Ave, odious wretches of nasty horn and petulant hoof! Knowing you have a natural interest in projectiles and all things of an upright nature, I will tell you a tale.
Recently, I found myself contemplating Nelson's Column, marvelling as to how, despite the inadequate design, this edifice is nonetheless an effective collection point for pigeon shit. This is an important feature in a monument as it is required that we remember the realities and hardships of battle, the arena of human conflict in which our heroes have so distinguished themselves that we build pigeon-shit catchers in their honour.
That led me to a further contemplation, this involving the Battle of Trafalgar itself or the Battle of Raglafart as those with a penchant for mirrors or reverse writing incline to call it. In this battle, Admiral Nelson (the column is eponymous) triumphed and died. I marvelled at how, on this occasion, death, so often awkward or inconvenient, proved to be fortunate for this master of the Seven Seas. The fortune was in part due to an increasing paucity of requisite bits for the handicapped commander, a sad condition caused by a succession of severe wounds in previous battles! Short of a suitable number of eyes and limbs, he was at a point where further losses would count as total dismemberment.
The other part of this fortune was that, by dint of death, Nelson passed to the invincibility of legend, a chequered and scandalous history forgot, with no whisper of the ignominy of past aquatic defeats (of which there were a few). Although, counter to this public reputation, there were, in the corridors of the admiralty, mutterings of a more personal naval disaster, said to have taken place just prior to victory over the Frogs. In this unverified encounter, Nelson's flagship set itself against the stormy sea of Emma Hamilton's thighs, resulting in a battle in the bathtub where rumour has it that the adulterous female sank the vessel thrice but each time raised it again from the depths of this enamel ocean bed.
Sadly, or perhaps not so, the privacy of the locked door prevents us from knowing the truth. And why, I hear you ask, do I endeavour to fill your cloth ears with this aqueous fol-de-rol? Well, I'll tell you! Last time we left, you were wielder of the chicken bone and a speaker in tongues, fired up to set your mark upon a brainless public by dint of your innate tendency to violence and intolerable body odour. You, rancorous rams, have lived a life akin to that of Nelson prior to his demise, your tilts at success unseated by ignominious defeat, shameful sexual scandal, demerit, demotion and the degradation of body, mind and spirit.
Are you now set to claim the one great victory that will make you a monument in stone, enshrining you in the public mind as the hero of life's great drama? And, if so, will you perish in the attempt? Or your the current efforts deteriorate to predictable farce, leaving you once again a shattered wreck of a ram, lying in the gutters of life while passers-by sneer at your reprobate and recalcitrant recumbence. I am Asperitus, tiny turnips! These are the vile and bitter prognostications for fateful February! Reach for the dictionary and tremble in your soiled pantaloons!
Great gods alive and dead, what's this! The Full Moon casts a chill necrotic light on a naughty world from loathsome Leo and you swell with arrogant pride, rush about boasting as to how wonderful you are and hit small persons, especially those too infirm to run or strike back. But, egad little cretins, you're undone as Mischievous Mercury slopes into wretched Pisces and your solar twelfth house. You speak in tongues and point the bone but, due to the miasma that customarily afflicts this ghastly realm of misery and tears, all and sundry take you for a loony! Some flee your odious presence (wisely) while others stand dumbstruck or hurl things in your general direction, gesticulating wildly and shouting frenziedly that the authorities must do something about the lunatics abroad, of which you are the most obvious example in view. Then it is that all Hell breaks loose in the Heavens! Jolly Jupiter rogers the living daylights out of vamping Venus and the Loony Nodes, the great Sol Invicti gropes grim Saturn and mischievous Mercury moves to perverse reverse.
Great corpulent caterpillars! What a to do! Everyone screams or weeps maniacally as rampant weather rampages. Odious persons in uniform resort to old-fashioned methods of crowd control, coups or religious wars shake the foundations of several minor principalities while you are swept away by the cosmic hurricane, almost dropping the chicken bone and whining with a very real and incapacitating terror at this meteorological awkwardness.
But, ye gods and little fishes, what's happening now? Eek! It's an about face of a ghastly kind! A New Moon in Aquarius, sign of the idiot god, wraps a naughty world in a cloak of stygian gloom and a foolish inspiration, so typical of a brainless twerp such as you, strikes out of the blue! You study the mayhem! There is a hurricane, with the lash of rain and crack of thunder punctuated by the wailing of a hysterical mob, a milling nightmare of a gathering replete with foam-flecked lips and aerated by the pong of soiled undergarments. Yet, the insane gods are not done, for further ghastly planets fart in nasty aspect! Vamping Venus gropes dark Pluto, god of the underworld, the great Sol Invicti swaggers into tear-stained Pisces while grim Saturn closes in on an obscene encounter with narcotic Neptune.
Mental disarray grips you, penetrating your usually impenetrably skull by force of the irritating electrical emanations of this unnatural phenomenon. A fixation possesses you. You decide you are the storm god that has reduced the civilized (snigger) world to chaos! You waved your bone, spoke magic gibberish and all has gone to Hell! As marauding Mars roars belligerently in idiot Aquarius and mischievous Mercury barrels backwards into that same inane sign, you call the lightning of the air into your body, charging yourself with a supernal power by dint of which you believe you will take your rightful and triumphant place as ruler of the known world.
Will it be the Ovine Emperor or just another case of singed wool and fried chops? Click here next time and see, smelly little cretins. For the nonce, ave!
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