This week's word has been
submitted by a Professor Marjorie Caseley of The Institue of Research into
Rubery.
Marjorie writes:
Dear niknmand,
My word of the day is QUANGO, the definition of which is something of a disappointment when compared with the pleasure to be derived from just saying the word. In fact to waste such a word on something as boring as an unelected government sponsored organisation is something of a crime.
So I prefer to think of a quango as a fierce but highly secretive carniverous kangaroo to which the mysterious disappearance of countless bushmen has been attributed. To be attacked by a quango is of course described as being 'quangoed'. To be injured by the unicorn like horn found on the forehead of a quango is to be 'quangoaded'.
Sincerely,
Professor Marjorie Caseley (Mrs).
Many thanks indeed for
the word Marjorie. You'll be pleased and amazed to know that those clever
chaps niknmand have discovered that, far from being the conjectural whims
of a post-HRT, pre-masculine feminist college lecturer, the definition of
quango as a kangaroo-like eater of australian bushmen is, in fact, the actual,
original definition.
We found the following article on a natural history web site sponsored by
Senokot laxative tablets:
Excerpt from "Travels
in the Antipodes" by Nathaniel Cramstock,
Naturalist to His Majesty's Exploratory Frigate "Curmudgeon"
"....That evening our sorry band, greatly reduced in number following
the attack of the naked midget folk, made camp in what appeared to be a great
basin hollowed out in the stiflingly dusty ground. We set a fire with the
brushwood abundant in the vicinity, and by the time the flames had risen high
enough for Mollet the chef to once again reduce our meagre rations to their
most basic form of pure carbon, some great and invisible hand had let fall
the dark, velvety fabric of the evening across the heavens. As always the
size of the glittering stars took away my very breath, and I sat as must the
first Man those many aeons before, struck senseless by the wonder.
Suddenly there came a monstrous braying off in the near distance directly
ahead of where I sat. It was an indescribably awful sound, inhuman and somehow
tinged with a tone that spake unto me of great evil. The noise of thickets
and the thorny shawaddywaddy trees being crumpled and thrown aside reached
me as I rose to my feet, and then came that awful screeching howl once again.
I hastily scrambled back to the fire and the other men, to find Sammy Wuckawucka,
our ethnic guide, in a state of high anxiety, pulling flaming branches from
our camp fire and thrusting them into the hands of the anxiously puzzled fellows
in the rest of our party. Sammy was in a terrible fug, to such an extent that
he seemed not to notice the flaring embers that dropped from the makeshift
torches and settled on to his leathery forearms and ape-like hands.
Never had I seen our guide quite so agitated; when the Land-Octopus, fiercely
protective of her slimy brood, had dropped onto Sammy's shoulders from the
overhanging Gonzo tree he had merely shrugged away from its bakelite beak
and with a simple twist of his finger tied its thirteen appendages into a
rather fetching sheepshank; when Pigwank, our constantly disgruntled ship's
carpenter, had fallen into the pit of the voracious Tiger Slug and been instantly
devoured by slimy wimples, Sammy had calmly sprinkled the powdered root of
the flabby-woof over the revolting creature, and when it had retreated back
to its burrow, fizzing gently in the agony caused by Sammy's sprinklings,
he retrieved the ship's mallett from poor Pigwank's skeletal fingers and passed
it to Reamer, the former ship's whore-boy now suddenly promoted to carpenter.
Now however, the blood curdling screeches coming from the darkness that ringed
our camp-fire had completely pierced Sammy's calm fuzzy-wuzzy exterior, and
it was apparent to us all that Sammy feared for his very life.
"Worrabluddyellisit Sammy?" I asked in Mombu-Jombu, the local dialect.
Our guide answered me not, such was the level of his panic. I grabbed him
hard at each elbow and pulled his face close to mine. The whites of his eyes,
always hugely apparent in the contrast of his little black monkey face, were
now almost complete spheres, quivering along with the rest of his thin wiry
frame, like a damp whippet lost on the Dales in mid-January. "Sammy!"
I hissed. "Worrissit?"
Slowly Sammy turned his head to face me. A thin line of mucus had escaped
from his leftmost nostril and was meandering its way towards his huge rubbery
top lip, like an African river made sluggish by the silt of the dry season.
"Quango," he said simply, then screamed as the monstrous creature
burst into our camp.
Quango. Quango. How to describe the Quango? Terrible. Fierce. Demonic . A
nightmare made flesh. All of these things are true, and aye, many more of
a nature more terrible still .
In appearance, the quango resembles a monstrous kangaroo, twelve feet tall,
with a lashing tail covered in hide more impenetrable than that of the tortoise
frog. Its huge rear legs, used to propel it across the undulating terrain
with minimal effort have great talons at the toe, and are used to devastating
effect on the flanks and rear quarters of whatever unfortunate prey it pursues.
The strangely gentle looking head is crowned by a vicious horn, three feet
in length, sharp as an executioners axe.
But most terrifying of all is the monocle worn in the right eye of all quangos,
attached to the breast by a thin flap of hide to avoid loss.
As I watched the great
beast, impotent with fear and terrified awe, the firelight flashed off its
monocle as it turned its terrible visage upon me. I ran. I ran for the cover
of some nearby rocks, and did not look back, not even when the screams of
my fellows rent the night air, and the sound of human blood fizzed as it spurted
into the flames of the campfire. The night was alive with death.
I can tell no more of that encounter with the quango, save that long after
the noise of carnage and death had passed, and the hell-sent beast had made
its way back to whatever lair it chose with the blood and innards of my comrades
wedged between its teeth and toes, I returned to the camp site. Dawn had arrived
shortly before, and the scene was lit by the ghost-light of the coming day,
leaching the colours from the awful scene and turning all things the colour
of decayed flesh.
None of the party survived save myself. What remained of the men I examined
for signs of life, but without hope. It was clear from a distance that each
of them had been most viciously quangoed; several carried the imprint of a
huge foot, and others had been brained, presumably by the massive and deadly
tail of the quango.
I found Sammy Wuckawucka in a jazpakarat tree, lying across the lowest branch
as if sleeping away a sweltering summer's noon-time. His rough woolen pantaloons
were around his ankles, his monkey-like buttocks bare. Before I turned away
to vomit I could see that he had been the subject of the most violent quangoading,
and must have died in great suffering. I noticed that Reamer had also been
quangoaded, but his, I am sure, was a much happier passing.
The thought of poor Sammy's agony brought to my awareness the pain in my lower
stomach. Until this point I had paid little attention to the uncomfortable
feeling that had been afflicting me for several hours, but as I surveyed this
scene of carnage and senseless destruction the intensity of my constipation
overcame me, and I had to sit on a torn and ragged kit bag that lay in a puddle
of blood near the fire, waiting for the bloated feeling to pass.
Damn this constipation! I leaned backwards in a futile attempt to ease the
discomfort, and as I did so a small packet fell out of the open end of the
kit bag. I picked up the packet, then looked heavenwards to give thanks to
the great and merciful God that must have been watching over me that day.
Senokot! It was a packet of Senokot tablets, still fresh and unused!
As any sane man, I was aware that nothing provides fast and effective relief
from constipation like Senokot, and using only natural ingredients too. Throughout
my years on board Curmudgeon, whenever I had a big day ahead, and the last
thing I needed was constipation to add to the pressures a heavy schedule can
cause, I always took a Senokot tablet with the rum ration at eight bells,
before relaxing to a good night's sleep, and waking to an impressive Richard,
ready and waiting to be dispatched from the torpedo tube......."
Nathaniel Cramstock was discovered wandering the inner desert of the Zippy-Zippys,
south east of the Bungle-Bungles, some two weeks after the events recorded
in this account. He was emaciated, dying of thirst and severely burned by
the sun, but claimed that his bowels were "tip-top", and that he
was "regular as a donkey on a bran-farm".
Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee
dee-te-dee dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee dee-te-dee......ah, brings back some
wonderful memories, doesn't it? Yes, the opening bars to the signature
tune of that wonderful old BBC2 favourite, Call My Bluff. |