The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Bicuspid ccxvi-ccxxxix

But the Father of Teeth travelled on, and came to a city where all the inhabitants had skin as white as the best enamel brushed with the best toothpaste for the best part of a hundred years. Their faces were so smooth that the features were completely bland and unreadable, since any expression would simply slide off and fall to the ground. The citizens looked at the Father of Teeth, and then looked away when the Father of Teeth grinned at them, and the Father of Teeth bowed low before each citizen he met. Whenever he did this, the inhabitants of the city would give the Father of Teeth a curt nod, or else flick with their flowing sleeves the various bald patches on his mangy scalp, in order to indicate that he might safely resume his way without giving undue offence.

But every time the Father of Teeth bowed low before a citizen, he secretly collected the expression which slid from that citizen's face. Under ordinary circumstances these expressions would be trodden into the earth and forgotten except by the wide-eyed buried in their graves; but the Father of Teeth had quick hands and copious robes, and the sight of his scalp when he bowed was distracting to a degree. In only a few hours of wandering the streets, the Father of Teeth clandestinely collected some seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection, all of which he filed away with great care in various pouches that were slung about his person in places few would care to search.

Eventually the Father of Teeth was placed under arrest, because the ground beneath the citizens' feet had become strangely lacking in emotional resonance and the grave-diggers were annoyed at its indifference. The Father of Teeth was brought before the Proctor, who demanded, his jowls wobbling with authority, what manner of magical rite the Father of Teeth had been conducting with all his bowing and grinning in front of respectable persons. At this the Father of Teeth flung open all his pouches at once, and seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection flew out like halitosis and attached themselves, with hideous slapping and sucking noises, to the Proctor's flabby face.

And ever afterwards in that city, the inhabitants went in fear of the Proctor's supreme lack of goodwill, while the ground remained indifferent of expression even as it received them in the grave.

Police Persecute Peaceful Protesters

Brexit protesters are struggling beneath the jackboot of an over-mighty superstate as functionaries in passport-coloured uniforms hand out arbitrary prosecutions. The protesters were demonstrating the likely benefits of full independence from the Euro-wog yoke next week, by blocking major roads, causing delays and bringing traffic to a standstill after the best traditions of Chris Graybeing and Operation Yellowhammer. Motivated no doubt by vengeful malice over Tin-pot Tessie's uncompromising attitude to police budgets when she was thugging for the Bullingdon Club, government enforcers stopped the leaders and booked them under the Nuremberg-style race laws which prohibit driving while gammon. If further proof were needed of their worthiness of the Farage Falange cause, the protesters intended to bring their vision to thirty or forty locations, but appear to have been noticed and martyred while appearing at the first two.

Common Sense Triumphs Again

British family values are once more under attack, and being staunchly defended by the compliant Sajid Javid's reformed, utterly non-racist Ministry for Wog Control. The guardians of the nation have refused a visitor's visa for a Togolese man to be with his British partner while she gave birth to their twins, on the grounds that, being of a different moral complexion to the Conservative Party, he might feel no particular urge to stand by his obligations and leave when the visa expired. The Ministry was also concerned that the relationship, having lasted only four years until now, is insufficiently stable for the welfare of the country, having presumably been formalised only in some barbarous Togolese manner featuring glistening juju-men and fevered bongo drummers. Since her partner cannot be with her, the mother cannot work and has to live on benefits, to the incalculable profit of her children and the British taxpayer. Naturally, when asked to specify the full extent of these profits in Parliament, Javid's ever-obliging henchbeing Caroline Nokes put Parliament firmly in its place; but the citizens of nowhere at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants claim that a minimum of fifteen thousand British children are imbibing the world's best family values in similar fashion.

Silting Up the Sea of Faith

Young-Earthers, Biblical literalists and other intellectual eminences will doubtless be exalted to find another test of faith from their whimsical deity. Thousands of fossilised jellyfish, sponges, worms and other cultural conservatives have been discovered among the lands of the Heathen Chinee, where the divine prankster was fooling around with the mud some little time ago. He then solidified the mud into rock, onto which He then threw a bit of make-up to give an impression of seniority. At least one victim of the evidence delusion has already proclaimed that such fossils "help us to tease apart how complex organs such as brains could be assembled through blind evolutionary processes" rather than through the creative rigours of the divine will to trickery.

Police to Debate with Extremists

With headlines dominated by the approaching Brexit withdrawgasm and the various messes that may come of it, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer has raised the possibility of yet further feasts of reason in the wake of the terrorism at Christchurch. Neil Basu, who has somehow escaped deportation despite his unpatriotic exterior, took it upon himself to criticise the scumbag press for rushing white supremacist manifestos into publication even as they foamed against the failure of social media platforms to censor extremists. The online Rothermere Stürmer was even considerate enough to make the Christchurch killer's magnum opus available for download from its website, presumably because the generators of decades' worth of front-page Muslim-baiting squeals saw nothing particularly harmful in it. Basu emitted some ominous Levesonic noises about the limits of free speech, and even dared invite editors to debate their coverage with "survivors of terrorism and those of us trying to counter it" - a remark which will certainly come back to bludgeon him at some future date when the Press is feeling particularly free, fair and cantankerous.

Certain Concerns Outweigh Mere Survival

In keeping with Global Britain's position of leadership in the battle against unnecessary and avoidable climate change, a local authority has unanimously approved the opening of a new coal mine. Even the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty has expressed his approval, which gives some indication of just how forward-looking and intelligent the whole business is likely to prove. The councillors cannot even plead a natural loosening of bowels at the local elections this May, since none of their seats will be in contention. Labour and the Conservatives were both in favour, so the former Deputy Conservatives naturally went along in their usual mould-breaking fashion, and subsequently the little yellow chair of the development committee was pushed out the door to proclaim that, of course, we would all prefer to live on a habitable planet and not have civilisation collapse quite yet, but local needs must take precedence and we cannot always have what we want and it was not, after all, an easy decision to make. It's all very well for metropolitan élitists to splurge their sympathy on insects and flooded wogs and trouble-making truants, but some of us have responsibilities, actually.

Dies Irae

Day of wrath and day of chaos!
Unexpected Erskine May gloss
Leads to Governmental way-loss!

Nothing short of revolution
When the Speaker's elocution
Buggers Britain's Constitution!

As in Passchendaele's trenches
Terror dawns upon the benches:
Blubbing bullies, squealing wenches!

Porkers on their barrels cheating,
Gammon faces overheating!
Humble pie they'll soon be eating!

Ship of state hath cracked its gunwale;
All who hoped for no-deal fun'll
Take it up the rear-side tunnel!

Tremble, old Westminster city:
All of Eton's wise and witty
Shriek in sorrow and self-pity!

Now we'll never get out early;
Eurocrats all grim and surly
Have us by the short and curly!

Painful scolding, painful schooling!
Termination of all fooling
When the Speaker makes his ruling!

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Gingivitis lxxxiv-xcvii

Fortunately, however, the Father of Teeth saw a great plume of black smoke in the heavens, and by keeping it in sight at all times he managed to escape the perilous realms and find the path again. He repeated the time-honoured warning, "Never leave the path," but the others had long ago succumbed to weevils, lip-gout and the ravages of philosophy, not necessarily in that order. The plume of smoke grew thicker and darker, and its taste filled the crunchy air as the Father of Teeth came upon a great multitude all waiting in line. Men, women and children of all shapes and ages stood in orderly fashion, monitored by armoured guards who were thoroughly beweaponed and impenetrably shielded against any hanky-panky and who did not hesitate to take the most assertive precautions against anyone who stepped out of place.

Since the queue completely blocked the path, the Father of Teeth had little choice but to join it, but after only a few hours one of the guards clumped up to him and demanded to know the nature of his business at the factory. "What factory might that be?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"Why, you rank and vile impostor," said the guard, whose visor was painted with a rose-cheeked smiley-face in fluorescent pink; "what factory, you ask? You dare to plead ignorance while occupying a place in this very line, and without a dollop of make-up to festoon your blatant phiz?"
"Make-up?" asked the Father of Teeth.

For reply the guard grabbed the nearest few people by their scalps and spun them around one by one. Men, women and children alike were hideously plastered with powder and paint, all in the brightest primary shades, although their clothes were as ragged and faded as those of the Father of Teeth himself. "All customers of the factory present themselves thus," said the guard, spinning them back into their accustomed positions; "it is an ancient and much-honoured custom, dating from the old days before the great reforms."
"Indeed," said the Father of Teeth; "and what reforms were those?"
"Truly, your ignorance is most blasphemous," said the guard; "you are fortunate to have encountered me rather than one of my less tolerant colleagues, otherwise you might have had some of the black knocked off those gleaming gums of yours. Know then that in the olden days the factory took in people and rendered them down into usefulness, extracting certain essences to enrich the colour of the granules, in order to make them more appetising. From all I have heard, the process was quite useful and very nearly painless; but certain disruptive and subversive elements objected, saying that people should be destined for better things."
"Such as what, for example?" inquired the Father of Teeth, with genuine interest.
"Freedom and breeding and poetry and such," said the guard; "all the usual. And the people listened to these agitators, and began to disguise themselves with make-up so that the factory would be deceived as to their true colours, and would render them down to be used on a better class of granule. So the management proclaimed that a regular dose of granules was just the thing to keep you fit for the very best sort of granules, and from that day to this the queue has never shortened, the glamorous facial tradition has been maintained, and only the necessary daily minimum of persons have been bludgeoned for offences against the queue. Now, about this make-up of yours."

And opening a small door in his breastplate the guard produced a brush, a bottle and a powder puff, which scattered small clouds of pink dust to flatter the factory's black perfume. But the Father of Teeth had already left the path and, in defiance of the time-honoured warning, vanished once more into the perilous realms.

Walling Up

With its usual sledgehammer tact, the Trumpster administration has chosen the day after the atrocity against Muslims in Christchurch to assert that it will neither tolerate nor facilitate investigation of atrocities against Muslims. Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court are looking into incidents of kidnap and torture in Afghanistan, besides various self-defendings by the Righteous State which only an anti-semite would be boorish enough to detail. The Trumpster administration has responded with a proclamation that anyone suspected of trying to enforce international law will themselves be treated as a Muslim or even a Latin American, and denied permission to enter the realm of the manifestly-destined. The USA has not recognised the ICC by ratifying the Rome Statute, unlike Britain which takes the more nuanced position of acknowledging the existence of international law but ignoring it when it gets in the way.

Not Us

This is not who we are, you know;
The problem's someone else's, so
There is no need, in countries free,
For all of our community
To seek out and denounce the few
Of us values are not true;
And naturally no excuse
For vengeful insult or abuse,
Or that unpatriotic game
Whereby the lesser breeds heap blame
On white Crusader souls, the Press
Or staunch, ancestral Britishness.
A democratic nation learns
From understandable concerns;
No-one denies some go too far,
But that is Them, not who We are.