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. Just as the shadow of the sacred rodent -- coaxed to mosey from its black hole -- darkened the soil of the holy precinct, so my ominous pear-shaped silhouette shall fall upon the slack-jawed, hairy-bottomed Greeks, and they shall know terror and destruction! Boom boom boom!
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 it could. What, in the name of porpoise-faced Poseidon, the fuck does that mean? Of course, it knows how to chuck wood! 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 to the likes of me. Happily, my beloved Jeanninimus, daughter of Pandemonium, was able to unlock the cryptic augury, i.e. my fell blade shall chew the swine-humping Pygmies of Agamemnon into ground lamb-burger 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, if understandable, 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 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 cranky 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 developments that come up on the glorious field of indiscriminate butchery -- and, frankly, 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.” 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 Temple of the Nympho-maenads 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 and valuable 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 dignity and disposition.
February 6, 1222 B.C.
Oh, the rudeness of it! To be prodded at spear point through the gates…this is blasphemy against Zeus himself! (Apparently, the Father of Gods delivered sound career advice to thousands of service-age Trojans last night.) As if strong-armed, swift-footed Hankemus doesn’t live for the song of the swinging axe and clashing sword, the musical thud of arrow and javelin against brittle rib and meaty sinew! I'm an ecstatic berserker in battle...It’s just that I’m feeling a bit off today: my throat feels scratchy and I think I pulled the string in my leg. Plus I promised Jeanninimus to repaint the gazebo. Luckily (for them), the sissyish Achaeans took the day off for olive oiling, strygiling and bikini waxing.
Only fragments remain of the rest of the diary
May 14, 1222 B.C.
Brave Achilles! Invincible Achilles! Achilles, "sexiest hoplite of the year" for 3 years running! It seems one can’t pick up an Anthropoi or Teen Anthropoi magazine without seeing that grotesque, hormone-swollen musculature and the coy, pouty smirk peeking out from under the faceguard of his crested 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. I shall play buzkashi with their soft, pulpy heads! Just as soon as the string in my leg feels a little better...
September 1, 1218 B.C.
Full-girdled Helen, for whom very small kingdoms are lost and won, has gained forty, fifty kilos, I’d say -- with Turkish Delight being fingered as a prime mover. “Rubenesque,” "full-figured" and "well-nourished" are the nice ways of putting it that the palace spokesperson employs. Society columnists prefer "jolly" and "big boned," which at least show a minimal attempt at respectful delicacy. However, the riffraff refer to her as "Helen the Happy Hippopotamus" and hundreds of crude, frolicking graffitos now decorate our fabled walls. (Some wags maintain it would take a thousand ships to tow her back to Lacedaemon.) But to me, the magic princess will always be like a... [candy in the wind? pimple on the rind? sandal up the behind? -- unfortunately, the text is too illegible to be conclusive]
July 11, 1217
…brave, noble, incomparable Achilles stepped on a rusty nail and is dead… immediately becoming the favorite for this year’s best performance dragging-a-corpse-around-the-city-walls-by-chariot award…tickets to the tribute concert very hard to come by…a giant has passed…
October, 9, 1215
…almost perfected the lubricated sheath for one’s…protection against Pan’s Disease…family planning tool…reservoir tip...ribbed…richer than Croesus! But what shall I call it?
April 1, 1213 B.C.
The banner in the great square reads “Mission Accomplished!” The royal councilors at Defense are crowing and slapping each other on the back. And wise and boney-legged Priam capers like an ancient chimpanzee in full armor, fearlessly thrusting his great spear at cardboard cutouts of Neanderthal-like Hellenes--who have paddled and skedaddled away in the night!
Tonight the city shall celebrate with a "Trojan Day Pride Parade" 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 for the after-event party.
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, bubble-butted warriors laughing and urinating on my back as I lay in the long daisy chain of future slaves? I twist my leather-collared head in the dust and manure 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-Venus thanks-giving clusterfuck--and thus missed the urgent call of her brother, quick-scuttling Aeneas). Can it be true? Oh, happy day!
They say they come as liberators!
Henry E. Panky
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