I can see clearly. It all seems so much nicer – all the plants look so much more green, and my house is no longer a total pigsty. I believe I shall write a song about this monumental event in my life,” Mr. Crickleburg said as he settled into the reclining lounge chair he had moved to the garage some years earlier, during the last, then-wife-assisted spring cleaning, and never retrieved. “Look at that,” he continued, pointing out of the window at a house across the street. “I can see Mrs. Chuhsin-Handell's house very well, and all of her begonias look so colorful, and pretty.”

Before said monumental event, very little light penetrated into the dark, dank recesses of Darius' double-wide home, which, since his wife left him last fall for a female shipping clerk from Spokane, has been but infrequently kept up. “The last six months, since Rachel left, have been rough, but the dark clouds seem to be gone, and I don't feel quite as down on my luck as I did before. It looks to be a bright day, outside, a day of abundant sunshine. It is as if I can see all obstructions, all obstacles, that stand in my path, and I can not only see them, I know how to surmount them – what to do about them.” Things continued to look up, and to run smoothly throughout the day, until sunset, however, when Mr. Crickleburg purchased a case of beer from the corner store, and fell to drinking.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

North Carolina announces Fag-Out 2012

Come one, come all, to Fag-Out 2012, and help us get the Fags Out! Billed as America's largest concerted action against homosexuality, lesbianism, and freedom since that cunt Liberty first sneezed, this will be the righteous killing-spree demanded by our bloodthirsty God. We shall drive the queers, the screwballs, and the homos out of this state – and out of the whole goshdurn South – first by casually banning gay marriage, then by passing and enforcing laws based on those found in Leviticus 20 of the Old Testament. As per the explicit, clearly-worded instructions of terrible god YHWH, it is the duty of every Christian to kill, murder, put to death, and otherwise end the life of any man sleeping with another man as he would sleep with a woman. Fuck the teachings of Jesus Christ, who never once said that marriage Had To Be between a man and a woman, or, who, for that matter, never actually spoke of homosexuality as evil, or bad – we are going old-school on this one, unleashing the fury of that most jealous and spiteful of gods, Jehovah, with a fierce vengeance and unrelenting fury not seen since He wreaked His blessed genocide upon the inhabitants of Jericho.

It was not enough for us to call homosexuality a sin; we were not satisfied with ridiculing and occasionally beating on those damn dirty fairies; our efforts to marginalize these our honest, upright fellow Americans in other, less obvious ways, simply did not go far enough; no, we had to pass laws to make them officially and legally Worth Less Than Everyone Else (and lacking of equal treatment under the law). And now, we finally get to start killing them. Please, concerned citizens of North Carolina, denizens of the Southern states, please, if you are not a filthy fucking faggot, please mark your front door with three large black X's, and do not interfere if you see us dragging your lesbian neighbors out of their homes by the hair and hacking their heads off in the streets using common digging shovels. Please, stay inside, watch your TV, have another snack, and don't forget to send your checks to support the blessed, righteous ministry of your favorite televangelist. If you want to get involved, if you want to bludgeon a stinking homo to death without worrying about others mistaking it for a human being, go on down and get deputized at your local police station, thus joining our honorable ranks and perpetuating the proud tradition of the Leviticus 20 Liberator (c), such honest, caring people as have been “liberating the souls of gays to Hell since well before the birth of Christ."

So join us for Fag-Out 2012: put a shine on your killin' boots, a razor's edge on that pig-sticker, and leave your ability to reason and any remaining shred of common sense at home, 'cuz we got more Freedoms to rescind, and a whole bunch of pillow-biters and rug-munchers to put out of their miserable fucking lives.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

New Hampshire secedes

Last Tuesday, in Concord, the capital of this now-sovereign nation of 1.3 million individuals, the decision was announced to bow quietly out of the Union of American States. Initiated by a referendum in which 98% of the voting population supported secession (and inspired by New Hampshire's history as the first post-colonial sovereign nation in the Americas), the move comes at a time of increasing national and international doubt over the feasibility of the Union in general. During a brief ceremony completely devoid of fanfare, bluster, or celebration, the governor for the state, a Dr. Florentine B. Mistleblanch, declared, “For too long have we citizens of the once fine state of New Hampshire – and the now fine nation of Nu-Hemp-Sure – merely payed lip service to our motto, 'Live free or die.' Since all persons who are alive at this time will soon be totally and completely free of any and all outside interference, this shall cease to be just a slogan, and it will become a reality.”

Polls conducted in the wake of last fall's referendum showed that individuals living in this ex-state wanted nothing to do with such other states as North Carolina, a state that is currently in the process of passing laws to codify marriage according to hard-line Christian rules. (As of press-time, Christianity is merely one religion among many thousands of different religions practiced in America; it is neither the nation's founding religion nor its dominant religion.) Said governor Mistleblanch while unlocking her bicycle from a nearby stop-sign, “We don't want to be lumped together in the minds of the world with leaders seeking to overthrow reason; we do not care to associate with madmen looking to rule according to one – and only one – religious codex; and we want nothing to do with lunatics who abolish the principles of liberty and democracy by installing and maintaining theocratic rule. We invite the North Carolinians to do as they please, but we proud denizens of the Hempen-Shire want nothing to do with such crazy, freedom-destroying schemes.”

Nu-Hemp-Sure is the world's newest nation, and the fourth – following Canada, Puerto Rico, and Panama – to officially renounce, rescind, or refuse membership in the crumbling, tyrannical, and politically-corrupted collection of – formerly United – States of America.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

books “totally worthless,” teenager says

Speaking from the comfort of his parent's leather sofa, in a room illuminated by coal-generated electricity, and stopping often to stare at a small, hand-held electronic device, 19-year-old Samuell K. Vost said, just this past Monday, that books are totally worthless. “Look at this new smart-phone I got for my birthday last month,” he said, poking at the pocket computer that never seemed to leave his hand. “I can look up stuff on it, and I can get on the Internet and maybe chat with people I don't even know who live in, like, China and stuff. I don't, but I could, and anyway, I couldn't do any of this stuff with, like, a paper book.”

The book is a physical medium for storing and sharing information that was popular from the dawn of human civilization well into the beginning of the 21st century. Since the advent of man-portable external gadgets of high sophistication and tremendous computing power, large numbers of people – even entire generations – have stopped storing information in the man-portable internal computer of high sophistication and tremendous computing power known as the Brain, preferring rather to rely on devices that stop working when they get wet, when they are dropped, and when their batteries die. Said young master Vost over his shoulder while urinating standing up, “With my new phone, I can find anyone, see anything, watch any movie, and visit any place on Earth I want to, without leaving that fine suede couch you saw in the living-room.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he accidentally dropped the device in the toilet, destroying it. Desperate, he tried to order a new phone using the desktop computer in the workroom, but, just as he was about to complete the transaction, the electrical storm that had been raging outside hit a transformer box, knocking out all electrical power in the neighborhood and severing his connection to the World-Wide-Web. Alone, computer-less, and confronted with total darkness for the first time in a decade, Samuell stumbled around blindly, searching in vain for a flashlight. “I normally use my phone to light the way,” he said from a curled-up heap by the basement staircase. “I don't even think we have flashlights in the house, or in the garage. I wish my phone worked so I could call for help, or watch a tutorial video on how to use the breaker-box in the basement. I don't know anyone's telephone numbers, not even my parents'. Shit,” he said dejectedly, “I may be in trouble.”

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

a week with the Yaelong

(or, having a whorphan of a time with marauders)

My first night in the Lower Yalung Valley is cold, damp, and filled with the haunting calls of the yip-yip-yend, Grigovia's first official national animal. For the next week, I shall be accompanying the Czabpamndt, one of four dedicated scouting parties for the fiercely independent, semi-nomadic warriors known as the Yaelong. Bandits feared since before the time of Alexander the Great, the Yaelong recently received international attention – and widespread acclaim – for their vehement refusal to submit to Yankee demands for the counting of their numbers, the video-taping of their traditional dances, the recording of their hunting calls, and that they finally settle down in tastefully-furnished, prefabricated structures built by nice civilian contractors from Texas; in truth, however, they have for untold centuries protected their rights – and their verdant, mountainous valleys – from most every incursion by, “idiotic, ignorant outsiders such as servile Persians, snooty Englishmen, meddlesome Soviets, and, now, capitalistic Americans.”

Due to its unique location and great age, the Lower Yalung Valley is home to many treasures, among them the czabtyip (a local spice-drug plant), the yip-yip-yend (a goat-like beast prized for its single horn, tender flesh, and dazzling coat), and, due to its location in the eastern Caucasus mountains, the vast deposits of rare-earth-minerals such as lithium, high-grade silicone, and inert, rock-bound hydrogen. The area is also known for its pristine aquifers and crisp, cold-running mountain streams that appear to keep the Yaelong in good health regardless of their hard-charging, marauding ways and a nearly universal addiction to czabtlan, a tart, intoxicating, and mildly hallucinogenic beverage made using czabtyip root.

On the sixth day of my visit, we climb – precariously – up to a string of sheltered glens that do not appear on any of my maps. We meander from spot to spot, with the Yaelong pausing to tend semi-wild, seemingly-perennial crops along the way. For hours we walk in silence, soaking up such rays of sunlight that manage to penetrate the thick overhead canopy of trees. We keep our eyes peeled for the poisonous harsh-vine, which strikes with a whip-like lash, and speak little so as to listen for predators such as cougar, bear, or man. As I am preparing, the next morning, to leave for the Glorious Republic of Grigovia's capital, Grig, Yhend Yipyend, the self-educated and democratically-elected leader of the Western Lower Yalung Yaelong, tells me, “We did not assist the Russians when they asked for our help to fight our neighbors, and we shall help neither the Americans nor the Islamists; we said the same thing to the clean-faced Yankee missionaries that we told the bearded Saudi jihadists: 'Please, leave us alone,' we said, 'please, everyone, please go fuck yourselves and stop trying to interfere with our ancient and long-standing traditions.' We have no problem with the way other people go about their business, and we expect them to leave us alone – on own our lands, in our own valleys – and that they respect our right to go about our business as we please.” Mr. Yipyend is being considered for various peace prizes, including a Nobel, and one from the United Nations.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on May-Day 2012

Awaken, slumbering masses of the world, and unite as one! Today is our day, and this year is our year. Let us read the Communist Manifesto, and the Declaration of Independence, gaining from their few pages such common purpose as to unite us all. Let us fight, side by side, to secure the rights that we liberated and emancipated persons deserve equally. Let us combat corruption, avarice, sloth, and pride – first in our own lives, then in our families, communities, societies, and nations. Let us foster a spirit of cooperation, a zeal for self-sacrifice, a yearning for self-sufficiency, and a love for all things living and inert – first in our own lives, then in our families, communities, societies, and nations.

Together, friends, together we can beat back the rising tide of hatred and discontent that still threatens to swamp our hearts with fear; together, we can rid the world of the pettiness of conspicuous consumption, of the cruelty of wage-slavery, and of the fallacy of unchecked environmental degradation; together, we can truly make of many, one, of all the different peoples of this earth One People sharing equally – with full stomachs, clothed backs, and bright and shining smiles – of her lush and abundant gifts. So, on this perfect, sunny Spring day, let us fill our hearts with joy, basking in the glow of our growing righteous fury.

Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit