“Festivus for the rest of us”!

(Olden days kiddies riding bikes without helmets. Such behaviour is now BANNED!)

 It’s a real struggle keeping pace with the most defining salient issues of our time. 

And it’s easy to loose your metaphorical eye from the proverbial ball. 

Olden days kiddies playing with sparklers. BANNED now for THEIR OWN GOOD!

What news item is more pressing? Is it the fact that if you’ve got shitloads of money and you want to launder it a Crown? Peter Dutton will throw out the red carpet. No questions asked!!  Or is it Angus Taylor? Angus understands that ‘Mateship’ is way more important than the environment. By removing red tape and killing off ecosystems, business can FLOURISH!

Or just the fact that as you read this your mind impulses are being monitored by a Chinese submarine somewhere deep off the Pacific trench and already your vitals are slated to be harvested in an Uighur organ donor factory! (the one that Cotton On uses for its labour force). And all awhile you know that th U.S, last bastion of self interest and free enterprise is going down the toilet. The UK is going down the toilet, and you can hear a flushing sound and know that we’re  on an identical trajectory. And it’ll be all over just as soon as the kleptocracy finishing dividing the spoils.

Olden days kiddie mucking round with a .22 rifle. A Kiddie would GO TO JAIL if they did that now.

In the end it all comes down to EDUCASHUN!!

WE are indebted to Ira for this snippet. 

Good people all,

At the risk of laying myself open to the accusation that I am nothing less than a tedious pedant, I would like to make the following observation;

The Bendigo Writers’ Festival has adopted the above ‘quotation’ as its banner to attract the crème  of the crop to its Word-er-ama. (9-11 August 2019)

As we all know, Portia is available as a missus to the person who chooses the correct container. The Prince of Morocco reasons that Portia is so trif that that the pure gold container must be the right choice.  He is wrong. Instead and inside there’s a written piece that more or less tells him not to judge a book by its cover. It tells him, not that ‘…all that glitters is not gold…’ but ‘…all that glisters is not gold…’  and that death awaits…

Am I missing something? Is there an in-joke here, beyond the comprehension of people like me? Or is the ignorance of the promoters such that they have no idea how badly they’ve fucked up, or don’t care? And what about the writers? Dear God the writers… Have they mounted a campaign to boycott this literary disaster? Jesus wept…

Ira

Portia goes for the box. Not Pandora’s though.

I think it sad… or am I missing the point?k

What is the point?

What does it point to?

Were does it lead?

John Marsden reckons that parents are neurotic. Took him years to work that one out. Could’ve told him that modern parent neurosis began on the day they killed off Guy Fawkes and replaced it with Halloween. More Hollow than hallowed, and you can’t wean yourself off the commercial opportunities. 

The author writes about parents ‘loving their children to death’. How right he is. We reckon they’re born dead. Work, eat, (a small aperture exists for breeding) and Death. Marsden hasn’t gone far enough. Hard to put a more precise date on it, but perhaps when the Shanghai was no longer an indispensable part of school equipage, and the strap gave way to serious counselling and behavioural limitation strategies. 

Nicola Heath reckons Johnny has got it wrong.We beg to differ.

Olden days kids enjoying a smoke. BANNED!

Either way we’re rooted, need working with children checks if you want to take the kiddies to the park, and if you hang around you’ll be arrested as a pervert. Spose that’s what got Marsden into teaching. As a riposte to all that control. Parents now want to micro manage everything. It’s an insecurity index. A critic countered and said Marsden was over-reacting. Since when did kiddies have I-phones etc in the past so that they are monitored every nano-second of their life? And the pressure to conformity? With the added bonus of consumerism to hollow them out just that little bit more. Food for consultant psychiatrists, psychologists, paediatricians and allied health and mental health workers. Value added by the certainty is there aint someting wrong with em, there WILL be something wrong with them.  Indigenous kids as young as ten killing themselves. They’ve seen the future and jumped the queue. And yet this knob tells us nothing’s changed.  

Anything than to question the reason why.

Cracker night anyone?

Mr and Mrs Blake at work de-coding the “Catholic Boys Daily”, ( the Australian)

Once again, we thrill to the anticipation of another book review from that luminary of the near north Joseph (Sexton Blake). In this brief encounter we delve deep into a fragment of history unerringly familiar. Sadly due to the 24/7 news cycle and digital media, we’ve forgotten already. We urge you to read this review quickly, and try and keep a notebook and pencil handy, lest you forget what it was all about. “We learn from history, what we do not learn from history”. (Hegel)

It can creep up on you know. Faster than you can say “Brexit”!

And now it’s over to you JOE!

The Yield, by Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton, rrp $32.99

reviewed by Joe Blake

When one nation invades another, the first thing that gets destroyed is culture: music, dance, art and language are all banned. The experience in this country has been no different; when one new Victorian Governor’s wife wanted to witness a corroboree, she had to be satisfied with a painting by William Barak. For Indigenous Australians, some good news (and there’s not much of that) is that many of their 700 “lost” languages are being retrieved and used.

This brilliant novel comes in three different voices from three different eras. Each contributes to the big picture of ongoing white settlement and maltreatment.

Joe pausing at the typewriter

August Goondiwindi, who hails from a former mission on the Murrumbidgee, has been living overseas for years, and arrives back home for her grandfather Albert’s funeral. Things are looking dire for her family; the big mining company is about to take over, bulldoze everything, and disperse her people like chaff in the wind. Of course she has to get involved in the resistance.

Albert, lived on the former mission on Massacre Plains all his life, and spent his last years developing a dictionary of the local Wiradjuri language. It’s not just definitions, though, it’s a whole expression of a philosophy of life. Each entry starts with a word’s meaning, then leads on to a myriad of other interconnected thoughts and memories. It’s a brilliant way of reconstructing the history of himself and his people.

Reverend Greenleaf, who was a supervisor at the mission about 100 years ago, also left some words, but these express a different reality: the horrific treatment meted out to the blackfellas by drunken, sadistic white men. He wasn’t your usual preacher, but one with eyes in his head and empathy. He did his feeble best to provide a place of sanctuary, but he was up against unstoppable forces of evil.

Like August, Tara June Winch has spent a large part of her adult life in other countries; she currently lives in France. Fortunately for readers, she hasn’t forgotten one scrap of the details of life here, and she has the most amazing ability to weave those tidbits into a marvellous story. You won’t read a better novel this year.

Goodonya Adam.

Dear reader, after that compelling despatch from the far inner North, we felt compelled to give our readership a snippet of when things were in their right place. That’s a time, not so long ago, when you could walk all over “Ayers Rock” as it was then affectionately called. The locals allowed you to do it cos they knew their place. That’s the problem with people these days they’ve forgotten their correct place. Adam Giles the former NT Chief Minister knows about the correct place for every little thing. That’s why he found useful employment with Gina Rinehart. She knows that people should stay in their place. That’s the problem nowadays, people just don’t know their place. Take Adam Goodes for instance, he stepped out of his place and Sam Newman demonstrated leadership and incited the general pubic to PUSH BACK. So that Adam would know once again, (some people have to be reminded) of his correct place.

Kiddies , the Adam on the right is the WRONG ADAM!. That nice man on the left is Sam Newman. Sam is looking angry cos Adam has forgotten his place.

WE dedicate todays’ poem to you Adam.

(Not Adam Goodes, but Adam Giles, as he is more deserving. And besides he shares a surname with another famous Explorer who opened up the vast hinterland of this content to the benign hand of civilisation).

For Helping Gina in knowing where people should be, we award you the Bess Price Merit Certificate. Its non refundable, and printed on real fly paper.

Little Aborigine*

Verse 1

Oh How I wish tha I could be, a little Aborigine,

The Boomerang he learns to throw, and that is all he needs to know,

He chases bunnies all day long, and paddles in a billabong,

Verse 2

Black skin wont show the dirty place,

And so he doesn’t wash his face,

I needn’t eat his grubs and snakes,

But live on lollipops and cakes, 

He sees the wild corroboree,

I wish , I wish, that he was me!

Oh, how I wish that I could be a little Aboriginee!! (sung with emphasis)

Even in the olden days little aborigines had to be on the lookout for the police, the welfare officer, the missionary, the cleric, the do- gooder, etc..etc.. Happily, nothing much has changed.

• This is a famous poem, that little kiddies would recite at school. It posses all the hallmarks of great poetry. Imaginative, stirring, and emulative. Don’t we all wish we could be little Aboriginies?. Though we never met real Aborigines, this was in a time when they were akin to faeries and pixies. And like all good little folk… they knew their place.

I remember when we would sit cross legged in primary school and sing this ditty “on the broadcast”. The Broadcast was the big tannoy speaker that was suspended somewhere up in the ceiling (closer to god) and to question its veracity was DEATH!

For those not familiar with a schools Broadcast we urge you to follow this link to a typical schools broadcast.

Hola amigos,

Coming up is the 60th. Anniversary of Yuendumu Sport’s week-end. The first Sports weekend was on my 16th birthday. You’re all invited to Sports weekend and also my birthday party on Sunday evening (4th.August) which sad to say has wound down over time to a modest relatively quiet affair.

At a Yuendumu School Council meeting it was proposed that “old” school staff should be invited to a reunion. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we are a rather laissez faire mob out here and now we’ve left it too late to organise anything properly.

A few decades ago my family and friends visited Ayers Rock. The idea that the locals might have had ideas regarding the appropriateness or otherwise of climbing the rock didn’t occur to us, and neither did it occur to the many other visitors. Myself I did not climb it, not out of respect, but out of acrophobic apprehension. Some of my relatives did climb it, and found it to be an exhilarating experience.

Not all that long ago the Mt.Everest Climb received a fair bit of publicity. We all saw those obscene pictures of crowded queues reaching for the summit and reports of an accumulation of abandoned rubbish and corpses on the slopes, only to have the image of a string of people racing to the top of Uluru to beat the October deadline, when the climb will no longer be permitted, suddenly explode in the Australian media. A not always dignified discourse has ensued. Does the Rock belong to all Australians and should the polite but firm wishes of the Traditional Owners be ignored and defied?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNeWmzPOZE (Solid Rock- Sacred Ground)- Goanna

In a Musical Dispatch- Lawa- April 2016, I quoted from a 20th April ABC news report:

“…He said, with the approval of the local people, the climb could be a ‘great opportunity for the local Anangu to participate in a lucrative business and create much-needed local jobs’. Mr Giles said he would ‘like to hear from the traditional owners, the Anangu people, and start a conversation’ …”

The traditional owners have been saying WIYA (LAWA in their language) for decades. They simply don’t like people climbing Uluru (Ayers Rock). Possibly for similar reasons to those that the many who would object to people clambering up St. Peter’s Basilica or the Alhambra might give. Yet our Chief Minister, Adam Giles, wants to start a conversation!

Well may we ask:

What part of NO don’t you understand Mr. Giles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z535jczyobQ

Adam Giles has since been seriously defeated in an election, but not before selling the TIO (Territory Insurance Office) and selling a 99 year lease on the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company

It is of course complete coincidence that Adam Giles after his electoral defeat got a job with Australia’s richest women, Gina Reinhart who in turn sold half a billion dollars worth of live cattle to China.

Somewhat ironic that there is a controversy about climbing Uluru, considering Indigenous Australia’s most generous olive branch extended to mainstream Australia ‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart’ (May 2017) was proclaimed in the shadow of that mountain.

I was going to put a link to the Sound of Music’s ‘Climb Every Mountain’ but just as I’m not a fan of climbing, neither am I a fan of Musicals, so you’re getting Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High’ instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0wPrN_Y_4

and as a bonus Aretha Franklin’s “Respect’ which is what Uluru climbers don’t show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0

Hasta luego,

Frank

Welcoming the new School Bully. Old School bully hands over School Concubine, (more or less intact)

This STUNNING!! piece from our luminary front near north Sir Atney of Emo.

He writes,

‘Faced with reconciling the irreconcilable, that fantasist and Latinist, now elevated to No. 10, would dismiss it all with an optimistic – ‘Quid, me anxious sum?’ *… 

Those of us who are ’normal’ (more or less) watch this theatre of the absurd, and are agape and aghast.  Behaviours and statements that would have had us knotted in shame, guilt and embarrassment, are as nothing to these narcissists: they count on our attention being quickly deflected by yet another outrage!

It must be marvellous to hear only resounding applause, and to see only swollen crowds wearing red trucker caps.

Maybe we are too self-censorious!  We should learn to accept that, in a post-modernist world, all truth is relative – and image is reality’!

Sir Atney,

PS

*I recall that Mad Magazine issue back in 1961.  Alfred E. Neumann’s phrase has stood me in good stead ever since!

Dull and Boring. How Latin should be. If you scratched out the “L” in Latin and made it and “E”, then it would read, ” an Approach to Eatin”. Hours of fun!

(Chewing Gum smears are entirely free)

This would always get a snigger..

Froggy journalists get a lesson in POWER!

Froggy journalists, ” Liberte, Eglalite, and a fucken liberal dose of IRONY”!

Not since Parliament was suspended between 1629 and 1640, has the fifth estate been made to bear some responsibility for being a nuisance. And it’s encouraging to see that most recently the Commonwealth Bank, whos bent, greed filled executives sent people broke and suicidal through extortion, corruption, fraud and bloody mindedness, are off the hook. That’s the sort of governance the people want. If you don’t believe us, the only putative P.M never to vist Rupert Lord of Murdoch LOST. And the country was saved thanks to that shining white sepulchure locked deep in the crypt of salvation they refer to as “Franking Credits’. 

We’re still rapt, that journo’s even the odd one from Lord Murdoch’s own stable, (there must always be a sacrificial lamb) are cowered over the defense-gate scandal. So what if a couple of Afghani’s get knocked off in a civilising war we’ve been at for twenty years. Cos as the strategic policy bean counters would tell us it’s their own fault. 

Shouldn’t be there in the first place. Not us… THEM!

Things are pretty crook in Honkers. But we know it’lll be over once the malcontents are imprisoned, and business can feel confident again the profits will not be affected unduly by the susserus of protest, and for that matter the side issue of human rights.

This is what happens to SMART ARSE foreigners in God’s Own Country!

And as for human rights, we feel content when traveling on the train. The Gestapo (Public Safety Officers) patrol it regularly. Outside the station the Sicherheistdienst (Public Response Unit Officers) are waiting with guns and tasers to deflect the homeless, and in the streets the new ruling elite (the formerly inactive Committee for Public Safety, Fines Victoria) reassures us that minor infringements will be duly monetised. Glad then that constant video surveillance is making our lives  safe. No time to question the sort of society that requires constant surveillance. All the indeces are of a proto-Orwellian society. No time to question why people in our society are angry, dangerous and VIOLENT! Prisons are booming, corporations don’t need to worry about regulation, and these new flats have a life expectancy of ten years, (if you’re lucky).  All of this points to one thing. These are great times if you want POWER. Better still if you want to RETAIN POWER! And better times still if you know that there is only one truth. It is MONEY!

Ask witness K. 

And if you get nowehere there, ask witness X.

And if you fail there? Just ask Donald. He’ll tell you.  Democracy’s broke. It’s fucked.  It’s karked it it’s kaput. And we made it thus. 

Roll over fifth estate youve had it coming. Just for questioning Angus Taylor for looking after his family interests courtesy of the taxpayer, you deserve it. 

For not inciting the public imagination you deserve it.

For trying to be balanced and objective you deserve it.

For not really caring whether Master Chef continues without Matt, George and the other bloke.  

And for not being interested enough in “Celebrity Get Me Outta Here, or Australian Ninja. 

They should Go BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM!

And your biggest crimes, Not devoting enough media time to the Kardashians. 

Cos that’s important, all the other stuff, climate, equity and education are NON ISSUES!

Cos the truth is 

Nobody cares, and 

Even if they did, what are they doing about it? 

Even banging froggy journalists in the slammer for filming a protest seems ok,  if you’re living in Cairo, Just ask Peter de Gretser. 

Queensland is a bit like Egypt though. 

Egypt and Queensland have another thing in common beyond palm trees and sand, they know how to deal with Journo’s.

Plenty of sand, the odd palm tree. 

No one really cares in Egypt either. 

If you did you’d be in HUGE TROUBLE!

They might have cared a bit more back in 1640. 

Whatta CHEEK! Froggy Bastard trying to film his own arrest. No wonder Hollywood killed the froggy fillum industry!

Isn’t that a brand of beer?

Or a Cologne?

But

Human rights?

Free Press?

Not here. 

Whos in charge of that sort of thing?

Peter Dutton.. 

Why bother. 

It’s heartening to read in the news that the very first appointment as media chief in the incoming Johnson government is the Sky news Exec Andrew Griffith. 

“Andrew Griffith, the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at the pay-TV group, has been appointed as the chief business adviser to Number 10.

Rupert deserves credit for getting the right man the right job.

He will work closely with the new prime minister who reputedly said “fuck business” when confronted with companies’ concerns over Brexit”. (the Guardian)

Once again it demonstrates the impact and leadership Rupert Lord of Murdoch wields in getting the correct results in western (English speaking former white colonies) government. And it’s just what we all need to tackle head-on the monumental existential earth ending catastrophe of climate change. BY IGNORING IT!

In the US, Climate Science has been ignored. Problem Solved, 

In Australia Climate Science has been put back where it belongs by luminaries such as Malcolm Roberts, George Chirtiansen and Angus Taylor (who like to keep things within the family) to where it belongs. A complete non issue.   And in this they are allied to the greatest PM Australia is currently having who’s principal  belief is that earth is only 6000 years old, and poverty is due entirely to laziness. Climate Catastrophe SOLVED!

And because of this he’s earnt a state dinner with DON. 

Rupert’s boy in Australia, on the floor of parliament with  the “Fixer”.

And if you didn’t know, currently the most unifying issue that unites all Australians is not drought affected farmers broken by climate change. Nor the death of every species of coral on the Great Barrier Reef . Nor the mangroves of the upper north, the kelp beds, the forests and the artesian basin give freely to Adani.  But…… you guessed it: Franking Credits. 

And In Canada, big oil will save the planet, by ignoring climate change as a NON ISSUE. 

Only New Zealand fails to see the benefit of ignoring climate change. Clearly Lord Rupert of Murdoch nedds to do some heavy lifting there, cos if it aint fixed yet by the right kinda people its broke!!

So join with us in HATING the EU. It has only given us peace in Europe, fair trade between countries, and massive subsidies to English farmers, who’ve never had it so good. Fuck Business, if it’s any ‘foreigners’ business and keep the profits, at home where they belong to people of vision like Boris who can tell the Europeans to FUCK OFF!

And then just as quickly before you can say Suez Crisis, “hey, youse guys we need your help with these Iranians”, beg the EU to help you out.  … 

Contemporary western politics is an irony free zone. We are living in the “Hubris-cene”

Rupert, Lord of Murdoch has given us 1984 as a consumerist dystopia. And only lazy no good losers complain. And the west is richer for it. 

Rupert and Donald, A bromance made in heaven. A question of who made who is immaterial.

That’s what Franking Credits do to ENRICH US!

And with a bit of luck when the dust blows over there’ll be some good deals coming outta Hong Kong, once the government has dealt with malcontents. Cos human rights is lefty bullshit! And big business will FIX IT! Only Big Business has the expertise, (as so nobly demonstrated in the Banking Royal Commission) to deny EVERYTHING! 

And that’s what you need to maintain stability, and tackle climate change HEAD ON!

Cos it’s too big to worry about anyway, and in the end it’s the lefty’s fault. And lefty’s only know one thing, whether it be Hong Kong, Adani Protesters or executed Russian Activists. Their delusion is they hope for a principled world of higher instincts of ethics and humanity.

 And how to cause TROUBLE!

And in the end, Rupert Lord of Murdoch, knows that the lower instincts, of greed, short -termism and money will always win. 

Lord Rupert of Murdoch. Always gets the results because he knows what we really want.

And sadly, for all the rest of us,  he’s right.

Sometimes it’s flaming difficult keeping pace with worthy issues in the Australian political cycle. Very difficult to choose which tops the list. Is it Adani wanting the names, addresses, and blood type of scientists involved in the Murray Darling Basin? 

“Mateship”. The great Australian tradition at work…(even when you’re not really working)

Or is it the good work done by whatever they call the current parliamentary committe that pretends to look into rorts to ensure the  improper dealings of Christopher Pyne or Julie Bishop are cleansed. So that they can get plum sinecures with lobbyists linked to their former portfolios after leaving parliament with whopping great 350 k annual pensions?

Which part of the conundrum do you not understand?

Is it the  private company who gets an unlimited use of groundwater in the most severely drought affected part of Australia, unlimited so that taxpayers can pay them to fuck the continent up and with it our last natural assett? 

The Great Artesian Basin…. So that it may go the way of the Great Barrier Reef!!!

Or is it the pollies who talk of double standards and vested interests, and codes of conduct who then wantonly abandon them in pursuit of more money and more wealth at the expense of taxpayers and good governance?

Good governance you may ask?

Yes indeed, wasn’t it  Cicero who spoke of that crazy lefty stuff in the dying days of the last republic?  And you’re confused, cos we’re a constitutional monarchy!

deluded baby boomer not equipped with a contemporary understanding of how politics works

Well you’re wrong. 

Course Pyne and Bishop deserve the extra cash and the conflict of interest paid for by us. Cos that’s what those on top do. And Mr Adani is quite right to question government servants. Cos that’s what big business does. 

And you, dear reader are quite right to sit back into your apathetic sludge and say ‘tisk tisk’, cos that’s what the public wants and deserve as a right. 

Objectivity is a dirty word.. And it confuses the be-jeeesus outta us. We just dont get a look in. We’ve tried reality tv, and we’ve tried instagram, facebook and whatever else contitutes socal meida, and it just makes us feel more hollow. 

Is there an antedote?

Is there a cure?

Is there hope?  

Good thing the permafrost is melting, 

Great that the Amazon is being cleared faster than you can say “Opal or Mascot Tower”. 

“Quis custodes custodiet” ( “who guards the guardians”), as Tacitus was wont to say.  

Who the fuck was Tacitus you may ask?

We owe so much to BOB! Set the ethical standards of contemporary politicians. Always had a many knack for having a “bob each way”.

And who knows enough Latin these days to save us in our moment of need, to tell us that since landing on the moon we aint gone backwards. 

The Man cometh

To save the earth from the forces of greed and stupdity, 

To save us fo the nihilism of Murdoch

To tame the beast in Trump

So HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!

Before you once again say “ Tahiti Looks Nice” and flit off to Bosnia, Bayreuth or North Carolina just stop and LISTEN!!!

Refute the climate catastrophists who would have us cowered in FEAR!

Refute Rupert who lives in fear and the power of FEAR ALONE!

The earth is not doomed

And there isa PLAN B

And his name is BORIS!

He is not a saint, not a mesiah, he’s just a very naughty boy,