last gunfight on Vleeptron

One day we were out hunting, and came upon a dreadful sight: the corpses of two young men hanging from a tree. I asked my host why they had been hanged. He explained that these young men had taken a voyage to a far-away land, and had then returned to their homeland, and had told many lies, false stories, and exaggerations about what they had seen and done on their voyage. This discovered by the authorities, they were immediately condemned to death. Sad though the hanged men were to see, I fully agreed with this wise and just action. There is no worse crime than to lie about the people and the goings-on in foreign lands, and about one's own activities while on one's foreign travels.

-- Baron von Munchausen
first and only European to travel to the Moon (1745)

Okay, that's all I have to say about the despicable sin and crime of making up whoppers about your travels overseas and overtrees and to other Planets, because I have just returned from a brief fishing trip in Quebec, and now must barbecue the sturgeon I caught in Reserve La Vérendrye, as soon as the helicopter lowers it into my backyard. I love to fish, and SWMBO loves to clean every fish I bring home. She's going to love cleaning this sturgeon! 9.2 meters! 340.19 kilograms! And I absolutely LOVE sturgeon! There is no more delicious fish in the world! It tastes a little bit like whooping crane or American Heritage Girl.

And a mature, 130-year-old sturgeon isn't easy to catch! They're ferocious! Twice the fish pulled ME out of the canoe, dragged me to the bottom of Lac Savary, and tried to marinate me with soy sauce and Worcestershire! Fortunately my many years of fish-shooting in Vermont -- sorry, season just ended -- had taught me always to carry a Glock in my creel, and I emptied a full clip into the sturgeon's brain, barely saving my life. It could have gone the other way, and the sturgeon could now be blogging about the 65.77-kilogram Yankee asshat he caught the other day!

Did you read the transcript of my IRC relapse yesterday? If you are not IRCish, you may have had several questions about it.

1. Why is everybody on the chatroom called #london speaking Turkish?

2. Why do the @Ops on #london let people natter on endlessly in Turkish, but kicer touts les Youths et jeunes filles qui parlent en francaise?

I don't know. And I don't care. I just wanted to know what the telephone Country Code of the USA is, and a very nice Turkish gentleman was happy to tell me (001).

When The Brother of the President of the United States, Neil Bush, travels to Asia as a representative of the semiconductor industry, why do beautiful young Asian women knock on his hotel room door late at night and demand to play Hide the Salami with him for hours, and all for free? In sworn legal documents associated with The Mother of All Nasty Divorces, the brother of one President and the son of another President testified that he also didn't know why this frequently happened to him in five-star Asian hotels, and he probably didn't care, either.

There are just some mysteries you can never solve. Suck it up.

When I first entered chatroom #london, I introduced myself this way:

[Droog4] Greeting English people in London! It is I, a Wild Colonial Boy! And I have a Question!

People from Foreign Lands who only know America by its fine exported television programmes know much about day-to-day Life in These United States, and, on Internet Relay Chat, frequently ask me what kind of machine-gun and automatic pistol I prefer (Uzi, Glock), and how many grizzly bears (Ursus horribilis) I have wrestled (four). And this brings me to another matter which arose during my IRC relapse:

[dowset] if fight agains a bear one time
[dowset] it was freak
* morocco26msn has quit IRC (Quit)
[dowset] i caught up my arm with is claw

3. Do you believe this Quebecer Punque Youth really rassled a bar? Or

4. Should Crown Prosecutors in Ottawa promptly make the Quebecer Youth into le Pendu, to discourage other Canadiennes from telling total bullshit whoppers about their manly adventures in the wilderness of Northern Quebec to ignorant Yankee asshats on IRC?

Please leave the Comment, Share Your Feelings with Vleeptron on this important question. (He also said he only does it doggy-style with young Anglophone girls, probably your younger sister.) Nonetheless, I know for a fact that he was being perfectly honest about the Free Marihuana available throughout the wonderful Province du Quebec, for I have visited this land many times (J'habite 6 heurs sud du Montreal!). This agribusiness resource (Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, Cannabis bcbud) is grown and harvested by Quebecer Biquers (les Cousins Distants du Satan) who stand along the highways and distribute it to passing American tourists. When I try to pay them, they say: "Votre U$ Dollar, c'est pas desiree ici, mon ami! Bon voyage!"

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. It is I, your Wild Colonial Boy.

For at least 300 years, Americans travelling to Europe have gotten laid and Free Room & Board (music and washing extra) by putting on a Wild Colonial Boy freak show, and pretending to be the Living Breathing 3D Embodiment of every Fantastical Outlandish Thing TV-watching and Cineastique Europeanaisies expect an American to be.

During our War of Independence from Britain, Benjamin Franklin was the Rebels' first diplomatic emissary to France. This was an important diplomatic mission. The Rebels desperately needed help from abroad. George Washington was the commander of a few thousand peasant farmers whose educational backgrounds were so Lite that they didn't know their Left Foot from their Right Foot, so their first professional military drillmaster, Baron von Steuben, tied hay to their left feet and straw to their right feet, and drilled them this way:

HAY!
HAY!
HAY! STRAW! HAY!
HAY!
HAY!
HAY! STRAW! HAY!
(repeat 3291 times, then collapse)

because every one of his Continental Army soldiers knew perfectly well the difference between hay and straw. (I don't. If you do, please Leave a Comment. Also I could use a little help with The Offsides Rule, and my crappy free Hello image blog software which only lets me post images of raw sausages.)

Franklin was afflicted with a common medical disorder: the heartbreak of satyriasis. This tragic genetic ailment, located exclusively on the Y Chromosome, compelled this happily married man, with a wife back home in Philadelphia, with the kids, against his will (women may Leave a Comment) to fuck every attractive young woman in Paris, Lyons, Calais, Montpelier, Limoges, and he would have travelled to Cannes for a little of the old in-out at le Fête, but motion pictures and Brigitte Bardot had not yet been invented. If only he had lived long enough to take a spin through Time on the Heathkit Vacuum-Tube Ungrounded Plug TM-212 Time Machine, he could have banged Ursula Andress while she was filming "She" (Who Must Be Obeyed), if he was wearing the coonskin cap. (See next paragraph. Women may also Leave a Comment to explain this coonskin cap Hot Thing to Bob, he Just Doesn't Get It. If this silly headgear makes you so excited, maybe a few of you could wear them, then maybe I could grok this thing better.)

Often 50-year-old fat bald male diplomats on a government expense account have difficulty Becoming Their Dreams, and have to resort to tricks and deceit. Franklin used the old Wild Colonial Boy dodge. He actually wore a raccoon-skin cap (long before Davy Crockett and slightly before Daniel Boone) as he went on his diplomatic rounds in Paris and Versailles, and all the women of Paris just plotzed. The rest of his get-up was equally outlandish a la The Last of the Mohicans and total bullshit. The guy ran a printing shop in Philadelphia (he invented the Franklin Press) and spent most of his time sitting at his desk writing -- an ur-Computer Nerd -- which is how he got corpulent as middle age set in.

But in Paris, in the raccoon cap, with the small discreet tomahawk tucked in his beaded Native-American wampum belt (from Sid's Mountain Man Outfitters, 71 Olde Schuykill Street, Philadelphia), Franklin had to beat les jeunes filles off with the tomahawk, they were ripping at his deerskin trousers as if he were Daniel Day Lewis or Tom Cruise.

You wouldn't think this Fête du Troilisme Parisienne was likely to assist in the success of his desperate diplomatic mission, but actually America owes its Freedom to Franklin's incurable satyriasis. His many Satisfied Customeusses (and Viagra would not be invented for another two centuries) whispered Tee-Hee and What A Guy and God Bless l'Amerique into the annoyed ears of their husbands, brothers, Grandes Ducs, Princes, and eventually le Roi himself, until the King of France (Louis the Decapitated) reluctantly and grudgingly granted Wild Colonial Franklin an audience. (This took a couple of years. But Franklin had kielbasa stuph to do across town to keep l'ennui at bay.)

Free At Last, several famous 19th-Century American men pulled the same scam in London, getting fancy free dinners at castles and mansions every night merely by promising to appear dressed up in the outlandish regalia of Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, and Dead-Eye Leon Saperstein (yes, there WERE!!!! real authentic Jewish Cowboys in the Wild West).

And I confess, a few times on my extended Wanderlust adventures through Europe, when I have been running low on cash and the ATMs have stopped talking to me, I, too, have strapped on my Colt .45 pearl-handled engraved six-shooters, donned my Ten-Gallon Hat, my chaps, and my Gram Parsons Acid Country cowboy boots, to give a Wild Colonial Boy Thrill to rich, dumb Londoners. The squab and l'homarde were exquisite, the champagne -- wow! -- and (I was an Unsupervised Bachelor at the time) I got my ashes hauled after dinner.

Okay, I have to take the trash to the Solid Waste Landfill now, enough of this bullshit. Here's the song, the terrible, violent last gunfight on Vleeptron. It dates from 19th Century Australia, but I'm pretty sure there was also an earlier American Colonial Version. This is still a beloved authentic traditional Irish folk song, from the days when all the young folks had to leave Ireland and go off to The New World because every Irish person was starving to death during the Potato Famine. (And the population went UP! Nothing to eat, and the population went UP!!! Malthus was RIGHT!!!!)

Okay, so the guy wasn't a cowboy. Big fucking deal, sue me. Or better yet, bite me, asshat. Go rassle a grizzly bar.

{ [ ( o ) ] }

The Wild Colonial Boy
traditional Irish
(don't look for a crappy MIDI, Irish folksongs MUST ONLY BE PLAYED BY Seán Keane | Dave Fallon | Michael Tubridy | Peadar Mercier | Kevin Conneff! I'm sure they cover this sucker, this is a famous, famous Irish standard played at every Baptism, Wake, Rebellion and Bar Mitzvah in Eire. They played it at Billy Annyas' Bar Mitzvah, they played it at Otto Yaffe's. They were the hired band at Bobby Briscoe's Bar Mitzvah, and then again at little Ben Briscoe's Bar Mitzvah, and at Gerry Goldberg's, too!)

There was a Wild Colonial Boy,
Jack Doolan was his name,
Of poor but honest parents
He was born in Castlemaine.
He was his father's only hope,
His mother's pride and joy
And dearly did his parents love
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:
So come away me hearties
We'll roam the mountains high,
Together we will plunder
And together we will die.
We'll scour along the valleys
And we'll gallop o'er the plains,
And scorn to live in slavery,
Bound down by iron chains.

At the age of sixteen years
He started out to roam,
Stowed away and reached Australia
Which he chose to make his home.
They put him in an iron gang
In the government employ,
But never an iron on earth could hold
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

Forsaking means of honest toil
To earn his daily bread
There on Australia's sunny shores,
A bushranger life he led.
To help the poor, he robbed the rich,
A pistol was his toy,
With which he slew a man or two,
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

In 'Sixty-One this daring youth
Commenced his wild career,
With a heart that knew no danger
And no foeman did he fear.
He stuck up the Beechworth mail coach
And robbed Judge MacEvoy
Who, trembling cold, gave up his gold
To the Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

He bade the judge good morning
And he told him to beware,
That he'd never rob a needy man
Or one who acted square,
But a judge who'd rob a mother
Of her one and only joy
Sure, he must be a worse outlaw than
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

One day as Jack was riding
The mountain side along,
A-listening to the little birds,
Their happy laughing song.
Three mounted troopers came along,
Kelly, Davis and Fitzroy
With a warrant for the capture of
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

"Surrender now! Jack Doolan,
For you see it's three to one;
Surrender in the Queen's own name,
For the plund'ring deeds you've done!"
Jack drew a pistol from his side
And waved it like toy,
"I'll fight, but not surrender, cried
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

He quickly turned to Davis,
And shot him through the thigh,
Then he took aim for Kelly's brain,
But missed the lucky guy.
The shot returned by Davis did
Not bring Jack any joy.
All shattered through the jaw he lay
The Wild Colonial Boy.

Chorus:

He fired at trooper Kelly
And brought him to the ground,
And in return from Davis
Received a mortal wound,
His proud young heart was torn apart
Still firing at Fitzroy.
And that's the way they captured him,
The Wild Colonial Boy.