This gem comes from Magus Firecow (aka Lin Ka-Ming) [kamin@mms.utoronto.ca]. He is one of the masters of the shaggy dog. (RL = real life and a.c. = alt.callahans. Mike is the man behind the bar.)

It’s been over a month since Magus Firecow was last roaming about the wired world. His RL persona has been swamped with unbelievable amounts of work (whine whine whine. Pity me, I’m busy, yeah I know how pathetic it sounds…), but he’s finally found a long enough break to get back into a.c.

“Hey, Mike, summa that 151 inna shot glass to start, and Mist in a snifter for when my tastebuds get back on-line,” as he flips a pair of Canadian loons on the bar.

“So, part of where I’ve been so long involves doing so much stats that I found myself hallucinating. ZOWWWEEEE!!! Ouch. Thanx Mike. Anywhoo, I found myself seeing things that weren’t there, either that or I fell through some sort of rip in the fabric of causality, etc. And there I was in this quiet little cafe in some strange land. There was a yellow brick road just outside, but everything else around was covered with snow. A nice lady brought me a double shot and a wafer as I tried to acclimatize myself.

Then, in walked several rough looking gentlemen with dollars in their hands. They asked to be taken to see ‘The Man’ and they went ’round to the back of the shop. I asked the woman who brought me my coffee who ‘The Man’ was. Well apparently, ‘The Man’ used to be the wisest person in the kingdom. He had vast stores of knowledge and incredible understanding of the universe. He became the most sought out of sages, and his prophecies all came true.

But that was in the past, and over the last few decades his mind began to slip. Soon he had lost all of his remarkable abilities and insights, with only one exception. The only skill with which he was left was the ability to figure out the odds for sporting events. He could still determine the probability of one team beating another, and the men who had just come in to see him were bookies. They had come to find the line they should set on that night’s game.

Well, I just had to meet ‘The Man’ so I went round back to watch what was going on. There he was, standing there listening to the gentlemen explaining who was playing in tonight’s game. He nodded at every detail, and when they were done, he did a truly bizarre thing. He waved them back, dropped his pants, and urinated in the snow.

Apparently, they had his tongue cut out when his prophecies started going wrong. He continued to prophesize by writing down his visions, but when those went wrong, too, he had his hands cut off. Now, the only way he could communicate his answers was to pee out figures into the snow. And that’s why they call him the WIZZER OF ODDS.”