Finally, the two friars decided they needed a change of climate and headed to the islands of Melanesia to try to convert the native souls to their way of thinking. This colonizing decision had tragic results, I'm sorry to say. The two headed up a river in Guinea and during a torrential rain their canoe sank and they were separated, to be discovered by two different clans that lived along the river.

The first group of indigenous people, who only ate people on ceremonial occasions, decided that ingesting a citizen of a powerful European nation would bring power to themselves, so they pulled up the stew pot and dropped him in. The results were not as they hoped. The man was extremely tough, and subsequent grinding and pounding of the meat produced simliarly tough results.

The second priest fared no better, but his end was quick as his captors quickly dispatched him and distributed the tender cooked meat to all of the village in preparation for a power-sharing feast. They lived less than a day's travel from a European settlement and had within running distance a machine that dispensed what they considered colonizer's power drinks. So a boy was sent to bring back the ceremonial drinks to accompany the power feast. And they proceeded to eat everything. Everything, that is, except his thing. They couldn't figure out how it was to be eaten, and it was extremely tough, defying usual preparation techniques.

Later, elders of these two villages compared notes on recent ceremonies, and found that they had had bookends, so to speak, a matching set of Europeans ala carte. The first elder complained that no amount of boiling would tenderize the meat.

"What did your fella look like?" asked the second elder. "What was he dressed in?"

"He was wearing a brown robe," responded the first.

"Ah, that's your problem. He was a friar." advised the second. "Our meal was tender, except we never figured out what to do with his thing. It defied cooking."

"What elixer did you use to sanctify the meal?" asked the first.

"We sent a boy to the village to come back with European drinks. Green and white cans. 7-up, they say."

"Ah, THAT'S your problem! Everyone in our village knows that Things Go Better With Coke."

became kind of a shaggy dog story. . .