Garry Trotter and the Portal of Pleasure #3

These stories make no sense unless you read them in order - Links to previous chapeters [#1] ... [#2]

It was almost exam time and Garry was supposed to be revising in his room. Instead of concentrating on The History of Wart Cures he was thinking about Briony and his wand was demanding attention. Throwing off his clothes Garry was about to get down to some serious work when he was distracted by a scratching, scuffing noise coming from beyond the end of the bed. Strange noises were not a strange occurrence in Swinlemoles and Garry tried to ignore it. But the noise got more persistent and was accompanied by a lot of huffing and puffing and grunting.
"What on Earth is going on?" the boy wizard asked nobody in particular and was surprised to get an answer.
"Just - puff - moving the - grunt - rung a bit Mr. - arrrrrooooogahoof - Garry," said the voice of Dobber the domestic gnome whose job was to look after the private room and its occupant.
That occupant now sat up to see what was really going on. Dobber's capacity for misunderstanding was legendary.
"Dobber, why are you moving the rug?"
"Dobber 'as found somefink what 'onerable Mr Garry will find interessin."
"Not now Dobber, I'm busy."
Dobber looked as if he was about to burst into tears. "Oh woe is Dobber, Dobber has been bad gnome and disturbed 'onerable Mr Garry just as great wizard was about to spank the monkey. But Dobber only wanted 'elp Mr Garry get a peep at Miss Briny wivvout clotheses."
"What!" said Garry, leaping forward to help the gnome. Together they pulled the rug aside and Dobber pointed proudly to a knothole in the floor and indicated that Garry should look through it. When he did so he was treated to a view of Briony naked and about to step into the shower.
Later in the girls dormitory Briony confided to Titania Hemlock that she thought there was a heavy breather ghost in the girls' showers.
It was a while before Garry understood what had been revealed. There was nothing in the school library of volumes on wizardry, witchcraft, potions and enchantments about young wizards getting hair around their private bits. Just as he was growing a patch of hair around his willie, Briony, who did not have a willie of course, sported a dark triangle at the place where her body joined her legs. Eventually Garry had had to use the Cloak of Invisibility left for him by his parents to slip out of school and into the dimension of reality. Once there he had visited a muggle shop that had the windows painted so nobody could see inside and a sign that said "Adult Book Shop" before he found anything useful.
Inside the shop were thousands of books showing male and female muggles without clothes. All of them had the strange hair that he and Briony now sported. He also noticed that the men all had moustaches. Horror of Horrors, he and Briony were turning into Muggles. They would be expelled from school and have to give back their broomsticks and get jobs in fast food restaurants. Who could possibly hate them enough to have done this.
Despite the spotty young man behind the counter becoming very panicky when he saw his stock lifting itself off the shelves, thumbing through its own pages and then disappearing as Garry slipped books that he fancied under the cloak of invisibility, nothing was done to stop him and he strolled out of the shop with a lot of valuable research material.
Later in his room Garry had time to study the literature properly. All the muggle ladies had hair, but some just had a little tuft called a Brazilian and others had narrow line called a landing strip. Garry supposed it was where muggle men tried to land their broomsticks. One woman whose pictures were in several books had a heart shaped patch of pink hair. Garry thought that was quite artistic and then decided that Briony had chosen a triangle because it was a powerful magical symbol. Briony was great at defensive magic, she would have been quick to realise something was going on and protect herself. But how could Garry ask for her help. He could not even talk to her without blushing these days. It was impossible to get near the girl wizard without feeling embarrassed so mentioning such a delicate subject was out of the question.
And then, as he studied the muggle books he though of how he had acquired them and a brilliant idea came to him.


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Garry Trotter and the Portal of Pleasure #2 (adult humour)

Garry Trotter and the Portal Of Pleasure - chapter 2


These spoofs make no sense unless you read them in order. Go to Chapter 1

A few days after the evil enchantment had fallen upon Garry Mrs Vorbis the school housekeeper was complaining to the headmaster.

"Bedsheets stuck fast together again this morning Professor. It just isn't good enough, you know how much extra laundry that sort of thing causes. Everything has to be done by hand, you have to take care with Wizard's jiz; can't just go waving a wand."

"Unfortunately that is what young Trotter has been doing."

Mrs Vorbis was one of those humourless women who did not see the funny side of anything, especially if it concerned boy's underwear or bedlinen. "I can't just go zapping semen, into another dimension you know, its not like seamen, they are always disappearing into the triangle, but semen you have to be careful with. If I was to banish wizard seed into another dimension just like that we should have hidden forests full of pregnant nymphs and fairies."

"Oh come now Mrs Vorbis," Humblebore said without thinking.

"Come now? Young Trotter has been doing enough of that for the whole school, staff included I should say."

"I merely meant to ask you to show a little tolerance. Boys will be boys."

"Not on my clean bed linen they won't. That sort of thing needs to be trodden on before it gets out of hand. We shall have pregnant fairies turning up on the Tricia show before we know where we are."

Humblebore tried to recall if he had seen a pregnant fairy on the Tricia show but could not. Jerry Springer maybe, but that was America. "I shall see Trotter today before he shoots off to Futtox practice," the Headmaster promised.

Professor Rebus Humblebore adjusted his spectacles and looked in a stern but not unkind way at Garry.

"Hmm. It seems young Trotter that you have reached a point…"

"That is SO UNFAIR! Nobody understands me, I get the blame for everything around here. You spread stories about me and make everybody hate me…"

"Trotter! That is quite enough, now as I was saying…"

"I don't care what you were saying. I don't want to listen to you, I didn't ask to come to this stupid school. Witches and Wizards, that's kids stuff."

"As I was saying Garry, we feel you have reached the point at which you might welcome the privacy of a single room."

"What? Do you think I'm Billy No Mates saddo or something? Do you think I want to sit on my own studying every night? You don't want me to have any friends, you are destroying my life."

"Now listen Garry," Humblebore said patiently, "we just want to do what is best for you. I have heard that certain things are happening that indicate you are ready for a more - er - grown up environment. At some time every young man's body begins to change, certain things happen and he gets urges that may be quite upsetting."

Garry blushed deeply. How had Humblebore known the embarrassing nature of his problem.

"I just want to stay in the dorm and be one of the chaps."

"As you wish, but if you change your mind I'll be happy to arrange a private room for you."

As Garry left the Professor sighed. Things were going to get difficult.

A few days later Garry was alone in his private room. He lay naked on top of the bedcovers, head propped up with extra pillows so that he could look down at his body which had become a source of fascination. Garry was frightened and embarrassed at what was happening to him, but also excited. Something dark and powerful had entered his life and was working its enchantment on him. His magic wand, as the Swinemoles boys liked to call their todger, was getting longer and thicker, also there was a dark smudge of curly hair growing around its base.

As he looked at his magic wand it became suffused with cosmic energy again. Absent - mindedly he began to stroke it so that it would relax, as he did so his thoughts turned to Briony.

Suddenly the school swat had ceased to be just a girl, a good sort though far more sensible than was necessary and absolutely hopeless at the school sport Futtox. Since the spell had first manifested itself Garry had started to find her interesting in different ways. He no longer wanted to talk to her about spells and potions, if fact he could hardly talk to her at all, he just blushed and got an erection. But he had started to find her interesting in strange ways and strange places. Her legs and bottom were interesting and those lumpy bits that had appeared under her sweater, they were magic. Not in the wizarding sense of course, but magic all the same.

Don Beesley said they were just two bags of sweets that Briony did not want to share. Don could be childishly idiotic at times.

Garry wondered what the things on Briony's chest were and tried to think of a way he could cop a look.
IN TOMORROW'S THRILLING INSTALMENT GARRY PUT HIS PLAN INTO ACTION AND HUMBLEBORE IS AFRAID THE BOY WIZARD IS BEING DESTROYED BY MUGGLE INFLUENCES.

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Garry Trotter And The Portal of Pleasure

Headbutt Blog's greatest scoop to date. Exclusive to Headbutt Blog, every day this week we will bring you an abridged serialisation of the seventh book in the saga of Garry Trotter - Boy Wizard. This one is called Garry Trotter And The Portal of Pleasure. Despite seven years having elapsed since Garry was first enrolled at Swinemoles City Academy for Supernatural Studies, because Wizards usually are subject to arrested development due to the fact they live for a thousand years, the hero is just experiencing puberty and embarking upon the wild adventures that brings. Now read on.

It was almost dawn of a summer day, a pale light crept through the boy's dormitory window and over the sleeping forms of the pupils. One pupil was not sleeping however. Garry Trotter opened his eyelids just enough to let in a tiny sliver of light, enough to let him look down towards his feet. Garry could not see his feet because some mysterious force was holding up his bed cover as if it were a tent.
In the pale light Garry could just make out the hands of the clock. It was four fifteen a.m. Most people would sleep for another two hours at least. Looking towards the next bed Garry was reassured to see the carroty hair of his best friend Don Beesley, the only part visible above the quilt. The whole dorm was silent and still. Garry was just about to lift up his quilt to get a better look at what was going on when a sudden noise made him duck down and pretend to be asleep.

The noise became louder and Garry lay very still, wondering if the thing under his quilt was some strange creature from another dimension or simply a magical force - field caused by his arch enemy Batto Bellfry.
The noise was very loud now and sounded like the distress call of a terminally wounded bull Buffalo.

"Heeeewwwww hna hnuzane
Hghugh guh eeeeeooooowwwwwmmm
Hhhhhyyyynnn mzgmiyappy" the noise sang

Garry heave a sigh of relief. It was only Legless Len, the Swinemoles drunken ghost trying to find his way back to his dungeon before sunrise.

"Goodnight Len," Garry called as the ghost passed his bed.

"Hnnnuggite Meestair Grrrryyyy," Len answered incoherently.

"You should keep off the spirits Len," Garry said, as he had on many other nights.

"Hohoho, kp 'ffa spiriz, hahaha, vry gd. Hahahahahohoho, spiriz." Len laughed as if it was the first time he had heard the joke, which in a manner of speaking it was as ghosts have no past or future but only now.

When Len had gone on his way Garry looked at the quilt again. It still looked like a tent. The thing had not gone. Perhaps it was a snake with rigor mortis, he thought, or somebody had left him a new wand. Most likely it was a spell gone wrong. Garry half remembered a dream about Briony, the girl who had come from a muggle family and befriended him and Don on their first day at the school. It had been a rude dream, Briony had had no clothes on. Of course, Briony was doing a project on extra sensory perception so she must have caught him dreaming about her and this was a trick to get him back.

Cautiously Garry lifted the quilt to see what Briony had done. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he let out a gasp of horror. The thing was not a creature of wizardry at all. It was him. Well, part of him even if it did look quite like a new wand. Whoever had done this to him was a very powerful wizard and obviously was on the dark side. Had Volauvent found a way back from the twelfth dimension and come looking for revenge? Garry reached down and touched the thing that had grown where his willie had been. He expected it to be rough and scaly or cold and slimy but it was warn and soft. It did not feel magical in any way, in fact it seemed to enjoy being touched. With a faraway look in his eye Garry started to stroke the thing.

Soon he was fast asleep again.

IN TOMORROW'S INSTALMENT PROF. HUMBLEBORE LEARNS OF GARRY'S AFFLICTION.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and other books
Harry Potter films
Harry Potter at Amazon

Taking The Piss

For American readers, "Taking The Piss" = taking advantage of in a very unfair way, pulling a scam, abusing one's position. Also means "making fun of" in a different context.

Now that is just taking the piss (Image source)

You have heard all the stories about a looming water shortage. Does it not seem strange that in a summer so far not particularly memorable for its endless days of brilliant blue skies and scorching sunshine we are warned that a serious water shortage is imminent. What has really caught the attention of Headbutt Blog's relentless hunter of cant and hypocrisy Ed. Butt is the call by the Mayor of London to refrain from flushing each time you pee.

There is an old maxim in low rainfall nations like Australia, "if its yellow its mellow, if its brown flush it down," although having spent a lot of time in London I know this should be revised for Londoners; "if its yellow its mellow, if its brown and tastes of shit its probably drinking water." Yep, the product of London Water is perhaps not of the best quality to start with. Another old joke relating to the recycling of water in the British capital it that London Water Company takes quality control very seriously, in fact all the water Londoners drink has been passed by qualified chemists.

Flushing is not environmentally friendly The Mayor tells us, perhaps he should explain what is environmentally friendly about letting millions of gallons of water leak away through fractures in the hundred and fifty year old pipes.

Pee is environmentally friendly anyhow, lots of gardeners collect theirs and put it on the compost. I suppose it gives the marigolds an especially bright hue. A hundred and fifty years ago (around the time the water mains were being laid) the urine of pregnant women was highly prized for its use in something I would probably rather not think about. Urine is a very underrated commodity.

As well as its role in ayurvedic medicine (which again I would rather not think about) it was for centuries used in tanning and in the dyeing of cloth. Our revulsion at stuff that comes out of the body is therefore modern and bourgeois. The cried of "yeuch, disgusting" that greeted Livingstone's suggestion are entirely the product of modern urban prissiness. Country folk are not victims of such delicate sensibilities, I speak as a country lad who once failed a school spelling test because the crucial word was "auspices".

What should outrage us is that a senior public official is blame shifting again. Livingstone is saying "there is a water shortage because you irresponsible, binge - drinking bastards are pissing too often, so you can suffer." Actually the problems exist because of mismanagement in the privatised utility companies. For every pound they spend on giving you a good service to your premises they spend ten on employing people in Mumbai to harass you with a million unsolicited marketing calls a day.

And that really is taking the piss.



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Enfoncez Votre Fromage M. Chirac

There is nothing like a bit of xenophobic name calling to get us all in the holiday mood. As President Chirac has kicked off about British food, suggesting it is the worst in Europe (except for Finland - I wonder what they did to him?) I think that conveniently excuses me from the need to be diplomatic.
Half the fun of being English of course is that it is our patriotic duty to say outrageously insulting things about the French. Half the fun of being French, my French friends tell me, is that it is a patriotic duty to say outrageously insulting things about the English. On with the motley.
A fat lot of room Chirac has to talk about crappy English food. The French will eat anything. One regional delicacy in Lorraine province consists of cow's noses thinly sliced and sautéed in garlic butter. Sometimes I think the French would eat dog turds if they were sautéed in garlic butter. Another French delicacy is lamb's tongues. I have often taken to task those American fast food chains whose products contain mainly lips and arseholes. French haute cuisine chefs go further however, they serve snot and saliva. Another French delicacy is pigs feet. Next time you are passing a pig pen just take a look what those trotters have been marinating in before they land on your plate.
Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, spotted dick and custard, faggots and peas, bangers and mash; all these have been celebrated in verse. Scottish Haggis which Chirac described as a weapon of mass destruction (that's rich coming from a man who eats cow's noses) is the subject of a famous verse by Scotland's national poet Robert Burns.
"Fair fa your honest sonsie face,
great chieftain o' the pudding race,
aboon them a' ye tak your place,
painch, tripe and thairm.
Weel worthy are ye o' a grace
as lang's my arm."
So there! I'll bet pigs feet have never inspired such eloquence.
The Gleneagles Hotel where the G8 conference is being held will be serving a traditional Scottish banquet in honour of the world's leaders. Let's hope that for the benefit of M. Chirac the menu includes that Glaswegian favourite Deep Fried Mars Bar.
BTW: For the benefit of politically correct type who infiltrate this site from time to time, I love French food (though I tend to pass on cows noses) The comments of M. Chirac were meant humourously and should be taken as such, as should this posting. For God's sake, what kind of a world would it be if the French and the English could not insult each other. We would have to gang up on the Dutch. (Belgium is to France what Wales is to England.)

G8 protest movement
the rich get richer
America and G8
Chirac and Blair
Chirac and Haggis
Spotted Dick
Ian Thorpe Interview and Multi Media performance in Poetry Life and Times
Go over the top with Ian Thorpe at Boggart Blog

Islamic Suicide Bombers - Dead Scary (Fear and Panic #3)

Image source

When security forces in Iraq announce they are stepping up efforts to locate and capture "know suicide bombers" I am afraid, I am very afraid. Its is not that I fear our suburban streets are patrolled by men with exploding beards waiting for an opportune moment before they blow me up. No, it is the security forces that scare me, I mean "known suicide bombers," the first rule of warfare, I leaned in history lessons long ago, is know your enemy. It strikes me that our military have not really got their heads round the basic concept of suicide bombing if they are looking for people with a track record.

Similarly President Bush recently spoke of "cowardly attacks by suicide bombers" in his feeble attempt to bolster support for the war by spreading Fear and Panic among ordinary Americans, most of whom are at least 5000 miles from the nearest known suicide bomber. Suicide is often described as the coward's way out when someone in our western society decides to end it all rather than face up to the mess they have made of everything. That is a rather harsh assessment in a lot of cases, it must often seem to people that life just cannot get any better. It takes something other than cowardice for somebody to stick several kilos of Semtex and a detonator to their body, drive or walk calmly up to the target and hit the trigger.

To a young Arab though, suicide is a very different prospect and suicide bombers can be described as many things, stupid, fanatical, insane etc. But surely not cowardly, and especially not by a man who orders the forces he commands to drop bombs from 30,000 feet on civilian targets in third world countries that have no credible defence systems. The suicide bomber is at least up close and personal and prepared not just to take a calculated risk in order to spread Fear and Panic, they have to face the certainty of joining their victims on the journey to "that unexplored country from in whose bourne no traveller returns," which Shakespeare referred to.

Always a great believer in looking at the big picture I see things rather differently than when they are viewed from the perspective of somebody who seeks political advantage by spreading Fear and Panic. It is a question of understanding the Arab mindset. To them death is not something to be avoided but to be embraced, death offers better prospects than life. Suicide Bombing therefore represents the best available career option. Sign up and you are guaranteed three meals a day and a heroes welcome on your last visit home plus, and get this everybody, twenty - yes twenty (or twenty four, or seventy two depending on who you believe) heavenly virgins waiting for you on the other side.

Compare that with working as a menial for the American company that is ripping off your country's oil or a life of poverty and drudgery as a tomato farmer, both of which carry the certainty of an arranged marriage to a girl whose face you will not see until the ring is on her finger.

No wonder those boys are saying "pass the semtex and tell the virgins to lay in a supply of KY jelly."

Iraqi Insurgency
The BBC view
The Arab Viewpoint

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Bring Out Your Dead

The tumbrils are ready in SW17, the charnel houses of South London are preparing for an influx of customers.
Like virgins to the altar (oops sorry; this is not a Solstice piece) like lambs to the ritual slaughter Britain's young tennis hopefuls will be taken through the streets the place of execution, The All England Club where they will kneel before axepersons with names like Federer, Roddick, Williams and Clijsters. The axe usually falls mercifully quickly to cut off careers that had promised so much.
Every year at this time sports pundits ask why can Britain not produce a contender. And ghostly eminences of Andrew Castle, Chris Bailey and Annabel Croft rattle their chains and cry "I cudda been a contender." But seriously, could they? The dichotomy (Ian shows off his Guardian reader vocabulary there,) of British sport is that while we want our champions to win we do not want them to be winners. Thus is the British hope condemned forever to be the jolly nice chap or chapess who is nearly great. This is why Tiger Tim never quite made it of course, (apart from being saddled with a nickname taken from an under-5s comic character) he is just to well brought up. You can imagine him, when his opponent slams a second serve into the net to go three match points down, saying "oh jolly hard luck old chap," instead of suggesting that the opponent will soon eat excrement. British players might say an umpire's decision is rather harsh but would never suggest the official has an unnatural relationship with his mother.
English Tennis is about strawberries and cream, cucumber sandwiches and being a good loser.
Now who could imagine John MacEnroe eating cucumber sandwiches? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! Johnny Mac was who he was because he ate steaks, raw steaks still attached to the carcass of a bull that had not yet been slaughtered. Do you hear what I am saying?
Winners are red in tooth and claw and if we ever want the annual slaughter of our innocents to cease we must find or make winners. Here is my five point plan.
(1) Identify promising youngsters at junior school level.
(2) Take them away from their parents in Surrey or Hampshire and send them to live with the Gallaghers from Shameless on a sink estate in Manchester until they are sixteen.
(3) If they survive to sixteen give them jobs as trainees in a Gordon Ramsey kitchen.
(4) After two years of that introduce them to the world of professional sport by appointing Mike Tyson as their personal fitness instructor.
(5) Once they are fit, find the school bully who made their young life hell, put him / her in an enclosed tennis court, equip the future champion with a tennis racquet and immunity from prosecution. If the bully is dead within five minutes or alternatively survives more than two hours of extreme pain and humiliation, hire the best tennis coach in the world and commence lessons.

Wimbledon
Tim Henman
John McEnroe
Andrew Castle, presenter on TVAM and Former Future Wimbledon Champion
Annabel Croft, Celebrity Wrestling victor and Former Future Wimbledon Champion
Annabel's wrestling career
Shameless - Channel 4 comedy drama
Greenteeth

BRITSPEAK

Some American academics are concerned about the number of British slang words and colloquialisms that are finding their way into the pure and beautiful American language after being picked up from TV shows and films. One particular individual who shall be nameless because he is probably the type of small minded, humourless bastard who would sue, is getting his knickers in a right old twist and throwing hissy fits about it every chance he gets. And what are these colloquialisms he finds so irritatingly un-American? Well his favourites are "gone missing" and "at the end of the day."

When I read this I was like "No Way! That is just so not true. British street slang, gone missing? As if? And it isn't like we are not hearing Americanisms 24/7 is it.

The good professor feels that "gone missing" is a typical example of sloppy British grammar and should never be used instead of that Fine, upright, stars-and-stripes-waving, silver-ring-thinging Americanism "gone astray."
It is a generalisation and very unfair to say that Americans do not get irony, but there is a certain class of American of whom that is true. The "aspirational middle class" not only do not do irony, they do not do humour at all. And so the effect of "gone missing" is lost on them. When something has gone missing it implies an act of will was involved. Things go astray in the mail, people go missing with the funds from the social club. Other than that, gone astray is no more American than Apple Pie (which is actually German, it was brought to Britain by the Saxons.) "Gone astray" is perfectly standard English grammar and to use it where "gone missing" is more appropriate it to condemn us all to that sterile and colourless version of English spoken by corporate managers, the style immortalised in that early Microsoft Grammar checker that would have had us change references to Dick Van Dyke into Penis van Lesbian.

Whatever.

The other phrase singled out for attention is "at the end of the day." Now I can't understand how this was noticed as BBC America does not screen Football Focus, nor even Soccer Focus. "At the end of the day" does not strike me as particularly British, in fact it has the idiom of those American management buzz words and phrases that began to creep into the language in the 1970s. You know, the ones that use ten words when one would do, "at this moment in time" instead of "now", "we have an ongoing situation" instead of "we're clueless," etc.

We are told however that it is mightily offensive to use "at the end of the day" instead of that modest and unpretentious phrase "in the end." Now when have you ever heard an American say "in the end" rather than "in the final analysis." American English loves wordiness, police officers say "I need for you to stand up" instead of just "stand up please," salesmen say "I have to meet with" rather than "I have to meet," blind to the sheer impossibility of meeting yourself.

Americans also have this tendency to overqualify, where we would go horse riding, an American goes horseback riding. What other part of a horse would you ride FFS (Guys who are into bestiality need not answer). optical aids, a British person would simply say, my vision is not what it used to be, I need to get some glasses, but an American would call them eyeglasses? What other kind of glasses would you get to help you read a book, a pair of shot glasses? Champagne glasses? Real estate? Who would buy fake estate?

At the end of the day of course, these are trivial matters but annoying because it is another example of America's habit of claiming everything as its own, for example, splitting the atom, inventing the computer, Catherine Zeta Jones, apple pie and now the English language.

With respect to our American friends here at Boggart Blog we think it is time we fought back. We should recruit bloggers around the world, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Pakistan and we should overwhelm American academic institutions with slang, patois, lingua franca and parliari.

American my khyber! They'll soon be on their twos and threes begging for mercy if we start to throw rhyming slang at them. After a few days the guy who started this bollocks will be as sick as a parrot if he comes near this gaff. This is a place where we celebrate English like what it is spoke.

I will start tomorrow if I can find a window in my diary.

Parliari (Polari) the underground slang - aka parliari - was orignially used by travellers and circus folk. Later it evolved into Polari, the slang of showbusiness people, prostitutes, drug users and homosexuals, people who might not want morally uptight individuals knowing what they were talking about.

If you are as irreverent as I am here is the Bible in polari
Online slang dictionary
Cockney Rhyming Slang
more rhyming slang
The dictionary of britspeak
The Greenteeth Labyrinth

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God's Little Careers Consultants

In a week that has witnessed controversy in the UK after an advertisment for The Church Of England, showing somebody reciting The Lord's Prayer was banned from being shown in theatres where the new star Wars film is being shown by the movie's distributors, which prompted us to ask how would Christians feel if Jedi Knights invaded a church service and used The Force to make bibles and hymn books float around and gargoyles sing bawdy songs, it is perhaps time to revive this post:

Yoda Gets Christianity (Image source)

New guidelines issued by the Greek Orthodox Church bar former gynaecologists, lawyers, actors and magicians from ordination as priests. The detailed list sets out acceptable jobs for candidate clerics, including former carpenters, teachers, nurses, politicians and former officers in the police and military. Other considered unacceptable include tavern owners, money lenders and astrologers. Alas we could not discover whether nail technicians are excluded or not.

Now I can see the logic in wanting former carpenters after all there is a connection, but there seem to be a few anomolies here. Why politicians and not actors, surely there is little difference in the two trades. Actors spend all their time pretending to be someone they are not and politicians spend theirs pretending to be something they are not. Neither can I see why teachers will be accepted but not tavern owners. Most of us learn far more in the pub than we ever did at school. And why are astrologers not welcome, to go from astrologer (or Jedi Knight) to priest simply involves swapping one kind of unreality for another.

Magicians too seem to be very well qualified. "I want to to put this biscuit in your mouth and then take a little sip of wine as I say Abracadabra, and it will turn into the flesh and blood of the Messiah. Just like that. Lawyers too are ideal.

"I put it to you that on the third of May Mrs Papadopoulos and yourself went to the Corinthian motel and indulged in various lewd acts. Do not deny it Mr. Leandros, there are witnesses. You were seen by the hotel receptionist, the chambermaid and God.

Gynaecologists however is understandable. Who could know better that what most men think is heaven can look pretty unattractive in some circumstances.

Greek Orthodox Church
More info
Jonathan Cainer - astrologer
Pub Quiz website

The Children From Hell

Children are like farts, your own aren't so bad but anyone else's are horrible." How many times has that been said by people in my age group I wonder.

The Bash Street Kids (image source)

Having reached the brink of old-githood I can now look forward to being able to say "I love children, but only if they are served with Hollandaise sauce." A quip from comedian W.C. Fields of course, the comedian who claimed he had developed a look that could kill a child at 50 paces. Some readers may still be looking forward to spawning your own sprogs and playing happy families for a decade or so. Be warned, the sentimentalisation of children is just a cynical plot devised by the ruling elite to make us all abandon our carefree early adult years and conform. Trust me on this, the time between the two year old deciding that Mr. Ploppy likes to sit in the sugar bowl and the adolescent falling victim to hormone fuelled mood swings is of only a few days duration. Or so it seems for children eat time as they eat everything they can get their hands on (including Mr. Ploppy if they are young enough.)

The ruling elite easily dismiss fears about parenthood. Well they would, being able to afford nannies they need not see their disgusting offspring from immediately after the christening or naming ceremony to the insufferably trendy, until its is time to say "goodbye darling, we have enrolled you in an excellent school." Being able to delegate parental responsibility to the hired help until well after that awkward period when hair starts to sprout in funny places and body piercings start to sprout in the funny places where hair does not grow masks most of the horrors and actually lends parents a certain social cachet.

The incurably sentimental will by now be thinking "how can he be so heartless, children are a gift from God." Can people not see, children are from Hell.

I have always felt that somewhere along the line religion got it horribly wrong. If we accept the standard definition of God then He gave us mortality, guilt, war, disease, religion, the missionary position, Britney effing Spears, piles and children. On the other hand the Devil's works include recreational sex, recreational drugs, recreation, sex, Pamela Anderson, over indulgence and contraceptives. It’s a no brainer isn't it? Just as the world's most religious country keeps electing the wrong President the people who invented religion elected the wrong God. If the other guy had got in women would have deposited a tiny egg in a flower, cocooned it in silk and got on with their lives. Twenty one years later a fully formed adult would have emerged and taken its place in society without ever once having demanded Turkey Twizzlers, an iPod, a hoodie, expensive trainers or vast sums of money.

My anti - child stance can be traced back to the time when old fashioned bringing - up - kids, a process of trial and error that most of us seemed to negotiate without having to resort to nailing the little brats feet to the floor, suddenly morphed into parenting, a skill that had to be learned at great expense from people with degrees in childcare or worse still from self - help books written by Californian fuckwits or worthy but boring British ladies who take themselves far too seriously. Nowadays the parenting industry has grown to such an extent there are even TV shows dedicated to making struggling parents feel inadequate. In these shows Professional Nannies who bear a more than passing resemblance to Bette Davis, Rebecca de Mornay or Glenn Close knock into shape both children and parents by acting like a drill sergeant in the Paratroop regiment. The message is of course you will fail unless you SPEND SPEND SPEND.

So far neither of my offspring have shown the least inclination to make us Grandparents which is good as neither of us fancies smelling of urine, breaking out in hairy warts all over our faces or wearing cardigans. As people live longer and retain youthful attitudes into their seventies cloning starts to seem like a good option.

Copyright © 2005, Ian Thorpe

TV show Nanny 911-In the UK
and in the USA
Bette Davis in The Nanny
Review of the film

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Accept Everything, Question Nothing
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Childhood drinking puts us on a slippery slope


Children and the government

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