Chugalotachocalotl the Mayan Math Professor

[Simon Halliday]

Chugalotachocalotl the Mayan math professor was a having a bad day.

Apoplexalotl the Emperor, had woken that evening, his birthday (every day is birthday if you're a Mayan Emperor and last night's birthday party had been a real zinger), and had a distinct feeling of déjà vu as he gazed across the Great Plaza towards the apex of the  Pyramid of Disembowelalotapopl, where the latest batch of subjects were neatly lining up to be eviscerated, all perfectly framed in the disc of the setting sun.

It was a postcard moment (though those hadn't been invented yet) but Apoplexalotl was troubled, and suddenly it occured to him that he had seen the same sight many times in his life—strangely, all on birthdays albeit quite a few, a regular number in fact, of birthdays apart—and that, ergo, if the world was truly a terrestrial  planetary body orbiting a Type G2 star,  its frequency of rotation must be—Apoplexalotl's brow furrowed in concentration—roughly 365 birthdays; he then had his eureka moment: it was high time for someone to invent clocks and calendars and he knew of just the man.

Chugalotachocalotl was duely given the commission and once he'd hashed out the trivial mathematics of the problem, he started on its design.

Apoplexalotl liked big (big parties—big pyramids—big ritual executions—big... well, we won't go there) so clearly this calendar had to be BIG, but since it also had to be portable for moving up to the palace, Chugalotachocalot decided to make it round too, a disk, so the slaves could just roll the damn thing over to the Emperor's pad once it was all carved and inscribed prior to the standard inaugural ceremony with celebratory mass disembowelings and canapes.

But as the stone was pushed away for the festive event, exhausted Chugalotachocalotl (who had, with abandon, this last sleepless week, and was thus madly over-caffeinated) realized the disk was big alright, and a very big mistake, for the immortal Emperor must surely notice that a calendar on a disk eventually has to end when the current date completes the circle and arrives back at the Very First Date, which would therefore  imply the end of time and Apoplexalotl's mortality—at this point Chugalotachocalotl decided his head hurt and it was high time he took an extended vacation in a safer place far, far away.

[Mike Handley]

What fun! The names alone are worth "favoriting."

[Judy Thompson]

This is hysterical. I agree,  celebratory mass disembowelings and canapes made me laugh out loud.   And yeah, you do sustained silly extremely well.  Not a bobble in the bunch.

[Gita]

Oh, and I take it you don't believe that the world is going to end on December 12. But in case you do believe and want to give stuff away for free, please let me know.

[Gita]

Liked celebratory mass disembowelings and canapes. Liked all the silliness. You do silly very well.

[Teresa]

Lots of "alots" at the end of these names, I guess like a lot of calendar "so the slaves could just roll the damn thing" -- that phrasing made me laugh.  People have always been too much.

[stephen burgers]

I imagine they were a bit reckless. Thanks for the comment. I have to get to K-Mart for my new 2013 Mayan calander.