all any means

The Yaelong hold power their reach it is long their family systems are tight-meshed and strong. Long ago we'd quarrel o'er land and resources but quickly did learn to combine our small forces into some quick response and some quick action teams who crush all intruders by various means. Their guerrilla tactics we've much added to combining in lessons from Ho Chi Minh too and also from Mao and from Rommel to boot wherefore primed and ready is this armed offshoot. In truth though it makes up the bulk of our guard yet only emerges as a high trump card to mop up the damage done unto such fools who eschew good company's longstanding rules. From trench and from cupola alley and ditch with blood whipped up into a mad fever-pitch will every man woman child et ceterum stand up for to expel from home hearth and womb such Ynki Rus Kossak or Turkmeni brute who should dare on our precious soil set foot. Grigovian weapons and that Yaelong guile should help us keep hold on our freedom a while – for lest we get bombed out like the Nips once got there's nothing can move us from this awesome spot.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

and filling repast

On acres of grounds and in countless displays we tell mankind's story from then to today, at least from the view of Grigovia's past, please come for a stroll or just run through real fast. About half the people that come here do so their learning and knowledge and culture to grow, the others (like tourists) just dash on fleet feet – they'd rather relax, rest their bones, drink, and eat. A restaurant lies at the end of the tour that one cannot reach but through our big front doors, we did this because of an honest desire to have people eat well of learning's hot fire; to fill their minds first and their intestines last; to see to their double and filling repast. We have cloth, tool, weapon, and art galleries that sprawl under soaring vaults and swooping eaves, that are filled with treasures made by man and not, that we strain to preserve from foul, creeping rot. The resto serves tchuirff and fine food and good eats, from Iysh in the north to Gar Nuuzsh in the east, some snacks from the south and bites from Pyltagrad, please try them then sit back both sated and glad. We hope you will visit the National Vault, if not though it is your own damnable fault, there is no set fee so please pay what you like, food prices are kept low (sans seasonal spikes). Buses transport daily to our vast compound from just about every city and town. We hope you will come soon and witness what's grand about our beloved Grigovian land.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

map of Grigovia

national bird selected

The discovery by field researchers of a breeding pair of pygmy burrowing snow owls (nyctea scandiaca pyltaregina) in the Pylta The Terrible National Ecological Protection Area (PTTNEPA) has buoyed the spirits of the Grigovian people. “I remember, as a child, seeing these birds whilst vising relatives in the dizzyingly-high valleys north of Pyltagrad,” said Dorevtha Mouiryindt, 72, who now lives in the southern city of Pryaghdoyest. “Try as we did, my cousins and I could never catch a bird, let alone get close enough to touch one. They are wary, watchful, and quick – the perfect choice for our national bird.”

While technically part of the genus nyctea scandiaca, pyltareginae differ significantly. Brightly-colored plumage clusters around face and foot and lead edge of wing; to some observers, the birds resemble flamenco dancers dressed for carnival. (The birds appear to use the colorful bands during courtship and to demarcate territory.) “We find few opportunistic predators this size that have evolved such attention-getting plumage,” said Yue Zhishuou, 39, an ornithologist at the University of Stockholm. “But the birds, when they hunt during the day, hunt in packs, using tactics similar to those used by other top predators, including killer whales. After locating their prey, they fly away from it in different directions. Then, with piercing screams in their throats, they come floating back on wings of silent menace, dropping from the sky directly above their victim with talons snapping and beaks grasping for purchase. Most often, they run their quarry in circles until it trips over its own feet and collapses into a panting heap, whereupon they pounce.”

“The uhuiyendt are fascinating creatures,” said Hennu Yiptlend, Grigovia's Secretary of the Interior – Natural Resources, using the local name for the birds (uhuiyendt, pronounced oo-whoo-ee-yend-t). “They form family bonds that last for generations, they defend their territory with reckless ferocity, they use tools to reach deep into anthills, they can punch through a foot of iced-over snow while hunting vole in wintertime, and they do all these things dressed in bold plumage replete with dazzling bursts of color.” The minister tied our steppe ponies to a stunted tree just below the top of a wind-swept ridge. We walked to the summit and glassed down onto a flock of uhuiyendt hunting rodents in the sparse Autumn grasses. My host directed my gaze to where a few birds had chased a field mouse out into the open. They screeched and dove at it until the little beast – confused and panicking – ran into the waiting talons of a big, red female. In the early morning sun, her plumage was so bright that I had to lower my binoculars and blink the sunspots from my eyes. The owls started diving at us a few minutes later, loosing their piercing screams at ear level and chasing us off their ridge with quick efficiency. “These birds live nowhere else – they are ours alone,” said Mr. Yiptlend as we were working the horses down a series of switchbacks. “The flock we just saw will defend that ridge from other predators for the next three months but not bag from it, so that, when they return to hunt, vole is fat and mouse is lazy. There are few birds as fierce, efficient, and cunning as the uhuiyendt, few nations a resilient and egalitarian as Grigovia. Long live the People's Republic.” (For more information about the uhuiyendt, and to see pictures of its colorful plumage, please visit pyltaregina.avian.gv.)

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

national idea month

Keeping in mind that innovation can solve the ills of mankind, the citizenry of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia declared the second moon-cycle of each year to be National Idea Month. More than 90% of the voting population approved the measure via referendum. During February, anyone with an idea and at least three dozen signatures can attend one of the many ideas-summits being held in cities all across this small, landlocked nation. (Two-thirds of the signatures gathered must be from persons other than blood relatives.) While there, persons are invited to sleep in a bunkhouse and eat in a communal cafeteria, which will be located close to the halls of summit. With food and shelter taken care of, persons can engage in lively debate and constructive human interaction freely and without stress.

Dr. Rendlo Afthogar of the Grigovian Ministry for the Interior (GMI) said: “After analyzing dozens of studies conducted in countries around the world, we discovered that persons who are given time to think things through, who get together in groups in order to hash things out, and who can do these things without having to worry about when they are going to eat and where they are going to sleep, that such individuals tend to come up with clever and effective solutions to problems, issues, dilemmas, conundrums, and difficulties.” (Funding for National Idea Month will come in part from GMI and in part from a nation-wide financing drive organized by Orange Ladder, a native humanitarian aid organization.) “I like the idea of getting together with other Grigovians from different part of our land in order to seek answers to the questions and concerns we all face,” said 19 year-old engineering student Veria Ordest. “By loosely copying a Silicon Valley model of problem-solving, we hope to improve the lives of all Grigovians and tighten the bonds that connect us.”

The Interior Ministry released part of an official statement it is preparing for National Idea Month. The following is an excerpt. “Since we started experimenting with free market capitalism after the fall of the Soviet empire, the Grigovian people have seen much of the common wealth of tens of thousands become concentrated in the hands of a few hundred. We rely on each other for survival, Happiness, and cultural and societal progress; the path of rational egotism violates the notions of Liberty and human worth, and, therefore, we shall cease to follow it. [The fundamental idea of Liberty is not that people do as they please without regard to Nature or one another but that we focus instead on positive development, working tirelessly to improve our own lives by first improving the lives of our fellow homo sapiens.] By giving freely of our time, ability, knowledge, blood, sweat, and treasure, we the forward-thinking and compassionate citizens of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia can shine the light of Progress into the darkest recesses of human suffering. We shall meet together, sit together, speak together, and think together in People's Congresses located in cities large and small, searching for answers to our common problems and exploring solutions to our persistent challenges. Alone, we live exposed to a harsh and volatile world; together, we can accomplish anything.”

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

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

dollar stores = commie outposts

  As of these last few months of 2011, millions of American citizens are directly supporting the People's Republic of China, our country's primary economic competitor and one of the sole remaining bastions of the socialistic world-view. Every day, we in this country support communism in the People's Republic of China, and all across this nation, in cities great and small, from the rolling central plains to the rugged western coastline, countless numbers of red-blooded, patriotic American citizens contribute directly to the ascending might of the Middle Kingdom.
  Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its inexorable dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads, Made In China, funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. In the 1980s, the capitalistic-minded oligarchy that has been allowed to accumulate the vast majority of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further boost their profits, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options other than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive – they turned to dollar stores, thus supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas, to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.

  I welcome our soon-to-be Chinese masters, and I would like to say Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood has been in America since day one. I, however, am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model of top-few capitalism. In fact, I find our current economic model, in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of a handful of corporate officers, deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy, but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice rewarded with a deep sense of pride and patriotic fervor.

  So, remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are in part responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our high unemployment rate, and for the Chinese government's ability to purchase a significant portion of our national debt. Shopping at dollar stores is unlikely to have a positive economic impact on your personal finances, but it will certainly boost the profits of those very corporations that got us in this mess in the first place.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp