The History of Books: Part 2-ish

Anyway, out in fiefdoms, the peasants… er readers were growing restless. This new sorcerer named Congo came along one day and started messing with people.

“Hey,” he’d say, like every conversation ever in the history of humanity began, “would you like to see a neat trick?”

And the peasants would say, “Hell yes, entertain us, but be careful, if you use your wizardly sorcerer powers, we’ll call you a witch-demon and put you on the rack until you confess.”

To which the sorcerer replied, “What? I thought this story had moved into like the 20th or 21st century by now. I have to go change costumes into 15th century period fashion.”

But then Congo, the great sorcerer, showed them the trick. He let them choose an item they wanted to buy, and then he would teleport it right to their front door. Or barn door. Or hovel door. Congo didn’t care, he could make items appear right at anyone’s door that had a legal address in a proper zip code.

This caused another revolution of sorts, but it really had nothing to do with The Publishers. Yet. Soon though, the tides of war arrived on the publishing shores, and they had no choice but to take up arms and do battle against the evil sorcerer. For the evil sorcerer Congo was now teleporting books to the doors of peasants everywhere, but this particular spell, according to The Publishers, not only teleported the book to the front door of a peasant… er customer, but a side-effect of the spell is that it also nicked a few cents worth of profit out of The Publishers’ coffers.

The battles raged for a while, but eventually the sorcerer won the ability to demand the terms of a treaty. He didn’t outright destroy The Publishers. He wasn’t really an evil sorcerer. He was pretty damn intelligent, as he knew that his own trick depended on The Publishers doing their job to work. How could the sorcerer teleport books to a peasant’s house if there were no books to teleport because the great sorcerer had destroyed The Publishers who produced the books?

(side note: This wouldn’t be the last time The Publishers clashed with Congo. There’s some more conflict in Chapter 2.5 somewhere. I’m too lazy to look it up, but trust me, Congo The Wise is a very tricky trickster, and The Publishers, by Chapter 2.5, are these old dudes like from The Dark Crystal, which is a kick-ass movie if you’ve never seen it… you really should check it out. Jim Henson and stuff. It’s going to be cheese, but it’s a totally awesome badass cheese. Like Pepper Jack cheese or something.)

And during a night of drunken debauchery with an entire ballroom full of virgins or rappers or something, after almost setting the King’s couch on fire with a slurred Power Word, it came to him. The sorcerer’s epiphany was that he could craft a new spell, one more powerful than any he’d ever crafted, that would teleport the books directly from the author to the peasants. Customers. Sheesh.
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Dragons are NOT COOL. Nor are they your friends.

Getting real fucking tired of dragons suddenly being ‘the good guy’ in everyone’s story/timeline. It’s absolute bullshit. Let me lay down some hard facts on you, then tell me you still think dragons are ‘awesome’ or ‘badass.’

Jake, a green dragon from Minneapolis, started working at the company I was employed by in 1997. At first, everyone, including me, thought he was a pretty neat guy. No one had ever seen a dragon except for a few nerds that got beat up on our lunch break regularly. And even those poindexter assholes had never seen a green dragon.

The trouble started about a month after Jake hit the 39th floor, working in the Executive Sales Management section. During an office party one night, everyone was bugging Jake to breathe fire, set something on fire, fire this, fire that. Ignorant twats that they were, they had no clue that a green dragon spits acid instead of breathing fire. Breathing fire is for RED dragons, but whatever.

Tommy McKindless learned a lesson that night. The lesson was “don’t get drunk at an office party and beg Jake the big fuckin’ green dragon to spit acid and make shit melt to amuse me/us.” Let’s just say that the paramedics couldn’t distinguish between Tommy, the cubicle he was standing near, or half of the men’s bathroom.

No one hated on Jake then, as it was an honest mistake (well, we thought so then… Tommy WAS an asshole, and his wife was known to sleep around the office, and not just Dalgren Information Systems, where we worked. She was a bit of a… well, you know). Jake took it pretty hard, or pretended to, and everything was quiet for another three months, until Jennifer Ortiz came to work pregnant one day, and let the word slip that it was Jake’s.

Jake denied it, of course, and if you’ve never met a dragon, they are professional liars. Kyle, Jen’s husband, was furious, but, I mean, what’s he going to do? Fight a dragon? This is fucking 1997, remember, not 997 where he can just run home and grab his rusty sword and shitty leather armor in hopes of at least giving a dragon peritonitis or something while being mashed and chewed between massive, razor sharp teeth.
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