Absurdity Rules - Satire Officially Declared Redundant

Poor bogus Smirk has given up, more or less. Whenever he dreams up something new pour épater la bourgeoisie, he finds that the idiots who are running the show have beaten him to it. It's a hard life for someone trying to be outrageous.

I have just heard that my local Catholic Church in England has a No Smoking notice in the narthex. Apparently all public buildings have them. Good thing too. The Priest used to drive us mad, coughing his way through the Eucharistic Prayer with a gasper hanging from his lower lip. He claimed it was incense, not tobacco, but we could tell the difference.

Are there, I wonder, exceptions for those for whom smoking during a religious service is an essential element. I am thinking here of Rastafarians who, according to one I knew, smoked ganja seven or eight years ago as part of their services at a Church in Balham.

Perhaps someone will soon 'discover' that incense smoke causes lung cancer, or more likely bigotry and intolerance. Does the use of Latin inflame the Catholic masses with a longing for autos da fé? Does singing "Gather Us In" provoke the Faithful into leaping into combine harvesters so as to be harvested?

It is all very worrying.