The adventures of Jasper the dimension-hopping archaeological cat (Volume 3, Episode 2)

He's back. Kind of...

First things first: our apologies for the notable absence of reportage on the black-hole jumping feline. The reasons for this are multiple. They include (in no particular order) a complete-meltdown in communications with Jasper, Daev's terrifying ordeal at the hands of a group of marauding tree-huggers and my forced absence from cyberspace due to unwanted attention from the intelligence community and that girl who keeps following me home from the chipper.

Now, as previously reported , our investigations had led us to the deepest, darkest vaults of the National Museum of Ireland and, ultimately, to our acquisition of the little-known Gnostic Gospel The Book of Bob. Decoding of the manuscript has been furtively trundling along for months now, with the help of a small army of linguists at the Vatican, Professor Noam Chomsky and that guy who used to do the funny dance in the Guinness adverts.

Whilst the final translation is far from finished (due to be presented at a special symposium in the Royal Irish Academy in February 2005) some short extracts have arrived at Blather HQ in the last fortnight. They make fascinating reading, not least because of their relevance to the fate of Jasper, but also because of their seeming reference to important historical events.

"And Bob sayeth: Woe be unto ye that shall ignore the warnings of McCreevy. Pestilence and teenage pregnancy shall fill thy house. Thy seed shall be as decentralisation. Thy wombs shall be as individualisation of tax bands. Thy manhood shall be as the Luas (ill-shaped and under-used). Thy carbuncles shall be as Bertie's make-up bill (the size of Brando's coffin). And the Lord sayeth to Bob, 'Yo momma'"

A later extract reads:

"And there shall be mutterings and whisperings in that time. Great tales of a man from Rome and the lost work of M. Lost in the bowels of a Jesuit house, discovered by error, slapped on a wall in the National Gallery and whored to a million American Tourists. Christ shall be taken and Bob will be pissed..."

No, we don’t know what it means either. More as we get it...

When Jasper gets in contact, could you ask about the Xists. I'm wondering when I will be ruptured, and go off in the saucers.