THERE COMES A time in every person’s life when they feel they are receiving a clear message from God / the universe / destiny / the voice in their head.
By “every person” I am of course referring to myself and the (let’s be honest) fairly bizarre group of readers who send me curious bits of news.
Whatever, it is vital to be fully receptive to the message, particularly when the voices are saying: Solid Gold Poop.
Disclaimer: I am a high class columnist whose work appears in extremely high class publications and websites such as this one, and I only touch upon subjects that might conceivably be misidentified as “toilet humor” on very rare occasions, ie, not more than two or three hundred times a year.
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But the thing about messages from the universe is that they tell you important things you usually don’t want to hear.
On this occasion, it started when I was in the business district of Japan and learned that Central Tokyo is now dominated by a gigantic gold poop, big as three buses, created by Philippe Starck.
In Japanese airports, they sell tiny gold poops for travellers, and someone told me they have moved more than 2.5 million in recent years. Sign two.
On my return, I took my kids to see Puss in Boots, an animated movie. In a key scene, one of the main characters sits on a huge solid gold egg and muses on how painful it would be to lay such a thing. Another sign.
Then a younger reader told me about Sukamon from the TV anime show Digimon, who is an animated golden poop. That was number four.
The fifth came when I met a graduate who was an addicted player of World of Warcraft, the world’s biggest on-line game, and she told me she spent her time in the game world collecting Azsharite, which is, yes, super-valuable droppings.
Eventually I headed for the source of all wisdom: my mentor/ bartender.
“The universe is speaking to me, saying ‘Solid Gold Poop’. What does this mean?”
He replied: “Not sure. But I don’t think it’s a compliment.”
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The answer finally came when a reader sent me a newspaper article which said the amount of gold smuggling in Asia was soaring.
In Hong Kong it was up ten-fold in a year, and India has seen a jump in arrests. I called travel industry people who gave me the some details.
Gold bars are smuggled from Mongolia to Hong Kong inside people’s bottoms, and customs officials have been trained to scan arrivals to see if anyone is walking funny. (I am not making this up.)
People walking oddly are taken aside and given the sort of extremely thorough search that salary-men pay a fortune for in hotels near the nightclubs in Kabukicho, Tokyo.
The universe, knowing I was a frequent traveller, was sending me a warning.
I strongly advise any reader suffering from an accidental wedgie at Hong Kong airport to just keep on walking as smoothly as possible.
DO NOT adjust your underpants until you are at least 15 kilometers away from the airport.
Scientists: forget nuclear fission, Higgs Boson and all that stuff. You want to make a real contribution to humanity, invent The Non-Wedgie-ing Pant NOW.
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(man walking funny)
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