I’ll be posting some excerpts from my new book Slubgrip Instructs as tasters. Make sure you get this in time for your Lenten reading!
There is a special pre-publication offer on for the rest of the month of January. Go here to learn more.
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Bell clanging. Crowd voices and movement. Slubgrip’s voice is heard above the din.
Come to order! Come to order! Worms! Slimetoads! Grubs and Slugs, come to order!
This is Popular Culture 101. If you are meant to be in this class, then do me the courtesy of sitting down and shutting up. Now then, that’s better. Nothing worse than starting off the day with your interminable grunting, squeaking and popping.
What’s that? No, this is not Psychology and Psychosis taught by Dr. Froth. That’s a third-level course—far above you. You may be confusing that course with Psychiatrists and Psychopaths. Professor Shrank teaches that next door. Off you go.
You are no doubt feeling gratified that you have not only moved up from paramecium, but progressed on to larva, and now you have graduated to the maggot class. However, remember that you are still worms, and you have an awful lot to learn, and much to suffer, before you can hope to move up to the next level. Remember fish bait, my dear fellows. Remember fish bait.
Grimwort you fat toad, do you have the attendance rosters ready? Well, get on with it—and stop sticking your tongue out like that. You know how it annoys me! Class, meet Grimwort, Associate Professor and my general dogsbody. Grimwort has been longing to be made a full professor for years, but he doesn’t really have what it takes, do you, Grimwort?
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Slubgrip and this is Popular Culture 101, or as it is sometimes called, “Pop Cult.” As you have moved from the larva class, you will have no doubt mastered the simpler levels of temptation. Professor Crapulous will have taken you through the basic dimensions of rage and violence, while Dr. Strangle’s sessions on lust and perversion will, no doubt, have tickled your disgusting adolescent imaginations. I hope you will remember Tepshank’s classic lectures on sloth and despair, not forgetting Dr. Snout’s lessons on gluttony, drunkenness and addictions.
All that is behind you now, my dear flukes. If you have got this far, then you have passed the exams and shown at least a basic understanding of the foundations of the art of tempting. Those of you who have been at all observant will see that our class begins on the day the Enemy calls “Ash Wednesday.” “Ash Wednesday” they call it! I’ll show the miserable creatures ashes—but not before they have some flames first….but there I’m getting off track again. Let me see…
