Introns: A Fable

At one point in early 2011, a brand new island is discovered off the coast of Scotland, quite by accident. It is called Lumberia. The Royal Geography Bureau sends out a team in a boat. The team consists of an ethologist and a preacher. As they row out to the island, each of them surveys the island's inhabitants through a pair of powerful binoculars.

"The Lumberians are powerfully built, wearing flannel shirts, carrying hatchets, and living in robust wooden houses," says the preacher. "They all look very much alike."

"I agree," says the ethologist. "They look quite like Scotsmen. I think they are descended from Scotsmen."

"Nonsense!" says the preacher. "Scotsmen come in all shapes and sizes. The Lumberians look very similar to each other. They were clearly created by God to make lumber on the island. See how they are perfectly suited to logging, protecting themselves against the cold with their sensible flannel clothing. Obviously that didn't come about by chance! They are so similar to each other because, when God created the first Lumberian, He got it right, and decided not to fix what wasn't broken."

"I'm not saying the Lumberians are descended from all Scotsmen equally," says the ethologist. "Their geographic isolation would restrict their genetic diversity. They are merely descended from a few ... perhaps a single clan. I can't say for sure -"

"Ha!" shouts the preacher. "You admit you don't know!"

"True," says the ethologist. "But I may later. Right now I think that they may be descended from the McCheznicks of a wooded village on the Scottish coast near here. They look like McCheznicks, wear the same clothing, and excel at the traditional McCheznick trade of cutting timber. When the clan landed on the island, they thrived here for the same reasons they thrived in their similar home environment."

The preacher shakes his head. "You deny all the beauty of God's work with your preposterous theory of someone teleporting from the mainland to this island!"

"Actually, I think they used a boat, or several," says the ethologist, pulling at the oars.

"Ah ha! You just assumed a boat."

"Until we reach the island, this will all be necessarily hypothetical. There may have been a few strong swimmers, or a land bridge that has sunken out of sight. But assuming a boat is less a leap of faith than assuming a god."

At this point, each of them asserts his vehement belief that the burden of proof lies with the other. Each of them makes a few references to Okham's Razor. The argument continues until they reach the island.

After making landfall and greeting the inhabitants, each of the visitors sticks with his Theory of Lumberian Origins, despite the revelation that all the inhabitants of the island are named McCheznick.

A Grand Palace for the Lightning Bugs

Lightning bugs flatter me

They regard each of my branches as a grand palace

Just today I overheard one of them saying a single branch had 

one hundred thirty-seven prime places to perch

(and over four hundred mediocre places)

His abdomen flashed blue-white, which is hardly surprising

Though of course he was doing it just for me

Because all lightning bugs are silly, and think I am here just for them.

Today a man saw lightning bugs superimposed 

on a cloudy horizon decorated with lightning

That’s right, just regular old lightning

He was a short man, not more than three meters tall

(though Grandpa told me a man that size can do fiercesome things 

with a bow-saw)

Yet the sky performed its background to the lightning bugs' dance

And he thought it was there just for him.

The lightning bugs never fly so high as when they want to reach my tops

(you can call them turrets, if you want, and imagine them made of stone)

They never fly as high as an airplane

   looking down on me, thinking I’m short and forgetting me quickly

Nor do the squirrels, or the crows, or the pleasanter birds

No matter how many friends perch in my branches, it is no burden to bear

For a palace

of a few cubic meters

of softwood.

If Magic Worked Like Insurance Underwriting

Zartok's mage sense reminded him of a task. To supply his staff with wool, he would need a sheep. He had left the project with his assistant, a move which seemed logical at the time but which left troubling thoughts as he tried to study. He stood up from his desk, donned his robe, left the candles burning, and headed down the winding stone staircase.

He entered the laboratory in the subbasement of his manse. Assistant Mage Klipthak sat on the floor with his grimoire open and an overturned vial next to him. A group of distracted sheep wandered about, sniffing various magic paraphernalia.

“Klipthak, didn’t I tell you to turn a single cow into a sheep?”

“Why yes, Senior Technical Mage, sir, but I did!" the lad blinked. "At least, I started with a single cow?”

“Oh, no no no, Klipthak. Don’t tell me you didn’t follow my exact instructions, down to each subitem? Verbatim?!” Zartok stroked his long white beard and furrowed his great brows. He couldn’t blast his assistant for this sort of error but wished he could.

Klipthak was apprehensive but not exactly contrite. “Well, Senior Technical, I followed them almost exactly -“.

“ENOUGH!” came the roared answer. Zartok paused for effect. Klipthak cowered behind his grimoire, waiting for the lightning bolts. Instead, his master continued. “Recite your spell in its entirety, with all the hand motions. Pray be exact.”

After three minutes of timid but exact recounting, Zartok sighed. “I see what you’ve done, boy. An easy mistake to make, but easily avoided if you had followed orders. First, when you referred to the target animal as four-legged creature, the universe thought you wanted four sheep. You don’t need to specify number of legs for a within-phylum transformation spell. So now we have four sheep.”

Klipthak mistook the pause for a chance to speak. “So we’ll eat mutton," he offered.

“SILENCE! We eat no mutton! You know how you added permancy to that spell, so your sheep wouldn’t change back to a cow at sundown?” Klipthak nodded. “Well, you added it to the spell’s object level. Permanency is a meta-level item if you only want the spell’s effects to be permanent. On the object level, it makes the object permanent. We shall never eat mutton because … you … have … made … me … FOUR ... IMMORTAL ... SHEEP!”

Klipthak turned pale and began to cry.

The Gnospel of Slang

One day about four million years ago, the Monad looked upon the Universe He had created, and saw that it was okay. But not great. He was dissatisfied.

He gathered His aeons together. "It has come to My attention that creation is lacking. There are simply not enough slang words for marijuana!"

One of his aeons (not named) responded, "But, my liege, there are currently over six thousand slang terms for marijuana. Is that not enough?"

The Monad scoffed. "Zut alors! Of course it's not enough. We need more! Just make up another 40 trillion by Tuesday."

The aeons gasped. It seemed like a daunting task. They set to work until sweat glistened on their heavenly foreheads.

On Monday evening the Monad became restless, and started lurking around the office trying to see if any progress was made on His new plan. He happened upon the desk of Sophia, the aeon of wisdom. "Sophia," He said in His gravelly voice, "What progress have you made for me?"

Sophia blinked at him. "Umm ... 'doobage'?"

"Forty trillion!" the Monad roared.

"My lord, our task is to make 40 trillion new slang words for marijuana. Yet there are less than a billion words in all the extant languages combined! Are you certain this is a reasonable task?"

"Forty trillion!" the Monad repeated. "Back to work, Sophia!"

Sophia said nothing, but turned back to her work. She smoothed her raven-black hair with her pale fingers in a vaguely hot but very Goth sort of way. Once the Monad had wandered back to His office, she crept away from her desk to make a baby. She didn't inform her mate, a male aeon whose name is lost to history. This was probably not a great idea.

"'Probably not a great idea'?!" the aeons cried in unison. Okay, fine, it was probably the worst idea in history. After a long, arduous, yet easily-concealed pregnancy, Sophia gave birth to the Demiurge, and he went on to create the Cosmos, filling it with dirt, landfills, people, and all sorts of other dirty disgusting stuff.

And that, my children, is how the world was created.

Denmark in a Nuthshell

Preface: Given the nature of the subject matter and the opacity of my writing, I have decided to help out the reader by marking with an asterisk those facts about Denmark which sound like jokes but aren't.  (Those that the sound like a joke but are unmarked are actually jokes, usually made up by me.  Since Danes like to laugh about themselves, and I am half-Danish, these jokes will be half-funny.)

I don't know what the Danish national beverage is, but it might be akvavit or aquavit or however it's spelled.  Aquavit is a very Scandinavian sort of caraway-fennel vodka*.  It is reported to taste like rocket fuel, which is strange since Denmark does not have a space program.

Denmark minus Greenland is half the size of Maine and a sixth the size of Oregon.*  Some people say Greenland is not actually green, but if you look at a world map you can see that it actually is.

Denmark is spelled "Danmark" in Denmark.  The D e n m a r k spelling was necessary because there is no A in English.

People from Denmark are called "Danes".  If you call them "Dutch" I will go berzerk, brandish my battleaxe, and sunburn easily.

Denmark Vessey was an African-American slave who led a revolt.  It failed.

The Little Mermaid is a story written by the most famous Dane of all time, Hans Christian Anderson.  A copper statue of The Little Mermaid sits in Copenhagen harbor, sadly contemplating her native sea and delighting tourists with her grace and innocence.  The statue has been decapitated twice and blown up once.*

In addition to H.C. Andersen, famous Danes include navigator Vitus Bering, astronomer Tycho Brahe, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, comedian Victor Borge, and King Christian X, who led the peaceful resistance to Nazi violence against Jews.  Other prominent Danes include several generations of extremely violent Vikings and a shamefully small number of death metal musicians.

Danish is a close relative of English, but it sounds rather like the sound Italian toddlers make when they have a mouthful of dishwashing liquid.  The Danish alphabet has 29 characters*; the three extra ones are formally known as "A and E stuck together", "A with a dot over it", and "O crossed out so it looks like a zero on an old PC".

Danish wildlife includes wild boar, feral Great Danes, and Swedes who get on the ferry to take advantage of relatively low local excise taxes on liquor.  The Danes have some of the best and worst food in the world.  The former includes a variety of fresh fish, dark rye bread, butter, and salty licorice flavored with ammonium chloride*.  The latter includes marzipan, tilsit, pickled herring, and some sort of horrendous concoction made from stale bread soaked in flat beer; its name translates to "beer bread".  No, really - it is supposed to be made from soaking stale bread in flat beer.*

Out of guilt for tilsit, "beer bread", and those centuries of Vikings mistreating British peasants, the Danes have transformed themselves recently into nice people.  "Recently" being around five hundred years ago.  Basically, all the Danes went to see the a travelling production of Hamlet and realized that if they kept on like they were, they were all going to end up stabbed or poisoned.  So they turned in their battleaxes, freed their thralls, and decided to only colonize uninhabited places.

Danish explorer: Wow, this whole island is covered with ice!  It should be totally uninhabited!

Native Greendlander: "Should be", but isn't.

Danish explorer: Aww, nuts.

At The Employment Office

"I'm considering a career in Information Hoarding," I said, trying to sound optimistic. "I can tell you all about myself - salary requirements, education, preferred work environment, the whole nine yards. Here's my resume!"

The man behind the desk sat impassively. His hands were nowhere to be seen, probably on his knees. He didn't touch my resume. "You've come to right place. I know all about that field. Or rather, I know about all of them - really it's a melange of sub-fields." He smiled contentedly.

I paused, waiting for him to continue. I gave up. "I'm very excited about it, but I can't seem to find much about it on the web, and none of my contacts know much. Is there a typical way someone gets into this field?"

"Oh, no standard way to get into it. Depends on the sub-field, really. Which sub-field are you most interested in?"

"Well," I replied sheepishly. "I honestly don't know anything about the sub-fields. I need more information on them. Actually, I need any information on them!"

"Oh, there's a wealth of information on them," he said encouragingly. "Absolutely. Just gotta know where to find it."

I was heartened. "Can you help me find it?"

"Sure," he said, and smiled again.

This time I promised myself I wouldn't speak until he did, and that I could bear any length of silence. I broke after what seemed like five minutes, but was probably not one. "Sometimes I feel like I allow discussions to founder because I focus on conveying an overall impression and a set of goals, while my listener is fixated on a few missing keywords."

He nodded knowingly. "Yes, that's very possible."

"What should I do now?" I asked, wondering if he heard it all as an undifferentiated hiss.

"Whatever you want to!" he declared in the same encouraging force.

I thanked him and bade him farewell. He beamed and gave me a friendly wave as I left his office.

The Eldritch Coffees of Sam

I'll try to gather my thoughts about me before my mind falls into the brief mercy of slumber. Mine is a tale of Sam, the fabled Barista of the Blasted Heath, who turns out endless lattes to the tuneless intonations of an unseen piper, and the horror that befell me when I visited his lair.
It seems so far in the distant past that I was a callow, foolish youth, yet reason tells me it was a mere three years ago. I was born in a wooded area, dotted with dappled meadows and farmhouses whose inhabitants spoke only in whispers of the dark things that lay beyond the edge of the forest. Despite their warnings, the elders could not quiet my infernal curiosity, the dark desires that burned within my heart to investigate - perhaps conquer! - the fabled, foresaken Heath.

One day only a week after I had turned twenty-one I set out on one of my usual rambling journeys near the edge of the wood. I had not yet developed the courage, or foolhardiness, which would cause me to venture out onto the Heath itself. Instead I stood on the rich soil of the wood and gazed onto the Heath, simultaneously repelled by its desolation and drawn in by its otherworldly strangeness. Suddenly the cheerful sound of the meadowlarks died away, and I could here only an infernal hissing moan. Later, I would learn that it was the sound of what Sam called, in his swarthy Slavic accent, a milk-steaming machine. Upon first hearing it, I was stricken dumb by the nameless terror.

The sound gave way all too swiftly to the second sensation of that weird afternoon, my first contact with the aroma of fresh-roasted Sumatra. The deathly-black beans had been harvested under the uncaring sun of far-off islands, and brought to my very doorstep on creaking barques manned by lean, hunted sailors. It was my good fortune, that day, to be unable to see the gaunt, stooped figure of Sam himself, for the grey haze of caffeine vapors were too thick for my poor eyes to penetrate.

My fortune did not last. How, O how was I to resist the call of the latte, of the mocha, of the espresso? Not even at night, far from the Heath, wrapped in my too-thin blanket, could I free myself from the heady fumes of Sam's bar. The hiss of the steaming machine rubbed my nerves raw and kept my eyes open like a doorless cellar. I tried to console myself with liquor, with light music, with nonsensical poetry, but nothing could free my mind from this steaming black prison. I returned again and again, against my better judgement and the urgent words of the elders, trying to catch a glimpse of the author of these horrors - and yet fearing that I might.

It is hard to believe now, but at the time I was not aware of my fate. How could I not have known that dabbling with the weirdness of the Heath would lead me to ruin? Now, not even knowing the answer could console me. After many months of coy wanderings on early afternoons, once during a particularly sleepless night the idea struck me to visit the Heath once again.

It was a moonless night. I brought with me an electrical torch, thinking that if I encountered anything threatening I could simply extinguish the torch and thus disappear. My feet took me along the paths I had followed so many times, never once tripping or stumbling. In the dead of night, the boundary of the woods did not appear to be so forbidding. I took my first few steps onto the Heath, and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing molested me.

Such a naive sigh! As if a few steps out of the security of my forest proved anything about my ability to defend myself in that cheerless, insane place! With this callow vigor flowing through my poor veins, I proceeded further on the heath with my torch in my pocket. At first, the ground felt fairly normal, but as I proceeded my feet began to sink into the peat. Still, I was not deterred. The wind had abandoned its usual crass icyness, and died down to a mere breath. I walked on with a childlike determination on my brow.

Tonight, I would see the bar of Sam. It mattered not if it were occupied. I wanted to feel the grounds in my hand - to touch a cup which had held the unspeakable liquid so many times over the countless years. If I could do this, I reasoned, I could return to sleep, and normalcy, and some shred of sanity.

I saw the bar. It was an old-fashioned tumble-down shack of the kind a peat-cutter might rest his old bones in. Still, I knew it was the epicenter of the horrors. I moved toward it, steadfast, and woefully ignorant. The door was not locked. Curse that doorknob! Curse that hand that had left it unlocked!

What happened next I cannot and must not remember. I only know that they found me at the edge of the wood three days later, deathly mute and almost dead of exposure, with my pockets full of coffee grounds and a milk-moustache upon my quivering visage. Dr. Zann pronounced me beyond his power to help, and prayed that I should recover of my own inner strength.

Have I made such a recovery? I do not know. I can walk and speak and, sometimes, eat. I can write these words. But it is a rare night that passes without some dream of the hissing machine, or the smell (dare I say - the taste?) of that beverage, leaving me bolt-upright and damp on my bed. My cat Little Pancho shuns me after dark now; I can no longer rely on his lazy form to comfort my tired shins. My days are spent in fear that I will yet again cross paths with the dreaded Sam and his dark tonics.