Every morning the Twisty inbox is pretty well chockablock with news of the asinine, yet every morning there is at least one item so absurd, so irrational, so completely cracked, that when I read it the little shred of hope for humankind that sometimes manages to soothe my inflamed obstreperal lobe during the night instantly executes a clumsy swan dive off the deep end.
Which is exactly what happened when I read that, in preparation for a visit from the world’s premier pointy-hatted old homophobic misogynist, Poland has suddenly developed a passion for protecting the citizenry from the life-threatening hazards of ice cream. They will be banning sales of the dessert for the duration, citing “a danger to health.”
It seems that, in Poland, ice cream performs the bidding of Death’s Bright Angel by “go[ing] off.” Left to the imagination is the exact manner in which a frozen dessert is more susceptible to bacterial incursions than, say, a kielbasa.
And apparently nobody cares if ice cream kills people when the pope isn’t in town (nor does there appear to be any bureaucratic concern for what I would consider the more terrifying threat: that the pope might preach them to death).
But wait! There’s more! They’re also banning booze (although the pope himself will retain access to wine, praise Jesus), as well as TV ads for birth control, women’s underwear, and—you guessed it—tampons. Possibly the Poles fear the cosmic implosion that would theoretically take place if His Holiness and little wads of absorbent cotton (also known as ‘godbag anti-matter’) were to occupy the same point on the space-time continuum.
[Gracias, Anne]
Just want to say that reading your site makes my day.
Well, come on. If women weren’t perverting a beautiful gift of god by using birth control, they obviously wouldn’t be needing very many tampons.
Oh, I forgot— except for the celibate nuns.
But don’t tampons make you lose your virginity, anyway?
Death by ice cream? Is this more of a problem in Poland than elsewhere? Are they afraid the pope might get an ice cream headache? The mind boggles!
Wow. I seriously would not have believed this if I hadn’t clicked the link myself.
Taken from the article: “There is always the risk that the faithful may feel hurt if programming devoted to the Pope’s visit is interrupted by frivolous ads,” Zbigniew Badziak, head of advertising for Telewizja Polska, the state-run TV network, told the Associated Press news agency.
Well, excuse me. I didn’t know tampons and mestrual periods were considered frivolous? While my period is being considered a silly matter and not worthy of anyone’s time, especially the Pope, I might as well go ahead and bleed all over the place. Now wouldn’t that be silly.
Sorry. Apparently I can’t spell ‘menstrual’ today.
I don’t understand! Pope not be tampon???????
People get food poisoning every year from bad ice cream (I don’t know how many, but every summer there are articles in the paper about “Be careful!” and statistics and which hospital to go to and whatnot). So banning the ice cream is their way of saying, “We do not want a bunch of puking pilgrims clogging the halls of our already-clogged hospitals.” This makes a modicum of sense. But banning booze altogether -well, in Poland? “Good luck!” is all I can say. The people you are afraid of having drink (because they will be a visual embarrassment) it are the ones who will find it. And banning advertising just about blew my mind. I’m offended by stuff I see every day: when are things going to get banned to spare my feelings?
Dear Twisty, thank you very much.
At last a concrete vision of a true Catholic state. It will have, in part, a coldly sober population of women without underwear, a certain percentage at any given time of whom will be bleeding menstrually without hindrance, searching for ice cream.
Jesus is so proud.
Dear tuckova, you will be spared things that offend you when you become Pope.
Just a quick note on the ice cream weirdness: a lot of vendors in poland sell home-made ice cream, which, for some reason, is still made with raw egg. This kind of ice cream is highly likely to “go off” in summer. That, and the jimmies made of C4.