Not really. It was a self-deprecating joke, ya whooshee.
**
DO NOT BE CONCERNED THAT THE WAYS OF GURTHEK ARE INSCRUTABLE TO LESSER BEINGS. MERELY BE JOYOUS AND THANKFUL THAT HE TOLERATES YOUR EXISTENCE. FOR NOW, AT LEAST.**
GURTHEK is mean. I found a deity that costs less and makes a better cheesesteak than you. What are you going to do to match his offer?
The winner meets Conan the Barbarian here Tuesday night.
Brick bats at half a mile.
You can get your tickets for both outstanding bouts by sending money to my paypal account.
Hurry, seating is limited.
PERHAPS A BETTER MATCH WOULD BE YOUR FACE AND A BABOONS BUTT. HA HA HA HA HA!!! GURTHEK HAS AMUSED HIMSELF. YOUR PUNY LIFE IS SPARED. ENJOY YOUR CHEESTEAK WHILE YOU CAN. YOU MIGHT WANT TO HEAVY UP ON THE MUSTARD. THE MEAT’S A BIT OFF.
Hey, who’s that guy behind the curtain operating levers and stuff?
I’m getting a pleasant light cyan colour. I like it. It brings out your eyes.
That’s my accountant, counting the filthy lucre…er, ticket sales.
Gurthek, my friend. Understand, you get 10% of the ticket sales. That means that for each dollar sold, you get ninety cents!
:rolleyes:
YOU HAVE DONE WELL MY CHILD. GURTHEK IS PLEASED. I AM SENDING YOU A TENNER. IT WILL BE CONCEALED IN THE NEXT PACKET OF MONIES THAT YOU RECEIVE. USE IT TO BUY ONE TICKET TO THE TIDDLYWINK RUMBLE. BET THE REST ON RAGELLAG THE AXE. I AM FEELING A BIT UNWELL. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT MY POWERS FADE IN THE PRESENCE OF SKEPTICS.
Or when you nick someone’s slightly-off cheesesteak. Bastard.
I’ll take that tenner, thank you.
Gurthek:
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What is old, wrinkled, and smells like ginger?
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What does a man do standing up that a woman does sitting down that a dog does on three legs?
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What does a man have in his pants that a woman doesn’t?
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If a chicken and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long will it take a grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick all the seeds out of a dill pickle?
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Which is closer, Duluth or by bus?
Gurthek is busy working out for the bout.
Perhaps I may help.
Horseradish. (I went by a different route.)
Read a newspaper.
A wallet.
Kosher or not?
On Tuesdays, Peoria.
IDIOT. YOU THINK TO TEST GURTHEK WITH A BOGUS TOM ROBBINS QUOTATION? DID YOUR MAMA EAT STUPID FOOD THE NIGHT YOU WERE CONCEIVED? IT IS A MONKEY, NOT A GRASSHOPPER. GRASSHOPPERS HAVE LEGS OF POLYVINYLCHLORIDE. AND THEY ONLY KICK SEEDLESS PICKLES.
Although give me a couple of sweet gherkins and you can talk me into just about anything.
GURTHEK, you nasty troll! You have seven chakras, all different colors! The colors of the rainbow! There is no one color, just as there is no spoon!
(BTW, I found your post-it. The rains washed it down the Colorado River and it’s stuck to the underside of Hoover Dam, so the ink’s washed out and I can’t read it. Care to fax me another copy? Use Psychic Email, if you like.)
Got no gherkins. Want squash? How about pumpkins? I can smash the pumpkins first, if you like.
**GURTHEK: **
Last night I had a weird dream. I dreamt I was in college and was supposed to complete a report about how different kinds of bird eggs could be genotyped, except I had somehow forgotten about the report and only had a single night to finish it. So I went to the library to make a last-ditch attempt to throw something together overnight. The librarian was this sagging elderly woman who looked a lot like “Momma” from the movie Throw Momma From The Train, and who was somehow also simultaneously a contestant on Jeopardy even though she was still in the library at the time. This presented quite the distraction to my own work, as you may imagine.
One of the other Jeopardy contestants was this ultra-smarmy guy who kept making wisecracks during the game show, even if it meant invalidating his own responses. This had the effect of goading Alex Trebek into a duel of wits with him, which threatened to stretch the show out long past its normal half-hour running time, which in turn meant an even greater distraction and even less chance of me being able to finish my bird egg report.
However, one of the questions on the show caught my attention because it involved bird eggs. Alex Trebek ran a short film of an extinct volcano ringed by trees, in which bald eagles were known to nest. Somehow the librarian woman was also in this film, along with her desk and all the other contents of the library (though not the building itself). Since I was also in the library, I suddenly found myself on the slopes of this volcano among the shelves of books, which were still lined up in an orderly fashion on the plateau bordering the caldera.
There was a tree containing an eagle’s nest directly behind the librarian’s desk, and the mother eagle pushed one of the eggs out of the nest, evidently sensing something amiss about it. Instead of splattering on the desk, the egg was caught safely in the folds of the librarian’s skirt and immediately hatched, revealing a curious human-eagle hybrid baby. The librarian raised this chick as her own, tutoring him with the books in the library, and he grew to be extremely erudite as a result.
At one point he came across a reference in one of the library books that suggested their volcano had been used as a nuclear test site in the past. This may have accounted for his own mutated condition, but also meant that his adopted mother could still be at risk from residual radiation. Procuring a Geiger counter from somewhere (maybe there was a Civil Defense shelter in the basement of the library; I don’t know), he discovered that the caldera was indeed still dangerously radioactive. He therefore persuaded the librarian that they should abandon their mountaintop home. I decided to leave as well, since:
A. this meant the library would no longer be staffed, and
B. my bird egg report suddenly seemed less important than avoiding radiation-induced carcinoma.
I also figured that the anecdote about the nuclear-spawned human-eagle hybrid would be worth at least as much credit as the report would have been in Bird Egg class.
I struck out on my own, and after some time I encountered a peculiar semi-organic termite mound-resembling multistory tower in the middle of a field. It transpired that this was the abode of a wizard, and I found myself acting out the role of a peasant lad attempting to scale the tower, defeating various foes on the way up and rescuing a princess held prisoner at the very top. It turned out that the entire affair was the wizard’s way of selecting a worthy apprentice to pass on his legacy of magic. In the dream I had the impression that this scenario was supposed to be an adaptation of a Nicholas Stuart Grey story, although to my knowledge this precise storyline does not actually exist.
Following this interlude, I continued across the field until I came across a group of religious fanatics dressed in some sort of extremely bogus-looking Arabian Nights-style garb. They mistook me for one of their number and demanded that I dress up in an identical goofy outfit, then proceeded to reveal their secret plan to me, which was supposedly encoded in the freeway signs along Interstate 275.
(Abrupt transition here; I may have woken up briefly to go to the bathroom.)
Next I found myself in an airport gift shop, dressed in a comfortable business suit made of super-high tech holographic fibers that lit up in a jazzy greenish display. Apparently I was trying to create word-of-mouth interest in this technology by wearing it in such a high-traffic area, in the hopes of attracting investors. I had a store of business cards to give away; they were made in the same way as the suit, glowed eerily under their own power, and also incorporated a tiny camera and flatscreen computer. Only I knew that this material was secretly created using future technology.
Somehow this led into an extended storyline from the show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is sort of curious since I was never overwhelmingly fond of that show. This story arc began with the DS9 space station having “crash landed” on a desolate planet somewhere, and was now a ground-based installation. Chief Engineer Miles O’Brien was charged with the task of rebuilding the station’s defenses quickly, and decided to adapt a form of nanotechnology to make the changes. While explaining this plan to the rest of the station’s crew, O’Brien seemed to assume that none of the others had ever heard of the concept of nanotechnology before. He also claimed that the term “nanite” was actually an acronym for something or other.
Meanwhile it was revealed that the Mirror Universe DS9 was in an identical situation and had arrived at an identical solution. (In the dream, this Mirror Universe was more or less a direct parallel to the Federation except evil, as in TOS, and all the crew were represented. So this was apparently a different Mirror Universe.) The use of nanotechnology triggered an arms race between the universes which lasted for centuries, with all the DS9 crew from both universes rendered immortal via nanotech.
The two O’Briens were viewed as key players throughout all this, since they were centrally involved in the escalating potential of nanotechnology. So each side kept trying to subvert the other’s O’Brien even though a successful attack on one generally resulted in the same effect being visited on the other O’Brien through some sort of cosmic backfire or balance of karma. An assassination attempt on the good O’Brien resulted in the character being nanotechnologically merged with two other characters and evolved into this big-headed alien-looking being, which however was still played by the original actor. Later the character was attacked again and replaced by a completely different actor in the manner of Doctor Who.
Ultimately the battle between universes culminated at the end of time, when the Mirror Universe DS9 crew allowed themselves to be totally consumed by their own nanotechnology, merged into a single rapacious entity of pure chaos. Even though it meant their own destruction as individuals, they felt it was worth the sacrifice to finally achieve victory over their good-universe counterparts. Meanwhile the good DS9, which was in space again at this point, had evolved to a last bastion of ultimate crystalline order. Although at this point the crew were merged with their technology at the molecular level, they still maintained physical simulacra of themselves in order to maintain their individual identities.
The evil DS9 entity attempted to engulf the station, but the good DS9’s defenses were able to keep it at bay. There was a vague sense that in the end chaos would prevail, but the sides were still so perfectly matched that the battle could be extended nearly indefinitely. Inside the good DS9, the crew (including O’Brien who by now was restored to his original form) were able to resist the chaos attack by engaging in symbolic exercises of creation and order. This was represented by everyone lounging around on the plush floor of a comfortable communal area, putting together Lego models of spaceships while reminiscing about times past.
After a while the crew fell to bickering, and at this point it seemed a little unclear whether it was the characters or the actors speaking. Nana Visitor in particular seemed to feel that her character had been unjustly sidelined during the nanotechnology war, and appeared to blame Avery Brooks for this. There was a sense that it might be possible to use the good DS9’s technology to travel back in time and change things, but Brooks (or perhaps Sisko) was adamantly opposed to the idea, which stalemated the option. Then I woke up.
What does this mean?
I HAVE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. THE BAD NEWS IS THAT WHAT YOU HAVE DESCRIBED WAS NOT A DREAM, BUT REALITY. ALL THIS OTHER STUFF IS THE DREAM. THE GOOD NEWS IS I HAVE FOUND A TYPE OF EGG JEANS FOR YOU, SO YOU MAY BE FREE TO BEGIN THE SEARCH TO JUSTIFY THE WAYS OF ME TO MAN. HOPE THIS HELPS.
Really? Wow! Although, given the enormous credit card debt hanging over my head in so-called “waking life,” this news is actually not as bad as it might seem.
Awesome!!! Hully gee, this is going to knock their socks off in Oology class! What a huge load off my mind this is. GURTHEK is generous and wise! GURTHEK totally rocks!
*“I know not whether I was then a man who dreamt he was a radioactive volcano-dwelling human-eagle hybrid, or am now a radioactive volcano-dwelling human-eagle hybrid who dreams of being a man.” * --Chuang Tzu’s lesser-known brother Doug Tzu