The Saga of the Thong...fin

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Here it is. If you are looking for the previous episodes, they're all in this forum somewhere.

There is an aura of defeat that hangs over the vanquished. You can sense it on one side of the field at the end of a sporting event. You can feel it clinging to the kid at the National Spelling Bee who has just left an “i” out of “antidisestablishmentarianism”. You can smell it around the poor schmuck who has been called into his boss’s office to be thanked “for all the hard work…but…” It is a real presence that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and a sinking sensation in the stomach. That dire cloud of impending doom lay heavy over the Elk Lodge.

Sir Belisarius toyed with his hockey stick as he continued, “So, after covering all of North America, Australia and New Zealand…we are yet to find a subject suitable to wear the thong. Rotku and Ofelix couldn’t get parental consent, Fade had some sort of immunity due to having started this whole thong thing to begin with, Death Rabbit was covered in fur…for real, and worst of all was Hacken Slash…he actually begged us to let him wear the thong…”, Bel winced, “but damn, the guy’s a toad.”

An anxious murmur began to grow and swell across the room, causing Sir Bel to continue in a hurried way. “But I figure I’ll put together another Enforcer Squad and we’ll head over to check out some of our European members. I’m sure that we’ll have some luck there…they all have topless beaches, don’t they?”

“We have no more time to wait for results of fruitless strong-arm tactics” bellowed Blackthorne. “In 24 hours the Sorcerers Secret catalogue goes to print, and if there is no photo of an SP member proudly wearing the thong, we will be in substantial Breach of Contract!” BTA paused and took a breathe when he realized, as usual, he was being a bit heavy handed for the average SP member. “There is one other person I would like to call on. I’ve asked ejsmith to apply his unique and off-beat viewpoint to try to develop a strategy that all of us may have overlooked. ej…any ideas?”

ejsmith rose, never removing his gaze from the floor in front of him, and began speaking in a rhythmic monotone that was strangely arresting. “OK…here’s what we do…we build a party that’s all Bards…but each Bard is a different race…now we roll and roll until they all have the same stats…but here’s the kicker…all the scores haveta suck. We assign all their skill points to “Persuade” and “Pickpocket”…we call them “The Affirmative Action” and they wander Faerun and win all the quests by litigation…”

Blackthorne could either choke out a whisper or scream. He chose the former. “You’re, um, talking about Baldur’s Gate, aren’t you?”

ejsmith finally looked up from the floor. “Well yeah, isn’t that all we ever talk about?”

Still struggling to remain calm, BTA said “ej, we are discussing the current dilemma of who will wear the SP thong.”

After looking around the room in a bewildered fashion, ej said “isn’t underwear kind of a personal thing?”

The ensuing silence was punctuated by a cry of “I HAVE HEARD ENOUGH!” The voice was a distinctive tenor, and despite its drunken slur, it left little doubt who had spoken. Beside Blackthorne, Beren groaned “Oh no, chevalier’s been drinking.”

Near the back of the room a slender, young man heaved himself to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. He bobbed unsteadily, and as the earth attempted to jump out from beneath his feet, he was forced to hold on to ArtEChoke’s hair to avoid pitching head first onto the floor. Drawing himself up to his full height and regarding the room with eyes that couldn’t really see…chev spoke.

“Thongsh are evil…evil, evil, evil. I can prove with in…inf…infabible logic that thongsh are evil and vile. And evil. Hell will be full of sinners in thongsh. I will hear no more about such an evil and vile and evil thing. I am no longer part of these dishcussions. Anyway, I need to find the resht room.”

With that, chevalier released his grip on Art’s head and proceeded to weave and stagger his way out of the Lodge Hall, bouncing like a billiard ball off unfortunate members along the way. He stumbled through the open doorway and into the night still muttering “evil, evil thongsh.”

The meeting degenerated into total chaos. It had been a long night, and the attention span of most of the members had long since been exceeded. A fist fight broke out on one side of the hall, and on the other, Spellbound and Deathmage were leading a small group in a carefully metered cadence of “Arrrr.” The entire group devolved in a raucous mob as Beren shouted “OK, you Bozos, settle down” (he’d heard both Tal and Blackthorne say it with good success in the past). He was about to attempt a “Mass Charm” spell, when Blackthorne stayed his hand and said with a sly look, “No…let them go…I have an idea.” And so a disgruntled throng of SP senior faithful were loosed upon an unsuspecting California neighborhood, illuminated only by the dim light of a waning moon. Fortunately, due to the late hour, most of the family pets were inside for the night.


Tal paced in frustration across the floor of his palatial estate, pausing to peer at the distant banks of monitors far above his head. He noted again with renewed anxiety that all the screens displayed the “flying through space” screensaver, reminding him of the unacceptable amount of time they had been unattended. His lowering gaze couldn’t help but observe the cause of such unprecedented neglect: his custom hydraulic lift chair lay detached and upended before him, the telescoping cylinder mechanism useless and fully withdrawn into the floor. Leaning over the dismantled chair was a repairman named “Norm” (Tal knew his name was Norm because his grubby coveralls bore a patch reading “served with a smile by…Norm”).

Norm grunted and wheezed as he pushed his round belly off the chair to stand and speak to Tal. “Well, Mr. Untain, what you have here is a broken chair.”

“Excuse me”, said Tal, “why are you calling me ‘Mr. Untain’?”

Pulling a tattered piece of paper out of his hip pocket, Norm said “well that’s what my work order says…’Mr. Tal Untain of Number One Palatial Estate Drive’…that’s you, right?”

Realizing with dismay that he had failed to scribe a “Dispel Stupidity” spell in his spellbook, Tal said “It’s Taluntain…one word…one name…like ‘Sting’ or ‘Bono’ or ‘Fiftycent’…do you understand?” Tal considered for a moment inviting Norm to join SP so he could immediately ban him for life.

Norm paused and blinked then continued, “like I was sayin, Mr. Untain, this chair is broken…bad. Someone has hit the control panel so hard that the extension rod has been snapped off of the flexor bearing causing the cam wheel to lodge in the expansion housing. The entire unit will have to be replaced before the chair or lift will ever work again.”

“OK”, breathed Tal, “how long will it take and how much will it cost?”

Norm grinned, “Well Mr. Untain, that’s the good news…the chair’s still under warranty, so it don’t cost you nothing. We’ll have to special order the parts from the factory in North Korea…that can take anywhere from 10 days to 2 years, but as soon as they come in we’ll have your chair fixed within 6 hours.”

Tal spoke slowly in an attempt to not yell. “You don’t seem to understand…I am the semi-benevolent overlord of a massive on-line community that I oversee from up there.” As Tal pointed toward the distant array of CRT’s Norm cocked his head back and let out an awed whistle. “Unless I can reach the monitors, then I have no way of knowing what’s happening in my world. I need my chair…and I need it now!”

Norm laughed, a noise remarkably like a choking burro, and said “is that what has you upset Mr. Untain? No problemo…you see, since this is warranty service you automatically qualify for our ‘Loaner Chair’ program. We provide you with a chair, at no charge, that you are free to use until we get your chair repaired. Really, Mr. Untain, you shouldn’t get yourself so keyed up…in fact, as soon as I get done loading your chair and the servo mechanism into my van, I’ll be right back with your Loaner Chair.”

“Tal…it is done!” shouted Blackthorne as he ran into the room holding a magazine high above his head. He trotted across the chamber, passing a struggling Norm, and stopped to proudly present the new copy of Sorcerers Secret magazine to Taluntain. “We barely made the deadline, but we did make it…page 27”. BTA handed the still crisp catalogue to Tal who frantically leafed through the pages until he arrived at the photo of the thong. For a moment he stared at it as if he didn’t understand, then his eyes went wide and his jaw dropped as he stammered “but…how did you get him to wear the thong…chev hates thongs!”

Blackthorne smiled as he said “it was really easy in the long run…we just got him really drunk and told him the thong was actually a ‘Greater Girdle of the Bladder’…the armor came off…the thong went on…and in that brief moment ‘click’ went the camera. We transmitted the image to the publisher, and within moments chev was being printed in glossy glory.”

“But how did you get him to pose with his sword above his head, leaping through the air wearing only the thong?” questioned Tal.

BTA Chuckled, “well, that wasn’t really a ‘pose’; he was actually trying to kill us. Fortunately, he fell down right after the picture was taken.”

Tal closed the magazine and smiled at BTA “You have done well my friend. Once again you have demonstrated that you are a powerful ally in the SP world…as a reward you may choose from adding 1000 to your post count, selecting a new avatar from my private collection or banning the member of your choice.”

“Don’t we still have 40,000 thongs to get rid of?” asked BTA.

“I’ve already liquidated the entire stock of thongs” smiled Tal, “and at a tidy profit, too. I managed to sell them to the US Army as ‘Epic Breeches of WMD Detection’. I’ve decided that I rather like Americans after all.”

“That’s brilliant!” beamed Blackthone.

“That’s why I’m in charge. There is, however, one other SP Merchandise item that I would like you to help eliminate. Who’d have thought that no one would want the ‘SP hamster shaped Spam loaf’.”

Blackthorne was able to slip away in the commotion that arose when Norm returned carrying a battered wooden rocking chair.


If you feel somehow left out, perhaps I will find a way to include you in the insults when I write the sequel "Spamster, anyone?"

 

Words will not suffice, so I will just do this:

*rises to give standing ovation*

Well worth the wait!

 

err yeh, just as long as im not the one eating the spam... never have liked proccessed meat.

Oh and yeh, very very nice story you wrote there

*joins in the standing ovation*

 

This is one of those rare occasions when dodgy online acronyms should be spelt out in full.

i am Rolling On The Floor, Laughing My A$$ Off!!

Simply brilliant. Well done.

 

It's stories like this that make us proud to be SPers. Kudos!

So, will that chevalier picture be put on the Photos site?

 

Lol, great story, somehow I knew Chev would end up wearing the thong in the end

 

If only one of the picture manipulators had have thought of that first...

 

Hilarious. Two daggers and a long sword up.

 

BRILLIANT!

 

Hilarious!

Wonder what Chev will say when he reads this

 

That HAS to be the funniest thing I've read on here since... I started coming on here! Of course, you have to weigh it with the fact that I now have a picture of Chev in a thong waving a sword around stuck in my head...

 

Don't try that in real life

 

Brilliance!

 

Great stuff!

 

Word are not enough, indeed! Bravo!

 

*chucks a few flowers* bravo!
That was just a total classic
words can not express the complete crack up I had when I read *that* the first time
but on the whole two words would fit - absolutely priceless -
*thinks to self*<hmmm.. wonder if that would work on some of my sister's friends Mwahahaa!>

 

Here is an alternate ending, and a good starter to the next story.

“That’s why I’m in charge. There is, however, one other SP Merchandise item that I would like you to help eliminate. Who’d have thought that no one would want the ‘SP hamster shaped Spam loaf’.”

As these words were spoken, a tall man peered into the room from around the corner, a newcomer to the area. Focusing his sneaky eyes on the speaker, he was quietly formulating a way to get his hands on the Spam loaf. He went for the direct approach.

"Can I have the spam?" He asked.

"No." Was all his reply was.

Smyther slunk away, plotting a way to steal this prize of all prizes.

Blackthorne was able to slip away in the commotion that arose when Norm returned carrying a battered wooden rocking chair.