Once-upon-a-time, there
was a worthless piece of land known as the Kingdom of
Wartlestoff. In the native language, Wartlestoff meant
small painful swelling under the armpit. The people
called it Wartlestoff because they couldn't actually name
it shithole which was their first suggestion.
Wartlestoff was known
throughout the continent for two things: 1. A really low
average age of the citizens that was due to an incredibly
high suicide rate and the fact that most people over five
years-old tried to leave the country 2. A really low
birth rate that was due to the fact there wasn't anybody
in Wartlestoff that anybody wanted to have sex with.
Wartlestoff had been
the object of several brutal wars by its neighboring
countries, with each side claiming Wartlestoff belonged
to the other. During a particularly brutal war, someone
got the idea that they could declare Wartlestoff an
autonomous state and everybody could go home.
A new formed country,
even a lousy one like Wartlestoff, could be turned into a
larger one by an ambitious, enterprising and charismatic
leader. The leaders of the warring countries realized
this and decided to choose the king themselves to make
sure that this didn't
happen. They set out to find the most feeble minded,
indecisive, and uncharasmatic twit for the throne. The
only constraint, they decided, was that the twit should
be of noble birth. All the countries were littered with
feeble minded, indecisive, and uncharasmatic nobility who
had been unemployed during the great layoffs of the
feeble minded, indecisive, and uncharasmatic aristocracy
and Wartlestoff was no exception.
After a great search
through the mounds of resumes, the Kings found the man
that they were looking for. He was known as Lord Melvin
the mildly flatulent.
He was slow, fat, rude,
ugly and tended to get lost on the way to the bathroom.
His estate had consisted of over thirty people at its
height. These people, however, were all his family or
servants in the castle. They had also formed a new barony
and revolted.
They invited a nearby
Lord to annex them into his estate. The new lord returned
the favor by plundering them, killing the women and
children and raising taxes tenfold.
It was said of him that
"No one would follow him to a coke machine, much
less into battle." When he failed to arrive for the
interview or even give an explanation of his absence,
this was considered a demonstration of just what a good
choice they had made.
He was dragged from his
castle and forcibly crowned. Afterwards the occupying
armies fled the country as fast as their horses would
take them. Stragglers were left behind.
One of Melvin's first
acts was to put his face on every coin that was stamped
in the realm. This helped the economy in two ways: 1. The
sheer ugliness of the coins caused people in other realms
to refuse them outright, as a result money no longer left
the country due to
trade imbalances 2. The sheer ugliness of the coins meant
that folks inside the realm didn't really want the coins
either, as a result much less money changed hands and
inflation was curbed. It was said on the street that
"You could once again buy a loaf of bread for less
than 400 gold crowns!"
Ironically, the
reduction of the trade imbalance and the rate of
inflation would have been greatly heralded by the
economists if he hadn't put them all to death.
King Melvin the mildly
flatulent then decided to find a new wife since his ex
still refused to come back. He decided to try a strategy
that had worked so well in the past, he sent out tons of
resumes. When the various eligible women visited the
castle
for the interview, they
asked questions like "You don't expect me to have
sex with you do you?" and "We wouldn't actually
have to have sex if I got this job right?". Melvin
was unfazed. When Lady Bovina failed to refuse
immediately, Melvin decided to go
after her with
unceasing effort. He organized a festival and a series of
games in her honor. The week before the festival, he had
all the roads from her castle to the amphitheater lined
with lawyers stapled to crosses. The games were a series
of contests
between economists
armed with shields and swords and lions. The crowds went
wild as economist after economist was chewed up by the
lions. The economists were eaten so quickly that several
market analysts, psychotherapists and poets had to be
rounded up to keep the crowds amused.
By the end of the day,
the crowd was at a fever pitch. They were screaming
"Melvin! Melvin! Melvin!" at the top of their
lungs. Melvin, whose ego was just barely able to fit in
the amphitheater with all those people began to give a
speech. He was possessed. He began to tell them that he
would raise an army to give the people what they had
wanted most for their entire lives, another decent
country to live in, decent land to build hovels on and
new and better neighbors.
When his speech reached
a crescendo, he asked the crowd to be silent. He bent
down on his knees and asked Lady Bovina to marry him.
She was startled.
"Would you promise to love me forever?" she
asked.
"Forever!" he
said.
"Would you turn
over your treasury to me?" she asked.
"Every last
coin!" he responded.
"Would we have to
have sex?" she asked.
"Do we have to
talk about this here?"
She looked around at
all the quiet faces who were staring directly at her and
made the biggest mistake of her life.
The stirring speech,
the ascension of the new queen, and the extermination of
all the lawyers were exactly the sort of inspiring things
that the country had been starving for for
years, and would have
been duly celebrated by the historians and political
analysts if they hadn't all been exterminated during the
later games of the festival.
After the festival was
over, Melvin raised a large and inspired if untrained and
unequipped army. He led his army on muleback to the
closest country and proceeded to attack by sending all
his troops over the boarder as fast as he could, while he
waited behind to see what happened.
Epilogue
Melvin's army was
thrashed as they charged into the waiting canons of the
enemy. He blamed the loss on foreign treachery, but many
pundits felt the loss was due to the fact that all the
officers had sacrificed to the lions during the festival.
Melvin himself was
later killed when the mule that he was riding on
collapsed of a broken back.
Lady Bovina was the
guest of honor at one last festival where she placed on
the field to combat the last remaining economists.
The Kings who had
placed Melvin at the throne of Wartlestoff were taken out
and beaten.
And the people of
Wartlestoff still wait for the day when the clouds will
open and a voice proclaim from the Heavens to the people
all across the land that they can finally leave.
