Most
of us like to celebrate our birthdays.
My
own, for example, is a national holiday in Tibet, a Day of Gladness
and Rejoicing in Upper Sumatra, and, no doubt, many other parts of
the world.
But
how many of you have ever stopped to consider this particular riddle?
If
you are born on a Monday, then next year your birthday will fall on a
Tuesday. The next on a Wednesday and so on and so forth. Therefore, by
the time you are seven, although your birthdate remains the same
you must actually be celebrating your birthday one week later in the year.
By
the time you are thirty, an entire lunar month later. Therefore, a man
born in the spring must surely celebrate his ninetieth birthday in the
middle of summer.
This
is what you call a Cosmic Mystery. And I will return to it.
There
is a great deal more to time than meets the eye, or has, in fact, ever
been explained by that unprincipled scoundrel, A. Einstein, Esq.
For
instance, who amongst us has not said at one time or another:
Doesn't
time fly when you're enjoying yourself?
Time really drags in this job
Not bloody Christmas again already!
My wife say's I'm a bad lover. How can any woman tell that in thirty seconds?
Isn't that window cleaner coming more often than he did last year?
Now,
I'm the last man on Earth to cry, CONSPIRACY! But I think to detect the
acrid stench of it's breath in this one.
Allow
me to explain
Time,
as you will agree, is the most valuable commodity that we posses. And,
as we know only too well, every really valuable commodity falls, sooner
or later, into the hands of some unscrupulous individual, who then exploits
it for their own ends. It is my contention that time is now under
the control of such an individual, who manipulates it in order to do down
the working man.
Allow
me to explain further.
The
average working man spends roughly half of his life working. This involves
a lot of clock watching. The working part of a working mans life seems
to last forever. Then, if he survives this and retires, one of
two things happens. Either, he finds time dragging terribly and
returns to work, or, he resists the urge, takes off to the seaside, wakes
up one morning, say's 'Twenty years retired, it seems like only five minutes',
and drops dead.
There
is no escape for the working man!
His
time is being controlled!
Let
me cite the example of Shakespeare. How could he have completed so many
plays, as well as formulating the beer which bears his name and opening
so many tea rooms? Remember, there were no typewriters or photocopier
machines in those days.
If
Shakespeare wrote a play with a cast of twenty-five, then he must have
had to write a separate copy for each of the cast. I estimate that he
must therefore have penned no less than five thousand words per minute,
ten hours a day, for twenty years. No mean feat!
There
are two possibilities here. Either, that time was substantially different
in those days, let us say that a minute then, would be equivalent to an
hour and a half now; or that somehow Shakespeare had time on his side.
Under his control, in fact. Oh, yes? I contend that it was all down to
Shakespeare's employer. He had to milk it for every ounce of potential
profit.
So,
I hear you cry, tell us how it's done, Hugo. And tell us who's doing it.
An
so I shall.
THE
POPE CONTROLS TIME ON THIS PLANET!
Come,
come, I hear you cry. Surely this is sour grapes, Hugo. Because your application
to become Pope has been turned down yet again. Not so, my friends, not
so.
I
will now explain everything.
A
Brief History of Time
By Hugo Rune
No-one
knows exactly who originally discovered the existence of time. But it
was certainly the Romans who thought of splitting it up into units of
measurement.
The
Roman senate started off with seconds and decided that sixty of them should
equal one minute. Being extremely fond of naming things after themselves,
the sixty-man senate arrived at this particular figure without much in
the way of heated debate. And each had a second named after themselves.
They
did not, however, agree upon a uniform length for the second. And since
some senators had much longer names than did others, jealousies soon arose.
In no time senators were renaming themselves with longer and longer titles
so that their seconds should be bigger than everyone else's.
We
have the sixty-first senator to thank for the length of the second. Arriving
back from his holidays to discover that his honourable companions hadn't
given him a second to call his own, he took umbrage (somewhere near Troy).
And
being a conniving little toady with an eye for the main chance, he proclaimed
that the second should equal exactly the time it took to say 'Praise Caesar'.
And that they shouldn't have names at all, but just be numbered from one
to sixty.
This
didn't go down too well with the rest of the senate, but found great favour
with Caesar, who allowed the sixty-first senator to keep umbrage.
The
Caesar in question was the almost forgotten Flavius the Noseless. And
it was he who originally decreed that all Roman sculptures be fashioned
without noses. A fact which seems to have slipped by the greybeards of
the art world. The same greybeards, in fact, who still refer to Henry
Moore as an abstract sculptor. I knew Moore for many years and
can testify that he was a master of life-like representation. He just
knocked around with some very funny looking women. But I digress.
Now,
the senate, having got time divided up, named and tamed, were not happy.
They had already invented the Class System (we have much to thank the
Romans for). And they were saying to themselves, 'Why should time be the
same for everyone? Surely we, as the ruling intelligentsia, should
have posher time than the slaves and the plebs?'.
A
whole lot of serious debating went on about this.
Many
suggestions were put forward. The plebs should have less seconds in their
minutes. They should have the same number of seconds but be taxed for
using them. That somehow their seconds should be made longer, so that
they could do more work in a day.
It
was the latter suggestion, and how it was put into practice, that has
enslaved the working man to this day.
Now,
there was this greek fellow called Archimedes, who had built up quite
a reputation for himself. He had invented this word called EUREKA! which,
if shouted under certain conditions in the bathroom, enabled him to solve
any manner of obtuse conundrums.
Flavius
the Noseless had booked two weeks in greece for his holidays, so whilst
there he dropped in on Archimedes and sked him if he could come up with
anything.
Archimedes
stroked his beard and retired to cogitate.
Eventually
he emerged from his bath, somewhat prunelike about the toe regions, but
with an E-word once more on his lips.
'The
answer lies in the soap', he told Caesar.
'Kaendly
eggsplane', said the noseless one.
'Certainly.
Now the way I see it, you want more upmarket time than the plebs. Now
I must make this quite clear to you, you can't actually mess around with
time. But, you can mess around with the perception of time. What you need
is a special drug, which, when administered to the plebs, will alter the
way they percieve time. It will make time appear to travel slower. Thus,
whilst in this state, they will get much more work done than they would
normally. Do you know anything about chemistry?'
Caesar
nodded sagely.
Thought
not, thought Archimedes. 'Well, I happen to know of such a drug. It has
a very complicated chemical formula (C11H17NO3).
And I alone can manufacture it. All you have to do is introduce it into
the plebs' soap. They wash with the soap and ingest the drug. And away
they go.'
'But
whet abeet thee greet unweshed?' Caesar asked.
'Stick
it in their tea. Agreed the working masses may not bath as regularly as
might be wished, but they all drink tea. Listen, I'll distil you a batch.
You take it back to Rome. If you're happy with the results, put in a regular
order and we're in business.'
Palms
were spat upon and smacked together. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Caesar
returned to Rome. Tested the drug. Found that it worked magically. Rome
thrived. Caesar, being an astute business man, if not a terribly nice
person, sacked greece, arrested Archimedes and tortured the formula out
of him.
The
Caesars eventually turned to christianity and became Popes. And the Vatican
has held the secret to this very day.
Hang
about, I hear you cry, doubting toms that you are. This doesn't ring true.
Surely we all use soap and drink tea. We can't all be permanantly drugged.
No,
say I. Not all.
Because
not all tea and soap is infected. And, if only the Vatican were in on
the conspiracy, it could never operate. The manufacturers of tea and soap
are in collusion. The distributers are in collusion. Higher management
is in collusion. All those who drink exotictea and smell differently from
the rest of us are probably in collusion.
It
is an international conspiracy. Huge and insidious and the Pope is behind
it all.
I
detect that some doubts still remain. That you really believe you
could not really be a victim of this terribly conspiracy.
But
consider this, 'Time really flies when you're enjoying yourself'. This
is because alcohol negates the effects of the drug. Ever found time flying
when you're taking a bath or drinking a cup of tea? Aha!
And
let me mention this. The drug is addictive. Ever found yourself Dying
for a cuppa? Aha!
Ever
wondered why the Catholic Church was so keen to convert the natives of
South America? You know South America. Where all that coffee comes
from. Aha!
Ever
wondered why the formula for Coca-Cola is such a closely guarded secret?
Aha!
I
could continue at great length. But I will not. I opened this piece by
stating that your birthday falls upon a different day each year. But that
logically it could not.
Ever
heard the expression, 'He's so stoned that he doesn't know what day of
the week it is?'
Aha!
In
concluding, I would just like to say that it has been a very great honour
to be invited here tonight to The William of Orange Memorial Hall, Belfast,
as a guest speaker at The Independent Shopkeeper of the Year Awards.
To
find myself in the company of so many eminent, discerning and open minded
independent shopkeepers, affords me a pleasure beyond expression.
I
trust that my revelations have amused you. I know that they will draw
considerable interest from the buying public when they are revealed upon
the fronot pages of certain newspapers this coming Sunday. Considerable
interest.
You
will otice I have before me a selection of RUNE BRAND products. For instance,
EARL RUNE. Now this particular tea is guaranteed 100% C11H17NO3
free. Organically grown, packed in an ozone-friendly biodegradeable carton
and marketed at a price to please both purchaser and shopkeeper alike.
As with CAFE RUNE GOLDEN BLEND, HUGO-COLA, and RUNELIGHT SOAP. Now, I
have to knock these out by the case, so who'll be the first one up? You,
sir? The tall distinguished gentleman. Twelve cases of EARL RUNE? Certainly.
Rizla, fetch twelve down from the back of the van...
Offered
as exhibit A for the prosecution
in the case of Nearly Everyone versus
Hugo Rune (Nicked from Robert Rankin - not penned by the Hugo Rune that owns this site :)
Added by
Hugo Rune on 08/10/2002 12:37:57
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