It seems altogether appropriate that, having just completed a magical voyage to a new site, filled with wondrous and fantastic beasts, peril, romance, and yes, even monkeys, that I should do my inaugural article here on another such historical voyage, from long, long ago.  Now, most of my readers here in Virginia (long may she kick ass) probably are already familiar with the subject of today’s blog, but for all of you out there in strange and foreign countries like Vermont, this blog is liable to shatter you most deeply held beliefs and convictions.  The truth however, must be told.

 

            Our story begins in 1620, when the Mayflower and a bunch of pilgrims came over from England and landed in Massachusetts, where they would establish the first permanent English colony in the New World, except for Jamestown, Henricus, and about a jillion little plantations all up and down the James River, which were started in 1607.  Yes, New Englanders, I’m afraid you weren’t the first here at all; not by a long shot.  Call it heresy if you must (I don’t care, here in Virginia, we never burned heretics at the stake) (mmm, steak).

 

            Oh well, at least Massachusetts still was the site of the first Thanksgiving ever.  Oh wait, that happened in Virginia too, when in 1607, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Death Star (it was made out of wood back then) sailed over from England, under the command of Dick Cheney, with orders to settle in Virginia and do something totally awesome (really, their orders weren’t all that particular, as long as it ended up being awesome or carcinogenic).  In fact, Plymouth can’t even claim being the first English colony from a moral point of view.  After all, Jamestown was chartered with the blessing of King James.  To show their gratitude to their benevolent monarch, the colonists named their town, their mighty (and very damp) river, and the totally sweet old-school Bible they wrote on the way over from England after they realized they couldn’t play road kill bingo on a boat and got really bored.  Massachusetts, meanwhile, was named after Ol’ Massa Chewbacca, the evil Wookie overlord of the Pilgrims, who left his mark of domination upon them by compelling every man among them to wear a hat with a big silly looking, useless buckle on it, and by ordering them to all carry those goofy-looking pilgrim guns, which wouldn’t even be invented for another hundred years.

 

            The Jamestown colonists better embodied the spirit of the nation that their descendants would found anyways.  How, you ask?  Well, the King was always getting angry at the Virginians because they were always running off into the woods, doing whatever they felt like, killing stuff, hooting and hollering, inventing tobacco, and staging early monster truck rallies.  Also, they were all really into growing hemp, like George Washington (“but it’s for making rope out of!” he used to say.  Sure it is George, sure it is).  Meanwhile, up in Massachusetts, they all stayed in nice little easily spied-upon villages, where they never carried on or raised a fuss or anything, except now and then when they’d go and execute a couple of dozen innocent people for making pacts with the devil (the devil wasn’t even in the pact-making business back then, he was doing a brief, but memorable stint as the spokesman for IHOP).

 

            What am I getting at here?  Nothing less than one of the greatest conspiracies of our nation’s history ever.  For generations, kids have been taught a story of our great nation founded on lies, silly hats, and the metric system (Oh yes, they all used the metric system up in Plymouth.  That’s something they don’t go around telling everyone, now isn’t it?).  So my brethren and sistren (I know it’s a made up word, but so are most of the others I use) to throw off the oppressive and metaphorical shackles of a hundred and fifty years of bad history!  It all goes back to the Civil War, you know, before then, Virginia was the generally acknowledged most awesome state ever, but when we lost we had to give the title up to Rhode Island, which isn’t even really an island at all (I checked, it’s a peninsula).  How can you help to defeat the lies?  There are, in fact, a number of ways.  Write a letter to New England telling them you’re onto their little game and you’re not going to buy into anymore.  Next time someone tells you the Mayflower came first, punch them in the face, or if you’re not the violent type, tell someone you can trust, like Dick Cheney (though he’ll just end up punching them in the face too, you know).  The next time you see one of those Mayflower moving vans, hulk out and throw it off a cliff.  If you see someone with a buckle on their hat, challenge them to a fight in the Thunderdome.  These are just a few simple suggestions to help you defeat the evil.

 

            Be sure to tune in tomorrow, for the Legend of Snarf.

Well, here it is, my new site, all shiny and generic and completely confusing to set up how I want it be.  But it's all good, cause I've all my old articles posted already, and shall shortly be putting up a new one for the day, since this is really more of an announcement and doesn't count.  Please feel free to leave comments and stuff, or email me at ben@teacupmammoths.com . Whichever.  With y'all's help, I'm sure that someday we'll all be able to look back and say that this was one of the definitive moments on my path to world domination.

Okay everyone, here's the thing:  Doing this blog has been totally fun, and the reponse from y'all out there in cyberspae has been absolutely more than I ever imagined.  With that in mind, I've started looking at maybe getting a site of my own, rather than just going through my myspace account.  It's a big step though, and not one I'd do simply to gratify my own ego.  Rather, assuming there's enough interest, it seems like the next logical step in my diabolical plan.

So, what say you?  If I went and put up my own site, would you read it?  Do you think anyone else would?  I really do want to hear from y'all about what you think about this.  Yay or Nay, leave me a comment on the issue.  If you haven't got a myspace account, my email is ben_strohm@yahoo.com .  I hope to hear from all of you, and with any luck, this'll be the start of something new and unprecendentedly awesome!

            In all of our lives, there are certain individuals who serve to inspire us to greater achievement.  Now, for many people, greater achievement means doing things like going out and finding a cure for clinical buttugliness, or going to a third world country, like Luxembourg, or Djibouti, to build yurts for the yurtless (no one should be yurtless in this day and age; I’ve been there before, and it’s no way for a civilized man to live), or setting squirrels on fire.  However, in my case, being inspired to greater things means encouraging me (as if I needed much encouragement) to write ridiculous things and hope that people will read them and laugh (or if I’m very lucky, people will read them and take them far too seriously and freak out).  In any case, one of the giants of my literary world is Dave Barry, who, along with Charles Dickens, H.P. Lovecraft, The King James Bible, Dick Cheney, and monkeys, is one of my greatest inspirations when it comes to the art of the written word.

 

            Indeed, since I was but a tiny Benling, with a haircut that attracted bullies to me like baboons to a smoothie machine, Dave Barry and his weekly comedic stylings have opened up to me a new and amazing world of possibilities, filled with exploding cows, exploding toilets, flaming Barbie, and the state of Florida.  ‘Twas from him that I learned the innate humor potential of silly band names (The Innate Humor Potential, by the way, would make a totally sweet band name), and the way that the phrase “weasel boogers” can liven up even the dullest blog, State of the Union Address, or eulogy.  As one might imagine then, I was sadder than a sack of gerbils (gerbils, of course, being infamous for their predisposition towards ennui, when in large groups) to learn that Dave Barry was quitting his regular writing.

 

            As one might well imagine, chaos descended upon the commentary section of the Sunday paper as a water buffalo flung from an office building descends upon the street below, swiftly, completely, and with a lot of goop left over afterwards that takes forever to clean up properly because you forgot to get the pressure washer fixed last week.  As is usually the case when a superhero retires, all the lesser wanna be superheroes in the area all vie for supremacy in the sudden humor vacuum.  Within days Thomas Sowell, Aquaman (lame boy-scout Aquaman, not the cool one who’s on TV now) and President Rutherford B. Hayes all waged endless battle o’er the lower third of the page G1 of the Sunday paper.  The ceaseless violence soon became intolerable, and ordinary civilians started just skipping the commentary section altogether, and going on right to “Ask Marilyn”, lest they be struck by a stray independent clause or even an infarctive gerund, as the battle spilled over into the Home and Garden section.

 

            In the midst of all this devastation, at last a hero hove in view.  Doug Wilder, onetime Governor of Virginia, world-renowned champion of opossum rodeos, and present Mayor of Richmond, seized control of the commentary section, and boldly forged from the reigning anarchy a new order.  Alas, though his skills at governing and doing the “I’m a Little Teapot” dance are more than legendary, his talent for regularly turning out a humor column is somewhat wanting.

 

            His first article, on cleaning up the City Council, ought to have been as easy to make fun of as a pygmy rhinoceros in a pink tutu trying to carve up a bratwurst shaped like Nikita Khrushev with a chainsaw (the rhinoceros with the chainsaw, I mean, not the bratwurst)(that would just be silly).  Sadly, other than a couple of half-hearted references to the time that previous mayor Rudy McCullum tried to set a toiled of fire down at City Hall, the article was really a profound failure to be funny on a number of levels.  Some weeks later, when Richmond was stricken by a series of subterranean explosions and rumblings, he missed a golden opportunity to blame the trouble on the underground kingdom of Spanky, Lord of the Mole People, whom as everyone knows, lives far beneath Richmond, ever plotting to be rid of us surface-dwellers.  But no, other than a liberal dose of weaselboogers, Doug Wilder again missed the chance to be funny, eliciting nary a chortle nor a snarf from the people of this fair city.

 

            One would think that a man so very close to famed comedian and lord of the undead as Bill Cosby would be better equipped to thoroughly mock at least of few of the daily goings on in Richmond, epicenter of wackiness and drug trafficking (really, they’re only the same thing when its like, a clown selling drugs to a midget in huge pants or something) that it is.  Sadly, it seems that this is not to be, leaving us still without a funny guy in the newspaper on a regular basis.  Therefore, let me be the first (except for all the others who already did this) to beseech Dave Barry, or someone else of suitable humor potential to take in hand the Spatula of Funniness, and with it sally forth and reclaim the Throne of Making All Five of the Literate People In Richmond Laugh (there’s really more than five of them, of course, the title’s just based on old census data, these days there’re probably at least a dozen).  So Dave, wherever you are, we need you now, more than ever, before Richmond turns into one of those bland cities which, devoid of flava, idly exist as their populations slowing devolve into troggles (you laugh, but this already happened in Charlotte).  Take back the commentary page.  Weaselboogers.