Ostrich Weekly Forecast: Nov 18
Ogre Week is finally here!
Maybe, like me, you've been giving the side eye to anyone who seems unusually upbeat. It gave me a queasy feeling, to find our weatherman in his office, whistling a polka and practicing his cha-cha. (Imagine the chaos implied in a mind that can cha-cha to his own polka.) Thankfully, instead of shooting spitwads, I had the presence of mind to ask him what was shaking. And that's how I learned about Ogre Week.
Ominous as it sounds, Ogre Week is a bona fide celebration. It honors the end of the ogre age, that long epoch wherein ogres were a general problem, causing many figurative and literal headaches. Nobody remembers how the ogre age ended. Some say the ogres were defeated, while other claim the ogres simply pivoted to other enterprises, reorganizing as the Plumbers Guild, giving rise to the first great cities. (There were cities before, but they weren't "great.") However it ended, it did, and we celebrate the End of Ogres with traditions such as these:
- Tree tossing: See if your neighborhood has a tree tossing club. Solo tossers, know your limits—there's no shame in tossing a very small tree.
- Spit-roasted chicken legs, turkey legs, lamb legs, ostrich legs—whatever the biggest leg is, that you can finish in one sitting. Ancient records recommend a daikon or a big zucchini, also noting that a snake counts as one leg, for feasting purposes.
- Piña Coladas: Probably not from the original feast, but now extremely traditional.
- Heroic poetry: Ogres were fools for a poem, and would always let their captives complete a recitation, once begun. This is the origin of Scheherazade, and explains why Homer and Ovid were so damn tedious.
- Puns: Ogres were notorious for their puns. Hence, puns were banned in many places after the End of Ogres. Some people missed the puns, though they knew it was shameful, and kept up the practice at illicit pun pubs, preserving the tradition to this day.
(Fun fact: Mrs. Tycoon's full legal name can be rearranged to spell, "Ogre hit, ogre kiss, ogre rent den.")
