We bought “Excalibur” on the internet. Here’s what happened.

We’ll admit, we were a little skeptical when we saw the legendary sword Excalibur offered on the internet for only $17,000. But we went ahead and placed our order so we could test it and maybe use it to become king of ancient England.
 
Our first attempt at buying it didn’t turn out well, as the seller took our money and explained that the sword was stuck in a stone in Denmark and that we would need to extract it ourselves. After a horrible journey to a public housing project in Copenhagen, we returned home with nothing.
 
Months passed before we saw another offer for the heralded sword online. This time the price was much more believable at a hundred and fifty grand, and although we did question how the weapon wound up in Nigeria, we were pleased when it arrived at our offices six months later with a note that read: “Dear sirs and/or madams. This is Excalibur. Enjoy the sword.” This sounded official enough, almost as if written by an Arthurian knight? Who else calls people sir and madam, right?
 
Anyway. We tested the sword and here’s what we found:
 
1. It’s illegal to bring it into public spaces and swing it around. Apparently, this goes for all swords, but we found that Excalibur drew special attention from mall patrons and water park goers. We wondered if their screams and panic had to do with the majestic powers emanating from the sword.
  
2. You do not need to be “pure of heart” to wield Excalibur. We tested this by giving the weapon to “Dirty” James, an intern of ours known for having sex with fruit and cheating on intern applications. He had no problem handling the sword and even ran through a water park swinging it around and yelling, “Hey, motherfuckers, bow before my sword!” 

3. Excalibur is not recommended for food preparation unless you like your food “before people knew about germs” style. We tried to cut up food and it was really unsanitary and hard to use, especially chopping onions and smaller vegetables. Rust fell off it pretty regularly and gave our food a “mediaeval” taste that wasn’t for everyone, although Dirty James didn’t complain at all. 

4. Excalibur doesn’t talk. We couldn’t remember if Excalibur was supposed to speak, so we spent a lot of time asking it things. It didn’t answer.  

5. Excalibur can summon Merlin. We think. Some guy who looked really old like maybe he used to be a magician approached us and said it was because of the sword. Was it Merlin? Probably. 

6. Excalibur doesn’t seem to unite people. We found the sword had more of a “Lord of the Rings” thing going because everyone was always arguing about who could use it next or keep it at their apartment. It made people really aggressive too, especially after drinking all night and then taking it out on the streets to confront garbage collectors. We feel strongly that the power of Excalibur needs to be carefully monitored.
 
7. Conclusion: We probably own the actual sword from Arthurian Legend. And at a total cost of one hundred and sixty-seven thousand (plus airfare, food, hotels, and some other stuff) we think we came away with the bargain of the millennium. We haven’t been able to harness all its powers, but feel strongly that if we do, we will finally bring together all people of America for a final battle against evil, although that sounds like it would completely suck. Most likely, we will put the sword in a box or let Dirty James hang it in his bedroom next to his liquor bottles so that he can make double entendre dick jokes about it (“Can you wield my sword? Oh, I meant this sword!”) when he brings girls back there.