BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

How many entries do we get? I could see these posts going back and forth for quite a while . . .

mrpicard wrote:Actually, even though I am having lots of fun with the graphics, I am not too sure but I think that it is supposed to be a writing competition as the heading says " frivolous writing contest".

Consider my entry a comic book or graphic novel.

Ok y'all are scarin me now !!!

well some great answers already....


Yes the winning of contests usually has a lot to do with reading the rules and intent of the competition as anything else ..tho I certainly dont want to stifle anyones creativity


(the next contest will have to do with T shirts and picture manipulation which it looks like will be a lot of fun with this group... )

In 1172 AD, Lord Gjord, a Swedish nobleman of rich ancestry, through a tumultuous series of popular revolts, overthrew the tyrannical King Ivar and ascended to the throne of all Sweden. He was a much beloved king, revered by his people as a just man and treated in some circles as a demi-god. During his reign, he held off countless invading armies. His people maintained that, if Lord Gjord were at the head of their army, Sweden was invincible. And this seemed quite true. For the next 400 years, not a single foe would encroach on Swedish soil without being quickly snuffed out.

Though King Gjord was a powerful man, built like a tree trunk and with the heart of a bear, legend has it that his power derived from the gods themselves, bestowed upon his family and passed through the generations. According to the legend, the source of the Gjord family?s godly power was a curious and mystical little trinket, one that was not well understood at the time and was feared by all but the Gjords themselves. This tiny treasure ? a Golden Potentiometer ? was jealously guarded and kept locked away out of the grasp of power seekers. And so the Golden Pot passed from King to King, ensuring that the mighty Gjord family would hold onto the throne and that there would be peace in all Sweden.

For 400 years the Gjord family ruled with the power of the Golden Pot. And during that time, the rumors of the Golden Pot spread. Those rumors became stories, the stories became legends, and the legends grew more and more grandiose. By the time these stories trickled into the ears of a young Duke Holger some 400 years later, it was said that he who possessed the Golden Pot would have power enough to rule the world. Delusions of grandeur warped his childish mind and obtaining the Golden Pot became an obsession. A dark, brooding obsession. He nursed this obsession and concocted elaborate plots over the years to usurp the Golden Pot and take his rightful place as ruler of the world. And he waited patiently for the right time . . .

In 1595, Duke Holger, by then a vengeful, poisonous soul, bribed a drunk court jester of King Gjord VIII to divulge the precise route the King would take that year on his trip to Spain. Holger knew that the King spent every June in Spain to rejuvenate his spirits, and he knew from years of prying that the King always took the Golden Pot with him to keep it safe. And so early on the morning of May 28, 1595, Holger and a band of goons laid waste to the royal caravan, and seized the Golden Pot.

Much to Holger?s dismay, he spent the remainder of his life trying to divine the secrets of the Golden Pot. He felt no more power and, of course, wielded none. He couldn?t even convince a child to run an errand for him, let alone rule the peoples of the world. And so a heartbroken Holger passed into oblivion and, with him, the legend of the Golden Pot.

Without the Golden Pot, the mighty Gjord family, who had ruled Sweden for so many peaceful years, soon lost control of the throne. Sweden descended into endless power struggles, and the Gjord family fell into obscurity. Though the family name continued, the legendary power was lost. And so, through generations of marriages, Gjords became Jords, Jords became Jurds, and so on and so forth through the years. Of course, the stories of the Golden Pot remained in the family and ancestor after ancestor went through great pains to recover it ? all in vain ? or so it was thought . . .

It was only recently, after taking great personal interest in the Gjord Golden Pot legend (which I had stumbled upon in an old edition of ?Swedish Kings of Yore?) and flying to Stockholm to research it, that I stumbled across something truly extraordinary. Poring over the dusty old genealogies of Swedish nobility and tracing the lines down to present day, I found a curious linkage. A descendent of the Jurds (who were themselves descended from the Gjords) had, in 1873, filed for an official name change to Juhler. Tracing this line even further, the Juhler family, sometime around WWII, shortened this name to Juhl.

After days of research on the internet, I discovered a young electronics wizard who was grandson to Hildegard Juhl, one of the names mentioned in the genealogy. Fascinated, I contacted this young man by phone and barraged him with questions. I learned of his quest to find the most exquisite guitar tones the world has ever known. And he spoke at length about the beauty of great tone and the pains people would go to get it (some stricken by a horrible disease he described as GAS). One of his creations in particular caught my attention ? a tiny unit he described as the AquaMarine Wonder Machine. As he described the pedal, I was stricken by the depth of his electronics knowledge, but what made my heart skip a beat was his description of one of the controls. His grandfather, not knowing what to do with it, had recently given him a trinket he had kept in his possession for many years. Bjorn (the young Juhl?s first name), knew immediately what to do with this trinket. ?It?s a potentiometer!? he announced to his grandfather. And he set about to build a wonderful machine around it.

Bjorn told me he knew there was something magical about this pedal, something that made him feel like he could take on the world, when he played through it. Powered by this golden potentiometer, as he described it, the pedal would turn ordinary tone into ?musical utterances from the mouth of God himself.? And yet, Juhl told me with a hint of melancholy, he felt perhaps the pedal was a bit too much for him. A power too profound to harness. And he felt one day he might rid himself of it. Strangely, he told me, no one but him seemed to be able to produce anything other than horrid screeching from the pedal.

Of course, I suspected the source of this pedal?s power all along. And when he showed me a picture of the pedal (before he covered the electronics in black goop), I knew it for certain. It matched exactly the drawings I had seen in rotting old Swedish story books. What?s more, I knew that only Bjorn could produce magical sound from this machine because he was a descendent of the Gjord family.

Newly invigorated, I set about doing more research in the Stockholm library. After weeks of tireless reading, I pieced the puzzle together. The great King Gjord had gotten his power from the wonderful music produced by the Golden Pot. It was the heavenly sounds it produced that gave him the peace and clarity of mind, the unending strength, to rule an entire country without so much as a bar fight taking place for 400 years.

The next discovery truly made time stop for me ? the discovery that the Jurd family tree had yet another branch. Sometime in the 1700s, the name evolved to Jurst and over the course of time, to Jursten, to Jurston, and finally ? in the early part of the 1900s ? to Justonwo. Tracing the linkages down to 1937, I was shocked to learn that my Grandfather was linked to the Jurd family. The realization hit me like a load of bricks. I was descended from King Gjord!!!

It was only recently that I learned of Bjorn Juhl?s reluctant passing of the Wonder Machine to a certain ?Donner.? And, having found Donner has put this great wonder of the ancient world on his website as a prize for a ?frivolous writing contest,? I can only express my disgust that such a treasure could be thrown around so callously.

And so, as the only living heir to the Gjord line of kings (other than Bjorn, of course), I believe that the AquaMarine Wonder Machine is mine by birthright. What?s more, as I have proven through my research, it is only I that could make the Wonder Machine achieve its true potential. So return the Wonder Machine, with its mystical Golden Pot, to its rightful owner - Justonwo, wielder of guitars and descendant of mighty kings!

I am new here and I am lost..
I feel like I just stuck my nose in to some place that it didn't belong.
I get the feeling that it's going to get cut off by MrPicard's 52 more reasons..

OUCH..