The Great Mugabo

According to a BBC report, despite having kept a low profile since elections three weeks ago, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe was on bullish form on Thursday as he attended a children's birthday party in Harare.

Charlogy Online can now reveal the exclusive story behind Mr Mugabe's party appearance.

It appears that three weeks prior to the party each child who had been invited and RSVP'd, together with many thousands of other children some of whom have not yet been born or even conceived were issued with a form to choose whom they would like as the entertainer. They were to tick a box for one of the following:

a) Zimbo the Clown

b) Mashona the Magician

c) President Robert Mugabe

After the resulting votes were scrupulously counted and rechecked the people's choice was respectfully upheld and Mr Mugabe duly arrived on the due date at 3pm.

"Greetings children!" he bellowed to the assembled kids. "I am the Great Mugabo!"

"I wanted the clown," the boy whose eighth birthday it was whispered to his friend, unfortunately just loud enough to be overheard.

"CLOWN?" roared Mr Mugabe. "You wish to hand your party over to that sinister bunch of white-faced mockers? Never!" He then nodded to a group of 15-year-old war veterans with baseball bats who promptly escorted the birthday boy outside, hopefully just for a game of rounders.

The Great Mugabo then turned back to his audience. "Is anyone else here in league with the vile forces of clownialism?"

No one was.

"Do you know any magic tricks?" piped up a youngster after a slightly awkward pause.

"Do I know any magic tricks?" Mr Mugabe scoffed. "You kids don't know you're born. Okay, watch carefully. You see this ballot box...?"

Later on, The Great Mugabo would slice the birthday cake with a Chinese machete he'd ordered especially for the occasion.

Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's -- the Self-Hating Cereal

As I found out this week, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's (Good Things In The Middle! TM) are high in fibre, low in fat and low in self-esteem.

If you've never tried them, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's are a breakfast cereal in the classic hoop shape but with additional little bits of wheat cracker, rice and honey filling the hole in the middle. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. I bought a box this week and was quite enjoying them. Until, that is, I discovered that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's despise themselves for ever being hoop-shaped in the first place.

I was alerted to this by the blurb on the back of the box, which had the usual dull stuff about the cereal's multi-grain composition and how many types of Vitamin B etc it contained. But then, unprompted, it went on to say, So why eat a cereal with nothing in the middle when there's so many good things in the middle of Honey Graham Oh's?

Well, why indeed? I mean, what kind of moron would do that? You'd only be singling yourself out as the type of doofus who pays NT$135 (US$4.50) for a 340g box of a cereal for which a key component is nutrient-free air! You idiot! Why would you do that? Why? You think you can get your RDA of riboflavin out of thin air, you cretin? Well let me tell you -- you can't!

Now this rather aggressive pushing of Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's's main selling point would be easier to accept were it not that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's quite clearly evolved from the hoop form themselves and thus might be expected to treat their origins with greater respect. But yet instead of ice-cold milk, it is unbridled scorn that they pour on their humble progenitor.

We could dismiss this as analagous to the posturing of high school kids trying to get into the cool set by slagging off the gang they used to hang around with. "Hole in the middle? That's just stupid. Glad I stopped hanging with that bunch of losers!"

But I fear it may be worse, more deep-seated. An inferiority complex leading to a rejection of one's basic identity. In other words, a Self-Hating Cereal.

Oh, I don't doubt that Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's view themselves as the victim in all of this. I picture Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's appearing on Oprah to declare tearfully, "I felt so inadequate, like something was missing. I realized there was a hole in my life. And I needed to fill that hole."

If that is the case then, Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's, you have my pity. But not my respect. Nor my continued custom. For how can such a cereal fill me up when it betrays such a gaping void in its own being? When it possesses every kind of fibre except moral? Herein lies the paradox -- it is only when you embrace your hole that you will be made complete. Once you accept your inner hole, you will realize that what sticks to others merely whistles through your hollow middle.

It is baffling. How can Quaker's Honey Graham Oh's turn their back on a community containing some of the most charismatic cereals the world has ever known? I call on Froot Loops, Wheetos, Lucky Charms -- let all the O-shaped cereals rise as one and condemn this ap-O-stasy.

I ask you -- would Cheerios ever show such disdain for their rich and crunchy heritage? I think not!