Life is tough when you’re a white, male, heterosexual, old Etonian like me. My constant struggle against prejudice has, however, yielded philosophical insight. What follows is a translation (from Eton slang) of my [cod] philosophical investigations. Please do not be so intimidated as to think you might not understand this profound exposition of the truth. Remember, I am but a mere great intellectual.

Raph Shirley, Vienna, 2011

1 This statement exists.

1.1 I just done a fart.

1.1.1 It stinks.

1.2 Can we say that the statement and the fart are connected? Is there a connexion?

2 I am embarrassed by the word fart.

2.1 I am embarrassed by the fart.

2.1.1 Remember that it stinks.

2.2 It stinks less now.

2.3 Has the statement dissipated with time in the same way? Does it still exist?

3 Yes.

3.1 What was it again?

3.2 In picturing the fart in a dance with the statement, may we come to dance too, with fart?

4 (Poo poos and bums and wee wees. Willys etc.)

5 One remembers great literature and asks: Is Raph Shirley so great a mind that his bodily functions might be comparable to, say, War and Peace?

5.0.1 Yes?

5.0.2 Yes.

6 I am forced to remember a dream I had when I was ten, in which I asked ‘does God exist, my massive mind?’.

6.1 At 6am I arose, and said ‘My understanding of the situation is so far in excess of the current discourse between the morons Dawkins, Hitchens, Pope, Williams etc, that to engage them in debate would be to whore myself to them; to lower my self from on high to meet with these silly demons; to masturbate.’.

7 The TV section of a newspaper.

7.1 An admission of inferiority.

7.2 Like a husband permitting his wife’s infidelity; buying her the prophylactics.

7.3 Yet our choice of paper is determined largely by their TV section layout and aesthetic preferences.

7.3.1 Jesus shat!

Yours, ever humble and meek, yet wise and everlasting,