The Pre-History of the Nile Delta

Okay, so one day about four trillion years ago, Osiris, Ra, Isis, Bast, and Seth were all sitting around in the Egyptian desert. They were hot, since air conditioning was about four trillion years from being invented, and due to various principles of thermodynamics, it doesn't work outdoors anyway. So Isis, who was looking hot in more ways than one, said, "Hey guys, let's play this new boardgame I got!"

Ra and Osiris were hip to the idea, but, since Seth is evil, he doesn't like boardgames. For the same reason, he happens to really like urban legends, so he started in. "Betcha thought glass is a solid. Ha! You're wrong! It's a liquid!" Ra wasn't particularly interested in that, since he was busy looking for some dice, but Osiris raised an elegant black eyebrow. Isis was annoyed that no one was noticing how hot she looked, but in fairness, they had known each other for like two million years so the guys were probably used to it.

"Didja know dog mouths are totally free of bacteria?" Seth cackled, licking his lips. "Their saliva kills all germs!" he said, bringing his face close to Isis's. Isis recoiled at the stench and turned to an old bookshelf that she thought might hold an old copy of Diplomacy.

"Found 'em!" Ra said with great excitement, as he found both dice under the couch. Osiris looked up from a book and smiled. Bast lay on her side in the shadow of the bookshelf. Isis looked looked under the Diplomacy box and found her absolute favorite game, Pictionary. Seth was annoyed that no one was paying attention to him. He stood on his head and waved at his friend's with his hind paws. He began to get dizzy so he righted himself and started in again.

"Did you know that bitch Andrea Dworkin said 'All sex is rape'? Man, I could talk about that for hours."

"Yeah, well, Andrea Dworkin is an idiot," said Isis, since she couldn't think of anything else to say. Ra went to look for a card table, wondering if this Andrew Dworkin person might combine Isis's good looks with a less haughty personality.

Osiris spoke for the first time. "Or, perhaps, the person who misquoted Ms. Dworkin as having said that is an idiot." He smiled sagely, as he often did. Ra set up the card table, and Bast wasted no time in hoping on it and moving to the exact center.

Seth whirled on him. "No! No, no! When someone asserts that someone said something stupid, it's always true! It is, cause I said so, and I'm a god, dammit!"

Osiris smiled some more, and said, "My dear Seth, I think you'll find that 'Goddammit' is a completely anachronistic phrase for this period. Just kidding!" Ra approached the table, trying to figure out how they could set up the game without disturbing Bast, who had just fallen into a deep slumber. Osiris ignored this and continued, "Seriously though, I looked up the definition of liquid and I have to say that, at room temperature, glass just doesn't fit that definition. I am starting to believe that, at this point, your credibility leaves something -".

At that moment, he was cut short by Seth's having chopped him into little pieces. Seth even fed a very politically-incorrect part of Osiris to a fish. Naturally, this spoiled the game. Ra sat at the card table pouting, hoping to get Bast to sit on his lap (which she wouldn't do despite his claim that he had some calf's liver), while Isis, despite her haughty attitude and keen awareness of her good looks, made herself useful by travelling all over Egypt in a Chevy Nova collecting various parts of Osiris for his eventual reassembly. In the interim, Seth thought he was a pretty cool cat, or a pretty cool aardrvark, or whatever he was.

And that, my children, is how loudmouths were created.