Chip Dale's Thought Experiments: The Campaign

I've decided to do something about a travesty that has befallen one of our own. Bryan Appleyard’s Thought Experiments hasn’t updated in days and Bryan is now struggling to get Blogger’s support staff to recognize his problem . I feel his pain. Last week, I too fell victim to Blogger's victimization of the brightest and best and the injustice brings tears to all three of my eyes like I'm wearing a salt and vinegar flavoured thong.

The situation has clearly got out of hand and it's time for The Chipster to pull some strings. I've decided to launch a campaign to free Thought Experiments and Big Frank had produced a rather tasteful logo, which I ask you all to wear on your blogs until Bryan is released from his virtual cell.

Blogger must learn that when they silence one of us, they silence us all. This is about personal liberties, the freedom of the press, and about the virtues of having a stable backend. With your help, I hope to make 'Thought Experiments Saved Through Individuals Campaigning Loudly Enough' the big issue of the coming week and I want T.E.S.T.I.C.L.E. to grow enormously in size. To get the ball rolling, I want 10,000 angry and determined bloggers ready to march on Whitehall on Friday where I hope stage a mass strip involving cats dressed as clowns. Gabby has already taken it upon herself to write the campaign’s song.

What has happened to Thought Experiments?
Oh, what has evil Blogger gone and done?
You weren’t like animal experiments,
Smoking beagles, monkeys with makeup on.

She says it will be better when she’s had a couple more days to work on it…

Some of you might be wondering why I’ve decided to lead this fight. You know how busy I've been lately. But I was persuaded to act when Gabby roused me from my mid-afternoon nap.

Before I was woken, I had been dreaming about Cameron Diaz and a jar of chocolate flavoured mustard so you can no doubt imagine my reluctance to open my eyes. I can normally sleep through one of Gabby’s heckles, only this one had something hard attached to it and resonated as it bounced off my head.

‘Chippy Dale!’ she snapped or more accurately barked from the armchair across the room. ‘Are you awake?’

I raised my eyelids and found myself looking at a slightly dented tin of Cornish shortcrust biscuits lying on my chest.

'Are you even listening to me?' asked the voice full of Romanian impatience.

‘O, speak again, bright angel,’ I said, ‘for thou art as glorious to this night, being o’er my head, as is a winged messenger...

I didn’t get chance to finish. The bright angel sent a permanent marker pen fizzing my way. It was more than enough to stop a man misusing Shakespeare for sarcastic purposes.

‘You are a bad man,’ she said, sitting with my laptop on her knee. ‘You let people down.’

‘Me?’ I protested. ‘Who have I let down?’

Didn’t she know the lengths I go to in order to help people? I wanted to tell her about the last week, about the two thousand word piece on Wallace Stevens I’d written for Ms. Baroque, the trouble I went to attending the Blog Power Awards, and the free show I gave everybody when I whipped off my clothes as I picked up my award. I wanted to mention previous months and all the charity work I’ve done, the time I took attending the British Thong Society. I felt like reminding her of my visit to the old folks home…

She held up hands as if to stop me before I could begin to recount my charity work.

‘You not reply to people who email you,’ she said.

I shuddered at the thought that she’d been reading my mail.

‘Who didn’t I email?’ I asked, suddenly feeling a little exposed lying there naked on the sofa.

‘Mr. Blister,’ she said. ‘He email you this week and you never answer.’

Blood through my heart ran cold. She was right. Dear old Montague Blister had emailed me last week but I’d received the message as I'd been heading out the door. I’d forgotten all about replying to the poor man.

Gabby just tutted with the arrogance of one who is rarely wrong. She tapped away at the keyboard.

‘Lots and lots of emails,’ she said. ‘And you not answer every one.’

I made a resolution that I would email Mr. Blister as soon as I got my laptop back.

‘If you want to be good person like me,' said Gabby, 'you must be good friend to people. You must learn to be selfless, Chippy. Good people do good things.’

‘Like threatening to make sausage meat out of the newspaper boy’s liver?’

‘He noisy,’ she replied. ‘But warning good. Gabby not have him waking neighbours.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, rubbing my head where my own sleep had been interrupted.

She slammed the laptop lid down. ‘You do okay, Chippy. No messages Gabby not like but you must be more considerate to people.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied calmly.

‘No, Chippy. You do very well. No other women. No naked pictures on laptop. No. You do very very good.’

‘I just have to learn to be a better person,’ I agreed.

Gabby just smiled. She had clearly made her point.

I’ll get plenty of chances to be a better person later this week. I have something else to write for Ms. Baroque’s blog, which I’ll get done as soon as I’ve finished groveling to Blister and asking for his forgiveness. For the moment, I just need to thank Ian Grey for the fleshy gift he gave me at the Blog Power awards, though this might need some explaining...

You have to picture the scene. I’d gone up to pick up my award for ‘Most Articulate Wordsmith’ when I decided that I’d give everybody an extra treat my whipping off my thong. A couple of clicks of my mouse and I'd disabled the 'clothes' option and I was standing there, surrounded by dozens of virtual visitors, in my virtual birthday suit. There were, of course, a few gasps and virtual gasps, which I naturally acknowledged with my usual humility. Until, that is, somebody pointed out that I didn’t have any genitals.

The room fell silent.

It was true. I was like an Action Man figure below the waist. I didn't know what to say. I was ready to blame my computer for lacking the processing power to render my genitalia when, thankfully, Ian stepped in and presented me with some genitals from his own collection. So relieved, I foolishly tried them on, without giving any thought as to how they were meant to be worn. I was stunned to discover that they attached themselves to my elbow. It was not a pretty sight and there were some screams in the room. I also attribute the genitals on my elbow with my computer choosing that moment to crash and to dump me back to my desktop.

And that's when I decided that I'd fight the evils of technical glitches. It's why I've decided to head T.E.S.T.I.C.L.E. and it's also why I'm so sure we'll win.

After all, when was the last time you knew a man with a large penis attached to his elbow to be wrong?