Pigge's Bogus Particle

Signs and wonders in the lovely country of Northumbria continue to unfold before our very eyes, leaving the population in the grip of perpetual excitement. The chewing of fingernails is an increasingly popular pastime among the knuckle-dragging hordes. It's not really surprising: unemployment is at an all-time record high (or, at least, since the last statistic was carefully collated), and the Great Credit Crisis of the entire civilized world (which doesn't include the Vikings and Huns, who are but savages) is biting hard into the posterior of the public consciousness.

But, no matter. We have entertainment a-plenty, and the bulk of it is generated by either the Ð Factory, popular fiction storytellers in the Tree/Liberationist/Redistributionist politico factions and of course, those tried-and-tested fantasists, the soothsayers. Who could ask for anything less?

The latest craze to emerge from the fly-infested swamplands of the human narrative is a new obsession with the Pigge's Bogus Particle. This strange contrivance is the crazed product of the addled consciousness of alchemists, who are paid enormous sums of money to discover for the benefit of Dark Ages Man truths that most Anglo-Saxons could take as commonsense. Or plain nonsense. Whatever.

Somewhere in a secret location in the Holy Roman Empire (which is neither holy, Roman nor an empire) is a land-locked land of mountains and goats. Within those great hills, a den has been carved deep into the caves, where an assortment of alchemists - aided and abetted by unending supplies of hallucinogenic mushrooms - carry out their clandestine work. Every now and then, they emerge from the foul-smelling darkness to release a piece of profound wisdom for the waiting soothsayers, who reverently devour every word, sagely pretending to understand what these troglodytes are talking about. In turn, the soothsayers relay a peculiarly mangled and chewed version of their newly-acquired information to the kingdoms they represent. Everyone is deliriously happy: the alchemists have created the illusion that they're Onto Something Great and Worthwhile, while the soothsayers are irritatingly self-satisfied because they have some new esoteric piece of wisdom to impart to the Ignorant Unwashed, thus furnishing them with the illusory notion that they have something significant to say. Hooray for the sons of Mercury! Bless.

Pigge's Bogus Particle - as this Cat understands it - is a missing piece of knowledge that would enable them to understand how to manufacture gold from pig manure. They have managed to fool Emperor Jose Borracho - the Supreme Allied Commander-In-Chief and Beloved Panjandram of the Holy Roman Empire (which is neither holy, Roman nor an empire) into believing that this glorious knowledge is within a hair's breadth of attainment. The implications of this are self-evident: once the technology to transmute gold from pigpoo is in operation, the King can put more gold into his treasury. The Great Credit Crisis would - of course - continue as before.

This Cat has reason to suspect that the alchemists are just stringing Joe Boy along. They've been doing it for years..