Ethical Shopping

A lot of people have asked me where I have been doing my ethical shopping this Christmas. Now, I must confess, I have been a little slow to catch onto this particular trend. Previously, my idea of ethical shopping was giving some loose change to the scary man with the big beard that stands outside of Sainsburys and shouts loud things at the buses. I have now learnt, however, that this is technically known as "feeding the drug habit".

In reality, it appears that ethical shopping revolves around buying cheap farmyard animals, such as geese, or goats. "That sounds really shit," you say, "who wants a goat?" Well, it turns out the Africans do - they'll take anything these days.

Now I was pretty fucking pissed when I came downstairs on Christmas morning to find that Santa had not delivered the 32-foot yacht that I had pre-ordered from his online gift-shop. I mean, how fucking useless are the Royal Mail these days? Weeks ago, I paid for it. However, my rage would have been somewhat abated if I had found a small goat wandering merrily around in the living room. Goats are cute. Well, until it craps on the floor, at least.

Instead, all I got was a piece of paper saying that I should have a goat wandering merrily around in my living room, but some do-gooder had decided to give it to an African instead. Hello! I think you'll find the present was meant to be for me!

I wouldn't mind so much, but keeping a pet requires responsibility, and I'm just not sure Africa is up to the task. They have consistently shown themselves incapable of feeding their own children - how are they going to feed a goat? It's like homeless people who own little dogs - it just doesn't make financial sense.

Now I know what you're thinking, but they couldn't eat the goat. Firstly, that would be well disrespectful to the person that just gave it to you. And to me, because it's my fucking Christmas present, let's not forget. And I say you can't eat it. Secondly, have you ever eaten goat? I have, it's disgusting. I'm sure even Africans have taste-buds.

Perhaps if they all got together, they could pool their farmyard animals and open a petting zoo - that might bring some cash in. Has anyone done any market research? Probably not. But I bet at the end of the day, they still don't send a thank-you letter for that goat. I would have done.

Moreover, now that everyone is so busy fussing over ethical christmas presents for Africa, who is thinking about the 7-year old Philippino kids? They have worked tirelessly to bring us christmas presents for many years, are we just going to cast them aside like the poor-quality toys that they made for us? How are they going to eat now that nobody is buying any stuff from their sweatshops?

See what compassion does to the world? It rots it. Someone should tell Bob Geldof and Bono. What a pair of tossers.


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Do you find yourself disquieted by the sentiments of this post? Then please read: The story of the blog

Approximate percentage that this post corresponds to reality = 8%

The story of the blog

Once upon a time there was a medical student with a blog.

The blog started as an effort to chart his futile attempts to get himself a ladyfriend. But although he is not a gay, he soon discovered that girls are rubbish by nature (it's genetical) and mildly disappointing as people. Moreover, none of them looked like the girls in his videos what he downloaded off the internet.

Thereafter, he began to use the blog as a canvas on which to paint his mindless and mildly-offensive opinions on poor people and animal-rights protestors, as well as tackling important social issues such as date rape and why Christians are obsessed with baking cakes. It was a mediocre blog at best. Although that is probably being a bit too generous.

Nevertheless, people on the world-wide interweb began to read his blog. His audience grew until literally tens of people were reading the blog on an annual basis. One or two even began to look forward to the next sardonic instalment from the bilious persona that he had created. That was all it was though, a persona - not an autobiographical account of his life and work.

But being on the most part intelligent creatures, these readers were able to discriminate between the world of fantasy and reality. Even a baked potato, with a little coaching in analytical skills, could have discerned that what was written was done in order to amuse, not to reflect the authors opinion, actions or desires. Granted, the humour was not to everyone's taste, but this site was just one amongst many billions on the interweb, Surely there was room for our hero alongside all the other turgid blogs that merely chronicle the meaningless lives, poor taste and irrelevant opinions of their ill-educated authors? Surely anyone who didn't like it could just go somewhere else?

And so everyone was content in blog-land. Oh to return to those happy, care-free times! However, one terrible day, the Wicked Witch of Self-Righteous Indignation visited the blog. As a young child, her sense of humour was forcibly removed in a horrific operation, as it was found to be impinging dangerously on the large self-righteous marrow that she had shoved up her backside. The scars from the procedure had left her hideously disfigured, and afraid to show her face, she spent her days surfing the interweb, trying to shut down any site that did not exactly mirror her particular narrow-minded worldview.

Our hero, in his youthful naivety, had carelessly let slip his real name and the medical school of which he was a member. Due to the ever-growing self-righteous marrow which was now destroying her capacity for independent thought, the Wicked Witch was unable to countenance any kind of debate with the author of the blog, and chose to forward it directly to the powerful Dean of the Medical School. A bit like Pontius Pilate in the Bible, the Dean secretly knew our hero was not guilty of the crimes laid against him, but in his capacity as a figure of authority, he had no choice but to order the blog to be shut down.

And lo, Great woe was there in blog-land. All the readers of the blog gathered together (all six of them) and wept copiously. But wait! As it was written in the scriptures, after three days a new blog arose from the ether! Our hero was gloriously resurrected (1), this time with no incriminating personal information that could be used against him. A new blog was born! Surely this blog will live forever! (2)

Some names and facts have been changed.

1. I am not saying I am like Jesus. That is for other people to say.

2. Probably not.

Beginnings

um, testing... one-two...

one-two...