The Wood-Cutter

This Dispatch is from 15 December 2010, and, sadly, still as current as the day it was first published.  (Use Google Translate for foreign text)

अच्छा दिन मेरे दोस्त

A documentary on SBS reminded me that many moons ago I read several Hunter S. Thompson books. I like to think some of Hunter’s writing rubbed off on me: Fear and Loathing under the Intervention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVT2tAV_66k

Hunter S. wrote that there was a rumour that Edmund Muskie (then running for President) was alleged to be addicted to a little known drug Ibogaine. Hunter S. started the rumour.

I herewith start a rumour: There is a rumour that Mal Brough and Jenny Macklin are both alleged to be addicted to Ibogaine.

I haven’t been able to come up with any other explanation for their politically motivated attack on Aboriginal Australia.

On the news last night: An NT enquiry has not come up with any explanation for the $70 million that is missing from the “Closing the Gap” SIHIP (Strategic Indigenous housing and infrastructure program) initiative.

Hunter S. supported George McGovern’s Presidential campaign. McGovern’s main platform was that: The war in Vietnam was a mistake and we should withdraw immediately. McGovern lost.

Kevin Rudd and now Julia Gillard (both also alleged to be addicted to Ibogaine) should have said: The NTER Intervention was a mistake and we should withdraw immediately. Kevin didn’t and Julia won’t. Their humanity and common sense are dwarfed by their fear of defeat and their determination to cling to power.

Mind you, if they withdrew the Ginger Bread Men, I am at a loss to imagine how we’d manage without them. How could this society function without the bee-watcher-watchers?

Last week a young lady that grew up in Yuendumu rang from Stirling (500Km or so by road) enquiring if we were buying seeds. She turned up with some relatives and her two small daughters.

They’d brought Watiyawarnu (Acacia Tennuissima), Paturtu (Acacia Melleodora), Manja (Acacia Aneura), Kanalarampi (Acacia Cowleana) and Wakulpiri (Acacia Coriacea) seed.

When I spoke (bad) Warlpiri to their mother, the little girls (around 10 years old) were surprised and amused, so I struck up a conversation with one of them (in Warlpiri). Yes, she spoke Warlpiri at home, and yes she was going to school, and so on. With justified pride their mother told me that her daughters spoke four languages (Anmatyere, Alyawarra, Kateij and Warlpiri). As an afterthought she said “and English”. When the seeds were being weighed, the little girl named them (in Warlpiri).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnHoqHscTKE   I don’t believe in an Interventionist God….

A father of five works for us, but only manages part time hours. He spends much time pushing a pram.

Presumably based on “information received”, Yuendumu police were looking for him. They eventually caught up with him out the front of the Intervention Store. For all to see they proceeded to search him for drugs. They made him take off his shoes etc. They found nothing.

Whence the presumption of innocence? Whence the due respect of discreetly searching him at the Yuendumu Police Station?

Everyone thought that there was nothing wrong with this kuntangka (shame job) situation, this humiliation. It was seen as normal. These are truly a conquered people.

So will they re-introduce tar and feathering and the stocks? Why not!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LgkuPfcN3c  The Police….”I’ll be watching you!…”

Long gone are the days of men choosing a wife.  Women are having an increasing (and some would argue justifiably so) say in choosing their partner.  I well remember a former woman member of the Australian parliament stating clearly what she looked – someone with a sizeable package.  I doubt that I would measure up.

the package

(Of great concern in this emphasis on the package may encourage even more middle aged men to wear lycra, and do strange things with vegetables.)  However this politician added that the prospective mate must also have a pile.  Again I doubt that I would measure up.   For centuries now in those bastions of female liberation, the United States of America and in all of Scandinavia, women have been advised to look closely at a man’s pile, for from the state of his pile his character can surely be gauged.

For the benefit of those looking for a mate we offer the following Norwegian interpretations on various piles:

Upright and solid pile: Upright and solid man

Low pile: Cautious man, could be shy or weak

Tall pile: Big ambitions. but watch out for sagging and collapse.

Unusual shape: Freethinking, open spirit, again the construction may be weak.

Flamboyant pile, widely visible: Extroverted, but possibly a bluffer

A lot in the pile: A man of foresight, loyal

Not much in the pile: A life lived from hand to mouth.

Pedantic pile: Perfectionist, may be introverted

Collapsed pile: Weak will, poor judgement of priorities.

Unfinished pile, some lying on the ground: Unstable, lazy, prone to drunkenness

Everything in a pile on the ground: Ignorance, decadence, laziness, drunkenness or possibly all of these

Pile made of whoppers:  Has a big appetite for life, but can be rash and extravagant.

Old and new piled together:  Be suspicious, could contain ill-gotten items.

Of course this is all about a person’s wood pile, the truest measure of a real man. And just three more categories to help with the choice:

Large and small logs piled in together:  Frugal.  Kindling sneaked in among the logs suggests a considerate man.

Rough, gnarled logs, hard to chop: Persistent and strong willed, or else bowed down by his burdens.

No woodpile:  No husband.

Should people follow this evidence based advice we foresee a bleak future for divorce lawyers.

Now for a couple of very poor reproductions of representative piles or try this link for even more spectacular results

Mighty Fine Pile

Fishy Pile

Our last hurrah, poster we did for Brisbane writers festival REJECTED! The organisers wanted a picture of a book. Queenslanders en masse HATE TREES!

Dear reader just in case you didn’t know we have been in detailed discussions with the Nine media group. Actually, they’ve gone further than that. We’ve been SOLD!

Our other poster design REJECTED! “The judges said BIG IDEAS were just too Kevin Rudd 20/20”.

You see, though we’ve valued up-to-date commentary, hard-hitting political analysis and scathing reviews of contemporary politics, society and everything, we’ve failed to improve our reader base. To be brutal.  Our readership is flat. At last count we had confirmation that Doris Flogget,(former boilermaker) at the “Happy Dayze” Retirement home, Melvyn Pewkes, (typesetter)of no fixed address and Briony Barkingtool (home duties)  were the only regular readers. And subscriptions have been a disgrace. Whence formerly we had at least 122.56c to cover rent, (our converted caravan at the back of Cecil’s mums place, the offset typewriter ribbon and dish washing liquid for the mugs we found at the end of the street), we’ve been going backwads. The kerosene heater’s element has gone, and the old PMG lamp we used for backup has rusted through. 

Previous funds drives resulted in a parking fine, and good behaviour bond for Cecil caught stealing underwear, (to augment the uniform allowance) from Mrs Colttarts clothes line. 

Since being taken over by noine this is our new look Investigative Journalism Vehicle. Staggeringly Popular.

Our growth is all down. Flatter than Tony Abbot’s flat-earth policy. And the worst of it is that our imcome derived through sales, advertising and endorsement has dropped to negative. It’s bleaker than the Coalition’s NEG, and could be like the National Broadband. A debt legacy the shareholders  would have to carry for ever and ever. 

That’s why Nine, took us on. Wheras once we were a quality independent news source. Now we’re a relic. A archaic construct. A bone from the ossary. A fossil. 

WE also got to be in the studio audience of the Footy Show. Cecil got to hold the Sherrin after Eddie handpassed it to Sam. Sam is a real professional.

They’ve offered to  help us out. With a bit of luck we can transfer the debt legacy, (with interest it’ll be stratospheric) onto the taxpayer. Nine are pretty cluey when it comes to turning rivers of gold into losses. Cleverer still about how Rupert and his cronies can get tax free, no questions asked subsidies from the feds for doing stuff that the national broadcaster, and “Rufus the dog” could do effortlessly. Cept their trick is to do it smartly. They drive fast cars, wear expensive suits, have straight teeth and when they grin, their teeth all shine like a polaroid in a crowd, on the carpet,  on a wet day, at the Brownlow. 

They ooze charisma. It’s not what they say. It aint Orwellian, a Wildean quip or a Bertie Russell analysis. We tried that and it’s about as popular as being caught getting a root in a special accomodation home.  When the people from NINE  say something, it sounds really credible. And as they do it, you can almost hear the chorus of cash registers, like angels quipping the international language, (in Mandarin) of “Cha-Ching Cha-Ching”. It’s the language of capital, designer labels and certainty. Who wouldn’t want a bit of that action?

So we sold out. So from now on this will no longer be called pcbcyp, but “NOINE”. That’s an acronym for a new era intellectual type journalism, “No one Intellectual Needs Employment”

We’ve been given a new headquarters in the swank four seasons resort at Coolum, and our front of house is now all shiny, with Zina, an ex-exotic dancer doing all enquiries. Cecil and I have never had it so  good, we get invited to all the right parties, and I suspect, though he wont let on, it wasn’t Whiz Fizz he was snorting at bingo last night. 

Our new look Current affairs programming looks at misogyny in the workplace.

Where once was flat we now have rivers of gold. 

Sadly though, the caravan was sold off. Cecil had to hand in his false teeth, pacemaker, and colostomy bag, and sign a waver. The waver, states he will continue to recieve all the benefits provided he doesn’t say anything controversial. This entitles him a platinum pass to the Brisbane Writers Festival! 

I suppose you could say we’re gagged. Still, it’s better than being broke. And now were the big end of town we’ll enjoy the tax cuts promised by Malcolm. Which just goes to say, “There’s more than beauty in the sounds of silence”.  Cos it’s all painted Gold!

Barnaby. No one can surpass his stellar performance!

Wed’ve been bigger than the PUP in 2015.

There were five by elections last Saturday. And they all went wrong. In order to stave off the imminent takeover by Channel Nine we fielded candidates in all five electorates. The pre-polling told us we were in there with a chance. And once the recruitment had been done, we felt our candidates represented the best chance ever to field people individually suited to the needs of their electorate. All we had to do, was do the letter boxes, man the phones, and within weeks with a voter turnout of between ten and fifteen percent, we’d be off. Five in the bag. More than Clive Palmer had in the 2015 election, and a better, more stable leadership than One Nation. An electoral force to be reckoned with. 

On the Labor Side. Sam waves to his leaders, (members of the CCP).

For starters we eschewed all that bullshit about being an alternative to the two major parties. Let’s get this straight, THERE IS NO Alternative to the two big parties. WE just don’t know enough people like Barnaby, Craig, Tony and Kevin on the right, and no one like Bill, Craig, Kevin, Sam, Emma and Kathy on the slightly to the left of right. People like that only exist in dystopian tele-dramas, or horror movies or mad-arse screw ball comedies. The sort of thing Howard Hawks did and made millions out of. Cept these pollies make us pay millions and it aint funny. 

That’s why we went ot a lot of trouble to find candidates suited to each electorate. 

Georgina Greentrees. ( No child was harmed in the making of this photograph)

In Mayo, we had a standout candidate Georgina Greentrees. Georgina is a passionate environmentalist. She recycles everything and had her Aston Martin DB9 converted to bio-fuel. Everything she does is committed to saving the enviroment and we endorsed her as a sure thing. She is also terribly well educated and knows how to handle a butter knife in stressful situations. Her dad, Sir Lumley Greentree (former Chairman of Rio Tinto) was happy to appear on the hustings with her, in his tweed jacket and Wool Corpotation tie in support of farmers. He promised to park his Silver Shadow at a discrete distance. Incredibly we received only two votes. 

Similar results are equally telling

In Fremantle we endorsed, Chooka Macmanus, the former centre half-back from Fremantle who runs a panel shop and  exotic dance/tattoo studio. His returns, twelve votes. Not all his family. 

In Longman, Knobby Baldcock, a grazier who’s into Real Estate, Reality Television, Bonsai and miniature poodles, four votes. 

In Perth Quinton de Crock, former South African, a big score but ineligible due to not being an Australian citzen. 

Luke Skyhook recites poetry..

And in Braddon, Luke, Skyhook, drug enthusiast, meditationalist, astral traveller and freelance water diviner, unemployed, limbless ex forester, only one vote. 

What’s the reason? Are people just not listening any more? With the end of Fairfax there’s ony one thing to do. Stay home and watch telly, and if you can be bothered voting, go for the party that offers you a tax cut, a free t shirt and more of the same. 

Chooka Macmanus. Our man in Fremantle.

We were in a world “Outclassed”. 

The scent of fresh wood by Hans Børli

The scent of fresh wood
is among the last things you will forget
when the veil falls.
The scent of fresh white wood
in the spring sap time:
as though life itself walked by you,
with dew in its hair.
That sweet and naked smell
Kneeling woman-soft and blond
in the silence inside you,
using your bones for
a willow flute.
With hard frost beneath your tongue
you look for fire to light a word,
and know, mild as a southern wind in the mind,
there is still one thing in the world
you can trust.

Printed in
Norwegian Wood Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way
by Lars Mytting 

Nyappara wardingi mpa?

What would be lost if Warlpiri disappeared in this century? There is a Warlpiri word, yirraru which means a deep sense of homesickness and melancholy. The Warlpiri language offers insights into a pre-industrial world view, a window onto another culture lost in the rest of mainstream Australia. As with any language , it represents another way of seeing the world, which makes it precious. Warlpiri’s survival is a matter of cultural diversity, just as important as ecological diversity. It is the accumulation of thousands of years of human ingenuity and resilience living in these desert landscapes. It is a heritage of human intelligence shaped by place, a language of the desert, with a richness and precision to describe the tasks of hunting and gathering. It is a language of community, offering concepts and expressions to capture the tightly knit interdependence required in this subsistence economy. Particular words describe the power of these relationships intertwined with place and community. For example jukurrpa is sometimes translated as ‘dreamtime’ or ‘dreaming’, but it conveys a much richer idea of a collective claim on a land, continually reinforced and lived out through the shared management of that land.

The strong connection to land and community means that people belong to places rather that places belong to people. It is an understanding of belonging which emphasized relationship, of responsibility as well as rights, and in return offers the security of a clear place in the world. Yapa (Warlpiri people) will often enquire ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Who are you related to?’ The identity of place and family matters most.

Warlpiri has a different sense of time, purpose and achievement.

Modern maps offer only a tiny glimpse of the relationship of yapa (Warlpiri people) to the landscape, which translates into a practice of dense naming; every rock, outcrop or patch of land is named.

So before you burst into paroxysms of praise (‘jeez that Frank has a way with words and deep insights’) I have a confession to make. The foregoing has been lifted almost word for word from Madeleine Bunting’s ‘Love of Country- A Hebridean Journey‘ (pages 222-225). My only contribution… replace Gaelic with Warlpiri, cianalas with yirraru, dúthchas with jukurrpa and the sea and islands with desert landscape.

Warumpi Band- My Island Home….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZEodxUx2ME

An Innis Aigh – gaelic traditional song – in Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCzUSJo5zqI 1:15 / 2:51

Blood Brothers – Jardiwarnpa clip 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZfGaEZu03E

See ya’s

Frank

At last some recognition. Both Cecil and Quentin have been invited to speak at this years Brisbane Writers festival. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for the pcbycp readership. WE are in a word, DELIGHTED! 

Germaine Greer. Under House arrest for “thinking beyond the square, circle and trapezoidal rhombus”

And glad that at long last the writers festival has taken the bold step of inviting fresh talent onto the stage. 

Bob Carr, colluding with Hillary, ex KGB China Spy,on what to fill the “basket of” with.

Hence our surprise, but secret shadenfrude at the recent un-inviting of Bob Carr and Germaine Greer. We would like to have it on the record that we wholeheartedly endorse the festival organisers for upholding diversity of opinion by shutting the door on these two writers. WE are sick to death of listening to Bob Carr questioning our tendency in Australia to “Sino- phobia”. And we’ve just about had enough of his questioning of the orthodoxy of his so called “ Israel lobby” endorsing the unquestioned acts of violence committed against Palestinans. And besides, no one wants to hear about human rights in a literary festival. Well at least not the viewpoints of perpetually downtrodden peoples who don’t express themselves eloquetly, with correct diction, have a decent degree, and engage within the decorum of polite conversation. Should we say, we like our writers to challenge the orthodoxy, but not too much. We like to keep it just a little to the right of a Joanna Murray-Smith play. Not offend anyone nice, but just stimulate them enough to say,” my word that was thoughtful I’ll have to mention it at  my next book reading group after tennis”. That is what we strive for in writers festivals. To be a CATALYST! A CHANGE AGENT!

The last thing you want in a writers festival is someone like Mark Latham, who offends the sensibilities of those worthy and intelligent and valuable people who attend writers festivals. No one likes being told they’re all a bunch of wankers! Particularly a polite group of retirees who do such a lot in their own way for philanthropic trusts, the publishers, and whatever adjunct fund raising appendage of one of our esteemed universities they’re beholden to. 

That’s why we’re shocked at what Germaine said, we reprint her rebuttal in full:

“The Brisbane writers’ festival is very hard work. So, to be uninvited to what is possibly the dreariest literary festival in the world, with zero hospitality and no fun at all, is a great relief.”

Mark Latham. Upsets genteel folk at Writers festivals.

And from the festival organisers:

“Brisbane writers’ festival does not shy away from controversy or challenging ideas, but as all festival organisers know, it’s invariably difficult to choose between the many authors currently promoting books and the need to provide engaging choices for our audience along a curatorial theme”

That’s right. Second Principle of Writers festivals.  “KEEP IT CURATORIAL”!

Pater Fitzsimmons. Writers festival GOLD! Tells us about how great we really are!

So what was Germaine thinking. She might potentially do a Mark Latham, and say that blokes with their old fella’s knocked off still don’t make the full bottle sheilah’, and that’d be the end of the sort of creative thought and challenging orthodoxy that festivals strive to achieve.

Hence our relief at being included. 

Cecil will be talking about his recent experience with Cajun Cooking. Whilst Quentin shares the stage with Mem Fox, Steve Biddolph and Peter Fitzsimmons where he’ll talk about Anzac, it’s tradition, the gift it bequethes to children,  and how Australian authors are now internationally famous in Australia. 

And you’ll all agree, that’s the sort of festival we want in BRIS-BANE.

Mem Fox! Deserves a gong for putting more children to sleep with her stories than any other author. And she didn’t even do the pictures.

Where there’s less an emphasis on UR-Bane, whilst more on BANE-al.

WE pretended that this was our office. And our editorial staff at work. It was a LIE!

We’ve had to come clean at pcbycp. Recently, you may have been under the impression that we were fair dinkum about being a serious contender in the independent journalism field. You may have felt reassured when we had a real red-hot go at sacred cows like mining, politicians and Philanthropic trusts we were acting for the underdog . We embodied the spirit of telling it the way it is. You may even have felt that we told it so straight, and down the line. That the last thing we could be is be a simpering enclave of smug sinecurist satraps, fulminating whilst we sip pina-coladas. 

You probably imagined us burning the Australian flag as a demonstration of our independence. Or mixing up the recycling bin as an act of defiance against an opressive society. Or Jaywalking, when we don’t even need to cross the street in the first place.  And you probably felt, our coverage of the Australian Space Agency’s Mars base was the most up to date forthright bit of reportage since we stopped beaming short wave across the Pacific. We stood for something, WE stood for ideals as egalitarian as Sunday roast and a pie at the footy. 

In actual fact we used OUR philanthropic tax free funds to pay for this man. To do OUR BIDDING!

But, it was all a SHAM!

We are not who we pretend to be. The truth is out. We’ll come clean. Cleaner than “CLEAN COAL”! We’ll assert a new set of fundamentals, and play it straight. You thought we were sincere. You thought we were broke. 

That was a LIE!

And secretly we funded people like this who never ever did a real job EVER to get into Parliament!

It has emerged, as a charitable institution, we get tax breaks. And you thought we needed the tax breaks cos we were poor.  Tax breaks sorely needed so that our brand of journalism can flourish. So that our viewpoint can be balanced and hold fast against the tide of mediocrity. 

To be honest we‘ve been floating in cash. We’ve never had a cash flow problem, we’ve been playing to the piper, an the piper, big, bigger than you’ll find anywhere, controls the whole bloody orchestra. And we, at the end of the conga line, are little more than the triangle player in the great celestial firmamment of journalism. 

Gina Rinehart has been paying us to keep our portal open, last year it was 2.4 million. This year a cool 4 million. Just like that! Tax free. And without question. That’s when we started on the Australian space race and the world’s first ever coal poowered rocket ship. That’s when we caved in and began our series on clean coal. Advocating clean coal to be served in kindergartens and primary schools for breakfast. And then, we went the full kebab, and repudiated lock stock and barrel climate science, for the warm pancake theory. The warm pancake theory presupposed that the earth and every living thing is on a metaphorical frypan, and as it gets hotter, we can just add more toppings. The hotter the better. 

Amd we paid for ads like this! To keep us FREE and SAFE from Climate Science!

We have the science to prove it and it’s irrrefutable, cos Lord Monckton, Lord Tony of Abbott and Gina said so. 

And this week, we’ll be proving that abortion kills whales, that God was a spaceman, and that Hillary Clinton is a transvestite Russian former KGB agent  working for China. We have the proof, and we’re just waiting for the word from Lord Rupert to let it out. 

Incidentally the money Gina gave us was well spent, WE have a new pcbycp coporate jet, and a new wing in the new maxi prison Barwon named after us, so that crims, being processed through our justice system may aspire and be rehabilitated morally. When they’re set free, jobless, unemployable and broken. 

And POWER the FUTURE with SAFE, RELIABLE CLEAN COAL. And protect WHALES!!

As Gina says says, if it aint broke don’t fix it. 

First principle of recycling. If we look at it really hard. The problem will GO AWAY!

Have you ever wondered what the manufacturers of plastic bottles, cans and all that stuff we buy when we’re thirsty, or think we’re thirsty, or may have a panic attack in the event of being thirsty think of recycling? Well, the fact is not a lot. But they’re determined not to have a recycling deposit scheme. That would be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. And corporates would have to think next time they’re having a monday morning engine room meeting. Public departments would have to re- calibrate befoe their facilities management meetings. Blue collar workers, (if there any left) would have to prioritise prior their workplace health and safety regime. And every team manager co-ordination meeting, and senior tier secreatries to politicians, and other worthy folk would have to adjust to their utterances across the board table not being ordained by the ubiquitous plastic bottle of H20. 

As the pcbycp initiative states, H20 in plastic has to go. 

But no one is listening. 

Shark Attacks reduced and SAFETY increased by plastic bottles on beaches.

On the fun run all the bottles were in happy plastic, showing the corporate responsibility for re- hydration. And now China doesnt want to take our plastic any more we’re in real trouble. Courageously super-markets have stopped giving away plastic bags, but this is a bridge too far, on a beach somewhere, to ever ever think of changing corporate behaviour on plastic bottles. For as Lord Rupert of Murdoch said; “he or she who replaces the throw-away society with something eternal and long term shall be accursed”. 

Seems Kevin Rudd went that way when he talked of the mining tax, and it’s good to know that the once in a generation boom from the mining  went into the pockets of a few. Some of them might even set up philanthropic recycling centres. We at pcbycp are working on the logo at the moment, 

A Clean beach and bottles recycled into Commonwealth Games mascot.

We thougt an Echidna or Koala would be good. Not quite as naff as the one used or the Commonwealth Games, but cute and cuddly. We’re hoping that Twiggy and Gina would stump up the cash for an old fashioned bottle drive. But so far they haven’t answered our calls. Clive did, but he wanted a downpayment or the facility, free advertising rights, and an amnesty from any criminal prosecution, and we just couldnt afford it. 

No plastic bottles were harmed in the production of this photograph.

So stumped, we asked Coca Cola the biggest producer of non-recyclable bottles and cans and they sent us a disclaimer. The disclaimer went words to the effect: “We care about nurturing the planet and all its eco systems, but whilst people insist on buying our product and throw the receptacles all over the place, we are deeply perplexed and confused, and will mention it at the next annual board meeting”. We think that’s a good effort. One can’t go too hard on the big end of town cos they employ hordes of people on workplace agreement contracts so that they may be down-trodden, but we thought we’d give it a go. 

We approached the banks who give the money to produce the plastic and they said it was non-core. 

We asked them what non-core was and they stated: “anything that doesn’t give us a shorrt term buck”.

So we’re doing our own bit. We have a recycling bin. And once a week we burn the lot.

That creates a lot of CO2. 

But we’re happy.

Problem solved.