A Tale of Two Dicks

Hello fellow Thonglateers, Chipsterites, and Devotees of Big Chip Dale. I’ve been silent for good reason: I’ve been struck by a strange melancholy that has left me feeling unhappy with the state of the world. I don’t mean you, of course. You’re all right. Salt of the earth, and all that. I mean the others. Them over there. They’re always doing that, hardly ever stop it, and rarely look like they’re going to give it up for something more reasonable.

I mean what’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with people? What is wrong with Pakistan? What’s going on in Burma? And why do the Spice Girls insist on reforming? Christmas approaches and I’m staring into its headlights like a small rabbit with its foot trapped in a manhole cover. Run, Chipster run! Before it’s too late!

Only it is too late. Cliff Richard’s back. He’s bringing out an album to menace all of us over Yuletide. I suppose a man won’t be able to walk around his local Woolworth’s without having Cliff injected into the base of his brain. There some tune will fester before breaking out as a canker on the lips, the size of a tennis ball. A man won’t be able to go five feet without whistling it, hating himself for his very susceptibility to catchy middle-of-the-road songs. Damn this musically blessed brain and whistle-tastic lips.

I don’t know who said it – I suppose it some witty type with wisdom dropping from them like dandruff – but ‘hell is other people’. I don’t know what they meant by that unless the other people were Cliff and the Spices. Or perhaps Jamie or Britney or Paris. Ah, Paris. We’ll always have Paris. I mean it. We’re stuck with her for the rest of our lives.

What’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with me?

I’m just sour. I see that Madeley got a puff from The Guardian. And his blog was visited by Stephen Fry. All in the same week. Good luck to him. I wish the man well. I really do. Only the blogging highlight of my month was to welcome my first visitor from Nepal. Interesting. They searched for the phrase ‘thonging’. I don’t know what it means but it was a highlight...

October's highlight...

[sob]

[sigh]

I wonder what November has in store... I wonder...

Gabby’s Poem To The Dalai Lama

I had a busy Sunday. After I’d finished watching the football and signing an online petition to jail Paris Hilton, I wrote a long deeply spiritual letter to his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. I barely had time to finish it and post it before I had to head off to the Green Dragon Tavern where I did my randy traffic warden routine, which has become something of a crowd favourite every Sunday night.

The letter had been Gabby’s idea. Personally, I’d resent it if the Dalai Lama turned up in Bangor and tried to teach me my job. There’s little that a man in a toga can tell a man born to the thong, but even should he be enlightened in some mystical ways of the hidden pouch, I’d still question his interference. Which is why I hesitated before writing to tell him how to do his job.

There are times, however, when even the reincarnations of Avalokiteśvara needs a bit of advice from North Wales’ top stripper and, in this case, I’ve put him straight about this business of his retirement.

If you’ve slept through the weekend, you might not have noticed that the Dalai Lama has decided to quit public life. The news brought Gabby no end of disappointment, given all the charity work she does on behalf of Nepal. I try not to involve myself in her causes as she won’t help me with the charity work I do on behalf of nipples. However, Gabby thought I might be able to talk some sense in the Lama. She’d already written a letter of her own and, bless her rhymeless little heart, included a self-penned poem in it.

In your humble Chipster’s opinion, the following bit of 'poetry' is more likely to make a spiritual leader lock himself away in a monastery, but I ask that you don’t laugh. I’ve promised to post it here, though I’m sure the sceptical ones among you will think it lacks a certain poetic quality. All I can do is reprint exactly what Gabby scribbled on the flyleaf of my first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land…

To The Dalai Lama On The Occasion of His Announcing His Retirement

Wise old man who’s more Dalai than lhama,
Do not retire while still in your prime-a.
Wiser than Attenborough, purer than Snow,
(Both David and Dickie, Peter and Jono),
You’re balder than Richard (the Cliff and the knight),
And like Felicity Kendal, don’t enjoy a knife fight,
But when it comes down to your spiritual healing,
You’re better than Cilla, or even Jan Leeming.
You’re also eternal, like Match of the Day,
Though your next repeat is a lifetime away.
So don’t go and choose that Buddhist retreat,
When we could have two weeks together (timeshare) in Crete,
Because dressed in a toga, you’re my super hero,
With love, from Gabby, Chip, and Richard Gere-o.

© Gabby, 2007

Well, I’ve done my bit by reprinting it and I think you’ll agree that it doesn’t make much sense, especially that bit about Cliff Richard.

Everybody knows he is actually the twelfth reincarnation of the original Cliff Richard…