Borepatch (see sidebar) sends over a note commemorating yesterday’s sad anniversary.

This Day in Geek History: July 26

1887

The first book written in Esperanto, the international language invented by Ludwig Zamenhof, is published.

Yes, it’s been 124 years since that plague of a synthetic argot was loosed upon the world, promising universal understanding, homogeneity, and—we hate to break it to you—mind control. Not the good kind, like Mandy’s orbital mind-control lasers, but the bad kind where if you actually start speaking Esperanto full-time, your cerebral cortex is shaped into a configuration susceptible to the frequencies the Freemasons transmit from their hot-air balloons. Or whatever flying gizmos you kids have today. Confucius* has been pretty out of it of late, and honestly, when you were born in 551 B.C., the last couple centuries kind of run together. The Boer War was after the Crimean, right? Whatever.

We’re trying to run a time-and-history spanning conspiracy here, and we’re kind of understaffed. You’ll notice fricking Prince Tochmas and the Grand Moghul can’t be bothered to blog around here. Undercover infiltration of governments or complete sloth, you make the call, sport.

Get the sense that the Volgi is grouchy? Well, when you have a shedding yeti hogging all the a/c; the Czar & ’Puter’s latest five-digit tab from the Leaping Peacock; this parking ticket GorT brought back from 2742 A.D. Gaborone and this sentence of witchcraft from Nürnberg, 1004; the Mandarin wandering around mumbling semi-audibly about what sounds like needing to vaporize the pampas; and trying to convince Intetef-Te-Henqet that the new chambermaid is not his reincarnated lost love, so stop mooning after her and get on with the inventory of the arsenal and the dairy pantry, because I’m pretty damn sure ’Puter decided to get buttered up and go ’possum hunting with one or more of the punt guns—

But I digress.

So, yeah.

To review: Esperanto: making zombies since 1887. Volgi: looking for some Liao Drug because I’m not getting any less immortal.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.