The Book of St Richard, Chapter 17

Continued from Chapter 16

1. So the year of Our Lord two thousand and thirteen arrived, and Richard said unto himself, "What deranged things can I do now?"

2. For he was a man of great years and great wealth, but he was bored.

3. He said unto himself, "I have attacked the Catholics, but they laugh at me. Yeah, and they write books such as The Dawkins Delusion, and The Blind Dawkins, yeah, and even The Selfish Dawkins, which mock me."

4. Thus he resolved to attack the Muslims as well. Which was actually rather courageous, because the Muslim turneth not the other cheek as a rule. Indeed in some cases his wrath waxeth exceeding hot.

A humble Muslim bringeth gifts to Richard Dawkins.

5. So Dawkins spake loudly on the Twitter, which hath the advantage that it may be used from a bunker deep underground, and condemned the Muslims.

6. For forty days and forty nights he condemned them and insulted them. Until people said, "If Richard hateth Islam so, then perhaps there's something to be said for it after all?"

7. And there was a man named Meh-di Ha-san, of the hosts of Puff-ing-ton, who was himself a Muslim.

8. So Richard cried out, saying "Let him not speak! For he believeth in wing-ed horses."

Cry "Mehdi! Mehdi!" and this horse will come and rescue you.

9. But the disciples of Richard cried "Shame! Shame! After all, it is only the New Statesman, which no man readeth anyway."

10. And some men began to question whether Richard was really infallible, as they had always believed.

11. After this setback, Richard was sore distressed, but his heart was uplifted when a prestigious magazine, the Beano, named him as the world's top thinker.

12. To which Richard responded with eloquence, saying, "D'oh..."

The runner up in the "top thinker" poll.

13. For, as it is written in the book of Eccles-iastes, the race is not to the swift, nor even to the clever, but simply to the one with the greatest publicity machine and his own sycophantic website.

14. For otherwise, one might have given the prize to one of many Nobel prize winners, or Fields medallists, or distinguished writers and scholars.

15. Why, they might have given it even to Joseph Ratzinger, he that is called Pope Emeritus.

Richard "Thinker" Dawkins realises that he's forgotten to put any clothes on.

16. And Richard rejoiced exceedingly, saying "The Beano hath spoken. I am indeed the greatest thinker of our time, greater even than Stephen Fry, or Joan Bakewell, or Melvyn Bragg."

17. "What is more, I am modest as well; for when a man praiseth me, I publish his words on my website, and on Twitter, and on a big notice-board outside my house in Oxford. But otherwise I hold my peace."

To be continued.

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The Book of St Richard started here.

Pentecost readings

Burning copies of "The Fix"

As the hype over The Fix reaches a climax, and the team of relay runners escorting it round the UK says with one voice "We've had enough of that flaming book," the CBCEW has agreed to adopt new readings for this Pentecost Sunday, from the book of St Damian.

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Vincent Nichols confesses to an addiction

As St Luke records in The Fix of the Apostles, when the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, the disciples were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house. Then there appeared tongues as of fire, which came to rest on them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues.

Now we see here several examples of addiction, and I have observed many such incidents in my researches for this book. Some people are addicted to strong winds; for example St Peter is recorded as once having taken his boat out onto the Sea of Galilee in a storm, evidently to feed his addiction to wind, which the other Apostles vainly tried to cover up. If he had not had this problem, he would probably have stayed indoors, become a journalist, and maybe written a blog. Some say that Prince Charles, who recently moonlighted as a weatherman on television, is also addicted to extreme meteorological phenomena.

Tongues of fire are another addiction I have seen on my travels. Sometimes this is merely a variation on cigarette-smoking, where the addict lights the wrong end of the cigarette in his confusion (my friend Cristina Odone often makes this mistake). Another way of setting one's tongue on fire is by fire-eating, which nobody would do unless they were seriously disturbed.

Unholy smoke from Cristina Odone

Could it have been the case that St Peter was addicted to fire-eating, as well as heavy winds? St Luke is strangely silent on the question.

Then again we come to another addiction mentioned in this passage, the speaking in different tongues. In modern society people with this problem can find useful employment as interpreters and translators, but sometimes we find charismatic sects whose members simply sound off with random garbage like "Molybdenite Holy Smoke ROFL Damian Fix Judy Bogan Pottymouth LOL," as a way of obtaining relief. No doubt St Peter was a sufferer from this condition as well.

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A  fairy cake cupcake, as seen at Our Lady of the Assumption & St. Gregory, Soho

As St Paul, notorious for plugging his own Epistles, once pointed out, the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, a good haircut, a clean shirt, and a real Ph.D. degree, whereas the works of the flesh are obvious: trolling on blogs, addiction to cupcakes, drinking my supplies of gin and hair-restorer, reading the Guardian and the Huffington post, and trying to ordain women as priests.

Alas, on my own blog, where many of the contributors are intelligent traditional Catholics with good haircuts and clean shirts, I have seen several more sordid people, with various addictions. Often they come from primitive places such as Australia and South America, pretending to have a scientific background, but really just invading my blog in order to feed their sordid compulsions (which are too disgusting to name in a sacred document such as this one).

In spite of the weaknesses of St Peter that I mentioned earlier, the reason that Christ gave him the keys of Heaven must surely be that he didn't eat cupcakes, only drank hair-restorer on special occasions, and would never have turned up smelling of llama.

Four out of ten old ladies drink hair-restorer

A geust blogg from Damain Thopmson
 

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Up to 40% of old ladies drink hair-restorer, according to recent research undertaken by the University of Adelaide. My own informal observations bear this out, as Patient M, a ridiculously old lady who is also currently my guest in Castle Thompson - as is her great-nephew, a charming man called Eccles - has turned out to be a consumer of many unusual products.

My butler, Will Heaven, reports that Anti Moly, as Eccles calls her, began by drinking my supplies of gin and whisky, but, when he started to lock these up, she turned to other substances.

Did I mention that I have written a book on addiction, called The Fix? Do buy a copy. I am hoping that Eccles will agree to serialize excerpts on his lovely blog. Anyway, in my book I treat all sorts of addictions and obsessions: for example, there is a biologist in South America who is addicted to stories of clerical child abuse, having a whole laboratory wall decorated with stories from the Puffington Post and the New Yawn Times. Another strange addiction I write about is cinnabons, a sticky cake much loved by Yorkshire bishops.

Returning to Patient M, once she had run out of conventional alcoholic drinks, she drank a bottle of my Geoffrey Lean hair-restorer; then she went to the garage and drank my supply of Delinpol anti-freeze (much to the annoyance of Hannan my chauffeur). Finally, getting desperate, she drank a bottle of her own Possumgon, a product she uses to protect the roof of her Australian home from enthusiastic marsupials.

Her drinking is irregular, but when she decides to have a "binge" or "meltdown," she is often seen on the internet, posting insults on blogs (including my own). For some reasons she particularly hates Catholics, especially serious ones.

Patient M seems to be immune to poison, according to her nephew Eccles. The old photograph below shows M and her friend informing a visitor that they had added some arsenic to his drink, "To give it some bite."

Well, it's difficult to know what to do in such cases, but if enough people buy my book The Fix, I will be able to do some more in-depth research (Tenerife looks like a promising place to start).