References To Aesop And Bill Wyman In The One Post!

That Aesop had quite a shitload of common sense, didn't he?  When I was a kid, I read a lot of his fables.  Their themes and their morals ring as true now as they did when Aesop was spinning a yarn some six hundred or so years before Jesus was born.  There was one I got thinking about: The Man, The Boy, and The Donkey.  In a nutshell, a man and his son were taking a donkey to market.  Someone pointed out they were mugs because after all, what's  a donkey for but to ride?  So the boy got on.  Then someone said the kid was a lazy little shit because the father had to walk.  So the kid got off and the father got on.  Some old biddies complained what an overbearing and obnoxious father to let the poor boy walk whilst he enjoyed the ride.  So THEN the kid climbed on, too, and a bunch of people castigated them for weighing down that poor donkey with their combined weight.  In a moment of brilliance <jokes>, they tied the beast's legs together and attached him to a pole, and tried to carry him in the mode of those African hunters who carry their kill back to the village, for boiling in the pot and divvying up amongst the villagers.  Anyway, they couldn't carry the donkey, the pole broke, donkey went over the bridge into the river.  Owing to its legs being bound, the poor beast couldn't get to safety and drowned.  Now, who knows what the moral to the story is?  If you can't figure it out, let me tell you: try to please all, you will end up pleasing none.  If you needed that explained to you, go back to viewing the Kardashians' pictures on your Instagram feed.

The reason WHY I got thinking about this story is the Blackfriars' Priory School in Adelaide has just unveiled a statue of St Martin de Porres, who in his earthly time was a member of the Dominicans in Lima.  Here's a picture of the statue that has caused consternation.  I'm sure you will realise why:

All right, get your minds out of the gutter and have a better look.  It's a piece of bread.  St Martin, having been an illegitimate mixed race child who experienced abject poverty when growing up, was very focused on providing for the unfortunate in society.  This piece of work depicts him giving the kid something to eat, okay?  It's not his dick.  It's bread.  Yes, the positioning is unfortunate, but I'm not a sculptor and I'm not sure if it was feasible for the artist to have the bread held elsewhere, given whatever medium the work has been sculpted in.

But some people complained.

'That's just offensive!'

'That will trigger young people who have been abused by the clergy!'

'This makes a mockery of child abuse carried out by religious institutions!'

'What were you people thinking?'

So the school did this:

Different people complained.

'It looks like a burqa, and is going to inflame anti-Muslim unrest!'

'Why did you give into the people whingeing?'

'It looks like he's being kidnapped, and is about to be thrown into the boot of a car and driven to a secret place, then held for ransom!' (That one's mine).

But you can see my reference to the Aesop fable here, can't you?  Doesn't matter what happens; someone's ALWAYS going to carry on like they need a tampon change.  To the school: please reinstate the statue.  It's a piece of art, it's not that bad, and St Martin de Porres sounds like he was an all right bloke.  Also, it's probably not going to be too long before the statue is covered with bird shit, anyway.  Of course this could be a job for the naughty children of the school: scrubbing it away.

Sigh.  RIP, David Cassidy.  No more suffering for you.  'I Think I Love You' is a very nicely crafted pop song, ostensibly performed by your television family, but more likely performed by you, your stepmother Shirley Jones, and professional session singers.

Double sigh.  That moment when you go read the playlist of the CD you won - 'Hard To Get Hits' - and see 'You Raise Me Up' by Westlife (emetic putrescence), and even worse: 'Je Suis In Rock Star' by Bill Wyman.  It's not that they're hard to get hits, it's that they're hits nobody WANTS to get!  The Bill Wyman ditty is a labia-shrivelling, craptacular paean to the art of recording a song when one is completely tone deaf.  That part where Bill croaks in faux cockney: 'she took 'orf 'er 'at, and she 'ad lovely 'air' just makes me think having Tabasco sauce dripped into my urethra might be a slightly more pleasant experience than listening to that.