Tuesday morning I was struck with the numbing and horrifying news of A&E's cancellation
of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This Saturday is scheduled to be the very last day that
A&E will show our beloved comic lunacy. However, they were smart enough, or dumb
enough, whichever the case may be, to provide the gigantic league of Python fans with an
email address and a postal address for us to complain.
"This looks like a job for the U.K.T.O.!" shouted a group of radicals.
"The U.K.T.O.?" asked the puzzled reader.
"Yes, the U.K.T.O.," chorused the radicals.
Realising that the reader has no earthly idea of what the U.K.T.O. is, the author began to
explain it to them, and immediately stopped writing in third person.
On July 4th, 1999, while I was in Texas witnessing the horrifying experience of my dog's
death, my friends at the Montypython.net forum began a campaign to get P.O.L.L.G.E.
(Purple Offish Lemon Loony Gumby, Esq. --- one good friend of mine who was mentioned
in the previous few entries) to be elected as the silly leader of the world. It was all in great
fun, and within the next few weeks we were carried away by assigning specific jobs and
eccentric names for each of us. I became Wapcaplet Biggles Splunge Loony Gumby, Esq.,
the Minister of War. My job is to stop wars, and lead the Allied Gumbies, the closest you
could get to a military in this estranged imaginative government. The U.K.T.O. came about
when a group of us were not pleased at the harsh enforcement of certain rules at the forum.
We retreated to our ship (actually a mailing list), the SS Loony Bits, and began a major
campaign of mockery, confusion, and defense against these rules. A number of us left,
never to be seen again, and the other half either didn't care or came back after a short
while. Our name means the Unknown Terrorist Organisation, and was brought to our
appeal by our elected ship captain, Colonel Invictus Doctor. It fit, and this insane anarchist
organisation saw it fit to defend any attempts to muzzle the silliness of incredibly loony
people.

A&E's cancellation of Monty Python would be such a silence of silliness, in which we
shall fight boldly for. We've come to the conclusion that this whole showing of Python on
A&E was yet another get rich quick scheme brought to you by those people who don't care
one bit about the major fanatical devotion that many people have to their favorite TV
shows, music groups, etc. Our plan, as best to my knowledge, is to flood A&E with
complaints of their decisions. We'll avoid immature and threatening complaints, and stick
to the more intelligent and polite ways of complaining. In other words, an email will be a
gigantic euphemism for the hatred of greediness of the powers that be, and hatred for stupid
decisions affecting thousands, if not millions, of fans. Their taking away Python, when it is
not readily available on video or any other channels, is like taking away a child's favorite
toy and refusing to tell him why. This is something A&E hasn't done yet: given us all the
reason, even if pitiful, as to why they're bringing Python off the air after only airing only a
third of the total number of episodes. Even so, A&E showed 12 episodes, and 6 other
episodes butchered painfully to allow for commercials and Python to be crammed into an
hour time slot. An average episode is a full half hour long. If you add in 15 minutes of
commercials, you're left with 15 extra minutes of air time. Since A&E wouldn't put the
show into an hour and a half time slot, they showed a full show and then another show later
in the series which was cut up and ended in mid-sketch. It was not the greatest airing, yet it
was my, and several others, only opportunity to see Flying Circus. If it is hard for you to
understand the reasoning behind everyone's being upset, then take something you're very
passionate for, and then imagine it were being taken away from you. How would you feel?
Take those feelings, and you have my Tuesday.

taken from Wap's Journal