Monthly Archives: December 2006

Historigon: Justinuary 2006

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Historigon

During This Month in History…

  • 2001 AD: Arizona state senator Arnold Schumaker (L) sends polaroids of expensive toys to underprivileged children in his district.
  • 1986 AD: A live-action manger scene burns down in Czechoslovakia, killing all participants.
  • 1983 AD: The first successful artificial appendix is inserted into Gary Clarkson.
  • 1969 AD: While exploring the surface of the Moon, astronaut Alan Bean finds a rock that resembles his primary school teacher Mrs. Belcher.
  • 1964 AD: Italy changes government.
  • 1943 AD: Airman Eric Jones paints a picture of a pretty dame on the nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress.
  • 1832 AD: Future president Martin Van Buren, after celebrating his birthday, vomits in a spittoon.
  • 1793AD: Marie Antoinette, in the few seconds of life afforded her head after its separation from the body, wonders if heaven will have delicious cakes.
  • 1653 AD: A group of Spanish settlers decide to play a game of pins using Olmec head statues and some old canoes.
  • 1588 AD: Pedro the Navigator informs his captain that the seas ahead appear stormy. Captain Menendez assures him that God will protect the Armada from storms. Later both their corpses wash up near Brighton.
  • 1402 AD: Kim Il-Sung, after inventing a time machine, arrives and promptly invents water skiing.
  • 1301 AD: Geoffe the Slopper of Stuttgart looks up and sees a comet.
  • 1282 AD: Friar Marcus makes a mistake while illuminating a manuscript, suggesting to future generations that he liked rutabagas very much.
  • 1202 AD: While sacking Constantinople, Martin of Tours finds a vase that he thinks his wife might like.
  • 738 AD: The Nanzhao kingdom sets up a strict code of state-mandated, individually-unique hair styles for its citizens.
  • 605 AD: Chinese Emperor Yang-ti orders the construction of a massive canal to link major rivers with the capital of Luoyang. Later that night he sneezes five times in a row, beating his previous record of three consecutive sneezes.
  • 439 AD: Axum resident Derdana asks if maybe they can’t have a few less stele around as they block out the fine Ethiopian sunshine. An unhappy neighbour later mixes goat dung in with Derdana’s stew.
  • 423 AD: A young Attila, later known as The Hun, gives his brother Bleda one of the first known wedgies after Bleda, in an amazing turn of cultural precocity tries wearing underpants.
  • 135 AD: Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan arrive at Simon Bar Kokhba’s hideout near the Dead Sea. They describe the situation as “totally un-station.”
  • 21 AD: Sauren the Parthian uses several captured Roman helmets to impress some girls. That night he sires Artabana.
  • 74 BC: Trandovix the Gaul wanders to present-day Gibraltar in search of a good tankard.
  • 712 BC: Numa Pompilius notices a member of his court has slipped an association of drinkers into his proposal for the creation of guilds in Rome.
  • 905 BC: Otonga and his friend eat a pig.
  • 1003 BC: The Olmecs create giant stone heads in mockery of disgraced citizens for use in playing a Meso-American version of pins.
  • 3281 BC: Adresh of Chaldea trades seventy loaves, two goats and an Abyssinian slave man to Ushot of Uruk for seven ounces of silver and two mares.
  • 6.701 BC: Erath the Scout finds a village where they teach him the secret of pottery.
  • 32.801 BC: After spending seven months in the freezing cold, Uguski and his clan begin to regret following that mammoth herd across what would one day be called the Bering Land Bridge.
  • 91,002 BC: While examining the community’s Large Bone with Notches in It, Ogoff laments that things were better back in the old days.

The March of Progress: Justinuary 2006

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Mammals and Muffins

Monrovia, MV – Researchers at Magic Muffin’s Research Campus have been working diligently in the service of muffin sortation. For the past year, Dr. Edward Jacobs and his team spent the majority of their time working to train various creatures in muffin separation in an effort to make the manufacturing and shipping processes more efficient. Surprisingly, they have found very little success with snakes.

“Snakes have been used for some time in microchip manufacturing,” says Jacobs, “but their sortational aptitude there does not seem to translate to muffins or virtually any other consumer package good.”

During the course of our interview with Dr. Jacobs, we passed through the test subject living quarters where we saw many dogs, old world monkeys, several ungulates and, surprisingly, a sloth.

“The sloth is actually fairly good with blueberry and poppy seed,” said Dr. Kelly Jacobs, Edward Jacobs’ daughter and assistant. She later told us that the sloth was “just a bit slow,” but she did not want to hurt his feelings by saying so in front of him.

Dr. Jacobs’ (the elder) prize animal is a schnauzer named Murray, who has received high grades in all the major muffin sorting axes including chocolate, chocolate chip, double-fudge chocolate, and bran. Dr. Jacobs (the younger) also sees promise in Hoody, a four year old Thompson’s gazelle who has proven quite skillful in some preliminary cupcake tests.

“Dad gave me some research time on my own and I wanted to see if maybe Hoody didn’t have some abilities outside of the corn muffin-oat muffin continuum,” explains Jacobs.

She points out that the major differences between cupcakes and muffins are frosting and size. Larger cupcakes are often mistaken for muffins, so the research team often includes a few in the muffin testing.

Javier McClintock, Vice President of Human and Animal Resources, says that once the results of the testing are reported in February, Magic Muffin will make a determination about which animals to put on the factory floor. Should the report be favorable, a test program will begin in their extra-national production facility located in international waters to avoid legal entanglements and taxation.

“After that,” says McClintock, “we plan to roll out schnauzer and gazelle sortation teams in
all of our muffin production facilities by quarter 3 of 2007.”

Election Tsunami

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Platha Elections

Pylon, PL– Platha State Union Steward-Premier Alexander Botchy appeared triumphant as he stood in the parking lot of the Platha State Union Building in Downtown Pylon. Flanked by recently appointed Governor Alexander Osten and Communications Commandant Dmetri Treskeshuvya-Schodtiv, and surrounded by distinguished and heavily-armed members of the Platha State Union Precautionary Brigade, Steward-Premier Botchy led a hastily assembled crowd in a hearty rendition of the unofficial State Anthem, Hell on Wheels, before announcing the official election results.

While reporters and citizens not approved by members of the Political Conclave were barred from documenting or recording the announcement, my translator from the Ministry of Historical Document Distribution provided a transcript and press release stating:

The People of Platha have once again wisely chosen to allow the Platha State Union to govern them. This is a day of great victory for Platha and a day of humiliating defeat for the Enemy Party, who received not one vote. What a wondrous and historic day for the institution of democracy and for the people of Platha.

As a result of this new election the Platha State Union retained an overwhelming majority of 100% in the four member Council of Control, the eight member House of Progress Determination, the twelve-member State Senate and the eighteen-member People’s Committee for Authorization. Currently, the ballots and elections are under the control of the three members of the Committee for Leadership, a sub-committee of State Union’s Council for Perpetuation of Progress. In their next session, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the cases American Freedom Party vs. Platha State Union and Free America Party vs. Alexander Reich. In both cases plaintiffs claimed the Platha State Union has engaged in unfair and illegal election practices.

Officially sanctioned ballots in Platha only carry candidates from the Platha State Union or the Evil Enemy Party, a strange fact since the Evil Enemy Party appears to have no members and has never put up a candidate for any office. Further, issue and candidate advertising during the election cycle is restricted to segments approved by PTV, a television and radio station owned by the Platha State Union. PTV is the only broadcast medium available within state bounds, enforced by signal jamming equipment located on the periphery of the state. The titles of some such advertising include “Platha State Union and the Glory of Beets,” “Ideology and You: The Platha State Union,” and “The Evil Enemy Party Destroys Commerce, Souls, and Babies in the Service of the Great Capitalist Menace Next Door Bent on Control of the Proletariat for Its Own Nefarious Devices.” Neighboring state governors have complained about many of the broadcasts, which demonize and dehumanize their citizens.

Alexander Osten

Others have charged that Platha has denied the right to vote to many of its citizens through the practice of having only a single State-wide polling precinct open for fifteen minutes per year. An additional lawsuit is planned by the ACLU to challenge the Committee for Leadership’s decision to satisfy these complaints by installing the state-wide precinct within a dirigible instructed to land randomly throughout the state over the course of ten hours.

Despite the difficulties Plathans might face in choosing their representatives in the state’s quadricameral legislature, the ordinary people I was allowed to speak with: a high-tech computer man, an award winning author and novelist, and a conductor of a fast, efficient new train network; read from cards about how much they believe in Platha’s flourishing democracy.

“We believe in democracy, and nothing is brings freedom than tireless work of Platha State Union” read one young woman. “Never would I choose to leaving such a land of prosperity, freedom and accomplishment. I vote for progress provided by fair and just wisdom of Platha State Union.”

Letters: Justinuary 2006

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Written correspondences from good natured gentlemen who have read our previous installments and wish to comment on some aspects thereof.

Dear A&A,
Your advertisement for the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (Caliguly 2006) would also be great for a t-shirt. Unfortunately the molten rock contained within the Earth is called magma, not lava. This really bugs me.
Sabine
Corpus Christi, TX

Dear Editors,
I take issue with Sticker Page in your Clauduary issue (Sticker Page, Clauduary 2006). At the very top of the page you feature a sticker which says “I Dig Dugout Dug.” Dugout Dug is a thoroughly despicable human being. He is unable to wash or clothe himself and his only claim to fame before your infamous lionizing of him on Sticker Page was being kicked out of the Rocklynde, Montsylvania Lentil Soakers AAA baseball team dugout before every game.
Melvin Merkson
Rocklynde, MV

To the Axes & Alleys editors, in regards to Not Even
Wrong review, Springtober 2006:
Thanks for sending this, although I think you guys should lighten up…You have been smart enough to notice what lots of reviewers didn’t, that the book wasn’t especially written for a popular audience, but that significant parts of it were really written mainly for other physicists and mathematicians, although this is cleverly hidden through the avoidance of equations. My publishers also didn’t much notice this, although they perhaps just have unshakeable faith in the public’s willingness to buy something they won’t be able to understand. Anyway, so far I’ve been extremely pleased and surprised at how much attention the book has gotten and how well it has been selling. It really was intended originally for a university press and much more limited distribution. String theorists put a stop to that, now they’re not very happy with the fact that the book’s point of view is reaching a rather wide audience.
Anyway, best wishes!
Dr. Peter Woit
New York, NY

Dear Axes & Alleys,
I am incensed by the latest rash of bestiality reports in the media. Persons engaging in interspecies rape with pit bulls, pomeranians, schnauzers, basset hounds, doberman pinschers, chihuahuas, bluetick coonhounds, corgis, pekingese, otterhounds, and spitzes is just disgusting. Humans should only rape size-appropriate canines such as Irish wolfhounds, borzois, St. Bernards, Rhodesian ridgebacks, and mongrels more than two feet tall. I am constantly amazed at the true depths of depravity to which society plummets; more so the incomprehension of size differences.
Mike Gamble
Sordid Rakehook, WD

Dear Axes & Alleys,
Your classified ads are not actually classified at all. They are randomly arranged. Please fix this or I will cancel my subscription. Also, when are you gonna publish some more Rango and Lem comics? It’s not like they’re that hard or produce, so c’mon lets see the boy and the alien and lets see some actual classifieds some time.
Jennifer Martasko
Seaford, NY

To the Editors,
How come all the ladies on your covers are famous celebrities like actors, singers or models? Why not put an ordinary girl on your cover? Maybe someone who’s just a college student or check out girl at the supermarket? Ordinary, normal girls are hot. It’d be cool to see one on your cover.
Paul David Hewson
Dublin, Ireland