A while back, the Gormogons were asked—never mind by whom—to edit a collection of children’s nursery rhymes. As part of the consideration process, we were each asked to submit a sample. Nothing came of it, evidently, and the Czar had all but forgotten about it. Interestingly, we just stumbled across it the other day when moving a bookcase out of a room in order to construct a secret doorway in the Castle.

Original:

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

What fun. So the Czar went first:

Little Miss Muffet, who evidently lacks the scientific acumen, or whatever part of the brain it is that prevents normal people from sitting on stupid things, elected to eat a particularly loathesome concoction. Lunch? Breakfast? Who the hell knows.

Anyway, a spider comes stomping up to her and she totally freaks out about it. No, the Czar does not have any information on the genus or species in question, but unless it was a mactans widow, this is pointless. Grow a spine. Spider? Jeez, step on it, lady! The Czar has about a dozen in his beard, for crying out loud.

And ‘Puter’s went like this:

You know what else cheeses me off? Look, I’m not saying that Generation X, or whatever that book nobody read is calling us, isn’t without its goddamn faults, but the next batch of kids seriously has scrambled eggs for brains. Take this Misty Muffet or whatever the hell her name is, who sees some spider while eating her lunch outside–yeah, right! No one warned her that if you eat outside you might see, I dunno, wildlife–and she goes batshit crazy. She runs off, crying to mom, dad, and the government of the US of A to do something! Whaaah! What a goddamn whiner. And we never find out what happened to her meal. Did she drop it? Throw it at the spider? I’ll bet I know–ten to one she sat there, finished her meal, and then decided to go nuts. That’s not how her lawyer will spin it, of course. Kids these days. It all started when they stopped teaching Latin in the public schools.

And GorT had a version:

Now there are reports circulating in government circles that a Ms. Muffet, address and age unknown, was attempting to eat a home-cooked meal when she was threatend by (you guessed it) a spider. This seems problematic on a number of levels, but let’s look at the math, shall we? The last known instance of curds and why being promoted in school meal programs was August 4, 1972. Since then, we have had a zero percent (0%) increase in curds-and-whey-related spider assault, and that’s according to the democrats’ own Bureau of Arthropods (data for 1988 has not yet been tabulated, and some regression is necessary on 1987’s data because California uses their own method of analyzing this stuff). Zero percent! The story is pure hokum of the worst kind, and the sort of thing that took out Gary Hart.

Volgi took a different turn:

Little Miss Muffet, or more accurately, Míš-áĺ-Múffôž, was born in 1366 outside the Port of Caphesia in modern day Turkey. Interestingly, she was about 18 at the time, and was substantially endowed according to the Persian mosaic engraver and hand colorist Maffek-e-Rashaz, widely known in circles at the time as portraying his subjects accurately to the point of insulting realism. Rashaz so infuriated a Kosovar potentate (Confucius need not tell you it was Lagrës Maquri) that he himself was forced to flee to Syria to avoid penile defenestration. But the story goes that áĺ-Múffôž (who was actually male) was dining one day—we can suspect that the likely meal consisted of honey-sweetened curdled whey cakes named ܘܙܛܝ,—when she was stung by a scorpion. She fled, frightened, but made it perhaps only thirteen feet before the venom caused horrific pain and she collapsed, dead. History does not record the name of the scorpion, but Turkish scholar Bey Azmîk believes it was Nigel.

Dr. J took a crack at it:

Dr. J does not refute the Œcumenical Volgi’s account, but suspects that the neurotoxin, not venom, of the scorprion likely casues intense, localized pain, muscle twitching, dyskinesia, and sweating, before leading to dizziness and death. Most scorpion stings are fairly temporary, but the complex layering of histimines, seratoning, enzymes, and enzyme inhibitors gives a sting in a small child a notable LD₅₀. For what it’s worth. Dr. J has been feeding the Lil Med Student and Lil Resident small doses for years in order to prevent any risk to them later. So far it works, although the Lil Resident does stick to the ceiling without any visible means of support.

Mandarin finishes off our effort with his usual flair for rhyme:

Little Miss Muffet! I am the Mandarin. You will obey me. You will eat curds and whey. In the event a spider comes, you will denounce it as a Marxist and step on it. Uncle John has a long mustache. Also, obey me.

Anyway, we did not get a call back from the publisher.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.