After a length of time most remarkable for my absence, I return with a message of hope. I have found (and founded) a new home, and you are invited to visit. Bring friends! Bring strangers! Bring that cat down the street that looks at you like it knows something you don't! Tell them to go to www.theswollenhead.com

I would await thee eagerly, but I have better things to do.

Ms Polly had a dolly who was sick, sick, sick.

So she threw it in the sea tied to a brick, brick, brick.

She did the right thing.

 

Taken from 'More Songs to Sing Your Modern Child in a Modern World'.

Today I founded a religion that worships Richard Dawkins as a god.

   Yesterday my father told me to slay the Nemean Lion.

   “Why?” I asked.

   “Because I say so.” He countered.

   “You can’t tell me what to do!” I shouted. “You’re not my father!”

   “Yes I am.”

   “Oh, right, sorry. I guess I got a bit carried away.”

   “That’s alright, I forgive you. Which is just as well because I forgot my belt today.”

   “I was wondering why your pants were round your ankles.”

   “Yes, well, I can’t very well keep pulling them up again, I’d never get anything done.”

   “So where’s Nemea anyway?”

   “How should I know?”

   “If you don’t even know where it is why on Earth do you want me to slay their lion?”

   “It keeps digging up my vegetable patch.”

   “A lion?”

   “Yes.”

   “Why would it do that? I’ve never heard of a lion eating vegetables.”

   “I blame this new fandangled obsession with diets.”

   “You think it’s on some sort of all vegetable diet?”

   “Yes.”

   “Well at least I won’t have to worry about it eating me.”

   “Actually you have to do it with pockets full of vegetables.”

   “What? Why?”

   “Because it will be funny.”

   “How do you even know it’s the Nemean Lion anyway?”

   “I have a hunch.”

   “You have a hunch that your vegetables are being stolen by a lion on a diet from a place you’ve never been?”

   “No, I have a hunchback and he told me.”

   “Well what exactly do you want me to do?”

   “Go and slay it.”

   “How?”

   “Well, you could go and use that marvelous new internal net of yours or you could just wait in the garden tomorrow morning.”

   Thus I equipped myself with bow and arrows both, a sword of bronze and then, on a whim, pulled an olive tree from the ground to use as a club, before crouching in the bushes by my father’s vegetable patch. Sure enough and to my considerable surprise the lion came as warned and began digging about at the turnips. I immediately fired a volley of arrows at him but not a single one managed to pierce his thick hide. This I leaped upon him with my club which broke harmlessly across his head. I drew then my sword. Slash! I went, and stab also. And slash, slash, stab, stab, slash, all to no avail. Finally the lion noticed me, looking me over with a slow and mildly irritated glance.

   “Sorry, did you say something?” He asked.

   “Are you the Nemean Lion?” I asked in reply.

   “Why yes, have we met before?”

   “Not that I remember.”

   “Are those turnips in your pocket?”

   “Yes.”

   “Do you think I could have some? Only I’m frightfully hungry. I know it’s unusual, a lion eating turnips, but I’m on a diet.”

   “Of course you can.” And I reached into my pocket, taking from it a single turnip. “Open up now.” The lion did so and I thrust my entire arm down its throat with lightning speed.

   “Grklbrlkurlk?” It choked, which I assumed to mean ‘what the bloody hell are you doing?’.

   When it was dead I skinned it with its own claws. My father hadn’t asked me to, of course, but I thought I’d look rather fetching in its skin, and I was right.

   While trimming my bonsai this morning I was taken (though not literally) somewhat by surprise when a colossal metal cable fell from the sky to land in my garden, dangling from the very heavens themselves. I stood up and had a bit of a look. What had appeared at first to be steel no longer appeared to be any sort of Earth metal, tinged purple as it was. With arms four times as long I couldn’t have encompassed its girth.

   Before I could even try five little blue men abseiled down it wearing rather fetching space suits decorated with a delightful floral motif. As soon as they landed they began trying to fasten the cable to something, first by tying it unsuccessfully to a tree and then to the hills hoist.

   “Um, excuse me.” I hazarded. They all screamed and hid behind the cable, slowly poking their little helmeted heads out from behind it in a not un-comical manner.

   “It spoke!” Declared one.

   “What is it?” Declared another (well, asked, but that would break the flow of the dialogue).

   “Gary said this place was uninhabited!” Declared a third.

   “Why does this always bloody happen?” I shouted to the sky, obscured though it was by the enormous cable. “First the Aborigines and now us! How bloody hard is it to take a proper look?”

   “What did it say?” Asked one.

   “Don’t be daft Wally, it’s already apparent that it understood us, if you act like we speak different languages now it’ll just be one big plot hole.”

   “No it wouldn’t! It might show up as a careless mistake but it wouldn’t be a plot hole. It hardly effects the plot does it?”

   “Of course it does! If we can understand each other this whole thing will take a completely different direction!”

   “Well I wouldn’t call it a plot hole. I don’t know what I’d call it but not a plot hole. And anyway, it’s stupid.”

   “What is?”

   “Us speaking the same language. I mean, what are the chances of that? I find it hard to believe our mouths even have the slightest thing in common, we’re a totally different species. And anyway, think of how many languages we have back on Boink, you think they only speak the one language here? So what are the chances, even if one language was shared by our two planets, that we, Kirikians, speaking Kirikian, would come across, by sheer coincidence, by accident, the one place on this planet where they also speak Kirikian?”

   “Maybe we have some sort of translator in out helmets.”

   “They’re fish bowls! Where’s it going to go?”

   “Well the readers didn’t know that, he hasn’t described them yet!”

   “Well how do we know he’s not about to? What, we make some stupid reference to the translators in our helmets and then two paragraphs later he describes them and suddenly we have another plot hole.”

   “I don’t see how that’s a plot hole if you suddenly not understanding him isn’t.”

   “That’s besides the point!”

   “Well how would you explain it?”

   “I wouldn’t! I’m the one who thinks we shouldn’t understand each other!”

   “Maybe he’s a psychic!”

   “What? Then how come he hasn’t mentioned it before? He’s been writing this for over a year now.”

   “Well he’s not a very consistent character is he?”

   “Anyway, now you’re creating another plot hole. We’re not even supposed to know this place is inhabited, and now you’re blurting out how well you know him!”

   “Um, excuse me?” I interrupted as politely as I could.

   “Oh what is it?” Demanded one irritably.

   “Kriklikklookspikklek.” Said the other.

   “Look it’s too late now alright? It’s well established now that we can understand each other.”

   “But that’s daft! How could we? I’ve been through this!”

   “I was just wondering what it is you’re doing in my garden with a huge great big cable.”

   They all turned to me then, staring at me with alien eyes through their fish bowl helmets (“See! I told you!”) as if I were the stupidest being in the universe.

   “Um, because we’re building a space elevator? Duh.”

   “So what, now he can understand you?”

   “A what?” I asked.

   “Look, it’s really not that hard. We drop a few satellites into your orbit and then drop down cables. That way we can easily get in and out of your atmosphere without a needless waste of fuel. Then we link up the satellites into a sort of ring or two around your planet. Do you have any idea how much fuel we’d waste flying in and out of atmospheres every time we enslaved a planet? This way we can just build our war machines on the ground out of your own resources. It’s almost worth it for the irony alone.”

   I mulled this over for a moment then stepped forward, grasped the cable and gave it a tremendous tug, pulling the satellite above out of orbit and sending it hurtling harmlessly towards the sea which is situated so conveniently nearby my abode. Of course the connecting cable demolished pretty much ever building between my garden and the sea but it broke my fence too and you don’t here me complaining.

   “You bastard!”

   “Klekpokklikklatklok!”

   An excerpt from the diaries of Tinky Winky, a Teletubby.

    God I’m so fucking tired of people giving me shit about my handbag! It’s handy, alright? I don’t wear pants so I don’t have any pockets. How else am I meant to carry my stuff? Sometimes you need to use your hands, you know? You can’t just carry shit round in your arms all the time.

   And, I mean, I’m purple, so fucking what? You give some black guy shit for being black and you’re a racist but see a guy who’s purple and you can say whatever the hell you want! On television! I mean, there are priests accusing me of perverting children on television in fucking Australia! I swear to god, Australia! I mean, they’re a country of fucking convicts and they’re accusing me of shit! Since when did being purple mean you’re gay anyway? Is the fucking Count on Sesame Street gay? I met him at a party once and the two chicks hanging off him didn’t seem to think so. So what if I’m fucking purple? I was born this way. What, you want me to bleach my body or some shit? I would have thought not rooting guys would be enough!

   And you know the shit I have to put up with from Dipsy? He keeps asking if I watch gay porn on my stomach! And, I mean, come on! How is green any less gay than purple? And you know he’ll deny it but a couple of years ago at a Christmas party he and Jerry Falwell disappeared together for like two hours and they were awkward around each other for months afterwards! Every time anyone asks him about it he just says he was too drunk to remember where they were and then he chucks a hissy fit and tells you to stop interrogating him.

   It’s just, it’s like the whole world’s against me, you know? Even the sun looks at me like I’m some kind of freak and it’s like, you’re a fucking baby, what do you know? Don’t even get me started on the rabbits. I mean, they don’t even bother to check before they start going at it and then they look at you with their beady little eyes and you can just feel them thinking ‘you’re purple and you carry a handbag’. I mean, you’re a fucking rabbit, and I know I saw you fucking that other rabbit like three minutes ago. And you know what else I know? That’s a guy rabbit. And you know what else? He’s your fucking brother or some shit! I mean, come on!

   God, I just, it just makes you want to curl up on the couch with a whole tub of ice cream and watch Sleepless in Seattle again.

   I met a rooster today who claimed to be the reincarnation of John Wilkes Booth.

   “Hello.” He said. “I’m the reincarnation of John Wilkes Booth.”

   “Are you now?” I asked.

   “Yes.” He confirmed.

   I asked him why he was in my yard stealing laundry.

   “I’m not, I just think it would look better on the clothes line two yards over.”

   I mulled over his words like so much wine.

   “You have a point. Perhaps I should move.”

   “Or you could just swap clothes with your neighbour.”

   “That wouldn’t work at all.”

   “Why ever not?”

   “She’s a gothic transvestite midget.”

   Suddenly a possum appeared on the roof.

   “I’m the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln!” It declared.

   The rooster promptly shot it to death and ran away.