I was educated by Jesuits, dear reader, and therefore… BegPardon??
Oh, no: just a few years, really. Never got around to taking vows. You see: I
was kicked out of the college when at the precocious age of 13 I called into
question, at uncompromising length and with irrefutable arguments, the
historical existence of St Ignatius of Loyola, their putative founding father.
So it was dishonourable discharge for me, because the good fathers were pretty bad
losers. But that’s another story, for another day…
So, as I said: I was educated by Jesuits, and therefore I deeply love
the Delicate Dilemma. You know the kind: a razor-sharp discussion of ethical puzzles,
apropos of a story that has no clear moral answer. Like the one good old Immanuel Kant wrote down as an illustration to his Compulsory Imperative:
suppose you’re living in a country with a perfect justice system, and your best
friend knocks on your door, telling you he is being haunted by the police… Will
you then let him in and hide him in your attic?
That one is, of course, a piece of cake to answer. But now, from
Down Under, comes a far more fascinating one! Yes, a true gem excavated from
the soil of the last continent to be discovered! And I may say it takes an
Aussie to come up with such a risible riddle!
OK. Here goes without more ado.
Let us say you are a smart, upwardly mobile, well-educated, and
quite physically vital Australian young
lady who has landed a job as a civil servant in the pay of a respectable
government bureau. Your employer sends you to a congress you have to attend so
as to perform your duties optimally. As the congress will take several days, your
employer books you a hotel room. The evening of your arrival, you happen to
meet up (by chance or sly appointment) with a gentleman friend. You have dinner
together (Ostrich steak, I suppose, with Aphrodisiac Sauce…) There are candles
on the table. There is wine in the glass. There is romance in abundance. His
manly hand softly touches the inside of your knee under the ta---… In short:
once the kangaroo pudding has been gobbled up, the two of you decide to, well, continue the conviviality in a private
setting. In Aussie idiom: to go up to her room to ball. You go at it with, well, young, upwardly mobile, and
physically vital abandon. And just as the going gets good (Oh stop! You know
what I mean, dear reader! Alfred B Mittington does not have to translate everything to Australian Idiom, does
he?), just as the coming gets going, then… the overhead chandelier crashes down
from the ceiling, hurting you badly in various places of your unprotected
anatomy, and traumatising you no little in the head.
 |
| lethal weapon |
We all know how that feels, right? Happens every day and to anybody…
But now what do you do? Do you go to the hospital, get fixed up,
attend the rest of the congress as good or as bad as you can and steal home,
silently, shamefully, embarrassed at this laughable adventure?
No, you don’t! Instead, you run to the nearest lawyer’s office, and
you sue your employer for damages, because you have been harmed, both
physically and mentally, in the line of duty during office hours! After all:
you were in that hotel room - weren’t you, Sheilah? - because your employer obliged
you to attend that bleeding congress! So if harm came your way in that hotel
room HE forced down your throat (don’t get no picture into your head, dear
naughty reader!) he is formally responsible…! And can we kindly hear now how
many million the government are willing to cough up, mate…?
You probably will not believe this, dear reader, but the above is
indeed a case that made the Australian High Court the other day. And the High
Court decided that no, the lady in question is not entitled to compensation,
because ‘the activities engaged in were not directly related to her duties as a
civil servant’ and ‘she cannot have been under the impression that this could
have been part of her task.’
Bloody H.! The freaking cheek of these judges! They seem to labour
under the erroneous understanding that a person is only entitled to a bucket of
money when harmed while ORDERED by their employers to fuck a third person! And
that is not, of course, what this is all about (according to the wisdom which the
Jesuit fathers instilled in me).
No, in reality, the matter ought to be decided by a far more ample,
and ethical contemplation. It depends, in my Jesuit view, on four quintessential
moral questions. They are the following:
1.
Would the young lady have been
in that bed had she NOT met and ‘intertwined
herself’ with the gentleman friend
in question? Let us hear about her usual schedule and daily routines!
2.
Had she indeed been an early
sleeper, would she then have found herself in the EXACT SAME SPOT in the
catastrophic bed? I mean: do give us all the gory details of the Kama Sutra
position they were engaged in!!
3.
Did the chandelier come off the
ceiling BECAUSE OF their carnal activities? We need the architectonical details
of that hotel, its resistance to earthquakes, and yes, once again, more details
of their throbbing motions!
4.
How can it be that Down Under,
where everything is topsy-turvy, a chandelier comes crashing UP? Was there
perhaps some diabolical government experiment involving the manipulation of gravity going on nearby? Let’s
hear it from Mr Snowdon and our fellow Aussie Mr Assange, if you please!
Until these questions are exhaustively answered, dear reader, Alfred
B Mittington will not tell this poor Australian young lady, who already
suffered so much, to go, well,…. lick herself. Like a hurt cat, I mean (oh,
what a very sick imagination you have, you shameless reader of mine!) And
meanwhile, I would be most interested to hear from you folks what you think of
the case in the comments thread down below.
