Years ago, after the debacle with ESB and his fake Talossan citizens, Vitxalmour Conductour and I came up with an idea that was basically a parody of the Kentucky Colonels thing... the Noble Order of the Corncob. (One of Eiric's fake citizens was a character named Benedict (can't for the life of me recall the last name) who's CoA had a corncob on it. For some reason, that inspired this dumb idea.)) The Order would exist to honor citizens of (then) Benito who had contributed significantly to the province.
Well, I've decided to revive this idea, and would like to announce that we've selected a few Belacostans to be honored as "Kernels" in this society. They are free to reject the honor, and I wouldn't blame them.
Firstly, Istefan Pertgonest. Once my rival (during a Senate campaign), never really a friend (just never got to know him very well), but a Benitian/Belacostan worthy of every honor possible for his contributions to our province. He isn't very active on Witt anymore, but he is still around, and anytime he shows up, it feels like a big piece of our province has returned.
Secondly, Sir Lüc. Lüc has been the most prominent representative of Belacosta for a long time. He has done a fine job. He also spurred the creation of the Cjovani subculture. (Which he may possibly regret.) (Da Schir Day is a holiday in our calendar.) Nothing further needs to be said about Lüc, everyone knows how cool he is.
Third, and lastly, Mic'haglh Autófil. A newer member of Belacosta, he's done more than enough to earn membership in this elite society. His contributions to both Belacosta and Talossa in general makes me ashamed at how lame my own contributions have been.
We welcome these fine gentlemen to the Noble Order of the Corncob. They may now add "NOC" at the end of their names. (That's "Noble Order Corncob".)
There is a logo and a full constitution for this Order available to members, if they desire to look at it. There are no obligations or weird things you have to do as a member. It is honorary, and you are free to accept it or reject it as you will.

I have decided to choose the following as my motto:
Animus ferus numquam vincitur

I missed the deadline too. (I've been working so much lately, half the time I don't even know what day of the week it is.)

Talossa's Embassy in Ohio, formerly located at 508 East State Street, in Salem, Ohio, has moved! (To be honest, it wasn't much of an embassy, we never even got a Talossan flag installed. We promise to do better in the new location.) Nerdy Necessities, the game store that also operates as the embassy, has just moved down the street a few blocks. New address is 420 East State Street. If you happen to be in the area, you are welcome to visit (and hopefully not leave without buying something.) The new location sits above a place called "Kast Iron Soda Works", a soda pop saloon that makes many of its own products, and is across the street from an awesome record store (State Street Records). There's also a popular tattoo parlour next to the record store. And if you want something stronger than soda pop, there are several establishments offering a variety of alcoholic beverages just a short walk away. (Ricky's English Pub is my favorite. They have Guinness on tap and the food is generally pretty good.) Stop by sometime.
(And if you can't, you can still support a Talossan owned business! Nerdy Necessities has a website you can order stuff from.)

62RZ22: Con
62RZ23: Aus
62RZ24: Aus
Taiwos, Senator for Belacosta

Someone explain Brenier's crime to me like I was ten years old. He said he thought Lüc was cute? Is there more that I happened to miss?

XPB, we Belacostan Cjovani adopted bocce as our "official" subcultural sport...because a lot of prominent Belacostans are Italian, and also because bocce ball sets are easier to come by, and there are several local bocce courts we can play in. (Vitxalmour Conductour and I once visited a local park, with the intention of hiking thru the woods, enjoying nature...we found there was a bocce court on the premises! Luckily, I had my bocce ball set in the trunk of my car, so we played our first ever game on a proper bocce court.) (I won, lol.)
I've looked into pétanque because the balls are smaller and more portable. My bocce set is heavy and a pain in the butt to haul around.
Anyhow, we came up with some Talossan terminology for our bocce games. Here they are:
Baiça Françal - "French Kiss". Buci term. "Kissing the fanny", a bocce tradition believed to have originated in France's Savoy region, requires losing teams (who have failed to score a single point) to kiss an image of a woman's bare buttocks
Balineu  -  the pallino, the small ball in bocce
Bola da Buci  -  bocce ball 
Buci  -  bocce. Bocce was introduced to Cjováni culture by Taiwos, who once bought a set of bocce balls to try to find an outdoor activity to keep his grandkids occupied. The kids didn't care for it, so Taiwos lugged the set up to Conductour's house one day. After a few games, Taiwos and Conductour were hooked. Initially, they called the way they played bocce "bolextrema", or extreme bocce, for, unlike the well manicured outdoor bocce courts they had seen, they played in Conductour's hilly and overgrown backyard. They quickly formed A.B.B.A., which, as far as we know, is Talossas only regularly active sports league. Eventually, Taiwos acquired a book about bocce, which  lead him to scrap the term 'bolextrema'. "According to the book", Taiwos said, "what we'd been playing was not particularly extreme in the bocce world." 
Iral da buci  - bocce court.
L' cäps d'Umberto Granaglia  -  Awarded by ABBA to the winner of their annual Tournament of Waterloo, L'Cäps d'Umberto Granaglia is a collectible sports card bearing the likeness of Umberto Granaglia, who is widely considered to be the greatest buci player in that sport's history.
Rafà - buci term. A fast rolling shot intending to knock an opponent's bola away or to direct the balineu to a new position.
Reverse Hooligan  -  buci term. Falling on ones back when tossing a buci ball.
Triple Miestra  -  buci term. When one has three of their balls closest to the balineu.
These are all the terms related to bocce from our Cjovani lexicon. I doubt they will be helpful to you, but may encourage you.
Ignore the crickets. Go ahead and make pétanque the official leisure sport of Cezembre. In doing so, you will forge an alliance with the Belacostan Cjovani, who enjoy a similar sport.
In Talossa, it seems easier to just make something official by actually doing it regularly, than to make laws around it.

Quote from: King Txec on April 16, 2026, 07:49:30 PM

Quote from: Carteir Montagnhă on April 13, 2026, 09:46:43 PMhello everyone, lately, i haven't been really active or engaged with any of my fellow Talossans due to personal reasons.

today, i would like to know what has occurred, basically anything, any kind of event, so i can catch up with everybody else.

thank you!

I bet very few people will get the reference, but in the 70's there was a sitcom called "Welcome Back Kotter." The theme song from that show came to my mind on your return, so, "welcome back Carteir!"

- Txec R

I would hope there are more people who get the reference than you think...otherwise, we are OLD!
(One of my best finds as the founder of the Talossan Pannapictagraphist Society in recent times was a copy of DC Comics "Welcome Back Kotter" #2, found in a dollar bin.)
So, should we tease Carteir a lot because we got him on the spot?

I'm currently working 72 hours a week, with Sunday being my only day off, and I'm usually doing stuff that day (laundry, groceries...today I went and had my taxes done), so you shouldn't plan anything around my schedule, lol

Is this going to be made available to watch? I would like to have participated, but I was at work.

I'd love to do this! (I was addicted to the PlayStation hockey game for awhile.)

We had a Cajun food truck in town for a while. I talked to the owner, he was from New Orleans. I was pleased to find this place, they sold home made boudin, and had gumbo and Po' Boys. Unfortunately, they were expensive, and some of the dishes weren't very good. I would have figured a dude from New Orleans would make some good gumbo, but it was pretty bad. People in my town aren't familiar with Cajun foods (I've gotten weird looks and comments from the clerks at Walmart whenever I buy bags of crawfish), so this food truck didn't get much business and eventually shut down. The boudin was very good, tho.

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on March 21, 2026, 04:58:56 PM

Quote from: Iason Taiwos on March 21, 2026, 02:38:42 PMI gave this topic some more consideration, and decided fried chicken is actually my most beloved food.

An excellent choice, Iason. Do you have a favorite restaurant? I am partial to a place in the Louisville area called Indi's.

The best local fried chicken is from a place called Italo's. It's a locally owned business with a few locations in the area. Their chicken dinner is just a cardboard box of fried chicken with jo-Jo's and a side of cole slaw. When I lived in East Liverpool (Feiabalsa Oriental in Talossan), the local Italo's was within walking distance of my house. I was friends with the delivery girl, and sometimes she'd give me extra chicken for free.
Aside from Italo's, Popeyes is the best place. The chicken and biscuits are still good, but the sides are pretty bad. I dunno about nationally, but our local Popeyes doesn't sell dirty rice anymore, they have red beans and rice, and it's awful.
Best fried fish is from a place called Mark's Landing. It's near Vitxalmour Conductour's house. Every Friday they have an all-you-can-eat fish dinner, and it's superb. (My area in Ohio is pretty good for fried fish.) (For traveling Talossans, I live in Columbiana County, Ohio. It's mostly farmland with towns scattered here and there. The local cuisine is improving since we got an influx of immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico. Highly recommend a place called Rancho Viejo, none of the staff speak English, but the food is cheap and fantastic. Best tacos I've ever had.)

Quote from: Barclamïu da Miéletz on March 21, 2026, 12:40:31 PMAlso took a look at the website and I can say that in my opinion their products look appalling.

😂 Agreed. But this is the brand that's available everywhere around here.
Until today, I also added an "s" to pluralize "Pączki". But am I pronouncing it properly? Around here we say it like "punch-key". (I love pączki, but you can only get them certain times of the year. I think it revolves around some religious holiday.)
AD, if you can find them, the frozen bags of crawfish are acceptable. The ones from Louisiana tend to be better. Walmart used to sell ones that were products of China, Spain, and Egypt. Like I said, these things are precooked and seasoned, and sometimes the non-Louisiana brands had a funky seasoning on them.
I gave this topic some more consideration, and decided fried chicken is actually my most beloved food. I am ashamed to admit that I've still never had Barberton chicken, which is a popular style of fried chicken in these parts (it's of Serbian origin.)

Quote from: Barclamïu da Miéletz on March 21, 2026, 08:23:24 AM

Quote from: Moinul Moin on March 21, 2026, 07:27:07 AMPierogies

I just said that pierogi is already the plural... sad.

https://www.mrstspierogies.com/
Thank you for informing us about this, but I would imagine the majority of people in my region don't know that. Even a company that makes them calls them pierogies.

Www.anley.com
My Talossan flag was one I ordered off eBay for maybe $15. It was from some Chinese company. (Just type in "Micronation flag" on eBay, you'll find it.) It's hanging on my wall now, and is okay, I guess. A little flimsy. 
Vitxalmour Conductour designed a flag for our Cjovani subculture. If I could figure out how to share pictures on here, I'd show you. Anyhow, I found this Anley flag making company. I uploaded a picture of our Cjovani flag to them...in a couple of weeks, they sent me the flag. (It was like $26.)
This is a nice flag. Sturdy and way better quality than the Chinese Talossan flag. Unlike the Chinese flag, I'd feel confident that I could stick this flag outside, and it could withstand the weather for a few years.
Just throwing this out there as a suggestion for Talossans wanting a decent quality flag.

The region of Ohio I live in has a large population of Polish descendants, and a lot of Polish foods are commonplace around here. I was a dumb hick from southeast Texas when I first moved up here; I had never heard of pierogis. I remember the first time I heard the word kielbasa, I had no idea what it was. "It's a sausage", a pal told me. I thought he was saying "Kill Bossy" (Bossy being a cow's name in my mind), and I thought that was a horrible name for a sausage. (Yeah, I was pretty dumb back then.)
As for pierogis, I still don't particularly like them, but my wife sometimes makes them, and they're okay. She mainly makes the potato ones. I do like Kill Bossy, tho.
I have never lost my love for the food I grew up on in Texas, most of which is impossible to find in Ohio. My local Walmart actually sells crawfish, (frozen, pre-seasoned and cooked), and while not as good as what you'd get at a live crawfish boil, it's okay. A few local Chinese restaurants serve crawfish, but advertise them as "baby lobsters". I could have live crawfish shipped to me from Louisiana, but it's too expensive.
Anyhow, my beloved food? Boudin. In Texas, we spell it boudain for some reason. It's a type of sausage made with rice. I did order some of that from a place in Louisiana. I contemplated getting a meat grinder/sausage stuffer, and trying to make my own. A boudin link for breakfast is a thing of joy, washed down with some Cafe du Monde coffee.

62RZ14: Per
62RZ15: Per
62RZ16: Austaneu
62RZ17: Per
62RZ18: Per
62RZ19: Per
62RZ20: Austaneu
62RZ21: Austaneu

RZ06 CONTRA
RZ07 PER
RZ08 PER
RZ09 PER
RZ10 PER
RZ11 PER
RZ12 ABSTAIN
RZ13 PER

Mick