Gas

Roland watched the TV news, despondently hoping for a breakthrough deal in Copenhagen, or Kobnhavn, depending upon your point of view. It was depressing, watching the apparent cream of the crop from around the world bickering like schoolkids, while The Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu each sank a little lower into the briny deep.

The Chinese had apparently sent their “No” man to the negotiations, after he had won the Chinese Checkers match that put their “Yes” man on the outer, leaving the winner on the inner.

Binding agreements by other nations? “No”
Verifiable progress on emissions cuts? “No”
Commitment to a 2020 target? “No”
Commitment to a 2050 target? “No”
Commitment to a peak year of CO2 production? “No”
1.5 degrees Celsius maximum temperature increase? “No”
Can you make a decision on anything? “No”
Wny not? “I’ll have to call my superiors on that”

Barry O’Bama, President of the Free World, Defender of the Peace, Nobel Prize Winner and Great Consensus Maker, came on the screen and announced a deal that he had brokered between a group of significant nations, paving the way for a 2deg C increase in temperature over an unspecified number of years. The good news arising from this announcement would mean that anyone living less than 2 metres above the high tide mark in their part of the world was about to start enjoying regular saltwater baths, free of charge. It would also ensure famines in parts of Africa, a rare and nasty experience that everyone seemed to agree would be “cleansing” and “novel” for the good folk of Africa.

However, it turned out that no-one else knew about the deal, which was announced just in time for US news networks to pick it up and broadcast it to their parochial, carbon dioxide exhaling viewers, on their evening news shows. Mass confusion broke out, prompting the leaders of those countries that really don’t have much in the way of TV coverage to spit their collective dummies, circle their wagons and begin shoving hatpins into small effigies of poor Barry.

In all, it came down to 45,000 people descending upon a freezing cold town where you can’t even get a decent coffee and a Danish, to discuss how to reduce the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere on a daily basis. Despite all of the hot air coming out of the whole crowd of them, not a single snowflake was melted as a result of their presence.

After achieving exactly nothing, they all got back in their jetliners and flew home to their shrinking, sinking paradises, punching holes in the sky and adding a lot more CO2 to the atmosphere in the process.

Finally, in sheer disgust, Roland threw the remote control at his 50 inch plasma screen TV. It bounced harmlessly to the floor, as the screen had been made in China and was therefore tougher and better quality than most other manufacturers’ screens.

Roland turned his clothes dryer back on and turned the ducted airconditioning down another degree as it was a bright, sunny day outside, and slightly warmer that it had been yesterday. There was a documentary on polar bears on the Discovery Channel, so he flipped over to watch it.

Witness

Sunday, just after he awoke and began again to appreciate the world, Roland received a visitation.

Rather than do his own dirty work, the deity had apparently sent a henchman in his stead. An earnest fellow, with a gaggle of kids and a plain, mousy, obsequious wife. The henchman himself was much smaller than he appeared, for he was puffed up with righteousness, much like a frill-necked lizard who’s trying to scare people off by appearing much larger than he is in reality.

The henchman knocked several times upon the front door, having already presumed to ignore the doorbell by the gate, coming inside the yard and right to the front door of Roland’s home. Roland made his way to the door, pulling on a shirt as he went, expecting something other than a self-appointed accolyte of a mythical entity to be there, leading to the first disappointment for that day.

The henchman had upon his head a hat of grey felt, for verily it was hot outside in the sun, even at nine of the clock on a Sunday morning. He removed this hat from his head, revealing a matted mop of mousy locks, perspiration-plastered upon his pate… and asked if he might have a drink of water.

Roland nodded and said as he turned that he would get one for the henchman, to save him from an untimely death of thirst. Upon getting to the kitchen, to fetch the henchman his drink, Roland found the entire mousy family of moisture mendicants hot upon his heels, all of them wishing to partake of his newfound largesse.

Undeterred, Roland poured six glasses of water for the horde, watching and idly amused as each glass was comsumed in moments. One of the children began to speak, as if to ask for another, before being rebuked into surly silence by a telepathic glance from its mother.

The henchman then spoke, “Thank you for your hospitality, sir. Before I go I should like to ask you whether you have a moment, perhaps, to discuss the reason for my visit?”

“Here it comes, brothers and sisters”, thought Roland, inwardly cursing his decision to allow the henchman and his silent retinue the benefit of his hospitality. Roland held his tongue, standing purse-lipped and expressionless, willing himself into another galaxy… if it were possible. The deity, it would appear, had other plans.

“Do you know about our free magazine, The Watchtower?” asked the henchman, as one appeared as if by magic, in his long, bony hands. Roland noted they were scrubbed and pink, as though the henchman had perhaps been trying to remove an unseen spot from them. “Not really”, murmured Roland, “not really my cup of tea.”

“It’s very informative, and packed with important information”, insisted the henchman.

“Have you finished your glass of water?” asked Roland, pointedly, “Do you need another?”

“Yes, I have, though no more, thank you very much.”, said the henchman, “Perhaps you’d like to come along to our Kingdom Hall soon? It’s the only way to ensure your own salvation.” The henchman had not moved from his seat. His retinue stood, entranced by the opening moves of the hunt.

Roland stood, walking toward the door and offering that he had errands to run. The henchman realised he was fighting a lost battle and gathered his hat, wife and offspring, following Roland in disconsolate fashion. Upon reaching the door he turned to Roland and blurted, “Perhaps we can catch up next time I’m in the area?”

“Perhaps”, said Roland, “Perhaps you’ll meet my partner next time. He just loves a good argument”, before closing the door briskly.

Socks

Socks are apparently the most intelligent form of life in the universe (I’ve always wondered why it was assumed there was just one verse, haven’t you?) for a number of reasons. It’s pretty cool, because they know that we don’t even think of them as a lifeform.

The reason for this assertion is the whole disappearance thing. You know, the way socks go into dryers in pairs and only one comes out? A friend of mine believes the theory put forward by Douglas Adams (Rest his soul and fly a towel at half-mast for 42 days) that surmises socks put into dryers sometimes pass through the portal to another universe (there goes that idea) and are replaced in this universe by a wire coathanger in your wardrobe (a simple matter of conservation of mass between one universe and another) , which neatly explains why there are so damned many of them in every wardrobe. They even turn up in hotel room wardrobes, despite the coathangers there being the sort that don’t have a hook on them so you won’t steal them when you’re flogging the bathrobes.

Travelling through space-time in this fashion is something we have yet to master, despite our supposed cleverness. If we could just jump into a clothes dryer and emerge in another universe or another part of this universe (this one is pretty big, by all accounts) then we’d all be doing it, for the purposes of tourism, of course. The fact that socks are merely space tourists has never really occurred to anyone whom I know personally, but it should come as no surprise that clothes dryer ownership is on a rapid growth curve worldwide, at the same time that socks are disappearing in greater numbers than ever before and wire coathangers are appearing so quickly that the unknowing believe they are breeding in dark places. You see, it makes a strange sort of sense if you squint just right.

There is, however, another possibility that has not been adequately canvassed: Upright washing machines.

Down through history, we have been washing our clothes in small pools, about 60cm in diameter. This has always been a relatively safe practice, so long as one is accompanied whilst doing it. There is a darker side to it though, that is little understood. You see, washing machines are also portals or wormholes into other far distant galaxies and parallel universes. Unaccompanied use is a different matter. Millions of men and women, mostly women in this case, go missing each year when they witness a sock activating the portal and become suspicious. The socks simply take care of the witness in the way any “made man” mobster would… they grab the woman and drag her through the portal with them, thus ensuring their secret remains safe.

Someone figured this out a while back and has made a small mountain of money out of the Stargate franchise. The shimmery surface of a stargate is really just the surface of the water in a washing machine, though larger. If you have the operator’s manual committed to memory and the right codes, you too can use waching machines for intergalactic travel. You don’t have to even deal with those large, swarthy critters with the plastic toys from cereal packets implanted under the skin of their foreheads, either.

If they scare you now, there’s really no compelling reason to have a dryer or a washing machine. Front-loading washing machines seem to be OK, at least until they reach a diameter of 4 metres or more. Fortunately, such big front-loading washing machines are rare, though some have obviously found their way into the hands of the props department on the Stargate set.

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there – I wonder if they’re dry?

Tiger

What is there to say? Everyone else is just jealous they never get the chance to fly attractive, sexy “cocktail bar hostesses” (WTF are they, if they’re not in-house hookers, by the way?) halfway ’round the world so they’ll have something to play with when they get there. If you had the opportunity then you’d do it too, wouldn’t you?

Leave the guy alone and he’ll go away, just like that nasty, big pimple on your ass that you keep picking at and squeezing would also go away, if you could resist bothering it.

He’s got a wife and kids and a shitload of sucking up to do, if any of them are going to come out of this halfway sane, as far as I can see. Golf will miss him for a while; the players who get the prizemoney he would have won won’t miss him at all.

Inklings

Out there, in the real world, well away from the beautiful people in their designer clothes and frequent trips to the makeup trailer on the set of CSI:Podunk, there is a whole race of Untermensch, shall we say, whom Roland refers to as Inklings.

In other parts of the world they are also known as bogans, bevans, rednecks, yeehaws, chavs, lowlifes, toerags and scum.

Several days ago, Roland saw a flock of them, gambolling in the park near his home. The males wore torn jeans with grease ingrained into them. They all seemed to have lank, dirty hair and missing teeth. They wore dirty caps backward on their partially empty heads, seemingly because they saw someone else do it somewhere, probably on TV, and it had become a signature habit of theirs.

All of them were wearing designer clothes. By “designer clothes, Roland observed to himself that their clothes probably cost more than the designer clothes worn by celebrities and professional sportsmen such as David Beckham and Paris Hilton. Darkly, Roland assumed the funds to obtain these clothes were either stolen, governmnet handouts or unnecessary, as the items were, themselves, stolen.

Something else, Roland noticed, that set them apart from ordinary humans was the obvious and curious phenomenon known as the TTR (Tooth to Tattoo Ratio). In short, the Theory of TTR states that Inkling males have more tattoos than they have teeth. For reasons not yet understood by medical science, this renders them impervious to disease and most injury. An Inkling with a low TTR will live a long and useless life, dying in ripe old age, proud to be the patriarch, or matriarch, of a family that spans anywhere up to 8 living generations at any one time. (There’s likely a thesis and some handsome medical research grants to be had, investigating these aspects of Inkling physiology and culture)

Roland also observed a number of females with the herd?… flock?… troop? As always, the females were overweight and pimply, surrounded by a gaggle of kids who have probably been fending for themselves since before they learned to walk. Hand-eye co-ordination like monkeys and a stomach that can metabolise almost anything to their benefit.

It was apparent to Roland, a keen observer of the human condition, that these females were also living proof that Darwin was essentially right. These were obviously experienced Inkling breeding stock… their offspring were markedly different, one from another. This is taken as proof positive that when they procreate, they always do so with a different male each time. This is a very clever ploy on their part, as it ensures maximum biodiversity for their particular subspecies. (They may not be a true subspecies yet but they are well on their way.)

Roland realised he had seen some of these particular Inklings in their native habitat. Several of them were regulars around the local courthouse on Monday mornings. They were often there, in their torn jeans, flannel shirts and shiny Nylon sports windbreakers. Their females were also familiar to Roland, wearing clothes that might have fit them when they were 4 or 6 sizes smaller. A pall of Marlboro smoke seemed to be eternally hanging over them, trapped under the inversion layer of disapproval that follows them everywhere, as they drive their motley hordes of children before them, in the manner of Albanian goatherds.