Weird

• Straya

— originally uploaded by Red Wolf

• Face pareidolia

— originally uploaded by Red Wolf

Scarfolk’s Dr Hushson, who surgically adapted children into kitchen utensils for the catering industry, also genetically modified children to grow a variety of foods on, and in, their bodies (see Discovering Scarfolk p. 120-123).

Taking sausage DNA, Hushson created the sausage orphan, which genetically substituted a child’s face — something Hushson had long considered redundant — with a sausage or luncheon meat.

By the end of the 1970s, sausage orphans or kids in blankets had become a traditional part of a Scarfolk Christmas lunch. Orders were taken weeks in advance and in the days leading up to the festivities, frightened sausage orphans would huddle together in meat curing/smoking rooms to await their fate — via Scarfolk Council

Just as Scarfolk Council demanded control over cultural memories and the historical narrative taught in schools, it also wanted to control individuals’ memories.

To ensure a docile, compliant populace, Scarfolk promoted the idea of clumsy townsfolk forever stumbling into situations and seeing and hearing things they shouldn’t, and proposed that measures be taken so that citizens only retained information that reflected the official party line at any given time.

Building on the success of the Black Spot Card campaign, potent, neurotoxic chemicals (and, in some cases, a steel truncheon) were employed, according to one leaflet, to: cleanse unnecessary or redundant memories, so as to unclutter the mind.

The campaign and treatments were so effective that some people became inexplicably afraid not only to go outside but also to go into rooms in their own homes in case they saw or overheard something forbidden.

Those who could still manage to venture into rooms immediately forgot why they were there and, following a deluge of confused calls to the authorities, they had to be reminded that they had forgotten, and should now forget that they had remembered that they had forgotten — via Scarfolk Council

Post-Truthism is nothing new. Following the Truth Reform Act of 1976, it became every citizen’s civic duty to attend de-education classes. The state instinctively felt that knowledge and the educated people who wield it destablise governmental plans, especially those that routinely and deliberately disregard verifiable facts.

According to one de-education textbook: A good or Schrödinger fact is simultaneously true and untrue until such a time that someone in authority tells you which, though they may change their mind or substitute the fact entirely for another piece of information, fabricated or otherwise, that suits their personal or political needs.

It could take many years for a citizen to unlearn everything, particularly because they first had to learn the complex method of how to unlearn. (Also see the How to Burn Books book).

Additionally, because de-education classes were compulsory (and expensive), some people opted instead for lobotomies by backstreet barber-surgeons, who, it was later revealed, received government funding. These unregistered practitioners would lay their patients’ heads on the bottom step of a staircase, then release a Slinky attached to a sledgehammer from the top step. If this procedure was unsuccessful, they would force the patients to binge-watch ITV talent shows such as Opportunity Knocks or the BBC’s Come Dancing programme — via Scarfolk Council

During the People Purges of 1974 and 1975, the many people who peopled Scarfolk were alarmed to learn that they were now the kinds of people that the government categorised as people.

With no clear definition of what the state meant by people, the mayor, who had previously declared himself a man of the people, tried to alleviate anxiety among his people by saying he didn’t want to drive a wedge between people; he only intended to arrest those kinds of people who he deemed not to be people people.

He said that he of all people knew that the most effective way to crack down on these people was with people power: People working together to observe people, being able to tell people apart and then reporting those people to the appropriate people in authority.

On the 13 August 1975, the only people not in prison were six government officials, members of Scarfolk police force and a man called Dennis Peoples who suffered from a rare psychiatric syndrome called Clinical Lycanthropy which led him to believe he was a puffer fish — via Scarfolk Council

— via Obvious Plant

By 1973, poverty was widespread in the UK and 80% of Scarfolk residents relied on soup kitchens. At first, the council alleviated the problem by exploiting an existing urban food source, but once the supply of homeless people was exhausted, a more sustainable food solution had to be found. Scarfolk Vermin Extermination Club (see leaflet above), which was launched in 1974, encouraged children to scavenge through cellars, rubbish tips and industrial wasteland and eat the pests they caught. Initially, youngsters cooked their prey, but parents complained that expecting children to use matches without supervision was irresponsible and dangerous. Thereafter, rats, pigeons, mice, and even foxes (which became collectively known as ghetto tartare) were consumed in their raw state. Unsurprisingly, pest control clubs became popular throughout the country and gained thousands of new eager members. The most requested Christmas gifts of 1974 were steel-reinforced jaw braces and hunting dentures which were required if children wanted to adequately render sinew, skin and bone. Which they did in vast numbers: The many tonnes of discarded bones were used to partially reconstruct the House of Commons which had been damaged by hungry children in search of the vermin rumoured to be teeming within its walls — via Scarfolk Council

Governments have always invoked religion to deflect criticism away from or justify questionable political agendas. Not unlike terrorists.

In the 1970s, the British government frequently cited so-called Christian Values around Christmas and Easter time. Taking its cue from the Bible, the government knew that belief in an all-powerful authority, whose actions cannot be questioned, is a formidable tool of control.

The prime minister would, before the proposal of dubious bills or changes in policy, aggressively promote trust in the state as a virtue not dissimilar to religious faith. By the end of the decade, ideas of political and religious authority became so entwined that anyone who questioned or opposed the ruling party faced Biblical-style punishments.

Academics and experts in particular were branded as extremists (and later as fact witches) for producing any evidence that contradicted government policies. In 1978 a 4 year old dissident heretic was crucified in Scarfolk town square for highlighting glaring errors in the government’s annual budget, which she did with the help of a Fisher-Price junior calculator she had received for her birthday — via Scarfolk Council

— via Scarfolk Council