The Sphinxeañera
The Sphinxeañera was an ancient Egyptian ceremony celebrating the Sphinx’s 15th birthday, marking her passing from childhood to womanhood. Remnants of the ceremony survive today in the Latin American Quinceañera celebration. All information we have about The Sphinxeañera ritual comes from an ancient papyrus invitation that reads, “You and one guest are cordially invited to attend the Sphinx’s Sphinxeañera on May 27. Below, please find the program for the day’s events.” Much of the contents of the program are damaged, but archaeologists have managed to piece together a possible translation:
1. ENTRANCE PARADE AND RIDDLE CEREMONY. The Sphinx will arrive in the Royal Gardens at noon in a giant dress shaped like a cloud accompanied by 14 Rainbow Girls, a pair for each color of the rainbow, and she will ask her guests a riddle: what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening? Please have an answer prepared before departure.
2. COCKTAILS WITH IRON MAIDEN. Each guest will slam four shots of Sarcophagus Jäger, chased by two kegs of mead, followed by three barrels of wine while Iron Maiden plays an extended dance remix of “Powerslave.” A toast will be made by the Sphinx’s Mummy and the eyes of the Nile will open, you’ll see.
3. DINNER. Guests are offered a choice between the Sphinx’s Childhood Dolls braised in cat urine, or the Sphinx’s Baby Shoes, bronzed, and cooked sous vide style, all prepared by the Dark Hand of Set.
4. FIRST DANCE. The young Sphinx dances with her father Osiris’s Wiener, Oedipus Dox.
5. DESSERT. Guests will be served a cake made from the Sphinx’s baby crib, pyramid blocks, catacomb syrup, and covered with candles stolen from tombs.
6. MORE COCKTAILS, NILE TAKES THE STAGE. The river Nile will flood the Royal Grounds while Nile the band will play a collection of blasphemous songs written to offend the Sphinx’s “stupid brother,” Horus.
7. RIDDLE SOLUTION AND CLOSING CEREMONY. Anyone unable to answer the Sphinx’s Riddle upon departure will be torn limb from limb and devoured on the spot.
All hail the Sphinx.
Citizen Jane From Canada
They say she was formerly a he, and an admiral in the Royal Reichsflotte no less, but now she goes by the name of Citizen Jane From Canada.
Citizen Jane From Canada now sits in her room smoking cigarettes, grooming her pussy, and writing erotic poetry, only coming out at night to go shopping for hats with her Sugar Daddy who made his fortune in gumdrops and lollies. He’s the one bankrolling her upcoming collection of poetry, her first since the war, which is tentatively titled, Who’s Afraid Of Anaïs Nincompoop? But Citizen Jane From Canada is worried the title might be mistakenly received as pejorative, and so she is also considering:
I Heart Long Wieners
Sex Dox
Sedachtion Of The Minotaur
Hymn To Him, and
Deep Penetraschund
The book is due out later this year.
Wieners Vs. Pussy Witch Worms
Once upon a time there were two old Wieners who lived in a shoe. Their home was besieged by Pussy Witches and they didn’t know what to do. The Pussy Witches buzzed their rooftop and left fart trails in the sky. The unholy clouds contained their evil minions: tiny Toxoplasma Gondii Worms that would parachute onto the Shoe House roof where they would party all night and drive the Wieners insane.
“We’ll make them a special soup filled with poisonous poops,” the Wieners sang. “Two can play at this game.”
When night fell they lit the cauldron on their roof, filled it with scale of dragon and tooth of wolf. They added fillet of a fenny snake in the cauldron to boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg and howlet's wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
The Worms had their party, and enjoyed the soup, the broth was delicious and so was the poop. But when dawn arrived, to cat butts they returned; and the contagious Worms made the Pussy Witches crash and burn.
The End.
LOST: Lobster
While I certainly applaud those who have rescued their pet from an imminent shelter execution, I often get the feeling that “rescue” is a little too strong and too proud of a word to describe a situation that essentially amounts to an “adoption.”
Unlike most rescues, our brontosaurus really was a rescue. Our friend Stacy found him in an alleyway in Compton—a tributary of the La Brea Tar Pits, I imagine? He was covered in tar, his eyes weren’t yet open, and he was barely alive. More importantly, he was blocking traffic.
Stacy scooped him up and took him to the vet. When Stacy was filling out the paperwork she wrote “Lobster” in the space for “pet’s name.” Stacy loves Red Lobster, and she has since admitted that she was “probably hungry at the time.” When the vet came into the reception area and called for the patient, “Lobster?” everyone chuckled, and that sealed the deal: the dinosaur’s name is Lobster—“Lobster,” what a stupid name for a brontosaurus from Compton.
Stacy has a small apartment and too many cats as it is, so we were nominated to become Lobster’s new parents. As expected, our dachshund didn’t much care for his new roommate and has asked several times a day since, “When’s his mom gonna come pick him up?” And that’s why we suspect the dachshund had something to do with Lobster’s disappearance. In fact we think the dachshund put the dinosaur in his time machine.
We have steadfastly refused to believe that the contraption the dachshund is always tinkering with is a working time machine, but we’re having a hard time maintaining this opinion in the face of recent facts. Last week, for instance, Lobster was gone for a couple days and when he finally returned he looked pretty frazzled and he was wearing a tattered Civil War uniform. Which side was the grey team? The Confederates? Oh, so he’s a racist dinosaur? (Redundant?)
Anyway, we put up signs around the neighborhood, which, to be honest, we had a little chuckle while making: “LOST: BRONTOSAURUS.” I was going to write “LOST: THUNDER LIZARD,” which is what brontosaurus means, but I thought the neighbors might not get it, or think it’s a prank, or something. They’ll probably think it’s a prank anyway because how do you lose one of the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth? That’s why we have to consider the time machine a real possibility: Lobster could be anywhen.
He was last seen around November 14 in a daily dachshund calendar, but he could be on any day in any calendar from any year. If you see him in your past, present, or future, please call us in the now. Danke.
Princess Poobah’s Plight
One day while Faunus was chugging a jug of fig wine with the Lady Isis Thea high in the branches of their Sacred Grove, there was a brilliant flash. Before them stood their Son (they didn’t know they had one) swathed in an aura of gold. His name was Heliodox, also known as “The Millennium Falchund.”
Heliodox laid Seven Golden Eggs in the center of Faunus’s Sacred Grove Of Trees and when they hatched they became the Sunshine Sprites, a race of Golden Pixies that tend to the Earth’s Sunshine and manage the Rhinebeau River, the source of all Rainbows. Faunus and Lady Isis were overjoyed with their new family of gold babies.
Heliodox gave them a magical Fairy Flag that they could use as a blanket for the Sunshine Sprites when they lay down to sleep after putting the Sun to bed every Night. But Heliodox warned them that the Sunshine Sprites are a mischievous little horde of Faeries and should they ever harm a human child, the Fairy Flag and the Sacred Grove will disappear. As a precaution, Faunus and Lady Isis hired a Gold Nanny Droid (who came with excellent recommendations) to watch over the Sunshine Sprites and make sure they stayed out of trouble.
One day, as the Sprites were building Rainbows in the Rhinebeau, they came upon a young girl bathing in their waters. It was the Princess Poobah and she didn’t know that entering their River was strictly forbidden. The Sunshine Sprites decided to teach the Princess a lesson. One of them splashed the Nanny Droid with water while the others used their Faerie Magic to turn the Princess’s bar of lilac soap into a dead, slimy, rotten chicken. When the Princess Poobah realized she was washing with raw poultry and maggots, she screamed and ran home to her castle.
The Princess Poobah soon became very ill. It was determined by her Royal doctors that she had come down with Furry Parrot Disease due to the exposure to slimy poultry.
Princess Poobah’s Plight, Part 2
The Grand Poobah’s daughter, the Princess Poobah, was sick in bed suffering from Furry Parrot Disease. The Grand Poobah offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who could cure her. Beckett, a lowly wiener in the village, knew that if he could steal the Fairy Flag from Faunus, The Old Man Of The Wood, it would cure the Princess. But even before he could approach Faunus’s terrifying grove of trees, Beckett had to travel many miles and cross the Fairy Bridge at the Rhinebeau River, which is guarded by the Sunshine Sprites: if you can’t answer their riddle, they eat you.
After an arduous journey, Beckett arrived at the Fairy Bridge and was stopped by a Sunshine Sprite. The Sprite demanded an answer to his riddle before Beckett could enter the Wood: “How many beans are too many beans in a bean burrito?”
For an answer, Beckett lifted his leg and whizzed in the Rhinebeau River. The waters of the Rhinebeau are sacred to the Sprites and the invasion of Beckett’s urine was the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez disaster.
While the Sprite was distracted cleaning up the yellow spill, Beckett crept into the Wood and entered Faunus’ grove.
“What brings you to Faunus’s Wood, oh Little One?” Faunus asked.
In reply, Beckett did a little dance on his little legs that made Faunus laugh so hard he nearly fell out of his tree. “Oh ho ho! You are Nature’s Little Clown! Dance for Faunus, Little One, dance.”
While Beckett continued his jig, Faunus opened a jug of fig wine to enjoy while he watched the show. Beckett danced and danced while Faunus drank and drank, and soon the Old Man Of The Wood came down with a bad case of the hiccups. As Faunus tried scaring himself by drinking wine while standing on his head and breathing his own farts, Beckett used the opportunity to reach into the closet in Faunus’ tree and nab the Fairy Flag.
He ran all the way back to his village, unfurled the flag, cured the Princess of her Furry Parrot Disease, and they all lived happily ever after.
[Answer to the riddle: 240 beans because 240 is too farty.]
The Queen Of The Spider Beans
When the Dachess Of Dork was very young, her parents died and she was forced to live with her aunt who made her do all of the chores. One day she told the Dachess to visit her nearest neighbor, The Loch Ness Monster, and retrieve the Rainbow she had lent her. It was late and the Dachess worried that she wouldn’t make it back before sunset to milk the Lady Bugs—unless she took a shortcut through the Spinnewald, a dark and evil forest patrolled by venomous Devil Spiders who created a labyrinth of cobwebs in the ominous woods. It was said that even the slightest touch of a Spinnewald web would ensnare you for eternity.
As she pondered her predicament, a strange Little Green Man with gold teeth appeared and handed her a can of Electric Mayhem Beans. He told her to eat the beans, spin around three times, then enter the Spinnewald backwards and a path will appear. The Dachess figured life couldn’t get any worse, so she did as he said. But as soon as she entered the dark forest, she became very scared. The old dead trees blotted out the sun, the cobwebs began closing in, and she could hear the Devil Spiders chittering in the darkness.
Suddenly, her tummy rumbled and before she had time to control her bowels, a deafening fart exploded out of her butt and roared through the forest.
After the Dachess excused herself and recovered from her embarrassment, she noticed that her sonic boom-boom had blasted a path right through all the cobwebs. As she took a few steps further into the spiders’ lair, it happened again, and she produced another massive explosion that blew away all of the cobwebs behind her. The Electric Mayhem Beans had turned her keister into an Ultrasonic Fart Cannon!
In this way the Dachess marched straight through the forest, fanny first, clearing a path through the webs with her new sonic weapon. She retrieved the Rainbow from Nessie and made it home in time to milk the Lady Bugs.
She has been known ever since as The Queen Of The Spider Beans. To this day, people in the region always scoop up a spider and/or some cobwebs from behind the toilet and place it in the bottom of a pot of bean soup in her honor.
The Great J.S. Dach, With Primitive Blacksmith Derek
The great J.S. Dach’s performance at our tiny village’s Dachtoberfest this year was an experience we will not soon forget. The maestro’s soulful howling was accompanied, of course, by Captain “Borg Face” Picard (tenor) and the Marquis De Sade on lead guitar (his Sado-Masolicks are to die for!), as well as their backing orchestra, The Little Horde—which, I was surprised to learn, really is a little horde of orphan scamps who play weird instruments. There’s a young girl, for instance, who just pours blue paint on a snare drum while a pack of hounds chase a Jazz Rabbit around in 5/3 time. There’s another rabble of rapscallions who do nothing but slap a giraffe’s tits back and forth for the duration of the show.
It was one of the most amazing performances our tiny stage has ever hosted. The surprising star of the night, however, was J.S. Dach’s opening act: Primitive Blacksmith Derek. Now, I’ve never been to Vegas, but those that have said that PBD was way better than the Blue Man Group—you know, those guys that paint themselves up all blue and bang on stuff? It’s difficult to describe Derek’s music except that it’s very percussive, and almost sounds electronic at times, but it’s all made with primitive analog instruments—primarily a forge, fire, anvil, and hammer. I understand it’s an entirely new genre of music being dubbed Ludtron (short for Luddite Electronica).
During the show, actors and other musicians acted out scenes from Derek’s life while he bangs out a real hammer, then a sword, on the anvil in his forge. Despite the tragedies that unfold around him, he perseveres and uses his hammer to build a magnificent bridge across the stage. Then he leaves his forge, strides across the bridge, and, once he reaches the other side, he jams the hot sword he just smithed up his butt and dies.
It sounds terrible, I know, but it was quite beautiful. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
WienerschnitzHELL
In an upcoming film about dach metal giants, WienerschnitzHELL, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews reveal a band that was in complete chaos while they were in the studio writing and recording their magnum opus of radish patch techno, “The Flight Of The Turnip Princess.”
Metatron’s Cube, who writes all the lyrics and is known as the band’s Voice Of Nothing And The Sound Of Silence, was frequently absent from the recording sessions because she became deeply involved in Sacred Geometry and was too busy with real estate speculation in another dimension.
The lead guitar player, Wolfgang Pugilisky, was practically useless because he was injecting a potent concoction of navy bean soup laced with spider webs he farmed behind his toilet. As a result, he was convinced that he was an ancient bronze statue of a Greek God that had been reincarnated in a Native American child who rode a motorcycle around a graveyard in the desert.
Vicious Sintaur, usually the band’s most colorful musician, was constantly drunk on a strange brew made from floor stew and fermented earwax. That wasn’t a problem in itself (he was almost always drunk), the problem was that he had seen a Cirque De Soleil show in Las Vegas and insisted, often violently, that the band should incorporate more circus tricks and acrobatics into their onstage performances.
Saint Pinocchio and his girlfriend Sweetums had devised a way of untangling the red lines from candy canes which they then crushed into a powder and smoked in a mistletoe cigarette—they said it allowed them to communicate with bees on the moon.
Even J.S. Dach, usually the voice of reason in the group, became addicted to a strange mixture of old Halloween candy and his own farts. It’s a miracle they were able to complete “The Flight Of The Turnip Princess,” an album that changed the face of music.
“Concerto In Fart #: The WienerschnitzHELL Dachumentary” airs next month on PBS.
Lil Weenies
You may have one of these floating around inside of you right now. They’re known as Lil Weenies: biochemical computers that operate on a subatomic level. And someone, or something, has been implanting them in newborn babies across the world since at least 1969.
Scientists say the Lil Weenies began as a DNA molecule harvested from a subtraction sign in a third grade-level math problem which was then combined with proteins from a crack in a stump that was used as a milking stool in a dairy barn at an agricultural university. Once the synthesis between the minus sign and the crack occurred, it quickly evolved into a subatomic microorganism with a chemical profile that is distinctly long, yet very short—much like a dachshund, hence the nickname, Lil Weenies.
How they got into our systems, and what they’re doing, nobody knows, but they exist in a surprisingly large portion of the population. While their ultimate purpose is yet unknown, Lil Weenies have been observed drawing on the internal walls of veins and arteries with their lipstick rockets. It’s been likened to “quantum graffiti,” but some of the observed “tagging” appears to be a form of poetry about sublime pastoral landscapes.
There is also evidence to suggest that the Lil Weenie’s biochemical processing system is emitting gases composed of proteins from Wood, Wieners, and Whipstick (WWW)—the basic building blocks of the internet. There is a radical theory that not only did Lil Weenie gases create the internet, but that their emissions are the internet itself.
Lil Weenies have so far proven indestructible, although they have exhibited a susceptibility to severe cases of nuclear subatomic worms. As if having a tiny Lil Weenie cruising around in your veins wasn’t disturbing news enough, there are nuclear subatomic worms cruising around in its veins—and, presumably, being excreted into our veins.
So, yeah, you probably have worms.
When Sirens Sleep
The mesmerizing song of the Siren, Lorelei, has lured sailors to their deaths on the Rhine River for centuries so that she may feed on them under the waves [1]. Interestingly, she eats every part of the sailors except their Wieners, which she stores in pickle jars arranged on glass shelves in a mirrored hutch. Every other part of the dead sailor is ground up and shaped into patties that become her “world famous” (self-proclaimed) Sailor Burgers [2].
Many years ago, Lorelei invited her neighbors, the Dwarves who lived in the mine next door, over for a BBQ. Even though she said she was serving her “world famous Sailor Burgers,” they didn’t learn ‘til much later that the burgers they had eaten were actually comprised of ground up sailors. The Dwarves are responsible for wide array of disgusting habits of their own, but eating human sailors was not on their list. The Dwarves avoided Lorelei after that and politely declined any further BBQ invitations. Time passed, Lorelei eventually took the hint, and they all quietly coexisted in silence beneath the Rhine.
If only the Wieners were lucky enough to have been ground up into Sailor Burgers, for the existence they suffered in Lorelei’s hutch was a fate far worse than death: each of the specimens in her trophy case was possessed by the conscious spirit of its former owner, yet because of a Siren Spell they were rendered limp and inert, unable to move or cry for help. Each of them was nothing more than an inanimate, yet conscious, wiener in a jar.
Then one day the Dwarves heard a cacophony of deafening noises coming from Lorelei’s underwater grotto and, despite their fear of the crazy Siren lady, the Dwarves went to investigate what was causing the tumult.
When they arrived they found the place in total disarray and a swarm of Wieners were running around barking, and dancing, and peeing on everything, just going crazy and completely trashing the place. In the middle of the room lay the great Siren, naked and snoring deeply in her bed.
“What in the world is going on?” the Dwarves wondered aghast.
Apparently the Siren’s Spell is only active when she is awake. And while it’s generally believed that Sirens never sleep, the truth is they do tend to doze off for a couple of days once every 100 years or so. This was one of those rare moments of rest in Lorelei’s life and it allowed the captive Wieners the opportunity to bust out of their pickle jars.
The Dwarves went and got their instruments and they all had a great big party celebrating the Wieners’ freedom. If a ship happened to pass, they would bark at the sailors and tell them to “Git! Go on! Git!”
So now, once every century, for two days around the end of November, there are no shipwrecks on the Rhine. And so it is said, when Sirens sleep, their Wieners will sing.
1. Sirens have been suspected of cannibalism ever since Circe, in Homer’s Odyssey, warned Odysseus about them: “You will come first to the Sirens, who are enchanters of all mankind and whoever comes their way; … They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with bone heaps of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them.”
2. The burger recipe appears in Gourmet Lorelei, along with many others, for cuts of sailor meat: buttock soup, kneecaps on the half shell, foot sandwiches with eyebrow aioli, toe jam chowder, scrotum dumplings with hemorrhoid filling, etc..