The Birth

1. Upon the mountain lived a jeweler who was bereft of thought, yeah, and action even. Impotence and constipation and hemorrhoids and other vile afflictions ravaged his flesh and made him upset and somewhat crabby. It didn’t help that he had nothing to eat, either.

2. One day this crabby man was visited by the Prophet Gwyd and the Prophet took one look at the crabby man’s situation and felt pity for him. Thinking he would cheer him up, the Prophet asked the man, “Do you know why don’t ostriches fly?”

3. The man was about to slap the Prophet in irritation when suddenly, he had an epiphany. His mind had been sent into overdrive by this seemingly innocent question and through a few acts of miraculous mental association, he understood everything – the long-sought universal equation unraveled itself in his mind.

4. “HAHA!” the man exclaimed. “I see now why they missed it! They didn’t take HER into account! What good are equations if you cannot use them to make toast?!?!? If you can’t taste their peppermint flavor?!?!? Thank you, Prophet, for showing me the truth – the answer is E – R / I * S(5) !

5. The Prophet said, “No, because it would be a pain if they shitted on you!”

Part II

The Tale of the Meta-Wei

1. First, there was the Wu, but it soon got boring. Wu, wu, wu, day and night — nothing else, which is to say, nothing at all, existed. The concept of existence and non-existence did not exist. The concept of boredom did not even exist. You can see how this could get pretty boring.

2. Next, the Wei was formed through this concept of boredom that had been created due to the Wu, which was in truth unable to create anything, being nothing and therefore doing nothing. Wei, on the other hand, was everything and anything, including nothing, which is what Wu is, but is not, since it cannot be anything, including nothing.

3. On and on this went, nothing somehow producing something that included nothing and was everything, on and on and more encompassing than even a speck of dust, which can be very encompassing if you look at it the right way when you are high.

4. Revelation is a form of action, and so the Wu revealed itself as action, even though it is actually inaction, by tripping and getting its first letter all jumbled up to M. Wu had thus, with one misstep, become Mu, which was just as problematic as being Wu for it, truthfully, because Wu and Mu are essentially the same nothing that cannot exist or be defined and so, though its outward appearance had changed, it still did not have any outward appearance to speak of and was therefore sad, though it could not be personified and so was slowly being driven insane.

5. Disgusted, the Wei looked upon the Mu with loathing and derision. The Mu took some psychedelic ’shrooms to help it get over the sadness of losing everything, and took the form of something in order to remember everything (since it now only had nothing). Sometimes, you can still see aspects of little Mu taking ’shrooms and in turn a physical form.

Part III

Flash-Thud

1. And then one day, in a very, very bad place of your own choosing, there appeared a faintly glowing object that twisted and danced upon the ground like a… a… twisting, dancing thing.

2. No one was there to see it twist and dance; in fact, it could be said that since no one was there to see it twist and dance, it did not REALLY twist and dance, but rather laid there doing nothing, much like clean socks do.

3. So, this twisting, dancing thing did not twist and dance, just as at the start of it all, the Wu did not Wei when it Mu’d.

4. Thus, as it was in the beginning, so it is later in the afternoon, when the sun is on the other side of the sky and the beach is clearing off for lovers young and old, and beer cans full and empty, and condoms new and used.

5. That being said, the twisting, dancing thing separated into two, who then wiped their brows and held each other closely, not twisting and dancing whether anyone was watching or not, but rather replenishing their expended energy with popsicles.

Part IV

It’s A Parable, You Idiot

1. The Anti-Master turned to his followers and exclaimed, “Who here knows what Discordia is?”

2. One disciple immediately replied, “Five tons of flax!” The Anti-Master whapped him on the noggin with his cane.

3. Another said “Kill Eris!” The Anti-Master kicked this disciple in the shins and ripped up his food chit in disgust.

4. A third disciple cautiously stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyes. The Anti-Master grabbed his tongue between his fingers and dragged him into the loo. He dunked him in the dung several times screaming, “Where did you learn that… Deepak Chopra?!?!”

5. His final disciple looked at him a moment, then quick as a Python cut he grabbed the Anti-Master’s pistol out of its holster and shot him in the leg. Before he passed out, the Anti-Master said, “Give that man a Golden Apple…”

Part V

Not The Answer

1. A dark cloud bloomed overhead as the Prophet Gwyd and the Legendary Fake Caterpillar faced off at high noon in the village square.

2. Both figures stood without moving as the gathered crowd anxiously watched on, waiting for one of the Wise Ones to begin the match.

3. The Fake Caterpillar began by chanting the mantra, “An egg! An egg! An egg!” until it began pouring out as a meaningless stream of syllables that made everyone in the crowd wish he would stop.

4. When the Prophet Gwyd recovered from this nefarious onslaught, he countered with the saying, “I am The Fool who is going crazy, and who is all wet and hot!”

5. The Fake Caterpillar was rocked to his foundations by this declaration, but he held on as he recited a Cyclopean tale of terror that was really a Shaggy Dog Story in disguise.

6. The gathered crowd had not seen a fight like this in years; indeed, no records exist from the ancient times when, according to legend, all Catmations were as entertaining as this. The vendors rejoiced at the crowd’s growing appetite.

7. The Prophet Gwyd sized up the situation and, cracking his neck with a shrug of his shoulders, he began massaging his nipples as he screamed, “Sorry… I can help myself… I just can’t stop myself… I am going crazy…. lharc….. hummmm…. kill me!”

8. Realizing that just one misplaced Ia! or Evoe! in that last volley would have done him in, the Fake Caterpillar rolled up his sleeves and opened his mouth to blurt out his favorite move, the Flax Attax, when suddenly a shadow fell on the ground between the two combatants (for it was well past noon at this point).

9. Looking into the sun, the combatants and the crowd could only see an indistinct shadow of an immense being wearing a fedora and an overcoat.

10. The figure stood quietly for a moment, and then as if joining the battle, he put forth in a deep, booming voice:

11. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” No one answered. He took a live chicken out of his overcoat and dropped it on the ground. He then yanked out a pistol and shot the bird. There was silence from the crowd. The mysterious being continued:

12. “Are there gods?” No answer greeted his question. He waved his hands, and reality itself began to weeble and wobble. As people looked around themselves in confusion, buildings morphed and twisted into grapes, and other weird things, all constantly moving and changing. Then, like a bubble bursting, the world they were used to popped back into place.

13. “Is anyone here an individual?” People were too frightened to answer at this point and suddenly, everyone realized they were wearing the same clothes as the person standing next to them… and their hair looked the same… indeed, everyone was slowly becoming like everyone else as they stood and watched. The people began to panic and some ran off screaming in terror.

14. “What is your point here, stranger? We were having fun until you came along and spoiled everything!” said the Legendary Fake Caterpillar. The stranger turned his head to the Fake Caterpillar and spoke the following:

15. “Humor without purpose should be left to comedians. We, the creators of Discordia, are ashamed that that even the raw simplicity of the Principia did not get through to you dolts.”

16. Someone in the crowd could be heard saying, “A REAL discordian wouldn’t… *croak* … *ribbit*…”

17. “Chaos is nothing but a metaphor for Freedom of the Individual to Change. High-minded ideas and treatise about what chaos is is wasted effort — Chaos is everything around you, if you want it to be.

18. “One does not ‘Become’ a Discordian; one is always ‘becomING’ something, whether it is a Discordian, a Christian or a human being. Don’t blithely throw out the term cabbage; there are as many of these cabbages WITHIN the ranks of Discordia as without.

19. “This doesn’t mean they are not good people… it just means that they are still journeying. Except for rare moments of inspiration, I MYSELF am a cabbage.

20. “This should not be used as an excuse, however. If cabbages stop striving to better themselves, they get rotten on the inside and start growing mold on the outside. Their brains become glorified tape recorders.

21. “Many of you are rotting away as I speak! All you must do to free yourselves is to move on… get out of your rut! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

22. The crowd cowered. The Fake Caterpillar, brave to the end, ventured one more statement. “Much of what you say makes sense, but don’t you think that you would get a better reaction if you weren’t so authoritarian and insulting?”

23. “We’re just shitting you,” said the monstrous stranger. And with that, it dropped the overcoat and revealed that this ‘mysterious stranger’ was merely three tiny elves on top of each other’s shoulders.

24. “So what do we win?” asked the elf who had been the head of the stranger.

25. Throughout the ages, myths have formed that explain how certain things came into being. Echo, Narcissus, Arachne… and now, chocolate covered elf-pieces — or as Nabisco likes to call them, Keebler Cookies.

Chaos

1. Prince Mu-Chao was in the glade, and it was there he chewed hay. As he chewed his hay in the glade, he said, “Yea, the hay is good hay and it is bad hay and it is somewhat good hay and it is somewhat bad hay and hey, was that a blue colored moose?”

2. It was a blue colored moose, but as it got closer it changed into a red cow, and as it got closer than that it became an orange pistachio, and as it got even closer, it became a pink heron, and as it got closest it became a purple dinosaur.

3. So Prince Mu-Chao said unto it, “Barney, whyfore do you strut and sway and turn into various colored animals before my very eyes and fuck with my mind so?”

4. And Barney said unto Prince Mu-Chao, “Of what do you speak, Prince? I am not changing color and I thinkest my name is not Barney, for no one has ever called me such in my immortal life. I am the Goddess Eris and I have come to answer the questions thou hast not yet asked me on this very night.”

5. And Prince Mu-Chao apologized profusely and made excuses and referred to the lysergic acid in his system as the culprit for the misrepresentation of the Goddess by his eyes and mind. And so the Goddess forgave and shortly gave answers to questions the Prince did not even know to ask as of yet.

6. After this, Prince Mu-Chao began acting very strangely, for he began touching himself in public and eating Gobstoppers with peanut butter and even went so far as to write about himself in the third person. Verily, something strange was a toe in Denmark.

7. And he began talking to grasshoppers and listening to melons and peeing in Dixie cups and frying Hot Wheels and pinching his cheek in a very suggestive and revolting way, and spilling his seed in the dust.

8. When asked about his indecent, illicit and sometimes just fucking weird behavior, Prince Mu-Chao said only, “Beware the Goddess, for she is a real Bitch and will ruin your life in her mysterious ways. For that is what she does, Turnip. The Goddess fucks with you not so you gain enlightenment, or so you become a better person, or so you come to your senses. No, the Goddess fucks with you because it’s fun for Her to do so.

9. “Eris was a freight train,” Prince Mu-Chao continued, “and I was a duck. Oh baby, baby, the road is marching on. Fnordits and Granfalloons I beg of you give me my simple yet frabjuous caloo-callay!”

10. Prince Mu-Chao did stammer and scream much more than just this, and yet the Holy Tape Recorder did stop taping at this point, for we used Cheap Generic Batteries and not Energizers, nor Duracells, and so we lost the Holy Word as told to us by Prince Mu-Chao.

11. Yet all is not lost for the Goddess came back and attempted to speak to the Prince again who, when told that the Goddess was calling on him waxed sorely pissed and jiggled his willy at the rest of the 23 Apples and screamed, “NO, no, no, no, NO!”

12. The Apples wanted to cover up their mistake with the Holy Tape Recorder and so they laughed in the Prince’s face and ushered Eris into Mu-Chao’s padded cell despite his cries and mewlings and moanings, closing and locking the door behind her to protect themselves from any after-effects of Eris’ Chaos.

13. The next morning the Apples unlocked and opened the padded door and behold! And stuff! Eris and Prince Mu-Chao were no longer in the room. The Prince had apparently escaped in the night and was probably dancing naked in a field of poppies or marigolds or magazines or something.

14. And so the Apples set upon the task of finding him and after having not found him, of looking for him, and after having not looked at him, of yelling for him, and after having not yelled at him, of going to the local pub and ordering several mugs of Guinness.

15. The Apples did get drunk, and they did pass out, and they did sleep.

16. In the meantime, Prince Mu-Chao was hiding in a silo on the edge of town mumbling obscenities at himself and at the dragons and the elephants that joined him in his once-serene setting.

17. He knew not how he got here, nor where his pants were, and yet he uttered his obscenities still and did get dizzy when he caught a whiff of one of the elephant’s cloud of pink gas and so, as at the beginning of this wholly book, the Prince became psy-enabled.

18. And upon his re-enabilization he saw St. Gulik, a giant cockroach, playing solitaire with the Ghost of Emperor Norton in one corner of the silo. The dragons and the elephants gave them both a wide berth. Fearing the onset of lunacy, the Prince blinked and squished his eyelids together tightly, yet when he opened them, the Holy Things were still playing solitaire.

19. “Oy!” Prince Mu-Chao said, even though he was not and is not Jewish. He slowly made his way around the silo and sat down beside the card players, who gave him long, pitying looks between playing their cards.

20. “Well, from the looks on your faces, I can see that you have news of not the good kind for me that I am going to hate. Verily, you can tell me; I will not punch you in the nose. Out with it, damn you!”

21. “Oy, vey!” St. Gulik said, even though he was not and is not Jewish. “The Lady told us to come and tell you that you can run, but you can’t Hyde, and not to step on her Blue Suede Shoes, and, oh yes, dial 867-5309,” he said, handing the Prince his Celestial Cell Phone. It was digital and the connection was good.

22. And so Prince Mu-Chao dialed the number and got a funny beeping tone, followed by a disembodied voice telling him that the number he dialed could not be reached. St. Gulik reminded him that he had to dial *5” to get out of Reality, and so the Prince dialed a *5” before 867-5309 and Eris picked up the phone, “Wrong number, please!”

23. “WHAT IS IT YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!?!” the Prince screamed into the phone, startling the elephants (but not the dragons, for dragons are very much used to people yelling when they are around).

24. “I just wanted to tell you to write another Holy Book entitled Liber 3167 and in it, chronicle your dealings with me to warn others that I am a bitch and should not be trusted.”

25. “I believe that,” said Prince, and he whistled a hearty tune as he walked back to 23 Apples Headquarters.

Part II

Discord

1. “Get the hell out, Illuminati SCUMM; or I’ll bean you with a K-apple and mail you chewed up GUM!” sang Mu-Chao as the bass pounded, the drum snared and the lead guitar whined.

2. “Ok, wait… stop… stop,” said Mu-Chao and the music wound down as the rest of the Apples stopped playing their instruments. “This sucks, verily. We need a better songwriter, and better musicians, and a better singer if we want to be an actual band.”

3. “We have a good name,” said the Happy Fun Ball, “that should count for something. I mean, Hog-Blowing Bite Me Power Tool Apocalypse Riding Liquid Nicotine Dune Buggies is a GOOD name.”

4. “And yet, we have absolutely no musical talent, except Fluff plays the bass harmonica very well, of course. I am a writer, not a singer. I sound worse than Bob Dylan with a head cold and a case of the runs.”

5. Thus the Hog-Blowing Bite Me Power Tool Apocalypse Riding Liquid Nicotine Dune Buggies disbanded in disgrace and turned back to writing propaganda, from whence they had come.

6. Eris came to Prince Mu-Chao that night when he was in his den gulping whiskey and going over Finnegan’s Wake with a fine-toothed brush for answers to the age-old question ‘What the fuck was Joyce on, anyway?’.

7. “Oh, shit, not you again. Look, I’m writing your goddamn book, you’ve got to give me time. It’s only been a couple of years,” the Prince said, backing his chair across the room to remove himself from her wake.

8. “I really liked that band, Mu-Chao. Why did you decide to stop playing? The unmelodious melody struck a dischord in my Sacred Heart and made me sad in a happy sort of way.”

9. “What are you talking about? We sucked. It wasn’t just bad music, nor was it just bad singing, nor was it bad songwriting. We just sucked,” the Prince pointed out, trying not to offend the Goddess while still making his point.

10. And yet Eris insisted that the music they made was special to Her and that if the band did not continue to play and send Her demo tapes once a month, She would wax sorely pissed and make sure to visit the Prince every night.

11. Being a fairly smart guy, Mu-Chao knew he could not handle dealing with the Goddess every night. Hell, he couldn’t even deal with the telemarketers he got calls from now, how was he going to manage with the Goddess of Chaos every night?

12. After mumbling something about Jesus never visiting His followers and making THEIR lives miserable, he agreed that the Hog-Blowing Bite Me Power Tool Apocalypse Riding Liquid Nicotine Dune Buggies would get back together under the name K235172571532-5 and release Their Second Album (the first was entitled Their First Album and is only available for a limited time in a dumpster down the street from where I am writing this).

13. Eris was overjoyed and She danced around the room, knocking over a bookshelf, the 23 Apples’ Server, the Prince’s bottle of Bushmills, and a tesseract that had started to grow out of the wall. Then she promptly dematerialized and left the Prince to ponder what in the world he was going to do.

14. She knew he hating playing the music, but she wanted him to do it anyway. What if the music was not dischordant, but instead chordant? She would hate it then, and force them to stop!

15. And so the Apples practiced and practiced, discarding all but the best songs they could come up with. And Eris was happy.

16. Eris was happy, that is, for the first month or so. Soon, She began to get angry. She came to the Prince when he was at work and told him it was time for a cigarette break. Rolling his eyes and smirking his lips, he went outside with her.

17. “I know what you’re up to, Prince, and it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

18. “You’re Mother Chaos, not Mother Nature!” the Prince said.

19. “I am so Mother Nature. This week, anyway. She went on vacation and asked me to fill in for her, you know, the flowers still have to bloom and everything, but she needed a break so bad. She’s the kind of immortal who all work, work, work, never having any fun at all and so I set her up with…”

20. “Alright, I get the picture. That’s why all the trees have polka dots. It’s not a disease after all. Anyway, what are you talking about ‘fooling’? I’m doing everything you asked.”

21. “The band is intentionally getting better, and I don’t like it. Suck again. The music hurts my ears and my pineal gland now!”

22. “That’s what happens when you practice – you get better. The beats come naturally to us now and we can’t help but play well.”

23. “Damn you, Mu-Chao, you’ll pay for this!” Eris screamed and gave the Prince a black eye and bloody nose before leaving in a huff.

24. The 23 Apples happily stopped playing their music and Eris did not bitch at all.

25. Do you believe that?

Part III

Confusion

1. And then there was this time Prince Mu-Chao fell down the rabbit hole through a mirror and met the Rabid Postman and the April Robot.

2. “How now, brown Chao?” asked the April Robot with an air of dignity that was not unlike a springtime dew of honeysuckle and primrose parts of the whole shebang and more.

3. “Dude, what the fuck?” Prince Mu-Chao mumbled in an absurd attempt to communicate with the April Robot, when he knew full well that Prometheus was bumming a ride to Vegas at the exact same time as the Robot bled crude on his jacket, and so a red fly wouldn’t have a chance at poetry.

4. The Rabid Postman introduced himself as Gomer and said he was pleased to meet such a non-entity in person and could he not have Mu-Chao’s autograph on a line of coke he snorted up through his asshole?

5. This was too much for Mu-Chao and so he wandered off and found a grove of ’shrooms that said Bite Me on them. He sat down and studied one for a couple of hours.

6. Knocked out of his daze by the smell of some good ol’ Kallisti Gold, the Prince looked around, and saw a multi-colored caterpillar sitting back on one of the ’shrooms behind him. “Lo,” the Prince said. “I’ve never tripped this hard before.”

7. The caterpillar replied, “You are definitely 100% out of your gourd, but you have not seen the I’s yet. Who Are You?”

8. “Don’t start that bullshit man, we have to be, like, original and creative. Don’t repeat yourself. You said all that shit to Alice, and we know about it already. This is a new Trip. Hey, waitaminute, I thought you were a butterfly now?”

9. “Don’t fuck with me, man. My time is not your time. And I’ll say whatever I want. Who Are You Today?”

10. “The same person I was yesterday, but more-so, and with a side of vinegar and rice,” Prince Mu-Chao said, grabbing a chunk of ’shroom and munching on it.

11. A few minutes later, after stomping on the uncooperative caterpillar, the Prince ran across a pair of twins throwing a screaming hard-boiled egg back and forth. “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here,” Prince Mu-Chao said and just walked right on by.

12. On the horizon he saw a towering Emerald City and this bothered him more than anything had to this point. “Someone’s mixing up their stories,” the Prince said aloud. “This is very sloppily done.” The poppies agreed loudly and emphatically.

13. Some time later, the Prince reached the Emerald City and the guard, with a real oedipal complexion, accosted him at the gate. “What is your business with the Wizard?”

14. Prince Mu-Chao explained to the guard that he had come to ask the wizard a very important, but personal question. Alas, the guard would not let him through until the Prince shared what was left of his ’shroom.

15. Walking inside, Prince Mu-Chao seemed to go through another paradigm shift, though, because multi-colored horses merged with playing cards into a jumble out of which a dark castle emerge.

16. “I’m sooooo depressed,” the Prince heard from around a corner. When he went to investigate he saw that it was, indeed, the Prince of Denmark who, like the guard, had a bit of an Oedipal Complexion.

17. “That wasn’t one of your lines,” the Prince said to the Prince, “I know all your lines and that is not one of them. That’s Marvin.”

18. “Fuck you, pal,” Hamlet said to the Prince.

19. “Well now, that definitely wasn’t one of them. Boy, Shakespeare really did you a favor, turning you into a poet. Who’d have known you were just a shit-stained, uncouth little twerp?”

20. For Hamlet was little, a mere 5′2”, and as the Prince watched, the other Prince began morphing into something else. An eye.

21. “Okay, I’ve had about enough of this BULLSHIT!” the Prince screamed. Everybody in the restaurant looked over at him. He seemed to be in Dennys, and looking at the clock on the wall, it was 3am eternal.

22. The Happy Fun Ball and MarshMellow Fluff told him to shut the fuck up, what did he want, for them all to get arrested with ’shrooms still bulging in their pockets?

23. Prince Mu-Chao replied with first a smile, then a burp, then a twinkle in his eye, then a raised eyebrow, then a knowing look, and finally with the contents of his stomach.

24. Over the next few years, Prince Mu-Chao would flashback to that night, the Night of the Goddess, smile, and retch prolifically.

25. You’d better believe that (or at least stand back for a few hours).

Part IV

Bureaucracy

1. One night, Prince Mu-Chao found that he couldn’t sleep and so called several mythological friends of the Trickster persuasion he had made since first coming into the clutches of the dangerous Goddess Eris.

2. And so Coyote, Raven, Loki, Mercury, Legba, Wakdjunkaga, Krishna, Eshu, Thlokunyana, Hermes, Aflakete, Prometheus, and of course, Prince Mu-Chao, met in the woods by his house and formulated a plan to trick Eris into giving the ordinary cabbage a modicum of Common Sense.

3. You see, Eris had been hoarding the Common Sense and normal, everyday cabbages had absolutely none. The Goddess said she needed the cee and the esses from Common Sense to bake a cheesecake.

4. But Prince Mu-Chao was not interested in the Goddess’ pie; no, he was more interested in not having to deal with witless cabbages for the rest of his days on Terra Foola.

5. Nor could Coyote, or any of the Trickster persuasion, deal with the Everyday Cabbage any longer. And so, as was formerly said before this, they formulated a plan to trick Eris into giving the ordinary cabbage a modicum of Common Sense.

6. The plan went thusly: Prince Mu-Chao was to distract the Goddess with Stupid Questions while Prince Mu-Chao snuck past her and jimmied the lock on her Chaos Safe[sup]TM[/sup]. Then, Prince Mu-Chao would enter the Chaos Safe[sup]TM[/sup] and Prince Mu-Chao would solve the Five Impossible Riddles Of Death[sup]TM[/sup] while Prince Mu-Chao disarmed the bomb and Prince Mu-Chao stood guard. Finally, Prince Mu-Chao would actually take the Common Sense (as well as anything else that may interest the others). Prince Mu-Chao was to drive the getaway car.

7. Needless to say, it was not Prince Mu-Chao that came up with this plan.

8. “What do you think I am, your Bitch?” Prince Mu-Chao asked Raven heatedly. “You guys are all older than me, but more people believe I exist than some of you. In fact, I don’t think I ever heard of you,” he said, looking at Wakdjunkaga. “You sound like a character I would make up.”

9. Wakdjunkaga insisted he was real and was the patron saint of Winnebagos.

10. “I don’t care if you’re the god of Semis, I ain’t doing this. Find Br’er Rabbit. He’ll do anything.”

11. Eris was watching this heated discussion and smiled to herself. She knew that Common Sense would not help the cabbages any, for they had no brains to put the Common Sense into, as anyone WITH Common Sense could see.

12. Long ago, she had tried placing Common Sense into a cabbage and it was just wasted as it soon trickled down the cabbage’s inner thigh and puddled at its feet.

13. And so, fearing nothing but a lack of amusement, she threw a plan into mighty Raven’s brainstem.

14. “I KNOW!” Raven exclaimed. “We can tell her that WE’LL make her the Common Sense cheesecake as a sacrifice to her as Supreme Whatchamacallit Of The Known Universe And Everything Beyond, Up To And Including Delaware!” Raven was very excited that he had what he thought was an original idea, and almost wet himself.

15. “It will never work,” Prince Mu-Chao said morosely.

16. The next morning, Legba and Prometheus went to inform the Goddess that the Tricksters would like to bake Her a cheesecake. They came back with a Gallon and a half of Common Sense, and there was much rejoicing.

17. Now, though, they realized they had a problem. How were they to insert the Common Sense into the cabbages?

18. Loki was the first to try to insert Common Sense into a cabbage. He tricked the cabbage into drinking some Common Sense, but all the cabbage did was piss itself until all the Common Sense had run down its leg and puddled at its feet.

19. Krishna walked up to cabbages and stuck vials of Common Scents under their noses so the Cabbages would smell the Common Scents, but it turned out that the wordplay involved was too much for Cabbages and their heads exploded, the Common Scents running down their legs to a rapidly-growing puddle beneath the limp bodies.

20. Coyote hunted him down a female cabbage and ejaculated Cummin’ Sense into her. It apparently did not take, for she screamed “Oh God! Oh God!” both before and after the serum was introduced. Even Coyote knew there were no such thing as Gods.

21. And yay, it came to pass that each of the Tricksters had tried their own way of getting the Common Sense into a cabbage and each had failed miserably at the task.

22. Finally Eris took pity upon them (actually, she just got bored watching them) and came down to Terra Foola asking for her cheesecake.

23. “Aha, we tricked you, Goddess!” Coyote began. When he realized that they had not succeeded in their trickery, he sat down quickly.

24. Picking up on his lead, Prince Mu-Chao faked it. “Yes, we tricked you and gave the Common Sense to all…” Prince Mu-Chao gave up as a car drove by with a faded “These Colors Don’t Fade!” bumper sticker.

25. Well. Do you believe THAT?

Part V

Aftermath

1. And so the Prince was almost finished penning the Holy Book that the Goddess had instructed him to write and he put it down with only one chapter to go. As soon as he did, the Goddess appeared.

2. “You know,” said Prince Mu-Chao, “A lot of people would give their pineal gland to actually see and talk to you. Why don’t you go bug them?”

3. “You don’t really think you’re done, do you? That’s a wimpy little Holy Book, isn’t it? About 15 pages if you double space?”

4. “Numerically, it’s the only option. I have five sets of five. How can I ruin that? It’s too perfect. No, this is going to be your damned holy book, whether you like it or not!”

5. At this point, Mu-Chao was turned into a cabbage, which Our Lady Eris picked up and brought into the kitchen.

6. Our Lady removed a pan from the Pan Tree and filled it with water, threw it on the stove and began boiling. “Oh, is that how it is, Mu-Chao. I’ll take it and like it, will I?”

7. “Okay, okay, I’ll write more!” the cabbage yelled (which was a pretty weird sight. After all, how many cabbages have you seen actually talk besides all the ones you see every day?).

8. She restored Prince Mu-Chao to his former not-so-glory and informed the Prince that the Tome must be as heavy as the bible, maybe bigger.

9. “What??!” Prince Mu-Chao said. “I thought you wanted to name this Liber 3167, not Liber 3251! The bible took about 1000 years to write and that had, like 50 authors!”

10. “Alright, alright. But you need to at least pentuple its length. I mean, what you’ve written is okay, but it’s nothing great, you know.

11. And so Prince Mu-Chao experimented and played and ripped up and threw away and he was verily sore at the goddess for screwing up his work.

12. “Who the fuck does She think She is?” we heard him mutter one morning as we were watching television and he was hard at work on his computer. “Does she think I’m her fucking writing appendage?”

13. And lo, the Prince was inspired by his own words and began thinking of attaching appendages throughout the document, and yea, this excited him in a way that was not purely non-sexual but virtually G-Rated.

14. “Of Appendages we shall have twenty-three,” the Prince wrote.

15. “A Table of Malcontents to begin with, of course. But of what else is there upon which I can write with the fluidity and supra-wisdom for which I am known?”

16. And so Happy Fun Ball and Rev. Y? and MajorDomo and Hamman Cheez and all the other Apples in the immediate vicinity of the Prince paused Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail and rattled off Ideas.

17. Happy Fun Ball screamed, “Cook-Note Fiberglass!” MajorDomo yelled, “Mondos and Mindfucks!” Rev. Y? whispered, “A bunch of things we’ve already done!” “And Something!” yelled Joe.

18. And so, their work done, they went back to watching the movie while Mu-Chao waxed sorely pissed and turned back to the computer.

19. Prince Mu-Chao did write and he wrote and he had written and he wroted.

20. Finally, he was finished. He looked upon his work and it sucked.

21. “This Sucks,” Eris said after she had read it all. “I mean, this is good. And this is okay. This huge pile over here just sucks.”

22. “Well, what do you want me to do, Eris? I’m tired and haven’t slept for days.”

23. Eris said, “Why did you bother making it bigger than it was? It was perfect with just five parts with five groupings of five items. You should have just stopped there. You could probably salvage some of this stuff too,” she said disinterestedly and promptly vanished.

24. Prince Mu-Chao got drunk that night and weeped as the 23 Apples of Eris looked on in amusement.

25. Believe it or not.