Shalampax Speaks

Peeps, if you’ve been reading Shalampax Speaks for some time, you’ve likely been wondering what happened to Openfly. To be perfectly honest, so have I. For about four months now, neither she nor Doctor Don have responded to any of my many emails.

I was beginning to think that the ship they were on had sunk with all hands—not to mention all other body parts—lost. But no, Openfly is very much alive and she’s finally gotten back in touch with me.

The first news to tell you is that the experiment in which Dr. Don was trying to disprove his own hypothesis that Shalampaxians are not Homo sapiens has ended. As you’ll remember, in that experiment, Dr. Don, who is presumably Homo sapiens, was trying to impregnate Openfly, who is very much a Shalampaxian.

The thinking was that if Dr. Don was able to impregnate Openfly and the resulting baby was a viable human being, that would, pretty much by definition, prove that Openfly is of the same species as Dr. Don.

Openfly had been through four fertile periods during the experiment, and despite having sex as often and as vigorously as possible, she did not get pregnant.

Openfly denies it, but if you ask me, I suspect she was taking birth control pills on the sly. Openfly is a known nymphomaniac of the highest order, but she is also well known to be exceptionally averse to getting pregnant, to the extend that her aversion will override her nymphomania when necessary.

She gets severe morning sickness just thinking about the prospect of pregnancy. Whenever it comes time to select a woman to make up for a deficiency in Shalampax’s population quota, she scouts out the best spot to stand to avoid being chosen. Then, on the day of the selection, she rushes to get her spot, elbowing out any contenders who might have somehow managed to get there before her.

As much as she enjoyed sex with Dr. Don, Openfly agreed to try to get pregnant only because Dr. Don promised her a large monetary reward just for participating in the experiment—whether or not she got pregnant. Openfly began to doubt Dr. Don’s sincerity about the payment when she overheard him offering an IOU to buy a box of facial tissues from shopkeeper who came on board to sell his wares at one of their ports of call.

Dr. Don was furious when Openfly refused to continue with the experiment.

The ship they were on recently docked in Honolulu, Hawaii, but, before they approached the pier, Dr. Don locked Openfly in a room so she couldn’t escape. Fortunately, Openfly heard the resident bonobo walking past the room. She called out to the bonobo to open the door and he complied.

(By the way, apropos of nothing, no one onboard ever bothered to give the bonobo a formal name. However, Openfly often referred to him affectionately as “her Studmuffin.”)

Openfly then stripped naked, threw all of her belongings into a suitcase and ran off the ship with the bonobo. She figured, correctly as it turns out, that everyone would be so dumbfounded at seeing a naked woman and a bonobo running hand-in-hand that it wouldn’t occur to anyone to stop them.

Once safely away from the ship, Openfly put on some clothes and told the bonobo to shove off and enjoy his newfound freedom on his own. Upon spotting some bikini-clad women on the beach, the bonobo complied.

Totally out of character for her, Openfly had not touched a drop of alcohol while onboard the ship, but once on dry land she reverted to form and made a beeline for the nearest bar.

Inside, Openfly decided to put her libido on a leash. She, with great difficulty, gave no encouragement to the many men in the bar who stared at her lasciviously. Instead, she mounted a barstool beside a woman who, despite looking very spry and in good health, appeared to be in her mid- to late-seventies. Although, there was something about the woman—Openfly couldn’t quite identify what it was—that made Openfly think that the woman was somewhat older than she appeared.

The two of them began chatting. The woman, Marie Kurveh, was quite gregarious and immediately volunteered that she was on vacation from California. Openfly kept the conversation going by telling Marie about Shalampax. As Openfly spoke, Marie’s jaw dropped and a look of sheer astonishment engulfed her face.

Those of you who are familiar with Shalampax history probably know where this is going. Yes, it was that Marie; the Marie who, early in 1952, washed up on our shores, taught the inhabitants of our island their first language, English, assigned the name “Shalampax” to our land, and taught us about civilization. There is no record of exactly when Marie left what, thanks to her, is now called Shalampax, but it’s generally believed that she hadn’t been here for much more than a couple of years before the inhabitants of the day grew tired of her and frightened her into leaving our island.

In the whole time she had been here, Marie never told anyone what her last name was, but now we know. I have no idea why she kept her last name a secret while she was in Shalampax. It sounds like a nice enough name to me and she doesn’t seem to be bothered by it anymore.

Hell, living in Shalampax, I’ve heard many names that are much odder sounding than Kurveh. In fact, almost all of our names are way weirder than that. Maybe Kurveh has a hidden meaning that I don’t know about. That’s always a possibility because there’s a lot that I don’t know about and little that I do know about.

Marie’s last name aside, does this situation amaze you as much as it amazes me? Think about it. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, what are the chances that Openfly and Marie would find themselves in the same one at the same time? The probability has to be damned close to zero, but there they were.

Marie, who was only going to be in Hawaii for a couple more days, was staying in a two-bedroom suite in a nearby hotel. She offered to let Openfly stay in the second bedroom until Marie checked out. Openfly accepted the offer because Marie was a part of Shalampax history. To put it simply, Openfly was star-struck.

That’s where it stands, peeps. I’ll keep you posted. This could get exciting. That, in itself, is exciting because Shalampaxians are not used to excitement. Stay tuned.

Hi peeps, in my last post I told you about Openfly miraculously stumbling upon Marie in a bar in Honolulu. Here’s the latest. Marie left Hawaii yesterday and returned to her place in California. Before going, she invited Openfly to join her. Openfly, not having anything better to do, went.

Openfly assures me that she is in the United States legally. She claims that, on the advice of Marie, she checked in with an office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) shortly after docking in Honolulu and sharing a drink or two or three with Marie. According to Openfly, CIS granted her a B-2 tourist visa that allows her to stay in the United States for up to six months.

I find this rather bizarre because very few countries recognize Shalampax. And among those handful of nations that do acknowledge our country, none, to the best of my knowledge, recognizes our passports due to the fact that they are printed on newsprint using a cheap inkjet printer and the picture is stapled on.

Nonetheless, Openfly swears she has a valid B-2 visa.

When I said that Marie returned to her “place” in California, that might have been a bit misleading. According to Openfly, Marie’s place consists of several acres—Openfly is not sure of exactly how many—within an hour or two’s drive of somewhere that Marie refers to as “Big Sur.” I don’t know if that is a town, a landmark or a well-hung guy named Sur, but from the way Openfly talks about it, I think I’m supposed to be impressed.

Marie runs a five-star resort on half of her property. On the other half, she runs a hippie-retro commune. Surprisingly, the commune makes as much money for Marie as the resort does. Apparently, there are a number of old hippies who gave up being hippies, joined the establishment, made a ton of money, and now want to retire and relive their hippy days.

The story of how Marie was able to buy her land and start her businesses is interesting. After fleeing Shalampax and returning to the United States, in addition to being largely responsible for initiating the hippy movement, she started a cult that competed with Shalampax’s cults religions. Our cults religions were only getting started back then, so she had no problem competing with us.

Marie’s cult was quite lucrative, but she shut it down when the authorities started hassling her and threatening her with charges related to the cult. Clearly, there’s not nearly as much religious freedom and commercial latitude in the United States as there is in Shalampax.

Marie used the money left in the cult to construct the resort on the property where she had built a religious retreat for her cult. Later, when her old hippie friends started calling her up wanting to recapture the spirit of their hippie days, she built the commune.

That’s history, but the future is looking decidedly exciting for our little Openfly. She wants to stay in the United States and Marie thinks that might be possible, even within the law.

Marie suggested that the easiest route that Openfly could take to a U.S. green card and eventual citizenship would be through an EB-5 investor class visa. The U.S. gives up to 10,000 of these visas each year to people who invest at least $1 million in a U.S. business, or just $500,000 or more in an area of high unemployment, and hire at least 10 Americans.

It looks like things are moving forward in this regard. Marie and Openfly have come up with an idea for a business that Openfly can start. The owner of a large chunk of property adjacent to where Marie runs her retro-hippie commune wants to sell his property. Marie suggested that Openfly buy the land and build an outlet mall for manufacturers of new age paraphernalia. The now rich, former and retro hippies will love it.

I know what you’re thinking. Where would Openfly get that kind of money? Well, it was as great of a surprise to me as it will likely be to you, but Openfly is rich. Very rich. Over the past few years she had been given many shares in a number of Shalampax spam and cult religion companies as gifts in return for “special favors” she performed for the various owners.

Shortly before leaving Shalampax, Openfly sold those shares back to their original owners for hundreds of millions of dollars, half of which she invested in dividend-paying U.S. blue chip stocks, most of which have held up reasonably well even under the current economic conditions. The other half is socked away in accounts in some of the few rock-solid (thanks to government bailouts) U.S. banks.

This was wise of her because, considering our reputation, the U.S. authorities would, no doubt, have looked askance at any investments in Shalampax companies. In addition, shares in those companies are not very liquid outside of Shalampax.

So, that’s were it stands. It looks like Openfly may not be coming back to Shalampax. That should make Cherrytart, Openfly’s former best friend, very happy because it will mean that she’ll be able to take over Openfly’s apartment in Shalampax. It would serve Cherrytart right if she got Openfly’s apartment and then was the one selected to fill the gap in Shalampax’s population that was created by Openfly’s departure.

I’ll keep passing along information as I get it, peeps.

Till next time, be cool. I don’t know what that means, but it’s something Openfly picked up when she took a stroll through the commune.

Peeps, if you’re not sitting or lying down I strongly recommend that you do so. I cannot be held responsible for any injuries you may suffer when you collapse in shock upon hearing the news I’m about to relate.

Do you remember the experiment that Dr. Don proposed while Openfly was on the ship? You remember. Dr. Don suggested that the way to prove that Shalampaxians are members of the Homo sapiens species—something that Dr. Don doubted—was for a Homo sapiens, namely Dr. Don, to impregnate Openfly. If the pregnancy resulted in a viable human baby, that would mean that Openfly must be Homo sapiens.

Well, it turns out that the experiment was unnecessary. A product of sex between a Shalampaxian and a non-Shalampaxian has been living on this earth for about 55 years. Can you believe it? Marie was pregnant when she fled Shalampax!

It is well known that Marie was knocked up a few times in the approximately two years she was here. Her promiscuity back then was limited only by the hours in the day. (Openfly tells me that, from what she can tell, age has slowed Marie down, but only a little. Openfly is impressed.)

When she was in Shalampax, Marie induced an abortion as soon as she became aware that she was pregnant. (Nobody admits to knowing how she did it and she hasn’t shared that information with Openfly yet.) Marie fled Shalampax before she could have an abortion after her the last time she conceived here.

We didn’t have contraceptives in Shalampax in those days. Consequently, because of her renowned promiscuity and because Marie didn’t have the estrus display advantage that Shalampaxian women have, Marie was never able to successfully practice the rhythm method while here. As a result, very shortly after Marie had an abortion she’d be pregnant again.

Everyone thought the reason that Marie had abortions was that she shared Shalampaxian women’s strong aversion to bearing children. However, according to what Marie told Openfly, that is not the case. Marie aborted her pregnancies because she felt it would be a crime against humanity—or at least against one human—to bear a child in a hellhole like Shalampax. Many Shalampaxians agree with her on that point.

Once Marie escaped from Shalampax and landed back in America, she was quite happy, and even excited, about having a child.

Marie doesn’t know the identity of her daughter’s biological father. She told Openfly, “It could have been any of at least a dozen guys in Shalampax, most of whom I don’t remember. And I’ve been trying hard to forget the ones I do remember.”

Despite some animosity toward Shalampax, Marie thought it was important for her daughter to know about her Shalampaxian heritage. It is, after all, a part of her. To instill a little of Shalmapax’s culture in her daughter, Marie decided to follow the Shalampaxian baby-naming custom.

That custom, as many of you know, is to name your child after the first interesting thing you see after your child is born, provided that name is not already taken. If it requires more than one word or name to describe that thing, then all of the words and names are rammed together without any spaces. For example, after I was born, my parents saw someone with a stone stuck up his or he nose, hence my name is Stoneupnose. (I still don’t know why that person had a stone up his or her nose, nor do I care.)

Marie did make one change to our naming custom. When our names are assembled from multiple words, we capitalize only the first letter of our name. Because she was back in America, Marie felt it would be appropriate to shake things up a bit and capitalize each component of her daughter’s name, rather than only the first.

So, you are asking, what is that name? I’m getting to that.

Shortly after Marie’s daughter was born a deranged (i.e., mad) woman, who was a patient in the psychiatric ward of the hospital where Marie had her baby, stormed into Marie’s room, shouting at the top of her lungs because she was exceptionally angry (i.e., mad) about the food in the hospital. And what was that mad, mad woman’s name? Margo.

As a result of this incident, Marie named her baby MadMadMargo.

What is particularly interesting is that there has been a MadMadMargo who has commented on this blog from time to time. She played it very coy and occasionally claimed to be a Shalampaxian, but she never provided any justification for that claim.

Not believing it possible for there to be any Shalampaxians off the island without our knowledge, we all assumed that this MadMadMargo was either a nut-job or she was going to try to shake us down. So we either ignored or made fun of her claims.

This raises a dilemma. We’ve never defined the requirements for Shalampaxian citizenship. We’ve always assumed that was unnecessary because we thought that no one had ever been born of a mix of a Shalampaxian and a non-Shalampaxian parent. And we were convinced that everyone born of Shalampaxian parents was born in Shalampax. Therefore, there was never a question of who had citizenship—or so we thought until now.

MadMadMargo was born in the United States to a non-Shalampaxian mother. True, her father is Shalampaxian and her mother, despite not being from Shalampax, was more responsible than anyone else for Shalampax being the nation it is to day. But is that enough to grant MadMadMargo Shalampaxian citizenship? I’ve talked it over with a few people here, but we can’t decide.

The debate continues. If MadMadMargo persists with her claim to Shalampaxian citizenship the final decision will probably have to be made by Parliament.

Openfly thought this news was so important that she cut short her chat with Marie so she could find a computer and email me. As a result, Marie hasn’t yet given Openfly much information about MadMadMargo. I’m sure we’ll hear more in the coming days and weeks.

Being curious, I did a little research on my own.

MadMadMargo maintains a blog called The Screaming Me-Me. Unlike Shalampax Speaks, which presents only staid, factual reporting of people and events in Shalampax, The Screaming Me-Me is a humor blog, and a very good one at that.

MadMadMargo must get her humor from her mother because, as you can tell from this blog, none of us Shalampaxians have a funny bone in our bodies. For her sake, I hope she also got her looks from her mother.

I don’t know if MadMadMargo visits her mother often, but her blog profile says she lives in Arizona. I looked at a map and that’s not all that far from California. In fact, the bottom parts of the two states are adjacent, so maybe Openfly will get a chance to meet MadMadMargo at some point. We’ll see.

That’s all for now, peeps.

Peeps, I’m flabbergasted. At least, I think I’m flabbergasted. I don’t actually know what that word means, but it sounds about right and I’ve wanted to use it for a long time now.

If you read my last column you know that Marie revealed to Openfly that Marie was pregnant when she left Shalampax. After she returned to America, Marie gave birth to a girl, MadMadMargo, whose father was, obviously, Shalampaxian.

The story might have ended there, but more shocking news followed. Someone claiming to be MadMadMargo posted a couple of comments on my last column. I have to assume that it is the same MadMadMargo that Marie said was her daughter because how many MadMadMargoes can there be in this world?

MadMadMargo claims that she was left in an orphanage near New Orleans when she was a baby. She was adopted, raised by a loving family and never knew her biological parents.

This puzzled me because, in comments on Shalampax Speaks that were written before this story broke, MadMadMargo claimed to be Shalampaxian. If she was left in an orphanage when she was, to use her words, “just a tiny thing,” how did she know about her Shalampaxian heritage?

When I challenged her, MadMadMargo explained that, to quote her, “When I was only 5 years old I overheard a conversation between my adoptive mother and her sister. My ‘mother’ said she had received a letter from a man who lived in Shalampax and that he was certain I was his child. When I asked my ‘mother’ about this later, she was not forthcoming with any information.”

MadMadMargo went on to request that she, Marie, and any Shalampaxian men who might be her father submit to DNA testing as a way to prove her parentage. This sounds to me like a very reasonable request.

After hearing from MadMadMargo and reflecting on Marie’s revelation to Openfly, I found it disturbing that Marie chose to tell Openfly about her daughter, but omitted the fact that that she gave MadMadMargo up for adoption as a baby. Why did Marie leave out that little tidbit?

And what about that letter from the Shalampaxian man who claimed to be MadMadMargo’s father? How can that be explained? Marie claims that she doesn’t have the foggiest idea as to which of at least a dozen Shalampaxian men is MadMadMargo’s father.

What’s more, there was no Internet back when Marie left Shalampax. And, when it came to the electronic communication options that were available then, we were technology morons. We’re still generally morons, but at least we’ve figured out the technology.

In those days, we communicated with the outside world only when, by some miracle, a ship happened to be passing by on the one day in a hundred when the weather was calm enough for us to paddle out to meet it. So how could this mystery man learn of his daughter and then get a letter to her? I can’t figure it out.

Troubled by what I had learned, I passed this information along to Openfly and asked her to confront Marie with it.

The meeting between Openfly and Marie was not pleasant.

As soon as Openfly revealed what MadMadMargo had said, Marie broke down in a flood of tears and a fit of blubbering. Through her sobs she managed to admit that she had given MadMadMargo up for adoption. After calming down somewhat, Marie told Openfly the story of why she had done so.

When Marie left Shalampax and returned stateside she had no money and little more than the clothes on her back. Well, she also had the clothes on her front, legs, and feet, but you get the point.

On her return, she went to the city where she grew up, New Orleans. Not having any money, she took a part-time job and rented the cheapest place she could find, a tiny studio apartment above a small strip joint hidden away on Iberville Street in the French Quarter.

After MadMadMargo was born, Marie worked hard at getting her figure back. Within a couple of months she was stripping in the club downstairs. Marie swears that she was never a prostitute. True, she wasn’t above accepting gifts from her “gentlemen friends,” as she called them, but she says that the gifts were never a precondition for sex. She had few, if any, preconditions for sex.

On her voyage from Shalampax to the States, Marie came up with her idea for a cult business, but she knew she would need a lot capital to get it started. And that’s not the sort of business idea you can take to a loan officer in a respectable bank. Tight-assed bankers don’t understand these things.

Despite staying in that low-rent, bare-bones, seedy apartment, Marie’s stripping gigs and other part-time jobs barely gave her enough money to feed and clothe her and little MadMadMargo, let alone pay the rent. And those jobs certainly didn’t provide any extra cash to put aside for a future business.

In addition, Marie thought it was wrong to bring MadMadMargo up in such a squalid environment, which was only a few notches above the general conditions in Shalampax. Thus, with deep, deep regret, she put her baby up for adoption.

Marie had always intended to have more children once she got settled, but it took a while to save enough money to start her cult business, which then consumed all of her energies. One thing led to another and she never did have another child.

I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like a tall tale and Marie probably made it up. Maybe, but I specifically told Openfly to not tell Marie where MadMadMargo said she was adopted. Unless Marie and MadMadMargo are working in cahoots or Marie reads the comments on this blog (which is not likely because hardly anyone reads this blog), it is highly unlikely that Marie would have guessed that MadMadMargo was adopted near New Orleans. No, their stories do jive.

We should soon enough know for certain whether Marie is MadMadMargo’s mother. Marie has agreed to submit to DNA testing and she has even volunteered to pay for MadMadMargo’s test if MadMadMargo can’t afford it.

Determining MadMadMargo’s father could be more problematic. Marie still claims that she remembers only a couple of the one or two dozen men she had sex with around the time MadMadMargo was conceived. Marie gave Openfly those two names, but we can’t force them to submit to a paternity test. And it’s possible that MadMadMargo is the daughter of one of the men Marie doesn’t remember.

I’m going to send emails to all Shalampaxian men old enough to be MadMadMargo’s father asking them if they had sex with Marie shortly before she fled Shalampax. I don’t think there will be any difficulty getting guys to admit to that. In fact, the problem will be just the opposite. The number of men who claim to have slept with Marie is far larger than even Marie could have handled in the time she was on our island.

Hell, some guys who weren’t even born yet when Marie was here claim they banged her.

It’s not surprising that guys want to make such claims. Marie is reputed to have been drop-dead gorgeous in her younger days. And when I say “drop-dead gorgeous” I’m not talking about the Shalampaxian standard of beauty, which gives trolls and Playboy Playmates the same beauty grade. (Trust me, if you’ve had anything to eat in the past 24 hours you don’t want to know how ugly you’d have to be to be rated as ugly here.) I’m talking about beauty that would put top fashion models and Hollywood starlets to shame.

I’ll ask all men who, based on their boasts, could have fathered MadMadMargo to submit to DNA testing. But, like I said, I can’t force them if they refuse.

What’s more, even if we do get the right guy to submit to DNA testing, that test will not be conclusive unless it looks at the entire genome of MadMadMargo and her father. Because there are only 4,242 people in Shalampax and no Shalampaxian has ever mated with a non-Shalampaxian other than Marie, our gene pool is shallower than a puddle on a fresh piece of perfectly flat asphalt three days after the last rain. We don’t have any well-paved asphalt in Shalampax, nor have we gone even one day in the last several years without rain, but you get my point. If MadMadMargo’s father is a Shalampaxian, the results of MadMadMargo’s DNA test will show a very close relationship with every Shalampaxian.

Keep in mind too that MadMadMargo was conceived about 56 years ago. Her father would have had to have been at least 12 or 13 years old when he fathered MadMadMargo. (We start young here.) This means that he is at least 68 or 69 years old now. And, apart from death, there’s no upper limit to how old her father might have been when she was conceived. So, it’s very possible that her father is no longer alive. And our burial customs do not leave a body to exhume. So if he’s dead there’s probably no DNA to test.

As I see it, our one real hope for discovering the identity of MadMadMargo’s father is the letter MadMadMargo mentioned. Marie has no explanation for it, but it would seem that someone here in Shalampax either knew or suspected that he was MadMadMargo’s father. I don’t see how that could be true, but if it is, and if he’s still alive, maybe he’ll come forward now that the story is out there. Otherwise, it may remain a mystery forever.

That’s all for now, peeps. I’ll stay on top of this and keep you up-to-date as I get more information.

Hi, peeps. If you haven’t been following my columns on Openfly’s adventures in America, you should spend a few minutes reading the previous ones (there aren’t that many yet). Otherwise, this will get confusing.

There’s an easy way to get caught up. The “Openfly Serial – Part 2” category in the navigation menu to the right includes all of my articles in this series sorted in forward chronological-order, as opposed to the reverse chronological-order that is the blogging standard.

Last time, we learned that when Marie returned to America she first lived above a strip joint on Iberville Street in New Orleans and, after she gave birth and subsequently got her figure back, she started stripping there.

MadMadMargo, who may be the daughter that Marie gave up for adoption (I’m told that we might have the DNA-based maternity test results back in as little as a few days and certainly no more than a couple of weeks), posted a comment on my last article. When, about 30 years ago, MadMadMargo visited an old friend in New Orleans, that friend’s apartment on Iberville Street was only two doors away from the Cher-Marie strip club. In her comment, MadMadMargo asked if that was the same strip joint that Marie lived above and worked in.

Well, MadMadMargo, we owe your friend a debt of gratitude. I would like to dedicate today’s column to her because if she had not lived near Cher-Marie, and if you had not mentioned it, I likely would have not had anything to write about today. Instead, thanks to your friend, we now have an interesting story about a part of Marie’s life after she returned to America. Not only that, but I also learned a very surprising fact about one of Shalampax’s businesses.

I passed your question to Openfly, who posed it to Marie. The answer is, yes, it is the same strip joint. However, it wasn’t called Cher-Marie when Marie lived above it or while she was stripping there. Back then, it was called “Cajun Bare Facts.”

It wasn’t long after Marie started stripping that she became the talk of New Orleans and the most sought after stripper in the city’s history. As a result, she was also the highest-paid “exotic dancer” in the city, by far.

With the money flowing in, she quickly had enough cash to start up her cult. But she didn’t stop there. She also bought the Cajun Bare Facts and the apartments above it. She left the strip joint as a strip joint, but she turned the upstairs apartments into her cult offices.

Marie’s cult was called Cherism. That may sound familiar to you. I’ll have more to say later on why you might recognize the name.

The premise of Cherism is that, back in the nineteenth century, God started a long, well-deserved nap. He left a Parisian stripper named Cherie and, in turn, her female descendents in charge for the millennia that his nap will last. However, being a bit absent-minded because of all he had to do as God, he forgot to tell Cherie about it.

In the off-chance that Cherie’s descendents followed in Cherie’s footsteps, Cherists, which is what Cherism devotees are called, are expected to spend a lot of time in strip clubs searching for a female descendent of Marie so they can inform her of the responsibilities that she and her descendents are supposed to fulfill until God wakes up.

Marie thought it would be a good idea to keep the strip joint open as it would benefit from spinoff business from Cherism. Marie changed the name to Cher-Marie at that time. Marie put “Cher” in the name in the hope that it would lead Cherists to believe that it might be a good place to look for a descendent of Cherie. And the fact that “cher” means “dear” in both French and Cajun created a name that would appeal to non-Cherists as well.

I promised to tell you why Cherism might sound familiar to you. There are two reasons. First, Cherism has been in the Shalampax cult religion catalog for a long time now. And second, it was only a little over five weeks ago that Gravyonshirtfront, the spirituality columnist here at Shalampax Speaks, reported that Bentteaspoon, the current owner of Cherism, was bemoaning the fact that he wasn’t doing as well as the other cult religion owners here in Shalampax.

That’s the surprising Shalampax business fact that I mentioned earlier. I had always been told that, after fleeing our island, Marie had never contacted any Shalampaxians until Openfly chanced upon her in Hawaii. I had also assumed that Bentteaspoon had started Cherism himself. Neither of those things are true.

When the American authorities eventually started badgering Marie about her cult, Shalampax already had established radio communications with the outside world. Marie used those communications to arrange to sell the Cherism cult religion to Bentteaspoon.

A few years prior to that, Marie had bought her land in California and set up her Cherism retreat. Marie kept the California land, which she converted to her current enterprises, a five-star resort and a hippie-retro commune. This was the only asset of the cult religion that she held onto.

In addition to gaining the rights to the cult religion itself, upon closing of the sale, Bentteaspoon became owner of Cher-Marie and the upstairs cult religion offices.

Bentteaspoon sold Cher-Marie within a year. He figured that, because of the international arrest warrants sworn out against him (and against most other Shalampaxians as well) he would never get to visit New Orleans. He didn’t see any point in running a strip joint if he wasn’t able to demand sexual favors in return for handing out stripping jobs.

History shows that Bentteaspoon has never been as successful with Cherism as Marie was.

Why did Marie sell Cherism to Bentteaspoon rather than to someone else? I don’t know, but hopefully we’ll get an answer to that question eventually. Could that be a clue to who MadMadMargo’s biological father is? Possibly, but I doubt it. We don’t know exactly when Marie left Shalampax, but Bentteaspoon would have been about 11 or 12 years old at the time. If he reached puberty early he might have fathered MadMadMargo, but it seems highly unlikely.

And was the sale to Bentteaspoon the only contact Marie had with Shalampaxians after her departure? Or were there others, possibly with more significant implications? Again, I don’t know. But Openfly seems to have settled into California nicely so she’ll probably be having many more conversations with Marie. Maybe the whole truth will come out eventually, but maybe not. You never know.

That’s all I’ve got for you now, peeps. Like they say, stay tuned.

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.