Corona Saga: Lock Down - 1st Day

Twas the first day of the Lockdown and Cone Man reflected that God Zone had morphed into the Twilight Zone. The vast majority of sky canoes were grounded and no longer burned through Ozone. Every warrior was confined to his Own Zone, excepting those who had cone maidens, in which case they were confined to Her Zone.

Dwelling alone in what was definitely His Zone Cone Man cone-centrated on his literary endeavours. "After all" he reason "why should I be bored when I could be busy boring other people?

Cone Man had heard it was permissible to leave his man cave to ride forth on his not particularly mighty steed, so long as he gave the answer 'exercise' when questioned by the Tribal Enforcers. "Thus does a man remain sane during an insane time" he mused ...

Corona Saga: The Gathering Storm

The terrible Coronavirus Monster raged across the globe. Global trade was adversely affected andconsequently the share markets crashed. The mightiest of e-coin mavens was perplexed and knew not what to counsel. The mighty beer mug of Cone Man kept its mugly calm ...

Twas the first day of the Lockdown and Cone Man reflected that God Zone had morphed into the Twilight Zone. The vast majority of sky canoes were grounded and no longer burned through Ozone. Every warrior was confined to his Own Zone, excepting those who had cone maidens, in which case they were confined to Her Zone. Dwelling alone in what was definitely His Zone Cone Man cone-centrated on his literary endeavours. "After all" he reason "why should I be bored when I could be busy boring other people? Cone Man had heard it was permissible to leave his man cave to ride forth on his not particularly mighty steed, so long as he gave the answer 'exercise' when questioned by the Tribal Enforcers. "Thus does a man remain sane during an insane time" he mused ...

Cone Man's Company

Cone Man was halfway through his two week internship with the company of Wizards at the Tower of Power in the far north of the Land of the Huttites. They were a special order in the world of Wizardry, and thus were really Cloud Wizards.

The Cloud Wizards had a penchant for athletic pursuits, and Cone Man cone-sidered that he would have to demonstrate an athletic pursuit in order to enter into the ethos of the office. Reluctantly, grimly, he mounted his not particularly mighty steed and began training to prepare himself for the epic 24km trip from his man cave to the Tower of Power.

Come what may of that epic adventure, his contingency plan was complete. The BARAAHP (Between A Rock And A Hard Place) Hotel was at long last open for business. Cone-Man vaingloriously styled himself as the Managing Director of the BARAAHP Hotel, simultaneously laughing at the prospect of a man giving himself such a title when he was doing nothing more than taking in boarders, but there was a grain of truth in his claim.

Cone Man had clerked at the High Commission of the Wallabies Tribe thirty years earlier, and one day while he was there, an applicant for a visa had exclaimed "THIS IS NEEDED FOR A BUSINESS TRIP!". Well, yes, but what distinguishes "business" from that which is not business? Arguably, the elderly woman applying for a visa to visit her dying sister in the Land of the Wallabies was on a business trip, even if her business did not include negotiating the exchange of large sums of money.

On a larger scale, private business often had far reaching political and financial ramifications. Robert I, Duke of Normandy, failed to sire any sons by any woman he was legally married to, and in the absence of other offspring, his duchy was inherited by the illegitimate son of his mistress. This was, of course, an excellent start to a career in politics and his son was highly successful, being remembered after his death in 1187 as William the Conqueror, first Norman King of England.

Royal fornication, particularly after Columbus's sailors returned from the New World after 1492, did not always produce the same happy results. Henry VIII, Phillip of Hesse, and later Charles II all contracted syphilis, and found that regal status did not exclude them from suffering the symptoms common to commoners who contracted this Socially Transmissible Disease. Charles II acknowledged all 14 of the children born to his mistresses, but was nevertheless unable to sire an heir with Catherine of Braganza, his legal wife.

Even if the business in question was not personal business, many financial transactions were not described as "business" because of the nature and size of the transactions concerned. If you ran a hotel with a hundred rooms, you were running a "business". If you rented two rooms in your man cave, you were merely "renting rooms to boarders" and even the Tribute Takers did not want to know about your income unless you had more than two boarders or charged over a specified maximum level.

Cone Man had his own business and had avoided syphilis, but his real business lay at the Tower of Power, and he had not avoided sloth, of which his surplus girth was an unsightly symptom. He would need to train for another two weeks before he was fit enough to ride to the Tower of Power, and knew he would have to endure the snide mockery of his scales for another three months .

A warrior returns from Cone Man's past ...

The Cousin Gathering in the Land of the Cantabrians was a great success, albeit Cone Man did not succeed greatly in defeating the temptation to eat too much. The success of the occasion owed much to the tireless efforts of Cone Man's cousin, Deborah the Domestic Goddess. Cousin Jennifer, who had attained the tender age of sixty, had been suitably "sixtied", and they could all move on.

Cone Man had indeed moved on. His flight had left the Land of the Cantabrians at 3.35pm, two days and five hours earlier, and so in cosmic terms he had travelled at least 111.3 million kilometres since the afternoon of the last Day of the Sun. Seven to eight billion people had also made the same dizzying journey through the cosmos, so Cone Man had to admit that his achievement was not exceptional, but it was fun to reflect on.

Cone Man's pattern of movement around the Land of the Hurricanes was certainly unusual. Everybody else left the Land of the Huttites each day and rode the rail canoe south to Wellesley's Town to trade their time for money. Cone Man instead road the rail canoe to the far north of the Land of the Huttites to trade his time to learn from the company of Wizards in the Tower of Power. In a few weeks Cone Man hoped to master the spells and incantations by which he could draw money from the clouds. The prospect of this cloudy currency possessed his mind as surely as the prospect of gold.

Cone Man cared not that he could find himself a laughingstock in a few weeks. He had nothing to lose, and gold had made fools of many a man before him. 19th century writers and later historians remarked at the "Gold Rushes" that caused men to descend on parts of the Land of the All Black Tribe, dig for months, and then the leave the country, having spent all they had to obtain nothing but memories of the Long White Cloud over their heads as they laboured.

Gold had even used to "back up" paper currency, until politicians realised that this policy was deflationary and reduced the amount of money in circulation. At the other extreme, many had believed that stockmarket shares were worth more than gold, and had mortgaged their man caves to purchase shares in the months leading up to the Great Crash of 1987. Cone Man may been crazy, but if judged by the low bar set by his contemporaries, he could be said to moderately sane.

Even if Cone Man could not conjure money from the clouds, others seemed to have faith in him. One true believer was his old friend, Kelvin the Hunter, who lived in the Land of the Cantabrians. When Kelvin was not slaughtering every edible creature that came within range of his mighty Fire Stick, he earned his living spraying the man caves of others with his mighty Paint Stick, and he wondered if Cone Man could assist him in finding customers for his colourful talent. "Alright" sighed Cone Man, "I'll inform the native tribesmen of the Land of the Cantabrians that you can be found at 0225864321 if they need a painter, but after that, be it on your head if you are besieged by desperate building contractors!"

Cone Man's epic journey through time and space ...

Cone Man was attending a Cousin Gathering of his tribe in the Land of the Cantabrians. Cone Man's ancestral links to the area stemmed from his maternal grandparents. Cone Man also had another connection to the Mighty South through his father, who had been born in the Land of the Cargillians, so far south that it even south of the fabled music capital of Gore, notable for being the All Black Tribe's answer to Nashville in the Land of the Stars and Stripes Tribe.

Cone Man had missed yet another land canoe, but keeping his manly calm, he was able to catch the next land canoe, the rail canoe after that, and another land canoe after that. He arrived at the sky port with five minutes to spare before boarding the sky canoe to the Land of the Cantabrians.

"Too close for comfort" Cone Man cone-sidered, but he was on his epic way, and settled back in his seat to endure the flight. The flight began at 10.05am and lasted one hour, and although he knew that the sky canoe was travelling at 300 kilometres an hour, the time seemed to drag.

Drugged by the devious Dragging Time Monster, Cone Man's mind duly drifted away to dwell in other dimensions as he cone-templated his pace through space. The land canoe in which he sat was travelling 300 kilometres per hour. According the crazed Astro-Wizards, the planet over which it flew travelled 106,000 kilometres per hour while orbiting the Sun. The solar system revolving round the Sun travelled at 882,000 kilometres per hour through the Milky Way Galaxy. Ultimately, the Milky Way Galaxy travelled through the Universe at 2.1 million kilometres per …

"Screech!" Cone Man's cosmic cone-templation was abruptly brought back to Earth by the contact of the land canoe's wheels with the tarmac on the landing strip at the sky port of the Land of the Cantabrians. Cone Man had traversed 2.1 million kilometres while travelling to the Land of the Cantabrians!

Walking into the terminal of the sky port, Cone Man reflected on the paradox of his situation - he simultaneously knew exactly where he was on the face of the Earth, and yet had scientific evidence confirming that he and over 7 billion human beings were incapable of comprehending from one hundredth of a millisecond the next one hundredth of a millisecond where they were. Divided into distinct and often warring tribes, humanity nevertheless careened through space on the same space ship, breathing air from the same life support system, while arguing over the transfer of individuals from compartment of the spaceship to another. Cone Man's mind reeled as he looked for a way out of the sky port ...

Cone Man cone-siders a weighty matter

Cone Man was not in denial about being overweight. The problem was that nobody else was in denial about him being overweight. Taciturn tactless types openly mocked Cone Man's middle aged midriff. The more inconsiderate, sadistic and masochistic went dieted and exercised themselves into revoltingly slim and athletic physiques. What had Cone Man ever done to deserve all this heartless betrayal?

Cone Man turned for reassurance to his bedroom scales. "You're 95.5 K today, fatso!" laughed his scales. "Glass scales should not live in cone men's homes, particularly if the cone men own sledgehammers" Cone Man snarled". "It will cost $59.90 to buy a set of replacement scales. If you believe that my replacement will tell you something different, smash me and get a good night's sleep. If you don't believe that, then objectively it is not my fault but yours" the scales answered back. Cone Man had to admit that under the circumstances the scales certainly had hutzpah!

The scales may have been somewhat sadistic, but the online body mass calculator was positively psychopathic, and said without a qualm: "Lose 20 k". Admittedly it was a machine designed by scientists, doctors, and physical education instructors which were professions known for attracting psychopaths, but that was beside the point.

Cone Man cone-sidered the prospect of losing 20 kilograms. He had more chance of riding around Lake Taupo in one day. He had even done so ten years before, and his weight had gone down to 82 kilograms. 20 kilograms? 44 pounds? Three stone? "Blazing cones, that's a lot of stones!" stormed Cone Man.

A stony silence settled upon Cone Man has he cone-sidered the privations of the terrible journey ahead of him if he had any hope of slaying the terrible Middle Aged Midriff Monster ...