Seanachai

You disappoint me. I've never even been in your bathtub. In this you have done me a disservice. Within two weeks, I will be taking you to my cabin at Lake of the Woods. I have used all my credit within the Family to take you to our place Up North, and still you speak of me in this disrespectful and dishonest way. I am filled with sorrow, to see you show me so little respect.

Obviously, Boo, for anyone that isn't dealing with an almost psychotic level of self-involvement, I wouldn't 'look good'. When the time comes for me to, perhaps, 'flee to Belgium' (or Ohio), I'm not anticipating cheering crowds, tiny flags on sticks, and all the other paraphernalia of people welcoming in their 'Liberator'. I'm anticipating a quiet ceremony, where the local members of the Peng Challenge Thread show up to kneel before me, kiss my ring, and say 'Old One.' Of course, I'll simply be happy if they don't hit me with a tazer and get the boot in.

He's after being right, Sturmy. I couldn't be more proud of you, if you were me own bastard son. And, on that note, are you earning a good living? Got a nice place? A bed where an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread could lay his head? A respectable total of single malt scotches, sipping rums and decent wines? I mean, c'mon. America's not going to be able to put up with me forever. There might come a day when Belgium looks pretty good to me...

You'll get told what 'case of beer' to buy when I get around to deciding how much you should suffer for making that stupid bet, you bugger. And no, Dalem doesn't drink beer. But I drink beer. And whatever beer you end up buying Dalem will figure large in my enjoyment the next few times I'm up at his place. And you should consider the fact that Dalem made that bet in a desperate attempt to feed my insatiable thirst for new and more expensive experiences. I know every good beer retailer in town. And I know enough about the various, sundry and, most importantly expensive beers out there that the only thing standing between the satisfaction of your bet and financial ruin is the fact that I don't want to deny your kid the chance to go to college. So, Elvis, me little lad, you'll just do me the favour of calling me any number of all sorts of perfectly true and applicable foul names, and wait upon my decision as to exactly what 'case of beer' you're to buy Dalem. Because you made a really stupid bet. You have made your bed, and by all the gods, I shall lie in it, drinking beer. Really, really great beer. The kind of beer that Christ would have drunk.

Fair to middling, Gay Boy, fair to middling. And your own fine self? Time marches on, and we stagger about the landscape Late at night, when the rum is getting low, your name does come up. Still spoken with quite natural disdain, and respect. Are your eyes still so bracingly blue, to trouble the hearts of Queens?

Nah! We just don't jerk to a 'Stupid Drummer'. Don't think you really get this Forum at all, at all. No, child. Most everyone here is far too old to ever have studied English. We learned it from drunk Druids in oak groves, waving sickles around in the air and shouting "Conjugate this, you bastard! Here, that's the sprig of mistletoe I was going to put in my drink, you swine!"

Calgary? Isn't that the only 'city' in Canada that God has actually turned his face away from?

You sick, sick child.

Uh, weeeelllll, no, lad. We set some useless fecks to analyzing your pattern of posting on both this and other sites in an attempt to sort out what you were on about. Mind, we've gotten back some reports. We killed the messengers, of course. Kindest thing, really. They'd gone all 'Cthulu Cult Madness' on us. The only one still attempting to gibber at us about it is Elvis. We'd kill him, too, but Peng likes him. Also, it's not like his gibberish is actually any worse.

Fox river, I've heard good things. Nice river to paddle. Of course, here in the real North Country, we have so many rivers that we sometimes just sit around and look at them. Never even put a boat in the water. Just sit there drinking beer and going 'yeah, that's a really great river. Probably kayak it pretty soon.' It's good to be the Greatest State in America. Can't imagine how awful things must be for all those poor bastards sitting there in 'Fly From One Arsehole to Another' country. Can you imagine anything worse than living in New York or California?

Roight, then! Get to it. Possibly because you're all my little lads, and I love to see you occupied with useful tasks, then, eh?

BOO! Bring me flesh and bring me fowl, bring me spirits, bring them now Spirits rich with alcohol! Pork and beef, fish and chicken Potatoes boiled, and baked and fried and alcohol this side of formaldehyde! Then strike up songs, and sing for me Let's eat and drink 'til we cannot see! Then let each man here make poetry Vile doggerel, and Dalem Verse Each poem bad, each rhyme worse Until each are filled with good bad taste And someone throws up! Because, you know, if you make a really good night of it, with eating and drinking and singing and bad versification, the weakest one is always going to heave. It's a given.

High on a mountain side Somewhere in Austria Maybe it's Switzerland It's hard to say I see the woman She runs through the meadow She's crying in anguish She's turning away Oh God...oh...oh...God I think it's Julie Andrews Julie...Julie Andrews Maybe we should call somebody Maybe we should put her out of her misery... Julie Andrews -Uncle Bonsai

And possibly pushing the corpse into a bog with long sticks. There, does that make you feel better?

Maybe later, if I don't simply pass out. Have you been out kayaking this summer, my Lady?

Every post on the Combat Mission Forums is gibberish about something, child. And very few posts here, actually, are about Peng (may he live a thousand years or until he is stepped on by a camel...). But here, in the Peng Challenge Thread, as Dalem has somewhat cryptically pointed out, we tend to minimize the 'wtf', 'lol', and 'muhamcwiwrH' (My Underwear Has Attacked My Crack While I Was Reading Heimskringla) abbreviations in favour of actually typing 'words', and we tend to prefer something like sentence structure, capitalization, and punctuation while posting. Of course, there are times when, in a post modernist, jocular, satirical sort of way, we might post as you posted above. But most of the time, we're all 'goofy adult like' and post like we don't just scratch it out on the ground with a fecking stick. With the possible exception of the Australians. With them it's hard to tell what's ignorance, what's drunkenness, what's regional dialect, and what's ignorant regional drunkenness dialect. With a stick. Doesn't really matter, with them. Their entire language is based on drunkenness. That's why they come here. It's the one place they always know they'll be understood. We speak 'Drunkard'.

I am not dead. Contemplating an historic occasion. At the end of July, I will be bringing Dalem back to our Cabin in Canada for his second, triumphal visit, and quite likely bring Papa Khann there for his first ever visit. There will be rum. There will be song. There will be a mighty pissing off the end of decks involving rum and song. There will be bruising from landing on the native granite of Lake of the Woods after the fall from the deck railing while drinking rum, singing, and pissing. It will be...magical. Boo, as your putative 'Prospero-like' master, I command you to inform Rose and the swine you work for that next summer you will need time off to fly to Minneapolis so that you can drive to Canada, and Freedom! For a week or so, anyways. I should have asked Lars this year, as well. But it was hard to pin down the dates, because the Family was after doing a lot of work on the Cabin, still. And lets be honest. It was a Herculean task to get Dalem & Papa Khann to get their passports into order. With Lars, I would have had to go back and explain several hundred years of diplomacy, the border requirements of two nations, and everything involving the concept of 'government documents' before I could have gotten him to get enough documentation to cross the border. I'm not a young man, anymore. I don't want to die trying to explain the difference between a 'US Passport' and a 'Border Passport Card' to Lars, let alone the whole concept of 'why we need some kinds of identification'. It was bad enough trying to get the concept through to the other two. With Lars, I know that every time I tried, he'd just keep pulling out his wallet, handing me his license and saying "Yes, Officer! I have it right here! If I seem a little happy, it's simply because I'm coming from a wedding...no, wait, they drink at weddings...a funeral...no, wait, I drink at funerals...a christening/baptism/confirmation/occasion involving the joyful entry of young souls into some form of the Church' that doesn't necessarily involve adults drinking at all!" Big Smile. As the gods are my witness, 2 hours of that without having gotten through to him about what a 'birth certificate' is is more than I can take.

God damn it. I feel slightly better about things. It'll pass of course. On the other hand, I'll continue to be an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread. Which gives me a wonderful vantage point on the vagaries of humanity. Have I ever told you about my Small Friends?

Hey! Apparently the 'filtering' software doesn't object to 'goddamn it'. You know, 'God Damn It', at certain points in history, was considered to be a fairly serious bit of blasphemy. So, let's see... Goddamn the King, Goddamn the Queen Goddamn everyone in between Goddamn you when the King was behind you Goddamn the fact that the Queen didn't mind you Goddamn the fact they caught you going and coming Goddamn the fact that you did it all knowing Goddamn the people who parse sh*t and sh*te Goddamn them for trying make it all right Goddamn all software that takes away choice Goddamn the asterisks in place of my voice Goddamn those too lazy to bring down the hammer On those too goddamned to do more than yammer Goddamn us all, each and every one Who've had stupid software stand in for our Mums Goddamn you, and goddamn me Goddamn the fact that asterisks are what we see And of all those goddamns, Goddamn me For the goddamn desire to speak free

Occasionally, I wonder about things, and so I check into them. And do you know what? Emrys is a fecking Welsh name. The base root has to do with 'immortal', which seems appropriate. Goddamn Emrys. Welsh. Oh, and Joe Shaw? Michael is not simply allowed to start up a new Thread, he is welcome to start up a new Thread. What the hell do you think they sang at Rourke's Drift? Some dutch tune? 'Ya, ya, mi liebe willchen tulips stucken up miene?' Fecking Dutch. No, Justicar, they sang 'Men of Harlech'. Fecking Welsh. But it'll be a cold day in hell before I allow the Dutch to start up the new Peng Challenge Thread, as opposed to an aging madman Welsh weirdo who's probably in adult diapers every time he posts, crazy as a goddamn corgi on methamphetamine.

Three. count 'em, three weeks of gout/achilles tendonitis (basically brought on by the gout), have gone by, in the early Paddling Season. Three weeks of doubt, concern, ibuprofen (there was a time, that was, when I had to check the expiration date on a small canister of ibuprofen; now I buy it by the tub and never worry if I'm going to use it up before I die), and I can walk with only a limp. And I paddled. Today, I was like unto a god. A short, fat, annoying god of doubtful provenance, but more godlike than most of you lot of butcher's offal will ever be on a good weekday with a following wind. Did the Vermillion River flats for 4+ hours, almost 9 miles. Glorious weather. Oh, what's that you say, Justicar? You spent the same period pondering whether your next PowerPoint presentation would have the proper 'zing'? Oh, good meister Stuka, what did you do? Stand in front of a mirror and worry that you're getting as fat as a gnome? What's that, oh Boo? Did you drag yourself over the island on your knuckles, wondering if Prospero would be amazed by the fact that you'd learned to wonder whether hate and love were just two faces of the same coin? Well, you sorry shower, I PADDLED. Very nice day. Wish you could have been there. Herons, hawks, two bald eagles, and a snake swam across the river right in front of me, and I hadn't seen that before. Pretty sure it was a Fox Snake. Which was a good sign. Because, if you don't know it, the fox is my symbol. Damn good day.

I appreciate the well wishes of those who posted in acknowledgment of my birthday. Even Emrys's, which seemed to lack...a certain something. 'Good wishes', perhaps. It's hard, you know, getting old. Watching your friends taken off by death, one by one. Leaving you alone, and feeling incredibly smug. I figure the paucity of 'Happy Birthday Wishes' was due to the fact that most of you shower of useless bastards were so completely, fecking insensibly drunk in celebration of my birthday that you ended up in Detox. Or that you had died in the last year. That last thought left me with a warm feeling. The Ladies of the 'Pool, of course, were out dancing and drinking champagne that night. Of course, it was also 'Mother's Day'. Appropriate.

How come neither you nor Peng sends me erotic pictures anymore? Actually, that was mostly Peng. Come to think of it, that was just Peng... What the hell?! How come Peng used to send me erotic pictures?! What is wrong with this place?

NIDAN! Nidan? I think we all agree that there needs to never be another posting of the guy in the Tron suit. For any reason. Okay?

You have trivialized the word 'terrible'. Yeknod's versification was f*cking horrible.