Horsing About - Internet Stupidity On Delusion

On page 6 in the Daily Telegraph, dated 21^st October, 2008, there was a short piece titled ‘Internet encourages stupidity’. A serious study of the rise in children’s addiction to ‘an endless digital forest of mediocrity’ and decline in moral boundaries, it called for a government clean-up. It appears, also, that an increase in blogging blurs our sense of what is true or false, real or imaginary. All of which I can believe.

Nevertheless, in the interest of insanity and depression, I thought that, today, in the midst of all the gloom and doom, a light hearted look at some recent news wouldn’t go amiss.

HORSING AROUND

First we have the story of a pony, nick-named Fat Boy, who, having escaped from his stable, gorged himself on fermented wind-fall apples and became so drunk that he fell into a swimming pool. You might say that he was unstable, or that you could take a horse to water but couldn't make him drink. . .

The pool’s owner, Sarah Penhaligon from Newquay, Cornwall, UK, said that at first sight, she was terrified. However, when she realized that it was a horse, she sent for the fire brigade. They did an excellent job in rescuing the miscreant by building hay steps to help him out of the pool.

Are there lessons we could learn here? Should governments in Western societies be looking more closely at this story of greed and obesity? Or is this simply a tale of one rotten apple turning all the others bad?

STILL HORSING ABOUT

Next we learn of a silly filly called Gracie, who lost her head (not over Fat Boy, I hope? These youngsters get so over-emotional about the opposite sex!) There were no fermented apples for Gracie to gorge on, nor a swimming pool for baptism by immersion. Gracie, like Winnie the Pooh before her, was simply consumed with curiosity, it would appear. Or perhaps, after all, she, too, was subject to greed and obesity and was in search of honey?

Who knows? Gracie, of Pullman, West Virginia, USA, may have felt that she couldn’t see the wood for the tree. Sticking her head into a cleft in the trunk, she became stuck. With her legs splayed about the trunk, perhaps she twigged that a ‘hug a tree’ philosophy might help her to branch out, stem the rising sap of heartbreak that Fat Boy had caused her, root out her depression, and leaf her free to embark on a face-saving exercise. This was achieved when she was cut free by someone with a (un) chain (ed melody) saw.

OFF HIS ROCK(ER)ING HORSE

And finally, at a time when people are losing their jobs, savings and homes, we have the silliness of a well-known scientist, who is preparing to spend good money on bus adverts declaring ‘there’s probably no God.’

Why the ‘probably’? Isn’t he sure? It must be sheer desperation that’s driving him. Perhaps he realises that denouncing the existence of someone you’ve never met doesn’t, actually, disprove their being? Or perhaps he’s joined Fat Boy and the silly filly Gracie in a self-indulgent gorging, which has led to the sort of mental impairment we see in inebriation?

Whatever! I hope you’ll join with me in praying, to God, that he doesn’t fall into a swimming pool. Or get his head stuck in a tree. There may not be too much hay around on a London bus to build the steps to get him out. Nor a chain saw to cut him free.