Proncfrood, your absurdism never ceases to amuse

From the desk of General Tlanbuun

General Proncfrood,

Demands, now, is it? I thought we would be negotiating for the peaceful exchange of prisoners. But if demands are what you want, then demands are what you'll get.

Firstly, you must personally apologize, face to face, with the leader of the Happy Rainbow Brigade for your continued slander against their name. These cookie-selling children are not, as you call them most recently, "a hate group furthering the cause of genocide across the stars." The most offensive thing this group has ever done is travel, without permission from Xathnarian High Command, to your personal residence. They tried to give you a basket of free cookies in an attempt to end this thousand-year war.

You responded by setting your Blortinese slug-beasts upon them. Their deaths were neither quick nor painless. Your evening news showed you and your gelatinous friends eating the cookies and laughing heartily as the poor Rainbow Brigadiers were slowly dissolved by the slug-beasts' digestive fluids.

The meeting will take place on a neutral planet of our choosing, and the proceedings will be universally telecast live.

Secondly, you will take back the four terrorists who have been residing comfortably within my domain for these thirty-five years. Robotic beasts? What nonsense! Despite what "horrors" you wrongly think they may have suffered, I'm sure they would much prefer to be brought home. They have seen much of your Blortinese news broadcasts, and are looking forward to returning to the people who now regard them as great heroes. Perhaps they will be rewarded greatly, perhaps appointed to assorted positions of high power in your military?

Thirdly, PARXON 7 must be turned over to Xathnarian professionals. I was much saddened when I heard of his horrifying accident, especially so when I learned he was on his way to testify against Blortinon in the Intergalactic War Crimes court on Parpacia. As the last living witness of the events leading to the destruction of his people, his testimony would have made solid the case against you and your kind. I realize that you have said again and again that no one knows what caused those asteroids to suddenly shift course toward his small craft, but Xathnarian forces in the area found traces of your negative energy weaponry in the area, raising suspicions about your honesty in this matter.

It also raises questions about your doctors' motivations in the care of poor PARXON. If any of his friends and family were still alive, I'm sure they would rather he be placed in the care of the far superior hospitals on Xathar. He must be promptly brought back to health so he can provide the courts with his testimony.

As for your other ridiculous demands, our bombing of your immense opium fields did indeed strike a blow against your budget, but it also prevented your hired criminal cohorts from continuing to sell your illicit goods in elementary schools across the galaxy. I, as well as the Parpacian court, feel that this was a necessary and unpreventable attack. Xathnar will be more than happy to assist in the rebuilding of your economy, however. Perhaps you could sell some of your larger banking assets to us. We would hate to see Blortinon's people suffer needlessly because of their drug-lord leadership.

And we will never give you the plans for our purely scientific Black Hole Generator. Given your reckless disregard for innocent life shown by your repeated use of negative energy weapons on non-military targets, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that you held the power to destroy entire planetary systems in your horrible clutches.

I don't even understand why you are so intent on building your own black hole generator, when it's destructive capabilities are nothing compared to your own endless source of mayhem and death: your negative energy cannons. Obviously you would only use such a device to lay the blame of thousands of newly destroyed planets on Xathnarian troops.

Rather, I demand that YOU provide the plans for your negative energy cannons to our Xathnarian scientists, so that we can develop some method of bringing back mass from the negative dimension, perhaps returning trillions of innocents to life. Perhaps they will bolster the ranks of the ever-growing Xathnarian army.

Awaiting your reply,
General Tlanbuun

P.S. Never will I dirty my statue with your filthy filthy lies. Never.

General Tlanbuun: Monarch or Court Jester?

1st Class Priority Space-Mail from Blortinon

Dear General Tlanbuun,

Well, I can see already that this process of so-called negotiation in regards to the safe return of your spies is going to be a turbulent one.

And yes, I do mean spies, children or no. After all, the average age of a Xantharian suicide bomber is thirteen, but we don't refer to those guerilla warriors as "the happy rainbow brigade" just because they're still wearing piddle-proof underpants, now do we?

What you fail to realize, Tlanbuun, is that the ball is very firmly in my court. Here I am, with a pocket full of snoops sent to do your dirty work behind enemy lines in blatant violation of the Parpacia convention, and you're going to make me an offer? General, I'm well aware that you are a clown, but is there no end to your self-mockery? I've got you by the balls, fool, and now you must bend to my every whim!

Oh, and speaking of your offer, I am afraid it leaves little to be desired. When you imprisoned those four, poor Blortinese tourists more than a quarter of a century ago for merely leaning on your precarious and shoddily constructed statue, even the most cynical Blortinite couldn't have predicted the horrors that would await them. According to those rather sobering photographs published by the Xathnarian Associated Press, thirty years of cruel and revolting genetic experimentation by corrupt Xantharian scientists have transformed them into something more resembling robotic beasts than anything even remotely Bortinese in origin.

My demands:

1) Blue-prints, specifications and building materials for your black-hole generator. One of these days, Xathnar's recklessness will literally swallow this universe, but not if Xathnar is too busy being swallowed itself.

2) Three hundred and fifty million ramperrods in small bills, because your unnecessary bombing of our national mint has started a very, very small and nearly insignificant recession on Blortinon that we'd prefer to get past as soon as possible.

3) One written apology to PARXON 7, the last living Nanark, who was spared the wanton destruction suffered by his species at the hands of your aforementioned black-hole generator. Oh, I know how you love to blame the incident on our peacekeeping and soon-to-be legally recognized negative energy weapons, but I guess that's the beauty of a black hole: Plausible deniability!

4) A new and improved inscription on the placard at the base of your statue: "General Tlanbuun; Father of Race Murder, Rapist of Galaxies, Cannibal Extraordinaire"

These four, quite reasonable things are all that I ask. Sometimes my fairness is so absolute that it nearly becomes mercy, or even pity.

Anticipating your reply with bated breath,
General Proncfrood

P.S. I was not at all surprised to learn that the complex allegory and rich, lyrical stanza of our great versifier Aldimus Globulon was far beyond the limitations of your Xantharian brain. I would like to leave you with an excerpt from one of his works that I found fitting.

Incoming bandits I seem to have found
From here in my crawlspace way up on the rafter
Xathnarian, presumed, based only on the sound:
One farting and four laughing loudly thereafter

Proncfrood, Proncfrood, Proncfrood...

From the desk of General Tlanbuun, 95th fleet, Xathnar

General Proncfrood,

I find it amusing you still control your fleet from the confines of your "office" aboard whatever passes for your flagship. Do you all wear bezxties? Are there casual Khandays? Do you offer dental? But I digress.

Again with the accusations regarding our Black Hole generator! How many times must I explain to you that this amazing breakthrough has, is, and always will be used for scientific experimentation and not military purposes? Soon we will be able to stabilize a black hole small enough to approach for real study. Perhaps wormhole travel will be possible in our lifetimes, thanks to the tireless efforts of Xathnar's finest minds! Granted, I'm sure a lot of things will happen in our lifetimes, as I am nearing my 16th century of existance and haven't even felt the need to purchase a sleek ship to go chasing "space-tail," to use the vernacular.

And forgive me for the slipup regarding the "negative dimension." I assumed your own Blortinon Ledger had checked its scientific facts before publishing that treatise of Aldimus Globulon's last year on the subject. Although I must admit, it should have tipped me off when he referred to space as "the great sky pudding." Globulon is your Poet Laureate, is he not?

Now, about my "spies"...

The five children you kidnapped from the elementary school you mentioned were only spies insofar as they had alerted the Xathnarian media about your repeated attempts to harvest their organs for your horrible pagan rituals. I shudder to think of them at your "resort," being forced to watch as their fellow prisoners are fed one by one into a "pool" of carnivorous beasts. I hear that some of the guards have taken to gambling on the results as well. Let's see what the Nanarkhian war crimes tribunal will have to say about that.

Oh, we can't, can we?

Normally, I would simply destroy the whole place from a safe distance, just to put the poor inmates out of their misery, but you seem to have gone out of your way to make sure that all five of the "spies" are the sons and daughters of my fleet admirals and closest friends. So, with much hesitation, I will... negotiate... for their release.

Perhaps we can trade for the four terrorists who attempted to topple my statue over into the capital city? That is, if they even wish to leave the comfort of my mountain retreat, where they have been happily living in peace for almost thirty years.

I await your reply.

General Tlanbuun

P.S. I find it fascinating that your people still insist on elections every three months, even though you have rigged them all for the entirety of your term in office thusfar.

P.P.S. We recycle our dead into meals because we abhor the thought of our bodies being useless waste! Can you Blortinots never comprehend this? Or are you too busy filling another galaxy with your seemingly endless outflow of garbage?

Dear General Tlanbuun,

I would like to thank you sincerely for your most recent letter. In these dire times, laughter can be all too easily forgotten. Suffice to say that everyone around the office had a most hearty guffaw at your latest care package of wild, drooling slander.

I do have other things to get to, but firstly:

1) It’s nice to see that the black hole generator you’ve been pouring tax-dollars into for the last several thousand years is coming along nicely: Looks like it’ll come in handy for destroying the evidence of those weekly acts of intergalactic genocide we’ve all come to expect from you Huns.

2) Also, if you were up on your theoretical physics, you’d know that the now extinct Nanarkan people are not in the “negative dimension” (where’d you come up with that little gem?), but are in fact doomed to an eternity of time deceleration as they crawl towards but never pass the even horizon. To think that, even as you read this, their agony continues merely because Xathnar gunners are incapable of a straight shot, even at point blank range.

3) I’m sure that Blortinon’s use of fecal matter as a manufacturing resource must seem alien to the inhabitants of your Xathnar, who, for reasons unknown, seem to use their own feces only as war paint during traditional Xathnan incestuous orgies. But I must remind you that the waste product of the Blortinite digestive system is actually a fine alloy, abundant and far stronger than any of the coarse metals produced in the many child-labor sweatshops of Xathnar.

4) The “Proncfrood Illness” is probably your misremembered version of “Proncfrood Fever,” the campaign slogan of my recent five-hundredth re-election effort.

Anyway, I'm afraid I do have some business to discuss.

I must inform you that five spies from Xathnar were intercepted yesterday at the General Proncfrood Blortinese Elementary School for the Disabled, where they were attempting to sabotage the cafeteria’s soup de jour with a variety of poisons and bodily fluids.

The spies are currently safe and healthy, residing in a secret poolside resort for political prisoners. They seemed awfully thankful to be treated to a meal consisting of something other than their own liquefied dead for once, and have asked me to pass on this message:

“WE R NEVR CUMMIN BAK SO DONT CUM LUKIN 4 US KAY KAY?”

In spite of understandable hesitation on their part, I am happy to negotiate the terms of their safe return to Xathnar with you in the days to come.

Write me soon,
General Proncfrood

P.S. Surrender is inevitable, as the Holy Army of Blortinon shall soon crush your planet like an ant in the trajectory of a falling anvil.

General Proncfrood,

I am glad to hear you are well, as am I that you chose such a neutral place as Earth's internet to hold our correspondence. Hopefully it will soon be known throughout all of creation what a backstabbing, genocidal megalomaniac you truly are. Your most recent message encapsulates this exceedingly well.

Ah, Proncfrood, when will your compulsive lying ever cease? Is your entire race completely incapable of relating events as they happened? Yes, of course I fired upon a "nursery" ship of yours. I put "nursery" in quotes because the ship in question was the exact size and shape of one of your fleet destroyers, and was visibly armed with what appeared to be enough negative energy weaponry to level most of Xathnar.

The fact that "Nusrery"(sic) was crudely scrawled across the side of this attack ship was not enough to stay my fleet's hand.
And, since you bring up the treaty of Nanarkhis VII, I might remind you that the original purpose of said treaty was to forever outlaw the manufacture or use of negative energy weapons! I find it ironic that your most recent violation of this treaty resulted in the annihilation of the Nanarkhis system itself, along with a significant portion of my fleet. That's right, because your weaponry detonated during the firefight, over seventy billion lives are lost, and the peaceful Nanarkhans are no more, lost to the negative dimension that houses so many worlds destroyed by your cretinous followers.

We will never know if the negative energy was detonated by a stray shot during the intense fifteen minute battle, or if one of the slug-like cowards you call officers gave the order to self-destruct as a last, desperate grab for some skewed sense of honor. We could perhaps sift through the wreckage to determine the cause of the explosion, but as any remains are at the center of a new black hole, I would rather let the mystery remain unsolved. You of course are welcome to send Blortinon's finest scientific minds, if you are so inclined. Perhaps they can make some fascinating new discoveries, such as "Black hole bad! BAD!"

As for that incoherent ramble about my taking a leap off my statue, I'm afraid you must be confused. My statue is no mere 3000 feet tall, but over 30 million. It is so massive, it has affected the tides on the planet, so that all currents now flow toward the capital city of Buun. It's glistening spires can be seen, perhaps, even from the bug-swamps of Blortinon. Of course, if I were to leap off of the top of it, I would simply drift off into space.

You must have been thinking of your own "monument", standing perhaps no more than a thousand feet tall. I'm sure you would have made it bigger, but fecal matter is such a poor building material. Try stone next time, it might even make fewer of your peasants/slaves deathly ill. The "Proncfrood illness" I believe they call it? Interesting choice of a legacy to leave your people.

Of course, the legacy will not last, as within the decade Xathnar's mighty fleet will seek out and destroy the last of your vile kind.

Xathnar be proud,
General Tlanbuun


Oh, Xathnar my planet, the home of the wise,
With your dapple-mauze trees and flieny skies
How lucky am I to live midst your Pandicot trees
For else I wouldst live on Blortinon, planet of crap.

-from the national anthem of Xathnar

Dear General Tlanbuun,

Some time has passed since our last correspondence! If it is of any interest, I have thought of you often in our time apart. I hope Xathnar finds you well. Lord knows if it finds you half as well as those murderous goons of yours in that fleet of raider ships found our relief nursery, then we've got nothing to worry about.

Oh, right, speaking of that senseless act of infanticide, I took a quick gander at that silly treaty you and I signed the last time we were within 9,000,000 space miles from each other, and was surprised to find that the document had rather a lot to say about the bombing of non-military targets. Who'd've thunk it?

In all our years as adversaries, if there's one thing I've learned about you, Tlanbuun, it's that you truly believe that the rules do not apply to you. I highly recommend you put that theory to the test! Climb to the top of that three thousand foot gold statue of you that your legion of slave laborers built for your birthday, and take a big flying swan dive off of it! Surely if the laws of our treaty are beneath you, then the laws of gravity would similarly yield to your childish whim?

Of your retribution I can say only this: It shall be carried out swiftly and without mercy, in the name and by the will of the Blortinon Gods Mi'ignevaark and Eefleeb, God of testicular agony and God of targeting family members, respectively.

Blortinon soldiers on!

Sincerely,
General Proncfrood