Local resident,Timothy Dumdown of “In Diffrence” in Dunbothrin-in-the-Mire,
today announced that he really can’t be arsed.
Hailed by the government as a shining example of the
ideal citizen and the sort of person who has helped make Britain an average
province of the Brussels-based Belgian Empire, he delivered a carelessly worded
statement at the opening of Dunbothrin’s newest drive-in, the Brain-u-Like
psychiatric institute on Meltdown Lane, which he attended in deference to his
wife who made him go.
Mr Dumdown told reporters that after minutes of
consultation with his advisors at Soundbite and Tabloid, he has come to the
conclusion that the best way to survive the apocalypse is to pretend it isn’t
happening.
He said: “All this talk of the apocalypse is very unsettling
when you are trying to concentrate on the football results and really not very
helpful when you think about it, because we have a broad choice of apocalypses
to worry about.”
He cited several examples, such as the destruction of
the food chain by hamburgers, the government deciding to follow Satan, shortages
of medication, a sharp rise in the cost of TV licenses and the annexation of
Wiltshire by the United States, then added:
“There’s simply too much choice and
I think it’s best to leave it to the government to decide which apocalypse
should be allowed to kill us all. The government is after all democratically
elected by the dozens of people the length and breadth of Britain who were
aware there was an election going on, nearly ten percent of whom understood
what their politicians were talking about.”
He went on to explain that keeping one’s head down and
not getting involved is really the safest route to peace of mind on the basis
that what you are unaware of can’t hurt you. When asked if he had any concerns
about the future, he explained that the future is none of his business as he
isn’t living in it, probably won’t see much of it in any case and that most of
it will be his children’s problem.
”The best thing I can do for the kids is make sure they
stay medicated and not worry too much about the side effects, which are well
worth the risk if it keeps them quiet, or their getting liver damage or obesity
from eating too much junk food. After all, what’s the point in reading food
labels when you’re going to go right ahead and eat the stuff anyway? Besides, they
can do wonderful things with liver transplants, liposuction and heart pacemakers
these days.”
When asked what he thought about psychiatric drugs leaving
his children spaced out and desensitized, he said: “Well, those are just some
of the advantages. I’m happy to think that when the world goes tits-up they
probably won’t notice or, if they do, will be too numb to be upset by it - or
they’ll just think they’re in a computer game, which is a lot better than being
in reality when you think about it.”
Commenting on recent revelations that a cabal of the
world’s top industrialists have sold the world to Beelezebub Lord of the Flies
in exchange for being allowed to live out their days in luxurious fallout shelters,
Mr Dumdown said that he thought this was just shrewd business and they probably
meant no harm.
A call by Gil Bates of MacroVirus, the manufacturer of
Subliminal Implant, the latest computer game (slogan: “More addictive than
Cocaine, rots your brain better than Crystal Meth) for food and vaccine manufacturers
to work even harder to develop beneficial new programmes to help everybody by reducing
the world’s population by 95%, was given
Mr Dumdown’s complete and wholehearted non-opposition.
“I think the world is suffering from over-population in any
case. There are far too many other people around and they probably won’t mind
being culled.
Anything that reduces the checkout line at Tesco is okay by me.”
he said.
When asked if this was not just an “if you can’t beat ‘em,
join ‘em” philosophy, he responded. “Having an actual philosophy is going a bit
far. I mean,” he said, “I was never that smart at school and only came away with
25 A Levels, and nine of those were for Text Messaging. Anyway, it can only be a matter of not being
able to beat ‘em if you tried to do something in the first place and I don’t
believe in that kind of extremism. I prefer to say my way of thinking is more
along the lines of “Don’t upset them and they’ll probably not notice you and if
they do, pretend you are dead.”
I asked Mr Dumdown what he thinks we should do if the
current American invasion of the Vatican in order to save religion for democracy
results in World War Three due to the Vatican’s alliance with the Al Qaeda
faction said by reliable and unbiased sources in the Pentagon to be running
China, and the apocalypse really does happen.
He answered: “The main thing is not to worry and go on pretending
everything is all right. The fallout will probably leave you alone if you stay
indoors and pretend you are asleep or, ideally, really are asleep. Besides, I’m
sure they have a pill for it these days.”
But even the radiation does not kill us, what about food
and water supplies? Won’t we all just starve or freeze to death during the
nuclear winter?”
“Now you are just being alarmist.” he said. “All you
have to do is stock up on tins of spam and lager and wait for the internet to
come back on. Then you can simply order your supplies on line.”
Steve Cook is the author of Genghis Kant, a tongue-in-cheek sci fi spoof. See a current newspaper review here. Visit the Genghis Kant on Facebook for a free copy of Steve's latest story "Spilt Milk" of which one reader said: “Loved the Spilt Milk story. Loved the characters and how it all linked together.”
