Alone among the conquering sovereigns who have tread the path of human history, Bulbous Magnanimity is doubtlessly the most pointless and entertaining. His motivations remain shrouded in secrecy, as do large portions of his biography. His ambitions always dwarfed his abilities, and historians continue to pontificate on what our world would be had any of his pointlessly grandiose dreams been brought to fruition.
Bulbous Magnanimity was born at 12:47 am on June 19th, 57 B.C., then crawled back in and refused to come out. Two months later he was born again, this time accidentally as his mother was attempting to pass a kidney stone. His parents returned him to the womb once Bulbous refused to acknowledge them beyond giving them the finger. He was born for the third and final time on January 1st and immediately declared his intention to secede from the Union.
His father was Pulcher Magnanimity, an accomplished aedile and runway model who came from good chicken stock and enjoyed nothing more than composing verse in airport restrooms. By all accounts he was a warm and generous man who doted on his son and often read to him from lists of decommissioned naval vessels. His mother, Caribou However, had little time for him. Heiress to a wheelbarrow full of nickels Caribou devoted her entire life to the creation of an unpronounceable language that could not be written by human hand. Bulbous would posthumously publish her life’s work: The Complete Guide to a Language You Don’t Deserve to Know – fourteen hundred blank pages. Michiko Kakutani would call it, “a dazzling new pinnacle of linguistic invention.”
At the age of eight Bulbous’s life was set in a startling new direction. An enigmatic X-Ray technician claiming to be a forward for the San Antonio Spurs told Bulbous that he was the cosmically conceived offspring of the eternal souls of Robespierre and the Kyoto Accord. According to contemporary reports Bulbous nodded quietly, made himself a cup of tea, played some Madden, read Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, revolutionized gastric bypass surgery, discovered cheese, swallowed a bug, took a deep breath, counted to ten, then to six, said, “Very well,” and walked out of the house.
Bulbous would not be seen for another seventeen years, but rumors of his goings-on continued to circulate. Migrant workers in Bakersfield, California reported seeing Bulbous hitching a ride in a clown car while a laundromat in Sarasota, Florida claimed to have seen him inquiring into the whereabouts of a suspicious-looking Quaker with a hard-on. Crackheads said that he was raising an army in the East, Mormons said that his senses of sight and touch had been reversed, and Nancy Pelosi claimed to have sired a child by him – a manticore that she subsequently killed when it proved unable to carry a tune.
In 1894 Bulbous re-emerged in Buenos Aires and immediately announced to the world his intention to run for Emperor of Everything. It is commonly believed that Bulbous’s thinking was that, since the office did not exist, he would run unopposed and win by a landslide. But just one month before the election, the Republicans nominated Calvin Julius Horsefinder, president and CEO of Multinational Conglomerate Incorporated Clownshoes. Bulbous, however, was prepared to fight dirty to ensure victory and resorted to inundating Horsefinder with prank phone calls, putting pineapples in his underwear, making fun of his furniture, and pelting him with Chinamen. The dual nails in Horsefinder’s coffin were Bulbous’s impenetrable defense against his critics – responding to their questions and criticisms with the phrase, “Oh no you di’in’t!” – and the smear campaign he launched against Horsefinder. This campaign consisted of blanketing media outlets with commercials and print ads insinuating that Horsefinder had participated in one scandalous activity or another, such as: “Guess what CJ did on MLK?” or “Guess what customs found inside CJ on his way back from Amsterdam?” The two-pronged attack of the Guess What Campaign and the Oh No You Di’in’t Policy destroyed Horsefinder’s career and six months after the election he was found dead inside an ashtray factory, having strangled himself with his bare hands.
As the newly elected Emperor of Everything Bulbous Magnanimity was determined to put his best foot forward. He started by declaring war on the Aurora Borealis, but the offensive proved to be a debacle as Bulbous was never able to come within striking distance. He tried to start a war with the Harvard School of Business, but they refused to show up. He then turned to domestic issues, cutting taxes on the incontinent and constructing the first transcontinental tree house. He then returned to war and challenged Saudi Arabia to a staring contest. But when a dog barked and broke his concentration, Bulbous decided that he had had enough. So began The Great Purge of 1973. Bulbous and his followers, which consisted of a diminutive Welshman named Duncan and the anthropomorphic personification of Spina Bifida, would travel from village to dell screaming at passersby in German until they went away. Bulbous then redoubled his efforts and declared war on the Dead Sea. Believing the sea to have too depressing a name, he laid siege to the lake and demanded that it change its name. It refused and Bulbous attempted to burn the Dead Sea to the ground. When that did not work, he rounded up five hundred wolves and ordered them to huff and puff until the lake blew down. When that did not work, Bulbous drained the Dead Sea, deposited it into a series of differently colored mason jars and refused to free it until it complied with his demands. These demands now included not being so salty. Abnormal buoyancy, Bulbous claimed, was the work of the Devil. The Dead Sea held firm and, while its current location is unknown, it is believed to still reside in its segmented glass prison.
The Dead Sea disaster proved to be the nadir of Bulbous’s reign and he quickly returned to domestic affairs. In an effort to combat inflation he replaced all printed and minted currency with live badgers. In response to the badgers running amok – and to reduce unemployment – Bulbous started an imperial program of wild animal handlers. Then the handlers began to run amok. In response Bulbous got them all drunk and allowed the badgers to have their way with them. He had plans to reinvent calculus and then turn it into a musical, but the lure of military conquest beckoned once again. This time Bulbous declared war on war and proceeded to engage anyone who fought anyone anywhere over anything. Then, just for good measure, Bulbous declared war on the past and announced that he had won retroactively.
On the Ides of March in 2096, Bulbous broke into a Home Depot in Cleveland, Ohio, announced that he was stepping down from the throne, and walked out. He then walked back in, announced that he needed to buy some drywall, went to the appropriate aisle, took the drywall up to the counter, waited for someone to ring up his purchase, realized no one was coming after three hours, and walked out again – this time for good and, once again, without the drywall. Bulbous Magnanimity; the first, last and only Emperor of Everything; was never seen again.
No historian has ever posited a satisfactory theory as to why Bulbous would inexplicably abdicate. Some believe that his manticore-child by Nancy Pelosi had returned from the grave to challenge him to a duel and Bulbous felt obligated to accept the challenge. Others have asserted that he left to roadie for the Mars Volta or that he decided to start his long-gestating Airborne Afrikaner League. Regardless of his unknown fate Bulbous Magnanimity has proven to be the most inconsequential and amusing despot in human history. He was, by turns, intelligent and unintelligible; frightening and frighteningly funny; necessary and superfluous; loved and begrudgingly tolerated. His legacy is practically non-existent, yet we cannot stop talking about him.
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