I found particularly haunting the parallel to an old Arthur C Clarke series of shorts called 'Tales of the White Hart', a bar where a very Augustus-esque fellow, 'Harry Purvis', a little less amoral but still amoral, telling a good tale. Almost all of the tales end in the impossible invention discovered in the course of the story being destroyed, convenient to the continuity world we know, as is the manner of all such pub tales ....
Except for one, 'Patent Pending', which ends in the terrible applications of the brainwave device extant, exploited, and that things will change greatly, terribly, for the sake of a dollar.
Great story--horrific and hilarious (loved the line, "Sure your arms and legs will grow back, just give it time...and drink more whisky...").
"How many children does your sister have?"
"... Some"
I do agree that the ending here doesn't quite match the horror of the last one, because here the main narrator (not the guy telling the story, the other guy...bah you know what I mean) actually gets what's so horrible, whereas the last guy was completely oblivious and actually thought from that odd ghost story that the Irish were going to destroy God's Country.
As an Irishman myself, the only thing better than the fundamentally hilarious accents was the concept of a potato homunculi.
Having had to do no small amount of reading about abolitionist culture for various history degrees, I have to say the singing would have kept me gleefully sane after many a midnight's study.
Still not a bad story at all. I hope more tales of these magnificant, racist bastards are to come in the future.
Most definitely!
Reminds me of this oddly-encountered fellow:
http://flannelcrat.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/twitter-fitzwilly-flannelcat-daftwager-von-quatloo-the-third/Seems mad, quite mad.