These ancient three-ring notebooks were discovered in a duplex between Schenectady and Albany, in the area many believe was once home to the fabled city of Troy.
February 2, 1222 B.C.
Oh, make haste, thou rosy-fingered dawn! That the name Hankemus E. Pankemus shall gain immortal renown! A destiny confirmed, more or less—in so many words—during this morning’s groundhog-reading session: like the shadow of the sacred rodent coaxed to mosey from its black hole, my ominous pear-shaped silhouette shall fall upon the hairy-bottomed Greeks, and they shall know terror!
As usual, the divinatory-verse component of the the Weekday Oracle discount package was a bit obscure: something about the wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. What, in the name of porpoise-faced Poseidon, the fuck does that mean? But one doesn’t want to piss off the priests of Phoebus Apollo: they’re a tetchy, peevish bunch of rosy-bottom-pinching perverts, creatively malignant in their curses—and not inclined to explain themselves. Happily, my beloved Jeanninimus, daughter of Pandemonium, was able to unlock the cryptic augury, i.e., my fell blade shall turn the swine-humping Pygmies of Agamemnon into ground chuck!
Bang the shields and spear butts with great joy! For the world shall sing of my slaughter-happy exploits for ten thousand years! I doth believe my future is quite rosy!
February 3, 1222 B.C.
Last night, at the pre-battle tailgate party thrown by wise and bony-legged Priam, I got my first glimpse of rosy-bosomed Helen, puffy-lipped disturber of men’s dreams. By the sweet-assed Aphrodite, what a beddable trollop--I’d sure like to play Zeus the goose with her! I tried to catch her eye for a discreet, rosy-tongued licky-licky pantomime—for that ripe tart has the mouth to suck the bronze off a chariot hitch—but ever since the Vigorous Virgins of Priapus affair, Jeanninimus, granddaughter of Circe, eyeballs me like a harpy in mixed company. An earlier attempt to discuss open marriage in a forthright, adult manner only earned me a nasty bitch-slapping; the term “free-bird,” in particular, seems to twist her panties.
Whatever. Because, tomorrow, I shall achieve eternal fame on the ancient plain of Ilium! And then I’ll have more chicks than the great Nubian Olympiast, Wiltus the Stiltus!
February 4, 1222 B.C.
Damn! My first battle was not an unmixed triumph. Amid the dreadful clamor and splattered wine-dark carnage, there arrived an unfortunate attack of dismemberment-phobia, which, as we all know in these enlightened times, is simply a disease and nothing to be ashamed of. Thus, when skirt-wearing Achilles, son of ill-named Thetis, jumped high into the air (Whoa fella! Put some underpants on!) to jab his short sword down my rosy-tonsiled esophagus, instead of groining him with my trident to send his perforated shade to Pluto, I got spooked and jerked rosy-cheeked Phegeus, late son of Phigeus, between us. Alas, poor Phegeus, a fine, wide-eyed lad, yet beardless in armpits and loins, had been inadequately trained to deal with the unexpected development, and didn’t put up much of a fight—and now Monday morning pancratiasts are blaming me instead of the secondary school system. Already, a slanderous little ditty—playing off the tawdry rhyme between Hankemus and yankemus that bedeviled my undergraduate years—makes the rounds among the town’s ruder element.
Growling Jeanninimus, twin sister of Cerberus, greeted me at the door with a snort about “exceeding expectations once more.” And upon falling to my knees to weep and burble and clasp her rosy-fleshed behind—which, combined with my recent near-death experience, really perked up my libido—she kicked me away like a yelping mongrel. She also nixed a quick trip to the Bushy-Tailed Virgins of Dionysus to render thanks for my deliverance.
I shall console myself with many cups of wine-dark wine and, in the absence of viable alternatives, my own rosy-fingered fingers.
February 5, 1222 B.C.
Dick-happy Zeus, father of multitudes, appeared to me in a dream last night to point out that my quirky sense of life’s absurdity is too rare to risk in the daily blood-and-testosterone circle jerk now playing before the walls of Troy. Therefore, I shall apply for the position of conservative pundit or assistant secretary of defense, where I might shriek for war in an environment more appropriate to my disability.
February 6, 1222 B.C.
Oh, the rudeness of it! To be prodded at spear point through the gates…this is blasphemy against the will of Olympus itself! As if swift-footed Hankemus doesn’t live for the song of the swinging axe and clashing sword, the heavy thud of arrow and javelin against brittle rib and meaty flesh. It’s just that I’m feeling off today—I think I pulled the string in my leg—plus Jeanninimus wants me to repaint the gazebo.
Apparently, career-counseling Zeus appeared in the dreams of many thousands last night...
Only fragments remain of the rest of the diary
May 14, 1222 B.C.
Brave Achilles! Invincible Achilles! It seems one can’t pick up an Anthropoi or Teen Anthropoi magazine without seeing that grotesque musculature and the coy, pouty smirk peeking out from under the faceguard of his crested, iron helm. I swear I’m going to fix the hash of that pumped-up Peloponnesian poseur and his girlie-men Myrmidons once and for all—just as soon as the string in my leg…
September 1, 1218 B.C.
Full-girdled Helen, for whom very small kingdoms are lost and won, has gained sixty, seventy pounds, I’d say. “Rubenesque” would be a nice way of saying it. Or "well-nourished." "Hefty" would be less politic, but has the advantage of being alliterative...
April 1, 1213 B.C.
The banner in the great square reads “Mission Accomplished!” and wise and boney-legged Priam capers like an ancient chimpanzee in full armor, fearlessly thrusting his great spear at cardboard cutouts of ogre-like Hellenes--who have paddled and skedaddled away in the night!
Tonight the city shall hold a hootenanny around the giant Pop-Goes-The-Weasel box left behind in their craven flight, and I need hasten to the Pigglus Wigglus for mixed nuts and ice…
April 2, 1213 B.C.
Woe! Woe, I say! Fair, chaste Troy has been taken in the night in the manner some enjoy and some don’t, but that shall evermore be known as “Greek-style.”
But, wait! What’s this I hear from the drunken, gore-spattered and egregiously bubble-butted hoplites laughing and urinating on my back? I twist my leather-collared head in the dust to catch the darkling eye of Medusa-faced Jeanninimus (who, begrudging my piety, tracked me like Rhadamanthus to last night’s Barely-Legal-Virgins-of-Eros pool party--thus missing the urgent call of her brother, quick-scuttling Aeneas). Can it be true? Oh, happy day!
These godlike warriors say they come as liberators!
By Henry E. Panky
"The desperate struggle to amuse"
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