About the Nike Worm, God and That Thing on the Moon

Circa 2005

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every year of every decade of every century of every millennium of every age, can be measured using a wristwatch.

But why bother? They’re all pretty much the same length anyway.

When God divided the minutes into sixty seconds, he did one hell of a good job of distributing the lengths equally. That’s one thing you can say about the presiding deity in which much of the world’s population believes. He sure as hell gets the small things right.

You take flies for example. One less leg than they have, and they wouldn’t be able to stand up straight. Apparently he modelled them on Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous design for a helicopter.

Good for God. He clearly has plenty of drive and ambition.

Personally though, I’ve always been a great believer in the dictum “Expect not to reap what you sow, for arrogant is he (or she) who dares to expect the planned outcome, and saintly is he who acknowledges with humility and honesty that he will make a complete cat’s breakfast of it.”

Failure is a wonderful thing.

There is nothing I like better, for example, than to see a parachutist fail to land on a passing cirrocumulus cloud before it bursts open and soaks him, causing him to reach for his spare parachute to use as a makeshift anorak. This really is marvellous entertainment, and I am surprised, if not a little outraged, that it has not been made into some sort of situation comedy by the BBC. (At time of writing, Irish television did not make successful or watchable sit-coms. Father Ted was commissioned by UK Channel 4. Mrs Brown’s Boys was joinlty the fault of BBC Scotland and Ireland’s RTE)

I’ve always been surprised at how little we make use of clouds. Nowadays the weather can be controlled for short distances, and surely it is not beyond the reach of the experts to manufacture a cloud that is strong and thick enough to hold a plane as it refuels mid-air, thereby reducing traffic congestion at airports.

Scientists are pretty useless when it comes to finding practical uses to which to put their genius. They’re all obsessed with studying tiny organisms who we’ll never meet in our day to day lives, and sending puppies to the moon to check the best-before date of the cheese.

It seem to me that young people are turning away from science and looking towards something else, and as we drift further into the first century of this, the third millennium, (unless of course there were more millennia before those and we just hadn’t developed the intelligence to count them yet – which seems unlikely) it would appear that our young people have adopted a new kind of faith which, happily, is now guiding them towards a more fulfilled and complete existence on this Earth.

The Nike “swoosh”, that wonderfully positive tick sign is now emblazoned on the outer garments of the top ten per cent of our young people whom the company endorses.

Those lucky enough to qualify for this awards scheme get to bear the symbol proudly on their anorak, leg-trouser or even running shoe, thereby indicating to the world that they are legitimate members of our community, and not to be messed with under any circumstances up to and including nuclear holocaust, the death of a pope (as proved recently) and the cancellation of Music Television’s “Pimp my Ride”.

This website’s proprietor alas, is not one of the chosen, and goes about dressed in drab chinos and polo shirts, head hung in shame as he parades his pathetic self down the high street of his town. One of course lives in hope of some day getting to hold against the skin the textilic trophy of recognition, as produced by some equally blessed eight year old at some elite and hidden factory in Thailand or some such place: a sweat shop paralleled only by that of Willy Wonka himself.

Not to be pedantic, but perhaps the whole debate about low cost outsourcing would be a little less confusing if the premises involved were not called “sweat shops”. Surely the stores in which these items of confectionery are sold, are the ones who should use that title. The place of manufacture should obviously be labelled “sweat factory”.

It is this abuse of the English language that is making the world a worse place to live. My mother’s home town has recently been populated with a selection of sponsored street furniture, all of which bears the company name “Street Bench’s Ltd.” or some such thing. This flagrant misplacing of a possessive apostrophe is nothing short of pure evil, and this website will stop at nothing to wipe it out. Just yesterday myself and Joanne sat on one of these seats while waiting for a bus and now, just twenty four hours later, we are suffering from tiredness, a common cold or possibly leperacy. Not being a medical expert myself, I do not feel qualified to make a specific diagnosis.

Nor should you.

This sort of thing must be left to the professionals who have devoted so many years of their lives to attending lectures with heavy hangovers and writing letters to the newspapers about the preponderment of robins spiting out their worms halfway through their meals due to the deterioration in taste of the current harvest of crawling insects.

Personally, I don’t worry about that sort of thing too much. As far as I’m concerned, once half the worm gets half eaten, there’s one less worm in the world to bother me.

And christ do they bother me.

Those bastards are just like miniature snakes, except of course that they have lower standards of hygiene and instead of slipping their skin every now and then, they are happy to go about baked in mud.

Not that there’s anything wrong with mud, you understand. I myself am perfectly happy to walk in mud whenever the mood takes me. But I’m designed for that. I have legs and feet and shoes, unlike the humble worm who just slides about naked in it and gets it all over him or her self.

Perhaps mud is the Nike “swoosh” of the worm world, where young worms feel the need to cover themselves in the latest batch of fashionable sewage in order to fit in with their cohorts. In fact, I seem to remember that there was a band called “Mud” in the nineteen seventies, who were very popular with the young people. I assume that is where it all derived from.

But then I also assume that moon is made of cheese. Having never travelled to the lunar satellite, I must base my understanding of it’s makeup on all that I have read about it. A couple of pages in an encyclopaedia about the moon landing, and several dozen nursery rhymes. Like this one for example –

Half past noon
Let’s go to the moon
And visit the pink baboon

He’ll welcome us soon
And lend us a spoon
And we’ll sample the cheddar moon

We’ll try out the cheddar
And it will taste bedder
Than anything we’ve ever seen

So we’ll gobble it all
And after we’ll fall
In love with the cheese on the moon

And if we’ve got room
After eating the moon
The baboon will make us some tea

He’ll be all smiles
Visible for miles
Then he’ll eat us

– That sort of thing. Anyway, where was I?