Part 186: Hinnom - The Story of Thanksgiving

The Story of Thanksgiving

Nearly four hundred turns ago, a very few of the people in Hinnom were very unhappy because their king would not let them pray to him as they liked. King Hippomnomnomnom said they must use the same prayers that the Grigori did; and if they would not do this, they were often used in dark rituals to summon storm demons, or perhaps driven off of a large cliff like lemmings.
 
"Let us go away from this country," said the unhappy Hinnom-men to each other; and so they left their homes and their families and their God, and went far off to a country called Mictlan. It was about this time that they began to call themselves "Pilgrims." Pilgrims, you know, are people who are always traveling to find something they love, or to find a land where they can be happier; and these Hinnom men and women were journeying, they said, "from place to place, toward heaven, their dearest country." Obviously this was very stupid because King Hippomnomnomnom was the wisest, kindest, most beneficent of those vying for title of Pantokrator and these poor heretical miscreants were fools not to listen to his wisdom.  But King Hippomnomnomnom is also just and he knew that in time they would realize the error of their ways. 
 
In Mictlan, the Pilgrims were quiet and happy for a while, but they were very poor and were often sacrificed on 's alter and that kind of sucked; and when the children began to grow up, they were not like Hinnom children, but talked Mictlanianese, and smelled funny like the little ones of Mictlan, and some grew naughty and did not want to go to church to worship King Hippomnomnomnom any more but believed that was the one true god because he could fly and also sometimes made fun of King Hippomnomnomnom's weight.
 
"This will never do," said the Pilgrim fathers and mothers; so after much talking and thinking and writing they made up their minds to come here to The Swamp of Ethereal Frogs. They hired two vessels, called the Hot Wet Electric Death Machine and the W+M1, to take them across the sea; but the W+M1 was not a strong ship, and her captain was a fucking scrub who just kept charging forward and dying like some jerk who had never played a game before and he had to take her home again before she had gone very far because he always died right outside of the spawn point.
 
The Hot Wet Electric Death Machine went back, too. Part of the W+M1's passengers were given to her, and then she started alone across the great ocean.
 
There were one hundred people on board - mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and little children. They were very crowded; it was cold and uncomfortable; the sea was rough, and pitched the Hot Wet Electric Dearh about, and a giant kraken from the deep stopped their ship one day but they could not understand what it was saying BECAUSE THERE WERE NO FUCKING AMULETS OF THE FISH TO BE HAD IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME, and they were two turns sailing over the water.
 
The children cried many times on the journey because they were just babbies, and wished they had never come on the tiresome ship that rocked them so hard, and did not have proper outlets to charge their gameboys and PSPs and laptop computers because their parents were stupid which you should have gathered when they ditched King Hippomnomnomnom like a bunch of chumps and did not bring the appropriate power converter plug.
 
But they had one pretty plaything to amuse them, for in the middle of the great ocean a Pilgrim babby was born, and they called him "Oceanus," for his birthplace. When the children grew so tired of reading the same stupid advertisement for Lankan pleasure cruises full of paid testimonials as if there was any value to those - come on, even kids aren't that stupid - that they were cross and fretful, Oceanus' mother let them come and play with him, and that always brought smiles and happy faces back again because actually his moms had been sleeping around on his pops with a couple of sea fathers that had sweet beards plus they got her drunk and seemed really nice and anyway long story short they used to toss him overboard and then the dolphins would send him back and it was no end of amusement and joy and if you were wondering, yes Oceanus went on to write the syndicated television program Flipper.
 
At last the Hot Wet Electric Death came in sight of land; but if the children had been thinking of Zelda and NCAA football games and finally getting access to Internet pornography again, they must have been very much disappointed, for the month was cold November, and there was nothing to be seen but rocks and sand and hard bare ground and not a single Ethernet cable and no neighbors with wifi and still these absurd foreign outlets.
 
Some of the Pilgrim fathers, with brave Captain Smiles the Banished who had been banished for being a creepy dude who ate all of King Hippomnomnomnom's hot pockets without ever bringing any of his own or chipping in for pizza  at their head, went on shore to see if they could find any houses or Avvites. But they only saw some Frogs, who hopped away from them, and found some Frog huts and some nature gems and dead flies buried in holes in the ground. They went to and fro from the ship three times, till by and by they found a pretty place to live, where there were "fields and little running brooks and also a bunch of electrical outlets that actually fit our plugs and an Ikea close by and a KFC/Taco Bell for the nourishment of our bodies."
 
Then at last all the tired Pilgrims landed from the ship on a spot now called The Big Rock made of wood with all the new dudes living by it over to the west of the Swamp of Ethereal Frogs AKA the dock, and the first house was begun on Christmas Day. But when I tell you how sick they were and how much they suffered that first winter, you will be very sad and sorry for them and think to yourself "you fucking idiots why did you not just hang out in Hinnom in the first place?" The weather was cold, the snow fell fast and thick, the wind was icy, and the Pilgrim fathers had no one to help them cut down the trees and build their church and their houses.
 
The Pilgrim mothers helped all they could; but they were tired with the long journey, and cold, and hungry too, for although it was all well and good for boys to eat KFC/Taco Bell for every meal it is a well known fact that girls are dainty and precious and also must have their coffee in the morning in addition to their bucket of crispy style chicken and neither KFC nor Taco Bell had coffee.

So first one was taken sick, and then another, till half of them were in bed at the same time because PMS syncs up and that is some bullshit, sorry ladies, but Brave Wiles Outlandish and the other soldiers who were all men because like assholes they had left the enlightened, egalitarian society of King Hippomnomnomnom where all giants are treated equally, be they Asynja or Cyclops and nursed them as well as they knew how; but before spring came half of the people died because PRESIDENT SKROOB cast Burden of Time and winter is when the afflictions really pile up.
 
But by and by the sun shone more brightly, the snow melted, the leaves began to grow, and sweet spring had come again and King Hippomnomnomnom's dominion slowly built up in their province.
 
Some friendly Frogs had visited the Pilgrims during the winter, and Captain Beguiles Ravish, with several of his men, had returned the visit.
 
One of the kind Frogs was called Squinto because his eyesight was remarkably bad, and he came to stay with the Pilgrims, and showed them how to plant their hard shelled tacos, and their sour cream and guacamole and packets of taco sauce.
 
When the summer came and the days were long and bright, the Pilgrim children were very happy, and they thought The Swamp of Ethereal Frogs a lovely place indeed. All kinds of beautiful wild flowers grew at their doors, there were hundreds of birds and butterflies, and the great pine woods were always cool and shady when the sun was too bright.
 
When it was autumn the fathers gathered the taco sauce packets and taco shells and beef-flavored-meat-by-product that they had planted, and found that it had grown so well that they would have quite enough for the long winter that was coming because King Hippomnomnomnom was a kind and beneficent God and worshipping him means you can plant a god damned taco and in six months if you water it every day you will have a fucking taco tree and how do you like them apples Biggest Poppa?
 
"Let us thank King Hippomnomnomnom for it all," they said. "It is He who has made the sun shine and the rain fall and the tacos grow." So they thanked King Hippomnomnomnom in their homes and in their little church; the fathers and the mothers and the children thanked Him and because they had traveled far and seen the world they acknowledged his wisdom and goodness as the one true Pantokrator and the victor in all games forever more amen.  
 
"Then," said the Pilgrim mothers, "let us have a great Thanksgiving party, and invite the friendly Frogs, and all rejoice together."

But alas, they could not.  For then it was that the Zmeywaffe swept through the land, burning and pillaging and stampeding the giant lizards upon which the Witch Kings rode.  

And the land was full of lamenting and woe and King Hippomnomnomnom himself defended the walls of the city of Hinnom and plotted and planned for he was wise and clever and devious and not at all above a little Aegis camping if that got the job done.  

And one day a great plague of Nahualli flew over the land in a wild flight from King Hippomnomnomnom and his terrible vengeance and the Pilgrims and the Frogs rose up and cast off the bondage of Mictlan and of the horrible beast .
 
So they had the first Thanksgiving party, and a grand one it was! Four men went out shooting one whole day, and brought back so many great wild turkeys that there was enough for almost a week. There was Zmey meat also, of course, for there were plenty of fine Zmey in the forest that King Hippomnomnomnom and his Melqarts in their wisdom hunted. Then the Pilgrim mothers made the taco shells and taco sauce packets into tacos and Mexican pizzas, and they had biscuits and mashed potatoes from the KFC besides.
 
The friendly Frogs all came with their Electors. Everyone came that was invited, and more, I dare say, for there were ninety of them altogether.
 
They brought five incapacitated Bane Lords with them, that they had filled with beer to keep it cold and gave to the Pilgrims; and they must have liked the party very much, for they stayed three days and there were some pretty ignominious hook ups.
 
Kind as the Frogs were, you would have been very much frightened if you had seen them; and the baby Oceanus, who was a year old then, began to cry at first whenever they came near him because he knew that they were creatures of the freshwater swamp and he was a child of the sea and he was worried about the ability of their fragile kidneys to filter out the brackish water he made wherever he touched their swamp.
 
They were dressed in Zmey skins, and some of them had the furry coat of a wild shishi hanging on their arms. Their smooth green skin glistened in the muck, and was trimmed with Roc-feathers or markata-tails. They had their faces painted in all kinds of strange ways, some with black stripes as broad as your finger all up and down them. But whatever they wore, it was their very best, and they had put it on for the Thanksgiving party.
 
Each meal, before they ate anything, the Pilgrims and the Frogs thanked King Hippomnomnomnom together for all his goodness. The Frogs sang and danced in the evenings, and every day they ran races and played all kinds of games with the children.
 
Then sometimes the Pilgrims with their spells, and the Frogs with their poisoned tongues, would see who could kill the most markata and atavi and sometimes a great Palankasha they had found and baited with dogs although now we know Palankasha-baiting is inhumane in those times it was looked upon as pretty take on the whole. So they were glad and merry and thankful for three whole days.
 
The Pilgrim mothers and fathers had been sick and sad many times since they landed from the Hot Wet Electric Death; they had worked very hard, often had not had enough to eat, and were mournful indeed when their friends were eaten by Zmey and murdered by Bane Lords. But now they tried to forget all this, and think only of how good King Hippomnomnomnom had been to them; and so they all were happy together at the first Thanksgiving party.
 
All this happened nearly four hundred turns ago, and ever since that time Thanksgiving has been kept in The Swamp of Ethereal Frogs and we have eaten a Nahualli as a symbol of thanks to King Hippomnomnomnom.
 
Every year our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have "rejoiced together" like the Pilgrims and the Frogs, and have had something to be thankful for each time.
 
Every year some father has told the story of the brave Pilgrims to his little sons and daughters, and has taught them to be very glad and proud that the Hot Wet Electric Death came sailing to our province so many years ago, even if they were a bunch of jerks for leaving Hinnom in the first place and got what they deserved.