DEBATE: If someone at SAD FACTS needs to be sacked, it should be Simon.
FOR: SAD FACTS is like a family and so, like all good families, needs regular audits to ensure maximum efficiency. My positive demeanour and habit of hiding money in the office adds value to our business, more than a certain team member, whose habit of beginning sentences with 'actually' is made all the more patronising when their entire journalistic output is funnelled through their obsession with holes. Tracy Denholm
AGAINST: Actually, I believe I am an invaluable asset to SAD FACTS. Not only that, but I am 41 years old and have a family who rely on me, whereas Tracy Denholm lives at home, has no dependants and supports herself by selling beads online. The very idea that my 15 years of service are comparable to that of a new intern, or that I need to defend my job publicly like this, is frankly an insult to myself and my bad children who hate me. Simon Klimpt
SAD FOODS: TUBMAN’S POD REVISITED
Tubman’s Pod has become a byword for chic domesticity and wholesome nourishment. As restaurateurs clamber to innovate the new super bean into new dishes, should its origins and cultivation methods not give us pause for thought?
The 'Tubman' that gave the bean its name is believed to be a corruption of 'Tubeman', a moniker given to the British naval officer who first harvested the crop. William Wheldrake was part of a 1809 British-Portuguese naval force which liberated French Guiana from freedom, and was the first to see the export potential of the bean, which grew exclusively underneath the Tumak Humak mountains.
The tight catacombs beneath would only permit the spritely bodies of William 'The Tubeman' Wheldrake’s workforce of indentured children. The 'octopus children', as they were called, lacked calcium in their diet, which made their bones malleable enough to squeeze through the tight, irregular crevices of the subterranean labyrinth.
Modern-day depictions of The Tubeman are seen on food packaging as an ill-tempered cartoonish mascot, now replete with eyepatch, wooden leg and wise-cracking animal mascot, a young octopus who is always crying and saying, “Free me! Free me!”
Despite all this, it cannot be denied that Tubman’s Pod is delicious and featured heavily in our upcoming SAD FOODS book, so it is possible we’ll never determine what is truly the right thing to do.
DIGGING
You hear the phrase “Don’t dig holes” a lot these days. From the bearded hipsters eating Tubman’s Pod to the liberal North London elite broadsheet tut brigade: “No more holes!”
Actually, to me this represents the very worst of the nanny state, the slow creep of government into man’s relationship with the ground. A man’s home is his castle, and this extends 1,000 miles above and below. Fact.
Last June, I took a stand and dug a protest hole, but it wasn’t long before I uncovered a series of golden discs explaining a revelatory history of humankind, from man’s origins in the stars to his ultimate purpose of colonising them, oppressing the aliens and then voting to leave due to immigration concerns.
Needless to say, I reburied the discs immediately and have taken a full U-turn on my hole-digging position. I would like to apologise formally for my reckless, contrarian campaign, and the stress my excavation placed on my loving wife and bad children.
Editor’s Note: This will be Simon’s last article for SAD FACTS, as he is unfortunately pursuing a new career as a jobseeker. )
