first peoples meet

Gathering for the third time in the the Queen Pylta the Terrible Hotel's Grand Ballroom and Conference Suites, representatives of indigenous tribes from around the world met in in beautiful cosmopolitan Grig. “We are happy to be here again,” said U'u'tkik Bainbridge of the Greater Inupiaq Confederacy, an organization of Native Canadians. “As are we,” said Jerry Whitefoot of America's Western Plains Sioux while patting U'u'tkik on the shoulder affectionately; “it is not often that leaders and elders of Mother Earth's aboriginal groups can come together in such welcoming and safe surroundings.” The Queen Pylta the Terrible Hotel has received the highest structural integrity ratings from the United Nation's own Architectural Security Bureau, the only hotel in Central Asia built to such exacting standards. “During the Soviet occupation of this land, we used to have to meet here in relative secrecy,” said Ooundyesst Rovend, leader of the Nearflung Free Nations of Grigovia's own indigenous Yaelong tribes. He pointed at a group of individuals dressed in the manner of Native Siberians, saying, “and I remember planning guerrilla actions against our Socialist oppressors with those ladies and gentlemen over there, although we shelved our insurrections once the Poles toppled the Russians with their Solidarity campaign.” In addition to frequent exhibits of martial prowess and numerous prayer sessions and chanting circles, the event included scores of areas where basket-weaving and drum-making and similar Native practices were being taught. The highlight of Natives Gathering in Modern Grig (or NGMG) was the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, where attempts were made to hammer out a unified platform on the following topics: stabilizing and promoting harmony between all races, and all sexes; securing and protecting mineral and resource rights for the world's Aboriginal populations; supporting independence movements among First People nations; and preserving native cultural heritage through schooling of the young and promotion among all ages of traditional methods of procurement, dress, speech, and artistic expression. “I am eternally grateful to the Grig'v'an Ministry of Culture, which subsidized and helped plan the travel arrangements for me and the other economically-challenged Native Persons,” said Daniel O'ouloungo of the North-Bank Hawettha, a Congolese indigenous group. “What a beautiful thing is cooperation.”

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

encylopediamericanifesto: phaltweariness - dehydration

  Among the many serious dangers the smog rider faces daily is the risk of dehydration. A condition easy to overlook but deadly if ignored, the body's dehydration distress call resembles closely the distress call it makes to signal hunger; additional telltale signs of dehydration are crankiness and fatigue. A few reports say that within smog rider packs it is common for the incessantly whining and inexplicably binge-eating member to be forced to hydrate by the IPM (the Instant & Perpetual Militia, i.e. the smog-packs' ubiquitous, fully meritocratic agents of enforcement), however our trust in the source for these reports is shaken.

  Multiple trustworthy sources report that when cycling in desert climates the smog rider adjusts his body to the local variances for temperature and humidity, a somewhat risky process in which he trains his body to need less water than it needs in more northern-lying areas. The first step he takes in this process is to eat of the local soil, and to pledge his fealty to the spirits of the land, and to praise the things growing in it, and to celebrate the things scampering across its face (a curious custom akin to the practices of First People tribes). Once he has ingested of the local earth, he cuts back on water gradually until he needs only a liter of it a day, and perhaps a few ounces more if he should exercise vigorously.

  An active person and avid reader alike, the smog rider learned some of the eternal lessons of the desert by reading tales about Rommel and Lawrence of Arabia, tales of Westerners surviving in the desert on minimal amounts of water using methods they learned from the Bedouin people. (In fact, he considers himself deep down an adjunct member of the hard-scrabble group of desert dwelling bad-asses know as the Fremen, from in Frank Herbert's book Dune.)

  But he is not Fremen, and he is not Bedouin – he is a smog-riding street-art vagabond, a man free of scorn and haste whose heart is pure, and in whom there is no room for death.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp