no one knows

In a new (but ancient) twist on television crime dramas involving unsolved murders, a leading broadcaster is hoping to lure devout Christian viewers with a series of shows called “No One Knows.”
 
In each episode, the body of a murdered person will be found in field. None of the leaders of the surrounding towns will know who killed the person, whereupon they’ll get together in a nearby valley where there is a stream but no crops. Having already selected a young male cow that has never worked from the herd of the village closest to the field where the body was found, they will break the cow’s neck. Then, the assembled leaders will wash their hands over the dead cow and say, “We had no part in this murder, and we don’t know who did it.”

The show’s producers have indicated that each segment will feature a new valley location, and that a varying cast of star-studded male actors will play the village leaders. Spoiler alert! For anybody who wants to not actually watch the series and find out whether or not at the end of each episode the Christian god Yahweh forgives the town leaders for a murder they didn’t commit, read Deuteronomy 21 from the Bible’s Old Testament.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 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

Grigovians welcome winter

In the past, when greater Europe was wallowing in the cruel injustices of medieval depravity, winter in Grigovia was a time of communal sharing, a period of cooperative productivity. Even under the Soviet juggernaut's yoke, the people of this landlocked little republic managed to help one another out in times of scarcity, through diligent effort and clandestine communication maintaining a vast network of charity-driven black markets.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the old traditions still hold, that, when the first snows begin to fall in the dizzying mountain passes, the older high-valley denizens seal up their homes and hop buses into town while their younger counterparts break out snow-shoes and cross-country skis. “One learns to go without,” said ten year old Rathma Eroyip as she was carrying an armload of seasoned burning wood to an elderly neighbor's house. “I, for example, have come to terms with no longer being able to bicycle to school, and I know I must soon learn to ski so that I might continue attending classes in Grissend, which lies three kilometers to the east of here.” Rathma allowed us to escort her for the rest of the morning, during which she helped shovel out someone's back door, assisted in the manufacture of a thick woolen quilt, and learned how to attach and adjust the bindings on her first pair of cross-country skis. (The young lady's family had just recently moved up into the hills, to: “toughen these kids up a bit, and prepare them for life's exertions,” according to their mother.)

Wherever this news team went, Grigovians appeared to be contributing to the communal good in meaningful ways. We saw citizens handing out thick woolen blankets by the truckload, distributing baskets of hard cheeses and pickled vegetables in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, holding canned food drives and generally going out of their way to live up the notion that “Twigs in bundles become pillars”, Grigovia's unofficial national motto. “Instead of spending tax dollars on fleets of vehicles to plow the roads and contaminate the land with salts, we buried all power and telecommunications lines and created in even the smallest high-valley village satellite nodes for essential services where citizens can obtain medical care, educational materials, access to the national Wi-Fi network, and the materials needed to craft warm items for sharing with their elderly and disadvantaged neighbors,” said Qutomar Rastoyend, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior's Winter Division. “Furthermore, we have added new buildings and installed new beds to the network of Care & Comfort facilities that stretches from Grig in the south to Pyltagrad in the north-west, where old and infirm alike can bed down for the winter, if they should so choose.” So it goes all across this fine little land: people bettering themselves by first bettering others.

© 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

foreboding forgotten, ignored

Against the advice of more than a half dozen friends and close associates, an area man ignored feelings of foreboding and deeply-rooted worry and set out alone on an arduous, five-day-long bicycle ride through Death Valley. Planning on sticking to side routes, old Indian paths, and animal tracks so as to prove to himself his ruggedness and ability to read the land, 55 year-old chain restaurant owner Nivan Laurentz of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania made it halfway through the first day before disaster struck. According to entries in his diary, as soon as he had moved beyond sight of his car, “GPS batteries died trying to acquire signal; compass gone – lost, or dropped; backup water-sack leaking; backup to backup water-sack rank, foul; two front bicycle tires shredded by sharp rocks; forearms sunburned badly, cheap aloe gel runny and ineffective.”

The only traces of Mr. Laurentz's passage found during a search conducted by Park Rangers and area sheriffs were his diary and a trail of detritus dropped alongside the remnants of a path leading into the deepest and hottest regions of this barren and forsaken land. “The missing person's belongings lay strewn about, as if he were trying to lighten his load, or to find a precious commodity, which out here includes even a mouthful of water,” said Officer Dolores Ovillia, of the California Highway Patrol, who has combed the desert many times in search of lost or wayward citizens. “Then, of a sudden, all traces stop, as if the land had opened up and swallowed him – his bike, his bags, all traces.” Nivan's vehicle was unmolested, leading authorities to rule out foul play. “If this had been robbers or highwaymen lying in wait for an unsuspecting traveler to stop and park and get out for a stretch, then the vehicle would have been entered forcibly, and its contents – even those of comparatively little monetary value – would have been removed to another vehicle or to a different location,” said Agent Padraig Raian O'Malley of the federal Bureau of Land Management, who joined the search on its second day. “We see it out here occasionally, desperate people robbing and killing others and then selling their things at swap meets farther west, but, in this case, we have the trail of detritus and the diary, so we can rule out foul play by all parties but Mother Nature herself.”

One hot, dusty search-party after the next returned to the tent village that sprouted in the parking lot where the missing man's car was found, each group throwing up its hands in defeat and sinking despondently into folding chairs to drink cup after cup of hot green tea. Among the searchers was the California People-Finders Collective, a non-profit organization that specializes in… finding people. Said Webster Dulvishnakov, who canceled plans to attend a friend's wedding in order to help with the search, “We've been using methods developed to find persons buried in avalanches, lining up next to each other in rows and poking long sticks into dunes, trying to locate the body, the bike, anything that might offer clues. In his diary, Mr. Laurentz even talked about being really worried that things might go wrong, foreboding feelings he obviously ignored. I've seen scenario such as this before, though – guy starts feeling old, and, after bicycling around his town for a month, he thinks he's ready to do a Death Valley loop trail, alone, with untested and insufficient supplies, cheap stuff bought at big-box retailers. We People-Finders have located individuals who lost their way after walking ten feet into the woods to take a leak. Talk about one less mouth to feed – some people should just stay at home, and stay alive.” After three fruitless days, the search ended, everyone going home to take cold showers.

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 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

Grigovia accuses wildlife photographers of spying

Just weeks after apprehending a group of thirteen supposed wildlife photographers found loitering in its Lower Yalung Valley, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia today voiced suspicions that the individuals now incarcerated in the notorious Hrammbar prison complex are members of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. While the detained have been allowed to speak with their families and to receive medical attention and psychological care, four of them are rumored to be heavily addicted to the local strain of spice, and four more are being held in solitary confinement following a brazen but unsuccessful escape attempt.

Suspicions were raised when analyses of the Americans' photographs by (Soviet-trained) Grigovian image specialists revealed sensitive data relating to troop movements, field armaments, and active long-range missile sites in sublayers of seemingly innocent image files. Upon being questioned about the data, the Yankees were reported to have remained stone-faced and silent. Pitr Mohammad Yilyilanov, senior press agent for the Grigovian Ministry of Internal Information Gathering (MIIG) speaking from Grig, the nation's capital, stated in a press release that the Ministry had found packets of seemingly random data that, when arranged and compiled with two different sets of commercially available software, turned out to be detailed blueprints and technical specifications for primary military sites along the country's western border, which it shares with Iran.

Each of the thirteen Americans' passports appears to have been stamped by Grigovian customs officials upon entering the country, although MIIG is currently testing the authenticity of the ink, a proprietary blend made using the root of the mountain sharpstand, or czabtyip, which is a rare plant that grows only in the Lower Yalung. Persons processing czabtyip into ink become addicted frequently to the spice, which is a lesser component in the process, but which wafts up readily into the nostrils, and from there, into the lungs.

After verifying their good health and better cheer, the U.S. State Department demanded half-heartedly the return of the thirteen Americans. Insiders at State report that everyone there seems to be standing around in bored half-trances waiting for the real action to get started.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit