Seanachai

His photos are...giving me the red ass. The 'Blackwater' graphic was particularly mindless. And I don't think he's even remotely referencing Serenity. He's been posting for a while, in so far, in my current state, I can be bothered to judge these things. And for most of that time the only impression I have of him is that he keeps posting dumb-ass graphics. Christ on a crutch attempting to fill in a butterfly ballot, but he needs to post something more intriguing than snapshots of his most recent dream about the WWF. Has anyone spoken up for this creature? Has he unrealized depths that have been revealed in posts that I was too drunk to have bothered with? If not, it might be time to crush his deformed puppy skull with a ball-peen hammer, and move on.

Sigh. Berli, do I have to remind you that, however one stretches, bends and spindles your genealogical tables, you're neither a surviving member of the Royal Family, nor a boyar? You ARE the proletariat. You are only spiritually a member of the Nobility of Evil. For all practical purposes, you're a Russian peasant. As common as potato skin vodka, and just as useful for cleaning out the infection of self-satisfaction. About time to re-read 'The Master and Margarita', don't you think?

I'm not sure that I like MeatEtr. He does not seem to me to be bringing anything interesting to the table. And his endlessly posted pictures are tedious. It's one thing to be offensive. It's quite another to be boring. Has he ever posted anything longer than sentence fragments and t-shirt philosophy?

I can't believe the idiocy of the 'filter' software. I can tell Lars to keep his cock in his pants, but I can't use the word 'p*n*s'. There! I couldn't use it again! Thank Christ this isn't a medical review board discussing STDs. So, provided I keep it colloquially vulgar, I can romp all over the intent without violating the letter. But Lars, my original point remains the same. You're better off tucking a fighting rooster into your trousers, than crossing the Fair Shari.

That's because she knows that your heart, not to mention your brain and your member, belong to her. Even if you could get all three headed in the same direction, at the same time and with the same intent, they wouldn't all three together, let alone any of them on their own, be willing to take the risk of opposing her. We can only congratulate them on their sensibility. Religion can threaten you with Hell, and raise soul-devouring demons intent on rending your spirit into dog-meat, separating you forever from some higher, more spiritual vision. But fidelity, faithfulness and good behaviour are most often the result of enlightened self-interest. I wouldn't cross your wife on a dare. For all your grinning, half-lunatic affability and weirdness, Lars, neither would you. You've reached the age where your brain, your heart and your p*n*s sit down to a round table discussion and decide that the last thing any of them want is to be separated from the others.

I like to think, that in a time of strife In a time of war, red war The foolish jackanapes of the Peng Challenge Thread Would have been there, in the trenches with me Who never had to face any foeman Who was just a year or two too young for the one war of my youth And far to old for the ones that followed That we would have been brothers, I who never had a brother And that I would have been willing to die for them Or, at least, to kill for them Because killing is hard But dying is right out And comedy can be a complete disaster In four days the wheel turns America will face another four years Of something, hopefully, completely different No matter who wins So long as we don't all lose A nation divided between red and blue Plays to a legacy of Royalist and Loyalist Union and Confederacy Us and Them A house divided against itself cannot stand When it is all Us I remember, years ago, listening to two women Gushing on about the birth Of the Duchess of York's child And I told them: You remember That we fought a war of independence Over two hundred years ago, to throw those rascals out? No kings No queens No lords One nation, under God, Jehovah, Allah, The Goddess, Buddha, or Nothing At All Determined to make their own way By their own hand With a hand open to everyone Who would clasp it Time to shake on that bargain, again A bargain made by adventurers, fortune seekers and religious zealots With cheated natives and stolen slaves Ratified by immigrants and the wretched, refuse of the world To make upon this shore A nation greater than anyone in it Could lay claim to

Idjit. Abb-Seanachai is better. It sounds more like some Assyrian-Babylonian demon god. Seanachai-bott sounds like a piece of software that goes out on to the Web to find you Celtic music, or something that hatches in your flesh and eats out a hollow for itself before flying off to learn how to play the fiddle.

Oh, please, Stuka. A woman saying 'I had to have my dog put to sleep because it was killing cats and leaving their entrails on the bed' sounds suggestive to you. You're just a suggestible bastard. I smoked one of my new Vegas toros. It was light as air, but spicy in the back, and had a bit of kick. The 'Original Cubans' (as in 'not REAL cubans) I bought are even lighter, and without much kick. Dalem has reached the point that the only way his cigars could get heavier, darker and more powerful is if he was to start smoking moose sh*t. Moose sh*t, I might add, that he'd gathered by himself in a pine forest at the dark of the moon. It's not just the maduro wrappers. What he likes these days seems to be tobacco grown on the graves of african slaves from seeds that had been subjected to exposure to 'dark matter' from the creation of the Universe. The only way he's going to get a heavier smoke is by having black tobacco chopped into confetti and rammed up his arse.

S'okay. Dalem has delusions. But, and recite it with me now: "He is SO Brian Dennehy!" Our Justicar has been granted the right to ignore ALL national boundaries, bearing the torch (not to mention the pitchfork) of the Peng Challenge Thread to every jurisdiction on the planet. He will wave both impressively, while shouting out 'Kill the Monster!'. He'll then make you fill out several forms, signing and initialing according to some sort of bizarre protocol that even lawyers in the Hague haven't yet fathomed. He'll then tell you to 'pull his finger'. Go ahead and do it, it's not what you think. It seems to have something to do with his thought process, and if he stops humming 'We Are the Champions' then you'll probably get a bright smile, a stamp on the back of your hand, and he'll go away. Unless by being 'quasi-annually audited', you mean... That you want to pay a special 'sin tax' for being part of the Peng Challenge Thread. Then, you have to confess to Peng what you feel about chihuahuas, you have to tell Berli who your favorite musical group/singer is, and you have to admit to me that you are not now, nor have ever been a member of any group that really gives a good goddamn about a celebrity. Oh, and you have to put a book on your head, and walk across the room saying 'My claim to fame is that I choose not to defame anyone that declaims against the need to shame those who proclaim a position not the same as my own.' You get points for doing it dead drunk in lingerie. Hey, I did it dead drunk wearing lingerie! Made $20 at Glueks. Of course, they were paying me to put my clothes back on. I would have, but Lars gave me another $30 to keep on. Paid off all my utilities that month. And October is no month to ignore $30 from a guy dressed in camouflage. Not in Minnesota.

Do you want me to 'bring it on'? I can, you know. I CAN BRING IT ON ALL NIGHT LONG! Jolly singsongs, bad poetry, Small Emma stories, the myths, legends and folklore of The Peng Challenge Thread. I'm willing to do a lot of things. On a week night, 87.8% of them are legal. The others... well, they're just funny. The Justicar is not an Olde One. He is... well, he's Joe. Let's call him an Ambassador. With Special Powers. Or a Shaman. Kind of a stuffy, annoying one. Shakes the rattle in a pointed way, scatters the lizard blood rather officiously, keeps the 'bones of prophecy and judgement' sorted by type and size... You know the sort. Gets a bit shirty when anyone chants a bit off-key because they're text messaging to get the score from the last match. But he's our own, rosy-cheek Justicar, and the place wouldn't be the same without his occasionally hollow voiced pronouncement of what awaits anyone who fails to understand that "there are rules here, don't you know! And spit out that gum! Oh, for the love of all that I am here to enforce, did anyone even pretend to peruse the credentials of that last supplicant?!"

What's that, Small Emma? I need to put on a hat? Oh, but you vile child, you mocking little get of liberal parents, that is a silly hat! It does not befit one of my power, glory, and certitude. Be quiet, you horrible little urchin! I am not going to put that hat on, you little guttersnipe... Oh, silence! Stop crying! Alright, I will put on the stupid hat, just to show you how it ill befits me! Whoa! You know... Everything looks... different now... under my brand new leopard skin pillbox hat... You know, you're all a jolly lot of complete swine! I know what you really love me for. It's my brand new, leopard skin pillbox hat! It has revealed to me the truth! We're all okay. Mostly. Except the Aussies. They're just horrible. Oh, hell! Even the Aussies are okay, really. They're just the product of a bad home environment! Did you know everything in Australia is poisonous, including the sheep? You know, with this silly hat on, I feel completely different. More... Peng Challengy. Or something.

I'm back... but... I've changed. Every third day for the next 5 years I will post tediously un-funny cartoons threatening death and violence to anyone who's political views show the slightest deviation from my own. While doing all this I will strive to remain clueless and humorless. I will viciously abuse anyone I even remotely suspect of having disrespected me, all the while sanctimoniously maintaining that I am being persecuted. I will call everyone else a coward, then send private messages filled with vulgarity, abuse and harassment to women. I will maintain that I have reams of evidence of threats and abuse towards myself, but refuse to let anyone see it because they will just use it to abuse me further. While claiming that I completely understand the joke, I will vilify anyone who attempts to joke with me. I will demand that people be tolerant of everything I do and every opinion I voice, while belittling and abusing anyone I perceive as different, and deny the validity of every opinion contrary to my own. I will claim to be the only 'Real American' present, and use that fact as the basis for denying any form of consideration or rights to anyone else. In short: Choose your enemies carefully. For that is who you will become.

All of which threats look far less intimidating in the hands of dead people being nibbled by eels at the bottom of 100 feet of water... Are the Ukrainian owners still claiming that they're 'worried about the lives of the crew', as opposed to their expensive ship and its high profile, not to mention high priced cargo?

Oh, and Lars? I immensely enjoyed your party the other day. It was great. My thanks to your neighbor that fell asleep in the front yard with his head on the curb for bringing the 'dessert'. I spent the next three days in Iowa living under an assumed name. I don't recommend Iowa. A State filled with small minded people who want to know what kind of name 'Hakkim Rajnamurti Cohen' is. Very small minded people. One woman accused me of being an Arab. I forgive her, as she couldn't see my features because I was wearing my pants on my head at the time. I kept wandering around shouting 'People of Earth! Ignore Me!' It didn't seem to help. I wrote your name, phone number and address on pieces of paper and handed them out, but it didn't seem to reassure anyone. But the chances are good that within the next few weeks, you're going to have a lot of visitors. Put them up on the couch. The password is 'Rajnamurti sent me'.

Okay...I've read the last few pages, and it's apparent that whatever America learned about drug use in the period between 1970 and 2008 has gone completely by the boards. And Carlos Castenada was a lying poseur sack of ****e who'd probably never even eaten a hash brownie, let alone jumped all over the various hallucinogenic plants he made a fortune off of, pretending to some sort of Native American shamanistic right of passage. Hoser. Another lying bastard making money off the gullible. Step right up, step right up! See the Academic claiming he was dosing himself with hallucinogenic drugs and led along the path of ancient Native American wisdom by a Yaqui Shaman! See the bobble-head dopers eat it up like it was ice cream, and pronounce that they've found the Truth! Feh! Likewise, Bah! Remind me to tell you about the time I did a large amount of Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds on the first Father's Day after my Dad died. There was more insight, tears, penny-whistle playing and enlightenment gained that day than in all of Castenada's books put together. And vomiting. My gods, there was a copious amount of vomiting. Anyone who claims to have achieved wisdom in a spiritual moment fueled by natural, hallucinogenic plants without profuse vomiting is either lying, or selling something, or both. And anyone who passes the vomiting off as no big deal brought a change of clothes. It was pretty damn interesting, all told. Down along the St. Croix river. Very pretty day. Except for the vomiting.

A little charity, Boo. Stuka is not only an Australian, he's also living in the Middle East. When he left Australia, given the Western Civilization Differential Adjusted for Aussie Time Modifier, his country had basically reached the same level of social, political and cultural development as America in the 1970s. And he now lives in a place that is basically a Medieval Disney World with cell phones, computers and stoning women to death for revealing their faces. Knowing about a 30 minute, flash in the pan cultural sub-phenomenon like the Macarena is, for Stuka, rather like what being able to recite the works of Shakespeare from memory is for someone like you and I. And I don't think we should mock him for that. He's doing the best he can, the plucky little wombat that he is.

So, you've mastered verb conjugations. I'm proud of you, lad. I remember all the occasions when I told you: Give it time. Eventually, even you will be able to use English as though you were a native speaker, and not like someone from New Jersey. Er...one point, though. What's a 'frag'?

Joe, the thing is, as you knew even as you posted this... You're never going to be kicked out of a place because of Berli. He's like...Athos. A bit grim, a bit laconic, a bit dark. But one of Nature's noblemen. If Berli decides that there needs to be a riot, or that a hotel needs to be burnt to the ground... well, it will be done for good reasons, without rancor, and with a bit of a sigh for the trouble. It will also, then, be done...thoroughly. But he seldom makes trouble for the sheer, randy hell of making trouble. Berli is very sensitive, for example, about endangering children. He would never put large, thuggish, bearded children that are at least in their 30s and that look like grizzly bears, in harm's way. He once told me: Seanachai, no matter how disenchanted I ever become, I won't defile the publicly posted, photographic images of children that spent the weekend in a biker bar. He's an old softy, really.

So, you're telling us you're happy? Like 'dancing a gandy dance of happiness'? Or just relatively happy? Let's be real. You came here to be happy. Think of the happiest day of your life. Didn't you come here to tell us about it? Think about the saddest day of your life. Didn't you come here to tell us about it? Sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. A happiness shared is a happiness doubled. Happiness and Sorrow are burdens that must be carried until you come amongst friends. Then they're given wings, and you can soar.

Why? Because we weren't there to meet your needs? We're a full service Autocracy. We're just... you know.. conflicted about who's actually in charge. Your posts are very important to the Peng Challenge. Keep posting, and someone will be online shortly to answer your questions about - everything. Life, the Universe, America. God. Stupidity. Where all those dinosaur bones came from...whether it's better to feed a cold, or starve a fever... Whether it's better to vote your head, your heart, or your gut. We are there for you, Dave H. You are never alone. We are always with you. Never doubt us. We see you when you're awake. We know when you're drunk. We see you when you're sleeping. We're like Santa. We keep lists. But we're not so jolly. And when you're asleep? We're standing by your head, watching you. Sometimes for hours. It's not as creepy as it sounds. You know, you drool a bit when you're sleeping. On second thought, it's every bit as creepy as you think.

I go away, I come back. I honour the true Ladies of the 'Pool. I mock the Justicar. I sit with Berli, and with Peng in the Wasteland. We pass the bottle, hand to hand, and we contemplate the People. In the Wasteland, we discuss many things. Idiots. Politics. Life. We indulge in that most useless of all conspiracies: Intelligence. We throw another stupid post on the fire, there in the Wasteland. The flames illuminate us. We judge you. I'm the nice one. The other two are unimpressed by my arguments. Occasionally we wonder about the future of the Thread. Peng would end it. Berli deigns not to give a good goddamn. And I? I'm a silly old man. How can something so foolish not be good?

When given a Guinness, I neither hesitate, nor waffle. I drink it, you silly sod. It's good to see you posting again.

Peng exists, and suddenly, you are locked into a Life and Death struggle with Peng. Some laugh, some mock. You buy Peng several beers. In a very strange bar, in Minneapolis. Peng is glorious. You are now glorious. Everything is glorious. You wish Peng would come back again. He was good to talk to. Berli shows up, and suddenly, you know Berli. He despises you. He sleeps on your couch. He tells you that, when he decides to destroy the Universe, he really likes the fact that you can walk up to Hennepin Avenue and find a good Used Book Store. Various Miscreants show up, and drink with you. They are all good people. Joe Shaw arrives, attempting to frown and rain down judgement. He dumps your silverware drawer all over your kitchen floor, and stands there looking like a goddamn pillock. I am the Seanachai. I am the foolish old man of the Peng Challenge Thread. I am short, and stout, and in great need of a good diet. I know where all the bodies are buried. I know why the suppliant maidens were shocked, and why they weren't as suppliant as people said. I know why the gods hate the Australians. It's not for the reasons you'd think. I know why BFC continues to allow us to exist. I know why the least and the stupidest want to post here. I know a lot of things. I know more than you do. I know that I am an Olde One of the Peng Challenge Thread. You don't even know why you post here. But I do.

You can graduate the boy out of the Corps, but the man will always remain. Berli is a traditionalist. He's sentimental. He likes to think that underneath all that ****, there must be a pony. Silly bastard talks to me most every night. I enjoy his patois. His fine, guttural, Illinois nasal bitterness is unsurpassed. I just wish he'd get on a schedule. It's the 'not knowing' that makes his calls so abrupt.

Hey, Moriarity isn't dead. I'm pretty sure he stills owes me money...