Shalampax Speaks

Remember peeps, if you’ve been a laggard in reading my columns, you can always get caught up quickly on Openfly’s adventures in America by looking at the Openfly Serial – Part 2 category in the navigation menu to the right. It lists all of my posts in this series in forward chronological order.

Today, I can report that we are getting closer to finding out if Marie is MadMadMargo’s biological mother and whether MadMadMargo’s biological father is Shalampaxian. I also have a hunch about who that father might be, but proving or disproving that will take considerably longer.

MadMadMargo and Marie both sent DNA samples to labs for analysis. A few days ago, in a comment on my previous post, MadMadMargo said she expects to have her results within 10 days and promised to email them to me.

Marie is expected to have her results in about the same time and she too promised to email them to me. Marie and MadMadMargo each used a different lab, so there is no question of their DNA samples being accidentally tainted with a sample from the other.

When I have both results I will send them to yet a third DNA analysis company. It will be a company of my choosing. That way, there will be no opportunity for either Marie or MadMadMargo to falsify the results for their own advantage, whatever that advantage may be. The third company will compare the two DNA analyses to determine if Marie is MadMadMargo’s mother.

The two Shalampaxian men that Marie remembered having sex with also volunteered samples for testing. However, getting those two samples analyzed will take a lot longer. (Marie claims to have had sex with at least a dozen men within the appropriate time for them to have fathered MadMadMargo, but she says she can’t remember most of their names.)

The only way to move physical goods, such as the DNA samples, on or off our island is by ship. There is a supply ship expected to arrive in a holding area about 75 miles offshore within a week, but the weather conditions around Shalampax are such that it may have to wait anywhere from one day to two or three months before it is calm enough for the ship to dock safely here. And then the samples will have to be transported to a lab and analyzed. We don’t have the necessary equipment here.

Nonetheless, we should know if MadMadMargo has a Shalampaxian father as soon as we know if Marie is her mother. Openfly has volunteered a DNA sample, which she sent to a lab at the same time as Marie sent in her sample. From Openfly’s time with Dr. Don, we already know that Shalampaxians have a few unique genes that are not present in the genome of other humans. If MadMadMargo has any of those genes then one of her parents must be Shalampaxian.

I didn’t want to ask either Marie or MadMadMargo to pay for the analysis to determine whether Marie is MadMadMargo’s mother. Some Shalampax Speaks readers are very skeptical people. A few of them even have the audacity to assert that they think that Shalampax is a fictional place and Shalampaxians are fictional people. I didn’t want any of the skeptics to be able to suggest that either Marie or MadMadMargo bought the result she wanted.

Unfortunately, I’m not one of the rich Shalampaxians. And, as many of you are aware, trying to extract funds from Shalampaxians who are rich is harder than trying to extract a marshmallow from the core of Mars using existing technologies. As a result, because I thought the DNA analysis fee would have to come from my own meager pocket, I planned to use the cheapest company I could find. Obviously, I was very concerned about the quality of the results that such a company would deliver, but I felt that I had no other choice.

Fortunately, a Shalampaxian volunteered, without prompting, to foot the bill. His name is Roof. Roof is the father of none other than our very own esteemed editor, Birdinhand.

To avoid any hint of bias, Roof is still allowing me to choose the company that will perform the analysis. He’ll simply provide the funding.

Not that it is relevant, but the story of how Roof got his name is mildly interesting and not entirely boring. Because he was born a couple of decades before Marie arrived on our island and taught the inhabitants English, Roof, as he is now called, like the other people here at that time, did not have a name. In those days, people were referred to by the grunting equivalent of “hey you” and an appropriate pointing of the finger.

Adults without names back then later named themselves using the current naming system, except they chose their own names rather than having their parents choose their names for them. And they based their names on something they saw when they named themselves, as opposed to something their parents saw shortly after the named persons’ births, which is the current practice.

Roof selected his name when he saw the roof being put on Shalampax’s building. No one else was called Roof, so he was free to use it. He liked the name because it was much simpler than the silly names that other Shalampaxians were then assigning to themselves and have since assigned to their children. But that’s a digression.

When Roof volunteered to pay for the DNA comparison he said to me, “Spare no expense. Use the most highly qualified DNA analysts you can find.” In addition, despite not being one of the men named by Marie, he volunteered to have a sample of his DNA analyzed because he distinctly and very pleasurably remembers having sex with Marie within the last few months of her time here.

Hmm. Is there something that Roof isn’t telling us? Why is he so eager to fund the analysis and provide a sample of his DNA?

And, what about his name, Roof? If you’ve been reading the comments on my posts, you’ll know that MadMadMargo said, “Does the name ‘Hoof’ ring any bells? The reason I ask is my older brother from time-to-time would call me ‘Hoof’, which would really anger my mother. Could it be his teasing was based on the man who sent the letter?”

The letter MadMadMargo referred to was one that someone claiming to be her biological father sent to her adoptive mother when MadMadMargo was a child. Could her brother have misheard the name of the man who sent the letter? Could “Hoof” be “Roof?”

The possibility that Roof is MadMadMaro’s biological father is a wild guess on my part, but I know someone who will be exceptionally broken-hearted if it turns out to be true: Birdinhand.

Birdinhand has confessed to me that he has fallen deeply in love with MadMadMargo based solely on what she has written on her own blog, the comments she’s written here, and the picture on the profile page of her blog. Considering that he’s never met her, I think “lust” is probably a more appropriate word than “love,” but he refuses to consider any such notion.

Birdinhand is hoping that the tests will show that MadMadMargo had a Shalampaxian father, she’ll decide to move here, other Shalampaxians won’t treat her the way we usually treat foreigners, and he will win her heart.

I told Birdinhand that the picture likely isn’t a picture of MadMadMargo at all. It’s probably a stock photo of some fashion model or movie star. And the photo was probably airbrushed to make the subject look even more beautiful than she really is. No one is that stunning in real-life. If she were, I’d probably be in love—or lust—with her too.

Birdinhand screamed at me when I told him what I thought of MadMadMargo’s alleged picture. He accused me of defiling her good name by intimating that she might be a party to such deceit.

Here’s the problem for Birdinhand. He never considered that MadMadMargo’s father could be his father. Shalampax doesn’t have many taboos, but incest is one of the big ones. We aren’t too strict about what counts as incest. With only 4,242 people and no mating with people outside our country, we can’t afford to be too strict about that. But half-siblings definitely count as incest. If it turns out that Birdinhand’s father is also MadMadMargo’s biological father, a pairing of MadMadMargo and Birdinhand would be out of the question.

That having been said, I don’t think that’s a problem; not in the least. Personally, half-siblings or not, I don’t think Birdinhand would stand a chance with MadMadMargo. If that really is a picture of her—I doubt it, but you never know—she’s beautiful. Birdinhand is, well, not.

Take a look at the pictures below. The one on the left is Birdinhand. The one on the right is the one that appears on MadMadMargo’s blog. Do you honestly think that Birdinhand would have a hope in hell of successfully wooing MadMadMargo if that’s her?

Birdinhand

MadMadMargo

Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.

Openfly Serial - Part 2 biological father, biological mother, DNA