Ave Cletus! We Who Hoedown Salute You!
2000-02-21 16:40:07
The appalling state of education in this country never ceases to amaze me. Only recently in an informal office poll did I learn that NO ONE has heard of the greatest of rulers: Cletus Porcinus, the Slack-Jawed Emperor of Rome.
Noted primarily for the accident involving the misfiring of a Welsh longbow into his own foot, Cletus the Slack-Jawed brought many technological innovations to the empire including moonshine, grits, ringworm, moon pies, and outhouses.
The populace took the better part of Cletus's astounding four-week reign to grow accustomed to these advances in science. The extensive sewer tunnels that had once carried away the great city of Rome's sewage and detritus were used instead for "critter huntin'", and use of moonshine in the vomitoria eventually became the norm.
The bane of Cletus's reign (and, many say, the problem that drove him to his death) were a rowdy group of Gauls known as the "Fratres Hazardi". These men were the finest charioteers on the entire continent, and they often left Cletus's own imperial steed inverted in a ditch as they blew past the border into the safety of their homeland.
Cletus's death, which took place in a duck blind along the Tiber, is often disputed; but it is widely believed that he died from a gangrene infection he received while opening a tin of mustard sardines. Known across the land for regularly taking the auspices with the companionship of his hound dog, Enos, Cletus could often be found outside the palace walls.
Most of the cletian inventions were subsequently purged by Cletus's successor, Plautus the Polymath. Cletus's many barefoot and pregnant cousins were sent into a rigorous regime of "readin', scribin', and hirin' arabs to do 'rithmetic", from which only a precious few emerged.
Plautus spent the majority of his treasury converting the coliseum from a racetrack for dogs and cock fights back to more traditional roman entertainment. The conversion process was so long and costly that demolition derbies had to be staged in nearby farmland in order to keep the masses occupied. The resulting debris was later harvested by the locals for parts, and many a villa could be found with three or four half-built chariots up on marble blocks.
To this day, the buck-toothed deathmask of Cletus has not been found, though documents have proven that it remained as the lid of Plautus's rennovated latrine for several decades.
T O P S T O R I E S
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
Delusional rich man tries to fire town staff
"I'm mayor now" said write-in mayoral candidate and founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks Robert Ehrlich after losing the election for Mayor of Sea Cliff, NY. Then he tried to take over the Village Hall and fire everyone. (More...)
Musk claims Xitter security is staffed by idiots
Earlier this month Xitter experienced a massive outage. In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area." (More...)
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
An innocent trip to the Central Market resulted in a severe attack of arachnophobia (and a meal) when a depraved street kid set her vicious pet spider on an unsuspecting shopper. (More...)
NASA's Mars missions keep blowing up and crashing, but dammit, when you reach for the stars you have to expect a few minor setbacks. Drink a toast to the men and women of NASA! Toast them with a Lost Probe mixed up with your own two (or three) hands! (More...)
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)