Okay so, here is the first of many witty and erudite pieces [Editor: we’ll see] I plan to write about the footy this year. There will be weekly round updates [Ed: there won’t. She’ll see something sparkly in the distance and forget] until the Grand Final which I will not write about because either the Swans or Carlton will win it, thus necessitating sober appreciation of the kind that requires a week in bed on an anti-hangover i/v drip to recover from.
I’m starting late for a very good reason [Ed: yeah, nah, she forgot]. Because the AFL in their infinite wisdom decided to add a kind-of round to the pointy end of the season thus throwing footy tipping comps across the country into a state of utter confusion. Well, mine anyway. I commend the AFL on their no-doubt commendable decision and wish them the future they so richly deserve: a hell in which they are eternally cornered in a dry bar by MCG Members who need to tell them about their divorce. But in response, I have stubbornly refused to begin MY season at the God-appointed time either. Also, I forgot. Shut up, Ed.
Let’s start with Carlton. I said last year that they have done a deal with cardiologists across the country and their latest 2 results confirm this. That makes it six wins in a row that the Blues have won by a single kick, many in the dying minute of the game. My brother, who was born Navy Blue (somewhat distressingly for both parents who were Bulldogs supporters) has had his cardiologist on speed dial since the second half of last season. Very wise of him. He has needed it several times: last year’s Semi v the Dees and twice already this season. I’m very fond of my brother but I don’t hold out much hope of him surviving the season, and if Carlton get into the Grand Final and it’s against Collingwood I plan to kidnap him and keep him locked in a box for the entire game. It’s only sisterly.
The Swans, who are famous for doing the same heart-damaging shit to their supporters in the past (remember Kenny? He was only 33) have seen the error of their ways and are now winning games before the end of the first half. I thank them for that. It was getting harder and harder to find a doctor who would prescribe Valium, and you had to lie about why (one of the disadvantages of not living in Melbourne, doctors there would understand). Swans are looking more and more like a young team who knows what it’s doing, and Luke Parker, Callum Mills, Taylor Adams and others are yet to come into the side after injury, so the Swans are looking like real contenders again, and I will re-join the bandwagon after having jumped ship last year to the Blues. Call me a traitor (my brother does) but I grew up barracking for Carlton and there’s something about the sight of the Blues playing first-rate football that brings out the 10-y-o in me. We grew up in South Melbourne so Swans were always my second team, and when they moved to Sydney the same year I did, I reversed the order. They were so pathetic and lonely in those early days, couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag with the instructions written on the inside, so I felt I had to get behind them and look where that’s taken them… Two Premierships and finals contenders in more seasons than not. They couldn’t have done it without me, I take all the credit. You’re welcome, Horse.
Watching Collingwood play like a bunch of small wet girls has been most enjoyable, and if you forgive the outrageous sexism you will agree when I tell you that Ash Johnson, one of the Pies’ only Indigenous players, was harassed so badly online BY THEIR OWN FANS after their loss to the Swans that he shut down all his social media. All of them. Good onya Collingwood. What, having a convicted paedophile as head of your cheer squad wasn’t low enough for you? Plenty of players were appalling in that game, Brody Mihocek and Darcy Moore for example but they are… hmm, I don’t know, different to Ash in a way I can’t qwhite put my finger on.
The rest of Round 1 went pretty much as expected so won’t pull anything out except to say the highlight had to be when the ball mid air HIT THE CAMERA DRONE I kid you not, in the Swans Woods game. The umpire didn’t see it and called play on, but plenty of players and all the crowd saw it which raises the question: is that damn thing allowed to swoop too low? (correct answer: yes). The next question of course is will the AFL do anything about it to which the answer would be no, I mean, when have they ever favoured the game or player welfare above TV rights? Correct answer: never. The AFL is a dinosaur old boys’ club and… and I say this with love… I can’t wait to see them all die.
I won’t give a game-by-game analysis this round because reasons (Ed: she’s too lazy) (KT: who is this Ed and what’s he doing in my column, get orf, I’ll sic the dogs onto ya) but may with other rounds if I have anything interesting to say (Ed: or if she remembers) (KT: Brutus! Devil! EdKiller! here boys, sic!) column trails off in a mess of bloodshed, dogbarking and piteous squeals from my erstwhile editor………
btw: can anyone tell me how to set my WordPress so the Thumbnail image doesn’t double up on the first post image? There’s a beer in it for you.
As you know, there is a currently a worldwide shortage of WHITE SPACE and typing letters. So today, I will be showing you how to make the most of your limited keyboard resources and be an upstanding citizen in these turbulent times.
Today’s lecture will include such priceless knowledge as how to make a seven-letter word do service for an entire phrase of 19 syllables (example, for: “this age in which we live, turbulently, is ruled by tiny tyrannical toddlers”; substitute the 2-syllable word: “fuckers”) as well as ways of maximising the total number of CAPITAL LETTERS & diacritic symbols you do have in storage. See the excellent use I just made of my limited CAPS? And d̐i̊ȃc̯r̐ï̑t̰ïc̭s̲̲̃? Take notes. (also there’s this you are welcome)
Firstly, I would point out that the word “firstly” can easily be shortened to 1stly, thus saving you two whole keystrokes.
And here’s a trick for new players (btw “tip” can replace “trick” without any loss of amenity or life. See? You’re getting big bang for your bucks right there but back to my tip): numbers below ten can in fact be written in numerical symbols, even in this era of creepifyingly random microturbulence, regardless of what those lazy fools at yr low-rent school taught you. Look at this: 1, 2, 9, 5, 3, 7. See? I broke a grammar rule and absolutely nothing happened except the annoying red squiggle of my Autocorrect*1 which I sensibly choose to ignore. The grammarists can bellow all they like but I know their secret, they don’t really give a fuck, it’s all show. Shows you up, Mrs. Fullerton-my-grade-7-nazi-*2-I-mean-teacher who was of course a fine upstanding citizen and loyal to her nation*3 despite the turbulence of the era.
Here’s another: you do not have to put a period after Mrs. You really don’t. Nor Mr. neither, nor Ms. It’s perfectly safe and even hygienic to drop them, we’ll still know what you mean.
Okay if you’re ready, let’s proceed. We’ll open with punctuation. Now, many of you, I know, are still on Twitter despite the macro-, micro- and gravito-turbulence of the days within which we live i.e: the reign of the NepoBaby God-Emperor mister melon husk (or as we here at the Movement for the Protection of Innocent Keystrokes like to call him, Dud*4). On Twitter, one is required to limit one’s use of characters so as not to waste space and cut into Mister Mask’s closely-guarded letter supply. As it happens, I know a way that could save you thousands of character spaces at the flick of a wrist, thus firming your commitment to letter reduction wot is only fine and patriotic.
The secret is this: an em-dash*5 can connect 2 phrases with a single key. No need for that messy and wasteful habit you have of typing something like: “To hell with this writer/essayist/all-around-Goodtime-Gal, she knows less than nothing about modern grammatical usage: nada, zip, doodly-squat.”
You could, with the advantages my course gives you, write instead: “To hell with this writer/essayist/all-around-Goodtime-Gal—she knows less than nothing about modern grammatical usage—nada, zip, doodly squat.” In doing so, you have instantly transformed a 144 -character sentence into a 142-character sentence. Just like that. With no ramifications. No fines, no disapproving side-eye, no being duct-taped to chairs by Grammar Nazis Police.
See how easy it is once you get the hang?
You could also write something like: “This writer/essayist/all-around-Goodtime-Gal she be a fine upstanding citizen wot orter be encouraged, I desire to cross her palm with silver via the Buy Me A Coffee Tip Jar top right above”; it’s entirely up to you of course, but that is only 179 characters Hashtag Just Sayin’. (Receipts available for tax purposes.)
That concludes Lesson The First. To get anymore yr gunna hafta pay— tip jar top right don’t forget your waitstaff they have Landbastards too u know. Imma sign off by saying that I, for one, had fun; and that’s all that matters. I’m just sorry I can’t do more without payment but a girl’s gotta eat. also, I rent, thus I too have a Landbastard to placate otherwise I totally would, I see it as my patriotic duty. During these times. Which are turbulent.
I regret I have but 10 fingers to give for my cuntry.
*1 Hey has anyone else noticed that Autocorrect automatically corrects the word Autocorrect? Well, tries to? Mine has a red squiggle beneath it no matter how I spell it. Try it. Fascinating. Rilly rilly dumb seeing’s it’s already spelt right and they only correct it to itself. But fascinating.
*2 it aint safe to say nazis too often you’ll get visits from all manner of riff-raff and before you know it, ASIO and Five Eyes will be following your blog, hello boys, how’s the temperature in there? Excited at the prospect of escalation in the Middle East? Salivating at the very thought? Go take a cold shower, you’re spreading warhawk slime all over my nice clean white space. Also, you’re fuckers, nobody likes you. Go.)
*3 our libel lawyers made me say that she totes wasn’t
*4 or fucker. Your call.
*5 NOTE: em-dash not en-dash an em-dash looks like this — and an en-dash doesn’t. Would you like a drink? You have a couple more paragraphs to go then you’re safely outa here. We have vodka. ?
EXTRA BITS FOR THOSE WHO’VE PAID OR THOUGHT ABOUT PAYING BUT HAVEN’T DONE IT YET BC THEY’VE GIVEN ALL THEIR HARD-EARNED TO LANDBASTARDS
From Middle Dutchturbulent, from Middle Frenchturbulent, from Old Frenchturbulent, from Latinturbulentus. so you can see they really got busy changing the word as they progressed from language to language didn’t they? Lucky we caught it in its current form you never know what it might evolve into next. My money is on “turbulent” but I voted for Betamax what would I know?Back to Merriam. In pink, because reasons:
Did you know?
Some people lead turbulent lives*, and some are constantly in the grip of turbulent emotions**. The late 1960s are remembered as turbulent years of social revolution in America and Europe***. Often the captain of an airplane will warn passengers to fasten their seatbelts because of upper-air turbulence*****, which can make for a bumpy ride. El Niño, a seasonal current of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, may create turbulence***** in the winds across the United States, affecting patterns of rainfall and temperature as well.*
*me
**also me
***and, Australia
i ran out of asterisks here, you’re on your own
*not that we believe them for a nanosecond, any fule kno they are just ducking and weaving to avoid being shot down over North Korean air space
*and heat
*DO NOT MENTION THE CLIMATE CHANGE. They’ll sic Five Eyes onto you. They are fully capable of it.
Noun: Singular; Plural: REAgency; Mass Noun: Bunchapricksgetawayfrommydolecheque
DEFINITION:
* A usually greenish film on the surface of stagnant water, consisting of a mass of algae and fish shit oh wait that’s pond scum
* A diabolical and disgusting parasite. Parasites are sly, using the cleverest of ploys to stay alive while destroying almost everything in their tracks. Parasites have no mercy. Some devour the insides of their hosts. Another replaces the victim’s tongue with its own nope, that’s Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating fish louse gimme a minute
* Spread via contagious tumour cells that escaped from their original body, these cells now travel around the world as parasites, draining nutrients from their hosts. Often to be found on the Amalfi Coast during the southern hemisphere winter; or Vail, for the snow. This affliction, known as canine transmissible venereal tumour or CTVT, is spread through sex and lickin.….. oooh they do what now? Yikes. I’m not going to tell you what that one is I don’t want to be responsible for you puking up your coco pops. If you need an emetic, you can copy and google search because that’s a direct quote from livescience.com don’t say I didn’t warn you.
* in a bizarre death sentence, this fungus turns carpenter ants i.e. the proletariat into the walking dead. The fungus prefers places where temperature & humidity are ideal for the it to grow and reproduce baby landbastards and infect more victims via its devilish landbastardry. The parasite gets the proletariat to die hanging upside down from the mould-infested ceiling they should have fixed ten tenants ago, and then erupts a long stalk from their heads with which it sprinkle its spores to other proletariats*. It’s a charmer. It’s really Ophiocordyceps unilateralis but we’ve all hung upside down from the ceiling in mouldy share houses at some point in our lives whilst the parasite class feeds from our limpid corpses so I think we can all relate.
* Vermin. Close enough.
While you’re here, did you know that Power Thesaurus dot com lists “proletariat” as a synonym of “scum”? Shows what side of the landbastard line they’re writing from. I’m not going to dignify that mess with a hyperlink.
Aight that’s enough sciencey shit from me today, thanks for coming I’m here till thursday don’t forget to tip your waitstaff they have landbastards too you know.
Exeunt, chased by bear-enslaving landbastards.
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* I know it should say proletarians there rather than proletariats shut up, you’ll ruin the joke
HOW TO BANKRUPT YOUR ENEMIES USING THEIR OWN MONEY
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Or Do The Good Guys Ever Win?
For S. Kelly, Mardawud Jami, & Foytus
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Once upon a very weird time, in a galaxy far far away thank god, there lived two men: Goodfella Blakfella and Prince Sticksie Treeplace.
The reason Prince Sticksie was a prince, was that his ancestors had come to Goodfella’s land and stolen it all—raping the women, murdering the babies, and putting chains around the necks and ankles of the men who totes deserved it because they had eyes of a different colour to the invaders. Apparently this kind of behaviour was considered perfectly acceptable in the land from whence Sticksie’s ancestors came; they had made in their own image a God Who obligingly gave them dominion over the beasts of the field, all the fertile lands, and most of the people they inconveniently ran into who were already occupying said lands.
According to their laws and religious tomes, inconvenient people (especially those with eyes of a different colour) were not people at all and could therefore be abused and ravaged with impunity, so that’s what they did to Goodfella’s so-called “people”. They then installed themselves as Kings and began lecturing Goodfella’s non-people about the savagery of the ancient Goodfella ways, such as how appalling it was to spear someone once for a bad act and have done with it, as opposed to locking them in a box for many many many years which cost the taxpayer many many many bucks and made the locked-box-people sad and mad and unsafe for release. And then they released them. This was civilised. Punishment befitting the crime was not and they went to some lengths to show Goodfella’s “people” that was the case, mostly by locking them in little boxes .
They called this process “Civilising the Natives”.
Prince Sticksie’s God approved of Civilising the Natives with as much violence, brutality, and malice aforethought as necessary on the one condition that the Natives in question had a different eye colour from the Civilisers. This was how you could easily tell the Civilisers from the Non-people, by their eye colour. As Prince Sticksie’s ancestors had red eyes and Goodfella’s ancestors’ were purple, they Civilised the fuck out of them until there were very few left, and those that were left bore marks of trauma so severe it was still traumatising their descendants in Goodfella’s time. But, you know, they had purple eyes so really they only had themselves to blame.
At the time of which we speak, Prince Sticksie‚ having inherited Goodfella Blakfella’s land from his red-eyed granduncle Prince Stickster III, was committed to the noble task of gentle custodianship of the land, and care and compassion for the Natives, whose ancestors had been there a hell of a lot longer his had but had obviously had no care or compassion for it because they hadn’t dug it all up. Thus this Red-eyed noble custodianship and compassion mostly took the form of digging the land up and shipping it off to another country to keep it safe from the savage Natives. Thereby protecting the savage Natives from the evils of money, by ensuring they didn’t have any. As any fule kno*, money is very very very bad for Natives though just perfectly fabulous for red-eyed mining billionaires.
For this selfless behaviour Prince Sticksie was widely lauded and given medals, mining leases, and cupcakes. Also access to the forums where the major decisions about the country were made, where he advocated passionately for the rights of the purple-eyed Non-peoples not to be spoiled by wealth. He also didn’t want them bewildered by the complexities of managing the lands their ancestors had managed with intelligence and grace for tens of thousands of years prior to his advent, totally understandable, don’t know how we put our socks on the right feet in the morning without him.
The purple-eyed peoples were very relieved and grateful to Prince Sticksie for his kindness in speaking on their behalf, he said to the country’s decision-makers, who applauded him and gave him more titles and mining leases and cupcakes.
This pleased Sticksie enormously as there was nothing he liked more than adulation and cupcakes. His mother had not liked him very much so he had a deep need for such things.
There was only one fly in the ointment.
Goodfella Blakfella and his unruly gang of purple-eyed thugs had managed to get hold of a book detailing the Laws by which the red-eyed people governed the land.
At first, Sticksie was not bothered. If anything, he though it rather adorable they were pretending they could read.
Problem was, it turned out they could read.
Not to worry, Sticksie said, even if they can kind of make out the words they’ll never understand the content, why, he barely understood it himself!! haha.
Problem was, it turned out, not only could they read but they did understand the Laws, quite often better than he did. Haha.
Sticksie gritted his teeth and reassured his shareholders that the purple-eyed Natives were, after all, stone-age savages, and were probably just pretending to understand the Red-eyed Law books, egged on no doubt by the untrustworthy, trouble-making, Green-eyed people who were the red-eyed peoples mortal enemies.
He offered to test this theory by inundating Goodfella and the other Natives with an unprecedented slew of Law cases, designed to sap their will and empty their coffers. “We can keep this going for years,” he told the shareholders, “we have lawyers up the wazoo and these people can barely sign their own names.”
So that’s what he did.
Year after year, Sticksie threw court case after court case at Goodfella and his band of Native purple-eyed thugs, funded by the money he made from illegally mining their land.
And year after year, the purple-eyed natives withstood the vicious legal attacks, and proved themselves more than a match for english Law books and the bastards who wield them.
Finally, after over 10 years of what Sticksie thought would be a short and relatively easy win for him and his partners-in-crime, the Law courts told the red-eyed Prince that they would hear no more of his absurd litigation logic. “Face it, mate,” they said to him, “you’ve been outwitted by the Purple-Eyed at every turn. Your viciously vindictive tactics should have seen you jailed years ago, only reason you haven’t slunk away with your tail between your legs is that you are too stupid and racist to recognise exactly how racist and stupid you are. The purple-eyed people have been smarter than you. Significantly. Deal with it, and fuck away out of here with your dickhead red-eyed mates and your totally unwarranted megalomania, we have to work out how much you owe the Blakfella contingent and that’ll take some time because it’s gunna be a lot. A real lot. Sucks to be you.”
Only they said it in Legalese.
There was much rejoicing throughout the land by the purple-eyed peoples and their allies, and Goodfella was petted and admired and made much of, but frankly, all he wanted to do was get his kids into a decent school then go fishing. He and his wife packed sandwiches and lemonade and went on a picnic and had a very nice relax for a change.
Prince Sticksie fucked off to Africa and pretended to be deeply absorbed in totally unrelated matters but nobody bought it for a minute, his face was nearly as red as his eyes and he could be heard muttering in his sleep that stone-age savages with purple eyes didn’t orta eva be allowed to learn to read, it’ll all end in tears. His board members are currently whispering behind his back and practising pre-emptive press releases about Sticksie’s desire to spend more time with his truly horrible family.
And over on the other side of the country, a sad and cynical curly-haired girl called Sandra is beginning to think that sometime the Good Guys do win after all.
– live at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA in May 1997
Great song, horrifying video. I can’t not look.
I don’t know what went on before this, or why they did it, or how come they’re all dressed like their parents (except Stevie whose Halloween Witch costume seems to have expanded with her). I do know though that you can hear what they’re all thinking. They’re thinking it pretty loud.
Centre stage, we have Lindsey Buckingham in yet another of a long series of bad haircuts* singing: “Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise,” but thinking: “WHAT did you say to me, Stevie? WHAT did you say? I’m gonna get you for that. I know, Chris, but did you hear what she said, did you hear it? I can’t believe she said that imma get you for that after the show, you hear me Stephanie? Huh?” while Stevie Nicks twirls by him with a look that says: “You and whose army, Stick-Insect Boy?”
Now without knowing what went on before, I have to say, I’m on Stevie’s side here. On account of how I’ve met men. Wouldn’t recommend ‘em. Idk what she said but that goes double for me, chief. Men. Eish. Just as well they have things that are sexy, like rock’n’roll, and penises, because who would bother with them otherwise? Men are the reason aliens won’t talk to us. We all know it. If any of those of the male persuasion wish to dispute this, I’ll see you behind the shelter sheds after school, or its modern equivalent, Twitter, where we can circle each other hurling insults and the occasional bitchslap whilst a bloodthirsty crowd forms, chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Then you’ve got Christine McVie on the left, outfitted like the moderator of an intelligent religious debate program on a public broadcaster, or possibly Mrs Mother Partridge, clearly telling herself: ”Jesus. Can we do the short version? Please? I literally don’t think I could cope with an extra 2 1/2 minutes of this.”
I feel for Christine. Must be hard to have always been the only adult in the band.
Back to Lindsey singing: “I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain,” by which he means: “Anyway you’ve gotten fat.” As Stevie adds harmonies to the effect of: “Yeah but I still get laid, unlike certain Noodle Boys of my acquaintance, when was the last time you got any, Stick Insect? Wanking to videos of Robert Plant doesn’t count.”
Behind them is poor old John McVie, chanting: “Paycheck. Paycheck. Paycheck. Just play bass, oh god, just play John. Paycheck. Paycheck. Paycheck.”
And Mick Fleetwood up in the nosebleeds with the drums ain’t thinking nothing at all, looks like he hasn’t spoken to any of them in years. Which is probably why he’s the only one who seems remotely happy, if a tad manic. I don’t know what antidepressants they have him on but they should probably reconsider the dosage, no one ought to ever look as pleased about anything as Mick Fleetwood does about his drums.
Awful video. Wouldn’t recommend it.
Pretty fucken funny, but.
Presentation of evidence for snide comment about Lindsey Buckingham’s hair:
I rest my case. I mean, Lindsey Buckingham is a good-looking fella, if you like the skinny girly type (and who amongst us can honestly say they haven’t wanked over video of a bare-chested Robert Plant in his girlfriend’s blouse live at Madison Square Garden in 1973? Now there’s a Stick-Insect Boy I’d do time for.) But Lindsey has never found a hairdresser who could get to terms with those curls. I blame his father. Shoulda taught the lad The Art of Manliness.
Speaking of which… if I was a real journalist not just a rando who plays one on the internet, and I wanted to get the dirt on Sussssssssan Ley (and who doesn’t?) I’d seek out the woman’s hairdresser, who clearly hates her and has for a while. I bet that hairdresser could spill some tea.
Once upon a time… there was a Kingdom called Dwanaland, comprised of the counties Southchurch, Eastbord, and West Hale.
Every year, the richestbest and brightest young princes and princesses of the kingdom gathered in Eastbord, and partook in a series of trials designed to place them in a hierarchy which determined who amongst them would take up the various offices of the Court. It was from this privilegedtalented group that the eventual King of Dwanaland would come, so the trials were hotly contested. (In theory, the ruler could actually be a female King i.e. Queen, but that had only ever happened once and it had not been deemed a success except by the princesses. This, it was felt, was because princesses were more suited to obeying princes than to ruling them. Mostly it was the princes themselves who felt this, what the princesses felt cannot be said for certain as the princes wrote all the official records, the task of recounting history being too importantonerous for princesses and liable to damage their wombs. It was felt. By the princes.)
But by the year 18888, Dwanaland considered itself a modern and progressive kingdom, and the trials contained a surprising number of highly competitive princesses, most of them with intact wombs.
The princes and princesses gathered as usual in Emeraldcityville, the main city of Eastbord, to take part in the trials. Two of the competitors that year were Princess Catherine of Southchurch, and Prince Christian of West Hale. These two were very evenly matched but in the final trial, a speaking competition, Princess Catherine drew ahead and when the trials came to a close, she was judged the outright winner with Prince Christian a close second.
There was much celebration amongst Prince Christian and Princess Catherine’s friends: levity, jollity and horizontal folkdancing well into the night. People said that one or other of them was bound to be King one day, or Queen of course, all wombs being equal, and both were praised and made much of.
After the festivities, Prince Christian offered to walk Princess Catherine home. Just before they reached the backpackers’ castle where they were staying, he drew her aside and professed his love. The princess was thrilled, for she too harboured these secret feelings.
“Meet me at midnight, at the top of the highest tower, we’ll talk about your boobalicious mammary glands and see what comes up,” the prince whispered into her ear, and she shivered, and agreed.
So, later that night, Princess Catherine slipped out of her room, and went to meet her prince at the top of the highest tower.
When she got there, he was waiting for her. The light of a full moon streamed in, illuminating the room in silver, and the scent of roses wafted through from climbing vines at the window. Violin music could be heard from far below.
Her prince stood by the window looking out. “Come and look,” he said, and held out his hand to her, “you can see the lake from here.”
She went to him. He gathered her in his arms. Her face turned up to him, awaiting love’s first kiss. He pushed her out the window.
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Many years later, Prince Christian—who by now was high in line to the throne—received word that King Skum was very ill and not expected to last much longer. The prince hurried to meet with the king’s other advisors, and the succession was discussed in secret meetings in private back rooms throughout the castle. The prince had only two real rivals for the throne: Prince Friedegg and Prince Potater but both were unpopular with the people: the former for suggesting to the peasants that if they were hungry they ought to eat more lobster, the latter for attempting to imprison indefinitely anyone caught being poor in public. King Skum was also unpopular, mostly for passing a law in secret saying he was King of not only Dwanaland but of all other countries as well including those as yet undiscovered or likely to be imaginary. And that not genuflecting as he passed should punished with death by fire ants.
It was felt that Prince Christian was probably the option the people of Dwanaland would consider the least worst, and his succession to the throne was assured. The death of King Skum was a mere technicality at this point, one that could possibly be hastened by a merciful act of medical error. Failing that, he might soon be taken by his most trusted advisors on a tragic hunting accident.
Prince Christian celebrated quietly that night, dining on expensive wine, lobster, and his chambermaid. He drank a toast to himself for being finally about to achieve the honour he and his family had plotted for so carefully since he was born. King! It was everything he’d ever wanted and practically in his grasp. He went to bed in a mood of heady exhilaration.
But in the midnight hour, Prince Christian dreamed a terrible dream.
He was in a crypt: cold, silent, with dark archways and deep shadows.
Before him, on an altar, glittered the kingdom’s crown, its gold and jewels the only bright thing in the room.
Between him and the crown lay a coffin.
He reached out to grab the crown but suddenly, with a creak and a groan, the coffin lid opened, and from it rose a woman’s dead hand. Holding a letter.
Prince Christian woke with a start into his own bed chamber. It smelt of roses, moonlight was streaming through the window, and from far below he thought he could hear violin music.
He remembered his dream, and shuddered. “Too much lobster,” he told himself, “or possibly not enough chambermaid,” and he went back to sleep.
The next day, as the prince was breakfasting and daydreaming of future glories, a page came with an urgent summons to the throne room.
“Maybe the king is dead,” he thought. ”This could be it.” He shivered in anticipation.
But when he arrived at the throne room, King Skum, propped up on the throne by certain peasant-eating media outlets, was resting comfortably on the incompetence of his underlings, seemingly unaware he should be dying.
In front of the king stood one of the senior advisors. On the man’s face was a heavy scowl and in his hand, a letter.
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No one had faulted Prince Christian for his gentlemanliness after the terrible accident that broke Princess Catherine’s spine. He was quite magnanimous about it, offering to marry her, telling her that there were still many tasks to which she would be suited: raising his babies, answering his phone, and ironing his shirts as he rose through the ranks in the quest to become King of Dwanaland. Others said this was remarkably generous of him considering the fall was her fault in the first place: she should not have been wearing those ridiculous shoes. It was clear that the way she dressed simply asked for trouble.
It is assumed that Princess Catherine was very grateful to him for forgiving her lapse in shoe-wearing judgment, although no one actually bothered to record her thoughts at the time given that Prince Christian was entirely capable of interpreting them for her for the permanent record.
In the event, Princess Catherine did not go on to marry the prince. She returned to Southchurch and spent the next years undergoing different treatments for her broken back. Unfortunately, the injury was too great for her to ever really again be considered a contender in the kingly stakes. But doctors told her that with a healthy diet and a little gentle exercise, the worst of the shattered bones could be kept from interfering too much in her ordinary life, as long as she did not attempt anything really tricky such as gymnastics, or walking. They also discreetly suggested she lose a little weight, give up on the fine lobster perhaps, a sedentary lifestyle was hard on a woman’s body but that was no excuse for letting herself go.
The princess did everything she could to recover from her terrible accident, but the pain was a constant reminder that she was not fully capable of protecting herself. She found it hard to trust, and she always felt sad. One day, she reached the end of the line. She had tried all possible treatments, but always the pain and sadness ate through her.
That day, on a visit to her mother, her back gave out for the final time, and she tumbled all the way down a staircase to her death.
But before she died, she wrote a letter.
****************************
In the throne room, the king’s advisor told Prince Christian that Princess Catherine—whom by now he barely remembered—was dead, and that she had written a letter saying she did not fall from the castle tower that night, Prince Christian pushed her.
The prince was shocked. He denied it vociferously. When the ministers and advisors of the King’s Council asked why she would say such a thing if it wasn’t true, he said the thing that men always say about women they fear: that she was crazy. He said she was vengeful, she was bitter, she was a liar. He said she was nasty, vindictive, too old, probably ugly, and likely to own many cats but most of all, he repeated, she was crazy.
Although the ministers and advisors were always inclined to believe that a woman was crazy, it was too late to hide the news about the letter. Word had leaked out, and the people were demanding action.
King Skum did nothing, as was his wont, but Prince Christian was dragged before the Court of Public Opinion where he pleaded his case. He said he’d never met Princess Catherine. Then that he had met her but didn’t remember her. Then that he had met her, did remember her, but she was lying. He told them she was crazy, crazy, crazy. He begged for them to believe him. It is quite possible he actually believed himself by this point. He asked for sympathy. He cried.
But the people had no sympathy. They had suffered too long under the rule of men like Prince Christian. And King Skum’s time on the throne had been a nightmare full of corruption, incompetence, cruelty, and weevily peanuts. The people wanted a head.
So they took Christian’s.
He was stripped of all titles and influence, removed from power, and sent back to West Hale where he still had some friends, who organised for him a sinecure collecting the shit of the donkey belonging to the man who collected the shit of the horse ridden by the woman who emptied the chamberpot of the 4th-in-line to Head Shit Collector of the Royal Chickens.
King Skum didn’t die, he was far too cunning to go hunting with his best friends or drink the health potions they kindly prescribed, but he lost power anyway. His Council was sent into exile and replaced by a Council which actually contained princesses as well as princes. The people decided that at the very least, they could not be much worse than the council of King Skum and the Princes Christian, Friedegg, and Potater, and in the event, it turned out that the new Council, who called themselves The Workers’ Champions (although nobody knew why as none of them seemed to actually know any workers) were not much worse. They were not much better either but the people were too tired for revolution so they let it happen, and at the time I write, are watching them from afar with beady eyes.
****************************
Princess Catherine was buried with honours and real tears, her tragic letter read by the whole kingdom, and in time, a statue was raised to her with a plaque telling her story and warning of the perfidy of princes, written by media pundits of all of whom it suddenly turned out had known and loved her personally for many, many, many, many, many, many years.
And in West Hale, no-longer-a-prince Christian was left to rot away, a warning to others: here is the man who was almost king, felled by the words of a bloody woman fercrissake, always said ya can’t trust ’em, should never have let ’em learn how to read and write in the first place just look what happens when they get a bloody eddication ffs its a cryin’ shame lowdown bunch a bitches. Ahem.
He never slept very well after that. He was plagued, constantly, by a particular recurring nightmare.
In it, he is back in the crypt. He reaches out to grasp the glittering crown. But the coffin creaks open, and a long arm rises from it. Its cold, dead fingers hold a letter.
In the Year 18923, the new Council headed by the Workers’ Champions opened an inquiry into a particularly unpopular policy of the previous Council. This policy had insisted that if the very poorest of the citizens could not prove to the Council’s satisfaction that they’d never had more than a single bag of peanuts a fortnight to subsist on, they would be fined 12,000 bags of peanuts or spend 67 years in the dungeons. Which were guarded by sabre-toothed tigers. This was called the Fairness And Recognition of Kingdom Understanding, or FARKU.
The Council had been very pleased with this policy, which had reaped them a lot of peanuts and given the peasants a clear understanding of exactly where they stood in the hierarchy of the kingdom. Although some of the kingdom’s peanut-collectors had baulked, pointing out that the only way peasants could prove their peanut consumption was to obtain affidavits from everyone they had ever met since birth, and that many of these people could not provide said affidavits on account of now being dead, King Skum’s Ministers had responded by saying the peasants should have thought of this when they were born, and that they, the Ministers of the Crown, could not be held responsible for peasant fecklessness. And reminded everyone that the state of the Castle dungeons was such that they now required crocodiles to clean up the sabre-toothed tiger shit.
When the Workers’ Champions were elected, they showed a pleasing predilection for vindictiveness. They opened an Inquiry into FARKU and stocked it with Royal Lawyers with deceptively mild-mannered faces who had actually all been raised on sabre-tooth tiger milk, and had advanced weapons training in Sarcasm, Bullshit Detection, and Attention to Detail.
To date, the Royal Lawyers have spilt so much blood that the dungeon crocodiles have been brought up to lick the Inquiry room’s floors clean after every session, thus providing a neat solution to the disposal of certain soulless peanut-collectors.
Speaking of whom, it is expected that in the next week or two, the former-prince Christian of West Hale will be called to give testimony as to his part in the FARKU debacle. As it is said that his speech these days is limited to the phrases “I never” “I wouldn’t” “we didn’t” “she’s crazy” and “I forget” this is expected to be something of a bloodbath. Their neighbours say the sound of the Royal Lawyers sharpening their teeth on metal grinders can be heard throughout the night.
There’s a moment in the recording of Cardinal George Pell debating Richard Dawkins on QandA that is one of the most revealing statements Pell has ever made; which says more about him and his worldview than arguably any other example from his long history in public life.
“…so for some extraordinary reason, God chose the Jews.They weren’t intellectually the equivalent of the Egyptians … [as you can see from] the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power, for thousands of years, before Christianity. Persia was a great power. Chaldea. The poor little Jewish people, they were shepherds. They were stuck, they’re still stuck, between these great powers.”
Tony Jones, not one to let slip such an opportunity, immediately pulls Pell up on this and asks him directly whether by this he means that the most famous of all Jewish men, Jesus Christ, was intellectually not up to it. Pell tries to sidle past this excellent point as Dawkins looks on in wry, disdainful, amusement and the half of the audience not in thrall to the Catholic Church cheers.
Leaving aside the blatant and ugly anti-semitism of Pell here, the point I am talking about is the way Pell reveals his utter disdain for “the poor, little people” and his admiration for the “great powers”.
For a man like Pell, only other men of great power are of interest. The little people are just that, little. He reveals his identification with power and dismissal of those who lack it again, in his testimony to the child sexual abuse Royal Commission, when he justifies his reason for glossing over the dangerous sexual proclivities of certain priests, moving them from parish to parish when the complaints got too loud, rather than confining them away from children.
No. George Pell was not interested in those children At least, not interested in their well-being. George Pell had no interest in the powerless. He was not interested in the abuse or wellbeing of those his church MADE powerless, such as women and children. Only men were of interest to George Pell and of them, only men with power.
Power. It’s the single most seductive force in the human world. We would like that to be not Power but Love, but the truth stares us in the face every time we look at or listen to the dangerous behaviours of the men who crave it, trade in it, and value it above all else. What else is wealth but power? The power to go anywhere, do anything, and have whatever one desires. The power to control world events. The power to control other people.
Why don’t we have a category of abnormal mental health called Power Addiction?
It’s the craving for power that motivates so much of capitalism, so much of patriarchy, so much abuse, so much damage. What would this world be like if, instead of allowing this, we called the craving what it is, addiction? What if we had a category of abnormal mental health called Power Addiction? And recognised it in those who would lead us into exploitation and ultimately, as we are all having to face right now, into the strong possibility of human extinction?
It is suicidal, this lust for power. It is homicidal, ecocidal, planet-destroying, and yet we take it for granted that ambitious, power-hungry men (and some women) should make all the really important social decisions.
It is suicidal, this lust for power. It is homicidal, genocidal, ecocidal.
It’s not as if they hide it. Cardinal Pell, one of the highest-ranking religious authorities in the Christian world, thought nothing of publicly denigrating his own religion’s prophet because his culture was not one of the “great powers” of the time. Pell would probably be more comfortable in an old religion that openly worshipped Power .
It is unremarkable to worship the trappings of wealth and power in the Christian churches, rather than the lowly man on whom they are based. It’s easy to twist a few words about Abraham in the Old Testament to enforce the revolting notion that the Christian God rewards his favourites with wealth and success and therefore the humble, sick and poor are not only unworthy but actively sinful, as the Pentecostal churches do.
The success of all churches in creating political and social power bases has to do not only with their brilliantly successful tax-avoidance strategies, but also their appeal to the power addict in all of us. They appeal to greed and call it holy. They appeal to hate and call it righteousness. They appeal to fear and call it Hell or Eternal Damnation and tell you that only through them can you avoid this fate—much, much worse than death and by the way, here’s the tithe plate.
In the 21st century after Jesus, it’s not difficult to ignore the Christian aspects of Christianity.
When the wonderful sci fi series Firefly was made, it didn’t find favour with Fox executives because, as one was quoted saying (I paraphrase): “it’s just about a bunch of nobodies, we don’t get to see the real powers in that universe.” Star Wars on the other hand, despite its reputation as concerning a scrappy ragtag team of freedom fighters, and its inception in George Lucas’ mind as an allegory on the Vietnam War—with the USA as the Bad Guys—changed as Lucas changed, to feature the wars between the major powers of its universe: the Jedi and the Empire. Both actual bloody protofascists. Was it worldwide acclaim and wealth that motivated Lucas’ change of focus? Regardless, it succeeded. Unlike the brilliant Firefly, the Star Wars films have about 562 sequels and counting. Firefly got one.
The powerless are not of much interest to George Lucas, George Pell, or Fox executives.
But they MUST be of great interest to the rest of us. Because as power is condensed in the grasp of fewer and fewer men, and I do mean men, the ranks of the powerless grow. Our interests are aligned and the powerful are the enemy, this becomes increasingly clear every day. And as to our powerlessness, we do have one great superpower — our sheer numbers. If we worked together, we could overcome the power of wealth and might. Which is why the powerful work so hard to divide us, sowing discord and division, making it harder and harder psychologically for us to agree to disagree on some issues, put them aside, and act in concert from our common interests.
And too many of us assent to this division, refusing to admit that a working-class Trump voter could have had motivations other than racism and stupidity, or that an atheist may have something wise to say about morality and community, or that anti-vaxers have something in common with Anarchists: their laudable lack of faith in government authority.
We assent because most of us have similar psychological dysfunctions to the power addicts. We want external answers, ideologies we can follow to create our better world, manifestos which can cover the gaping gaps in our heads and hearts and lead us to the sunlit uplands.
Every ideology or faith is full of power addicts and arseholes.
But the truth may well be that there is no political, economic or social strategy that will save our world until we discover what causes Arseholery and what causes Power Addiction and how to cure them. Because any and every ideology or faith is full of these, of power addicts and arseholes, and every revolution will end up with the people powerless again under a new set of faces at the top table, until we cure the problem at the source.
So what is the source?
I contend that the real problem lies with the way we raise our children.
This is not the sexy answer. This doesn’t involve firepower, secret resistances, or brilliant theoretical analyses.
This is the long slow plod towards the better world through the tried and tested technique of raising kids in such a way that they don’t have a gaping hole in their psychological centre, they’re not full of secret self-loathing, no one of them needs power and control over others to feel okay about themselves.
This is not the sexy answer. This doesn’t involve gun battles, secret resistances, or brilliant theoretical analyses.
And you have to start with birth.
In the West, for a long time (and still too often), we delivered babies by pulling them out of their mothers’ wombs into a shockingly bright and cold world, cutting the cords immediately with sharp scissors, holding them upside down by one leg and whacking them on the bum until they cry. Then we say they’re breathing, all is well, and leave the mother to sacrifice her sleep, her career, and any hope of social respect, to the project of maintaining their lives for the next couple of decades, until she’s withered and mad, and they’re so stupefied by school and wage-slavery that they’re willing to repeat the process. The picture accompanying this post is of a newborn whose birthing was done using the Leboyer approach, from the 1975 book “Birth Without Violence”. See the difference?
Does the cold, harsh, immediate cord-cutting method seem like the way to raise generations who can solve our terrible problems and bring paradise to earth?
I’d like to talk about how we raise our children more, but this essay is already 1500 words, and nobody has the attention span for that. (My own beloved offspring* just said: “make it a Tik-Tok and I’ll read it.” He said he was joking but he wasn’t. I raised an arsehole. Ask me more about how to bring up children……) Suffice it here to say, children deserve not just food, shelter and love, but also respect.
*he's not beloved. He just shouted at me to turn my bloody music down AND IT WAS When the Levee Breaks. Arsehole. Ask me more about raising children...
Look, you know the fires are the first big climate change crisis and I know it’s climate change and everyone with a functioning brain knows it’s climate change but—and hear me out on this—the time for winning internet brownie points for coming up with most inventive insult for the fools who still think it’s not has passed. This is too serious.
The reason they think that—and I use the term “think” in the loosest possible sense—is that is what they are being told. They have different sources to us. They’re not going to change those sources. They’re not suddenly going to give up the Daily Tele or the QAnon sites in exchange for the Guardian and New Scientist. They’re not.
So stop trying to throw science at them because they can’t hear it. And stop calling them unbleepable twatwaffles because they CAN hear that. It is all they hear from the other side. It doesn’t make them listen to the science.
There’s a lot of misinformation being spread, around issues like hazard reduction, arsonists, blaming Greenies, spreading rumours that climate change activists are lighting the fires to “push thir narrative” and other outlandish nonsense. Some sources pushing this out are pretending to be Australian when they’re not. They use terms like “wildfire” that are just not the local vernacular.
So who is doing it?
Australians are falling for it. There’s a lot of conspiracy theorists out there, and there’s a lot of people motivated purely by vitriolic hatred.
We watch idiots like Craig Kelly, Richo, Alan Jones — the usual suspects — mouthing off their usual bilious garbage, and it’s not hard to draw the conclusion that these people would rather watch the world burn than ever admit the greenies were right.
…these people would rather watch the world burn than ever admit the greenies were right…
So we’ve got the stale pale male brigade and their Women’s Auxiliary — Miranda Divine, Rita Panahi and other poisonous little hobgoblins — on one end, and shadowy overseas influences pushing lies and division on the other. In between them are caught a lot of fools who live in a world where Murdoch dictates what is news, who believe all this garbage because it’s all they hear and it’s what their tribe thinks. And they’re desperate to be part of their tribe.
It’s not in Australia’s interests.
As is usual, we see a great deal of anger and ridicule from people not blinded by Murdoch. But here’s the problem: when those people expend their energy sneering at the ignorance of fools, whose work are they doing? Whose interests is it in to keep Australia divided into camps with bitter division between them? Not ours. It’s not in Australia’s interests.
What we need in this crisis is to be very supportive and tolerant of each other. Don’t get too involved in bagging idiots, they’re still our neighbours and we still have to create a new, post-climate change world with them.
And you don’t know whose dirty work you’re doing, getting involved in fights with rightwing nutters.
Find what you have in common and stick with that, and don’t get tricked into fighting. There’ll be plenty of time to fight later—right now we need solidarity. Even with people we have no politics in common with and who we think are insane: they still have children, still need drinking water and medical care, still worry about their pets. Find that level of commonality and stick with it. These influences are trying to divide us and we need to unite.
They are trying to divide us when we need to unite.
Can we give up our internet-fueled addiction to sneering at other tribes for just a little while? Can we swallow our normal response when Aunty Betty starts carrying on about the wicked greenies, and ask her instead if her cats are coping with the smoke? Are her budgies getting enough water? And is there anything we can do to help?
When someone attacks us online for being a sheeple who doesn’t understand Agenda 20 or QAnon, rather than retort, check that they have support, that the region they’re in is doing okay, and if not ask is there some way we can direct resources to them.
Ask them about their dogs. Even insane conspiracy theorists care about their dogs. Commiserate with them over the lack of water, or electricity, or the difficulty in breathing through this smoke. Don’t take the bait. Say things like: “I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, but we’re both Australian and we’re both affected and if I can help you in any way, please just ask.”
Even insane conspiracy theorists care about their dogs.
Seek unity, not discord. If we can create solidarity out of chaos and hate, then we are beating the enemies who want us at each others’ throats.
Seek unity, not discord.
Take the high road, for a while. Enjoy the view. Look after yourselves and look after your neighbours, however they voted.
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I find all this serious discussion and analysis of the latest bombing of Syria just fucking ridiculous. I don’t know anything about Syria, and neither do you. Nor do most of the journalists, or the commentators, or your friends on Twitter and Facebook who are certain there was no chemical attack in Douma—they may well be right about that, the point is, they’re guessing. They don’t “know”.
I have zero faith in the credibility of any sources (including the video below); we all should. There is just so much bullshit and propaganda everywhere; it is impossible to see behind the curtain, to see who’s pulling what strings. And it is impossible to begin to make sense of any of it until you admit your ignorance.
All I can see clearly is consistent accounts of an enormous amount of military ordnance and matériel getting used and I wonder who is paying for that, where the money is coming from, and where it is going to.
Because as far as I can figure out, modern warfare is not about politics, it’s about profits.
It’s a business.
The strikes on the weekend were likely some kind of marketing exercise. Someone wanted to show off their new kill-toys, and now all the psychopathic world-leader kiddies will be lining up around the block to get theirs too, their cool new shiny kill-toy.
I am cynical enough to believe that is ALL it is about anymore.
I have zero credible information about Assad, nor could I give a fat rats arse about him; he is somebody else’s problem. To form an opinion based on the level of bullshit we are constantly fed seems to me the height of arrogant stupidity. Syrians can have an opinion. They are there; they have to make decisions based on the reality they confront daily. So too their friends and neighbours … but everyone further away is just blowing hot air up your arse.
It is a vital and radical act to say: “I do not have enough credible information to form an intelligent opinion.”
Because think, in whose interests is it that we believe we’ve read enough op-eds or seen enough footage to weigh in on this and argue, argue, argue, pontificate, argue, argue..? While right in our own backyard we have psychopathic sadists torturing refugees, children, blackfullas, the elderly, the poor, the disabled and getting away with it, as all we know how to do is hold polite protests where all our anger is contained neatly within the signs we carry?
Cui bono?
And doesn’t it set your bullshit meter clanging to hear the oh-so-serious pundits discussing the motivations behind every new atrocity as it they are the acts of rational–albeit cruel–actors? Most human moves are made out of panic and stupidity. Most things are mistakes. Most people are idiots, and that goes double for anyone who is so addicted to power that they’ve performed all the inhumane acts necessary to reach “world leader” status. If the pundits ever got up and said: “I don’t know what the hell they’re up to, it’s quite possible someone just pressed the wrong button,” or “could be because it’s a Tuesday, Anderson, he often gets low blood pressure this time of the week,” then I’d be more inclined to listen to their ‘expertise’. But as it is, I can take only so much of this po-faced gravitas before I want to go running down the street reminding people that Columbus thought Turtle Island was India, and Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by forgetting to put his lunch in the bin before he went on holidays. Or that the Titanic sank because a guy lost a locker key. Or that the Berlin Wall came down because a politician fluffed a press conference. Or that Kennedy’s attempt to de-Communise Cuba failed because the idiots forgot about the time difference between Cuba and Nicaragua, thus taking us into the Cuban Missile Crisis and nearly WWIII. But everyone prefers the version where Kennedy is the most solemn of statesmen who saved us from the evil Reds and would never, ever, mislay his sunglasses or his house keys.
People are moronic. They’re forgetful, they’re lazy, they’re greedy and they’re usually nasty with it, and the higher you go the nastier they get. Politics, and war, are more Yes, Minister than Thirteen Days; more Dr Strangelove than Black Hawk Down; more Veep than House of Cards. Or perhaps there are some films & novels we should be looking at to better place ourselves amongst this incessant, torrential, deluge of ‘information’… I recommend Wag The Dog, Tomorrow Never Dies, andEvelyn Waugh’s Scoop.
Forget it. Forget trying to understand the conflict unless you’re there and have first-hand experience. Turn your attention instead to who is making what obscene profits from the business of constant war, from these dreadnoughts and killer drones, and missiles with an IQ higher than the Minister for Women.
And to how can we turn their abominations around and point them towards their houses, instead of towards normal people who just want to have a nice meal and go out dancing and get their kids to school on time tomorrow?
And then to what do we have to do to ensure Peter Dutton loses the very marginal seat of Dickson so we don’t have to die knowing we let him become Prime Minister on our watch?
And how to not choke on our own guffaws watching the Daily Telegraph trying to paint Scott Morrison as loveable. (Does that mean he is Murdoch’s choice for the post-Turnbull leadership? That’s a terrifying thought. Of all the appalling, unethical, incompetent people in the Coalition, Morrison is arguably the worst.)
Now, practice saying with me: “I know nothing.”
Feels good when you get used to it. Because it’s the truth.
At least this guy is actually in Douma. OAN is a dodgy source of course, but Real Clear Politics is rated right-of-centre biased but mostly factually accurate by the media bias/fact checking sites I checked. And there are issues around this journalist’s politics re the election Trump lost, but he IS there, in Douma, and he is not trying to overwhelmingly convince you, just telling you what he found out. I have the unfashionable belief that being opposed to someone ideologically doesn’t necessarily mean they are evil, wrong, and lying about everything. (Fascists, white supremacists, and most of the current crop of Australian LNP politicians excluded, obviously. They ARE evil, wrong, and lying about everything.)
Anyway, at least this feller has a point of view other than the breathless warlust of most current media morons.
Deuw-Yore eSearch is a customisable internet search engine, frequented primarily by professional sociologists, academics, client experience enhancement consultants, clinical beauticians, and other truth-seekers.
Kon Spiro Cetheris, supported by leading truth-in-reporting advocates Al X. Jonz, Dave Id-Icky & David Avocado Turnip, developed Deuw-Yore to fill the gap left by the Illuminati take-over of Google and Bing. The company has since become a favourite in scientific rationalist circles for its unbiased, dispassionate, well-informed, analyses of cutting-edge theoretical controversies in various academic disciplines, and internet memes involving frogs.
It has become one of the world’s leading search engines in recent years, after revelations of its popularity in both the White House and the Fox News research department.
Whereas Google’s user demographic skewed towards the YUPPIE—Young Upwardly-mobile Professionals Pursuing Innercity real Estate—Deuw-Yore is more popular with CLOUWNS—College-deprived Overeating Upwardly-Wakey Non-Sheeple.
Users tend to be committed proselytisers, dedicated to carrying the message even to the bowels of Youtube comments sections, where they can be identified by their anarchic abandon in grammar, caps lock usage, and ideological coherence, and their loud anti-mating calls: “Wake up, Sheeple!”
“Deuw-Yore eSearch!”
Their commitment to proselytising for increased usage of this particular engine is remarkable. It is not known what percentage of users are actual shareholders of the Deuw-Yore eSearch PiTY Ltd, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many actually volunteer their time, which they appear to have a great deal of. It has been suggested that they are, perhaps, motivated simply by the warm inner glow of setting right a net denizen on the verge of intellectual error. It has not been believed, but it has been suggested.
There are marked correlations between Deuw-Yore eSearch advocates, anti-vax totally-not-conspiracy-theorists, Moon Hoaxers, Flat Earthers, Birthers, and Mandela Effect enthusiasts, possibly due to the high standards of truth, proof, and grammar also required by those sub-demographics. Or possibly not. More data points should clarify.
They drive mostly flat-bed pick-up trucks and big ol’ John Deere skidders, are fond of movies starring Steven Siegal, Bruce Willis or The Rock, and their favourite flavour is purple. They vote conservative if they are not too drunk that day, Sovereign Citizen X if they are.
Dogs don’t like them.
********************
NEXT: An informative breakdown of the online shopping habits of people who believe both that crisis actors are all illegal refugees and that the Titanic and Hurricane Katrina were inside jobs.
Based on extensive data* collected with fanatically ethical integrity, and never, ever, passed on without permission except when paid. We here at Quaerentem pride ourselves on our commitment to the loftiest standards, and as we speak, Facebook is running their flag the highest though that may change. (Hi Alphabet. Contact details above.)
This time it’s October 15th, apparently, which will be nice because it’s my birthday. “Happy Bir— ¡BOOM! ” Yikes. At least I suppose the fireworks will be spectacular. It’s also a Monday, and who doesn’t secretly wish for the apocalypse when Mondays loom? We’re only human. (At least you and I and the former New Zealand Prime Minister are, I’m not so sure about Barnaby Joyce. Did you see that hat??? They breed ’em shameless at Black Stump Primary.)*
But, it got me thinking… whatever happened to “Nigh”? Back in the olden days, when I was a mere stripling of a lad and Playboy Bunnies roamed the earth, The End was never next month on a Thursday afternoon, it was simply Nigh.
Back in the day, doleful fellas in sandwich boards used to roam the streets adjuring us to:
“Repent, for the End is Nigh.”
Compared to them, Twenty-first Centurions are bewilderingly specific about the approaching Apocalypse. Nowadays, lovely, completely undoleful fellas like David Meade feel obliged to tell us The End is going to come on the stroke of midnight December 23rd. Or before breakfast, the third Tuesday of March. Or 12.36:09:and-a-bit:pm precisely on the 27th June, 2021 (possibly because zombies) and don’t bother putting a paper bag over your head, it won’t save you from Niburu, the Greys see all. Extraordinary, their accuracy**. It raises the question of how on earth they know, but this is not a question Apocalypse-Predictors are likely to answer sensibly; I strongly advise you not to ask. It will only end in tears.
Ah, I miss the old fellas. It was a lot easier on the nerves when The End was merely Nigh.
We had no trouble believing it, either, the End certainly felt very Nigh, in the heady, carefree days *cough* Rubbish. They totally weren’t. *cough* of the Cold War and The Bomb. None of us fully expected to live much beyond the age of—oh, say, six, so news of the Nighness of The End hardly surprised us. (The bit about the zombies did, tho, which is why I don’t like to talk about it, we Cold-Warbabies don’t much like surprises; we always think they’re going to involve a ¡BOOM!)
“Oh, yes,” we’d nod sagely when confronted with said sandwich boards. “Nigh, is it? Highly likely, what with all this carry on in the Common Market and Unmarried Mothers running about willy-nilly thinking they’re just as good as normal people, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket I tell you and now you say The End is Nigh well I for one don’t doubt it, what with this here new-fangled Daylight Saving bewildering the livestock and god knows the Labor Party ain’t what it was. Something had to give.”
I do miss the satisfying rubberiness of Nigh as a date. You could concertina Nigh in your imagination to indicate as long or as short a period as you wished. Nigh could be sometime early next week, if you had a nasty teacher/parent meeting looming, or it could be well after Christmas if you were hoping to get a Malvern Star bicycle with those dinky little streamers on the handlebars, maybe in red, and didn’t want The End to ruin that for you. And there was nary a zombie in sight, except for The Late Late Late Movie which is where they belong. Yes, as a date, Nigh was very accommodating.
Nowadays, however, things are very different indeed (except for the bit about the Labor Party, they’re still not what they used to be). We’ve already had to live through 2012 and every year it seems we’re forced to live through it again. Those Mayans knew what they were doing when they ended the calendar, this world clearly should have finished some time ago, it increasingly feels like we’re in the fifth season of a once edgy show and the writers have run out of both ideas and perspective. I mean, a demented Cheezel as U.S. president?? Kate Middleclass as Princess of the World?? Barnaby Joyce** as an actual human being with unassailable rights to food and oxygen??? Now they’re just jumping the shark.
It’s all rather unsettling really. Back when The End was only Nigh. it was perfectly acceptable to forget all about it for a while if one was enjoying oneself, having a peak sexual experience for example, or a very nice counter-lunch. (Whilst not fretting about zombies.)
When The End was Nigh, you could take time off from thinking about zombies it. When The End was Nigh you could at least pretend to be nonchalant about the undead the whole business. But now that it’s August 14th just after lunch it all gets just a bit more… brain-munchingly terrifying personal.
I find myself worrying about not having a Will, and then I remember The End goes for everyone so my offspring won’t care whether they get my collection of funny hats urinated on by inebriated footballers or whether their brother does. Then that thought depresses me and I wonder why I even bother to collect funny hats urinated on by inebriated footballers. It’s a sad, sorry state of affairs when one questions such harmless hobbies.
Why just last week I found myself calculating whether I could put off paying the electricity bill until after the latest date of the Apocalypse, and if so, can I use the money to get footballers inebriated or would that just be asking for trouble?
I blame the government. If they hadn’t invested so much in technology for the classrooms we wouldn’t have this rash of computer-literate eccentrics. They’d be wandering the streets in sandwich boards instead, comforting us with messages of hope. Telling us to buck up for godsake, there’s no need to stay indoors with a paper bag over your head on the evening of Wednesday 24th, because The End is merely Nigh.
Sigh. Troubling times. Predicting The End Of The World has become an exact science, legions of the re-animated roam our mental landscapes unchecked, and the Labor Party STILL ain’t what it used to be.
I miss the 20th Century.
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* btw, don’t believe the Beetrooter’s carry-on about his humble state school origins. He went to Riverview.
**that is, the accuracy would be extraordinary if there was any. So far I have lived through 39 and a half predictions of the End of the World so forgive me if I’m a tad jaded. (The “half” was of course the admittance of women into the MCC. Turbulent times. It’s still standing.)
On the island of Haiti, there is a village called Plik.
When the U.S. president, Evil Homer, recently spoke dispagagingly of Haiti, word travelled to the village of Plik rapidly.
“He’s an evil version of Homer Simpson,” they cried. “Something must be done.
Some demanded an apology. Others just wanted a lock of his hair.
They must have obtained it, because before too long, President Evil Homer was beginning to show the effects of some terrible magic: his speech became repetitive, illogical, and disorganised, he started forgetting important things like which nations were allies and which enemies, he began firing anyone who failed to flatter him fulsomely enough, and soon he was trying to date his own daughter.
It became clear to everyone that the poor orange man was losing what few marbles he had to begin with.
Eventually, the voodoo took full effect, and the President went dancing naked through the streets whistling Dixie and sticking sprigs of straw in his hair. This was too much, even for a White House peopled by sychophantic kindergartners. They arranged for him to be taken away by some nice young men in clean white coats.
And the villagers of Plik who had criticised the presidency took credit.
Tours were organised, from the USA to Haiti, to shake their hands. There was much rejoicing throughout both lands.
Many said the Plik villagers were heroes.
Others, however, shook their heads sadly and said:
“It’s nothing more than critical Plikners gone mad.”
I worry about the health of people like Pauline Hanson, Peta Credlin, Alan Jones and our other RWNJs, I really do, because they are so often sick. They complain about it all the time. Not only are they sick, but they are tired; in fact frequently both sick and tired. Sometimes even sick to death!
I suspect it’s something they ate, they admit themselves that they’ve had a gutful. Maybe they just ate too much, like when they tell us they’re fed up, often to the point of being fed up to the back teeth.
They must know something’s wrong, they say themselves that they’ve had just about as much as they can take. And they’re clearly measuring their own intake, because they know when they’ve had it up to here.
Sick and tired, sick to death, had it up to here, had a gutful, fed up to the back teeth… these are not signs of a healthy organism.
I hope they feel better soon, I really do, it’s not a mood you want a person to go out and vote in.
Quaerentem 