Saturday, July 30, 2005

Do try this at home.

I had a call from a friend of mine who had an interesting tale to tell me. He wishes to remain anonymous, so I shall refer to him as Mr de Sade from now on.
Before recounting this anecdote, a little must be explained for readers from foreign parts, as to how the 'Power Companies' are set up over here.
Many moons ago, there was a mighty empire, known as British Gas, who were Omnipotent and Omniscient, and all those who wanted fire, had to kow-tow, and sacrifice their first born to the Great Ones.
But then, the mighty God Thor, thought "Enough of this bo**ocks, I think I shall set some adversaries loose upon them and give them a bit of of a kicking, just for a laugh", and so a mighty battle is now being raged between BG, and a few other companies, such as NPower.
Anyway, Mr de Sade had for some time, and as many people had before, been tied to BG, until one day whilst feeding his venus fly trap, he received a telephone call.
"Hello Mr de Sade" said a happy voice on the other end of the line, "I'm calling from Npower! We've been going through our computer data, and have noticed that you are still with those nasty people who want your first-born-child and lots of money. Why don't you swap over to us? We're really nice and much cheaper, and you only have to sacrifice the odd lettuce now and again to get fire from us!"
Mr de Sade replied "Yes".
The happy person from NPower did a joyous dance, and played with his computer until Mr de Sade was on their records, and a little coded notice was sent to BG saying 'Yah boo sucks, he's with us now! pthrrrrp!'
A moon passed, and BG received the notice from NPower and thought 'Pah! two can play at that game!'
Mr de Sade received another call.
"Hello Mr de Sade, I'm calling from BG. We've noticed that you decided to join those nasty people at NPower and this has made us very sad as we really, really liked you, and if you come back to us, we will cut our costs and make fire even cheaper for you AND we'll give you a free bic biro!"
Mr de Sade said "Yes"
And so the minion at BG played with his computer, entered his code that said Mr de Sade was now back with the dark force, and also sent a message to NPower saying 'We got him back - how do you like them apples?'
Another moon passed before NPower received the message. When they heard, they gnashed their teeth, and wailed, and then called Mr de Sade, and offered him even cheaper fire, a shiny talisman and the fairest goat in the land, if only he would once again return to them!
Mr de Sade said "Yes"
More moons passed. The battle between BG and NPower continued with many a passing of message, many a snarling of minions, and a muchness of code being entered into computers, and many, many telephone calls to Mr de Sade who continued to say "Yes" to their offers of gold and fire and goat, until the day came when all the computers froze over. The days turned to night. The minions started to cry on their mousepads and the supervisors had to go home early complaining of strange headaches and a plague of turnip descended the land.
Mr de Sade now has extremely cheap fire, and a goat which ate his venus flytrap.