I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”

“Andrew Bolt is Australia’s most prominent and controversial commentator. In this second book of columns and reflections, Bolt is again in the front lines of our most urgent political and social debates, from Islam and immigration to the green movement and the rise of the slacktivist. But he also reveals his more personal side – the experiences that have shaped his values and love for this country.”

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

“Macbeth” (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28), William Shakespeare.

LAUGHING GEAR

Once upon a time …

It is 1983 and I am 24 years old, employed and on a wage of about $20,000 gross per annum.

After a few brief and bootless assays at sharing flats with girlfriends (break up, move back to the parents, break up, move back to parents, repeat chorus), I decide I shall find my own place, me, myself and I, for I am a solitary man by nature, a misanthrope some would (justifiably) say, and yearn for a modest Fortress of Solitude that I may call my very own.

Eventually I do. A one-bedroom older-style flat in a small block of six.

In Sydney’s Kirribilli.

For $65.00 a week.

Yes. You have read that correctly.

After a couple years, one night there is rap upon the door, and it is the owner who regretfully (for I have been a good tenant) informs me he has decided to sell.

“Oh”, I say, and then, out of curiosity, I ask him, “How much are you selling it for?” and he responds, “The agent thinks I could probably get 65 or $70,000 for it. Why do ask? Are you interested?”

It is an amount of money I can grasp, I can understand, about four year’s annual salary, and yet, because I am a single man, with no desire to marry or have children any time soon, and barely a half dozen years out of school, the thought of being beholden to a debt for the next twenty or twenty- five years holds no allure.

At this point, you must understand, the national obsession with “property” had yet to evolve into what it has become today, an almost psychosomatic illness of avarice, of base greed. There was no stigma about renting back then, and a young man or woman could happily rent (at a reasonable cost) for as long as they liked, sow their seeds as they saw fit, party ‘til they dropped, before the thought of “settling down” with a partner, having children, whatever, became an attractive and desirable option to them.

However, we now find ourselves in a world where, as soon as you finish high-school and venture into the domain of adulthood, you can expect to be immediately assailed and assaulted by some dreary, sallow-skinned, dead-eyed, beef-necked knobhead from the world of finance, investment and real estate insisting you must immediately start planning for retirement and “buy, buy, buy!”, “now is the time to get into the property market, now, now, now!”, every day these shills, shysters, hucksters shriek, every day is the time, every week, every year, and “DON’T MISS OUT!”

Why wait until tomorrow when you can panic now and avoid the rush?

I digress.

I begin to look for alternative lodgings, and find myself in a suburb which shall remain nameless (think of skeletal blue-rinse ladies and small, yapping, snapping, fluffy white dogs; think of a zoo) in a concrete, sunless shithole for $90.00 a week, and then, after a year, $110.00, yet my wage has barely changed from what it was two years prior. To relieve this increasing burden upon my purse, I make the decision to seek out share accommodation, and spend the late 1980’s and all of the ‘90’s in same.

After seven years sharing a flat in Sydney’s inner west with three other people (and, frankly, having a ball most every night), the flatmates have found partners, they have paired off, and moved out to begin their lives together.

I have not.

I begin looking around for a new place to live, preferably by myself, (for I am now 40 years old), the same general area, as I work in the CBD, and somewhere close would be preferable, however, as I peruse the “To Let” advertisements, I realise this will not be possible, as the rents being asked now amount to over one-third of my monthly wage.

“I can’t afford that” I think, for my wage (still), has not kept apace with the rising cost of living.

I move to the N.S.W. Central Coast where the rent is affordable, and resign myself to a two hour commute each day, not exactly a gruelling hardship, but by the working week’s end, the only way anyone could get me on a fucking train over the weekend would be at gunpoint.

I stay there for almost five years, yet I have tired of the job I had at the time and seek out another.

I find one. In Brisbane, Queensland. I move.

There is a flat, a 30-minute walk to work, a 10-minute walk to the train station and shops.

$360.00 a week.

It is affordable to me, for, by this time, after 30 years of continuous employment, I have finally attained that magical, mythical status of “average wage earner”.

Can I have a “Hallelujah!”? Can I have an “Amen!”?

I am there for 10 years and 7 months, after which time, I return to Sydney, having been made redundant in February of this year. It was a job worth losing, and I was fine with that, as the last several years my mental health had rapidly deteriorated (Queensland will do that to a person, being Queensland), panic attacks, anxiety, depression and such; however, as the bartender in Billy Wilder’s “Irma La Douce” would say, “That’s another story”, and for another time.

4 or 5 years before this, the flat across the hall from mine, identical in size and layout, is sold.

For $500,000.

Yes. You have read that correctly.

I think to myself ,“Who in their right fucking mind would pay half a million bucks for a 2 bedroom flat?”

It has a view of the flats across the road, and the flats either side of it, its only difference from mine being wooden floorboards, and Miele appliances in the kitchen, the kitchen being the size of an en-suite toilet.

For a half-million.

Equal to over 8 times my then gross annual wage.

A half-million. Plus interest.

“BUY! BUY! BUY!”

Piss off.

And now, in this time, not that one …

On Channel 7’s “Weekend Sunrise” on Sunday, mortgage mogul John Symond, of Aussie Home Loans fame and fortune, was bemoaning, wailing, most shrilly, changes to the current negative gearing rort being proposed by the Australian Labor Party.

He warned of an “economic Armageddon” should these changes be implemented. He warned of the loss of 10’s of thousands, hundreds of thousands jobs lost. He spoke of “mums and dads”, and he spoke of them again. And again. And again. Ordinary, humble investors of modest means (mums and dads), they’re fucked, they’re done for, they’re in the toilet, losses of thousands upon thousands and thousands of dollars on their investment, mums and dads and dads and moms, the whole country, ruined.

This “negative gearing” thing, when I hear it spoken of, my eyes glaze over, my head aches, it gives me facial tics and Tourette’s, and it doth cause me to pirouette in dizzy circles, bark at shadows, and bite the heads off chickens, it maketh me squirt, it leaveth stains on my trousers, and sweat upon my furrowed brow.

Why, it was not that long ago, not long ago at all, that John Symond, owner of a 50 million buck mansion on the harbour with 5 toilets (I pass no judgement, I merely assume he has an extremely weak bladder) said this …

“Negative gearing wasn’t designed for people who can afford to go and buy $1 million, $2 million, $3 million houses or apartments for negative gearing to offset the bulk of their interest payment off their tax. So negative gearing does need to be looked at in the tax system because I don’t think it is fair at the moment. I think it leans very heavily to the high income earners and that needs to be brought into line, as is hundreds of other aspects of the tax system.”

And this …

“Two years ago when I went out and said listen, I believe property prices are going to drop five or 10 per cent, well, did I cop it from the industry players, from the real estate players. That doesn’t worry me. And if it means we cop a flat patch in our business, I’d rather long-term health that short-term pain.”

And …

“How can young people get into housing? I looked at statistics a couple of weeks ago and I was appalled. In Sydney alone there’s more than 100 suburbs where the average home price is $1-million. In Melbourne, 40 suburbs. Come on! You know, that is crazy. And what’s worrying me about the social impact, this is opening up the great divide of the haves and the have-nots.”

Which brings me to this …

If you are the type of man or woman, or young couple on an “average” wage and you are prepared to shell out upward of four or five hundred thousand bucks for a characterless, hastily built ratbox in a block whose foundations are most probably made with dodgy Chinese steel and electricals simply to get into the “market”, then you are a bloody idiot and you should be beaten about the head with a golf club repeatedly until you wake up to your stupid fucking self.

Understand?

If you are the type of person who is prepared to fall for The Big Cons peddled by the vested interests of the real estate, investment and banking industries, the scare campaigns, the bullshit, the lies which, if told often enough, you begin to take as truths, then you are a bloody idiot.

Lest we forget, the Global Financial Crisis was not sponsored by any union movement or members.

No.

It was sponsored by those aforesaid industries, no member of whom has, or ever will be, held accountable for it.

And so, I beseech you …

BLOW. THIS. BUBBLE. UP!

Pay no heed to this screed of greed, for all possessions, in the fullness of time, are lost.

If these grasping bastards are looking to you for a blood sacrifice, tell them to slit their own wrists.

As John Waters, of Hairspray fame said during the 2015 graduation speech at the Rhode Island School of Design …

“Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully. Design clothes so hideous that they can’t be worn ironically. Horrify us with new ideas. Outrage outdated critics. Use technology for transgression, not lazy social living. Make me nervous…. It’s time to get busy. It’s your turn to cause trouble.”

Can I have a “Hallelujah!”? Can I have an “Amen!”?

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

When I was made redundant last month after ten and a half years with the company, I did not spend the ensuing few weeks lurking and loitering outside the entrance to the office, scowling, sulking and skulking, singing my own praises to anyone entering on the off chance someone may take pity upon me and offer me my job back.

No. I did not.

To whom do you think I may be drawing a parallel?

/////// ?

SMELLY TONGUES will return in mid-April.

There will be blood.

And a t-shirt and a coffee mug.

DAS KAPITAL!

Thank you for your comments and for reading.

In the meantime, some of my most recent posts have been re-published on Australian Independent Media Network and for continued, informed and intelligent commentary on the rancid state of #AusPol, there’s always the Something Wonky podcast.

Until then …

Leben ist leben.

KRIEG IST KRIEG!

Abschied.

THE SILENT TONGUE

3.45pm, Tuesday, February 16, 2016.

I am called to a meeting with my manager who informs me that my position with the company has been made redundant. Some aspects of my work shall be outsourced, others taken on by remaining employees (of which there aren’t really that many left).

“Oh. Okay”. I reply, flatly.

I am provided with a “Deed of Release” which sets out the terms of my redundancy. I sign it.

By 4.30pm, I have left the office, walked home, and sit at the local pub, reading the days’ papers and drinking a Peroni.

Ten years and seven months. It’s over.

“Fucking brilliant!”, I text a few friends.

Then I think, “Shit, I have to move. Pack, clean, move. Organise things.

“Shit”, I think, “I’ll have to buy a computer”.

I’m still getting around to that.

Having never been unemployed before over 40 years of work, getting out of the habit is strange. There has always been somewhere to go, and things to be done, even if they were loathsome.

So.

That’s where I’ve been these past several weeks.

Sitting on the couch mostly. Thinking. Or, to put it more aptly, procrastinating.

Procrastinating about thinking. And so on.

In other news, it seems the country has come to realise that our “new” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has turned out a rather gammy little squib.

Aw, shucks.

A TINY TONGUE

All I want is a coffee.

I pay you. You make it. Give me change if change is due.

Don’t ask me how my day is going. It’s not “going” anywhere. It’s a day. There’s another one tomorrow.

Don’t make lame jokes like, “Do we look like a coffee shop to you?”, and then laugh at your own joke. Did you see me smiling just then? No, you did not. No fucking ho.

Yes, it is a “hot one” today.

I’m fucking standing in it, you stupid bastard.

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR

From the “Consumer Medicine Information” pamphlet for a medication I have been prescribed, but have not yet taken …

• Do not use if you have ever had an allergic reaction to indacaterol maleate (the active ingredient).
• Do not breast-feed while using this medicine.
• This medication may interfere with other medications, including:
  Medications for lung disease.
  For high blood pressure or heart problems.
  Medicines used to treat depression and other mental disorders.
  Medicine for glaucoma, including eye drops.
  Medicines for hay fever, coughs, colds, runny nose.
• Tell your doctor if you notice any of the following side-effects:
  Combination of sore throat, blocked nose, coughing, headache.
  Muscle pain.
  Muscle spasm.
  Swollen hands, ankles and feet.
  Crushing chest pain.
  Neck pain.
  Headache.
  Sore throat.
  Cough.
  Runny nose.
  Blocked nose.
  Dry Mouth.
  Pressure/pain in cheeks and forehead.
  Chest pain/discomfort.
  Pain in muscles, bones or joints.
  Excessive thirst, high urine output.
  Increased appetite with weight loss, tiredness.
  Tingling and numbing.
  Dizziness.
  Vertigo.
• If you use too much (Overdose):
  Immediately telephone your doctor or;
  Poisons Information Centre (13 11 26)
  Go to the Accident/Emergency ward at your nearest hospital.
• Symptoms of overdose may include:
  Vomiting.
  Shakiness.
  Sleepiness.
  Headache.
  Fast, irregular heartbeat.

I feel so reassured.

ABSENT, WITHOUT LIFE

Ivan Leslie Sharp, born September 19, 1928, died at 4.00pm on Wednesday, November 4^th, 2015 in Bankstown Hospital after complications arose following a serious fall in October. He was 87 years old. His funeral service was held Friday, November 13^th, 2015.

In his working life, from the 1940’s to the 1990’s he was a commercial artist and a signwriter.

A tradesman. A craftsman.

He is survived by his wife of 57 years, and a choleric and oft ill-tempered son of 56 years of age, and some other relatives here and there, most of whom I never knew I had, and maybe, neither did he.

I may have more to offer on this subject (and, other, unrelated topics) over the coming days and weeks, but for now …

THE INTERRUPTED TONGUE

Three weeks ago, my 87 year-old emphysemic father did topple, in a most unseemly and indelicate fashion, face-first onto a heavy wooden dining table, and then did flip backward onto the kitchen floor, causing two bones in his neck to fracture, necessitating a quick visit to the hospital via ambulance where stitches were sewn across the bridge of his nose, and a neck brace fitted to him which looks like something from a science-fiction film – “Alien” came to mind first time I laid eyes on it.

He did lay there for two weeks, looking like one big, bruised, broken vegetable until, early last week, he was transferred to an aged care transitional facility where he is to be slowly re-introduced to the novel concept of walking without falling over (firstly, stand up while hanging onto something), and moving his head about.

This little episode did require my presence in Sydney for an extended period to deal with all manner of things (not least, a 77 year-old mother who is deaf, and cannot hear anything across a phone line), and during which time I had no computer or internet access (because I do not own a computer and my phone is not smart, not so much the affectation of a Luddite as it is my continued penchant for exploring the uncharted and challenging extremes of mind-numbing procrastination within the known – and unknown – dimensions of this, our infinite universe ).

This is about the fourth or fifth fall he has had in as many years, and if things keep going on like this, I may suggest to him that if he likes acrobatics so much, why doesn’t he just go join a fucking circus?

So.

I understand we have a new Prime Minister, that his name is Malcolm, and he speaks in complete sentences.

How’s that working out for people?

WHITE TRASH ON HEAT

It is another time, and it is another place, far, far away.

New laws rule this land in this time, and these laws must be upheld by das Volk to ensure the safety of the nation from those who would destroy it, those who would corrupt the minds of its young, befoul the tender flesh of its frauen, and recast the very soul and substance of its culture and the state, the cities and the towns, into a libertine haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.

The laws of the land do so decree that those who would besmirch our national character, those who would sully our people’s most sacred beliefs and institutions, those who would choose either to destroy the industries that keep us strong or hold them captive to their socialist ideologies of anti-government activism, who would forsake and deliver the sovereignty of our shores to the mongrel hordes of primitive, backward medievalism, who actively work against the good will of the government to safeguard  the welfare and security of our country and its citizens, shall now be purged from our midst forevermore, silenced, suppressed, broken, starved of resources, to be left utterly defeated and beaten, and to be banished from both our eyes and our ears, by whatever ways and means  possible.

Into this time and place, situate such people as Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, Kevin Andrews and others of similar mindset, lawmakers and enforcers all, public figures of esteem and rectitude who, as Christians, have not the duty to allow themselves to be cheated, but the duty to be fighters for truth and justice, and to uphold the law.

In this environment, ask yourself, would any of these be the kind of men to hide the Jews in the attic, or would be they be the kind of men emptying bullets into the heads of das Juden faster than they could unload the clip?

Resplendent in their tailored Hugo Boss  leather greatcoats, jackboots, peak’d cap, endorsed by and endowed with the full authority of the state and its laws, would they be gleefully kicking the carcasses of their enemies and of the sick and weak and deformed into shallow mass graves, and congratulating themselves on a “difficult” and often “confronting” task well executed in the name of prosperity, economic austerity, and the will of the people?

“Every day, the [Immigration] department and the Australian Border Force within it will create, receive and use critical and important information including intelligence and personal information. Much of this information will be sensitive and complex.

“It is therefore necessary that information secrecy and disclosure arrangements should be in place not only to protect information but also to enable the disclosure of information in appropriately controlled circumstances.” – Peter Dutton, Federal Immigration Minister

WE STOPPED THE BOATS!

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” – Adolf Hitler

Now imagine, if what you have just read were published in a mainstream news outlet or publication, or broadcast on the ABC television or radio, and imagine, just imagine, the outrage which would ensue, the high-keened chorus of frothing whimpers that would sweep all else to insignificance.

It may sound a little like this …

“That is an absolutely outrageous, offensive, utterly disgraceful, and highly disrespectful thing to say about any current member of this government, or for that matter, any sitting member of parliament. To suggest that we are in any way similar or comparable to a regime as evil as that of Hitler’s is not just an unforgivable slur upon the ethical, moral and professional standards of our elected representatives, but a vile, vile, and deeply disturbing statement of disrespect towards the millions of innocent men, women and children who suffered and died horribly under that regime. To say that our policies resemble in any way, in any way, those of Nazi Germany is just … just … totally unacceptable in this day and age, quite frankly, and statements such as those don’t belong in any intelligent debate or policy discussion.”

Outrage and offense, the impertinence and cheek, it’s a nice and easy tactic to divert attention from matters of actual substance; it’s the shit that makes the flowers grow, where column inches soon become yards, and indignation the headline of the day, bought to you by the White Trash on Heat from the tabloid commentariat, who’ll never let an opportunity to go full dudgeon over a spot of name-calling pass by, especially if it’s directed at the side of politics their media masters have told them to shill for.

Just let us speak not of this …

Social workers, doctors, nurses, teachers and humanitarian staff who have worked inside Australia’s detention centres have united in an unprecedented show of defiance against new laws that could see workers in detention centres jailed for speaking out about abuses.

“If we witness child abuse in Australia we are legally obliged to report it to child protection authorities. If we witness child abuse in detention centres, we can go to prison for attempting to advocate for them effectively. Internal reporting mechanisms such as they are have failed to remove children from detention; a situation that is itself recognised as a form of systematic child abuse.”

Or of this …

“A four-year-old girl who began exhibiting behaviour consistent with a child who had been sexually assaulted, including sexualised dancing and pulling her pants down to invite adults to insert their finger into her anus. Despite child protection workers assessing her to be at “high risk of ongoing sexual abuse”, the submission said the immigration department did not remove her from detention.”

The Minister shall determine the appropriate controls and circumstances under which such information shall be disclosed or released, and it will be at the discretion of the Minister and the government under which he serves to determine whether the disclosure of such information is in the public interest, or is not.

“Child abuse on Nauru was first publicly reported in an anonymous submission (#183) to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). Prior to this submission, despite evidence provided to the AHRC, child abuse was never disclosed. We now know there were multiple incidents of abuse that had occurred by the time these organisations gave evidence but they chose not to report it. – Viktoria Vibhakar, former senior child protection work for Save the Children on Nauru.

I repeat, the Minister shall determine the appropriate controls and circumstances under which such information shall be disclosed or released, and it will be at the discretion of the Minister and the government under which he serves to determine whether the disclosure of such information is in the public interest, or is not.

“I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.” – Michel de Montaigne

FEAR NOT!

We’ll keep Australia safer, safer than it’s ever been before, and we won’t be having no desert-nigger lovin’ raghead sum-bitches comin’ into our fuckin’ houses just so they can piss on our rugs and shit on our lawns, goddammit. We’re the rain to wash this scum off the earth, we are the swords fashioned from bright bolts of lightning plucked from thundering skies on whose blades heads shall roll, we are the ones who decide  who comes here and the manner in which they come, we are the ones who will decide who stays, who goes, who is, or is not, Australian, we are judge and we are jury, and we call upon you, our fellow Australians, to be our executioners, in thought, word and deed, on our side, with us, not against us, and whosoever chooses not to gather with us, shall be given good and righteous cause to scatter from our collective wrath.

“Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves” – William Shakespeare, “King Lear”

We can stunt and dull our senses with the psychological thalidomide of asinine entertainments and “moral” panics, we can redact our hearts and hide our minds from themselves, we can spit our collective contempt upon the faces of the feeble, the frail, and the a’feared, we can choose to live every minute of our future as a memory of our past, but nothing, nothing, will ever, wipe these sordid stains from our history or from our souls.

?

“There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.” – Gore Vidal

MENTAL MAGIC

Feeling anxious?

Depressed?

Are you mental, mad, is there a screw loose on your cupboard door, a plank missing from your deck, a wheel off your trolley?

Are you overly fond of cats, and do you carry big wads of crumpled newspapers around with you in plastic bags?

Throw away those pills! Cancel that therapy!

Our Federal Social Services Minister has found the simple solution to your sorrows…

MAGIC!

Now, if that doesn’t work, sure as shit nothing will, so you may as well face up to it and hang yourself from the living room light fitting, you fucking loser.

TALKIN’ SHIT ON THE TEE-VEE

“The ABC is out of control and must be reformed!”, howls Andrew Bolt, the Herald-Sun’s resident expert on taste and restraint, and O! how he doth howl, often and most loudly. His frequent allies in this noble quest – from the mighty Gerard Henderson, to stout and doughty Piers Akerman, from the audacious Janet Albrechtsen to the staunch daring of Miranda Devine and beyond, gallants all – steadfast and true in their brave crusade. This fearlessly outspoken consortium of Brothers and Sisters in Adjectival Febrility remain unwavering in their pursuits and arrayed, united and opposed, to the multiple perfidies of progressive advocacy that have lodged deep within the bowels of the nation’s public broadcaster and must, now and forevermore, be purged.

Begin position …

The ABC has consistently and wilfully betrayed its charter and its key, core constituents, those men and women of Australia on whose behalf it is expected to serve, to educate and inform – the Common Man and Common Woman of this land, the working man and woman, the mother, the wife, the modest and the humble.

The ABC’s news and current affairs content, on all platforms, has revealed itself repeatedly, and over time, to be fatally biased toward a disruptively radical “left-wing” liberal-social agenda by embracing and promoting without question positions of extreme anti-capitalism, anti-industry, and anti-family agitprop, to name but a few, as the preferred, prevailing paradigms of our time.

The nation’s public broadcaster has arrogantly forsworn its clear responsibilities to this charter by engaging in, and encouraging, base rumours, confected smears, slurs and vile slanders against the government of the day and the current Australian Prime Minister in particular, and elevating such things to the status of “news”, which they are clearly not.

The established orthodoxies which have served as the foundation and bedrock stones of our nation, and the nation’s citizens since Federation, are sneeringly dismissed as merely the antediluvian obsessions of naïve bumpkins and yokels, their traditional values, mores and morality reduced to the stuff of parody and satire, and sheer common decency regarded as a joke out of fashion and out of time, a fetish for simple-minded fools.

End position.

Nothing is ever what it simply is, or of its times, according to these, and countless other diligent Media Hounds for Truth, Justice and Wanting Everything Their Own Fucking Way All The Time, but rather, each item of “news” and the manner in which it is presented must be assigned, by them, a context serving some underlying political, religious or social ideology, whether that context be deduced from a facial expression, a random turn of phrase, or the sandwich and coffee someone’s just had for lunch.

To their critics, the ABC charter is an unholy mash of Marxist screed and Gaian enviro-ganda, its intent and ambition to thwart our minds with the language of misunderstanding, to alter our perceptions with catastrophic visions of our futures, to blind us with science, to expose our most senior government members to ridicule and scorn, seed our minds with doubt and mistruths, and to arouse and pervert our desires just to prove we’re depraved.

It is not just an organisation, mostly a broadcaster of news with news in it, and occasional entertainments of widely disparate quality and interest, but a “movement” now, an ideological concentrate of pure “leftist” evil and irresponsibility, a grotesque malformation of orthodox mores and virtues, an amorphous accretion of base tumescence, smearing its fusty scent across all things decent, and of righteous virtue, upstanding temperance and unostentatious reserve.

The ABC’s latest vile crime against propriety and couth occurred on June 22^nd’s episode of “Q&A”, a program of negligible quality and import which usually comprises a bunch of heads talking at and over each other about the issues of the moment, mostly in what appears nothing more than frenetic pursuit of achieving “quip of the night”, or making a headline the next day for being the biggest dickhead on the show.

On this momentous occasion, a brief and tepid exchange of words between a dickhead in the audience and a government minister on the panel resulted in said dickhead having a “Who? Ya muvver?!” moment, tetchily saying the type of thing one would expect a dickhead to say, which was promptly ruled out of order by the show’s host, who then quickly wrapped up and called it a night.

“O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.”

“What side are you on?!” bellowed our Prime Minister in discombobulated outrage by way of response to this event, all a-flutter in his mind with choleric vapours, and, soon enough, his rallying cry was dutifully picked up and echoed through the august journals of the people and of the land, demanding action be taken, apologies issued, investigations launched and retribution sought to ensure that our ABC shall never again be taken hostage by such barbaric forces of pure evil, and that our nation’s citizens shall never again be subjected to such expressions of deviant tyranny on the national broadcaster at the expense of Team Australia.

Or dickheads saying stupid shit on the tee-vee.

“Pollies get away with spouting rubbish because we let them. If we as a society have the collective attention span of a gnat, and obsess more about who’s stabbing whom in the back on the reality programme du jour than the future of our country, we can’t complain if politicians talk down to us or treat us as mugs, and if the media reports name-calling as serious political news.” – Terry Barnes, The Guardian.

Never let it be said that the White Trash on Heat who currently comprise our body politic and their media cohorts won’t abandon all sense of perspective on a thing in a heartbeat in favour of inchoate squeals of beleaguered rage and protestation over trivialities to deflect any substantive discussion or debate about issues of actual import, those things that affect real people out here in the real world.

No, let us not be thinking, let alone speaking, of the wholesale trashing of industries, the destruction of jobs, the demonisation of the young, the criminalisation of unemployment, and of poverty that our government are so enthusiastically engaged in; let us not be thinking of the shattered cheekbones of battered women denied refuge because funding no longer allows it; let us not think of our abandonment of human rights, the tortures and travails we inflict on the confused minds and soft bodies of women and children fleeing foreign conflicts; let us not think of the desecration of our lands and environments when we can be thinking of the money to be made from them; let us think not on these, or any other such things when we can find lazy solace in the easily confected outrage of the righteous where reality exists solely as a means of fulfilling an ideological end, and if it does not, reality will be duly denied.

You can’t handle the truth.

So let’s make some shit up.

Beat those drums of terror, dance to the discordant rhythms of fear and of loathing, come comrades, sing songs of battle, of defeat and of glorious victory over our most loath’d enemies, for they are closer than we think, much closer, and they do walk among us, in stealth and in silence …

Attention-seeking trolls talking shit on the tee-vee.

“Nurse, pass me the rubber underpants. I’m spending the night under the bed.”

For fuck’s sake.

FFS

I read the news today, oh boy.

Bronwyn Bishop, Speaker of the House has admonished Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission, saying “If you do wish to be a political participant, then you have to be no longer a statutory officer and stand for office”, and I think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”.

I see Scott Morrison, former Minister for Immigration being interviewed on television, and he speaks of “on-water operational matters” in regards refugees and won’t answer a question, and I think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”.

Somebody in the office has wished me “Good morning”, and inquires as to the going of my day, and I think to myself “For fuck’s sake”, before muttering “F-f-f-f-f-f ….. Fine. Thanks”, in reply and moving on.

The Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey talks of housing affordability and good jobs for good people, but does it in such a way that has most everybody thinking, “For fuck’s sake”, and thinking it over and over and over again every time he speaks. Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, speaks disconcertingly of windmills he has witnessed, tilting portentously over the lands, ever-growing in number, and spreading all manner of wretched maladies and miasmic blights to rattle the minds of the countryfolk, and I think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is probably doing something somewhere right now that I’m not currently paying attention to, but if I were, I’d probably think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”.

A sausage roll and an orange juice for lunch has cost me eight bucks fifty, and I think to myself “For fuck’s sake”, I can remember when they were about a buck each back in the day.

Watching ABC TV’s “The Drum” a couple days ago, and Rowan Dean is on the panel again, and I think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”, a little bit louder now, just a little bit louder, and then there’s a snippet from an interview with current Immigration Minister Peter Dutton coming up, and I think to myself, “For fuck’s sake”, and lunge for the remote control so I can hit the mute button, and then I get up and go to the fridge for a glass of wine, and I find myself looking at the dirty dishes in the sink and I think to myself “For fuck’s sake” before sitting back down, and hoping Peter Dutton has fucked off, but he hasn’t, so I light a cigarette and wonder if I should listen to some music instead.

A schooner of James Squire ale at my local pub costs $7.60, and I think to myself “For fuck’s sake”, I could buy a bottle of wine for that, but I pay it anyway, and I’ll pay it again, and again, because, well, for fuck’s sake, these are drinkin’ times, hard-drinkin’ times, and a man could go crazy thinking on this stuff, all this stuff they sayin’ and doin’ that don’t make no lick ‘o’ sense, an’ I don’ wanna be no crazy ol’ man mutterin’ at walls an’ yellin’ at fenceposts and pickin’ fights with squirrels.

No sir, I don’t.

Maybe Gerard Henderson will be on ABC’s “Insiders” again this Sunday.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

HAIR OF DICKHEAD

I have been ill for most of the week, and now I am not.

Normal service shall resume next week. Perhaps.

However, I am in an intolerant frame of mind (illness will do that), and feel a need to say something, and this is it …

CAN WE HAVE AN END NOW PLEASE TO THE “SLAP-ME-I-AM-A-PREENING-WANKER HIPSTER BEARD FASHION THING” AS IT HAS NOW BECOME FAR TOO BLOODY SILLY FOR WORDS AND IS BEGINNING TO GIVE ME THE BOWL-SHATTERING SHITS EVERY TIME I SEE ONE THANK YOU VERY MUCH GOODBYE AND HAVE A NICE WEEKEND.

FUCK OFF YOU.

↓

ST ELSEWHERE

Over at AIMN (Australian Independent Media Network) is a new piece I have written titled “PEACE IN OUR TIME”.

You may read it there if you wish.

…

…

…

…

Click the fucking link.

THE BIG ISSUES

On my brief train journey to work this morning, looking at the passengers standing and seated around me, I began to notice the shoes the women were wearing, and I thought to myself, it occurred to me for the very first time, that outside of men’s ties, what utterly stupid, impractical, impossibly crackpot, items of so-called “fashion” they are.

What on earth is that thing for? Why do you have to, why do you choose to, tie those half dozen things up before you can walk in them? WHY ARE YOU CRAMMING HALF YOUR TOES INTO A SPACE THE SIZE OF HALF A VEGEMITE JAR WHILST LEAVING THE OTHER HALF EXPOSED?

WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF THAT?

The simple act of walking, one step after another, one foot at a time (or both if you’re feeling gay and joyful!), is reduced to a Sisyphean task of confounding futility, a bootless exercise of self-inflicted tribulation, torment and woe, your only triumph to be had in getting from point A to point B without toppling into a gutter …

“The official dress code is explained to guests after they collect a ticket for their film … It is generally understood that men must wear black tie with black shoes and women must be elegantly dressed with smart footwear.”

Smart?

“Outside the Palais, 20-year-old Tami was one of many film fans hopeful of being given a spare ticket to the Tuesday-night premiere by a charitable delegate. She was carrying her high heels in a plastic bag.

“It says on your ticket that you have to be smartly dressed,” she said. “For women that means high heels. I wish we didn’t have to. They’re uncomfortable.””

There is nothing “smart” about three straps of leather and a heel the height of Hervé Villechaize that cause you to stagger about like a drunken wombat in the pursuit of “fashion”, and the people who make these things and expect women to wear them should all be stabbed in the fucking head with a pencil.

.

.

I was initially going to title this post “You Look Big I’Shues”, but even I have limits.

ST ELSEWHERE

Over at AIMN (Australian Independent Media Network) is a piece I wrote last week titled “Fairy Bread Is Not A Vegetable”.

You may read it there if you wish.

Oh, go on …

TONGUES AWAY

Having just done about 6 months work in the space of 2 months, Tongues is a little buggered and worn out, and will be taking a 10 day internet-free break.

I may even write some new stuff while I am away.

Or I may just drink a lot of beer, and get some sleep.

Nobody’s perfect.

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Flicked over to Channel 7’s “Sunrise” program briefly this morning, and it’s a live cross to “Kochie” from  Turkey and he’s promising upcoming coverage of a “great ceremony” in the morrow.

It’s the Olympics for Dead People. Who came dead first. Who came dead last.

Professor Bruce Scates writing for The Age yesterday …

“The centenary should have been the time to widen the ambit of remembrance, to reckon with the aftermath of Anzac. A legion of blind and crippled and insane men and women, irreparably damaged by war, returned to Australia. For those who came home, and for the families who supported them, a new and equally exacting battle began: to raise a family on an inadequate pension, find work without an arm or eye, forget the nightmare of what one saw, and did, on Gallipoli or the Somme, Palestine or Flanders.

Promised a land fit for heroes, inexperienced men were set to work marginal land on worthless soldier settlement blocks. Promised the praise of a grateful nation, they faced the Great Depression. Many would survive the war, but not the peace. Throughout the 1920s, gassed men choked to death, cot cases perished in their beds, “nervy men” blew their brains out.  Far from uniting a nation, as we are so often told, the war tore us apart and left a legacy of trauma.

These harsh realities of the aftermath of war do not lend themselves to the rousing rhetoric of princes or politicians. They highlight the obscenity of what has become a parody of remembrance, Anzac as carnival, commodity and re-enactment, a brand sold by tour guides, breweries, and supermarkets. In 1915, the landing failed. In 2015, we failed that generation yet again.”

Have a nice day.

FASTER, FASTER, YOUNG AUSSIE TEEN “SAND ‘N’ SANDAL” DESERT EPIC ENTHUSIASTS, KILL, KILL!!

Somebody’s left the gate open at the cunt farm again …

A terrifying troupe of terrorist teen tots and twenty-somethings had been planning to launch an extreme assault upon the Australian public on our nation’s finest and most revered of days, Holy of Holies, Oh Woe are We for We are Besieged by Evil!

They were going to go at it with a knife and a sword somewhere to avenge the death of some other dickhead with a name that sounded like a brand of Turkish nougat who bought a knife to a gunfight outside a police station a while back and got himself shot for his troubles.

As you would.

Our New Band of Brothers in Evil did speak often, and at large about their demonic plans for bloody savagery on our national Day of Mourning & Remembrance, and they did speak loudly, on Facebook and Twitter and other social networks, on blogs, texting and talking on their mobile phones, on Skype, and they were disgustingly adamant and unconcerned about the effect their vile intentions would have upon the otherwise genteel souls of our fair and most free land.

Most of their conversations did appear to come from the script of “Khartoum”, and are scattered with dark references to the flowing of blood, the slitting of throats, rolling heads, and infidels this and infidels that, and I suspect they also called each other “bro’” a lot, and did that lame rapper thing with the pointy-finger air-jabbing and the jazz hands.

So imagine their complete surprise, and their dismay, that their plans, hitherto unknown, highly secret, tightly kept plans to wreak this havoc became known to police and a bunch of these same police turned up at our dastardly dickheads front doors 4am one morning to make a few “inquiries”.

“Who snitched?”, our criminal crib-wetters must have wondered wide-eyed, casting furtive glances at each other, and wondering if their crew had been infiltrated by a mole acting on behalf of the agents of Zion.

Some of our dastardly clan of motley’s even claimed they had been “roughed up” and “mishandled” by these violently oppressive enemies of freedom from the Victorian Police Force during this melee, and photos were taken in evidence, showing small scratches and a few bruises here and there because, when you’re plotting to stab someone in a public place and run about like a lunatic shouting religiously inspired claptrap and stuff, the police should only ever be expected to tap gently at your door, politely ask to be invited in, and just proceed to whup you about the head with a Chux for a bit if you don’t make them a nice cup of tea and offer them a biscuit.

OH, THE BRUTALISM! OH, THE HUMANITY!

Silly little buggers.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED

Mid-morning Sunday last, I am watching ABCNews24, as is my wont, and, as also is my wont, my finger is hovering over the “mute” button on the remote just in case any Australian politician or “leading business figure” pops up talking slogans about bullshit billions here and bullshit billions there and gnarling and gnashing their squirrelly pebble gray teeth over what troublesome little bunnies we all are and how much easier it would be to run a country if it weren’t for all the fucking people in it.

My complete disengagement from Australian politics is almost complete.

There is a live-cross to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, a man I know nothing about beyond that, because, as far as state politics go, there are six of the goddamn things and a bloody territory, and I couldn’t give a flying fuck about any of them with all their backwoods, parochial “my state is better than your state” dribbly bullshit and carrying-on.

Andrews was speaking, favourably, to the subject of “medical marijuana” and as he spoke, I found myself … listening.

He was not reading from notes, of if he was, it was not evident, in fact, he appears to have been speaking “off the cuff”, and using full sentences to boot, and I thought to myself, “You actually sound as if you know what you’re talking about”, because he actually did, and then I think, “Shit. That doesn’t happen very often”, because it doesn’t.

He speaks of a boy, a young boy who suffers all manner of dreadful ailments and seizures, and Andrews appears to be acquainted with the actual circumstances of this boys’ life, and he speaks of this boy, of the boys’ parents, and of the ordeals they have endured, and he goes on for a bit about the benefits of this, and the benefits of that, and I listen to it all, something I very rarely do, and when he has finished, I thought, “That was good. That was about a real thing. Good.”

Can it be?

Can it be there may be individuals within this boggy swamp of our  fetid body politic who can talk on and about a topic sensibly, and logically, without resort to carnival barker sloganeering and “I’m such a Smug-Cunt” chest-puffery?

Fuck me with a spoon.

The last politician I paid attention to when he had something to say was former Independent MP, Tony Windsor, and before that, Paul Keating.

Does anyone remember Simon Crean?

No. Why would you?

Shortly after Julia Gillard enlisted the support of Windsor and his fellow Independent Rob Oakeshott to form government and inflict her Raging Red Reign of Horror upon the  innocently unsuspecting masses of this fair land, Windsor was interviewed on ABC’s “7:30 Report” by then host Kerry O’Brien.

O’Brien asked Windsor a question.

Windsor answered it.

“Shit! You just answered a question”, I thought to myself at the time. That doesn’t happen very often. Because it doesn’t.

O’Brien too looked a little taken aback, muttered a few “ums” and “ah’s”, shuffled a paper or two, and it was as if he were thinking to himself, “You bastard. I was expecting to have to go another two, three minutes to drag an answer out of you. You’ve fucked up my timing.”

When Tony Windsor (Windsor’s interview with Richard Fidler on ABC Radio’s “Conversations” a week or two ago can be downloaded from iTunes, or the ABC site, and I highly recommend you do) says Our Prime Descending Testicle did say he would do anything but sell his arse for the job, and Abbott says he did not, who the fuck are you going to be more inclined to listen to and believe, for Christ’s sake?.

If you expect people to listen to you, talk like a person, know what it is you are speaking about, get to the fucking point, answer the questions you are asked, and if you don’t know the answer, and you know you don’t know it, don’t make shit up, because you’ll only end up making yourself look and sound a complete fuckwit.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

You don’t have to be Martin Luther King.

You don’t have to be Billy McMahon either. Or Bill Shorten.

Here endeth the lesson.

In other news of note I am currently choosing to ignore but others are not, Our Prime Descending Testicle skolled a beer, Julie Bishop wore a scarf, and Malcom Turnbull appeared on the cover of Australian “GQ” looking like an over-eager counter boy from “Wendy’s” circa 1983, and then this popped up …

… Don’t cry, Baby Jesus, only one nail left to go.

I am going back to sleep now.

Wake me in time for Armageddon.