Flaubie and Neff

I, Flaubert, spent many lifetimes in ancient Egypt and I assure you, like so many of the great civilizations of ancient times it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, not by a long shot.

First of all it was ancient. Ancient does not mean “good.” It means archaic and decrepit and staggering around in diapers on a walker while you whine about medical treatments.

In fact nobody back then thought it was so great either what with pestilence and plague and drought and the lack of central air conditioning and so on and if you had asked them how great it was, for example, while the pyramids were being built they would have said, “meh,” or, “so-so,” or “fair to middling” or one of the other noncommittal phrases human beings use when things kind of suck but not completely super-badly. And BTW slaves. There were slaves everywhere, totally unacceptable. They would have said things sucked rotting hippopotamus balls, but no one ever asks slaves how they feel about anything.Every history written from the point of view of slaves is a shit history. No wonder they don’t want those in classrooms in Florida. It would totally ruin the vibe.

As a small dog on the banks of the Nile I did see many goings-on! The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la! The good news is that Nile crocodiles ignored me as far too small to be worth eating. And hippopotami didn’t see a dog my size as a threat except as a potentially irritating paste that might be found between their toes if they step in the wrong place.

One had to be nimble in those days.

And of course I was around when King Tut was a thing.