On gravity: the united way
You wouldn’t ask a ferret to cross the Mercy, a mouse to enjoy Disney or a ghost to organize a house-warming party.
To most people it is obvious that certain ingredients mix like cement shoes at a tightrope walking convention.
However, there are those who don’t understand or are unwilling to acknowledge this simple fact. Whatever lies at the roots of this - whether these people are professional party bores, wild-eyed conspiracy junkies and/or temper-tossed bloggers - is only of some passing interest to those who are paid to list and dissect pathologies.
It would be nice though, if these people could be dealt with properly. There are, of course, the Darwin awards but some problems and some people simply won’t take themselves off the board. They need, instead, some encouragement – some external force, if you like.
Come forward, the John Hurt Award.
Or: if Charles Darwin won’t come and get you, Isaac Newton will.
Each year there will be a list of people or institutions that behaved in a particularly obnoxious manner, giving offence to reason, manners and good taste. In that same year a winner will be chosen and announced - and then publicly nailed to his or her appalling stupidity and discover in one easy lesson that, whatever else might be prone to dumb mistakes and gross failures, gravity is decidedly not one of them.
On this year’s shortlist:
-For mixing religion with personal, sexual hang-ups, the Colorado Springs’ Seventh Annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball.
-For mistaking law for political orthodoxy, America’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
-For mingling poetry with polemics, the Belfast founders of The Love Poetry Hate Racism campaign.
While only one person or group can win the John Hurt Award per year, others can and will be encouraged to partake in one of the heavily subsidized, individual or group travel schemes, organised by the new kid on the tour operator block, The Lemming Express.
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