LUNATIC FRINGE CELEBRATES BELTANE

In honour of the birthday of William Shakespeare, 23April, 1564

DRAMATIS PERSONAE, ANIMALIAE, et OBJECTAE

SOPHIE GOLDSTEIN, aka High Priestess Sophia Goldenstone

MAUD

GERTIE

NIGEL,  an iguana, whom SOPHIE pocketed on an ecotour of the Galapagos

LITTLE FUDGIE, a retired dope-sniffing police dog

THE MOON

STANDING STONES

(TOR, The Onion Router, is encryption software used by WikiLeaks to secure internet communications. BELTANE – from the Irish Bealtaine  – is a pre-Christian celebration of the first of May. Rafael Correa is president of Ecuador. Julian Assange is a mythological hero conjured up by the FRINGE, under the influence of 1300 micrograms of Owsley acid, at Beltane, 1970.)

 

SCENE:  Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire. Sunset. The full moon rises above the standing stones.

(Enter MAUD and GERTIE, accompanied by LITTLE FUDGIE)

FUDGIE:  Yap yap yap yap yap yap yap.

NIGEL:  Squeak. (NIGEL scuttles under Sophie’s priestess robe)

SOPHIE: Keep your cur away from my reptile. He’s endangered.

MAUD: I’m gonna tell President Correa.

SOPHIE:  Your Spanish is worse than my !Xhosa. Listen up – Julian was interviewed by the CEO of Google. Bloke says,  “I want to talk about Thor.” Julian says, “Thor or Tor?”  The Googlehead goes, “Uh…” and Julesy says, “And Odin as well.”

(The crones cackle and high-five.)

MAUD: Always suspected he was pagan.

SOPHIE: He says he’s an atheist.

MAUD: Why disbelieve in just one god?

SOPHIE: Googlehead knows less about anonymizing software than I do, and I’m eighty-five. (SOPHIE looks at her wrinkled hands.)  I’m so old I can’t remember the last time I had an orgasm.

GERTIE: Would you like to borrow one of our vibrators?

END OF PART ONE

IRRELEVANT AND UNINTELLIGIBLE

9 April, 2013.

James Ball interned with WikiLeaks for three minutes in 2010. He now writes for The Guardian, better known as The Grauniad, the paper that misspells its own name.

This week WL published its Public Library of United States Documents. It includes a comment  made by Henry Kissinger:

“I used to say. . .‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

Ball’s column, which appeared the next day,  was entitled Do We Need WikiLeaks Any More?

“Your spell worked! Seen the Graun?” Emma hollered into the mobile.

“Which spell, sweetie?” asked Sophie.

“You said you and the gurlz were gonna cast a spell on Jaime Cojón. He’d think he was writing rationally, but everything he wrote would be gobbledygook.

“He told Fluke Hardon:

‘Before WikiLeaks, I used to say, ‘The irrelevant we do immediately. The unintelligible takes a little longer.’ But since WikiLeaks, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

“We didn’t do it, Em. We boiled the cauliflower and put it on the stoop to cool. Little Fudgie ate it.”