On Democracy
Americans! Still coming to terms with rich white men in suits using cutting edge touch-screen technology to steal your election? Sick to death of the fact that there is no audit trail for many of the votes that got Chimpy back in the White House? Dismayed that the Nationalist Socialist White Peoples' Party managed to get more votes in some districts than there are registered voters?
Then perhaps you might like to learn how it's done properly, and you will be amazed to learn that you don't actually have to say which party you intend to vote for when you register . That's. Just. Stupid.
Funnily enough, registering to vote is more-or-less compulsory over here, as the electoral roll is used for other purposes other than voting. Tax-raising, for example, and we all know what you Americans think of actually having to pay to run your country. It must be a novel idea, actually encouraging people to register to vote, rather than thinking of news ways of disqualifying them.
You know, in the stone age United Kingdom, we still vote by turning up at some damp church hall and draw a cross on a piece of paper with a pencil. The pencil is tied to the voting booth with a piece of hairy string so you can't steal it, which is about as deep as voter fraud gets around here.
Then, when the polls close, people sit at a long line of tables and count the votes by hand in front of auditors.
Funnily enough, this primitive system seems to work.
We may have shonky teeth and sip tea, but we laugh at your voting machines.
And if
this is the kind of person who gets to elect your president, we might as well just pack up and go home right now. He forgot to write "I am not mad" at the end.
My advice to you, if you really are guided by lights is this: let people shag around, enjoy the gayness and marry their dogs. If you were a real Christian instead of some sheep dragged along by a convincing facsimile, you'd keep your trap shut and
forgive them.
The Diary of RSM Albert O'Balsam, DSC and Bar
Having just emerged from up some mountain where he claims to have been fighting some unnamed foe, this last bastion of the British Empire, Regimental Sergeant Major to Her Majesty's 13th Goat Brigade Albert O'Balsam DSC and Bar, is now able to reveal his unique experiences of great savagery, his conversion to an obscure branch of Christianity, the secrets of the "Craft" and nubile Swedish former virgins via these very pages. We are, indeed, not worthy:
"I arrive here, exhausted, after a long trek over the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the north-west face of Konnie Huq. Through ice, snow and gale have I travelled merely because the bus services up there insist on a concept these foreign johnnies refer to as 'exact fare only please'.
It has taken me thirty-seven years to cover a mere three hundred yards, thanks, mainly to the virgins who have thrown their nubile young bodies at me in order to attain salvation in the eyes of the Lord. Salvation, that can only be achieved through what what we, the initiates to the secret ways of the "Craft" refer to as 'The Sacred Ceremony of Three-Up.'
I gather other, less enlightened branches of the church, know this most saintly of practices as 'a damn good spit-roasting', and it is lucky that I pilfered the One, True Strap-on of Thimppu from the body of a recently expired, and extremely happy Man of God, what with me being the only male in those remote mountain parts.
Some may say that I have dallied on my trek, enjoying the company of sixteen and seventeen year old Swedish ladies in expensive lingerie, but nothing can be further from the truth. It has been Hell, HELL, I tell you, and I arrive a man broken in both spirit and body.
And now we turn to today's scripture from the Book of Razzle, chapter XXVII, verses 1 to 69: 'Dear Fiesta, you won't believe the most amazing thing that happened to me the other day...'"
"Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I am amongst friends at last. Pull up a chair and we can discuss our adventures over a forty year old Glenhoddle I have stashed in me bedroll.
I am reminded of that unfortunate business with the flamethrower in the Mimh-Si wharf
Maison d'amitee, that I am now able to tell you about on account of the statue of limitations. And what a night that was, thanking the good Lord that Mme LaBelle and Madame Hung-Lo were still able to pose for the camera desite their rather singed appearance.
I do indeed still posses said Modern Art photographs, though they are somewhat "foxed" - and some would also say "badgered" and "ottered" - thanks to their frequent public display by way of raising funds on my trek.
You will be pleased to hear, old man, that my collection has somewhat grown, thanks to the patient recording of every Scandinavian nubile that has crossed my path, the words of St Bidulph the Perverted ("Drop 'em darlin' I'm gonna make you a star") having the desired effect every time.
My mind has been at rest over the Mimh-Si brouhaha for some time, for which I have certain photographs of Madame "Crusher" Hung-Lo with the minister of justice to thank. Not only have these images saved my bacon, but they have filled my loins with warmth on many a cold Himalayan night in times when there haven't been two Nordic beauties to rub together."
"As fer your questions, memsahib, I'm afraid there is no truth in the rumour that I was involved in that unfortunate affair with the Nepalese mountain goat and the Crown Prince of Jutland. I am afraid you may have me confused with the other RSM Sergeant Albert O'Balsam DSC and Bar who has also served under the command of Colonel Greebling.
You'll be amazed how many times this has happened. Twice, in fact.
It is, however, fairly easy to tell us apart. I am in possession of a full set of limbs, and as far as I know the other O'Balsam has no grasp of the Welsh language. And neither have I, come to mention it. "
"To answer any doubts that I may be "saved", I feel it is my duty to tell you all that my salvation came at the hands of one of the finest men this church has ever produced.
I remember it well - I was woken from my slumber to the brightest of lights. It was then I realised that I'd left the light on in the lav, but standing there, heaven sent, was the man himself, my saviour Roger de Courcey.
I shall never forget those words he said unto me that night, as angels danced around my head: "Nookie noookie nookie!", which I saw to be the most potent sign.
And I'd hardly touched a drop that night.
I have dedicated my life to educating young ladies in the work of my master, leaving me the broken wreck that I am today. I trust I can find succour in your arms. No tongues, mind."
With thanks to Col Horace Streeb Greebling, DSO (no relation)
