2656. Oh to be six again

(Note: This story (some will be pleased to hear) is the final politically incorrect posting for the time being!)

Dear Principal

I have included a list of the names of the boys involved. I had asked my class of six year olds to colour in a picture. It helps with the development of their co-ordination. Only one – ONLY ONE – used a black crayon. The rest coloured in the picture of a pixie with every other colour under the sun.

You will be glad to hear that I immediately sent these boys to the infirmary for castrating. The only boy not sent was Angelina Peasbody who not only used the black crayon hitherto mentioned, but requested that from now on we use the name of Angelo.

I know that in future we will both feel safer roaming the corridors of the school.

Anitx Cleanx
Teacher-of-six-year-olds

2654. An astonishingly resourceful idea

(Note: Over the following few days these stories will have a decidedly political bent. A fiction writer does not necessarily agree with his or her characters’ observations. Fiction is written with “a voice”. It is not necessarily the author’s own. That’s what I reckon anyway…)

Myra Cozens has come up with an astonishingly resourceful idea. It circumvents the necessity of rewriting books of note; for example, the removal of that shockingly sexist and terribly unhappy Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights”. We all know that Heathcliff was ill-fated because he had to sublimate his transsexual proclivity. It’s perfectly obvious that the sometimes-narrator of the story, Mr. Lockwood, was obsessed with and in love with Heathcliff. When Catherine says “I am Heathcliff” we know exactly what she means. If the whole entanglement of the novel could be simplified and everything called what it is then the novel might be able to be taught in our schools.

Myra Cozens’ astonishingly resourceful idea does away with the contemporary necessity of having to remove Heathcliff from “Wuthering Heights” altogether. Not to mention that horrible drunken sot in “Jane Eyre”, Edward Rochester. In fact most of the characters in “Jane Eyre” need purging from its pages.

The list of books goes on and on. Is there a book that does not need to be revised?

The astonishingly resourceful idea is to publish these novels on black paper with black print. It does away with every novel that drips of xenophobia and obviates the dominance of whiteness on every page. What a boon this will be! What a saving! No more expensive editors paid to cull offense-oscity from the pages of the classics. Let us purge the need for purging pages! The future is black print on black paper! Such a simple idea! Thank you Myra Cozens!

2638. Valentine’s Day Massacre

You’ve no idea how enraged Brianna’s parents were.

“We did everything right,” said Ruth. “We did everything by the book, and look at us now. Brianna is all of seventeen and has got a Valentine’s Day card. FROM RUSSELL. Where did we go wrong? Russell’s heterosexual. Can things get worse? Yes they can.”

“We brought Brianna up to respect transsexuals. How humiliating is this? I’m almost too embarrassed to be seen in public. Everyone will know. I told you she should have had that operation when she was seven. And now this Russell Hetero-raving-sexual sent her a Valentine’s Day card.”

 “Oh my God,” wailed Olga. “Have you seen this Russell fellow that sent the card? He’s white. We brought up Brianna to respect black people and now she gets a card from a white racist. Our standing in the community plummets by the minute. This is soul destroying.”

“Oh!” screeched Winston, Brianna’s third mother. “We brought Brianna up to respect other cultures and now she gets a Valentine’s Day card from someone who’s not a foreigner. Come here Brianna. Come here instantly!”

“Brianna,” said all three, “we brought you up properly and you’ve become racist, homophobic, and xenophobic. From now on we disown you. You’re on your own, you disgusting ungrateful personage. You have shown no respect. Get out of the house.”

“I forgot to tell you,” said Brianna. “I’m pregnant.”

2615. The black tulip

Hans grew nothing but tulips in his garden. They were every colour and variety. What a glorious garden, especially in the spring! Hordes of people would stroll past his house to have a peek over the fence. (Actually he lived in a windmill but it was still his house). At the height of the flowering season Hans barely went inside to sleep, so wondrous were the tulips.

Then one day someone walking past pointed out something: the collection of tulips was racist. They were in every colour but black. Was this because Hans hated blacks? Hans pointed out that there was no such thing as a black tulip. Aha! So he was in favour of racial genocide as well. No blacks.

Hans dug up his garden. He declared that he would never grow another tulip until he had developed a black tulip. It would take pride of place in the garden. It took him years, but he succeeded. Once again tulips of all colours and shapes flowered in his garden. And how extraordinary the black tulip looked among them! People gazed in utter wonder. It wasn’t a “pretend” black tulip which is really a dark purple. It was solid black!

Then one day someone walking past pointed out something: the collection of tulips was racist. What right did a white person have to develop a black tulip? How presumptuous. It harkened back to the days of slavery when white people thought they could rule of over everything and everyone.

In shame Hans once again dug up his garden. Never again would he grow another tulip. The person who had complained managed to get hold of a bulb of the unique black tulip and sold it for a huge sum.

2504. Job interview

I’m sorry Doctor Okonkwo. You might have a doctorate in Aerodynamics and such qualifications would sometimes suit such a job as ours, but unfortunately we cannot discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or genetic information.

You seem to scream unsuitability in as much as you have a flat nose, are black, a follower of African animism, are not descended from cannibals, hail from Swaziland, identify as male, are over 30 years old, are unmarried, have dated women, pretend you’re not gay, identify yourself with unacceptable pronouns, have a sperm count that is far too high, are in a wheelchair, have DNA that doesn’t match the boss’s family tree, don’t purport to be descended from slaves, and refuse to get inoculated against chimpanzee pox. In such circumstances your invention that enables time travel through space worms to other dimensions is completely irrelevant.

Next!

I’m sorry Doctor von Eberhardt. You might have a doctorate in Compressible Flow and such qualifications would sometimes suit such a job as ours, but unfortunately we cannot discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or genetic information.

You seem to scream unsuitability in as much as you have a pointy nose, are white, an enthusiastic Protestant, are descended from the Lord of a medieval fiefdom, hail from a section of Germany that no one has ever heard of, identify as female, are under 40 years old, are married, have dated men, refuse to refer to yourself as a birthing assortment of mammary glands, identify yourself with unacceptable pronouns, are not in a wheelchair, have DNA that doesn’t match the boss’s family tree, don’t have slave owners in your ancestry so you can’t apologise, and refuse to get inoculated against orangutan pox. In such circumstances your invention that enables helicopters to fly in an alien sky that is utterly devoid of gas is completely irrelevant.

Next!

2437. A paradigm of pedagogy

(Pre-note: I’m not overly happy with this story because it’s too political, but I’m old and tired and will post it so as to get on with writing more murderous ones).

Evangeline was a highly qualified school teacher. She (pronoun of choice) was, to say the least, a state-of-the-art teacher. What she didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. How she taught was the paradigm of pedagogy.

Persons! Persons! she would say. We are coming into Summer Time and there’s a mnemonic to help us remember. Spring back; Fall forward. It will tell us how to reset your phones. Say it together: Spring back; Fall forward. Or is it the other way around? Who cares? The phone company will change it for you automatically without your needing to do a thing.

Now for the calendar. Thirty days has September, August, March, and December. It’s something like that but facts don’t really matter so long as you know when your birthday is.

Now I will give you a little lesson in memorizing things. Always rhyme a word in your head. You will remember the rhyme and won’t forget the thing you have to remember. For homework I want you to make a list of every naughty word you can think of. Tomorrow we will make a combined list and find words that rhyme with them. That way you will remember them. There is to be no help from parents, is that clear?

Now, finally, Cornelius found a prophylactic on the patio. Yes Warwick? What is it?

Warwick: What’s a patio?

Evangeline: Never mind about such things, Warwick. I want you to go out into the corridor and tell the white kids they can come in now. But first, would everyone move over to the other side of the room.

2401. A reflection on the Easter Bunny

Rabbits come in all colours and sizes. A lot depends whether or not people intend to eat them.

The sad fact is that if people intend to keep a rabbit as a pet most prefer a white rabbit. Does not the magician pull a white rabbit out of the hat? Does not little Felicity want a white baby bunny for a pet?

This is systemic racism at its worst. People will tolerate a black rabbit if it’s all there is available. Brown ones are wild, out-of-control, under-developed rabbits that should be exterminated and eaten provided they don’t have a disease, which is not an uncommon condition among feral brown rabbits. Patchy rabbits look like they can’t make up their minds. But fluffy white rabbits… oh! ah! oh!

Strangely however, chocolate Easter bunnies are almost inevitably made of dark chocolate. They are too dark to be considered to be brown. They are closer to black than brown. And they lay dark-coloured eggs. Some of these black eggs have white centres – which is an insidious plot by the white eggs to invade the space of the black eggs.

Look at the chocolate Easter Bunny. It is usually hollow. There is nothing inside. Nothing speaks louder than this extraordinary proclamation of chocolate rabbits having no brains. Or no heart.

Now watch the white middleclass bigot get stuck into the Easter Bunny. First they strip it of its beautiful shiny clothing. Then they might descend into breaking off its ears. I know of one white systemic racist who hit their black Easter bunny with a hammer while his children oohed and aahed their approval. It broke into a dozen little pieces.

There is only one solution to all this systemic racism: ban Easter altogether. There is no need to have a whole season devoted to this exultation of white bunnies and the extermination of chocolate ones by redneck hillbillies. Those who disagree should be condemned to eating hot cross buns for the rest of their lives.

2130. A litany of achievement

Beryl was excited. She had won a scholarship to a prestigious university.
“All my hard work paid off,” said Beryl. “This is unbelievably exciting! Thank you!”
“Oh no,” said the university. “You got the scholarship because you are Black.”

Earle was excited. He had won a scholarship to a prestigious university.
“All my hard work paid off,” said Earl. “This is unbelievably exciting! Thank you!”
“Oh no,” said the university. “You got the scholarship because you are in a wheelchair.”

Fay was excited. Fay had won a scholarship to a prestigious university.
“All my hard work paid off,” said Fay. “This is unbelievably exciting! Thank you!”
“Oh no,” said the university. “You got the scholarship because you are transgender.”

Craig was excited. He had won a scholarship to a prestigious university.
“All my hard work paid off,” said Craig. “This is unbelievably exciting! Thank you!”
“Oh no,” said the university. “You got the scholarship because you are White. We had to show we weren’t biased.”

(Footnote: Unlike the scholarship recipients in the story above I have had the thrill of having won first place in Chel Owens’ A Mused Poetry Contest. It’s well worth a look at this contest if you don’t already follow it. And it’s fun, free, and easy to enter! You should think about giving it a go!)

2097. There they go again

Now that cosmic aliens have become commonplace, and in the main taken for granted, certain serious problems have arisen.

I’m not talking about interplanetary marriages. These of course can create hitherto unthought of problems. A human and an alien falling in love is a bit like being besotted by a pet cat. Nothing wrong with loving ones cat. It’s the procreation bit that makes the mess. There are now all sorts of bylaws and mores to govern transplanetary sex. How does an Earthling, for example, have sex with a creature who has… Oh, doesn’t matter…

But it’s the racism that gets to me. As an alien on Earth from the Planet Spectrifica I can only say I have felt the full force of Earthly bigotry many a time. Earthlings used to discriminate against Asians and Blacks and Europeans and any subdivision they cared to create that was governed by looks or beliefs. These days this full-faced vengeance is aimed at aliens from outer space. They cannot accept the fact that every alien from every planet has features Earthlings posit as being ludicrous. Only the other day I saw two Earthling schoolgirls giggling at a Tronkinish who had three belly buttons on his/her forehead. The various races on Earth are now united by their common hatred and scorn of aliens.

That is why I have founded a group that gives voice to protest against these bigotries. It is called ALARM. For the name I simply took the first letter of every word in the name; which seems to be a practice used by the Earthlings. For example there are UN and BLM and USA and UK and NASA and so on. So I settled on ALARM.

ALARM is become increasingly popular with us aliens. We stand together against the ignorance of Earthlings.

Some Earthling asked (on television would you believe): What do the letters of ALARM stand for? I said that ALARM stands for ALIEN LIVES ARE REALLY IMPORTANT. They said that would be ALARI not ALARM. I simply sighed and thought, There they go again. Earthlings continue to impose their restrictive perceptions on every living creature in the Universe. It seems they will never learn. If scrunchers weren’t illegal on this backward planet I’d get one and scrunch the lot.

2090. Pianoforte lessons, darling

Mazie’s daughter was Mayzing. Mazie was outraged. Her friend, Tammy, was also a parent at Mayzing’s school. The Hir-Oh-No Academy of Arts was not only expensive; it was the cat’s pyjamas. Tammy’s daughter, Shammy, was studying pianoforte at the Academy.

“It’s a wonderful skill to have, darling” said Tammy to Mazie. Thus it was that Mazie enrolled Mayzing in pianoforte. But what a shock!

“You have no idea,” declared Mazie. “More than half the pianoforte keys were white. There are only five black notes to every seven white notes. But what does one expect when all the composers, like Mozart and Beethoven and Burt Bacharach, had bigotry bred into them? I told Mayzing’s teacher that I wanted her to learn only the black notes. There must be pieces written for just the black notes.”

These days, Mayzing is confused. The only true Black notes are Blues ones.