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George Doing His Duty
Digital Malfeasance by Warrigal
So here I am, on a spaceship that’s going to the moon. I have a butler called George, the beautiful Belinda as my companion and a control freak of a computer called Catherine. What am I in for? Who knows? Belinda and I go for a walk around the village and of course in its centre is a green with, you guessed it, a cricket pitch. Droids are moving back and forth dressed in rural style clothing and as they walk past they sing out “Morning Father, morning Miss Belinda” “Morning” we reply.
The village has shops, café’s, a cinema, several pubs and two restaurants. At the end of the main street is a river that meanders off into the distance. How does all of this happen in a spaceship? I mean the sun is shining, there is a light breeze, and clouds are moving across the sky, I am struggling to take this all in. We sit on a bench and watch the river flowing. Belinda holds my hand. Her warmth makes me feel better and I’m so glad she is with me. We walk back to the Bats Droppings to meet Gordon.
“Sandy, Belinda, over here” Gordon beckons. We look round the pub. People are sitting at tables and someone is selecting some music on the jukebox. A man comes around the corner of the bar. “Afternoon Father, Miss Belinda, I’m Michael, Michael Jones and this is my pub, let me get you a drink. Trotters for you Father and the young miss would like a tonic water” Trotters, how the f….? Well I guess I’m about to find out. “Delightful, thanks Michael”.
We get our drinks and join Gordon. “Gordon, I’ve so many questions, I don’t know where to start plus I only have 500 words to play with” I gush, totally out of my depth. “Well” Gordon begins “let me tell you a few things and then we can talk about it. Last night we teleported up to the ship on SPITS. You are living in the English Village bio of the ship. After lunch I’ll take you to meet the FART and Catherine the controlling computer. The FART will take us for a quick trip round the moon then I’ll get you to drop me off back on Earth and you can head off. First you’ll need this”. Gordon pushes a book across the table. The book is called ‘Space Navigation for Dummies’. I flick to the table of contents. It reads, 1. Avoiding BO, 2. Watch out for BOOBS, 3. When to use a GOAT. 4. Five questions you should ask a FART, 5. Things you need to know about Space Travel and 6. The Complete List of Space Acronyms. It’s an incredibly small book for such a big subject. Gordon seems to know what I’m thinking “Okay so let me guess, small book big subject?” I nod passively “It’s pretty well all you need to know. Catherine runs the ship in conjunction with the FART and the Droids. You travel around the ship via the river. The river will take you to the other bio’s. Now Avoid BO” Yes I must say body odour can be intolerable at times “Body odour Gordon?” I ask knowing I’ll be wrong. “No Sandy, Big Objects. In space there are lots of Big Objects, avoid them at all costs”. “Boobs?” I ask and no, I don’t even want to go there even though boobs are my favourite subject. “Big Objects Out Back Side. If you have a Big Object Out Back Side then you are in trouble, really big trouble”.
“Gordon, whats a GOAT?” Belinda pipes in, “I mean you don’t sacrifice them at full moon or anything do you?” “No, my dear child a GOAT is a Giant Object Atomising Teleporter. It’s how we get big stuff on and off the ship”. “But Gordon” I question, “If I don’t need to know much about all this why there are five questions you should ask a FART?” “Well Sandy” Gordon responds “there’s an old saying, when you hit 50 never trust a FART”. Just as lunch is served, a cat enters the room and sits on one of the seats at our table. Gordon says “Sandy, Belinda, meet Catherine”. A cat, you mean to tell me that a cat runs a spaceship. The only good cat is a dead cat. “Good afternoon Father, Miss Belinda, I’m Catherine. When I roam around the ship I use this form, helps me catch any rats” she laughs wickedly. “Anyway, I’ll meet you later, see you”
Hung, the funnier you get, the crazier you get and the crazier you get, the funnier you get! Your imagination knows know bounds…
Here, have some of Granny’s wedges… she’s back you know; thank goodness; Merv just didn’t have her touch with the wedges!
🙂
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Thank you kind Sir. I just hope I can keep it going
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Looks like something that popped out of somebodies stomach in Alien, Hung.
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It was definitely a surprise but in space you take what you can get
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Perhaps I will wear my Ninja Turtle outfit in bed tonight after feeling very inspired by your story Hung.
I know that it can be a bit sweaty inside the outfit and the odd fart lingers, but the max was 6c to-day.
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There’s hope for us old blokes yet, Turtle Power
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Hung, I thought you said you don’t like acronyms…I’m starting to think that you LOVE them…
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Thank you your worshipness. A life full of contradictions for Hung One On
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This is wonderful stuff Hung. It puts me in mind of those whacked out comix you used to be able to get in headshops back in the sixties, or The Pig of Steel on JJ in the seventies
Makes no sense at all and yet manages to keep you guessing and just enough off balance to be able to keep pulling you in the direction it wants you to go. Just like all the drugs everyone took back in the sixties. (Or that series “Lost”. Flockwallpaper! What was that show about?!!?)
Turn on, tune in, drop out sounded like a plan at the time. Funny how funny it sounds now; but we were just children. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’m gonna dig out my Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Comix featuring Fat Freddy’s Cat, The Chequered Demon, Norbert the Nark and all those other wasted and wanton characters.
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I think the word absurd decribes it very nicely. Used to listen to JJ when living in the Gong as a kid. Do you remember Nude Radio, the precussor to Aunty Jack I think
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Ah, Mirri… who can forget the wisdom of Fat Freddy’s Cat: “Dope can get you through times of no money better than money can get you through times of no dope!”
Now THERE was an oracle!
😉
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Oh, no! If she’s as good at catching rats as she is in running a bio ship, you’re in trouble Mister Hungy boobs!
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Will have to slip Zeus in there somewhere, was he good at cricket?
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I imagine cricket is just exactly the kind of pointless exercise that might appeal to an ultimate deity, Hung:
The tedious wait between each shot as the bowler adds redness to the symbolic penis he has carefully painted on his white cricketing pants during the previous six overs… the unpleasant exposure to the mid-summer Australian sun, flies by the dozen drowning themselves in your beer while bull-ants invade your picnic hamper and challenge you for ownership rights; and all the while, the overwhelmingly disturbing but unmistakeably audible sound of grass blades growing inexorably towards the sunlight only to be cut short in their youthful prime by the groundskeeper’s mower; the grim reaper.
Oh, yes… lots there to amuse old Zeus!
I particularly like your ship’s computer and rodent-destruction system, Catherine… but why does she remind me of Nicole Kidman?
🙂
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Do the Persians play cricket?
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And Nicole, her acting is so wooden you could build your verandah out of her
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Didn’t you know that the Greeks built the Trojan Horse out of Nicole Kidman’s spare fat after a liposuction operation?
As for the Persians playing cricket, I think I’ve mentioned some time ago that the earliest record of a game played with a bat and ball is the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the earliest copies of which date back as far as Ancient Sumeria… although he is generally regarded as a Babylonian, and hence an Assyrian or even Persian demi-god.
However by all accounts, Gilgamesh’s game consisted solely in whacking the ball as far as one could and then chasing after the damned thing; repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum… or until exhaustion sets in, whichever comes first. This sounds a bit more like golf to me, but to my mind there’s not a lot to choose betweeh cricket and golf; they are BOTH exercises in utter pointlessness and futility in any case…
🙂
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Asty, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this game anywhere else but we used to play it in Greece as kids and I remember being told by my uncle that the ancient greek kids used to play it. It is played with a bat but not with a ball. The other guy throws a particularly curved stick, around 6inches, both points sharpened at the end. The batsman is inside a circle… I can’t remember much more about it, only that in certain circumstainces, the batsman can hit the rested stick at one of its points and then, when the stick comes flying up he must hit again as far as he can.
Anyone know this game? I can barely remember it but I do remember my uncle telling me that it was ancient game.
I must write to my cousin in Greece…
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Ato, the game you describe is remarkably similar to the original English game of cricket, except for the fact that you’re hitting another stick with the bat, and not a ball… in the original game of cricket, the ‘bat’ was a plain, rounded stick, similar to a short broomhandle, with which a ball of baked clay approximately 2 inches in diameter was hit… the aim being maximum distance. Later versions of the game introduced ‘runs’ as a symbolic measurement of distance…
The only real difference between your game and ‘original cricket’ is that you don’t even need a ‘bowler’ for your game…
I think this is probably quite strong cultural evidence of a high degree of cultural contiguity between the UK and ancient Greece.
Another toy we used to make as kids to play with were what we called ‘scotch arrows’… ever heard of them? These were effectively a long dart (much too short to be considered a ‘spear’ or a javelin) but which was thrown with a piece of string wrapped around it for extra distance, just like the thongs you ancient Greeks used to use to throw their javelins for extra distance and force…
🙂
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