File : HISTORY.TXT Author : Iceman(NZ) BBS : The Banana Republic BBS Iceman's History of the World +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |A History of the World Based on a Piece of Fossilized Chewing Gum found in | | the Sinai Desert during the 1973 Yom Kippur War | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The blob of discarded chewing gum lay in the desert. A lone figure leading a camel over the windblown sand dunes approached it. Bending down, the Egyptian prince picked it up, whereupon it stuck to his fingers as chewing-gum that has lain in the sun for a while tends to do. Obviously, the was a God, which the price named Freedentis, meaning "the sticky one". Back in Cairo, a magnificent temple was built in its honour. Every day at dawn, a jubjub bird would be sacrificed to it in a short but poignant ceremony, by smothering it in rose petals. The dead body of the bird would then be used as fertilizer to grow more roses. The Prince then went to pay homage to Napoleon, the Pharoah, and while in his presence inquired of him why he found it necessary to invade the vast icy steppes of Russia (he had been informed of this devastatingly interesting fact by an unusually prescien t jubjub bird shorlty before it died). Napoleon replied that he wanted more "Lebensraum" for his Volk, and that his tanks would crush the Russian forces, and would you like me to answer any more of your stupid questions or can I just get back to running the country? Unfortunately that night all his tank drivers were killed by a plague of locusts. Freedentis now had a son called Spearmintis, shaped like a shocking pink baby grand piano which was only ever capable of producing almost the same note in several different variants of B flat minor. The famous hippie-beat artist Aristotle was in favour o f dissecting him, but was violently opposed by Beethoven and his good friend Michael Jackson. Freedentis was greviously offended, and told Spearmintis to stick his head in Mt.Vesuvius, which promptly erupted and buried the town of Matakatia in its ashes. Spearmintis then came back and raised an army of Assyrians, led by Rommel, to oppose Freedent is, but Freedentis' Roman mercenaries, also led by Rommel, soon crushed him. Due to a slight disagreement, Rommel was later turned into a piano lubricating head by Freedentis, who then coagulated and was buried inside the Lincoln Memorial, named after a man he had known a few years before he was born. To celebrate, Spearmintis took a 767 flight to Angkor Wat, or at least the site where Angkor Wat was going to have been after the planning division had submitted its report to the works subcommittee. Here, his faithful Cossacks crushed an inferior force of rebellious Mongols. Here also, he uttered the famous words "Uuuurrggghh!!" as a parting burst of machine-gun fire from the Mongols hit him in the stomach. He then returned to Cairo, where he also had a son, known only by the cryptic moniker of PK. A fter that he died quietly in a corner due to nervous discombooberation. PK now mounted an expedition to see what lay beyond Otara, but was driven back by fierce bands of Aztecs armed with slingshots and particle accelerators. Most of his troops mamanged to escape, and fled to Memphis by way of the Aegean Sea, with the help o f some friendly black natives in their dugout paddle-steamers. Shortly afterwards, Memphis was destroyed when a small planetoid crashed into it. The Southern Pacific flooded into the crater, and as a result the Atlantic Ocean was created. Suddenly, a great threat rose up from the South. An Inca Prince by the name of Adolf Hitler, at the head of vast hordes of Scythians, was conquering everything that stood in his way, and replacing whole villages with well-laid-out holiday camps containin g some of the most advanced shower and oven facilities ever created. One by one, Peru, South Africa, and Constantinople fell to him. To stop his "Domino Theory" plan, PK threw a giant domino at him, which totally dominated the domineering dominion created by Hitler. As a result of this great victory, PK decided to get married. He met Ceopatra every night under the silvery moon, when then suddenly exploded for no adequately explored reason. This created such high tides that for weeks the moon had a red ring around it. PK consulted the great priest Minamoto, who told him to stick his head in an oil sump (preferably a used one). As a result, PK turned Minamoto into a psychopathic flea, which was subsequently used as reactor fuel after trying to hold up the Pony Express. Only minutes later, a giant Duracell (R) battery fifteen miles high appeared above Cairo. Shortly thereafter, a large pink jubjub bird flew from the left ear of the battery and descended to earth. As the battery picked its nose in boredom, the bird la id a large egg which was promptly crushed by a falling pyramid. The bird then returned to the Duracell (R) battery, which disappeared in a flash of burnt-out filaments. PK now had a son called Freshmintis, who liked nothing more than to roll Vietnam-War surplus hand grenades down the aforementioned pyramid, which due a freak high tide was now floating about two metres above the ground. One day, one of the grenades, havi ng been tampered with by a Communist agitator and possibly even a murderer, who had perpetrated the most cruel deeds against his fellow South Africans, and all because he was on the payroll of his masters far from these shores, imploded, and a huge whale fell on PK, instantly turning him into a small green tesseract, which was subsequently crushed by a landing 747. Freshmintis now built a huge palace just outside his front door, and proceeded to turn his house into a haven for battered moths (this was subsequently extended to basted, marinated, and pre-tenderized moths after complaints from the Moths Own Pressure Gr oup). He then went off to live in his magnificent new palace. One day, as he was busy machine-gunning his bedroom, a small carrier-pigeon arrived from one of his ministers to inform him that he was living in the back of a disused Watties baked bean can p arked on a campsite x-thousand miles away, where he had found a small maple tree who was to be his friend. After eating the pigeon, Freedentis decided to lock himself in the toilet until someone managed to conclusively prove to him that he wasn't a fish. His son Mildmintis siezed this opportunity to take over, and had the entire toilet block sealed inside a ping-pong ball, which was then crushed inside a paraplegic sphinx. Not less then four microweeks later, the air was suddenly rent with a wild yelling as hordes of Red Indians parachuted down on the palace. The Etruscan Palace guards were no match for the highly-trained Indian archers, and were quickly disposed of. The only thing which stood in the way of a complete victory for the Indians were three members of Mildmintis' elite Greek hoplite infantry bodyguard armed with AK47's. As the palace thundered and shook with the Red Indians' shells, Mildmintis used his Godlik e powers and summoned the Fleas of a Thousand Camels to plague the Indians, who then withdrew to their native Scotland, where they devoted themselves to breeding little green sausages that go "Poo-pip poo-pip" all day long. Mildmintis now journeyed to Ghana, where he was very impressed with the earthworks there. Upon his return, he had a son, Juicyfruitis, who viewed his main mission in life as tearing the wings off frogs and eating them. As he grew up, he progressed to la rger things such as Ankylosauri, and as his greatest achievement he actually succeeded in decapitating a Tyrannosaurus, but it must be admitted that he was helped to some extent by his pet mosquito, who, it was eventually established, did most of the work . (He was then sued by the farmer from whose pen the Tyrannosaurus had escaped. The farmer had almost won this precedent-setting case when he was suddenly and mysteriously eaten by a rare species of carnivorous earthworm). Juicyfruitis now decided to get rid of Mildmintis. He did this by dropping a peanut with the approximate volume of four major planets on him, and although only the peanut was damaged, Mildmintis got the hint and killed himself shortly after lunch. Just before breakfast the next year, Juicyfruitis recieved a bill from the power company for $893 million for the electrically heated toilet seat he had forgotten to unplug seven hundred and thirty-two years ago. With a sound faintly resembling a McDonalds ha mburger (large size) hitting a 747 in mid-flight, he made a collect call via the repeater on Saturn, and then launched into a long harangue about his uncle's grumbling appendix as soon as he had raised the inverse operator. If he had bothered to look out of the window at that moment, he might have noticed the remote-controlled cucumber fitted with an outbord motor whizzing towards him, but as he hadn't, he didn't. Suddenly, this first herald of the Patagonian invasion was u pon him, and in the struggle to escape, the seventh finger on each of his hands fell off, providing an interesting exception to Murphy's Law. As he raced to don his pumpkin suit, the first drops of orange juice were already beginning to fall. At about this time he first heard of a young Jew by the name of Joseph, and of his wife Madonna, who had reportedly told her husband to "get into the groove" when she first met him. For some reason they had come to Egypt in search of small red beetles to bronze and sell to American tourists (with or without handbags). After breakfast, he sold his grandmother (not Ruth) for 2 zloty, 1 rial, and 6 pfennig, and with these ill-gotten gains bought a box of bat manure which he used to teach his goldfish breas tstroke. Finally, Freedentis got married, and legally registered his son Supermintis, who was by now a year older than he would have been before had he not been born on a leap-minute. Right from the start, he and his rubber duck plotted to kill Freedentis. Final ly, they hit upon a clever plan. While Freedentis flossed his teeth (which were rotten from too much chewing gum), Supermintis raised a vast army of Ethyopian druids, and went on a "Long March" across his backyard. Upon reaching Laos, he turned hard lef t, and continued across the border to Morocco, where he met with fierce resistance from the grass, which grew in the opposite way to the direction of the march, due to the moon-worshipping cults practised there earlier this century. After sealing the ent ire plain in radioactive asphalt, which was blamed on the French a few millenia later, he continued north in the direction of Capetown, and finally succeeded in taking its high-rise toilet block after a thirty-second siege. Due to the tremendous casualties incurred in the awesome battle with the leafy plants of the South African tribal homelands, Supermintis killed his second cousins brothers uncles sister twice removed, so that she become his second cousins brothers uncles sister thrice removed, and devoted the rest of her unlife to progressive speech therapy for tadpoles. Supermintis now had a son called Arrowmintis, who was almost perfectly normal, proided that you are used to a three-hundred pound glowing red frog hanging around your back door. Arrowmintis loved to create picture frames, until Somebody told him that it was physically impossible to have five right angles in a square, whereupon he had Somebody shot, along with all his family, friends, relatives, and their pet cat. Almost three years passed before Arrowmintis developed his unique habit of blowing up letterboxes for pleasure and profit, and then sellng the grieving ex-owners sets of commemorative handkerchiefs and vaccuum cleaners. Only three letterboxes ever escape d: one ran away, the second evolved suddenly and flew off into the sunset, and the third walked around in ever-decreasing circles until it reached its perihelion, whereupon it kepy right on going and vanished into another dimension. Where the letterbox h ad been now lay a large, pink, blue-speckled egg. Even as Arrowmintis watched, the egg turned green, popped open, and disgorged a large roll of number eight fencing wire, wrapped in Genuine New Zealand Sheepskin, despite the fact that the sheep it was or iginally taken from desperately needed it to keep its insides in. For some reason which, like this story, defies any rational explanation, Arrowmintis decided it might be fun to make number eight fencing wire soufflee, which he proceeded to do, using a reactor wrapped in number seven fencing wire as his heat source. (B y the way, do not try this with your own reactor). Despite the fact that it took slightly longer than usual to cook, and was also slightly stringy, the soufflee was quite delicious, until it decided to take over the world, whereupon it had to be put down . At this very moment, an incredibly awesome event occurred. The fifteen mile high Duracell (R) battery, having obtained a new set of filaments, made a sudden but brief reappearance in the night sky above Cairo, as the replacement filaments almost immdeiat ely went the same way as the first set, thereby nearly outdoing the bright green sunlight emanating from the left wing of a passing blowfly. Arrowmintis now had a son called Juicymintis (doesn't rhyme with "snooposcerus") who was inexplicably paranoid about meeting up with a creature he referred to as a crockapotamus. His first act as God was to construct a crockapotamus-proof pencil-case, wh ere he would spend many happy hours giving psychiatric counselling to the tadpoles Supermintis' second cousins brothers uncles sister thrice removed had been unsuccessfully giving speech therapy to. At about this time, Juicymintis' little finger began to act very strangely, often coming home well after midnight with no explanation as to where it had been. After checking it carefully to make sure that it wan't just a Rastafarian in a clever disguise, Juicymintis satisfied himself that it was, indeed, his little finger, and so had no qualms about throttling it slowly to death with a piece of sharpened piano wire. Now Juicymintis's cousin twice removed decided to throw a party for him, which narrowly missed a major shopping centre, and later demolished the Reichstag building in Cairo. The aforementioned cousin twice removed then invited David and his pet killer-gu inea-pig Goliath to the party, where he promptly got drunk on too much red ink, and was the life and soul of the party for a full thirty-two seconds before he was suddenly and unexpectedly shot by the sinister "Man With Two Rubber Bands In His Pocket". T he guinea-pig, overcome with grief, decided to divorce his fur, and thus became the first of the many electronic guinea-pigs that were to lead, eventually, to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Back at the party, some overblown plastic bottle took it upon himself to make a full-length, feature chewing-gum commercial, and was subseqently arrested for the incredible heresy of suggesting that God came in a two-for-the-price-of-one pack, when everyb ody knew that God came in a single pack only. The plastic bottle pleaded guilty to whatever it was he was supposed to be accused of being guilty of even though he was innocent, not guilty, but pleaded guilty to prove the guilty innocence of a possible an d innocent "not-guilty" plea could prove him guilty, not innocent, if he was not guilty, but guiltily innocent in the first place. He was then hung, drawn, quartered, roasted, electrocuted, beheaded, boiled in oil, deep-fried, had his fingernails pulled out, his ears nibbled off by specially trained termites, and his eyes gouged out with a piece of number eight fencing wire, which had somehow miraculously escaped being turned into soufflee by Arrowmintis. He was then finally shot, except for his mouth, which was killed seperately to prove once and for all that mice cannot be taught to tap-dance. A few days later, when the fire had died down somewhat, Juicymintis was walking along the beach when suddenly he stumbled upon a haircut. Trying it on, he thought it wasn't quite his style, and so he threw it back into the lime-flavoured water. Just the n, a terrible storm broke out, with pitch-fork lightning and swing-beat thunder. The sea rose up in great mono-syllabic waves, which sneezed three times before breaking upon the imitation mink sandwich someone had left lying on the beach. In the middle of all this, it started snowing, and the small purple flakes hissed and sizzled as they entered the cold sea-water. At about this time, Juicyfruitis' pet one-legged spider died, and in honour of this great person and human being (the spider, that is), a moments silence will now be observed: The spider was then buried in three inches of soft ice-cream, to make sure that it didn't get too cold when the tide came in. Juicymintis now had a son with the all-encompassing name of Hubba Bubba. As he grew up, he loved to write poetry on the backs of TV antannae. What this did for reception is anybody's guess, but the following poem, considered by many to be the shortest i n the world, was found recently on the back of the BBC antenna No.486 at PPPPPudddddingdddddallllle (or Puddingdale, without the stutter) : " ! " This is regarded by some to be the most brilliantly concise piece of poetry ever written, but others, especially the workers in charge of cleaning out the receptables fitted at the backs of the more expensive TV sets to catch the bodies of any dead cowboy s and injuns that tend, on odd occasions, to fall out, tend to disagree. The BBC was rather annoyed at this defacing of their TV antennas, and so it set up a forest of dummy antennae in the hope of attracting Hubba Bubba to them. But Hubba Bubba had the antennas gathered up and turned into mass drivers, with which he bombarde d the BBC with corny poetry, until someone stole his car keys, and the drivers stopped driving the masses massively forward. The BBC decided it was time to take language lessons, and most of its directors drowned themselves trying to swallow the nasty in edible things. Upon hearing of this grave threat, Juicymintis ordered a nuclear strike against the BBC, and his faithful Cossacks rushed to obey. Almost everybody found this a very good arrangement, as they were able to cook their dinners on the sidewal ks, and people would spend hours lying in deck-chairs so as to develop healthy radiation-tans. Of course, all this radioactivity did have some side-effects: It rained for forty days and forty nights, and an enterprising young fellow by the name of Alfred James Noah built a large boat, named the "Ark" after the noise his mother-in-laws parakeet made when it was hungry, and offered to take people on joyrides and hiking trips, but on its maiden voyage the Ark hit a Titanic iceberg and sank it, even though icebergs are generally regarded as being unsinkable. The iceberg was later copyrighted by P.T.Ba rnum and used to emulate a guillotine that has been irradiated, dissloved in acid, reduced, distilled, condensed, and finally frozen. By this process, Leo "Pussycat" da Vinci tried to prove that thunderstorms were inversely proportional to wool when plac ed in order of increasing symmetry, but instead succeeded in showing that not all rocks have only an inside and an outside. Hubba Bubba now decided to do away with Juicymintis, and passed legislation to declare him obsolete, along with rasperry-flavoured rubbers and nuclear-free bubble bath salts. This legislation became so entangled in red tape that it took an army of men ar med with Geiger counters to find it. The red tape was then dyed blue, and used as typewriter ribbon for binary abacuses. The legislation turned out to be a piece of paper authorising the brewing of pink flourescent tea by stick insects in .01 ml quantit ies, and was eventually thrown out on grounds of total incomprehensibility, as for some reason it was written in a marsupial version of Linear B. At about this time, Juicymintis was attacked by a horde of dollarpedes, angry about rampant inflation which had destroyed their centipede status. They demanded that more money be put into circulation, and Juicyfruitis referred them to an associate of his , who happened to be a great white shark, but who was quite happy to arrange a loan for them at a suitable horrendous interest rate. The dollarpedes, who could now pay him back and revert to being centipedes again, were so happy about this that they spon taneously exploded, blowing off the sharks dorsal fin, which sailed into the kitchen of a nearby restaurant, thus creating the first recorded occurrence of sharks-fin soup. The chef of the aforementioned restaurant, angry at this explosive turn of events, grabbed the nearest bag of quenuts (more advanced than peanuts), and proceede to massacre them with his wife's knitting needles. This became known as the "Knit-nut Massacr e", and was reenacted every year using real live quenuts until the N.R.S.P.C.T.P.H.T.T.C.D.T.A.S.T. (Nearly-Royal Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Poor Harmless Things That Cannot Defend Themselves Anyway So There) intervened, and demanded that pe anuts (which are less advanced than quenuts in case this hasn't been mentioned before), be substituted, but unfortunately at about this time a major world war happened to break out, and the entire area was obliterated. At about the time the spaghetti trees usually come into bloom, Juicymintis died of resonably natural causes, or about as natural as an HE mosquito can get, and was buried in a little town called New York, which unfortunately resulted in its becoming a maj or metropolis as every man and his alligator wanted to take part in the bi-monthly Tree-Growing Competitions held there anually. Hubba Bubba now had a sone by the name of Freshfruitis, who, unlike most of his ancestors, spent the first two hundred and twenty-one years, seven months, two weeks, three days, sixteen hours, fourty-four minutes and 28.6281 +/- 186 x 10e-5 seconds (but d on't quote me on that) quite contentedly locked inside a small metal box with the word "Puddytat" inscribed on the lid. When he emerged, the first thing he did was to go on one of his concreting binges, stopping only to argue with a passing catoblepas th at Scandinavians are often blond, whereas many native Aquarians have weak ankles. Then, when he had poured the last drop of concrete on the road (which led to Rome, as of cource all roads do, except those that lead away from Rome), he set off down it, ar riving in Rome at around the time when Johannes Kepler was conducting his famous experiments on the specific gravity of self-raising flour. Once in Rome, he visited the building-site of the Colosseum, and had a nice long chat with the Pope, who turned out to be quite a card (Ace of Spades (Lemmy notwithstanding), to be precise). He then borrowed a car from Henry Hertz, the famous discoverer of the vaccuum, and while he was crossing the Atrium, his gearbox underwent a revolution and made off with he high-heeled jeans. Freshfruitis now made his famous "Friends, Romans, non-countrymen, lend me your gears!" speech, as he desperately needed them to get his car back to Hertz, who was planning to rent it to Marco Polo, another famous tourist, despite the fact that that cars had not yet been invented, and wouldn't be invented for at least another three weeks. Freshfruitis now had a son, Freshmintis II, with the unlikely-sounding nickname of Umbertovladistockenburgerson, which, along with his title, was usually abbreviated to "U2". U2 now decided to dispose of his great-great-great grandfather, who for some ph enomenally inexplicable reason was still alive, in a most ingenious manner. A waiter was to poison his ashtray, and when he was sure it was quite dead, to replace it with a radioactive tapioca plant, which would explode just before dinner, setting off al l the other plants in the room and bringing the whole hotel down on top of Supermintis, but unfortunately he died of old age a few minutes before this was to occur, as did his son Arrowmintis a few months earlier when the same thing was to happen to him. While U2 was planning his pesticide on these two clapped-out geriatrics, his grandfather Hubba Bubba was busy giving orders for the entire garrison of Fort Apocalypse to be drowned in warm beer. Unfortunately an apocalypse prevented him from carrying out this plan, and turned him into a plumber into the bargain. He was then accidentally beheaded by the Boilermakers Union for not having gone on strike for nearly two years. U2 now deicded to bump off his father Freshmintis, and hired a squad of glowworms to bring this policy into effect. Unfortunately, they hardly produced a glowing report of success, and U2 fairly glowed with fury when they informed him of their failure. But then at about the time when Egypt and Yugoslavia were defoliating each other's deserts, Freshmintis died after catching a non-contageous version of Beethovens ninth at a "Bring-your-own-Molotov" cocktail party (the kind of party where the invitations tell you to bring a *broken* bottle). U2 now had a son by the name of Mildmintis II, who was a great fan of television, and one day, after viewing a Concerto for Football Hooligans and Orchestra, he was suddenly dazzled by the visage of Ace Reported Dan Druff, who presented him with the follo wing commentary (gift-wrapped in several appealing colours): "News reports have been trickling in all day, and now it has finally been confirmed that the Auckland Harbour Bridge is STILL THERE. Later on in the program we will be interviewing a lady who claims to have actually crossed the bridge on her way to work this morning, and....". Bored, he told the TV to shut up, which completely upset the poor thing, and led it to declare war on all humanity and then some, which ultimately culminated in the ter rible Wars of the Roses. These began with an attack on Cairo by yet another army of Ethiopian druids which were eventually repulsed by a French Chef throwing High Explosive muffins an anything that moved, or looked like it might some day move, or might h ave moved at any time during the past thousand years or so. The second phase of the Wars of the Carnations was the infiltration of the Buzzing Beehive with Labour Party members not loyal to the Great Leader, who not only believed in the supremacy of a be ing known as the Great Yellow Television Set, but also put forward their rather questionable theory that apple trees were more tame than oak trees, and even went so far as to state that they were herd creatures, and that no orchard can really form an opin ion of its own. The third phase of the Wars of the Petunias was the famous Battle of the Bottle, with the two generals, Metric and Electric, using all sorts of devious tricks and overripe tomatoes to get at each other. Metric managed to catch Electrics rearguard napping , and stuffed all four of them into bean chairs to use as tadpole fodder. This became known as the Metric System. General Electric now retaliated by provoking an Industrial Revolution, in which many leading industrialists were beheaded, and had their di sembodied heads flattened out and used to Balance the Budget. This culminted in a force of 40,000 specially trained sheep, shouting their battlecry of "Maximise Casualties", invading the Kingdom of Hawaii after a long overland march, until they were repu lsed by a Russian force using the newly-discovered Ceylon Tea effect. At this time, the population of the earth was increasing by thirty million every Thursday, and England had just foundered and sunk, leaving a small blot of pollution known forever afterwards as "Nakkarov laf elokail lertonovsky" to the Russians, and some other fantastic name to those not in so much of a hurry. (The Russians were also the party responsible for contaminating the moon with bread mold, though they tend to dent this vehemently). Mildmintis II now went on a Great Quest to justify his existence, and almost three milli-weeks later he not only discovered that the Pentagon was originally intended as a modification of the flush toilet, but he also found a highly interesting document de scribing the history of the motto "First things first, but not necessarily in that order", no doubt a reference to the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozzie, inventor of the buzzbomb and underarm deodorant. He also rediscovered the Apparatus of Eirrgkk, built fo r Pope Johnpaulpiusstevenpeter II and wallpapered with genuine imitation white sand, until it became involved in the Wars of the Tulips, and was used as a gun turret in the Battle of the River Plate, and later on in the Battle of the Flat and Oblong Plate . This nearly caused a riot in downtown Ireland - nearly, as of course Ireland sank along with the rest of England. Mildmintis II now had a son by the name of Juicyfruitis II, who for some incredible reason preferred Russian bread mold to English-speaking strains. While this had no effect on the breeding cycle of the common tadpole, it did have something to do with t he high divorce rate among rolls of number eight fencing wire a few kilo-minutes later. Due to this, Mildmintis II became obsessed with the conecpt of three-dimensional paint, and eventually underwent a curious metamorphosis into a small blue penguin, wh ich then tried to blow up Baba Yaga's Hut (a cousin of the famous Jabba), and was finally accidentally shot with two shotguns, three rifles, two pistols, and a cruise missile. Juicyfruitis II decided he needed a break, and took a bus to Mexico to have a look at the Great Wall of China there. After demolishing a part of it to make way for a 1-hole golf course, he proceeded to set up a Commission of Enquiry to determine whether it was true that no two snowflakes *are* truly alike. This created a storm of protest among the peoples of Europe (except of course England, which sank some years earlier), who demanded that snowflakes be left alone. as they were a gentle and peace-loving race (barring the occasional minor nuclear conflict), and had kept well wit hin the limits set by the SALT and PEPPER treaties. This was greeted with enthusiasm by the Mexicans, as due to a translation error the protest came out as an authorisation for the massacre of blowflies by squashing them with bales of number eight fencin g wire after splattering them with giant flyswats woven out of number seven fencing wire. Juicyfruitis II now had a son, Freshmintis II, who vaguely resembled a cross between a fish. This curious mixture then set about killing his father by luring him into a large bottle, which was then corked and put in permanent geostationary orbit around i tself, thereby instantly disproving Newton's Theory of Relatives, which among other things stated that it is impossible to have such a thing as a second cousins brothers uncles sister thrice removed. About 2 milliyears +/- 28.2 kiloseconds later, Freshmintis II staged a major revolution to overthrow Hubba Bubba. The sound of explosions, gunfire, artillery, and machinegun fire filled the air, and here and there people were actually shooting at each ot her. At last Hubba Bubba was deep-fried by the nearby explosion of a shell fired from one of Freshmintis II's 210mm pocket-portable nuclear howitzers, also killing his PM, a Russian by the name of Knickersov, who unfortunately was so stupid he thought a Soviet was a table napkin, which no doubt was one of the things that later led to the rebirth of chauvinism among male pigs. It's a very mild winter we're having for this time of the year, isn't it? Freshmintis II now had a son by the name of Spearminti s II, who never really liked yoghurt until his father was suddenly and unexpectedly killed by a homicidal jelly-baby. Spearmintis II now decided to catch a bus, but after running after it for a while, he gave up and caught a large pink taxi instead. After making sure that no-one near him was eating apple strudel, he sat down, always on the lookout for low-flying whales (which meant that that weather was going to change). Spearmintis II now declared war on Antarctica, in retaliation for the Patagonian invasion of Uganda many moons earlier. This declration succeeded in inflaming the fiery Scottish Highlanders, which in itself was not much use as they had all died when England sank. Spearmintis II now had a son called Supermintis II, with the serial number 11001011010111011001111001000101 binary or 177545 octal, which meant that not only was he responsible for keeping the corridor free of drifting icebergs, he was also the only perso n alive who could speak simultaneously. This sent shock-waves around the world, and as a result for months the Sahara desert was completely free of the bright yellow snowstorms which used to plague travellers across Central America. Another side-effect of this was that not only did it pave the way for the construction of the Transatlantic Railway, it also made ballpoint pens perfectly legal. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- At this point the printed transcript ends. There is quite a bit more, stored in the attic somewhere, scribbled handwriting on yellowed paper, but f'd if I can remember where it is (or be bothered looking). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR : Iceman(NZ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brought to the WORLD by The Banana Republic BBS, Auckland, New Zealand. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------