Monday, July 16, 2012

Please Read The Letter

Woo hoo! I made it into the 2000s: Please Read The Letter is on the 2009 album "Raising Sand", by Alison Kraus and Robert Plant. OK, picky people will also note that it was first released on the Bob Plant album "Walking Into Clarksdale", realeased 1998. Bah, I say. And humbug.
Three letters...

Dear Listener Editor;
The first time I saw it in your pages, the matches came out. The second time: the fuse was lit. And now I’ve seen it for a third time. Which makes it time for me to explode.
July 21-27 Issue 3767
It’s the replacement of poo (a perfectly good -if childish – euphemism for sh*t, cr*p, d*ng, m*n*r*, or the ever-popular French m*rd*. Excrement.) with pooh. Pooh, as we should all know is the name of a Bear. A very nice Bear. A Bear of Importance, Hunny, and Verse.
Christopher Robin did not go a-wandering in the Hundred Acre Wood with a poo. That would have been weird. Instead, he went with Pooh, Piglet, Kanga, Tigger, Eeyore, Wol, Roo, and various others.

To replace Poo with Pooh implies that the word Poo (or sh*t, etc) is also synonymous with Black, Polar, Grizzly, Koala, and Cuddly. I shudder at the thought of a Cuddly Poo, but a Cuddly Pooh makes me feel all gooey and caramel-ey inside.
And consider this: all Bears can poo in the woods, but only one Pooh can Bear in the woods.

Please instruct your writers and sub-editors that a poo is a poo, and cannot under any circumstance be confused with Pooh, who is a Bear.
Many thanks,
Allan.


Dear JohnKey;
It must be very heart-warming for you to know that 67%  63%  58%  whoops  53%  um  48% er quite a few people are still quite fond of you. Unfortunately, your popularity seems to be dropping almost as quickly as a crack whore’s drawers on a Saturday night.


So, what to do? You’ve tried the race card: hauling out the water rights thing, so the Maori Party will get all divisive and divided, and you look like quite a reasonable sort of chap, smirking while you said that all you were quoting was the law. Oh, please, JohnKey: not even Winston Creepers would have used that one.
We know that all you’ve done, really, is follow what your monied instincts tell you to do: grab things that aren’t yours, things that someone else (like me, and my parents) paid for and built, and sell them to yourself and your buck-buddies. After all, you’re Mum and Dad Kiwis, aren’t you?


You know that so-called “ordinary” Kiwis can’t afford to buy any of the shares / share packages that will be offered when the power companies go on the market.  In New Zealand and simultaneously in Australia, where there's a million or so "ordinary" Kiwis. Mind you, I have to grant that your definition of “ordinary” might be different from mine. To you, ordinary is someone who earns more than $200,000 a year. Probably overseas. To me, ordinary means the other 98% of people. Here.They’re the strange little creatures you meet on those interminable photo-opportunities you have to smile so much at.
But the smile’s not working these days, is it? Not working for you, and not being put to work by you. Perhaps people have started seeing how shallow and shabby you and your pod-people in Cabinet are…
Lovingly,

Allan.

Dear God;
I’ve been reading a bit about Intelligent Design lately.
It’s an attractive proposition, until I look at myself. I had to start wearing spectacles at age 3, because my “Intelligently Designed” eyes weren’t up to scratch. It took a surgical team of fallible people to fix the major problems that Your Infallibility left behind. Mind you, I got lucky: I missed the Intelligently Designed Polio you gave us to play with.

And now, it seems your Design has cracked up again. The chances seem pretty good that I have something called “Cluster Headaches”. You must have built them into your Perfect Design as a way of teaching us oh, something – although if a human father did that to his kids he’d be thrown into prison for child abuse. Anyway, if you’ve forgotten about Cluster Headaches, check ‘em out on ouch.org.uk. You’ll see a video of a man learning your ineffable lesson as he joyously experiences a Cluster Headache. I know exactly how he feels.

Intelligent Design, eh, God? Sorry, but you don’t even get an “E” for Effort.

Ignore ya later,
Al.

Listening to: Nina Simone, Greatest Hits. “Cotton Eyed Joe” is playing right now. Sublime.
Reading: War comics.

2 comments:

  1. I dunno who GillianO is, but I agree with her. Yes, yes, and yes. And also re: Cluster Headaches - I know how you feel. Welcome to the club of clusterheads, God's reject pile. Bastard.

    ReplyDelete