Mr Jones Mr Jones Calling Mr Jones Mr Jones Mr Jones Wake up Now

e

This happened many years ago, when I was a schoolboy. I don’t recall the year, but I must have been in seventh or eighth grade, so I’d have been twelve or thirteen years old.

We had this English teacher, a blond man of Welsh extraction by the name of Jones. Mr Jones was quite a young man, I guess, certainly younger than I am now, but he seemed a terrifying authority figure to us pre-teenagers. I remember him for several reasons, all out of the ordinary...

One time, Jones had asked us to write an essay as homework. The essay was to be on a chemistry diagram which was, for some unaccountable reason, in our English textbook. The experiment was a fairly straightforward one, something we were familiar with, so it wasn’t much of a job to write the essay, and I wrote it that night in my exercise book. Jones had told us to bring the essay two days later – and I’d have done that. Only, I forgot. Yes, I forgot to put the exercise book in my satchel.

I still remember that Jones was in a properly foul mood that day. “Woe betide anyone,” he declared on stepping into the classroom, and in exactly those words, “who hasn’t brought the essay with them.” As I said, we were all terrified of this guy. Anyway, he then glared around the room and said, “Stand up whoever hasn’t brought the essay.” A scattering of people actually stood, I not so brave as to be among them. Jones stared at them, and just when we were all expecting him to call down the fires of heaven on their heads, he just said, quietly, “OK, bring the essay next time.” Then he turned to the rest of us. “You,” and he was pointing right at...me!!...”yes, you. Am I cockeyed or something? Come up here and read your essay.”

Now I may not be a quick thinker most of the time, but on this occasion I acted with commendable efficiency. I got out an exercise book from my bag at random, walked up to the front of the class, opened a page at random, and began “reading” the essay out loud (making it up as I went along, of course – remember that the experiment was nothing unknown to us). And I must say i did it rather well too. I was terrified that Jones would ask for the book at the end of it, but all he did was glare around at the class. “See,” he said. “That’s the way you should write an essay!”

And then the bell rang for the next period. You should have heard my sigh of relief.

This particular episode had a sequel. For Jones’ next class, of course, everyone made perfectly sure to bring their essays, and Jones took them for correction. He called me over to his desk. “Somehow,” he muttered, as he went over my effort with a red pen, “it doesn’t read quite as well on the page as when you read it out to the class...”

If he only knew.

On another occasion we were doing a story from the English textbook, which was about an ancient mammal being sassy to a dinosaur and informing it that it would soon be extinct. I don’t remember much of the story now except the splendid phrase “Jehovah’s jejune juvenilia,” but at a certain point there was the word “mastodon.”

Jones looked around the class and defined to us just what a mastodon might be. “It’s an animal with horns on its nose,” he declared. “A dinosaur, which gave rise to the rhinoceros.”

To this day, when I think of his statement, my mind boggles. All right, I accept science wasn’t Jones’ thing, but if you don’t know something, “keep your trap shut” (a favourite Jonesism) about it until you do find something out. I knew right then that

1.    A mastodon is a member of one of the two branches of the elephant family, the other being the mammoth;
2.    The dinosaur he was talking about was the Triceratops or one of the other species of horned dinosaurs, like Styracosaurus; and
3.    Dinosaurs didn’t, for Darwin’s sake, give rise to any damned species of rhino. It’s just a case of evolving to fit a particular ecological niche.

Now how do you go about contradicting a teacher you’re terrified of, and when the mess he’s created is so convoluted as to defy disentanglement, and he’s moved on far beyond anyway long before you’ve managed to channel your outrage into a coherent argument?

If to this day any of my then classmates thinks a rhino is an archaic elephant’s descendant, Mr Jones is to blame.

And then there was the time Jones asked us to write a story as homework. The only criterion was that it should be about a crime; length, style and content were up to us. My own not particularly distinguished effort revolved around a pair of crooks, a male and a female, who used to break into people’s houses on false pretences and steal things. Finally they were arrested by a cop who caught them in the act of...

Now at this point I stopped.

You see, there was a fancy word I was trying to think of, a synonym for burglary. The problem was that the word had for the moment totally slipped my mind, and – try as I might – it was slipping further and further away. I didn’t possess a thesaurus (hell, I didn’t know what a thesaurus was), so I couldn’t open it and discover that the word I wanted was larceny. Another word finally came to mind, a nice word, whose meaning I wasn’t quite sure of, but which I thought was the right one (I’ll tell you in a minute which word it was). The cop caught them in the act of...

I put my pen on the paper to write the word and hesitated. After all, I wasn’t quite, one hundred per cent, sure. But still...

I thought and thought about it and finally chickened out, and wrote that the couple were arrested for burglary, and submitted the story, still wishing I had the moral courage to submit the word I’d wanted.

A day or so later I found a dictionary. I decided to confirm that I was right and the word was in fact a synonym for burglary. I opened it to the A’s, found the correct page, and ran my finger down the column of words until I found it. There it was, in bold type:

Adultery. 

The Bushbunker: The American Revolution of 2008

From April 2007:

(I began writing this one this morning as a spoof meant as a gift for Malcolm. Somewhere along the way it became a more serious essay. I don't actually think it's going to happen, of course, but one can always hope.)

Time: the not too distant future. Oh, say…October 2008. That seems reasonable.

Background information: The US presidential elections of November are due, but the political scene is one of confusion. The Republicans and their corporate backers are desperate to get – say – Rudi Guiliani elected. The Democrats are a divided house, but with a wafer thin majority in the public opinion polls. The very public infighting between Barack Obama and Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton has harmed the Democratic cause, as has the refusal to impeach Bush and Cheney, the continued support to “Israel” right up to, during, and through the Great Gaza Genocide of December 2007. The defeat in Iraq and the Democratic refusal to break ranks in any meaningful way with the neocons on terminating that conflict has also eaten into Democratic votes. But all that this has meant is that, because there is no real third party candidate, people will not vote rather than vote for either party. Although the Democratic votes have plummeted, the Republicans have not gained; and the Democrats still hold a slim lead. And Hilary Clinton has been forced to promise the electorate that if voted to power she will crack down on political corruption, the lobbies, and the military industrial complex, clean up the environment, and withdraw troops from the global US jehad against Islam.

The big corporations are worried. Very, very worried.

Recent history: Recent events have not favoured the Republicans. Domestically, the crime wave is shooting up and up, the job market is imploding, food prices climb through the roof as meat and maize are diverted to produce “bio-fuels” for SUV owners, and parents battle school boards that aggressively push a fundamentalist Christian religious agenda. There are credible rumours that the draft will be reintroduced to keep the lid on social discontent. As the housing crisis continues, thousands of formerly relatively well off Americans suddenly find themselves on the street, homeless and with no social support.

Internationally: The most awaited event of the Bush presidency’s final two years, the attack on Iran, was a disaster. Massive casualties followed the sinking of several US carriers by Iranian anti-ship missiles provided by Russia. Since the land forces were too overstretched and incapable of invading Iran, only naval and air resources could be used for the attack. They were far from enough, even with the liberal use of nuclear warheads. This use of nuclear weapons against Iran has not damaged that country totally beyond recovery but has damaged the US so much diplomatically that most of the world’s governments no longer dare, for fear of their own people’s wrath, to maintain close relations with the US. Russia, infuriated by overt American attempts to contain, destabilise and impoverish it, is now openly supplying weapons to anyone with a grudge against theUS. China has – seeing the way the wind is blowing – pulled most of its investments out of the American market, and is, more quietly, doing the same.

Following the defeat, once again, of its renewed 2007 summer invasion of Lebanon, “Israel” – unsure of the continued backing of its embattled American master – had tried to gather its people behind it by a massive and sustained offensive against Gaza which ended in December in what came to be known as the Great Gaza Genocide. In the space of four days, in the full glare of the international media, and under direct orders of the new “Premier” Binyamin Netanyahu, the “Israelis”, using aircraft, tanks, and artillery, killed by conservative estimates three hundred and fifty thousand unarmed Palestinian men, women and children, on the premise of “fighting Hamas”. At least half a million more were forcibly deported to the Sinai peninsula. Gaza city was a mass of smouldering ruins. Netanyahu defended his armed forces’ actions by claiming that the people had been given “fair warning” – an hour – to leave the city and that anyone remaining after that time was fair game. It backfired spectacularly. Not even the Americans could protect “Israel” against the backlash. Even India’s pliant pro-Zionist government collapsed after its Left allies withdrew support over the Congress regime’s refusal to break off diplomatic relations with the “Israelis”. A new left wing coalition was stitched together which immediately repudiated the previous pro-American/Zionist government’s foreign policy completely. The same thing has been happening everywhere. New governments in centralEurope have universally demanded the immediate withdrawal of allUS forces based on their territory. France’s unexpectedly left wing new government has broken off diplomatic relations with the US and “Israel”. The floodgates are creaking.

In Iraq, the last few American troops, having suffered about ten thousand dead, are now set to leave. They control nothing any longer, not even the approaches to their own bases, and have to be helicoptered out because they no longer can venture outside. Even the helicopters are shot down every day as civil war rages all around. In the heart of the erstwhile Green Zone, the last American diplomats are fending off teary eyed appeals from Nouri al-Maliki and his former ministers for asylum to preserve their skins. The diplomats are to be evacuated in short order. They will take no Arabs with them.

In Afghanistan, a resurgent Taliban now surround Kabul. With the fall of the Bagram airbase, the NATO troops remaining in the capital are trapped. The Afghan army has gone over to the Taliban side, lock, stock, and barrel. Hamid Karzai – unable to flee – has been killed by his American bodyguards before he can sign an unconditional surrender. The NATO commanders are negotiating with the Taliban for safe passage of their trapped forces in return for recognition and reconstruction aid.

Defeat everywhere.

Frustrated at home and stymied overseas, Bush and his neocons have decided on a last minute gamble to snatch at least an electoral victory from the ashes of defeat.

After a prearranged “provocation”, they are going to launch a total war against all the major nations of West Asia, bar “Israel”. The first target will be Syria, and then, Saudi Arabia, whose new monarch is not deemed friendly. North Korea has been considered, but with its potent military arsenal and its capacity to wreak destruction on the puppet states of Japan, South Korea and “Taiwan”, it was thought better left for a later assault.

Genesis of the revolution: The trigger that set off the revolution cannot be isolated to any particular factor. Certainly, the domestic situation of disaffection with the collapsing economy, all round corruption, skyrocketing prices, food shortages (something hitherto almost unknown in the US) and burgeoning crime, has a major role to play. However, it is thought that the final precipitating factor was the planned invasion of Syria. It would never have been easy to justify invading Syria. The defeat in Iraq was so obvious it could no longer be propagandised away, though Afghanistan could be passed off as a NATO defeat, not an American one. The nuking of Iran could not hide the fact that the Iranian government not only survived but had been leased a few nuclear warheads by Russia to deter further attacks. The Jewish Lobby no longer had the power it once wielded after the Great Gaza Genocide, and “Israel” was a totally isolated international pariah. The “defence” of “Israel” was no longer an excuse on which an invasion could be launched. Some atrocity was needed, something so major indeed that the American people would be forced to rally to the flag. Something as much bigger than 9/11 as 9/11 was bigger than Tonkin Bay.

Accordingly, it was decided to sacrifice an American city; to cremate it utterly, to shock the world into silent acquiescence if not enthusiastic approval of “retaliatory” attacks. What city? They needed some place well enough known to arouse the proper pitch of shock and horror.Little Rock, Arkansas, would not do.

They chose San Francisco.

Now it is virtually certain that, had the city of San Francisco actually been destroyed as planned, there would never have had been an American revolution. Unfortunately, however, the NSA employee actually detailed with driving the truck borne nuclear bomb into San Francisco, arming it, and leaving, did no such thing. Instead, he went to the TV networks, called them all together for the scoop of all time, and broke the news. By the time he had been shot dead by snipers from a SWAT team he had even handed over, not just the bomb, but some recordings he had illegally made proving his contentions. It was then that the anger exploded.

The Bush administration denied it, of course. The bomb mysteriously “disappeared” for a crucial half an hour; when recovered, it was found to be a crude dynamite device, easily defused, most likely the work of a crank. The recordings were not so easily explained away, nor was the murder of the whistle blower, seen live on national television, for which the killers were never apprehended. Then the Bush administration declared that, notwithstanding, the invasion of Syriawas now an imperative, since “terrorists” now had got the idea that American cities could be destroyed by bombs in trucks and they had to be destroyed before they could carry their intentions out.

This was met by an American people who were no longer the brainwashed sludge of 2001 and 2003. Already badly hit by military defeat and isolation abroad, unemployment and inflation at home, and deeply worried about the future, they rise in mass protest. Anti-war protestors swamp the cities. They are rapidly joined by allied groups disaffected with the Bush regime’s policies: the NAACP, gay power groups, anti-draft organisations (among whom mothers’ organisations are prominent), minorities (excluding Americans of Indian origin, who stick fast to Bush), anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, and environmentalists. Meanwhile, senior army and Marine commanders say unequivocally that they will refuse to obey orders if forced to attack Syria or any other nation that has not attacked the US. The Democratic Party is pushed into an anti-Bush stance by its own power base; and things are made a bit easier for it by the eclipse, the total collapse, of the Jewish Lobby. The Bush regime responds by mass arrests of Democratic politicians including Denis Kucinic, Al Gore, Barack Obama, and even Jimmy Carter. Hilary Clinton goes into hiding. Joe Lieberman, denouncing the Democratic Party as “treasonable”, joins the Republicans – but a significant section of the Republicans is now in revolt too.

It is at this moment that a massive rally is planned for Washington. Led, among others, by Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, it says it will stay in place until it has forced the resignations of Bush and Cheney and their “cabal of evil” and the installation of a non-partisan interim administration which will oversee the elections.

This announcement can be said to be the point at which the Revolution can be said to have begun.

Events of the Revolution: Significant events can be best discussed on a day-to-day basis.

3 October: The rally is announced for the 10^th. It is immediately banned by the Department for Homeland Security as a “treasonable step”. The organisers say they will go ahead anyway, “with renewed vigour”, as Cindy Sheehan puts it in a TV interview. Orders to the TV station not to air that interview are ignored.

6 October: Thousands of protestors are already flooding towardsWashington, ready to camp out if necessary, bringing tents and even prefabricated huts with them. Some roads are ordered closed off to traffic. But a call by the organisers for local Washington residents to rise in support brings a massive response; spontaneous pro-rally demonstrations break out all over Washington. Barricades are physically removed. Police open fire and kill eight people at various points in the city.

10 October: The National Guard is called out. All roads out of the city are – theoretically – blocked off. But the demonstrations now ravaging every neighbourhood and the protestors now arriving cannot both be contained; and more and more protestors enter the city. Local right wing gangs are hastily armed and let loose on them, but the protestors are also not all unarmed, and there is enough bloodshed that the goons withdraw.

Dick Cheney appears on television claiming that “The President is going to be unswerving in his determination to defeat the treasonous rabble who want to destroy our country.” He announces that there is no basis to the rumour that the draft is being reintroduced and asks that the anti-conscription segment among the protestors go home. His speech has no effect; the protestors have smelt blood.

11 October: Washington is crammed. The demonstrators are everywhere – all roads are jammed with them, and from the poorer sections of the city its black inhabitants also pour out in support. The police can no longer beat the mass of people back. The people do not simply, as before, march and disperse. They arrive, set up camp, and vow to stay until the Bush regime is gone. The parks, and even the front gardens of many homes, are full of people, pitching tents, shouting slogans, and coming, coming, coming.

So many are the arrivals that even the FOX network stops pretending it is a paltry few “anti-American traitors” and concedes that a massive anti-government demonstration is taking place.

Persistent rumours that Bush is going to speak on television are borne out when he gives a speech from the Oval Office in the evening. In it he says that he, as a “war president” has the right to “defeat and resist the demon…demonstrat…demonstrationisers” and with the breakdown in civil authority, he, therefore, was taking over the country’s administration, indefinitely postponing the November elections, and temporarily banning the “Democrat Party”. He warns of “smoking the ringleaders out of their holes” should they not immediately disperse.

His speech raises his opponents’ spirits instantly.

12 October: Bush telephones the Pentagon and orders the US Army to fight its way into the capital, restore authority, and forcibly evict all the protestors, Washingtoners and outsiders both. General Peter Pace, Army commander, agrees, but his subordinates refuse point blank to pass on the orders. Railing against “faggots and atheists who made it to the army’s upper ranks”, Pace resigns.

By evening, by popular military acclaim, General Eric Shineseki comes out of retirement and “with great personal reluctance” re-assumes command of the Army in “these difficult times”. The Pentagon recognises the appointment, but the White House repudiates it.

On the approaches to Washington, a bus full of unarmed protestors is fired on by National Guard troops who claim they were shooting in self defence. More than twenty are killed. Media on the scene catch National Guard troops planting weapons in the gutted bus, and manage to smuggle out the images. By evening these scenes are going out to the world from New York, which has by now become the centre of the anti-Bush movement.

This evening of 12^th October, demonstrators fill Pennsylvania Avenue, physically break down barriers, and are at the gates of the White House. Bush’s security men set up machine gun nests on the White House lawns.

13 October: Bush, unable to trust the Army, turns to the Marine Corps, but to no avail. The Marines – like the Army – refuse to fight the people. After the previous day’s massacre of the bus-borne protestors, the National Guard announces that while its troops will continue to provide security, they will no longer block people from entering the city and will have no part of the anti-demonstration campaign. Bush sacks the National Guard commander by telephone; his subordinate refuses to accept charge.

Small, “spontaneous,” pro-Bush demonstrations break out all over the Bible Belt, and these get wide coverage in the media. Ann Coulter rushes from “protest” to “protest”, accompanied by the likes of Sean Hannity and Michael Ledeen, delivering flaming pro-Bush rhetoric. It has no effect whatever so far as the situation in Washington is concerned.

In an emergency session, the US Supreme Court declares the protests “totally illegal and an infringement on the US Constitution”. But the neocon-appointed, conservative-packed Supreme Court has so little credibility the protest organisers do not even bother to respond.

14 October: Food supplies are running short in Washington. FromNew York a major truck convoy is intercepted on Bush’s orders. It is allowed to proceed only when it gives assurances the food will only be distributed to “legitimate residents of Washington DC”. When it reaches Washington, however, its National Guard escorts stand aside and watch as the food is handed out to all comers. The protestors set up distribution centres at nodal points so that there is equitable food distribution. By now some of the protestors have gone home, but with more arriving, there is a constant number present. Sheehan and other organisers set up a rota; if the Bush regime continues to hold out, they will set up a regular system of tours of duty. They issue a statement that Bush and his cronies will be handed over, if captured, to an international war crimes tribunal.

In “blue state liberal hotbeds,” the US government has broken down completely, its orders are ignored, and in most areas local councils take up administration in their own hands. In red states, anti-Bush protests are making themselves felt as well; and for the first time, local authorities stand aside and let them proceed. Most of them are looking uneasily over their shoulders at what is going on inWashington. For the first time, the frontiers of faith are shaking.

Most Christian churches, except the extreme fringe of Rapture Righters, declare that they have no position in the current crisis. They ask their faithful to follow their consciences. A rumour that the Vaticanhas called for Bush’s immediate resignation is denied by the office of Pope Clement.

This is also the day that the Labour government of Britain, emasculated by Blair and tottering under Gordon Brown, and facing its own protests over its pro-US attitude, bows to the inevitable and resigns. The new Liberal government takes over and announces that it will make a common future with Europe outside the shadow of theUS. As a first act, it formally asks for an immediate withdrawal of allUS forces stationed in Britain, to be completed within six months. The European Union calls on the US to “rejoin the comity of civilised nations” by declaring an interim government.

15 October: The pivotal day of the Revolution. Morning: Bush and his most trusted men hold an emergency conference in the Oval Office. Karl Rove, Cheney, Richard Perle, and John Bolton are present. Condoleeza Rice is not invited. The time for token blacks who can’t be relied on is past.

The meeting is interrupted by an emergency alert and everyone is quickly evacuated to an “undisclosed location” - a bunker under the White House lawns. Moments later, a single engined Cessna crashes into the West Wing, partially demolishing it. All four aboard are killed, as are two on the ground. It is immediately declared to be a kamikaze suicide attack by terrorists among the protestors. What it was actually was an attempt to set down a small group of protestors on the White House lawn, bypassing the outer security rings, which went wrong when the pilot – under fire from the ground and caught in a crosswind - hit the White House instead. The West Wing catches fire. Bush and his acolytes continue their meeting down in the bunker. Excerpts:

BUSH: Them terrorists are a-getting too much to bear.

CHENEY: We are simply not being tough enough. On them or the media. The media is an enemy, you know, Junior. When we were winnin’ in Iraq, they were underminin’ us and saying we all were losing. We have to crack down on them.

ROVE: Damned liberal scum. Faggots and suchlike. We shoulda shot them all much earlier. I’ve always said so. They stabbed us in the back right from the beginning.

BUSH: This is a Christian nation and I’m God’s anointed. So these – this Michael Moore an suchlike – they’re on Satan’s side.

BOLTON: We have the corporates on our side, but we can’t rely on anyone else.

PERLE: What can they do right now? Precious little. Even if they sack people wholesale – I don’t know if you’ve noticed – but this demonstration thing has gathered a momentum, unless we break it up by force we aren’t going to win.

BUSH: What force? Who? That Jap bastard Shineseki won’t obey orders no more.

PERLE: We do have a private army. A very loyal private army.

CHENEY, ROVE and BOLTON (together): Blackwater.

BUSH (relieved): Well, then, get ‘em moving. Ask them to come in and clean up this mess!

CHENEY: No sooner said than done, Junior.

What happened next?: Frankly, I don’t know. Did Blackwater’s mercenaries come in, guns blazing? Did the National Guard fight them? Did the Army fight them? Did everyone just stand aside and let them destroy the demonstrators? I leave it to the reader – but with the addition of a quote attributed to Bush:

As massed protestors broke down the gates and poured onto the White House lawns, as the defenders put down their guns and walked away, as sledgehammers began smashing away at the doors of his bunker, Bush is supposed to have wailed:

“A helicopter, a helicopter, my kingdom for a helicopter!”

It may be an apocryphal urban myth of course.

Chronicles Of The Lord

(From 2007)

e

I, Tony XXIII, First Assistant to Pope Dick XV, Most High Priest and Vicar on Earth of His Eternal Holiness Lord Bush the Leader, am writing these words as a personal memorandum and as a draft for the suggestions I must tender at council for the most urgent and dramatic policy changes we must make if we are not in short order to face problems amounting to utter disaster.

Since no one else will, or is intended to, read these lines there is no reason to hold back or prevaricate in the manner we are taught to follow in theological training.

Before discussing the problems we are, if I am not mistaken, going to face in very short order, and possible solutions thereof, it is useful – nay, essential – that the history of our Divine Movement, so far as it is known, be considered, because there lie the roots of both problem and deliverance.

Let us admit, straight away, that we do not know the exact date when the Divine Movement was founded. Although for the purpose of theology we insist that it was following hard on the events of the life of the Precursor Prophet Jesus, who anointed Our Lord Bush the Leader with his own hands, and that this was some four thousand years after the creation of the world, that is only a fiction for the indoctrination of the masses. For, the Church of the Movement must never be seen as not to know. The Lord himself made this stipulation: that we should never show that we do not know. We – on the other hand – should always show that we know better. For the general public, the Church must beinfallible.

In reality, we know far less than we know that we do not know.

For example, though doctrine informs us that the world was created four thousand years before the Precursor Prophet, there is no other reason to believe that. Indeed, Brother Eric, the late Brother Eric, came to me once with what he claimed was hard evidence that the world was very much older than that – that he had found evidence not only that this could be proved, but that our forefathers had held this as common knowledge. I ascertained from Brother Eric that he had discussed this with no one else, and then had him destroyed at the stake as a dangerous lunatic. I knew he was no lunatic, of course; but such things are necessary if the Church is to survive.

There are, though, persistent whispers that the Precursor Prophet and Our Lord never actually met; that several hundred, perhaps even thousands, of years separated them; that – I shudder to think of it! – that Our Lord only imagined that he was anointed by the Precursor. Indeed there are many whispers that the Precursor may never, indeed, have had a corporeal existence. These rumours must be tracked down and the rumour-mongers ruthlessly destroyed, more so indeed, because I have an idea they may just be telling the truth.

Be that as it may, we do know, for a certainty, that Our Lord existed. We know he had a Spouse – our Lady Laura. However, we know nothing about her at all. She seems to have been a nonentity. We do, however, know something about his Blessed Parents. His father was the High Lord before him (there are reports that there was an interregnum while some fornicating interloper held the throne a few years before the Holy Family reclaimed it) – his name was the same as that of Our Lord, and he may be said to have blazed the trail for Our Lord to follow, in the Holy Struggle against the land of …but I am getting ahead of myself. Be it sufficient to say that the elder Lord, although Blessed, had done something that made him displeasing to Our Lord. It seems to have been something to do with starting something that was not finished, so Our Lord accused him of pusillanimity. This is why we call Our Lord’s Blessed Father by the epithet Lord Bush the Lesser.

Of Our Lord’s Blessed Mother we know a little; she was called Barbara the Beautiful. The sobriquet referred not to her looks, of which we know not very much, but to her mind, which was beautiful indeed. In those days they had instruments which could display images throughout the land. These instruments, called Televisions, were later suppressed during the reign of Pope Karl II because of the misuse they offered themselves to at the hands of heretics and deniers of the Divine Movement. However, in the days of which I speak, the Lord had made very effective use of these instruments for his own Divine Purpose. This purpose included a certain amount of prevarication (which is why heretics refer to Our Lord as Bush the Liar) and ended in Barbara the Beautiful speaking out on Television about the Beauty of her mind, which should not be disturbed by ugly images from the Divine Conflict her Son was about to begin.

This Divine Conflict was the defining action of Our Lord’s career. He had done many other things to forward his Divine Agenda before; and when certain trolls from a hell called Terror came across the seas and struck on his doorstep, he declared that Terror must vanish from this world. Of course this was not just a show of words, and therein lies his greatness; he followed Terror to its lair and destroyed it. He earned the title of the Leader.

Or so we are told.

Of course there are whispers from the same people as those who call Our Lord “the Liar” that Terror was not affected; that greater Terror was let loose on the world; and that – even! – the original attack on Our Lord’s doorstep was carried out with the connivance, if not actual involvement, of Our Lord himself. But followers of Evil will say anything.

Be that as it may, Our Lord then went to cleanse the world of the terrible happenings at a place called Sodom. We are not sure of whether thisSodom was a place or a person; there are reasons to think both; but in any case, what we do know is that Sodom allowed homosexuals to run wild and create obscenities and that there were something called W Em Dees involved. W is of course the Holy Letter, the letter we no longer allow to be pronounced; it is reserved as an alternative name for Our Lord himself. We do not know what these W Em Dees were. Possibly they were doctors for Our Lord; “spin doctors” as they used to call them, because Em Dees referred to doctors. And no account of Our Lord’s life is complete without some reference to these “spin doctors”.

In any event, Sodom was attacked and destroyed, something Lord Bush the Lesser had not completed. But Evil rose anew from the landof Sodom; while Our Lord wanted Holy Oil to anoint his Divine Mission from those lands, Sodomites and Terrorists fought back against his Holy Armies. Finally Our Lord let loose his ultimate weapon, someone called the Sarge. Who this was we do not know, but apparently the Sarge chose victory while Our Lord’s opponents were choosing defeat. Also we do not know about the Sarge’s actual effect on the War Against Sodomites and Terrorists, but it is likely that he did not prevail. However, the Sarge did allow Our Lord to impose his agenda on his own domestic audience, for whom he was still High Lord.

One must understand that in those days there was no world state controlled by the Movement’s Church – Our Lord was High Lord of a land called Amrikka. Amrikka was a land where not everyone followed Our Lord; and many of them were turning heretical at the time of the Sarge’s attack on Sodomites and Terrorists. This was the time that Our Lord used many things to impose his Divine Will on the land. He located the Centre of All Evil in the world in a land called Eye Ran, which was the Eye of Satan – Satan being the Devil who was crushed and destroyed by Our Lord – destroyed, yea, over and over again. He therefore – with the help of a mysterious empire called Zai-on and the help of my first predecessor as First Assistant, Tony I – invaded thatland of Eye Ran and – so far as we know – was planning to invade other heretical lands like Chai-na and Rus.

He, it seems, used these wars to put the people of Amrikka into line. He cut their rights to defy him, but let them keep what they really needed. Which was their individual freedom. The most important of those freedoms was, naturally, the freedom to own and use guns. It may be odd to think of it today, but in those days every person was notresponsible for his own security and guns were not compulsorily owned by everyone. Our Lord cleansed the people of softening, unmanning security provided by state agencies and taught them to be individualistic defenders of their right to bear arms – and to keep their mouth shut about their thoughts. He made them true he-men again.

It is known that at the time there were those opponents of Our Lord who wished to give him a peach. A peach was some kind of fruit. One really does not know why giving one a peach would be something done to insult or harm the person, but there can be no other connotation of the word – impeach – that makes sense. Naturally, the peach was banned and eradicated under the inspired papacy of Donald III so there can never be such an insult offered to Our Lord again.

Of course, today, we all bear guns as constantly as we wear clothing and we are never – never! – away from our guns further than we can reach. Also we have virtually eradicated those evil “police” agencies whose function now is only to hunt down and destroy dissenters, abortionists, and homosexuals. That is how the Lord wanted it.

This is how Our Lord united the people and later, this led them to take over, subdue and then rule over the decadent, peace loving world. All this should be remembered.

Of course, I have not mentioned the main circumstance that made this conquest possible – the sudden warming of the planet brought about by Our Lord, which brought fire, famine, flood and disaster on the impious and the unbelieving. This created so much chaos and so much infighting that Our Lord’s message took over the world with not too many years gone.

But that brings us to our current situation.

Today, the world has been cleansed by Our Lord’s divine fire; there are no pockets of resistance left; all lesser hordes of Evil have been vanquished without a trace; and now we should bear the fruit of our long patience, our long endurance. But…

The food is running out. The lands are destroyed, the rivers run dry. Our fields produce nothing but hay. Disease – disease we thought had been destroyed with the homosexuals and fornicators – is coming back to ravage us, to sap our will. Our women have begun to defy us, to demand equality again. And there are mysterious mutterings that young people are beginning to have sex without church sanction and aborting the monsters they breed in hidden dens of evil. There are mutterings that men have sex with men, women with women, and that they speak of a world without the Church of the Lord.

And, all this while, we have to be on constant guard against our own men going insane with the malign influence of Evil and running amok with the guns Our Lord won for us.

Starvation, disease, immorality, violence – we are approaching the End Times.

Unless we act immediately and ruthlessly, we are doomed. This is what I must impress on the council; this is what I must bring to the notice of his Temporal Holiness Pope Dick as well. His Holiness has grown slack in recent days – he is spending too much time hunting animals and scheming for profit and too little in his work of administration. If I were not of a long line of loyal First Assistants I may have planned to dethrone him.

Oh Lord, Lord, why do you chastise your servants thus? Do we not worship at your altar? Do we not bear our guns with pride and suffer not the abortionist or the homosexual to live? Do we not look at profit, first and foremost, over all other things in the Universe? Do we not promote Doctrine above all scientific “fact”?

It is time for a new crusade, a crusade against the immoral, corrupt, diseased and heretical among our own people. It is at least essential, if for no other reason than that the food supplies will only suffice for a tiny minority of our current population.

Such a crusade will need an excuse, a regrettable but necessary trigger point.

Show us, Lord, where and when we should strike.

Metaphor

“Excuse me.” The man in the brown suit takes out a small handkerchief and rubs his nose, blinking at us with reddened streaming eyes. Softly, almost decorously, he sneezes again.

“And there you have a metaphor,” she tells me.

“A metaphor? For what?”

“Well, sort of like modern life. Here you see that guy sneezing, something as natural as breathing, and he has to apologise for it – even though we’re the only ones near enough even to hear.”

“So what’s your point? He should sneeze out loud and spray germs everywhere, and not say a word?”

“Of course not. But it’s kind of, you know, like – oh, I don’t know – maybe like saying what a nice solar heater you’ve just installed on your roof, when there’s a drought on the land. Inessential. Is it worth it? Jewellery on a corpse. Besides,” she says, "how do we not excuse him? It's superfluous."

“You’re not making sense.”

“No,” she agrees. “Probably I’m not.” Then, leaning over, she sneezes violently.

“Excuse me,” she says.

Enid Blight-On: A Sex Story

Those of you who, like me, grew up reading Enid Blyton’s books will remember all those stories where toys in children’s cupboards came to life at night and had all kinds of improbable adventures.

Well, let’s see some other toys that came to life and had...adventures.

Here goes.

Dildo woke at the crack of noon.

His mistress had been gone for an hour, and he knew he could count on hours of freedom before she returned. In the dark confines of the drawer, he began rubbing himself sensuously on the lace panties.

“Oh...” he moaned. “You make me so hot.”

“Well,” a voice snapped, “don’t set the place on fire, then.”

“Who are you?” Dildo turned as best he could in the narrow space.

“We,” the voice whispered. “My sister and I are Ben-Wa balls. We come of an ancient culture, not like you, you crude...object.”

“Crude object?” Dildo roared. “I like that! Who was giving Mistress orgasms all last evening, before she went out, I’d like to know?”

“She prefers us now,” the voice whispered. “She got us last night, and just see if she ever uses you again.”

“You lot are funny,” another voice hummed. “It’s I who shall pleasure her from now on. I, the Ultimate Vibrator. Hmmmmmmm...”

The three sex toys fell to squabbling. If only they could have, they’d have come to blows. Rolling around and gesticulating, vibrating and twitching, they rumpled the panties and almost pushed the drawer out on the floor. Their quarrel lasted for hours as they each claimed supremacy. Suddenly, hearing a noise, they fell silent.

The bed was squeaking rhythmically, and they could hear Mistress, and a man, moaning.


(OK, I’ve squicked myself out, so I’ll stop now. I promise.)

Specimens

Like most dentists, I see a wide variant of the human race in my clinic. Some of my clientele is normal. At times I’d say most of it is normal. And there are the days when I scrape and search for a shred of normality among the lot and come up blank.

Sometimes I’ve thought that what I need is a psychiatrist to set up his practice in my waiting room and screen my patients…

…or impatients, as some would be better called, like the ones who bang at the treatment room door despite the notice inviting them to sit and wait, and who ignore the ten or fifteen waiting patients before them. Most of these characters are not in pain; far from it. One told me he had to go back to his shop, and since he was paying for his treatment anyway, how dare I make him wait?

Often I thought of putting up an Uncle Sam Wants You style poster with my photo: "Sit Down. THIS MEANS YOU." But would it even penetrate minds as these?

Another species of impatient is the one who wants his or her treatment done fast.The commonest such treatment is the root canal, which is something that absolutely cannot be hurried, and which I always begin by explaining cannot be hurried. Yet I daily find myself in conversations like this one:

Impatient (Imp): "Doctor, how many more sessions?"

I: "I can’t tell you that, your canals are still exuding pus."

Imp: "But can you give me a rough idea?"

I: "Sorry, I can’t. As I explained at the outset, your tooth is badly infected and we can’t fill it until we sterilise the canals."

Imp: "But I have to come so far…"

I: "Well, I’m sorry, but the bacteria in your canal don’t know that."

Imp: "Will it be finished by the nineteenth? I have to go out of town on the nineteenth."

I: "Again, I’m sorry, but the tooth doesn’t know that you’re going out…"

(Let me emphasise here that all this had already been explained before starting treatment.)

Imp: "My friend had a root canal done in only two sessions."

I: "So would you, if you hadn’t had an infection in this tooth."

Imp: (Signifies assent and understanding)

I: (finish treatment) "Please come on Friday for the next session."

Imp: "You’ll fill it on Friday, right?"

This is also the sort of person to be careful of, after treatment is over. The typical impatient will push for a time saving compromise and then begin moaning loud and long about how the results of treatment don’t match up to expectations, and try to wiggle out of paying.

Another such conversation:

Imp: "I’m not satisfied with this crown."

I: "Why?" (Sinking feeling. I know what’s coming.)

Imp: "It shows metallic when I smile."

I: "I told you it would, that’s why I recommended a porcelain crown."

Imp: "Can’t anything be done to cover it up?"

I: "No."

Imp: "But I’m not happy, everyone makes fun of me when I smile."

I: "I did warn you of this, but you preferred the metal crown anyway."

Imp: "But porcelain is so expensive. Can’t you do something?"

I: "We can always take out the metal crown and do the porcelain, but of course you’ll have to pay for it."

Imp (with bad grace): "All right. I’ll think about it." (Makes a hurried exit, casting dirty looks at me over his/her shoulder. And later the spouse will call to ask all these questions again.)

The impatient, however, yields pride of place as a species to the specimen. Specimens conform to no set pattern; they can be of all shapes and sizes, of all shades of bizarre behaviour. It’s impossible to set standards for a specimen. Whatever one might write would be only true of one at any particular time.

What should I say if asked about a typical specimen? Should I mention the one who said he rinses his mouth daily with (I fervently hope) his own urine? With the girl who sat down in the dental chair with her fly open, displaying flowery panties and wisps of pubic hair? With the guy who told me proudly, when I asked about his general health, "Oh, I’m fine. I have no diabetes, no asthma or allergies, no acidity, no blood pressure, no temperature, no pulse…"? How about the one who was supposed to take three tablets of an antibiotic a day, beginning one hour after prescription, and instead began taking three tablets every hour?

I have instituted an award of Specimen Of The Day in honour of these people, and send it around by text message. I have probably forgotten the less egregious ones, so if anyone reminds me of them I’ll include them.

One I remember back when I used to work in a hospital. The two other dentists had both treated this particular patient; they sent him to me with the warning: "Watch out! This guy’s crazy!" So I was rather circumspect in treating him, since I never could find out in what manner he was crazy. But during the entire treatment, which took an hour, he acted normal; I had about decided he was fine. And then, after getting out of the chair, he pulled up his trouser legs and told me proudly, "Look, I’m wearing mismatched socks…"

There was a woman called Helen whom I remember, who used to dig in her own gum for a nonexistent fragment of tooth which she was convinced was embedded in her bone, till she gave herself muscle spasm. Nothing I showed her on X rays convinced her otherwise. Other dentists had tried as well; at last she disappeared. I guess she found someone to cut a hole in her gum to take the "tooth" out. Anything’s possible.

There was this American preacher in 2003 who tried to hand me tracts for his fringe church and made a real, determined bid to convert me all through the treatment. In retaliation, I handed him some of my anti-Bush plays. He shut up after that.

Specimens are a special breed. I’ll keep including them as memory or treatment bring them to me.

And there are the third species: the other creatures. These are a few sets of patients who can be broadly fitted in stereotyped groups. We can fit them as under

1. The uncooperative kid: Will kick, scream, resolutely refuse to open its mouth, do anything to avoid treatment. The last one vomited on the floor, quite deliberately. The parents are usually to blame. They would either threaten the kid with a visit to the dentist as a punishment or else act in such a way that the child’s scared out of its wits. I remember a woman who told me loudly, right in front of the kid: "Doctor, please treat her, I can’t bear to watch." What is the child supposed to feel like after that?
2. The Bengali boy: An absolute and utter wimp, as I discussed some time back in another post. This one will have to be accompanied to treatment by one or both parents even when in his early twenties. In the recent past, one also qualified as a specimen, when he proved that he had no conception of the difference between left and right. His mother will be incredibly garrulous and overweight, as are virtually all Bengali matrons, and both parents will try and stand over the dentist’s shoulder to watch the treatment in progress.
3. The Bihari Woman: In fact, North Indian women in general. They will of necessity be brought in by their husbands. Of necessity because they can’t even summon the gumption to tell the dentist their name. All questions would have to be directed at the husband who will answer for his wife. I used to look and speak specifically at the wife in the early days, ignore the husband totally, and tell the wife to answer the questions. But then I’d ask "How long have you had the pain? Do you have the pain now?" and the woman would promptly begin rolling agonised eyes at her lord and master. More recently I gave up. I tried my best. No way I can change the world on my own.

A subset is the Muslim North Indian (not Muslim East Indian, who are normal) woman. This subspecies wears burqas and cannot be made to bare the face even for purposes of treatment for more than a few seconds. Where I lie there are no burqas, but I remember as a student in Lucknow turning to pick up filling materials on my instrument from my tray and already finding the veil back on the patient’s face.

4. The Khasi villager: This breed is actually pretty sensible by most parameters except for a peculiar fixation. If I ever extract a tooth from one of them, I have to make sure the tooth has a hole in it. Bam khniang, as they say: the tooth has been "eaten by insects". I've learnt that even if an impacted tooth has to be removed, or one that is destroyed by gum disease, I still have to create a hole in the otherwise undamaged tooth to satisfy these people, because they will check to see if a hole is there. Or else they will never be happy. Even the absence of pain or trouble will not make them happy.

5. The Meitei  and Mizo patient: These two ethnic groups are very different in culture, religion, language, in just about every way, but are united in one thing: it's almost impossible to get any idea into their heads. You might repeat something 1000 times, but in the end you'll find nothing has gone in. Oddest because they are both educated peoples. Typical conversation:

I:"We can save this tooth by root canal treatment."

M/M: "It has to be taken out?"

I:"No, I can save it." (Show flip charts etc to explain how I'd do it.)

So they agree. And I do the root canal. One day:

I; "Tomorrow I'll do your root filling"

M/M (brightening immediately): "Oh, tomorrow you'll take the tooth out?"

If ever I write my memoirs, they are going to be called Down At The Mouth...

Ban TV Nudity

(From 2006)

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession to make. I am a victim.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am a victim of the worst scourge ravaging this fair land of high morals and pure culture, a curse worse than HIV, poverty, overpopulation, terrorism, and caste divisions put together. I am – or, since I am reformed, was – an addict to nudity on television. Yes! I realise this makes me morally repulsive to you honourable, decent people; but perhaps, because I’ve reformed and am admitting my crime openly, it doesn’t actually put me forever beyond the pale?

Can you believe that I once used to watch swimming contests on TV, with their nubile young bare-limbed women in swimsuits that leave nothing to the imagination? How much more depraved can one get?

You will understand that I am warning one and all of the dangers of nudity on TV. Beware! Your very soul is at stake!

There is no doubt at all of the deleterious effects of an occasional flash of a foreign nipple on the small screen, not to mention other unmentionable body parts. I say "foreign" advisedly, because surely our Indian women are too chaste and decent ever to be seen flashing their, um, boobs. The evidence, as I said, of deleterious effects is overwhelming.

For example, there was this man who was arrested for molesting (the r - word is a no-no, Indian girls don't get, er, raped) a girl last night. Ladies and gentlemen, was it purely a coincidence that a fashion channel showed a nude breast just fifteen seconds before the crime was committed? You may choose to believe that it is, but then how do you account for what happened? It is true that the man has no cable TV in his house, but might he not have caught a glimpse through someone’s window? What was he doing hanging around peeking in windows at that time of night? How should I know? Am I talking of windows or the dangers of nudity on TV?

I remember how I was corrupted by the nudity I saw on TV all through my formative years. Children should definitely be protected from this scourge. They should instead be directed towards those superb teleserials from the Ekta Kapoor stable, where decently dressed Indian women do not work and are dressed up to the nines at all times, even when in bed, in saris and jewellery. What they say or do in those serials is of no concern to me. I’m talking of nudity, damn it!

The Bombay High Court has the right idea when it banned all nudity, as do all those who are so concerned with our moral health. Nudity certainly has no place on TV.

So, let's ban Animal Planet and National Geographic until all those animals are decently covered. "Decently" would seem to exclude jeans, which are Western and hence inimical. So they must wear, if male

Gandhi caps, khadi kurtas, and khaki RSS shorts

And, if female,

Saris and/or salwar kameez (no matter that one is of Greek origin and the other brought in with the Muslim invaders of the late first millennium - you can't have topless female animals, now can you)?

While we are on the subject, ban all visuals of bare midriffs (well, yes, some of them definitely need covering up) and bare faces, hands and feet (so the burqa brigade doesn't get offended). In fact, I’d suggest banning Western music with its suggestive lyrics and its pelvic gyrations. Henceforth, we must have nothing on TV except Bharat Natyam, performed in shoes, gloves, and surgical face masks.

And, most definitely, ban me, because I'll bust my clothes laughing.

Hmm…perhaps I’m not all that reformed after all…

In search of the Perfect Parasite

Just imagine the life.

No more struggle, no more strife.

Your food comes right to you each day

No need for sunshine to make hay.

All right, for dog’s sake, I’ll knock off the doggerel. Sorry, I apologise. OK? Now…

Ever since student zoology days, parasites fascinated me. Considering that 80% of the human race is, at any given time, suffering from some kind of parasitic infestation, and that all of us will suffer from some kind of parasitic infestation at some time in our life, it becomes more than just of casual interest…

So, I was wondering what would go into creating the ideal parasite. What would the perfect parasite need?

Let’s think about it…and try and find a winner.

First, an ideal parasite needs to be able to find a safe and stable environment. In this respect I’d say the ideal place for the parasite would be inside the host’s body.

Advantage: It’s the host itself that protects it; the parasite can hide almost indefinitely so long as it doesn’t cause so much damage that the host notices and does something about it.

Disadvantage: If it’s inside the host, it can’t run off in a hurry when in trouble or detected, or change hosts easily if the old host sickens or dies.

Secondly, the ideal parasite needs a good way of finding its meal with the minimum of effort. In this case the tapeworms of the genus Taenia, like Taenia solium up above, take the cake and biscuit and the whole bloody bakery. They don’t even have mouths to eat…they absorb food through the entire body surface. They don’t have any way to breathe oxygen, so they respire anaerobically. All they do is lie in the intestine, with the tiny head in front attached to the wall by hooks and suckers, and absorb food, and lay eggs. Hell, they don’t even have to bother about having sex. They are self-fertilising. They literally fuck themselves.

Sweet deal, huh?

Roundworms aren’t far behind, though they do have to go to the trouble of copulating and swallowing food. They have a different system. When there is no food coming, they fall asleep and lie inert, doing nothing. When food and oxygen arrive, they wake up, gulp the food down along with whatever air there is, and then promptly go to sleep again. Another sweetheart deal…

Advantage: easy life.

Disadvantage: none, except that you’re unable to change hosts and you might, if too successful, damage the host, what with intestinal bloating and so on. If you damage the host too much, he might decide to do something about you. If you’re a hookworm, you may drink so much blood you’ll end up killing the host. Bad boy.

If you are an external parasite, like a leech or a tick for example, you need to be able to go long, long times without food in between hearty meals when the opportunity allows.

Thirdly, the parasite needs to reproduce easily. Now if you’re an internal parasite, it’s not that easy. Your eggs will pass out of the body or – if you’re a blood borne parasite - keep circulating inside, looking for an insect to suck them up. Some of the life cycles are really complicated, Taenia for example needing to be swallowed by a pig (Taenia solium) or cow (Taenia saginata) and then that animal needs to be eaten by a human for the worm to get to a new host.

The best solution for an internal parasite is probably the one used by the pinworm Entrobius. It lays eggs on the anus, and these cause such intense itching the sufferer (usually a child) scratches the anus, picks up eggs on its fingernails, and then if it puts its fingers to its mouth without washing them the eggs go right on in and begin the cycle again.

Another solution is that of the external parasite, the flea. It lays eggs on dirt around the host, not on the host itself. The disadvantage is that it needs the host to be surrounded by dirt. If it isn’t, the flea can’t breed, poor thing.

Fourthly, the parasite needs to be able to abandon a dying host quickly and move on. This is not a frivolous matter and is impossible for internal parasites, which otherwise have everything going for them. Fleas are the best in this regard. Kill a rat and watch it for a few minutes. As the body cools, the fleas are already looking for fresh abodes.

Fifthly, if a parasite can do a few services for the host, the host may overlook its depredations. Plenty of examples in other animals, not many in humans. I mean of course parasites, which cause harm, notcommensals, to which the host is indifferent, and not symbiotes, which help the host. I’m not talking of them.

Sixthly, it needs to be physically resistant to anti-parasitical medication. Worms aren’t. Lice aren’t. Fleas, so long as they can get off the body into the dirt, are.

So, do we have a winner?

You’d never find a perfect parasite with all those features, will you now? Some of them are mutually contradictory. For example, an internal parasite has good food and no effort but can’t jump ship; an external parasite needs to work for its food.

So I guess there isn’t an ideal parasite…oh, wait, there is. We have a winner.

My nominee for the Perfect Parasite: the Indian politician.

Consider:

This species inhabits the body of the Indian political system and the Indian state. It works from inside. It absorbs any food (read money) that comes along; it can sleep inertly, doing absolutely nothing (certainly none of its official duties) until food and air (money and power) come along, when it suddenly wakes and gulps it all down. It is remarkably adept at causing itches and inflammations in the sense of mini-wars and crime waves to get itself re-elected, in the manner of the pinworm; it can thrive in the dirt that accrues round the system. And, like the flea, when the party to which it is attached begins faltering, it’s incredibly quick to seek a new host. It can oblige people sometimes, for a fee naturally, in illegal endeavours like setting up sham factories and human trafficking and the like. And it is incredibly tough, virtually ineradicable. If one is destroyed, two will take its place.

I believe the zoology textbooks need some modification…I wonder if they’ll credit the new classification to me.