Do you see them? Those sad, broken individuals in the queue for unemployment benefit, welfare, food stamps, the dole, call it what you will. Their hollow-eyed, thousand-yard stares tell well their despair, realising as they do that their chosen profession is now as redundant as they are, as though they were bronze axe makers or wheelwrights. Spare a thought and possibly some coins of small denomination as you pass them, gentle reader, for they are, or were, the satirists.
The Tweet above comes, as you see, from NBC News, which masquerades as a trustworthy and reputable news source. In the light of the staggering information the Tweet imparts, might we suggest that one approaches the rest of their output with caution? Always anxious for the view of the common man of toil in these matters, we showed the Tweet to Barry Shand, the heavily tattooed ex-doorman who now plies his trade as our caretaker here at the Towers. He looked at it for some time and inquired, 'What do they mean, more than just physical?’ We replied that they seemed to be suggesting that this pain was mental. Barry simply raised his Tower-Bridge-like eyebrows and continued jet-washing the pool.
While shaking one’s head and passing over this all-too-common eyewash, it is also worth noting that it is not only news corporations, celebrities and politicians who must bend the knee at this altar of dysfunction. Soon, the ordinary citizen will be forced to comply. Harry the Owl sounds as though he might be an underworld associate of Barry Shand, but is in fact the Twitter nom de plume of one Harry Miller, ex-police officer turned businessman and founder of Fair Cop, a response to his being investigated for a Tweet, in much the same way that whoever authorised the NBC Tweet ought to investigated by the top nibs from a loony bin.
Mr. Miller caught the attention of the boys, or whatever gender they have elected to be this week, in blue when he retweeted a ‘verse’ from a ‘song’ by a lesbian feminist chanteuse. As a magazine which publishes poesie, we cannot bring ourselves to reprint the wretched doggerel here, but the main thrust of the ditty was that there are but two genders. Cue the gloved knock on the door – or perhaps nest – of Harry the Owl.
In conversation with an officer, Mr. Miller was told to ‘check his thinking’, after there had been a complaint – that is, one complaint – from a party whose feelings had been hurt by the Tweet. Checking one’s thinking is, of course, no easy matter. Just ask René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein or any other of the dozens of Johnnies who have attempted same. But the concerns of the complainant were utmost. They were, Mr. Miller was informed, concerned for any transgender people who might be on Mr. Miller’s staff. But, the Owl shot back, my business is docking. I employ dockers. There aren’t any transgender people there. Nevertheless, the officer continued, there might be.
An interview with Mr. Miller can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUuZMyqhUUk&t=686s, with the entertaining coves from YouTube Channel Triggernometry. One of many high points in the narrative is when the investigating officer informs Mr. Miller that, in the womb, sometimes a woman’s brain grows the wrong body parts. I learned that, says the policeman, on a course.
And now we must be going. We are feeling a little queasy. Perhaps it is that time of the month.
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