THIS SMALL TOWN IS MY WORLD

 

EXILE ON MAINSTREET -- Rambling up the street I espy a sign in the window of the shoemaker's shop. The sign reads: "Get out of the road. Take the vaccine." I am nonplussed. Having recently been cured from a neurosis that involved me shouting at TVs (televisions not transvestites) I have no wish to embrace a new neurosis whereby I shout at signs in shop windows. "What a load of old cobblers," I murmur with philosophical detachment and wander on.

THE BANS -- News coming through that the Chinese Communist Party has banned Winnie The Pooh. That's a lot of banning right there if they've done it right. The imperialist teddy bear Winnie the Pooh is a ubiquitous influencer all over the planet earth. Books, films, TV series, and cuddly toys. The reason for the banning of Winnie the Pooh in China is that supposedly the character Winnie the Pooh as routinely depicted, shows a modest resemblance to Chinese President Xi Jing Ping. Particularly in the episode Pooh Enslaves The Uyghurs. Christopher Robin is a right bastard in that one. So why didn't they ban Ricochet Rabbit? He goes around the place saying: "Wim ping ping Ricochet Rabbit," and is obviously just sticking it to the Communist Party of China and its seriously credible leader. So they've banned Winnie the Pooh. Whatever next. Turkey's Erdogan banning Die Hard because of certain obscure similarities between Hans Gruber and Erdogan. (Try saying them both together really fast.) Russia's Putin banning Battle Of The Planets because Zoltar trying to take over the world is a bit like Vladdie the Pute trying to take over the world. Ah yes. Winnie The Pooh. Die Hard. Battle Of The Planets. The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes.

A LITTLE LIGHT READING -- A passing prole gave me a copy of the Bridge magazine and for want of something better to do, I flicked through the pages. And lo! What light through yonder anodyne wearisome b*******t breaks. It is the east. And my cousin Francis is the sun. She has an article in there squeezed in between some conformist half wit's maunderings on toxic masculinity and top science boff Noel Clare's latest user's guide to tree hugging or some such thing. Her article is entitled Why Teachers Do What They Do. I read nay devour the article expecting a tell all expose from the inside. But no. There is no mention of money, or nine months holidays a year, or a work day half as long as everybody else's or exorbitant pension entitlements. As near as I can make out, according to this article, teachers do what they do because occasionally the little thugs (the children) wear funny hats to school suddenly making it all worth while. Call me old fashioned but I'd still say it's the money.

EAT UP YOUR VACCINES MADE OUT OF MURDERED BABIES OR YOU ARE A CLODPOLL -- As we go to press, word comes through that the Irish government has finally withdrawn one of its immoral, poisonous, Hitlerite flu vaccines, the one produced by the Astrazeneca pharmaceutical company. Motto: "Es lebe unsere geheimnis Deutschlund." According to the latest Irish government edict, the vaccine will no longer be used on people aged under sixty. The Irish government withdrawal of the Astrazeneca vaccine has been precipitated by the small matter of the vaccine killing people, turning them blind, making them deaf, and giving them blood clots, though not necessarily in that order. Hilariously the government is still permitting the use of Astrazeneca's poison for people aged sixty and over. What could possibly go wrong. I recall with a touch of whimsy broadcaster Brian Byrne's publicity promos for the vaccine over the past few months along with top science boff Noel Clare's suggestion in a book review that people should listen to peer reviewed science and ignore nutters on the internet. I took that one kind of personally. I mean who else could he mean. Everyone else on the internet is sane. I wonder how he feels now. (That's enough Brian Byrne and Noel Clare - Ed note) (Too right it is - Heelers note)

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME -- A night of strange and perturbed dreams. I dreamed I was on trial before a cabal of Judges consisting of Richard Dawkins, Fred Hoyle and Charlie Darwin. Professor Dawkins was ranting: "How dare you insist atheistic Darwinism is nonsense simply because it is not possible for life to start spontaneously by chance! How dare you! How dare you claim there isn't enough time in the universe for natural selection as an agent of evolution to even begin to work and that the concept of evolution driven by natural selection is a spurious mimesis of intentionality that doesn't amount to a coherent theory even if we postulate a universe with limitless time. How dare you. How dare you suggest I am ascribing aspects of Deity to vocabularic hokum when I claim the universe was created by a quantum wave fluctuation. How dare you. Who are you to oppose us! You are sentenced to ten years working at the Leinster Leader newspaper. And no more Winnie the Pooh books for you." As I was led away I murmured with odd mystic detachment just like when I'm talking to signs in shop windows or reading my cousin Francis' Bridge articles: "Eppure e bolloxologia." Then I awoke. What can it all mean?