Sunday, October 15, 2006

Grind the Peasant into Mincemeat Orders Thag

Thagday, BC 23829 – At a hastily-scheduled press conference held from atop a pile of mule bones, Warrior-King Thag today ordered that Pong the Peasant be ground into mincemeat and fed to a dragon.

“Pong is bad,” declared Thag. “Pong take bright rock from wife #3. Thag mad at Pong. Pong pay price!”

A cheering crowd of onlookers proceeded to storm at Pong. One of them gnawed on his leg. Another ripped out Pong’s hair. “Har de har!” everyone laughed. Then they lit a massive bonfire, skewered Pong on a stake, placed him at the centre of the inferno, and pranced around him while Thag looked on with satisfaction. Meanwhile, Pong yelped like a whippet.

“Skin burn!” Thag roared approvingly, as he watched Pong’s epidermis turn into pork crackling. “Eyes melt!”

When Pong was thoroughly cooked, Thag’s helpful subjects wheeled out a large grinding machine, specially designed for rendering flesh and bones into a pulpy, jellied mess. Pong was fed into the machine and came out the other end. He was no longer recognizable, not even, sadly, to his own blind mother.

“Where Pong?” she was heard to lament as she rushed about frantically, sporadically bumping into menhirs1 and ossified mammoths.

“Mom of Pong sad,” observed a local witch doctor. “She need help.”

“Yeah,” said Eg the Empathetic. “She do no wrong. She is nice.”

While the local dragon ate Pong, the concerned residents of Thagalia wondered how to console Pong’s mother, Mag. There was much consternation that the conditional verb tense had not yet been invented, limiting Thaggians to speaking only in a pidgin present tense. Because it would have truly benefited Mag if she could have explained to her son when he was young what would happen if he weren’t well behaved. As it was, her crude sentence structure had always made it difficult to explain cause and effect.

“Now Pong is poo,” Eg declared sadly, watching the dragon burp.

“Pong, Pong, Pong!” cried Mag.

“Feed Mag a dog!” suggested one particularly clever peasant. The Thaggians yelled with approval. They went running into the dark and foreboding woods, pausing briefly to chant the name of the forest god in order to allay their superstitious fear of being eaten by the darkness, then continued on their hunting expedition. They rounded up four wild dogs and brought them back to Mag.

“Dog for Mag,” announced Eg, handing Mag a kicking and squirming poodle. “Cook dog and eat him and Mag be glad!”

Mag took the poodle onto her lap and caressed it.

“Pong?” she said.

The onlookers exchanged quizzical glances. There was uncertainty as to whether they should correct Mag’s misconception about the identity of the furry beast in her lap. Somebody mentioned that Thag should be consulted. But as somebody else pointed out, Thag had long ago abandoned his news conference and was currently in a cave fornicating with wife #8. He would surely be displeased to have his pleasure-making interrupted.

“Pong!” Mag exclaimed delightedly as the poodle licked her face.

“Brain of Mag broke,” observed the witch doctor with a sigh.

The primitives eventually decided to let Mag believe that her new furry friend was indeed Pong.

“I’m sure we’ve invented several things here,” said William, the first polysyllabic primitive. “Psychology, counselling, the concept of delusions, not to mention animal domestication!”

A quick poll of Thaggians today revealed that nobody had understood what he had said. The latest news is that Thag will imprison William for reason of insanity.

"That man is thoroughly unstable," Thag declared.

1 This is the M.o.M.’s first ever footnote!!! A menhir is a very large stone. It hurts if you run into one, even if you are a thick-skulled primitive.