I got an email from someone accusing me of using this blog as a vehicle for ridicule and heartless mockery.
“You’re always having a go at someone.” he wrote. “Why can’t you be positive for a change?”
I could have responded to this complaint by mentioning all the humans I’ve praised, a list which includes Dian Fossey and the cast of Star Trek (both the original series and ‘Next Generation’, but not ‘Deep Space Nine’ or ‘Voyager’). But after due reflection, I decided against such a defensive reaction. One shouldn’t argue with honest criticism from a reader, however lacking in objectivity.
“Thank you for sharing your views with me,” I wrote in reply. “I shall endeavour to adopt a more constructive tone in future posts.”
To prove I’m as good as my word, I will now pay homage to an employee of Bank of America, who was given the sack for mooning at his line manager. The act itself is not praiseworthy, of course. The typical human mooner is a vulgar oaf seeking to distract and annoy rather than enlighten. What made this particular exposure of the buttocks noble was the grievance that provoked it. For the man, you see, was protesting against the earlier dismissal of a colleague.
How many humans would be magnanimous enough to present their butt cheeks on behalf of a workmate? Not many, I would say. How moving it would be if another employee now moons to protest against the mooner’s dismissal. It could lead to a chain reaction that continued until half the workforce got fired. Perhaps everyone should have mooned together to make it harder to victimise any individual, like in the final scene of Dead Poet’s Society.
Esteem is not the only positive sentiment that I seek to express in this blog. I have never hesitated to show sympathy for humans who have suffered a misfortune through no fault of their own. This is why I must now draw your attention to an incident involving a German monk, who was found naked in a forest, wandering about haphazardly in a daze.
Before you get the wrong idea, I have no intention of mocking the poor fellow. His denuded and confused condition was the result of mistakenly eating some hallucinogenic berries. As a forest-dwelling primate, I know all too well how eating the wrong kind of fruit can make one lose one's marbles. I remember a gorilla called Mangobuns who ate some berries from a mysterious shrub in the Ngabe district. It caused him to shave off his body hair, jump in the Congo River and attempt to have sex with a crocodile. Fortunately, we managed to fish him out before the crocodile snapped his head off. If a wild gorilla can make a mistake like that, what chance has a monk?
So there you are, my touchy human cousin. I've written a post expressing admiration for one man and sympathy for another. What more do you want? The hair off my back?
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