somewhat-royal honeymoon

Thallandia Yündlennd married Reginald Augustus Steele for a second time this past weekend, in Grig, capital of Grigovia. In this small, Central Asian nation, tradition dictates that bride and groom state in the presence of a witness (of their choosing) to uphold and protect the Life, Liberty, and Property of the other person; once they and the witness have signed the Statement of Loving and Voluntary Partnership, the couple is officially married. (Religious organizations are forbidden from interfering with marriage; it is a secular affair. Either party may leave a marriage at any time and for any reason, but most pairs stay hitched because, according to nearly every twosome interviewed for this story, “we wouldn't have wed in the first place if we didn't plan on sticking together.” Grigovia's court system is staunchly egalitarian – in cases of divorce, children older than 13 years can choose which parent to live with whereas younger offspring go to the more psychologically stable person [with the less stable person receiving visitation rights]; property and debt are split equally. Marriage between couples of the same sex has been legal in Grigovia since 1964.)

After signing the necessary documents, the princess and Mr. Steele drank two beers each, smashing the bottles at the bottom of a concrete staircase behind City Hall (where Statements of Partnership are stored). Then, they bicycled two miles to Grig's main train station and purchased second-class tickets to the western city of Pyltagrad. (The Grigovian royal house has enjoyed only symbolic significance since Thallandia's great-grandfather abdicated in 1912 in order to return the right of self-government to his people.) After a few nights at one of Pyltagrad's many fine vineyards, the couple traveled east, to Gar Nuuzsh, where they stayed for a week with Thallandia's parents. (While there, the not-so-newlyweds set up a website with pictures and videos from their first honeymoon, most of which they spent backpacking through California's Sierra Nevada mountain range.) Upon meeting his son-in-law in person for the first time, King Erdogassdt Yündlennd said, merely, “Hrm.”

The wedding comes at an already joyous time for Grigovia. Unemployment is the lowest it's been in four decades, health-care is universal and efficient, and a new robotic hybrid-electric bus system services even the most secluded hamlet. “The Banoyend [Grigovians' name for themselves] are fair, but they can be brutal,” Reginald Steele said. “Throughout their history, they have expelled foreign usurpers and invading armies alike with legendary ferocity while showing kindness and generosity to neighbors in need. The princess and I plan to use our natural-born abilities to improve the lives of as many Grigovians as we can, she with her engineering skills and I with my art. We are easing our way into society humbly and patiently, so as not to stoke anyone's ire.” As part of the somewhat-royal couple's gift to the Grigovian people and in an effort to promote peaceful trade between peoples, they will spend next Spring clearing land mines sowed by Soviet forces in the mountain passes that lead into Afghanistan. Princess Thallandia is expecting twins.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Grigovia establishes preserve

In efforts aimed to negate growing pressure from a half dozen American-owned consortia to open their pristine high valleys to nub-logging for hardwoods and strip-mining for precious-earth-metals, the government of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) – authorized by a majority of its citizens, 99% of whom voted in the referendum – protected large swaths of its pristine countryside from runaway economic development. Named for Queen Pylta Pyltandyennd, who ruled the country for over a half century, from 1842 to 1897, the Pylta The Terrible National Ecological Protection Area (PTTNEPA) encompasses nearly half of the country's entire landmass, an area roughly the size of America's state of Connecticut.

Dubbed 'The Terrible' by a proto-Russian czar who had tried and failed nearly a dozen times to add her relatively small realm to his, Queen Pylta is celebrated within GROG as an early adopter of electricity (she was close friends with Nikola Tesla), as the inventor of the sweet-yet-spicy fermented green-tuber borscht, and as a gentle matriarch who sacrificed greatly for her subjects. She is remembered on the first Thursday in April, on Pyltafessd, a national holiday during which the people of Grig and the inhabitants of even the smallest village recharge their flashlight batteries and clean out their cupboards, at dusk going from house to house to share with each other the last of their winter stores, singing local folk-songs and lighting the way with their dazzlingly-bright pocket torches.

“We Grigovians are not against mining, or logging,” said Ristlünnd Yindlong, spokesman for the Resources Extraction Council, a voluntary national organization that researches and develops techniques for minimally-invasive resource extraction. “Miners and lumberjacks make up about 5% of the workforce and contribute roughly 10% to our overall gross domestic product. We, however, are against practices that are done hastily and without regard for biodiversity; that do not consider the needs of this nation's citizens and wildlife; and that violate the many rights of Nature, as defined by our Constitution. Personally, I signed the referendum in part to protect our high valleys, the only place in the world known to harbor drop-and-crawl moss, or autokineticus grigovianus. I invite you to stop by my flat this April, and pick up a jar of spiced apple butter.” In addition to establishing PTTNEPA, the national referendum also placed a ten year moratorium on new taxation and made it a crime to get all up in someone else's personal business.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the banks of the mighty Yalung – a tourist's look at Grigovia

(This text was smuggled out of Grig at terrible cost and despite a U.S.-led embargo against this fine, upstanding nation. Please, enjoy.)

Come, friends, please come visit Grig, capital of Grigovia. Find love along the tree-lined banks of the serpentine Yalung River; learn to make the spice using fresh czabtyip and cool, clean water; infiltrate a band of roving Yaelong raiders and attempt to puzzle out their speech (if you succeed in deciphering any portion of their language, please share your learnings with MIIG, the Ministry of Internal Information Gathering); hunt the elusive yip-yipt-yend in the verdant Lower Yalung Valley; search for the source of the mighty Yalung River (again, if you succeed in finding the source, please share your learnings with MIIG).

All these things and more you can do in the not-too-big, not-too-small Glorious Republic of Grigovia. We urge you to act before the American capitalist swine invade us to steal our bauxite, and our other rare earth metals. (MIIG puts the likelihood of invasion at nineteen to one in favor of our swift and crushing military defeat.) Spend your hard-earned coins at any of our four modern casinos (all within a two hour train ride from Grig); hit the slopes with ski-mounted girl-bunnies at Yiptlong Mountain Resort, a three-star hotel and ascending-pulley located high up in the world-famous Yiptlong massif. Act now, before our landscape is littered with unexploded ordinance; visit now, before our roads, our fields, our villages, and our cities are sewn with land-mines and bombed into ruin; share, now, in our long and proud traditions before they are pulverized by the jack-boot of forced democratization.

Please come soon, because we need tourist money to improve our antiquated ground defenses (which, according to MIIG, have been rusting away in good order since we declared independence from the loathsome Soviet overlords back in 1992). Times have been tough – our terrain is too mountainous for Yankee to use as a re-fueling stop on his way to carpet-bomb Iraq and Afghanistan, and therefore we were not invited into his League of Righteous 9-11 Avengers (the few stinking capitalists we caught poking around amongst the Yaelong are locked safely away in Hramm prison, a lovely building located near the pulsing heart of cosmopolitan Grig, from which they cannot be sprung, not even by the Team of 6 Sea-Lions). Please come – for the romance, for the powdered slopes, for the chase, or just to watch the impending invasion unfold. There is little time to lose, and much joy to gain by visiting the lush hidden valleys and pristine highland plains of Grigovia, today.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit