Amnesia Crawthump, Pol Pot Professor of Multicultural and Ethnic Minority Studies at Marxtown University, Dublin adjusted the safety pin through her nose, writes Kevin Myers
The faculty meeting would soon begin, and she wanted to look her best. The main business today was finance, and she had to be absolutely ready. The last time she had gone unprepared into a vital committee meeting, Fallopia Whynge, the Yasser Arafat Professor of Women and Travellers' Studies, had scooped most of the budget with her appalling tale of Army bigotry and of how not a single disabled lesbian Traveller had yet made it to brigadier-general.
Amnesia was not going to be outdone this time. She had heard that no practising Muslim had ever been ordained as a Catholic priest in Ireland. She had investigated. And it was true!
The Catholic Church unashamedly had a policy of ordaining only Catholics. That such discrimination could still be tolerated in this day and age was past all belief, and had to illegal. Provided she made her case with vigour, she would surely triumph over that snivelling wretch Whynge! On her shoulder, her parrot Ovaria squawked a sisterly squawk.
Bracing herself, Amnesia set off down the long corridor overlooking what had not long before been rugby grounds. But then Prof Neil Abjectly of the Department of Equality and Pacifist Studies had taken a court action against the college rugby club, alleging that it discriminated against women, against people with disabilities, against people who were gravitationally and velocitationally challenged, and people lacking in altitude. The club president, Seamus Clod, had fought a typically chauvinistic defence, alleging "freedom of choice", but happily the equality tribunal had ruled that such freedoms applied only to women, before expelling and imprisoning him. Now the former pitches had been converted into vegan plots, where transsexual Buddhists studied non-competitive market gardening, for which first-class honours degrees were granted to the students upon enrolment.
If only the world could be as peaceful and harmonious as feminists would undoubtedly make it once they came to power! But in the meantime, that bitch Whynge was sure to make trouble at the budget meeting. Nor was she the only threat. Mammalia Sink, who held the Winnie Mandela Chair of Law, Justice and Sexual Revenge for Ten Thousand Years of Oppression, probably had some sly trick up her sleeve also. How could you trust a feminist who had botoxed her forehead into a shiny ice-rink, and who had so many collagen-implants that her lips looked like barrage balloons trying to catch gnats? Amnesia growled, and her beloved Ovaria growled in harmony in her ear.
There was much to growl about. Through the mysterious processes of internal politics, Prof Anonymous Bosch, an antique from before the egalitarian revolution, would almost certainly be present at the faculty meeting. How had the sisters not purged such a reactionary? He was against quotas for women and minorities, believed in open competition, and even thought that some students should be failed, not for political reasons - which of course was fair enough - but solely on academic grounds. How preposterous was that? She tutted, and Ovaria dutifully uttered a slight cough of agreement. "End the chauvinist patriarchy," the bird squawked. "We want equality at our discretion! When don't we want it? When we've got flat tyres!" With that stirring battle-cry ringing in her ears, Amnesia Crawthump strode into the faculty meeting. "Yo, sisters," she said, raising a fist.
"Right on, sister," carolled a cluster of her sororial comrades, and sauntering over, they gave her a series of high-fives.
"An absence of lofty dissimulation, today," observed Prof Bosch. "No high guise. Such a shame."
The various sisters, and their male colleagues - Vincent Quisling, Aidan Turncoat and Fintan Cringe - rolled their eyes at one another. The latter group had successfully petitioned to have the urinals removed from the men's toilets because it gave men an unfair advantage. It was now campus rules that all men must sit in order to pass water, even if out in the countryside at midnight. However, the academic council had vetoed a proposal for men to have obligatory periods, lest they got them during exam times - which, according to the rules of Marxtown University, automatically entitled sufferers to receive a first-class honours degree.
Then Fallopia Whynge breezed into the faculty meeting with a small but triumphant smile on her face. Amnesia instantly asked herself: what little game was she playing? The chair for faculty meetings rotated equally between members, provided they were women, ethnic minorities, Travellers, gays, or belonged to any other oppressed groups. Today it was Whynge's turn.
"I have bad news," she began, smirking broadly. "Because of the worldwide outbreak of avian flu, all tame birds on campus will have to be put down." She eyed little Ovaria fixedly as she withdrew a small, glittering blade from her gown. "I am even prepared to perform the necessary task myself, in order to protect us all from possibly fatal infection."
"Jezebel!" shrieked Amnesia.
"Bitch!"
Other terse epithets followed, which we will leave to readers' imaginations. "You lay your hands on my beloved Ovaria at your peril." She paused. Could she actually hear the parrot chuckling? Amnesia hissed: "What do you find so funny?"
"I can't get avian flu. I am immune. Parrots with the bisexual gene are impervious to any form of avian flu."
"Bisexual? Bisexual? You're not bisexual! You're a 100 per cent lesbian parrot. That's why I chose you!"
"Ah yes, that's what I told you. But I'm actually avian AC-DC. UC, in my time, sister, I've often liked a cockatoo."