STORY OF THE INVENTOR OF THE PEDAL-DRIVEN VIKING SHIP

I used to be a poet for the feudal entity called Gardere. But then I fell in love with a princess, and because my lord was also smitten with her, I was banished, sent to a faraway place, ostensibly as an envoy to a group of barbarians. I voyaged far, through deserts so hot I thought at times my tongue would simply spring swollenly out of my mouth; across vast plains inhabited by nomads who ate nothing but grass; and through dense forests so deep and dark I often sensed no end to them. Finally, I reached my destination: a simple Viking ship tied to a tallow on a shallow river. Where was I? According to my guide, I was in the middle of the territory of the Tartars. But why?

Ah, that was nothing anyone could tell me. For, you see, the lord who vanquished me had hoped to lead me to my immediate death. Yes, under the umbrella of some sort of "secret mission" to the peoples of the Kingdom of Prester John, murder was the real reason. Now I was lost, a simple man in a typical Arabic tunic (black) being looked upon by fierce Viking warlords and all their minions. Before my eyes, a Christian missionary was murdered, impaled, left to die on the tip of a 12 foot sharpened stick, various wolves and other beasts licking the blood from its stalk as the corpse swelled and rotted in the sun.

But this is how life was like in those bygone days before civilized man: Feudal lords, barbaric warlords, missions to nowhere and the virtuous impaled.

At that time, of course, I was riding a bicycle. It was my only means of transportation. The Viking warlords, many of whom had never seen such transportation before, scoffed and spat in my face, calling my humble machine "a dog."

"Your dog can run"

"Can your dog run faster than a spear?"

Needless to say, my lowly bicycle was no match for their myriad horsepowered BMWs and Jaguars. The only way I could compete with the Vikings was in the realm of maneuverability: I could pop a wheelie at will and, given a good start and perhaps a push, I could literally leap over a BMW, moving or not. For some reason, this impressed my bloodthirsty captors. But, as is usual for the bloodthirsty amongst us, being impressed is for sissies. Bloodthisty don't like their kindred to know they're impressed by anything. Hence, most of these bloodthirsty captors expressed being impressed by ridiculing me. Such is life, such is war, such is luck.

Subject to ridicule once more, then, I found myself at the bottom of a brand-new pecking order based on horsepower and machinery. And insecurity masquerading as blonde-haired machismo. Whereas before I had struggled along the muddy floor of a Baghdad bureaucracy Byzantine in character and in influence, now I had to compete mano-a-mano in a system of airheadedness unmatched since the days of the Hells Angels. Which is something I thought about. When they asked me the name of my tribe, I responded with the first thing to come to mind:

"Heaven's Devils."

"Wha...?"

"Kind of like Hell's Angels," I'd answer. "Like that--only more dangerous."

Usually, those Viking airheads, macho or not, just weren't up to snuff in the Arabic department. They didn't understand me.

"Bah, bah, bah!" one kept saying. Others would laugh. Soon, I was getting "baaed" all the time. So much so that Bah became my name.

"Hey Bah! Get me some grog!"

"Bah! Come clean my toenails!"

You! Bah! Wanna get laid, ass virgin?"

Endless days I spent trying to learn the gutteral language of the Viking warlords. Of course, much of what I did learn was coarse indeed, but slowly and surely, I gained an understanding of their ruthless language, and with that understanding I learned I was in a hopeless situation. You see, these were vanquished poets also. Viking poets. Viking poets who liked...ice cream?

Yes. Ice cream. One time, after whipping up a batch (you see, I'd found a niche in the pecking order when I invented a way to use my peddling skills to make ice cream...linking up the chain to a sprocket attached to the ice cream machine's workings...well, you get the idea...), one said, "Bah! Let's go to Sweeden! I hear there are some really mean Morlocks up there that are screwing around with one of our villages."

"What?"

"I say, Bah, these Morlock creatures are invincible, they're vampires and they're meaner than your grandmother the day she discovered she had PMN for the first time."

"What's PMS?"

"You stupid Bah. PMS? That's simple. Pre. Morlock. Syndrome. You idiot."

So we got onto the Viking ship. Not to be forced to the bottom of the Viking pecking order again, I unhooked my sprocket system from the ice cream machine and hooked it up onto the ship. Our ship was the first pedal-driven Viking ship in the entire Norse empire. It was at this point, during a storm, that somebody, I think it was Erik, maybe Uruk, possibly Eruk, could be Erur--who knows? Anyway they accused me of stealing an entire Antonio Banderas movie. This idgit said I'd made this whole thing up and this thing was nothing more than another movie rip-off. That's when I woke up. I was crying. Something had broken the window and snow was falling onto my pillow. Worse, I wasn't an Arab anymore. I was simply me.