The Peng Challenge Thread – Never Safe to Say

[Stuka]

Boo, heartfelt condolences to you and your family...

[Patch]

Sad news to report, lads. My father passed away today after a short illness. But, he was surrounded by family and he was in no pain. And that's a good thing.

But he is and shall remain, greatly loved and greatly missed.

Sorry about your loss.

[Nidan1]

So sorry Boo, my condolences to you and your family.

[Boo Radley]

Thank you, everyone.

[Seanachai]

Boo, I am very sorry to hear of your loss. The 'Pool mourns a man who has been it's benefactor. Without him, we wouldn't have Boo.

Take care of yourself, and your family, and love to Rose.

[dalem]

You no doubt meant "its".

[Seanachai]

You no doubt meant "its".

I was sorrowing. My spelling goes to pieces when I'm unhappy, you pirck.

[dalem]

What a silly bunt.

[Stuka]

bunt 2 (bnt)

n.

1. The middle portion of a sail, especially a square one, that is shaped like a pouch to increase the effect of the wind.

Yes Dalem, clearly very silly.

[Boo Radley]

Well, he's sort of shaped like a pouch... isn't he?

Oh, wait... no! I'm thinking he's shaped like a pooch.

[Patch]

Ah, our own version of Omar Khayyam. But, because Dalem is a creature of the 21st Century, there is no "and Thou".

Bloody good thing, too. Did our own Dalem mention that on Thursday he had lunch with Sci-Fi writer Steven Brust? Probably not. I'm imagining that even if he had, he wouldn't mention that he'd had lunch with him a couple hundred feet from my apartment.

Oh, I knew about the lunch. I wasn't invited, of course. And that's just as well. Because, if I had been invited, I would have shown up only long enough to steal one of Brust's shoes, and run off laughing into south Minneapolis. And I'd have gone to every fan site on the web for Brust's various books, and chortled, and said 'Ha! I've got one of his fecking shoes!'

Well, long enough to have a couple of glasses of wine, and then steal one of Brust's shoes.

It wouldn't have really been theft, of course. After all, I had 3 terms of German from his father at Carleton College in the early 70s. That makes us almost family, in some ways.

I remember Herr Brust (the Elder). Big time Communist. One class, we began by discussing early German literature, but it ended with him ranting about the ultimate collapse of the Western Economic system, and he did a lovely bit describing empty lunch bags blowing through the parking lots of failed factories. Steve Johnson, a classmate, did a lovely bit of making a sad, soughing wind noise to accompany it. Herr Brust was slightly deaf, so it went unremarked.

Just as well. The only reason I passed out of my language requirement at Carleton was because I made a point of sitting by Johnson, and whenever I was called on to give an answer about dative/accusitive/etc. I looked blank until Steve Johnson whispered the answer to me.

Good times, good times.

Little was I to know that one day I'd be reading his son's books. In a couple of the early ones, he made references to places in Northfield, where Carleton was, such as the Hill of 3 Oaks. What I could tell you about that hill.

But I shant, because you're all unworthy swine, and the mysteries and wonders of my younger days aren't for sharing with a shower like you lot.

Safe to say, though, that I began my career as an Old One, sitting around a fire in the Wasteland and wondering about complete bloody idjits, had it's genesis somewhere, now didn't it?

I think I am worthy to get to read more of your younger days stories. I'm worthy to read all of your stories. So I want more stories!

[Seanachai]

I think I am worthy to get to read more of your younger days stories. I'm worthy to read all of your stories. So I want more stories!

You are, dear Lady, worthy. But the stories of my younger days...that is a book of shame. It can only be read out loud around an open fire, outdoors, with the drink flowing and the smoke of cigars mingling with the smell of burning wood (preferably pine, for the association with my childhood), and it's after the time when all right thinking folk should be in bed. Say, around 2 am.

And what's there, when you come right down to it? Tales of drunkenness? There's not an Australian on this Board who couldn't probably tell a tale more hair-rising, disturbing and repugnant than anything I could come up with. Tales of drug abuse? Go on and read Hunter S. Thompson, if that's the way you roll. Tales of sexual excess? One blushes. You'll get none of that sort of thing from me, because I was almost always too busy with the tales of drunkenness and drug abuse to pay much attention to that sort of thing. Tales of wild adventures, misadventures, and general weirdness? I was always too much the Good Child, too much the favoured son, too much the shy, bespectacled shat upon 'student' to ever be involved with any of that.

All I've ever had, is the picture of wild adventures, tales of drunkenness, and disturbing drug abuse. I can paint it with both a broad brush, and a fine one. And the longer I live, and the more folk I talk to, the more I realize that everything I've ever done has been simply dancing on the edge of a vast chasm of weirdness.

On the other hand, I've actually had to pay for my stupidity and weirdness, here and there. And I've collected a great treasure trove of stories, and known the moments of weirdness. And I've done much of it without having to buy more than the first round.

I am, after all, the Seanachai. And that means, in the Old Language: the Storyteller.

But what it really means, is, 'the Story Gatherer'. And my friends make fun of me, here in town, here in my own place, when we get together, when everyone is talking, and I begin things that I say with 'I remember this one time...', and 'I knew this fellow who...', and 'There was this time when we...'

And you get mocked for it, rather than appreciated. You get chided and chivvied for beginning a tale; perhaps it happened to you, perhaps someone you know, perhaps someone you knew, and you begin a tale, and everyone chortles and mocks. And no one believes you, or wants to hear, or they know a better story about someone else, or has a better story about something they did, and no one ever realizes that all the stories come to rest somewhere.

And where do they come to rest? You could spend a long day looking for them, and drink a lot of booze trying to remember, or forget them, but they come to where they belong.

But they all get told around an open fire, maybe with a bit of drink at hand, and it may be late at night, and if you can lift your eyes up to what's beyond the fire, and beyond the point where the fire shows you where you are sitting, you'll see nothing. A Wasteland. And in the Wasteland there are always those who sit, and listen.

And they are called 'Seanachais'.

[Seanachai]

But there was this one story, that happened to my friend Bob (big orange sheep!), that I remember he told me once, and I might have told it here, but maybe not, and so, I tell it again, as if for the first time...

My friend Bob (big orange sheep!), once owned a sandwich/deli/beer bar place in Columbia, Missouri. He bought it from its former owner, who he worked for for awhile, who skimmed all the profits from the place to do dumb-rocks and cocaine. And one day, when Bob was running the place, a police officer came in, with a leaflet in his hand, and asked to speak to the owner.

And Bob came out to talk to him, and the cop said 'Sir, are you the owner of this establishment?', and Bob told him, 'Well, yes?'

And the cop proffered the leaflet he was carrying and said 'Well, I found this stapled to a telephone pole in town'. And Bob looked at it, and recognized the flyer of one of the singer/songwriters that he'd encouraged to play in his business on Weekend Nights. Young guys, in general, who played guitar, and sang songs, and Bob played guitar, himself, and he liked them to be there, and maybe it brought in more business, but they played for tips and cost no one anything but time.

'Yes?, he told the cop. 'He's going to play guitar here Saturday.'

'Well," the cop told him. 'It's illegal to post a flyer on a telephone pole in town.'

'Okay?' Bob told him. 'I'll tell the guy who posted it?'

'I'm going to have to give you a ticket.'

Bob thought about it.

'But I didn't post it. He doesn't work for me. He plays for tips, we don't pay him.'

'Sorry, but your Place of Business is the one named here, and you're the owner. I'm going to have to give you a ticket.'

And the cop starts writing out the ticket. So my buddy Bob says to him, 'Okay, I realize that a telephone pole is something too beautiful to deface, but in the future where should I tell the people who play here where to post their leaflets?'

And the cop tells him:

"They should staple them to the cossacks downtown."

And Bob thinks about it for a moment, and then he tells him "You can get a nasty saber cut that way!"

The cop says 'What?'

Bob says to him 'Where are they supposed to staple them?'

'On the cossacks.'

'What, nomad horsemen sitting on sturdy ponies?'

'What? Look they should post their leaflets on those round things downtown.'

'You mean the kiosks?'

'Yeah, whatever.'

And then he gave Bob a $100 ticket.

The best part of the story it that there was a married couple having lunch in Bob's place that day, who caught the whole thing. And they started giving the cop a hard time, asking him if he was seriously going to give Bob a ticket rather than a warning for such a stupid offense, and the cop said he was just doing his job, and it turned out that the couple were reporters for the local paper, and they did a whole column on the incident.

And it turns out that the cop was generally disliked even by all the other cops, and for months afterwards they had a lot to ask him about the Czar and keeping order amongst the Tartars.

[Michael Emrys]

Tales of sexual excess? One blushes. You'll get none of that sort of thing from me, because I was almost always too busy with the tales of drunkenness and drug abuse to pay much attention to that sort of thing.

Well, there was one story you shared with me several years ago involving the young daughter of a conservative Christian family. But don't worry, I won't embarrass you by repeating it here. Not as long as the checks continue to arrive every month. Unless of course a much larger check from a different source should turn up...

Michael

[Seanachai]

Emrys, you are an Old Man. Had the gods looked just a bit askance, had the next post been something different, had Berli mocked Peng slightly differently, all those many, many posts ago, you might be here, where I am here.

You could now be what I have become, here in the Forum.

Have I done well? Have I been what I could be, or should be?

Have I done well, Old One?

(F*ck off, the rest of you. I AM the Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread, and I know what I mean. You lot go and scamper at the door, and wonder about what those who've grown old enough to be both certain, and afraid, have to say to each other).

You know, Michael, why I have always granted you a status beyond all but what the other Old Ones have. And the other Old Ones are younger than I, though they loom larger in the imagination.

They are Berli, the Dark Knight, the Evil One, the Angry Man. The man who can't be having with all that. They are Peng, the Curmudgeon, the Judgmental One, the man who wants the world to be better. The man who's a bit vague about how it should happen, but knows evil when he sees it.

And then, there's me. The man caught between dark and light. The Seanachai. The Storyteller.

And I'll go into the grave before the other two feckers will, unless there's a god that takes into account Berli's non-stop smoking, and Peng's frailness of purpose, and I'm given some kind of special dispensation.

So tell me, Emrys, Oldest, when I come to the Last World, and find your worthless arse there, dead, will I have done well?

Well?

I am the Seanachai.

[Seanachai]

3 am, and no one there?

Fecking weaklings. Where are the Australians, I ask you?

C*cks*ck*rs.

OH MY GODS, WHAT'S BECOME OF ALL THE VOWELS?!!

[Noba]

3 am, and no one there?

Fecking weaklings. Where are the Australians, I ask you?

C*cks*ck*rs.

OH MY GODS, WHAT'S BECOME OF ALL THE VOWELS?!!

Do you ever look in the mirror and think "my brain has gone. I hope it went to a good home".

Do you know how hard it is to ignore the "Mens magazines" in this here hairdressing shop just to reply to you? Useless sod, go paddle up the creek, without the paddle.

Noba.

[Seanachai]

Do you ever look in the mirror and think "my brain has gone. I hope it went to a good home".

Do you know how hard it is to ignore the "Mens magazines" in this here hairdressing shop just to reply to you? Useless sod, go paddle up the creek, without the paddle.

Noba.

Fecking Christ on a crutch. At least Noba's here. I feel better.

Not a lot better, mind you. But before, I was just going to go throw up, and go to bed. Now, I have a whole new lease on life.

It's the same lease on life, of course that has me wondering about all you lot of fools. How are you doing?

Don't be afraid. Tell Seanachai, the Old one, how you're doing.

[Seanachai]

Noba am I an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread?

[Seanachai]

I said, Noba am I an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread?!

[Seanachai]

I Said, Noba Am I An Old One Of The F*cking Peng Challenge Thread?!!

Or Am I Not, Eh?!

[Stuka]

I think Dalem took over your job, thank you for your service...we will keep your records on file and if a further position should open up we'll be in touch.

"Security, show Mr Seanachai to the door...the back door"

[Seanachai]

I think Dalem took over your job, thank you for your service...we will keep your records on file and if a further position should open up we'll be in touch.

"Security, show Mr Seanachai to the door...the back door"

I'm not here to hear from you, Stuka. I'm waiting for another answer. You go and sit down, now, lad.

[Seanachai]

And I ask again, Noba, am I not the Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread? Do you think I come here for my own ego, which is massive, or do you think I come here to hear from you lot that I AM AN OLD ONE OF THE PENG CHALLENGE THREAD, EH??

[Boo Radley]

I pick C: All of the above.

And yes, Seanachai YOU AM AN OLD ONE OF THE PENG CHALLENGE THREAD.

Now sit quietly. I have a bit of a headache.