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The morally instructive determinings of PROFESSOR THAUMUS PHAMBLEMELL
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A CORRESPONDENT WRITES: I am a Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and as a result of having continuously to deal with quaint and amusing governing bodies while endeavouring to enhance Britain's interests across the many parts of the globe, my health is suffering; I am afflicted with brain-fever and rapidly approaching nervous collapse. Furthermore, because of my charges' impudent refusal to adopt Greenwich Mean Time, my illogical working hours mean I am deprived of the company of my family to the extent that I am only reasonably sure that I have one. Is it acceptable that my duties to guide these quaint and amusing foreigners should weaken my body and spirit, and isolate me from my loved ones?
PROFESSOR PHAMBLEMELL REPLIES: Certainly not. Clear your desk. Send gunboats. |
is it acceptable? archive |
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Bill to Outlaw Beastly Nastiness introduced by the Rt Hon Melgeret Melmehaugh, Member for Miller's Dale.
i. That the ills of the world are caused solely by ozard frightfulness and ghastly odium.
ii. Accordingly, hideous awfulness itself ought to be proscribed; this abolition to be enforced by rosily cheerful constable-bobbies with pastel cudgels and priestly javelins.
(Second reading.) |
the bill before the house archive |
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The BRITON'S SCIENCE has shewn that The Weekly, the magazine which strives to maintain Britain's standards, has topped* one million readers since 1871.
"Are you quite sure you don't mean theweekly.com?" said MR MILLINGTON of this mathematically inevitable achievement.
MR NASH added: "Splendid - just the opportunity for some kind of retrospective compilation ish."
* Though not, of course, in the sense of assassination. The Weekly has had cause to assassinate no more than two hundred readers. |
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Sup from the issue broth with the random ladle. New issue every time, subject to blind unfavouring chance. |
feature archive |
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Baby's First Portrait |
Watch the birdie! |
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Or follow my voice if it's taken both eyes. |
hurrah/bah archive |
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This chap's purchased an OFFICIAL THE WEEKLY T-SHAPED SHIRT and now he's working off his shame at indulging in such wasteful extravagance. You too may display similar penitence, and perhaps press hot coins guiltily into the hands of a stooped clerk for a copy of MR MILLINGTON's improving books Things About Which My Girlfriend And I Have Argued, A Certain Chemistry, Love and Other Near-Death Experiences and Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life, by patronising the The Weekly Corner Shop corner shop. Items despatched under plain wrapper, school-boys will be chased from the premises with a broom. |
corner shop |
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Position: Cartographer.
Responsibilities: Empire! The very word thrills the soul of even the lowliest pauper whose soul is destined to burn in the fires of hell for all eternity. Yet there is much we know not of the farthest flings of Her Gracious Majesty's dominions, and it is in this vacuum of knowledge that a shrewd and ambitious cartographer may yet stamp his mark. A cartographer of hardy constitution, iron nerve and sharpened pencil can contribute much to our understanding of such exotic and ill-explored regions as Scot-land and the Northern Poor-towns. These last frontiers of human endurance must be conquered by the courageous cartographer, irrespective of disease, hardship and weirdly ritualled anthropophagous natives so that one day our bright-eyed, cow-licked school-children may learn as much about these distant climes as they understand of Darkest Africa and the Canadian Wastes.
Remuneration: A piffling stipend of £13 is provided to furnish the initial expeditionary force, but it is understood that the cartographer lives off the land mapped. You are entitled to a generous percentage of any gold and precious ores discovered in the name of Britain, and the opportunity cannot fail to excite of meeting and cataloguing mysterious new peoples; and of the gentleman-cartographer improving their rude shapes with the BRITON'S GENES or the lady-cartographer establishing a fine and profitable seraglio against her retirement.
Risk assessment: Little is riskier than the post of cartographer when much of the world is as wild as the caving-tenements of Bolton or the Border-lands of Wales; but the wise cartographer goes well-armed with machete and Webley (and, indeed, there is much sport to be had in this manner when work is ceased for the day); and is content that all cartographers are immortalised in the name of at least one town, usually the one around which ultimately they are strewn.
Prospects: Scientist; soup; Cartographer of the Cities of Mars when that expedition is launched in the next eight months or so. |
better yourself archive |
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