This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Friday 3 January 2014

Alternative-to-thought for the Day

We are delighted to be able to print excerpts from the Alternative-to-thought for the Day, by St Julian of Assange, who is currently incarcerated in a broom cupboard in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

wookie

The founder of Wookieleaks speaks out.

For those unaware of the context, the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme has had a series of guest editors this week, chosen for their great wisdom and erudition. On this occasion it was Dr Miley Cyrus, professor of Twerkonomics at the University of Nashville, who nominated St Julian to provide the Alternative-to-thought for the Day. Over to you, Julie!

Assange praying

O God, get me out of this dump!

Catholics!? Dontchahatem?! Always keeping secrets! I know all about this - a Catholic priest dropped into the Ecuadorian Embassy recently, and my hosts said I could interview him once I'd finished dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, fixing a wikileaking tap, and peeling the potatoes. "Father Llamedos," I said. "Tell me what people have been saying to you in the Confessional recently. We have a right to be told, and to publish it on the Internet." To my consternation and disgust, the priest refused to tell me any good gossip. I've heard that many other priests take the same secretive line.

Pope Francis and laptop

"They've leaked some fascinating confessions here, Holy Father!"

Of course I blame God really. He was going to keep the arrival of Jesus as a surprise, simply publishing the Good News hundreds of years afterwards. Luckily our agents, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah, managed to post a warning on the WookieProphet site, forcing the Heavenly authorities to revise their plans. Indeed, when Jesus was born, rather obscurely, in Bethlehem, we managed to leak the news to some shepherds by broadcasting the cryptic message "GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO." Although in the end we were unsuccessful, we also did our best to warn King Herod, so that he could have killed Jesus straight away, saving the lives of dozens of children.

angels and shepherds

The shepherds hear the message of the Assangels.

In more recent times, Catholicism has always been associated with secrecy, whereas Protestantism is the doctrine of freedom. For example, Latin was originally devised by the Romans as a way of keeping their messages secret. "AMO, AMAS, AMAT," they would say, and the common people wouldn't even guess that there was a three-way love affair going on. The Catholics took up the language, and to this day they use Latin Masses as a way of preventing our citizens from empowering themselves. In our Embassy the Masses are mostly in Spanish, Quichua and Shuar, and quite right too. Personally, I have converted to Incaism, which was once an important religion in my country of Ecuador. No Catholicism for me!

Incas

"Shine, Viracocha, Shine!" or just Assange at twilight.

Thank you very much, St Julian. You are a beacon of hope that opens the doors to freedom, and a key that lights the path to liberty. And we know you're very popular in Sweden.

6 comments:

  1. Darling eccles - I heard the original - which was certainly an alternative to thought :) xx Jess

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  2. 'Just Assange at twilight' has made my week-end.

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  3. Dear Mr Eccles,

    The BBC is enormously grateful for your slightly uninformed conservative commentary and we would like to provide you with the following re-education:

    1. Your satirical comment that guest editors this week were "chosen for their great wisdom and erudition" misses the point, as they were precisely chosen for those qualities. If you are an idiot, that is not our problem.
    2. If you see the above point as patronising, that is also your problem. We are the BBC.
    3. You refer to Mr Strange's solicitor Gareth Peirce in a satirical manner. My I remind you that Ms Peirce has successfully represented people of all shades of left wing opinion against Her Majesty in court and always won, so please do not be too optimistic about remaining solvent if your traddy remarks are not withdrawn, you loser.

    4. If you are suggesting that a man on the run from sexual offences who has been lawfully deemed extraditable under existing treaties but has gone into hiding in some wog embassy should not have his moment of glory on Thought for the Day, you are simply flouting equality legislation and you should either reconsider your language or flee the country immediately.
    5. An esteemed voice of the BBC once wrote: "As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug." (Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946)
    6. And there you have it.

    Yours sincerely,
    Controller of Radio 4 (with a capital "C" please)
    Gwyneth Atkinson

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  4. Well I for one was very disappointed. I so wanted to hear Prophet Assange, blessings be beneath him, instruct us in his doctrine on the use of artificial means of contraception and how best to apply these teachings in the field. Maybe another time.

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  5. Ah South America, South America....Great Bastian of Goodness and Truth. How the devil shines on thee.

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