And we're going through the motions

"The life of a commercial sperm broker has a few surprises even for a sophisticated bon vivant..."

"What?!" said Another Kiwi.  "I hope you are not going to talk like a loony and get us thrown out of the Old Entomologist again, not when Mrs Miggins' Vegetable Turducken is on the menu as tonight's bar snack."

"It is from the Whackyweedia entry for 'My Uncle Oswald'," I explained, tilting my chair back.

"No doubt you are reading it for the best of reasons," tigris agreed.

"It was brought to mind -- "

CRASH, interrupted the chair.

"-- by Throgmorton Portcullis' presentation to the Time Machine Booking Committee," I continued to say with dignity in the direction of the ceiling, "proposing that Riddled should invest in celebrity fecal transplants."

Celebrity participation

"I arrived late," said tigris, "on account of a future engagement, and only caught Swearing Bob singing something about a goblin buggering a hedgehog. Or possibly the other way round. Did I miss much?"

"I am not sure how the vile Throgmorton came to be setting the Booking Committee's agenda," AK vouchsafed. "Nor am I entirely convinced that fecal transplants -- recolonising one's intestinal symbiota for fun and profit -- fall within the Riddled mission statement."

"I said it was a bad idea to use cheap meeting-coordination software 'that fell off the back of an ambulance'," I remarked to the ceiling, since no-one else ever listens to me. "-----" ceiled the ceiling.

"The Riddled mission statement consists of mysterious characters scrawled in purple eyeliner on the back of a beer coaster from the Old Entomologist -- the top side bearing a cartoon of a happy Strepsipteran," tigris reminded us; "With its legibility further impaired by the inevitable spillage of Old Suitstainer Stout (with figs for regularity). So a certain degree of subjectivity enters into its interpretation. What did I miss?"

"Throgmorton tabled a report --"

"Stooled it," AK interjected.

"-- a report on the economics of the FMT industry."

"I imagine the motion was carried," said tigris. "Is 'fecal slurry' a punk band name yet?"

"He went on at length on the shift in technology for administering each dose of bacteria, from the humble clyster, to today's frozen or dried crapsules."

"I shall miss 'clyster', said AK. "It offers better rhymes for limericks."

"Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference," said the Ktistec machine's remote terminal. "They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out."
"Has someone been fiddling with the Ktistec machine's personality-emulation programming again, so that it thinks it's William Burroughs?" wondered tigris, carefully not looking at Another Kiwi in particular. "Or has it just been hammering the Philips screwdrivers?"

Disentangling myself from the amorous chairlegs, I picked myself up from the floor to avoid the attentions of Snuggles the Dog of Doom. I do not think he should be allowed in the pub, but Greenish Hugh swears that Snuggles is a sensory-assistance animal, who barks to signal whenever someone has made a joke, thereby compensating for Hugh's own lack of any sense of humour. "The flaw of the scheme," I said, "is the problem of sourcing the celebrity shit. One needs someone with access to each donor's dunny, an insider..."

"A stool pigeon?" tigris suggested.

"...or a well-trained latrine sloth".

"'Bona Bowels'," AK vouchsafed, "was the worst Julian-&-Sandy episode EVAH."

----------------------------------------

From which celebrities are we sourcing our fecal transplants today?

1. The artist.

2. Antarctic explorers.

3. The Bohemian student.

Gnossos stared down again. As he did, a small eddying current in the water lolled it over on its side. It was astonishingly well formed, here and there a miniscule design. Cuneiform of the bowels. Secret cellular knowledge etched by the insides, trying to tell us something.

4. Does the Dalai Lama shit in the woods?* "Gold-plated receptacle"? Just ONE LITTLE DRUNKEN MISIDENTIFICATION of a tuba and they never let you forget it!



* It is an article of faith in secular circles that pre-annexation Tibet was so benighted in mediaeval superstition that poop pills from the Dalai Lama fetched a high price among the faithful. It would be cynical to ask for support for this story apart from Chinese invasion-apologetic propaganda.