Think Tank

I see from today’s Daily Telegraph that architect, Mark Hacket, is setting up a think tank in Belfast. About time, too. What with all these Gay Pride marches and flabby-arsed powerlifters running all over the place, Belfast fucking needs it. Then again, I suppose many other cities could benefit from their own think tanks, as well.

How often, for example, when asked difficult questions or posed near insuperable problems, do people simply shrug their shoulders, say, “I’ll have a think”, and then just go away and do nothing? Most of the time, I’d say. This is because while they might indeed like to have a think, they usually can’t actually obtain one. Not a fresh one, anyway. This is where a dedicated, heated and oxygenated think tank comes in (with a deep-sea diver and model sunken galleon for the deluxe versions).

So next time anyone says “I’ll have a think”, he can then be directed to wherever the appropriate tank for his think is kept and there make his choice from the free-swimming selection. So, for instance, if Stephen Hawking is asked “What, exactly, is the `God Particle’?”, he can request that the exact, corresponding think be fished out of the tank for him by its proprietor, just like with a lobster in a Chinese restaurant. Thus will the mystery of the universe finally be solved.

I suppose where this system breaks down (aside from the pump getting blocked with floating think turds) is with the so-called “political think tank.” I can’t imagine, say, a BNP think and a Christian Democrat think swimming happily together in the same tank. It would be a bit like putting a goldfish in with a piranha. An Anarchist think might even do serious damage to the tank. But at least watching the ensuing "life or death" struggles would be entertaining.

Rather like today’s, in fact, in the Labour Party.