Des Downunder On Sundays

By Desmond Rutherford | Adelaide, Australia -- Australian Nuts, Are They Good For You?

Jesus having his headquarters near Kingaroy is not the least bit surprising. The Kingaroy region “...is known as the "Peanut Capital of Australia" because Australia's largest peanut processing plant is located in the town...” This year, we seem to have a peanut that requires special processing, in a padded room.

A.J. Miller claims to be the Messiah in the Australian state of Queensland.

So long as A.J. Miller stays in Queensland’s deep north, the rest of us should be all right.

People who claimed to be Jesus, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Caesar (you could choose which Caesar, there were lots of them,) used to be regarded as mentally challenged, deranged, missing a braincell, or just plain nuts (salted nuts have to be specially ordered.) They would find themselves as guests of the local mental health system. Today, with the mental health system being somewhat abandoned, underfunded, or overlooked, it seems the deranged are welcome to establish their own institutions or cults, based around their nutty beliefs. They are often found seeking financial contributions from easily deluded souls who suffer from malnutrition of their intelligence and think that they can gain asylum in academia by eating macadamia nuts.

The trouble is, with so many nuts, it is getting more and more difficult to know which ones to support and which to ignore. Maybe we aren't supposed to ignore any of them. Perhaps we should give equal time (and dollars) to each of them. Decisions, decisions; difficulty in deciding makes a strong case for getting a bag of mixed nuts.

Mind you, sampling all the varieties of peanuts out there, let alone the other nuts from all over the planet, is a formidable task, which reminds me of the story about the nuts on the wall. They are called, walnuts. Then there are the nuts on your chest, which we call chestnuts, delicious when roasted. And we mustn't forget those nuts on your chin which tells us exactly what you have in your mouth.

Perhaps that explains why so much of what comes out of the mouths of religious extremists seems to be so nutty, and puerile.

As for those who think being nuts is a divine madness, might I suggest that they carefully package their nuts, and offer them up for worship so that others will recognise how heavenly they are.

Alternatively, we could always serve plain nuts at tea parties, but that might be a little too cannibalistic for some caucuses.

It must also be said that despite the name, peanuts are not actually, 'nuts', they are legumes, and grow underground, which may explain why we are used to carefully hiding our nuts, after all we don't really want to micturate on our nuts.

Which brings us back to religious nuts, and we should note that just because the atheists think it is nuts to believe in a god, doesn't mean that all religious people are nuts. Indeed, if people find some solace in old legends and parables, there is no need to condemn them as being nuts unless they want to stop other people from enjoying nuts.

The problem of which religion is nuttier than thou, is sort of like the old carnival shell game, where the nut is apparently hidden under one of the three shells and a player has to guess which shell the nut is under. This game is also used to decide bipartisan political compromises, but the nut is never really under any of the shells because it is conservatively concealed under the right hand, which leaves the left hand to scratch the head which is trying to think progressively. That people still fall for this old shell game is itself, quite nuts. That politicians are falling for it is disastrous.

Now if we could just get our religious extremists to stop seeing devilled nuts everywhere, then they might realise that belief in the restrictions of a nation under a god, denies us the nutritious freedoms to be found in the fruits of heaven, here on Earth.

And that shows us that even if some of us are nuttier than a fruitcake, some nuts need to be crushed so that we can enjoy those naturally, wholesome nuts that are good for you just as they come.