5.30 on Channel 9’s “Today” show this morning opens with the headline story, “They’re here! More boats headed for our shores carrying potentially hundreds of asylum seekers and they could be here as soon as today!”, it’s Groundhog Day, I punch the mute button on the remote and wait for it to go away.
Lordy, lordy, won’t you help me please, for I was about 41 or 42 when this conversation about refugees became the Australia’s Cup of political footballs, and I am almost 53 today, and this conversation continues, and it surely does exhaust my tired ol’ mind sumfin’ awful and wearies my chalky ol’ bones to the marrow, yes’m, indeed it do, amen to that and praise this day.
For I have worn out my last pair of rubber underpants and peed my last panicked puddle of despair over the dire straits of it all, I can pee and squeal no more, I’m plum all peed and squealed out, looks like they’re here and they’re here to stay and they’re coming, more of them, every day, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of whacked-out dingbats in bomb-laden dinghies to blow us all to that great brick shithouse in the sky, fuck our sheep and fill our pies with felafel.
By God in the almighty heavens above our tender heads, it is a sad truth today that the fabric of our society is indeed a torn and ragged rag of a thing now.
Yes, Sweet Jesus, it is but a pair of ol’, piss-streaked y-fronts on the spindly and spotted frame of an 80 year old digger with its arse all hangin’ out to buggery, and the people of this fair land ain’t havin’ none of it no mo’, they’s a souffle of social unrest a-risin’ in the heartland, all angry cheese and righteous dustings of outraged flour over the changing state of this nation and these seemingly endless series of vile upheavals that have seen our shores swarm with murderin’ beards and their murderin’ ways, smokin’ hookahs and bakin’ flatbreads and those little jelly sweets that are dusted with sugary shit, I quite like those and I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth.
…
…
Sorry, where was I?
Oh.
Yes …
5.30 on Channel 9’s “Today” show this morning opens with the headline story, “They’re here! More boats headed for our shores carrying potentially hundreds of asylum seekers and they could be here as soon as today!”, it’s Groundhog Day, I punch the mute button on the remote and wait for it to go away.
Lordy, lordy, won’t you help me please, for I was about 41 or 42 when this conversation about refugees became the Australia’s Cup of political footballs, and I am almost 53 today, and this conversation continues, and it surely does exhaust my tired ol’ mind sumfin’ awful and wearies my chalky ol’ bones to the marrow, yes’m, indeed it do, amen to that and praise this day …
A rather pathetic individual has taken it upon himself to inflict damage to other individuals who had done no damage to him.
The justification for his actions, or so he would present them, are largely cultural and political and ideological, and he would like us to realise, he insists that we realise, that his actions have some underlying meaning, that we must understand what he is telling us, and that his actions, drastic as they may have been, were the only way, or one way at least, to compel us to listen.
Yes.
Yes, of course, I will stop what I am doing, I shall cease believing in what I believe, I shall discard my political and ideological and sociological convictions, all of which lean distinctively to the “left”, and I will do so simply because you have demanded that my attention, and the attention of the world, be paid you, and you will squeal like a child if it is not.
Or, perhaps, you will blow us all up.
No one wants to be blown up.
Therefore, I guess, you win.
No.
It really isn’t that easy.
It is curious that commentators are now commenting upon this individual and his actions as if they represent a thing, a movement, beliefs, a system of some sort, and that this thing is a bigger thing than it is, and indicative of some wider malaise threatening to riot throughout the modern world, and that the thing itself is to blame, the individuals merely misguided messengers, and so it must mean this, and so it must mean that, and so it must mean something other than what it is, for it cannot be simply what it is, for what it is is far too banal an excuse or reason for such outrageous carnage.
Listen … A serial killer is not a hyper-intelligent mastermind of infinitely novel and murderous invention, as innumerable Hollywood cinematic fantasias would represent to us.
A serial killer needs to cut someone’s throat because it’s the only way they can get their dicks hard, that’s all.
There’s not much more to it than that, really.
And a “spree” killer, such as the individual who is currently haunting the headlines throughout the known world, is just another dickhead with a gun.
This dickhead, like every other dickhead with a gun before him, and like every other dickhead with a gun that comes after him, has wrapped his emotional infantilism, his intellectual inadequacies and immaturity in a flag he thinks is a clubhouse, given his “clubhouse of one” a stupid name, and gone shootin’ to teach the world a lesson.
Because.
Because we weren’t paying him the attention he felt he deserved.
Because we weren’t reading what he wrote.
Because when he spoke, we all moved to the next table.
Because those girls didn’t want to fuck him, they thought he was creepy.
Because no one ever asked him out for coffee.
Because no one gave a fuck about his weekend.
Because he couldn’t get a “friend” on Facebook.
Because and because and because.
And so on.
But.
This dickhead, like every other dickhead with a gun before him, and like every other dickhead with a gun that comes after him, represents NO wide political ideology, no religion, no creed, no colour or culture.
Hell, this dickhead doesn’t even represent the multitudes of other dickheads out there, most of whom can safely be let alone to sit in a puddle of their own urine somewhere, picking insects from their pubic hair and shouting conspiracies at the radio.
No, this dickhead was just another dickhead who thought it was all about him, and that it should be all about him, but nobody agreed with dickhead, so dickhead got mighty pissed about that and got himself a gun and went shootin’.
I’m 22, it’s 1981, I’m still living with my parents – GODDAMMIT! – and home from work, I hoover up my dinner, change and then jump in my car and head to Parramatta to see the band.
Some random dive of a venue, bands during the week, disco-shit on the weekend; dark, dank RSL carpet so sodden through to the underfelt each step threatens to suck your boots into the floorboards, tattered red flock wallpaper, tarnished silver trim fittings and mirrored columns, a semi-permanent haze of stale cigarette smoke and polyester sweat, I barrel into the room, all eyeliner and attitude and start straight to the bar for the first gin and tonic of the night. There’s about thirty people, the support act’s already well into their set and nobody’s paying them any attention at all, they’re just a momentary inconvenience to be endured for another fifteen, twenty minutes is all and I clock a couple of scowling disco dickheads in too-tight sateen shirts with collars the size of albatross wings and tight white flares buttoned at the navel and think, “The fuck are they are here for, they lose a mirror ball?”
I grab a drink, and after a few minutes my attention is drawn to the sound of what seems to be an argument over the other side of the room, specifically the words, “WELL, FUCK OFF THEN! GO ON!FUCK OFF!”, spoken by a girl in a Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, leather mini and fishnets, the object of her ire some nondescript doofus in a duffle coat, about forty badges pinned to the lapels, who spreads his arms out at his sides, palms up, in a “What the fuck have I done?” gesture, after which both engage in a dumb-show of all manner of furious gestures for several more minutes until doofus trails off out the room dejectedly, leaving Siouxsie looking daggers at his shoulder blades, her head shaking in what appears to be exhausted exasperation.
Then the bass-player and his girlfriend and the singer in the band I’m there to see front up at the bar, the singer waves, shouts, “ROSS!”, and I say, “HEY!” and shove an envelope of a half dozen eight-by-tens I’d taken a couple weeks before at him, saying “THERE’S A COUPLE THERE I THINK ARE PRETTY GOOD!” and he takes a look, saying, “GREAT!”, and then he comes to the shot of his head and torso leaning into the microphone and bathed in fluorescent green light and says, “I LOOK LIKE A BIG SICK GREEN PENIS!” and we both crack up laughing.
“TAKE THEM!”, I say, because I don’t want to be dragging the things around with me the rest of the night, so he does, saying “SEE YOU AFTER!”, and the bass-player and his girlfriend and the singer all trail off to whatever passes for a dressing-room in this shithole, probably a toilet the size of a pencil case with walls covered in scribbly Texta scrawls of hairy testicles and vaginas and random phone numbers of random girls that not even the roadie for a drummer would ever consider ringing.
I get another drink, prop myself against a wall and wait for the band; every suburb, every pub, music almost every night, no fucking pokies, and the only television, if there was one, a dodgy black and white 15 inch with shitty reception on brackets up high on a nicotine flavoured wall, the public bar full of bandy-legged, sunken-chested old farts hunched over an infinite beer, rheumy eyes glaring redly and resentfully at the steady influx of all these pretty things, these dandy young faggots in black jeans and ripped shirts and stupid hair coming into their pub with all this faggot music, their slutty girls, and they’d punch them all to oblivion if they had a functioning muscle left in their sagging, sandpaper-skin arms and were only a few years younger, but they just go back to their beer, brains so soaked they can’t hold a coherent thought for more than a few minutes these days, back to dreaming of a fantasy blowjob from Good Old Cheryl, 48 years old, 30 of them spent behind the bar, they wish she could bang them about their hairy ears forever with her tits, even though her breasts have turned the size and shape of drained and dried zucchinis , yet all she ever dreams about is getting the fuck home to her cat and a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, maybe there’s a late movie to lull her off to a decent night’s sleep, she needs a thirty minute shower every night to scrape the grime of the day off.
Support band’s finished, Sammy the light and sound guy has shoved some music on – LOUD! – Ultravox before Midge Ure turned them all into a flock of poncing romantics, some Magazine maybe.
I grab another drink, drain it, and then another, then the girl in the Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, all spiky black hair and Chrissie Hynde pout walks over to me, a little unsteady on her feet and she shoves her face in my ear and shouts over the din of the music, “I’VE SEEN YOU BEFORE! WHAT’S YOUR NAME?!”, and I tell her, and she shouts at me, “YOU’RE COMING HOME WITH ME!”, and she prods me in the chest with her finger.
“WHAT?!”, I shout back, “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
“I’M LUCY!!”, she yells at me, “YOU’RE COMING HOME WITH ME!”, and she pokes me again, a poke with each word.
“WHY?!” I yell back, genuinely befuddled on account of I went to an all boy’s school and don’t have sisters and I’d only lost my virginity two years before, so whenever a woman spoke to me about pretty much anything back then, befuddlement was the most natural response I could muster.
“BECAUSE I’M PISSED AND I’M HORNY AND I WANNNAFUCKYOUTILLYOURHEADFALLSOFF!”, she shouts back, running all her words together, and poking me again with her drink.
“OKAY!”, I shout back with a shrug, because I don’t really know what else to do and I’m not looking for any trouble.
And then I hear the bass-players’ girlfriend shout “ROSS!”, and she ambles on over and shoves her face in my ear and shouts, “DO YOU WANT A COUPLE OF THESE?!”, and she pulls a blister-pack of pills out of her purse and shoves them at me, they’re diet pills, speed.
“OKAY!”, I shout back, and take a couple, and then Lucy shouts at the bass-players’ girlfriend, “CAN I HAVE A COUPLE?!”, and the bass-players’ girlfriend shouts “SURE!”, and shoves the blister pack at her, and asks her who she is, and she tells her.
“I’M GONNA FUCK HIM TILL HIS HEAD FALLS OFF!”, gesturing at me and I shrug, and then the bass-players’ girlfriend shouts back, “GOOD IDEA!” and then she shouts at me, “ROSS! CAN WE GET A LIFT BACK AFTER THE GIG?!”, and I shout back, “OKAY!”, and then I start to the bar and Lucy shouts, “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING?!” and I say, “I’M GETTING A FUCKING DRINK!”, and she says, “I WANT A BACARDI AND COKE!” and I say “OKAY!” and I buy her one and bring it back, and then Sammy the sound and light guy comes over to say hello and do I want to take a look at the eight hundred dollar tape deck he’s just bought and I do so we both go up to the sound desk for a gander and he tells me all about it and I say, “I WANT ONE!” and then he asks me, ‘WHO’S THE GIRL?” and I say “HER NAME’S LUCY! I THINK SHE’S CRAZY!”
“GREAT!”, he says, “FRIDAY! YOU COMING?”
“OKAY!”, I say, and then I start to the bar for another drink before the band begins and go back up the front of the room and Lucy dogs me, asking “WHERE’S MINE?” and I say, “I JUST GOT YOU ONE!” and she says, “WHERE’S YOURS?” and I say, “I FUCKING DRANK IT!” and she says, “SO DID I! I’M FUCKINGTHIRSTY!” and I say, “OKAY!” and I wander back to the bar muttering “Fuck me dead!” under my breath and I get her another drink and bring it back and then the band starts, the buzz has kicked in from the pills, and about a dozen of us break out bustin’ moves on the floor so carefully studied in furiously uncoordinated finger jabs, jumps and head pops it makes Peter Garrett’s dance stylings look like classically choreographed balletic grace on mandrax.
Seventy, eighty minutes later, exhausted, exhilarated, soaked through with sweat and stone cold sober, the band’s done and I’m heading back to the bar for a drink when Lucy grabs me on the arm, spins me around and says, “I WANT A BACARDI AND COKE!” and I say, “OKAY!” and I go get her one, and then we have another and then the band come out, the singer comes over, says to me, “ROSS! CAN I GET A LIFT BACK WITH YOU GUYS?” and I say “OKAY!”; the guitarist and the drummer are going with the van, I get the other three and Crazy Lucy.
Down and out of this place and into the car, the roads are damp from a light drizzle of rain, I punch a tape in the player, turn it up and we go, back to the city, civilisation, fuck these suburbs, they all suck donkey dick, we’re young and we’re cool and we’ll all live forever and if our heads were stuck any further up our own arses our navels would flap each time we drew breath.
Bugger all traffic, I’m under the speed limit taking it easy, everyone’s talking, winding down, and the singer and the bass-player ask me what the fuck is it on the tape, it’s good, what is it, and I say, “Suspiria! The soundtrack, you know the Argento movie? They’re called Goblin, they did “Dawn of the Dead” too, it’s fucking fantastic this music, I’ll make you a tape!”
“Great!”, they say, and I say “Okay!”, and I come to a curve in the road, hell, it’s not a curve, it’s a gentle lean to the left, a nudge to the steering wheel, it’s barely even noticeable, and I come to it and nudge the wheel just so, and then …
Steering wheel locks.
Freezes.
What?
Hello?
What?
The fuck?
Oh.
My car begins to spin, it spins on the spot, it spins and spins, right there, in the middle of the road, it just spins, and this ain’t ever happened before, this is most definitely a new thing, and as open as I may have been back then to new things, I’m not sure that this is a good new thing – NO – it most definitely does not seem that.
And my car is a carousel and we are the horses, ‘round and around, up and down and around, it’s a night at the fair and the streetlights are firecrackers, fairy dust, fairy dust, who’s got the fairy floss, where is the lever, pull the lever, the lever, and if this is a movie, then where’s the director?
Someone yells.
And someone says, “FUCK!”
Then, “OH, SHIT!”
And, “HANG ON!”
Backwards now, across three or four lanes, up and over the divider, another three or four lanes, on the kerb now, the footpath, and into a fence.
Made of bricks.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
“I GOTTA GET OUT!”, someone says.
“FUCK ME DEAD!”, someone else.
“SHIT!”, from another.
“MY FUCKING CAR!”, from me.
Everyone gets out.
I go around to the back, to the boot, it’s where the engine is, it’s a Volkswagen, there’s a dent is all, just a dent, but the brick fence is a pile of rubble, for this was when cars were made of COLD-HARD-STEEL, not the pussy-sucking tin foil they’re made of today, so that’s all okay then, and the singer and the bass-player and his girlfriend and Crazy Lucy are still trying to figure what the fuck just happened, and if it had happened only a couple hours earlier when the roads were crowded, we’d all be deader than Steve Fielding’s brain, but it’s one a.m. in the morning on a weeknight in the 1980’s and we’re alive.
“Mate,” asks the singer, “can I have a cigarette?”
“I didn’t know you smoked”, I say and give him one.
“Just for now,” he says, and everyone mills around aimlessly for a few minutes, quietly ejaculating various muttered expletives of wonderment and shock and surprise and awe and trying to pull our shit together, fireflies for stars, the road a greasy rainbow of damp, but we really gotta get out of this place, we gotta get out of this place now, before someone in the block of flats whose fence we just killed wakes up and calls a cop, so we all pile back into the car, what else can we do, I turn the key in the ignition and when it starts, the singer says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” and I say, “It’s a Volkswagen! I LOVE this car! You couldn’t kill this thing with a wrecking ball the size of Mars!”, and I tell him how the mechanic at the garage who did the last service on it asked me what the hell had I done to it and I’d told him, “Nothing! I bought it for fourteen hundred bucks at Flemington Markets in 1976, one owner!”, and he offered me two thousand for it and I just laughed and said, “No way, mate!”, and then I pull it back onto Parramatta Road and head to Bondi, back to the bass players’ flat to have a relax and a calm down with a bottle of gin between us all and a reefer or three.
(Yes, I know what you’re all thinking, and you can shove it.)
A bottle of gin and a reefer or three later and a spin of The Residents “Eskimo” album – limited edition white vinyl, gatefold sleeve, TAP YOUR FEET TO WIND!, it’s about four a.m. in the morning and Lucy says, “Let’s go, it’s late!” and I say, “Okay!”, and we take our leave and go out to the car, my killer of fences, and I ask her where I have to go and she says, “North Bondi, down here to Campbell Parade, I’lltell you what to do!”
“Okay!”, I say.
And she did.
I’m very pleased to be able to report that while my head didn’t exactly fall off, it most definitely got a rattle on.
A gerbilist is an erstwhile journalist whose prime modus operandi is to load each and every “article” they write with links to other journalists with whom they agree on pretty much everything and who, in turn, agree with them. Gerbilists do not generally quote from, or link to, those journalists who pose a contrary point of view to their own.
Gerbilists produce “gerbilism”, a style of abstract typing that, when recognised, immediately puts the reader in mind of brown noses, small furry animals wrapped in duct tape, ferris wheels and speech impediments.
Example No.1–
The gerbilist praises itself for finding another gerbilist in agreement, and says as much …
Gerbilists are like the Human Centipedes of news media, forever defecating in each other’s cakeholes and then chewing with their mouths open in public.
The film was refused classification to be distributed in any form in the U.K. citing the following reasons (take a deep breath now) –
“This new work, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), tells the story of a man who becomes sexually obsessed with a DVD recording of the first film and who imagines putting the ‘centipede’ idea into practice. Unlike the first film, the sequel presents graphic images of sexual violence, forced defecation, and mutilation, and the viewer is invited to witness events from the perspective of the protagonist. Whereas in the first film the ‘centipede’ idea is presented as a revolting medical experiment, with the focus on whether the victims will be able to escape, this sequel presents the ‘centipede’ idea as the object of the protagonist’s depraved sexual fantasy.
The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims. Examples of this include a scene early in the film in which he masturbates whilst he watches a DVD of the original Human Centipede film, with sandpaper wrapped around his penis, and a sequence later in the film in which he becomes aroused at the sight of the members of the ‘centipede’ being forced to defecate into one another’s mouths, culminating in sight of the man wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the rear of the ‘centipede’. There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience. There is a strong focus throughout on the link between sexual arousal and sexual violence and a clear association between pain, perversity and sexual pleasure. It is the Board’s conclusion that the explicit presentation of the central character’s obsessive sexually violent fantasies is in breach of its Classification Guidelines and poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers.”
Director Tom Six responded to the BBFC’s move, stating –
“Thank you BBFC for putting spoilers of my movie on your website and thank you for banning my film in this exceptional way. Apparently I made an horrific horror-film, but shouldn’t a good horror film be horrific? My dear people it is a fucking MOVIE. It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can’t handle or like my movies they just don’t watch them. If people like my movies they have to be able to see it any time, anywhere also in the UK.”
I have not seen the first film and have no desire to, and this is simply because, as someone who regularly watches horror films, I want a horror film to scare the living shit out of me (so to speak), not make me reach for a fucking bucket or spend 90 minutes of my life going, “Ewwwwwww!”.
And I say this as someone who loves such fare as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Dawn of The Dead”, “The Walking Dead” and other such offerings, but the horror movie has most certainly come a long way since the relatively innocent days of “The Exorcist”, or “Rosemary’s Baby”, or “Carrie” or John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, and I find myself wondering whether the journey was worth it, considering the penchant of so many directors of horror films today to confuse “horror” with “gross-out” …
“Perversely, the harder these films try to shock, the less the suspense: it just becomes a catalogue of ick. And that makes it difficult to stay emotionally engaged enough to be afraid. Human Centipede plays on a previously little-considered fear of compulsory coprophilia, which is disgusting, sure, but not frightening. The plot of Human Centipede II apparently centres on a sexual sadist who becomes obsessed with a DVD copy of the first movie. Chance would be a fine thing – I was being paid to watch it, and I still dozed off in the middle. It’s a movie that climaxes long before it ends, and you can’t even go and get popcorn to cheer yourself up, as your pervading response isn’t crippling terror, but vague nausea. And no one ever heard a creak on the stairs in the middle of the night and was paralysed by the fear of feeling a bit queasy. It’s surely time horror became horrifying again, and not just gross.”
It’s obvious that Six intended his film to be viewed by a general audience, either in cinemas or direct to DVD, and so I question the BBFC’s assumption that any commercially released film (or at least, those intended for commercial release) could, or would, pose a threat to the mental health of its audience – it’s not as if anyone is going to be forcibly dragged from the streets into the cinema by a pack of feral ushers and tied to a chair, their eyelids propped open by matchsticks. And for those who freely choose to watch it who may be appalled or repulsed at what they’re viewing, they have a choice of (a) getting up and leaving, or (b) hurling their cookies into their bucket of popcorn and then leaving. Or just not turning up in the first place.
But I would also question, not Six’s point (no film or book or piece of music needs a point to justify its existence or creation), but his intent.
And if the intent is simply to present a graphic visual catalogue of the variety of ghastly horrors one human being may inflict upon another or others for no particular reason other than that, then what we have here is little more than an example of fatally flawed storytelling, flawed in that there is simply no “story” to be told.
Hence we wind up with a lazy screenwriter and a lazy screenplay, one that comprises nothing more than one concept, or one thought, that starts with just that and goes no further.
By denying the characters development as characters beyond merely victim and torturer, we, as audience members, are also denied any opportunity to empathise with them, to form any relationship whatsoever, to involve ourselves, to care. And it would also seem, going by the BBFC’s summation above, that are we also being denied any sense of conflict within the characters themselves, that the obstacles that should typically prevent these characters from reaching their desired goals (however unpleasant they may be to us), and the ways and means by which they must overcome these obstacles, we have also been denied drama itself (for the drama arises from said conflicts and obstacles), and if there is no drama, what is it that is supposed to hold our attention for the duration?
Six defends his film as “art”, and yet if it is to be regarded as “art”, the absence of such vital ingredients necessary for a cohesive dramatic narrative would appear to relegate it to the realms of video installation exhibit in a gallery somewhere, around the corner from Tracy Emin’s “My Bed”, or Serrano’s “Piss Christ” or Mike Parr’s documentations of self-mutilation.
As for the whine about “spoilers”, finding out that a character wraps barbed wire around his prick in order to rape a woman is not exactly a plot revelation up there with the concluding moments of “The Usual Suspects” or “Psycho”, and given the nature of the behaviour that this character has (apparently) exhibited thus far, probably wouldn’t raise so much as an eyebrow at this stage in proceedings.
Many reviews of Six’s first film (both from critics and viewers) dismissed it as “dull”, that most heinous of cinematic sins, and if it is so, then there can only be one culprit and one only – the script.
Writing a script is hellishly difficult at the best of times. That tantalising brain fart that popped one’s frontal lobes in the dead of night, that seemed so fresh, so original, so promising, will, more often than not, turn out to be little more than an unsustainable and insubstantial few pages of sound and fury, signifying nothing and with nowhere to go and fuck all to offer, a squealing flatline of stillborn celluloid. Ideas are easy. It’s doing something with them that’s hard work.
(I understand that all of the above is nothing more but mere assumption on my part, and rather arrogant assumption at that, given that I’ve seen neither film and probably won’t, so this is offered not as “criticism” as such, as it is food for thought or a beginning point for further discussion.)
Banning a film in this digital day and age is a rather futile and impotent act of bureaucratic interference anyway, given that anyone in the United Kingdom who may want to watch the film could, armed with the right knowledge and tools, very simply download the thing (as I understand it, it has already been classified for straight to DVD release in Australia), so this makes the BBFC’s decision more than a little baffling, to say the least …
“Examiners do sometimes admit to feeling shellshocked at the weekly gathering. “It’s not the hardcore pornography and violence,” said the insider. “It’s children’s DVDs – having to watch five hours of Ivor The Engine.””
I heard on Wednesday morning that there had been a “softening” in the housing market, a “weakening” if you will, a “slump” if you’d prefer, a “downward trend” perhaps, a “depression”, that the “bubble has not burst, but is looking a little shaky”.
In the small, bog-ordinary, late ‘80’s style (which means no style whatsoever) block of six flats I currently live in (renting), the flat across the hall from mine sold last year for half a million bucks.
If it were to go on the market now, I presume that this “easement” of home prices at 0.3% would mean that it would sell for a whopping $1500.00 less.
From $500,000.00 to $498,500.00.
My heart bleeds for the vendor.
It’s a 2 bedroom flat.
It’s the same size and layout as mine, 2 bathrooms, one of which is an ensuite, the other doubles as a laundry. It’s kitchen is a kitchenette, which means more than one person at a time, there’s a crowd. From the balcony, you get a view of the block of flats across the street and if you turn your head to the right you get a view of the block of flats next door. Turn your head to the left, and you’ll see me on the balcony smoking a cigarette and scowling at you.
On a clear day, if you turned your head to the right, you might get a view of someone in the block next door shaving their armpits in the shower, because you can see straight through their bathroom window.
I wonder if that counts as “water glimpses”?
For real water glimpses however, wander about four blocks down and have a gander at the storm water channel on steroids known as the Brisbane River.
On the way back, stop in at the local pub, a big barn of a place that’s been renovated in such a fashion that all traces of style, history and character have been eradicated from it, a style I refer to as “airport toilette”. You can pay five and a half bucks for a schooner of basic beer, and thirty bucks for a 250g steak and a small fistful of salad while you’re there.
After which, you can take a relaxed stroll through the delightfully eclectic, village-like atmosphere of the shopping centre medium-sized, arse-ugly concrete shopping mall, grab a five buck bottle of cleanskin chardonnay from Liquorland, go home, get drunk and then put a bullet in your head because you’ve just realised that forking out a half million bucks for a bloody flat makes you a fucking moron.
In 1983, when I was 24 and earning about 23 or 24 grand a year as a royalty clerk for a record company, I rented a one bedroom flat in Kirribilli for 68 bucks a week. It was a nice, tidy, older style place, close to everything, no views to speak of, but you only had to go outside the block and look down the street for those, and when the owner told me he had decided to sell up a couple years later, I asked what he thought he might get for the place.
He replied, “Oh, about 65 or 70 thousand, they tell me”.
I was only young and single and had no desire to hook myself into a home loan for several decades, but I could easily grasp the amount as a realistic one and potentially achievable in terms of what I was then earning, certainly a lot of money at the time to fork out, but not an impossible ask.
About 4 years worth of my then annual gross salary, compared to about 12 times now for the 2 bed ratbox across the hall.
I recently spied a “studio apartment” for sale in Kirribilli for 270 thousand.
A studio apartment is real estate speak for “bedsitting room”. Typically, they’re about the size of a linen cupboard and the kitchen comprises a portable two-plate gas-burner and a bucket hung off a tap for a sink. The main selling point for this particular place appeared to be the presence of a balcony which was only slightly larger than a shoebox.
“The number of new home sales recorded in April grew by just 0.2%, according to the latest figures from the Housing Industry Association.
The HIA’s figures found detached house sales increased by 0.4% with gains in New South Wales and Victoria, while sales fell in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. Multi-unit sales recorded a third consecutive decline by 2%.
HIA chief economist Harley Dale says the result is evidence of an industry suffering under red tape and supply constraints.”
I’d say it’s also evidence that a great many people, certainly those in their 20’s and 30’s, simply couldn’t be bothered anymore attempting to hitch the wagon of their lives to an impossible mortgage that would have them living off tomato sauce and crackers for thirty years and have just given up.
Now, typically at this point in any conversation about the price of real estate, some dreary cunt will pop their head from the murk to gibber at all and sundry about how “they’ve managed to buy a house, they’ve bought three, and that’s because they worked hard, they worked really, really hard, harder than anyone else and certainly much harder than you, and they saved their money, they saved it all, and they ate beans from a can for twelve years and wore the same pair of underpants every day for a decade, whereas these days, these young people, they spend all their fucking money on plasma televisions and iPods and having fucking beers with their friends on a Friday fucking night and then they go and waste more fucking money on a fucking kebab with the fucking lot the indulgent fucking cunts and yes you can fucking buy a fucking house I did it why can’t you fucking do it it’s because you’re a lazy fucking goose that’s why it’s because you’re a lazy fucking goose and it serves you right you fucking farting fucker.”
And typically at this point in the conversation, after belting said dickhead upside the head with a mallet about forty times, you point out to said dickhead that,” Yes, you did manage to buy three, but you bought the fucking things in 1988 or thereabouts, dickhead.”
After which, you belt dickhead upside the head with a mallet again.
By that measure, the two bedroom ratbox across the hall from me was actually worth about 220K when it sold, and that sounds about right for what it is, which is exactly the same as the one I’m renting, and the one I’m renting ain’t nothin’ special, believe me.
You pay 56% more for a thing than it’s worth, you are a fool.
And those real estate spruikers and advisors and investors who expect you to pay 56% more for a thing than it’s worth are little more than the Limehouse Chappies and Ocean-Liner Al’s of today in modern dress shilling a Big Con, a Sting of wondrous dimensions, and it’s about time to tell these Gondorff grifters and shysters to take their overpriced shoeboxes and over-dramatic gibberish about how everybody needs to buy a house and buy NOW! NOW! NOW! just to get into the market before it’s too late and you wind up a third-class citizen because you only rent to shove it all up their backsides and go take a flying fuck at the moon, because interpreting an “easement” of 0.3% as a “slump” of any sort and touting this as “news worthy” is complete and utter bullshit.
Someone did pay 500 grand for that unit across the hall from me.
I am watching a “report” on the news, not because of any specific interest in the “report”, but simply because the news is on and I am watching it and the news comprises “reports” on all manner of shit.
I feel that my mind is slowly being clusterfucked into a piss-streaked gloopy puddle of dead, gelatinous jism by a persistently noisy gaggle of gibbering dickheads, all of whom regularly feel that their mere existence in this world upon which I stagger entitles them to poke their fingers into the slowly diminishing spongy spillage that is my brain and waggle them about some before scooping it up in a tissue and flushing it into the sea.
I imagine this scenario …
“Dad! Dad!”, shouts the excitable little boy in the ever-so-gorgeous Superman costume, “Can we go to McDonalds for dinner tonight?!”
“Why, of course we can son!”, replies Dad, all Brylcreem and respectable gray slacks belted at the nipples, he’s Fred MacMurray on steroids, he has a maid who cooks and cleans every day, she has folksy homilies on tap, you wouldn’t fuck her with a bag over your head via remote control even if you could.
“But only as a special treat, you mind! This is not a regular thing!”, says Dad, hitching his pants up to his neck and pulling the belt tight as it will go, a little spontaneous auto-erotic asphyxiation while junior’s washing his hands and poking about his earholes with a fluffy stick before a nice meal out never hurt anyone, whoopsy-daisy, there she blows!.
And then they arrive, and our excitable tyke rushes up to the counter and gazes longingly at the vast array of tempting comestibles on offer, all oozing, juicy meats and cheeses and buns and salt and sugar and stuff that bears no known relationship to any existing foodstuff but it’s served in fucking buckets TEN FEET HIGH! and our adorably innocent little boy scout supreme looks back at his Dad who’s now wandered up to the counter and joined him.
“Take your pick, son!”, says Dad, gazing adorably at the pride of his now empty old gray testicles.
And our cute as a button little fella, why you could almost take him home with you and chain him to a chair in a locked room that’s covered all over with dinosaur wallpaper and throw bloody big boxes of Lego at him until he cracks and agrees to be your son and help you hand out pamphlets at the abortion clinic for the rest of his life, he looks up at Dad, a little tentative, a little anxious, and then he blurts out the one true desire of his sweet young heart on this oh-so-special of nights …
Whilst on the topic of food, if you were as disgusted, upset and outraged by what you may have seen on ABC’s “Four Corners” last night as I was, the RSPCA”s official “Ban Live Export” site is here where you can sign a petition; GetUp have a petition here; and Animals Australia have a Facebook page here.
Dr. Temple Grandin: “No, this is clearly absolutely not acceptable for a developed country to be sending those cattle in there. And the thing that shocked me is a developed country built these really horrible facilities! And one of them was brand new and their name was all over the side of it.”
An office. A meeting room. A presentation to staff …
BEN: … And just briefly, while you’re all here, I’d just like to mention the new version –
JER: – It’s very good.
BEN: – It’s, yes, yes it is, and it’s been developed by us in conjunction with BCT Global –
JER: – They won an award you might re-, was it last year?
BEN: – Yes … Maybe. No, no, I think you’re right, it was the Brazil Society –
JER: – Yes, that’s right … I knew that. I thought I knew that. They’re very, very good –
BEN: – Those big picture solutions we were so passionate and insistent on? They … on a, on a …
JER: – There’s a narrative of resonant consistency within the – can you bring up the next slide? …
BEN: – The bigger picture –
JER: – A narrative that’s scalable from your back-end …
BEN: – You can bring anything into the landscape, there’s an intuitive circularity to the whole spectrum that’s just –
JER: – It’s incredibly resilient … up to the front end, you can see here, you can see what it’s doing here, depending on the volume –
BEN: – And there’s no limit on that.
JER: – No. None at all, we’ve managed to optimise a full facilitation of every conceivable touchpoint by fully integrating a top-down, client-driven approach to the landscape that ensures a level of granularity which conforms to the global regularity of systemic conform-, conf –
BEN: – It’s more of a reformation, I’d say, don’t you think?
JER: – What did I say? … Oh! Yes! Yes, that’s the word … That was the word I was chasing. Thanks.
BEN: – Okay.
JER: – Anyway. You can see, I’ll just, you can see the flexibility it provides, and I think you’ll find it –
BEN: – What we’ll do … I think, we’ll send you all the log-in details you need, … Will that …?
JER: – Sometime after lunch.
BEN: – Sometime after lunch. You’ll get the log-in, just use your regular password, and feel free to just have a look around, play with it, get familiar with the, with the, uh –
JER: – The circular intuitiveness of it will just –
BEN: – It’s very good. I think that’s the thing we’re most impressed by so far …
JER: – Definitely. Yes. Absolutely. By far.
BEN: – Anyway.
JER: – I think we’ll leave it there. Are there any questions?
BEN: – …
JER: – …
BEN: – …
JER: – …
BEN: – No?
JER: – …
BEN: – …
JER: – Right, then.
BEN: – Yes.
JER: – As we said …
BEN: – Anything you think we should look … just … anything to look into further… Well … well, we’ll leave all that up to you.
JER: – Yes. And thanks very, very much for your attention this morning everyone.
The federal government announces a policy. The opposition says the policy is bad, will ruin us all and we’ll be worse off than Haiti by lunchtime next Tuesday.
An increasingly partisan media chime in with a “Yay” or a “Ya-boo sucks” courtesy of a hyperactively rabid clutch of so-called “opinion” writers (my, there’s a talent – having an “opinion” – the world reels in awe), for whom “gotcha” moments and the barely-there policy brain farts of political pissants spell weeks and weeks of dramatic copy.
This is the current standard of what passes for political debate and discussion in this country. It’s the equivalent of saying “Your mother wears army boots and your dog smells”, but that’s about as good as it gets.
Now we have both government and opposition attempting to convince us all that there are vast zombie hordes of deliberately unemployed welfare cheats out there ripping hard-earned dollars straight from our poor little wallets, sentencing all of us “decent, hard-workin’ Aussie families” to a lifetime of deprivation and penury, while they, the unemployed, live life to the hilt with nary a care in the world.
The intellectual and ideological vapidity of the cliché-ridden mediocrities who now purport to represent us is such that, after 34 years of casting a vote in every state and federal election since I became eligible to do so, I will not be casting another.
I’ll turn up to get my name crossed off but, as far as the major parties are concerned, if this is the best the both of you have to offer, you know what you can do with your ballot paper from here on in.
After which, you can all just fuck off and die, the whole goddamn lot of you.*
*The author would like to apologise for the total absence of humour in this post. The author is in a snit.
I’m sitting outside the “gaming” room of my local pub, reading the paper and having a quiet drink. The ATM is nearby. Over the course of about thirty minutes, one guy comes out of the room four times to go to the ATM.
I think to myself, “How much money do they have to go to the ATM four times in thirty minutes?”.
……
Few years ago.
I’m inside the “gaming” room of the same pub.
My idea of “playing” a poker machine is to stick whatever dollar coins I may have in my pocket to see if I can win the cost of a couple beers back.
Mostly it doesn’t.
I shove a few coins in, staying standing, I won’t be there long. There’s a guy next to me. He says “Look” and I do, and he’s won a “jackpot”, about thirteen thousand dollars.
“Shit!”, I say, “Well done”.
My couple of dollars spent, I go to the bar, grab a drink and one of the papers they leave out for patrons, and go outside.
About twenty minutes later, I go back inside to return the paper (the “Courier Mail” doesn’t take long to read, believe me). The guy who won thirteen grand is still there, playing another machine, five bucks a spin.
……
Couple of years ago.
I’m in the “high-roller” room of a Gold Coast casino. A mate of mine makes in-house training videos for the Star City casino in Sydney, and he’s been asked to make one for this place and he’s asked if I’d like to be in it. “500 bucks for the day’s work and you get fed”, he says. “Done!”, I say, and then arrange to take a day’s leave from my “real” job.
You know what a “high-roller’s” room looks like?
A 150 buck a night motel room. At least this one did.
We’ve been assigned a couple of floor staff to look over us as we go about our business, make sure we don’t pinch anything.
“What is that worth?”, I ask one of them, pointing to a flat, embossed piece of plastic about the size of a slimline calculator under glass at a table.
“$50,000”, comes the answer.
“Shit”, I reply.
“These people”, I ask, “These people who spend fifty grand on just one bet. Do they actually enjoy it? I mean, are they having a good time?”
“They’re very serious about it. No. I don’t think they’re having fun. Not in the true sense of the word”.
“So what’s the bloody point?”
“They have money. That’s all.”
This video we’re making, it features a number of potentially troublesome scenarios that the casino floor staff need to be able to deal with. The woman who’s been playing for twelve hours straight and has soiled herself. The aggressive fucker who thinks a particular machine is his and his alone and abuses anyone who’s got it before him (that was one of my parts). The guy who’s trying to sell his mobile phone for a few extra bucks …
“Really?”, I ask the minder.
“Yes. Mobiles. Coats. Shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Yes. Shoes.”
“Shit”, I respond.
I tell her that a few months previous, I shoved a couple coins in a machine and it went on a roll and I ended up with three hundred bucks.
“That’s how it starts”, she replies.
“No”, I say, “I took the money and went shopping. Bought a new bathmat and some luggage. And an electric toothbrush.”
She laughed.
……
Christmas, last year.
I’m in Sydney, visiting the parents, catching up with some friends.
They live in Sydney’s south-west.
I go up to the local pub one morning about 11.30. It’s a shithouse of a pub at the best of times, and certainly one to be avoided at night. My father told me that one time in the 1970’s he saw a guy get beaten to death with a pool cue one night in this place.
I have to walk through the “gaming” room to get to the bar. There’s hardly anyone there. Ideal. A quiet drink and a read of the paper on a nice, warm morning.
I order a drink.
And then …
In the corner.
That’s the machine for me. It’s practically got my name on it.
This is the first pinball machine I’ve seen in a pub in maybe a decade.
And it’s been about that long since I’ve played one.
After two games, my 52 year old wrists feel like they’re about to crack in half.
And I have seven games left to play.
“This is how it starts”, I think to myself.
I play the seven games.
……
Last night. My local pub. Early evening. The “gaming room”.
I grab a beer, get a buck change, walk over to a machine and drop it in. Nothing.
I get a paper off the bar, take my drink and go outside.
A guy comes out.
“Winning?”, he asks, just making small talk while he has a smoke break.
“Not playing”, I reply.
“They’re bastards, those things”, he says, “that bloody Red Barron machine, mate, two hundred bucks, mate. Two hundred fucking bucks it got outta me. Fucking thing …”
They used to call them “one-armed bandits”.
Then they took away the arm, and called it a “game”.
He stubs out his cigarette, goes to the ATM, takes out some cash and goes back into the room.
Sometime last year I clocked a news item somewhere about a brand new type of instant foodstuff that had been introduced to the dear hearts and gentle people of the good ol’ U.S. of A.
This foodstuff was gifted to a grateful populace by the hard-workin’ and no doubt God-fearin’ folk of the K.F. of C, a fowl cookin’ establishment that was founded by a kindly old white-haired Colonel many years ago which went on to find fame and fortune throughout the entire world on account of a secret cookin’ recipe that involved a bunch of fancy spices and herbs and stuff, and this new foodstuff was called a “Double Down”.
This new foodstuff has now been introduced to the peckish populace that is Australia, all of whom are currently hotfootin’ their way to the nearest K.F. of C. to partake of its pickin’s.
It is known here as a “Double” and comprises two chicken fillets that have been dipped in some shit and deep fried and then used to sandwich a few strips of bacon and some cheese and an ejaculation of sauce.
It’s served in a cardboard holder, so you can keep your fingers from gettin’ greasy so as to keep your shirt and pants clean.
Now, I’d no sooner eat one of these unappetising looking things than I’d chew on my left testicle, but Lord Almighty, the arrival of this breadless assemblage of fowl, pig and cheddar has certainly upset some folk.
Why, you make a meal out of just one of these things it seems, your arteries will go harder than a porn star’s favourite tool of trade after forty tabs of Viagra, your heart will clog up like a sub-continental hostel toilet, and great big glistening globules of undigested fat will coagulate into an oily, rancid mass of greasy evil that will slowly ooze its way through your intestine into your bowel and make your farts smell like dead people and the next time you shit, your buttocks will be propelled from the seat with such a force that you’ll hit your head on the bathroom ceiling, crack your skull and fall to the floor dead, and the sewers of a city will be stuffed for months ever after.
Bugger your wars, your droughts, your famines, floods, your natural and unnatural disasters, your man-made horrors, rape, pillage, bugger all that.
Because it’s two slabs of fried chicken will kill us all.
Millions will suffer in infernal penury as a consequence, the remainder of their wretched lives to be spent sucking rancid spots of special sauce from the discarded wrappers of Happy Meal cheeseburgers, and Alan Jones is appalled, appalled, to have been kept waiting for an interview with this Lying Red SCUM QUEEN a whole TEN MINUTES after it was scheduled and, by God in Heaven and Christ on the cross and all that is holy on this earth and on the blessedly fluffy hereafter, we cannot have that, no, we cannot!
What does she mean when she says one thing at one point in time and something completely different at another? What does it mean when this Vacuous and Vicious Vile Vomitous Vixen has the audacity to even think she may match wits with the magnificent specimen of manly man that is the marvellous Mr. Jones and keep him waiting?
It means this …
“I am a politician.
“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will lie to you, I will steal from you, I will profess to giving a damn about you, even though I don’t actually give a flying fuck if you all die of cancer, I will dissemble and connive, I will make shit up and you will believe it, I will engage in all manner of scare campaigns to appeal to the basest natures of those type of squealing fuckwits who listen to commercial radio and think “A Current Affair” is a reliable source of news, I will think you are dumb enough to fall for simple-minded three or four word slogans because you always have before, and that is because a vast number of those people that we, as politicians, represent, whether as a local member, opposition leader or government leader from any political party, a vast number of our constituents are simple-minded retards with barely a brain cell in their cranium, let alone a tooth in their stupid heads.
“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will profess to care for the underprivileged, the frail of mind and body, the sick, the dying and the diseased, and I will be seen attending events on their behalf and I will speak with compassion and empathy and offer, on behalf of myself and my fellow travellers, our utmost sympathy and understanding to them, even though, in private, we, all of us, regardless of political party or ideology, we’d rather they were all taken out the back of a woodshed somewhere and shot through their useless fucking heads.
“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will try not to be too obvious about any of this, and you out there, the great unwashed masses of unthinking tuckshop-armed bogans and bowlegged boofheads in faded beer and b.o. branded t-shirts whose entire lives amount to little more than flitting from one childish, paralysing fear to another in screeching outraged hysteria because you all have the attention span of a bowl of fucking goldfish and there’s someone moved in down the street who has a deeply suspicious tan, you stupid cunts whom I have to pretend to be one with, to suck on your fucking sausage sandwiches at some crappy fete in some flyblown bumfuck town every goddamn election cycle, you stupid cunts come election time, you’ll vote for whoever the fuck promises to line your pockets with a little gold, no matter how little or how much, because you think it’s all about you, don’t you?
“Well, it isn’t.
“Because I am a politician, and like every politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, it’s all about me, it’s all about us, whatever name we choose to brand ourselves with, so fuck you with the sharp end of a stick, thank you very much.
“But what I won’t do, what I definitely will not do, like that other guy, and the ones who preceded him, like this guy, is kowtow to that fat cunt with a voice like a middle-aged castrato gargling sand who goes by the name of Alan fucking Jones and who thinks he’s the centre of the known and unknown fucking universe. Fuck him and fuck the gonorrhoeal donkey he rode in on.
“Because I am a politician, and like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, sometimes even we have limits to the things we’re expected to do in the course of carrying out our work.
“So you can take that sausage sandwich and suck the living fuck out it for all I care, darling.”
“The mail I am getting. And the mail I am not getting.”
“And your name?”
“Sharp. Ross Sharp.”
“Just a moment.”
…
…
“Mr. Sharp, how can I help?”
“Here are two letters that were in my mailbox yesterday. They appear to be bank statements or something of that nature. They are addressed to No.24. I live in a block of flats that is clearly identified on the outside as No.20.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Ah. No.20. A 2 followed by a zero. Which is a circle. Or an oval. A 4 is three straight lines. One is a vertical, one is a horizontal, and one is on a slant.”
“I’m very sorry, I’ll take …”
“Wait. I have been getting mail addressed to No.24 about a dozen times over the past twelve months. I came home once to find a bloody great parcel, a parcel wrapped in brown paper leaning against the security door of the block, the block marked No.20, and the parcel had been very clearly addressed to No.24. And there was another parcel, a smaller one, about a month after that. And then there’s the mail I have not been getting. Two credit card bills. An electricity bill. A letter from my parents. God only knows what else. Why? I do not know. This concerns me.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. It concerns me. Because I need to receive mail that is addressed to me. A lease. A bill. A drivers licence renewal. Things that pertain to me, my life, my identity. You are aware of identity theft, yes? Of fraud?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. And I suspect Australia Post, if this is anything to go by, is responsible for about 80% of it.”
“Well …”
“No. Wait. I am not a complainant. By nature. I do not like fuss. I understand the potential for human error in any job, in any situation. I can understand that. But this is becoming a habit. This is becoming a regular thing. And I do not understand how someone can confuse a zero, which is a circle, or an oval, with a 4, which is three straight lines. There are no straight lines in a zero. How can that happen? How can that happen on a regular basis?”
“Ah …”
“Is the person responsible for delivering the mail in this area, is this person a moron? Is this person numerically illiterate? Blind? Or in desperate need of an optometrist and a new prescription?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say, I don’t …”
“It is not my intention to make of your day a misery. I do not wish you ill. I simply desire to receive mail that has been addressed to me, and to not receive mail that is not. This is a simple request. This is the primary business that you are engaged in, that you should be engaged in. This and this alone, not selling fluffy bloody toys and “Made in China” Macguffins designed to occupy the desk space of dickheads for whom “Made in China” Macguffins have some significance, whatever that may be. This should not be a difficult ask. So. The thing. The thing here is this. Whoever it is who is responsible for delivering the mail in this area appears to be a flaming halfwit. And perhaps it might be a good idea to reassign this flaming halfwit to organise the fluffy toy and “Made in China” Macguffin displays that do so clutter up the floorspace here, and have someone who is in possession of a full set of functioning brain cells to deliver the mail instead. Yes? This is a good idea, yes?”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Sharp.”
“Yes. Yes. I can see that you are. I see that. Perhaps you may need to have a drink at lunchtime as balm for your woes, the woes that I have caused you, I would understand that, because if I were you, I certainly would because I would have the complete and utter shits by now.”
“I don’t have … um.”
“I need to leave now. I need to go to work. It is just that, on this occasion, after so many previous occasions, I felt compelled to bring this matter to your attention, as it is giving me the complete and utter shits, and I would very much rather it didn’t.”
“We’re standing here in Christchurch amidst scenes of utter, utter devastation and destruction … You would not believe it, it’s like something out of a Hollywood movie, and all about me, the people of this beautiful city appear to be in a state of … well … all I can describe it as, is shock, shock and horror at the damage that has been wrought, distraught at the friends and family that are missing, that have been injured, very possibly dead … Just behind me, rescue teams, Aussies, Kiwis, people that have been sent from around the world to lend a hand are bravely searching through the rubble for survivors, trying to recover the bodies of those who may have been killed by this most horrible of disasters, and some residents are … well, I’ve seen so many who are dazed, bruised, battered and bleeding, and don’t really know what to do with themselves … I just don’t know how to describe it, you can see, our cameras are … Excuse me, sir … Sir … Were you in Christchurch yesterday when the earthquake hit?”
“Wot?”
“Were you in Christchurch yesterday when the earthquake hit?”
“Yes. I was ‘ere. I was ‘avin’ a wander about, eh? I was ‘avin’ me lunch, eh?”
“And how did you feel when it happened?”
“Wot? WOT?! … How did you fink I felt? Eh? … How do you fuckin’ fink I felt? Eh? Like ‘avin’ a fuckin’ party? You fink I wanted to have a fuckin’ party, go for a fuckin’ dance, you takin’ the piss? You takin’ the Michael? No no no no no no no no no no no no, I’m not ‘avin’ it, that’s bollocks that is, that’s bollocks. What you think this is, the Wheel of fuckin’ Fortune, you just turn up for a bit of a peep about, make your dough and fuck off out of it, and ask a lot of stupid fuckin’ questions?”
“Bloody hell, I – ”
“Why you swearin’? I’m not swearin’, am I?”
“I –“
“Shut up, cunt. You got some fuckin’ neck, ain’t you, you got some fuckin’ neck. Who do you fink you are? King of the castle? Cock of the walk? Quite frankly, your attitude appals me. It’s not wot you’re sayin’, it’s all this stuff you’re not sayin’ … You really fink I’m gonna have that, ya ponce?”
“I didn’t mean to create a, a, a problem, Mr, Mr …”
“Logan. Don. Don Logan … Problem? Problem?! You’re the problem! You’re the fuckin’ problem, you fucking Dr. White honkin’ jam-rag spunk bubble, I’m tellin’ you, you keep lookin’ at me, you keep lookin’ at me and askin’ me stupid fuckin’ questions like “How do I feel”, how do you fink I fuckin’ feel, I’ll put you in the fuckin’ ground, promise you!”
“ …”
“ …”
“Um …”
“Shut up!”
“ …”
“I gotta change my shirt, it’s stickin’ to me … I’m sweatin’ like a cunt”.
Every three or four months, I visit a periodontist for some maintenance.
For what seems to me to be about an hour, one of these sadists will scrape, prod, push, scrape, scrape, prod, push and scrape about in my cakehole with their David Cronenberg inspired instruments of oral torture until my toes threaten to dislocate themselves from my feet and my spine contorts and arches in a fashion that would be quite impressive if I were a trapeze artist with Circus Oz.
And when this treatment is ended, I stagger, sweat soaked, from Ms. Mengele’s horizontal chair of terror to the front desk of this little shop of horrors to pay my debt, to pay what I owe for the privilege of having suffered so.
“That will be $200.00 today, Mr. Sharp”.
“Eftpos out of cheque, thanks”, I reply as I hand over my card, and then I glance at the time and realise that I have not been there for much longer than twenty minutes.
That’s ten bucks a minute.
Fuck me dead, he thinks to himself in quiet awe and amazement …
Seven survivors of the Christmas Island boat tragedy will travel to Sydney today to bury family members. Among them, Madian El Ibrahimy will bury his eight-month-old daughter, Zahra and Hussein al-Husaini will lay to rest his three-month-old son Sam.
Both men’s wives drowned, or are missing.
The opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, yesterday attacked the government for flying 21 detainees from Christmas Island to attend the Muslim and Christian funerals at Rookwood and Rouse Hill for victims of December’s horrific boat crash.
Family members of 12 of the victims live in Sydney and requested they be buried here.
But Mr Morrison said transferring detainees to Sydney raised security issues and showed the government ”doesn’t understand the value of the taxpayer’s money”.
As per my previous post, I managed to calm down sufficiently enough by lunchtime after reading Sady Doyle’s piece at Salon about John Boehner’s push to redefine rape to put a few brief words together and post them at Groupthink …
My penis has never been anywhere it wasn’t invited to go.
It’s a well-behaved penis, my penis is.
It doesn’t whip itself out at inappropriate moments and try to stick itself inside a girl just because a girl happens to be nearby.
That would be rude.
When I’ve been in a relationship, there were times when I’d felt like putting my penis inside the girl I was with and moving it around some, but the girl wasn’t up for it, so I didn’t. And sometimes, the girl I was with would want me to put my penis inside her and move it around some, but I didn’t feel like it. Sometimes, people would rather just get a good night’s sleep. Maybe read a book.
There’s some people though, they’d put their penis inside a woodpile and move it around some just on the odd chance there might be a warm snake inside.
UPDATE 04/02/11: Kristen Schaal with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (there’s “rape” and then there’s “rape rape” and then there’s “rape with benefits” ).
Over at Groupthink, Tongues analyses the work of the Herald-Sun’s gibbering “bloodclot” (John Birmingham’s word) Andrew Bolt …
Australia’s most incisive investigative reporter, social and media commentator extraordinaire, Mr. Andrew Bolt, receives over O!N!E! M!I!L!L!I!O!N! H!I!T!S A! D!A!Y! on his supremely successful online media presence, the imaginatively titled “Andrew Bolt Blog”!
How does he do it, you may ask yourself, you may indeed, yessirree, you may!
Wonder no more, I say, for enlightenment is what I offer you fine people and gentle folks today! Roll up! Roll up! And walk this way! For an elixir for all that ails you is on offer this fine day! (Children under 15 admitted free! Hooray! Hooray!)
And on a far more serious note, prepare to get very, very, very angry …
Here is Sady Doyle at Salon on John Boehner’s push to redefine rape … “And every survivor who finds herself in need of abortion funding will have to submit her rape for government approval.”
I’ve been thinking of doing a post on this … creature (Boehner and others of his ilk, that is) , but I think it might be wise to put a little distance between my current state of rage and some of the words I’m sorely tempted to use.
I got home from work in a filthy mood, a filthy mood totally unrelated to work (although there was one email I could’ve done without from some cheese-faced CUNT whose head I’d like to slam into a brick wall, split its eyelids with a toe-clipper and tear strips of flesh from its witheringly dusty, scabby skinned fucking body with a serrated vegetable peeler …)
…
I told you I was in a filthy mood.
So I get home in a filthy mood and I turn on the FUCKING TELEVISION SET!!! …
There’s this Jamie Oliver show on.
Something about cooking in 30 minutes, and I thought to myself, I thought, “I can do that. You put some rice in the cooker and heat up a curry, what’s so special about that, EH?”, I thought.
“You gammy CUNT”, I thought, “I’ll fucking have you your 30 fucking minutes, I can whip up a FUCKING CARBO-FUCKING-NARA IN FUCKING FIFTEEN, you can beat that I’d like to fucking see”, I thought to my myself, I fucking thought, I fucking DID.
And then I went for a piss and came back and he was “drizzling some olive oil” on a fucking thing.
What the FUCK is a “drizzle of olive oil” ‘cause every time I see some spatula and tonged-up CUNT ON A FUCKING COOKING SHOW “drizzle some olive oil” on a fucking thing, it always looks to me like they’re throwing about three fucking cups of the stuff over whatever the fuck it is which is usually just about every fucking thing, ain’t it, EH?
EH??
That’s not a FUCKING DRIZZLE, IT’S A FUCKING SOAK, YOU DENSE FUCKING CUNTS!
I thought to myself.
A drizzle is a light, spotty precipitation which can be rather pleasant and refreshing, if we’re speaking weatherwise that is.
A fucking downpour is something altogether fucking different now, isn’t it?
It’s not “The Perfect Storm” for fucking food, eh?
EH???
Now I’m looking at the television set again and he’s doing a thing with some tiny potatoes and some unpeeled garlic cloves in a pan and he’s pressing down on the spuds and all with a kitchen implement of some fucking sort.
And he pulls two cloves of garlic from the pan and takes them over to the chopping board, eh?
“Look at that”, he said, as he mashed some fucking garlic with a fork, “Isn’t that GORGEOUS?”, he said.
And I said, I said to the FUCKING TELEVISION SET I said, I said aloud, I fucking did, I said, “No, it FUCKING isn’t!! It’s just some MASHED UP FUCKING GARLIC, you STUPID, STUPID, FUCKING CUNT!!!”
And then I went for a piss after that and came back and put a curry on.
SMELLY TONGUES 
