FLIGHT DIRECTOR'S WELCOME
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Not to worry, Fellow earthlings! I received a lot of very supportive letters after my last newsletter, and I'd like to thank you all for your kind words. Especially the ladies. Especially the lonely ladies. Especially the lonely ladies who leave their lights on and their curtains open as they get undressed, and pretend not to notice me, with my binoculars, on my roof.

You coyly remove each item, knowing I can see you. You playfully look shout at me, daring me onwards with the harsh words you know arouse me. You lower the blinds, knowing full well that I have brought an infrared adapter for my video camera and can still make you out by the heat you give off, and that I will lie in bed watching the video repeatedly until I fall asleep.

You naughty minx.

As I said. I'm much better this week. The doctor altered the dosage, and everything seems to be fine.

Yours,

Barnaby Bottomley
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WHAT'S NEW?
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Um, only a brand new mission to Mars. Mission: Penetrator will be burrowing its way into your consciousnesses on Tuesday 27th March.

Get it here.

Then.
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A WORD FROM OUR CORPORATE SPONSORS
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Now, corporations get a lot of bad press. People think we like nothing more than mincing kittens to use as fertiliser; making people work for pennies and destroying indigenous cultures.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We like opera, too. And reading obituaries.

These people think that just because we use our wealth to secure beneficial deals with governments in terms of labour law, that we are in some way corrupt. Bribery is corrupt, giving money to a government in return for favours is 'investment'.

The truth is these people just don't understand trickle-down economics. It's a truth well-established in economic models that if we get wealthier, everyone gets wealthier. It's not our fault that reality often falls disappointingly short of those economic models. Blame reality, not us.

It works like this: imagine a pyramid of people. Now imagine the person at the top of the pyramid starts weeing. Wee splatters over the heads and shoulders of those below, getting in their eyes and up their noses as they breathe in. Pretty soon they begin to wee, too.

On and on it goes, further down the pyramid, until everyone is covered in lovely, lovely urine. Everyone except us, the dry ones at the very top.

That's trickle-down economics, and we hope that you feel a little less guilty about buying lots of lovely products in the future. You're not exploiting people in the third world, you're helping them to a better standard of living. Admittedly, not a standard you'd want for yourself, but they're different because they are a long way away.

There. That's better.
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ASK THE PROFESSOR
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Dear Professor Colander,

Who is the fairest of them all?

Yours,
Happabap Bappahap
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Dear Happabap,

I have to say that I think my mother, Jocelyn Colander, was a very fine-looking woman with stout thighs and a nose like a rotting strawberry. It was known around Menge that she could break a fully-grown man between her buttocks.

In her younger days, she was considered something of a beauty, and during the war she was placed on the beaches to repel the Hunnish invaders. She kept the West Country safe for the likes of you and me.

During the 1950s she was Miss Austerity for three years in a row, and her face adorned tins of processed pork until the early 1970s. She was a very sexual woman.

I've kept her room exactly as it was on the day she died. Except that I had to cut her down, the Council wouldn't let me leave her there.

Yours,

Professor Colander
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FLIGHT DIRECTOR'S POEM OF THE WEEK (ISH)
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Here's terza rima verse on outer space,
(A favourite of Dante's and of mine)
I think that Mars is my most favourite place.

Just thinking of it tingulates my spine,
I love its barren wastes and reddish rocks.
Unbreathable, its atmosphere is fine.

I love its sand, its mountains and its flocks
Of Martian geese, who honk at Martian voles.
A wormhole means it's also where lost socks
Can go to find their final resting holes.
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