grigs own aprodit

There is an old story, I know just a bit, about an old goddess, Grig's own Aprodit. Brought up in a valley immune to stray gazing she'd learned about friendship and animal grazing from an older shepherd-girl who stealthily could run across rockfall and swiftly climb trees. (This older companion could easily be, her shape-shifting highness, the fair Athene.) While seeking a lamb-chop swept off in a gale, our young Aprodit left her protective vale, got waylaid by wood-fellers, knotted and roped, abused with foul language and sat on and groped. 'Enough,' she said calmly, 'release me anon.' Her captors they jeered though, made laughter, and fun. She gave no more warnings, she'd treated them fair, she summoned her courage and focused her glare, then with a quick gesture she cut through her ropes while grasping a tiny blade found in her coats, then leaped up and threw off her mantles and norms, revealing to mankind her beautiful forms. So awestruck and smitten were all the men there, that past and amongst them she moved without care. Taking in her new-found station she uttered a proclamation: 'There you tremble, little shits, amazed and awed at Aprodit, she whom you tried to rape and torture, kill and maim, feed to the vultures, who now stands before you strong, cursing you to love her form while night is long and days are warm – know no love from any other, not from sister, friend, or mother.' Cursed they were the foolish fellers to short lives consumed by fits, lost in amour, pining always, for radiant Aprodit.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

Grigovian receives Nobel

In a long-anticipated show of support for peaceful co-existence amongst the human races, the Nobel Committee shall award its Peace Prize to her somewhat-royal-highness Thallandia Yündlennd. Granddaughter of King Hyu-Yennd Yündlennd of Grigovia, a full regent who abdicated in the early 1900s at the age of 12 years after signing legislation that ushered in a time of wide-spread egalitarianism, democracy, justice, and liberty, Princess Thallandia carries on her grandparents' tradition of harmonious and environmentally-friendly living and sacrificing oneself for the betterment of mankind. In a written press release, the Committee said its decision rested on her somewhat-royal-highness's work in bringing attention to, and in helping to end, America's more than decade-long occupation of sovereign Afghanistan.

“We made a mistake awarding the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama, an American president who makes war on foreign peoples and restricts the rights of his own constituents, subjugating them with police-state tactics,” said Nobel Committee spokesperson Hana Fiistendun, via telephone from Stockholm, Sweden. “With the selection of Princess Yündlennd, we shall prove to the world that we award Peace Prizes only to persons who actively propagate peace throughout the world, not to those who have neither regard nor respect for the frailty of human liberty.” Miss Thallandia enraged the U.S. Department of Defense when she traveled from one coalition airstrip to the next throughout Eastern and Central Asia, putting her body in harm's way and disrupting the flights of dozens of Hellfire-missile-equipped drones. When asked how she managed to keep gaining access to these highly-secured sites, the Princess stuck out her tongue and flipped everyone the bird as she was loaded, again and again, handcuffed and shackled, into unmarked black sedans, which whisked her away to points unknown.

Somehow managing to avoid being tortured and killed at the hands of America's brutal interrogations specialists, Princess Yündlennd stayed tight-lipped even at trial, preferring rather to take her licks in silence than to speak of the hardships she endured at the blood-stained hands of a once-honorable nation originally founded by individuals who abhorred all types of prisoner abuse. Perhaps her most daring achievements was saving a village full of refugees – mostly women and children – from being shelled by blind-firing Army National Guardsmen, which she accomplished by besting their commanding officer in hand-to-hand combat before blocking the barrel of one of the guns with her own arm. Then, a few months later, she used an inflatable dingy to stall an American naval armada headed for the Straights of Hormuz, thus preventing a shooting war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which claims the Straights as its own. “I want to stop tyranny, to put an end to war, and to sew liberty and justice where there is now strife and discontentment,” Princess Yündlennd said during an interview held at a trailer-park outside Ghent, Switzerland, where she owns a modest single-wide with her husband-to-be, infamous LA scumhound Reginald Augustus Steele. “As long as the United States of America values profit over peace, torture over compassion, materialism over sharing, and the rights of corporations over the dignity of mankind, I shall be out there on the front lines fighting to preserve that to which monetary value cannot be assigned, and to which no price-tags stick.” When last seen, Miss Thallandia was spot-welding the finishing touches on a low-cost, autonomous rover designed to detect and destroy land-mines.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on nine eleven

  On this day we mark a decade since the events surrounding the 11th of September, 2001. Many changes have taken place in our nation since that bright summer day, some that restrict us in our liberty, others that inconvenience to little noticeable advantage. Absent clear and defining purpose, we have foundered collectively among the shoals of short-sightedness and greed, bruised badly by the false promise of unlimited consumer credit, our public figures beating the drums of nationalism and xenophobia in tones ever more vituperative and religious, the cultural diversity of our peoples muted by creeping corporate homogenization, our inventiveness forgotten in the face of gadgets that rarely prove convenient to the economics of time, our artistic creativity lost in the mirror-maze of sequels, mash-ups, and gimmickry, our citizens willfully abusing the national flag in misguided attempts to prove to others their patriotism, that deep and pure sense of pride that shines most brightly when it is cultivated within the confines of the heart, a sense that shrinks when displayed too prominently.
  I was in Manhattan that day; I volunteered three days later in the dust and wreckage blanketing the North Cove; I lost a fraternity brother who had just started work high up in the North Tower. But, then as now, I will never succumb to fear, never believe in America-über-alles, never discriminate against someone because of their choice of religion, never accept torture as a means necessary to the common defense, never disgrace the Stars and Stripes to prove to another my love for country, and never cease in my attempts to secure the Blessings of Liberty to myself, my brothers and sisters, and our Posterity.
  My the people who died on that September day not so long ago continue to rest in peace.


Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp