An open letter to society
Yesterday, my five year old girl was stung by a wasp at school. She was very upset. Her teacher was unable to give her a hug in case she’s sued. Her teacher was unable to put vinegar on the sting in case she’s sued. As a result, my daughter had to spend an extended period of time upset and in pain. So:
Dear Society
Stop being such a bunch of spineless bloody idiots.
Love
John
ps I’m going to sue for the needless distress and pain my child has been caused.
October 1, 2006 at 2:26 pm
(This is irrelevant to the subject, but I’m typing it into this window because your e-mail thingy doesn’t seem to work. By the way, I have not been stung by anything at all in recent memory, but can I have a hug anyway? You can skip the vinegar.)
As you know, I am both a supervillain and a fictional character – it’s rather hard to be the former without being the latter, unless of course you’re Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, or the Joker (of course he’s real – who do you think has been running this country for the last 9 years?). By the way, Deborah, you may have noticed that last week a number of Adolf’s paintings went on sale, and the prices he fetched were quite astonishing, even for tiny little ones that weren’t that good. He’d be laughing if he wasn’t dead. Since you are NOT dead, might I suggest that you annexe Poland? Or if you don’t fancy Poland, somewhere else – I’ve always thought Montenegro had a nice name, and I don’t think they’ve got much of an army. The beauty of the scheme is that you don’t really have to invade the place – just establish a website saying that you have, and a surprising number of people will believe that you are sending panzer divisions cascading around Europe (or wherever), just because it’s on the internet. Then all you do is sit back and watch yourself become incredibly collectable! How about Greenland? There are so few people there that you could probably annexe it for real for a year or two before anybody noticed.
Anyway… Like most SuperPeople, I have my dark secrets. My secret identity, for example. Promise not to tell Robert Rankin, because as far as he’s concernec, I really am Count Otto Black? All right then – I do believe that back when I was a real person, and didn’t have all these nuclear-powered subterranean burrowing machines and suchlike, I do believe that I was at Telford College with Mrs. Dow. Remember me? The tall one, with a slight tendency to dominate the world? (Though I never did get the hang of physics sufficiently well to build a bomb that actually went off – you don’t imagine I was doing it for FUN, do you?) Anyway, there you are – small world, isn’t it? I was rather stunned when your names popped up in my totally unrelated websearch. I vaguely thought you wre in America, though I can’t recall why.
By the way, I really AM a fictional character – if you don’t believe me, take a look at the front cover of “The Brightonomicon”. Or listen to the forthcoming Channel 4 Radio adaptation, in which I will be played by Joss Ackland. Yes, really! It’s all in the mind, you know…
“Je suis l’astronaut urbain, cherie, mais ca viens le denoument –
Je n’exist pas!”
Yours phantasmagorically – Count Otto Black (???)