Charges Of Nepotistically Enhanced Deal-Making Are Categorically Ambivalized!

I'm tired of waiting for someone to ask how I got to be the Chief Elf, so I'm just gonna tell ya.

I married into the job... my wife has some Elvish heritage in her jeans. Mrs. Chief Elf (a.k.a. Princess Alatáriël) has some ancestors from "a very distant place," and she is, in fact, an heiress. As her consort, I get many benefits, including, after extensive negotiations, the exclusive trading rights on Earth with The Intergalactic Union of Elves.

By the way, my two daughters, Princess Promise and Princess Rebecca, contributed some suggestions to Piers Anthony, which he used in his hilarious Xanth series book, "Cube Route". Unlike the historical stories you find on this blog, Piers' stories are just fiction. At any rate, Piers is a very clever fellow, and he reckoned that Promise was already an Elvish enough name, but he gave Rebecca the name "Remember." And the Elvish versions for Promise and Remember are Nápoldë and Sára. I'll tell you more about them, and my sons Haldamir and Elessar, at a later date...

See also: Elvish Names

Take a left after Andromeda...

Another cartoon exhibited here with the kind permission of the most-talented and gracious Mark Irish ("Mr. Irish").

Of Elves and Ogres... etc, etc.

It is now time in our series of expoundatory de-mythsification articles for the complex topic of the inter-relationships between Elves, Giants, Ogres, Dragons, and People. Well, the executive summary, anyway.


Giants, like Elves, are space-travelers, but Giants aren't traders, they're "sportsmen"... or rather, sports-Giants, except they don't play football, they hunt Dragons. Or rather, they use Ogres to hunt Dragons, kind of like the English aristocracy uses Hound Dogs to hunt Foxi. That's clear enough, right? So where do the Elves and People fit in?

Well, as we're all now well aware, Elves are traders, but they need other sentient Creatures to trade with. Having monitored humankind's evolutionizing for a long time, they were just getting hopeful that our Ancestors would be developing into traders in a few thousand more generations, when People were threatened with extinction! Annihilation! And higher cave taxes! That's because this was all during our cave-dwelling period, and caves were also the preferred habitat for Dragons. I'm sure you now see how this ended up...

The Giants sent the Ogres into caves to flush out the Dragons, not knowing if the caves were Dragon-caves or People-Caves. The Ogres, being really strong, slow-witted, ornery, Ruthless, stinky, and inclined to kill anything that moves or makes noise, killed more People than they flushed Dragons. The clever Elves taught our Cave-cestors to kill the Dragons, so as to eliminate the Giants' incentive to include Earth in their Giant Guide to Dragon-Hunting-Planets and Cold Rocks (see Pluto post). So that got rid of the Dragons, which got rid of the Giants and Ogres, and allowed us to developicate our sophisticated interstellar-commerce interests.

Now, I know what those of you who are left-handed and eating eggs for breakfast are thinking... you're thinking, "I'll bet that's where the stories of Medieval Knights fighting Dragons comes from!" Naaah. The Dragons were all gone by the time the Knights started Knighting. The stories of Knights fighting Dragons is merely a myth, based on stories brought back to Europe from Asia by swimmers playing Marco-Polo. And they got the stories from the Asians who had passed down the stories by word of mouth, eventually leading to stories that little resemble THE TRUTH.

So, I for one, am glad the Elves kept such good records and are willing to sell those records to those of us who trade with them. Not to mention the commemorative "Moving Target" t-shirts, which are now available at The Elf Ink Emporium, and are exactly like the ones the Elves got the Ogres to wear so long ago. Happy Hunting!

Ads, Sidebars, and Games...

Mea Culpa, I liked making by blog's page look busy by adding banner ads, both at the bottom, and on the side. Plus, I learned that being an "affiliate" meant I could earn some money from commissions on sales... and you can really get-rich-quick, according to the affiliates' marketing blurbs.

Well, I've posted some, and taken them down, posted some more, and taken them down... 'cause I learned that they were using pop up/under ads, or were misleading. So, I'm pretty sure the ads I have up now are honest and straight-forward, but if you think otherwise, please comment and tell me what the problem is.

Now, I love the little flag game on the side over there, but I have to admit, I can't remember many flags... so right below the game, I've added a link to a list of national flags. Cheating? How can be cheating... It's helping us learn, right??

And no, I haven't figured out how to use the Chatterbox, but I'll get around to it...

When you let Ogres drive your space ship:

No worries, the two bloggers in the picture can handle this.

But it does remind me of an Army recruitment billboard I saw years ago... There were three adventurous-looking soldiers on parachutes in mid-air, with the caption, "This is the Army!" I thought, "I know recruiting is down, but I thought we had more than 3 guys!!"

This cartoon is also exhibited here with the kind permission of the talented and gracious Mark Irish ("Mr. Irish").

And the winner is:

I've been having fun playing around with all the little blogging widgets, but I've been slow to add permanent links other than my own, 'cause I don't want to end up with a list a mile long. So, I'm picky/persnickity/choosy/hard-to-please/dense.

But, I've decided that my first permanent link has to be awarded to: That Blogging Wheelchair, authorified by a blogger extraordinaire, who doesn't let her Quadriplagerism "stand" in the way of her keen sense of humor. Congratulations, Ruth Harrigan!!

I have a lot of physical problems myself, Ruth, but they're dwarfed by my mental ones.

Why we don't see more space-aliens on Earth:

This cartoon is exhibited here with the kind permission of the gracious Mark Irish ("Mr. Irish").