Guess who’s back.

This has been a long time brewing. The subject matter is one I never intended to discuss, but a recent conversation with Siv Parker has brought the issue to the point of personal detonation, so shall I rant. For the record, Siv is one of the most outstanding advocates I’ve ever met. She happens to be black, though I’d class her as a champion of humanity as opposed to merely an indigenous spokesperson – honourable enough as that is.
The backbone of this dummy-spit is personal, so in the interests of full disclosure and an inherent unwillingness to inflict painful boredom I strongly advise you to stop reading now. Warn others to do the same for the sake of all that is good and holy.
Some time ago I wrote a piece for King’s Tribune. It was angry and sorrowful, written on my final night in Vietnam. I had developed a deep and abiding love for the country. It had not only provided me with the love of my life, whom I had recently married, but blown me away with the warmth and sincerity of its inhabitants and convinced me to regard the place as something of a spiritual home. I would trade my Australian citizenship in a second to live in Tam Dau, or Vinh Yen, or Hanoi if it came to it.
The aforementioned piece bemoaned the uniquely Australian preoccupation with the mundane, as opposed to substantive issues worthy of true indignation. In the course of that particular rant I purposefully drew a tasteless analogy involving a silicate and an orifice I have since learned exists solely to be lovingly admired with the aid of a hand mirror. True to form, and sadly thrusting my gist into incredulous mouths on my behalf, a certain spanner-resembling portion of the online community railed against the words in euphoric ignorance of the argument. My editor caved to concerted pressure and censored the offending paragraph. A first, I believe. A published rebuttal would have been my choice, but when dealing with people who think a caps locked ‘fuck you’ is a reasoned response, she didn’t really have much to work with.
Jane copped the worst of it. I was left with an even split of the morbidly unhappy, those who view soap as a capitalist plot and a few reasonable people who argued their case in a reasonable manner. OK, that’s a lie. There was one reasonable person.
Of all the barrage of dickhead there was a resplendently standout moment, a singularity of gross lack of self awareness that actually hurt me. It came from a woman who regards herself as something of feminist royalty. I won’t name her as she embezzles enough oxygen already. Also, we have friends in common. Finally, I don’t want to toss the intellectually impoverished a buoy. She’ll have to forage for ideas elsewhere.
The comment was a throw-away. It wasn’t worthy of a screen capture, so I’ll paraphrase it as ‘he went to Vietnam because he couldn’t marry a real woman’, which is a pretty fair rendition. I’d now like to address that remark comprehensively.
First, you call yourself a feminist yet women other than Australians are less real? Less worthy? You fucking sad little failure. You are to feminism what Deveny is to atheism.
Second, my wife speaks three languages. She is an accountant with a business degree. She runs her family’s numerous companies. She could buy you with her pocket change. I don’t know enough Vietnamese yet to appreciate her in her native tongue, but she uses English with a concision, originality and humour I am yet to read in anything you’ve written. In fact, you’re a dead set bore.
Third, I followed her from Australia, where she was studying, to Vietnam. I did this because I had fallen deeply in love with her. She met me at the airport in a simple dress and was the most beautiful vision I had ever seen, an ethereal beauty that one only ever gets to witness once if they’re supremely lucky. I was looking at the love of my life. I had no idea of her family’s wealth, or of how I would be accepted as part of said family. I have uncles, aunts, grandparents who opened their hearts and hearths to me. Their acceptance matters very much. Their money doesn’t.
Fourth, fuck you. I’m rich and have a beautiful wife who teaches high impact aerobics and yoga as a hobby. She is simply better than you. Hell, she can do the splits against a wall while negotiating a discount on a shipment in progress, using the bill of lading as leverage. She uses her spare time to tutor my son in English.
What the fuck are you doing besides whine? What do you actually contribute to anything?
I stopped writing because I didn’t want to subject my wife to racism. You know what? Fuck it and fuck you racists. Bring it on. If you’re lucky you’ll only have to deal with me. My wife will spit your bones out, you cowardly sacks of shit.

Concern.org – Because You Care

Here at Concern.org™ we understand that you’re a simmering cassoulet of sadness, gin and unrealised potential. We’re here to capitalise on your seemingly limitless reserves of brooding resentment by allowing you to express your often misdirected outrage without having to do anything meaningful, like actually protest, sign real petitions or compose your own thoughts in a coherent manner. We realise your time is important to you and that clicking links takes time, so we have crafted an electronic uber-petition to allow you to address all your grievances at once, safe in the knowledge that it will promptly disappear into the ether without having been read by anyone, let alone tabled in parliament.

We have chosen to target the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea because a) he is getting a lot of press and therefore provides decent link-bait and b) because he’s exactly as likely to read and act on this as anyone else:

Dear Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un,

I am writing to urge you to take action on behalf of the decent people who think like I do because I am having strange and powerful emotions. I have taken moderate to deep offence because [select from the following]:

• Somebody said something on a radio program I don’t listen to
• Somebody wrote something in a publication I don’t read
• JULIAR
• There are too many characters in Game of Thrones and I am confused
• Homosexuals
• Heterosexuals
• Their ABC
• I am woman, hear me petition
• Americans
• I just like signing stuff
• Brown people are a bit frightening
• I am in an emotionally unfulfilling relationship
• Helen Fucken Razer
• Other
• All of the above

I hereby demand that you address my concerns in a timely and apologetic manner or I shall be compelled have more emotions. Please don’t force my hand.

Earnestly,

[Sign in via Twitter]

[Sign in via Facebook]

• [tick to re-tweet to show how seriously you take this matter]
• [tick to post to Facebook because you are really not fucking around here]

Support Concern.org™ by purchasing a Concern™ Troll keyring made from genuine recycled photographs of unloved middle children. All proceeds go to producing feel-good Youtube clips featuring one or more of the Daddo brothers.

Last Writes – How GetUp and I parted ways

I wouldn’t have bothered recording this, but it seems timely, given Geordie Guy’s lovely smackdown of GetUp over the internet filter. One can only hope that there is a growing trend away from rubber wristbands and spam electronic petitions.

In this spirit I present my final correspondence with GetUp. It wasn’t written for an audience and is produced verbatim. I considered going all David Thorne, but honestly couldn’t be arsed.

Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:57:33 -0700
From: info@getup.org.au
To: heath.cxxx@xxx.com.au
Subject: Dear Woolies: Do better, regards Heath

Dear Heath,

At the shops we’re all thinking carefully about the purchases we make. Is this good for my health? Is this the right price? Have animals been treated ethically and workers fairly? The list goes on.

But sometimes the impact companies are having in our communities is hidden. Take Woolworths, for example. They promote themselves as a family friendly grocery store, but they’re also the single biggest poker machine operator, taking money from the most vulnerable people in our communities.

We can do something about that. Here’s the plan.

Print off this short letter.

Sign your name and add any personal comments you’d like to include.

Put it in your shopping bag, purse or wallet, for next time you’re shopping in, or near a Woolworths store.

Deliver the letter to Woolworths staff at the checkout and politely ask them to pass it on to store management.

http://www.getup.org.au/woolworths-special-delivery

By working together, we can deliver thousands of letters to Woolworths stores across the country. That’s an avalanche of letters that will run from neighbourhood stores right through the company to get the attention of the board and CEO. When Woolworths hears that stores across the country have been receiving thousands of thoughtful, passionate letters from GetUp members they’re going to take notice.

This isn’t about causing a scene, nor getting angry at Woolworths staff — we know it’s not their fault that Woolworths invest in poker machines, and many are on our side! It’s not about boycotts or protest — and you don’t even have to be a regular Woolworths customer.

It’s simply about hand-delivered notes asking Woolworths to do better by our communities. Please print out your letter now, or if you don’t have access to a printer let us know and we’ll send you a copy in the post:

http://www.getup.org.au/woolworths-special-delivery

Thanks for all you do,
GetUp

PS – This is really important right now because it’s just a month until Woolworths hold an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the company to discuss our pokies reform proposals. 257 fantastic GetUp members, who are shareholders of Woolworths, have forced the company to hold the meeting, so now we need to ramp up the pressure. Let’s make sure the Woolworths manager in your local area passes on this message: their customers and community want Woolworths to do the right thing by our communities. That means sensible limits on the amount of money problem gamblers can lose on Woolworths poker machines. http://www.getup.org.au/woolworths-special-delivery
GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you’d like to contribute to help fund GetUp’s work, please donate now! If you have trouble with any links in this email, please go directly to http://www.getup.org.au. To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here. Authorised by Sam Mclean, Level 2, 104 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

From: Heath Cxxx (heath.cxxx@xxx.com.au)
Sent: Thursday, 18 October 2012 12:21:47 PM
To: Getup (info@getup.org.au)

Dear GetUp,

Here’s a thought. How about campaigning for matters of genuine importance? You know, like tax exemption and unfettered government funded access to schools for multinational child-rape corporations? Or perhaps draconian anti-prostitution laws that drive the sex industry underground and create a spawning ground for human trafficking from Asia? You could go straight to the heart of the matter and draw attention to the Arrow foundation and its poisoning of democracy by stealthy infiltration of parliament on all levels with well coordinated and heavily funded (again, by the taxpayer) placement of religious fundamentalist candidates.

What if, just bear with me here, what adults choose to do with their own money in their own time is really none of anybody’s fucking business and the last thing Australia needs is more regulation of individual behaviour? I know. Crazy, right? The thought that maybe you are not the arbitrary authority on what is best for all? Better wrap that thought in some plain packaging quick smart. What would the children make of it? Think of the children. The. Fucking. Children.

I really got behind your organisation in the beginning. I thought it was a good thing. It saddens me to watch you dilute into another dim collective wowser tosspottery club.

Yours in disappointment,

Heath.

From: Info @ Getup (info@getup.org.au)
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2012 12:37:37 PM
To: Heath Cxxx (heath.cxxx@xxx.com.au)

Hi there,

It sounds like we’ve got a different point of view on this issue. If you’d rather not recieve GetUp updates, you can unsubscribe here:

http://www.getup.org.au/unsubscribe

Also, please refrain from using profanities in future communications with us.

Sarah for the GetUp Team
E info@getup.org.au W getup.org.au

Be the first to hear about new campaigns: follow the GetUp blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & Pinterest.

PS – If you feel passionate about this issue and would like to make a donation in support of our continued efforts, please click here to go to our online donations page. It’s the small donations from people like you that help fuel the movement and make our work possible – thank you.

Thank you ACA

Before this week I had nary a clue of how to put together a news report. I wasn’t a journalist so, strangely, it had never occurred to me to want to learn. Fortunately ACA came to my rescue and saved me from my own ignorance. Now I am a qualified producer. Offers may be submitted to my people. If lunch is done satisfactorily you may indeed be lucky enough to procure my skill in elevating your deadbeat, flagging wankfest into ratings gold. Let me tell you what I can do for you.

 

I take a camera crew into an area that doesn’t see them often so that passers-by are suitably impressed. I get a low rent hack to make small talk among the locals. Maybe hand out a few mars bars and cans of coke to garner their trust. I think of something that might frighten them (some have this pre-planned, but I’m like the John Coltrane of current affairs production, so I like to riff on the vibe of the day). Then I get the hack to ask a few leading questions based on misinformation, record the lot, and edit out any response that doesn’t suit my narrative. Intersperse some footage of an interview with someone of monumental stupidity who is also afraid of what they don’t know or understand, and Bob’s your marauding Asian rapist uncle. Story filed. Await Walkley.

 

On occasion this may cause backlash among leftists, literates and the marginally self-aware. Should this occur, I merely return to the scene of the crime scoop and accuse a bunch of other people of the prejudice I displayed in producing the first story. They naturally refute such heinous allegations and hey presto! Balance restored.

 

All that’s required now is to have my head muppet show the divisive, hence newsworthy, nature of my own beat up exclusive. Game over.

 

I owe it all to ACA. Should you wish to solicit my services I’ll be in my waterfront penthouse, wearing a scarf and indulging in a well-earned beverage.

 

A Day in the Life of Gerald Hindrance – Soldier of Truth

Ever wondered what constitutes a typical working day of one of the most elite of the media elite? Wonder no more. I have valiantly taken it upon myself to venture behind the scenes to transcribe the real reality of the daily battle for truth against the army of the rest of you. What follows is not for the faint of heart and should be read only with the understanding that you are explicitly advised not to read it. Any spelling or grammatical errors are entirely the fault of the scribe and not the subject:

 

 

6:45am:                Catch the alarm on the first ring. I’ve still got it. There’s no snooze button in the war against sandal wearing leftists. Today is going to be a good day. I don my slippers and robe, fastening the belt carefully with a half hitch. I pause briefly in front of the mirror to ensure both sides of the belt are of equal length and that the collar of my pyjamas isn’t protruding in an unsightly manner, and am horrified to find my hair in unstatesmanlike disarray. Fortunately it’s nothing a lick of my tortoise shell comb and a few ordered passes can’t correct and anon I’m en route to the kitchen to make a nice pot of tea.

 

7:07am:                After some deliberation I’ve selected a tea befitting my mood. I scoff at those who drink coffee and refuse to allow any in the house. Mother brought home some decaffeinated international roast sachets after attending a CWA meeting once and there were some stern words spoken by yours truly, I can tell you. We’ll have none of that socialism by stealth around here. Chinese green tea is even worse. How can they call it green tea when it’s consumed by reds? The thought strikes me as witty and insightful and I make a note in my diary to contact my colleagues to discuss coming up with a phrase about something that looks green but is really red. This is how my mind works – razor sharp and ever alert. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one past old Gerald. 6:30am for instance, or perhaps even earlier.

                               

                                This morning’s tea is Earl Grey. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Gerald,” I hear you say, “but Earl Grey isn’t a morning tea! It’s best suited to the afternoon!” and I would be compelled to concede that you are correct, learned and adoring reader. English Breakfast is a much more respectable choice, but between you and me, sometimes I like to live on the wild side. I bet you didn’t expect that little glimpse behind the curtain of mystery that enshrouds Australia’s greatest intellect, did you? Well buckle your seatbelt because there’s more to come. Sometimes I even have a biscuit with my tea before breakfast. I like to think that minds like mine aren’t constrained by the same rules as you ordinary folk. I remind Mother of this all the time.

 

7:24am                 I begin my preparation for the day ahead. I am listening to Radio National while watching News 24 on mute with subtitles for the hearing impaired. Sometimes if I squint I can pretend that the radio is in fact the soundtrack to the television. It might as well be because I’m sure these leftists are all issued the same daily talking points. I make a note in my diary to contact my colleagues and have them mention that in the next daily electronic mail memorandum of talking points. Razor sharp. I don’t know how I do it. I catalogue a few spelling mistakes in the subtitles and put them aside for use in my planned correspondence with Mark Scott later.

 

8:19am                 I collect the daily papers from the front yard and head to the Institute™ to begin work. The journey generally takes about two minutes as the Institute™ is conveniently located in a converted granny flat in Mother’s back yard. Sometimes it takes longer as the latch on the side gate is somewhat rusted and can in cold weather be infuriatingly recalcitrant. This is why I always leave a few minutes earlier than I need to. Tardiness is but a short step from whale music and injecting rooms, and as Director of the Institute™ I must set an example for my employees. The fact that I don’t have any employees is something I see as immaterial. Standards are standards. The Institute™ is the nation’s leading collective of superior intellects. It has a brass plaque and printed stationery. It will not be mocked.

 

9:00am                 The day’s journey begins. I have a porcelain dog I call Margaret that I keep in a bed I have fashioned from a Bata shoe box and wood-grain patterned adhesive paper. This morning, as every morning, she has been roused from her slumber and is now occupying her habitual position on the desk beside my personal computerised workstation. I talk to her often and sometimes I pretend she talks back to me. I even record her opinions in my much lauded weekly electronic publication which showcases the inferior intellect of everybody I don’t agree with. This is funny on many levels because she is porcelain, and therefore not a real dog, and even if she was real, dogs can’t talk, and even if they could talk, they could hardly hold an insightful opinion on the failings of leftist media, could they? I know, it’s a scream, isn’t it? They aren’t really Margaret’s opinions at all. They’re mine and I just pretend. It’s what we intellectuals refer to as a literary device and it’s very clever. What’s more, I am so clever I use two literary devices. [It’s about time I got some recognition –Ed]. Try doing that with open-toed footwear.  

 

                I have established my telephone dial-up connection to everyone else’s personal computerised workstations and have made an orderly pile of today’s newsprint publications in order to begin cross-checking them against the electronic versions that I have delivered to my monitor. I will of course begin, as I do every morning, with the Guardian on the Yarra – that’s what I call The Age. It’s a very clever joke and my friends never get tired of it. I’ve selected a red Kilometrico disposable 1mm ball-point pen with which to mark inconsistencies and errors. I used to favour an Artline 8mm felt tipped pen, but I found that the ink seeped through the paper, causing confusion. On one occasion I mailed a 1,500 word electronic letter to the editor of a publication I shan’t, through grace, name, drawing his attention an error that didn’t actually exist, but was in fact seepage from my highlighting the misuse of the word ‘your’ on the preceding page. How we laughed that day, Margaret and me. The editor indignantly claimed that I was in the wrong until I pointed out that my error couldn’t have occurred without his ineptitude in printing the error of the preceding page. The correspondence is detailed in full in my electronic publication, issues 124-237. [Failure to reply is clear forfeiture of position. We showed him! – Ed.]

 

10:00am               Tea time. The morning has proven quite productive so far. I’ve sent an electronic letter to my friend Andrew, pointing out some misspellings and questionable grammatical choices on his web-log. I know he works for a rival organisation, but essentially we’re on the same side, and I am nothing if not the paradigm of professionalism. It gets a little tiring doing this every day, but Andrew seems to appreciate it.  I’ve also written to Piers and advised him it might be wise to stop denying the existence of carbon dioxide until my colleagues at another Institute™ finalise their latest research and publish the appropriate brochure. The price of the pursuit of truth is, after all, eternal vigilance.

 

12:30pm               Lunch. Today I’ve packed cucumber and Nutella sandwiches. I could journey home for lunch of course, but I worry what sort of an example I’d be setting to the employees. Also, Margaret frets if I leave the Institute™ through the day. I’ve spent the remainder of the morning watching Media Watch on iView. Mother doesn’t let me watch it in the house anymore owing to an unfortunate incident wherein I accidentally used a permanent marker to draw horns on Jonathon. The television screen is now barely smudged, but Mother now insists that my finger gun and ‘pew pew pew’ noises are distracting. It is most unfair. I wrote to Mark Scott about it and await his reply.

 

5:00pm                 Home time. Time flies when you’re corresponding with Bob Ellis. What a cunt.

 

6:45pm                 Bed time. I have some concerns about Margaret and was considering returning to the Institute™ to check on her but Mother doesn’t like me traveling after dark. Instead I’ve had a nice cup of tea and listened to three tracks from the latest Susan Boyle album. I dare not listen to more as experience has shown it disturbs my sleep and can create unnecessary embarrassment in the morning. Mother is entertaining a guest from her dancing class. He’s obviously quite inept as I can hear all manner of banging noises and Mother yelps intermittently. He’d better not be wearing sandals or I will be having stern words in the morning. We don’t like those types around here. Why can’t people wear decent shoes?

Misogyny and Homeopathic Language – A Brief Rant

Again I find myself drawn into the periphery of an argument I don’t want to be part of. It’s not like I have no horse in this race – I do. We all do – it’s just that the core of the argument is better addressed by more learned people than me. That said, I’m getting fucking shouty at my twitter feed as I watch people I love and respect embrace the stupid.

My complaint? The PM misused a word in a well overdue but somewhat overrated speech that has become famous globally. The guardian of the sacred key of Australian language at Macquarie decided to expand the definition of the misused word to encompass the PM’s meaning. Because, you know, language evolves. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Now the word is bandied about like some sort of wildcard bailout of every lazy argument ever. It is wrong, and fuck you all for raping the language I love.

Some context: I’ve just spent three months in Vietnam, attempting to learn the language. It is a concise, ordered dialect that is poetic and beautiful because it is imprecise. Ca phe sua is white coffee. Sua ca phe is also white coffee, but it is also iced yoghurt with coffee flavouring. I’m convinced that Vietnam is still poor because of all the returned drinks at coffee shops – not from tourists, but natives. I could cite countless other examples but I’m lazy. My point is that English is arguably the best and most beautiful language on Earth because its ungainly growth has fostered a precision that doesn’t exist in most other languages.

I’m a fan of evolution insofar as one can be a fan of a scientific reality. It sounds kind of stupid really. How many people are a fan of gravity? I’ll rephrase. I’m a fan of the theory of evolution, which explains evolution eloquently through precision of language. What I am not a fan of is devolution, the homogenization of thought and the homeopathic distillation of words to the point where they become meaningless. Equating misogyny with sexism is a fucking travesty and undermines no cause greater than that of feminism.

Before everyone gets their depend in a twist that a man dared to mention the ‘F’ word, let’s have a think about what we’re trying to achieve. Are we striving of a truly egalitarian society or are we looking to germinate some fuckwitted gender war? I don’t really care either way. I’m a middle-aged white guy who pulls a healthy six-figure income. If I’m the enemy then knock yourselves the fuck out. Nobody I know is lifting a finger to stop you.

What I’m talking about is the abuse of language. Misogyny is shooting a girl for wanting to be educated. It is spitting on an eight year old for dressing like a ‘slut’. It is ‘honour’ killings by fathers that hate their daughters for not being as stupid as they are. It is killing babies because a girl isn’t worth as much as a boy. It is throwing acid in the face of a woman who rejected the advances of a human-shaped turd. It is bombing an abortion clinic. It is denying condoms to women most likely to be infected with HIV. It is hatred of women.

I have many words to describe how loathsome Tony Abbott or Alan Jones is. They are beneath contempt. They are sexist sacks of shit. The public record speaks for itself. They are not misogynists. They’re just idiots. Classing them with true misogynists is offensive to those that have genuinely suffered. It’s saying the person who threw acid in a woman’s face is no worse than Tony Abbott. That’s wrong.

Misusing words damages one’s ability to utilize language for good. I feel embarrassed for you who seek to debase our shared vocabulary through repetition and misuse. Get the fuck out of my language and take your fight up using semaphore or Kermit arms. If all else fails put a fucking #hashtag on it. Just get off my lawn.

Letter to my local MP, Mr Tony Burke.

Dear Mr Burke,

 

I am writing in frustration and desperation regarding the plight of my friend Austin Mackell. Austin is a freelance journalist who has been covering the uprising in Egypt. He is facing 5-7 years in prison for doing his job. The Egyptian authorities have charged him with bribing people to strike, which is patently false, and simply disproved. He is a freelance journalist. He has no money.

 

I’m asking you, no, begging you to speak with our new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Carr, and get him to intervene on Austin’s behalf. I also ask for you to push for the resettlement of Aliya Alwi, who faces the same sentence for acting as his translator.

 

Please lend your voice to this issue. It’s wrong for us to leave fellow Australians at the mercy of military regimes. It is wrong for us to allow anyone to be at the mercy of said regimes. Like Bahrain, but that’s a discussion for another time. Please, please help.

 

Kind regards,

 

Heath Callaway

Lies, Damn Lies, and Cashing in on Labels That Don’t Quite Fit

In the past few days I’ve read more words written about Melinda Tankard Reist than any human should be forced to endure in their lifetime. I have been water-boarded with inanity as article after blog post after tweet clarted down from the rank ether of God’s irritable colon. It’s not that the subject matter is aesthetically repugnant to me, although Dancing Baby Jesus knows that it is.  It’s just that to my addled and admittedly twisted brain they have – almost to a letter – spectacularly missed the fucking point.

By now we all know the story. Sunday Herald article blows smoke up the pencil sharpening cloaca of Australia’s self-appointed queen of the fun harpies. Dr Jennifer Wilson asks a couple of sensible and pertinent questions of the author of said piece, who responds (maturely, and to her credit) by agreeing that she had made an oversight in her article, but one made on the assumption that everybody already knows her subject is a God-molesting wingnut. The Tankard (props to Fiona Patten for the nickname) does what she does best and threatens legal action for defamation. Online world completely embraces its true essence.

What followed was kind of like one of those unpalatable scenes from a Japanese home production where everyone wants to land their wad of perceived wisdom on the stars of the show. It’s a free speech issue. Wait, it’s a feminist issue. No, hang on, it’s all about religion. Or Censorship. Or Bratz dolls. Or something. I’m not saying that these aren’t all factors, or valid points of discussion. I’m saying that these are peripheral to the real meat of the issue, the reason Wilson was right to ask what she did, and the Tankard responded so disproportionately.

Money.

Let’s just clarify a small point. This poor victim of scurrilous enquiries into her motivation has gone to great lengths to ensure she is portrayed as a ‘campaigner’ for female rights. Ignoring the ugly dichotomy inherent in that proposition, (others have covered it much better than I could, or would wish to,) let’s just look at that word ‘campaigner’. It’s a nice, strong, positive word, emoting visions of some lone underdog waging the good war against the amoral establishment. It certainly sounds much better than ‘lobbyist’, which carries the sinister overtones of someone acting as a mouthpiece of the aforementioned establishment, wielding influence and cash to achieve results favourable to their employer. Melinda Tankard Reist petitions politicians to vote for or against legislative change, as suits her agenda. She browbeats and intimidates businesses into conforming to her will. As has been made apparent, she’s prepared to use legal muscle to silence criticism from the general public. She is a lobbyist.

Now I don’t personally know more than a couple of lobbyists, but I’m pretty confident it’s a job that needs a pretty healthy cashflow. It certainly takes cash to hire a high-profile legal defamation specialist, so my question is this: Who’s paying your bills, Melinda?

As for why I ask, well, that’s pretty simple. The Tankard affects me directly. She lobbies to have things banned or removed from sale. I would like to decide whether I buy a coffee mug, or a t-shirt, or watch a movie or whatever. These are my choices to make, not hers to make on my behalf. Strangely, our tastes are probably more similar than dissimilar in this regard, but I wouldn’t presume to speak for others. I’m not qualified to do so, and unless MTR is as coy with her qualifications as she is with her affiliations, neither is she. When it comes to serious issues like abortion and birth control, it is vital that the public is informed as to who’s really pulling the strings. Keep in mind she’s dealing with impressionable children who may not be able to discern that she is possibly acting in the best interests of the Kooky Guardians of the Sacred Concrete Box or some such lunatic fringe cult, as opposed to theirs.

Of course I could be entirely wrong, but be damned if I’m wrong for asking the question, or if Dr Wilson is. What I do know is that The Tankard isn’t representative of some ‘new movement’. Her ilk have been around forever, burning books and music, acting to remove our right to decide for ourselves where we draw our pleasures, or what we are allowed to view as art. They have historically come from a position of power and money – the sort of money MTR wouldn’t seem to have at her personal disposal.

The Tankard’s recalcitrance in dealing with what should be a straightforward issue is telling in itself. If she proceeds against Dr Wilson she’d better be prepared for a long fight, because I’m throwing my hat in the ring as well, and I’m more than a little confident that she’s biting off more than she can chew. Something tells me that I am only one of many, and the dyke make well be crumbling around her fingers. The big danger of the Streisand effect is not the increase in publicity. A narcissistic self-promoter craves publicity like air. The danger is that people will start turning over rocks and uncovering scurrilous activity that had hitherto evaded sunlight. Surely any true moral champion embraces the light of scrutiny? Surely.

Time will tell. The dance is on. Caveat Emptor, swingers. Where’s my waitress?

 

Never mind the Baracks – Here’s the flaccid media

Don’t we just love a good pageant, swingers? It doesn’t matter who or what it involves. It could be a visiting retinue from house Kardashian, the Queen, or any one of a multitude of the irrelevant privileged. Provided we get to line the streets and turn out some pomp, we’re happy little campers. For a country barely older than Colonel Sanders, we sure do love our ceremonies.

One would struggle to feign surprise, then, at the collective obsequiousness with which we greeted the OMG POTUS when he deigned to stop over for a few hours on our fair shores on his way to somewhere more interesting. We have a history of sycophancy. ‘All the way with LBJ’ wasn’t just a slogan, it was a personal directive to sitting members.

So I expected what we got in many ways. The tearful ecstasy of schoolchildren and backbenchers, the heartfelt rendition of ‘I loves you Porgy’ from Julia Gillard on the rusty trombone, Tony Abbott demonstrating that his brain is indistinguishable from colonic irrigation; no surprises to be had there.

What did surprise me was the utter testicular vacuum displayed by the press. Here was the chance for a serious journalist to make their mark by posing serious questions. What did we get? Nothing. From anyone. The coverage was so lacking in substance it was almost anti-matter. One could expect a certain level of ineptitude from some key players. Michelle Grattan managed to get the best day’s sleep in years. Laurie Oakes was undoubtedly sitting in his office, waiting for the president to make an appointment. Andrew Bolt & Alan Jones were detained by federal police at the border and were forced to sleep in their rig – they cuddled. Janet Albrechtsen was busy having rough sex with a stapler. Piers Akerman doesn’t know where he is and would like to be taken home in time for Upstairs Downstairs.

As for the rest? They should wither in Massola-esque shame.

 

So for the sake of every journalist who has wasted their parents’ money paying for their useless degree, I have a couple of questions for you to write down. You know? The ones you didn’t ask:

1. Mr President: You have vocally supported the uprisings in Egypt and Libya now that those dictators no longer serve American interests. Why haven’t you given the same support to the people of Bahrain, who are fighting the same fight?
2. Mr President: How can you lecture China on human rights while Guantanamo Bay is still operational – two years after you pledged to shut it down?
3. Mr President: Will you seek to extradite Julian Assange and charge him in a military court? If so, will you also seek to extradite responsible parties from the Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian, and New York Times? If not, why not?
4. Mr President: What exactly does our renewed free trade agreement curtail? Every previous agreement has shafted Australia completely. How is this different?

    

There you go kids. That should be enough to get you going, or at least cause you to reflect on your gutlessness. Do you wonder at all why people with real jobs think you’re crap?

 

8 Things I know About Teh Gheys

“A bigot” writes David van Gend, “is someone who refuses to see the other point of view.” A nice theory, but it’s unfortunately demonstrably false. Any sane person will refuse to concede that the world is hollow, that human activity is not affecting the climate, or that humans were spontaneously created from potting mix and spare ribs. The reason they would take this view is that in each instance there is overwhelming proof to the contrary – enough so that anyone who clings to these beliefs can be safely regarded as a window-licking moron.

Such is the calibre of argument presented against marriage equality. Like the issue of climate change, those clinging to their position do so through irrational faith, and continue to (ever more shrilly) parrot talking points that have long since been discredited completely. David van Gend has repackaged all of these same tired chestnuts in a fresh wrapping of confected concern. It’s old, it adds nothing, and I can’t be bothered revisiting the arguments that have proven him wrong, time and time again.

So instead I figure I’d enlighten the interwebs about a few apparently little known facts about same sex couples. This is obviously hitherto unheard of knowledge, so you are hereby sworn to secrecy under penalty of the Scissor Sisters, or similar forms of torture:

FACT #1: Homosexuals can’t have children by accident. Even with their drugs and their dancing and lattes, they have to make a conscious decision to breed. They are, in fact, hampered at every turn by adoption agencies and fertility clinics run by nice Christian organisations. This of course is at odds with the accepted wisdom that the community is built on the back of the Minto Mum, and the truism that the best way to locate a single woman in Woy Woy is to look for those pushing the prams. Teeth are a matter of personal preference. Apparently the sacred ‘family unit’ axiom is negotiable.

FACT #2: Homosexuals are statistically more likely to have tertiary education and high paying careers. They are more likely to be able to provide for a child in their care than the majority of parents. This is in no way proof alone that they are capable of being decent parents – one need only look to Alan Jones to see the flaw in that argument, but fortunately most aren’t self-loathing mouth breathers, so the danger is somewhat mitigated.

FACT #3: Homosexuals don’t hate people for being heterosexual. It’s true. Unfortunately the reverse does not always apply. And this, good folk, is the crux of the biscuit. The main thrust of the argument against marriage equality is the hatred of the ignorant directed toward those who do not wish them harm. Those that rail against gay marriage through fear of it debasing their own union are losers who lose. People so insecure about their own marriage don’t deserve to be in one. They probably don’t deserve soap or cutlery either, but I can’t do anything about that for now.

FACT #4: Ted Lapkin is an idiot. Not only is he an idiot, he’s a multifaceted idiot. He manages to be wrong about everything all at once. Quite a feat when you think about it. Even Andrew Bolt occasionally manages to be right due to the law of probability. For Lapkin to be so consistently wrong he must put in a monumental, unwavering effort – the sort of dedication that wilfully bypasses the tap when thirsty in order to drink from the toilet. Commendable if you go for that sort of thing.

FACT #5: Homosexuals are good at love. Perhaps because they’ve been told most (if not all) of their lives that they are incapable of true, ‘beat your wife’ kind of intimacy, they seem to work harder at loving. This is of course very bad for children. Children are allergic to love, and have been known to break out in Pell rash from overexposure. There’s a phrase in the church for the love of children. It’s called ‘Relocation to South America’. It’s not exactly the same sort of love we’re talking about, but they can’t really tell the difference.

Which brings us to FACT #6: Homosexuality isn’t paedophilia. It isn’t bestiality or incest. It is homosexuality. That some people can’t tell the difference says much more about them than it does about anyone else with a passing understanding of English, psychology, or common bloody sense. Homosexuals don’t rape your dog. I can’t speak for all News Limited bloggers on that one.

FACT #7 PETER GARRETT MUST RESIGN because PENNY WONG CAUSED RIOTS IN ENGLAND or SOMETHING.

FACT #8 Some people are paid by interfering tosspots to speak up about issues they have no understanding of – simply because they have a fan base that struggles with the concept of a spoon.

I leave it to others to draw their own conclusions regarding David van Geld’s tiny mew in the dark. Did he add anything at all to what should be a non-debate, or did he just cry into his weet-bix like another whiney nobody? I’d say history will decide, but a week from now Davey will just be another forgotten stain on the wall. The rest of us are playing well past this sort of nonsense.

 

Disclaimer: I am heterosexual. I have poor dress sense.

How low can you go? Ask the Herald Sun.

Not since Greg Jericho was outed by a petulant rag have I seen such a blatant misuse of ink as the Herald Sun managed to achieve today. I’m speaking of the call for the sacking of Andy Blume, a tram driver and something of a twitter celebrity.

As far as twitter goes, I’d call him a friend. He’s constantly rude and inappropriate. He’s offensive. He’ll show you his dick if you ask nicely. He’s bloody funny and has a huge heart.

Andy was not targeted because of anything to do with his work. He was marked for summary execution because he is critical of a rag that fails every conceivable test of journalistic integrity. Perhaps it would help to put this into context. This is a newspaper that has published calls for the assassination of the Prime Minister, that has wilfully published disinformation regarding the science of climate change, and seemingly encourages its morally challenged staff to accept bribes in return for favourable editorials. If Australia had a worthwhile media regulator, the Herald Sun would be fined out of existence. Alas, we don’t, and the blight continues. People buy this piece of shit every day, naively believing it operates within some moral framework that dictates the news can’t be fabricated.

Andy, on the other hand, has worked for a decade at his job, probably obnoxiously. Nobody has died on his watch, so we could fairly call him competent. It would take the longest of bows to draw the same conclusion of his current detractors.

Oh, and by the way Wayne Flower, you cur, If you want to out others expect the same in return. You’re known now.

Death in the Ring. Beauty lived here.

The poets breathe shite. Age doesn’t endow us with additional skin. Rather it peels us, whittles us like some sad balsa onion until we are nothing but bruised core and aching resentment of the fluidity life once afforded. We grow bitter, but it is not due to any hardening of the heart. It is due to the helpless recognition of our vulnerability to the many ravages of time. Our lost opportunities. Our lost love. Our fading capacity to experience truth. Our scream against the inevitability of beauty falling through our fingers, forever to mingle with the mountains of regret at our feet.

There is nothing glorious in your Death, Daran. It was ignoble and undeserved. You should have died in battle, or in love, or on stage. You deserved a painful, bloody death, befitting a warrior fool. A prince of crazy. A stupid and glorious poet. We rained on people in our day. We were fire and shit and anger, flowers of the killing fields. That day has passed with you, and the fire with it. Like many who stood beside you, I will never burn as bright again, but oh, how we burned then.

The muses who commanded us, resplendent and perfect in their beauty, we will never know again. The brute force of our song forged of hurt and hope, we will never know again. Our anger, our violence, our will for destruction – all faded. In those times we crafted the men we became from raw experience, and the brutal pain of error.

Brother, you were a dangerous and potent force. You would not ever be controlled. You drove me mad, or perhaps I was mad already. I loved you then, and I love you still. For the ocean of change that we have traversed, and the change that is to come, I am grateful to have walked beside you. Goodbye, my friend. It’s been quite a journey.

Vale, Daran Pratt.

 

 

 

 

 

Pornography -The View from My Pants

This was originally written for King’s Tribune. You should read it there, because there are heaps of things way cooler than this to read as well.

 

Q and A has received a fair amount of criticism of late, not least from the Tribune’s very own Justin Shaw. While much of it may have appeared fair and reasoned at the time, it can now be revealed that the writers of said criticism are terminally deluded, and seek to maliciously mislead you gentle seekers of truth.

‘On what basis does he make this claim?’ I hear you ask, as, dear reader, you are so often wont to do. The answer is simple, and undisputable.

On Monday, May 23rd, Q and A gave us the finest moment in Australian television history – possibly of all time, but certainly since Miranda Devine’s left nut popped out when she pulled her Basic Instinct move on Barrie Cassidy from the Insiders naughty chair.

I speak of course of the moment when Gail Dines uttered those three magic, oft misunderstood words, Arse To Mouth. There was silence in the streets as a whole nation collectively battled their gag reflex, or searched frantically for somewhere to offload the mouthful of sick they had just acquired. It was a thing of true beauty. Should I die tomorrow, your humble scribe will consider his life to be complete.

For those unfortunate souls who missed this exquisite little nugget of WTF, a little background information is required.

Some folk regard Gail Dines as a prime example of the Fun Police. This is not the case. Gail Dines is the Fun Mossad, assassinating pleasure with unbridled lethality.

Her mere mention of the word ‘erection’ is enough to render any mortal man incapable of having one, often for months afterward.

Her place on the panel was in keeping with Q and A’s long running policy of ensuring that the sanity of other guests is counterbalanced with at least one raving wingnut. This compliments the show’s other policy of rounding up as many mouth breathing Young Liberals as they can prise away from Mummy’s computer in the false pursuit of ‘audience balance’.

And rave? Boy did Gail rave. Gail raved harder than a metrosexual with a Hello Kitty lunchbox full of disco biscuits.

I find there is something almost awe-inspiring about watching a moral crusader in full froth. Perhaps it’s the sheer tenacity of their fervour, or their idiot child-like comprehension of life’s complexities. Most likely there’s an element of sheer relief that I can manage to get through a full day without becoming outraged at what someone else chooses to do for fun, something I doubt Gail has managed to do since she was four years old.

You see, like all true nutters, Gail knows what’s wrong with the world, and she knows exactly how to fix it. Actually she didn’t really get around to the latter, but the former certainly seems to revolve around arse to mouth.

In Gail’s World™ pornography is bad, mmkay? Apparently it was invented in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and ever since has been destroying our capacity for happiness, intimacy and something something. Our children now progress straight from Marco Polo to the uncontrollable urge to sodomise each other with garden implements. All men who watch pornography are diseased and women who watch it are actually men, or self-loathing Jews, or something something. I’m sure you get the idea.

Much hilarity ensued on twitter, and not a few thought provoking conversations carried on long after most of us had showered to wash off the bukkake of wowser we had just endured.

It occurred to me then that as deranged as the performance had been, it was not wrong (in the way that picturing Nicola Roxon giving a hummer is wrong) merely misguided, and dangerously naïve.

I don’t presume to speak for all men. That would be presumptuous. I do, however, have a penis. It is a very good looking penis and I call it Captain Winkie, but that’s a conversation for another time. The good Captain grants me the right to speak for myself on the issue of how men view pornography; certainly with more authority than some harpy who was weaned on pureed capers and wasabi.

Similarly, I know women with vaginas. They’re my favourite kind of woman. They can also speak for themselves. (The women, not the vaginas; though I would definitely take the advice of a talking vagina. Again, I digress.)

So here’s my perceived wisdom on this delicately nuanced subject. I seek to set the record straight, at least in my own terms, and for the sake of people I know: Pornography is a form of graffiti. Occasionally it can be beautiful, but mostly it just dirties the place up. Somewhere in between the tawdry and the artful is a form of communication that has been with us forever, and holds some attraction for all of us.

I enjoy watching images that reflect my own admittedly vanilla tastes. Provided the tastes of others don’t cross the boundary of criminality, I have no problem with them.

People – especially women – are sometimes exploited by the makers of pornography. It’s iniquitous and we should be talking about it, but we can do that without prefacing the discussion with an assumption that all men are violent, hate-filled slaves to their own penises.

As I write this the Perth Sexpo is ramping up in the centre opposite my apartment. Couples are indulging in the sort of behaviour that brings Gail Dnes out in hives. They seem happy, and sexually charged. They are leaving with their showbags of carnal depravity and going home to their apparently dysfunctional lives, hand in hand. They are kissing, touching and being flagrantly enamoured with each other in public.

They are obviously yet to learn of the depth of their perversion. I for one am fucking glad for that, and if I was capable of praying, it would be for Gail’s overactive bile duct to rise up, detach and lodge itself in her throat. Or something something.

Osama bin Handy

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

• Country Joe and the Fish

   

Osama bin Laden is dead. That’s it. Ten years of bloody war staged on the pretext capturing purportedly the most dangerous man in the world. Ten years of swarms of CIA operatives scouring Afghanistan yelling “Marco!” and he turns up in the Pakistani Playboy Mansion, less than a kilometre down the road from one of the largest military bases in the country. I’m sorry swingers, but I’m having a bit of a WTF meltdown.

Reports are coming in faster than you can channel-surf as not flocks, but storm-clouds of seagull-journalists descend on Abbottabad (and I seriously can’t believe I haven’t heard a joke about that yet), relaying essentially no information, but taking nice pictures of the wall around the compound. What information does slip through the competence filter is largely contradictory. As I write, the latest news is that bin Laden was not armed, but was resistant to capture, and that his wife attempted to attack the crack troop that confronted them both. She was shot in the leg, he in the head and chest. Who the fuck staged the operation, the US Navy Seals or the Victorian Police Department?

Apparently the CIA has known of his whereabouts for months, long enough at least that they could build a replica of the compound to practice their assault, by some accounts. Yet for all their practice they were unable to capture an allegedly unarmed man and bring him to trial. This should give one pause for thought. The last excuse I heard for the war in Iraq was that we’re bringing democracy and establishing the rule of law. Some example for the kids you’re setting there, Obama. Summary executions are bad if you happen to be any nation but the US or Israel. Not a good look.

So why would we want a trial? Why would we want to put this man, accused of the worst act of terrorism to ever be carried out on US soil, on the stand and make him answer for his alleged crimes? Perhaps to find out if he’s really guilty. That’s what democracies do apparently. The message sort of got lost during the Bush years, but we’ve been told there is (or was) no greater threat to ‘Our Way of Life’ than this malnourished Mungo McCallum look-alike. What is so wrong with the US legal system that he couldn’t have faced due process, and had his guilt or innocence determined by the court? I’m wagering on an utter lack of evidence and the need for a bump in approval ratings for a beleaguered president. I’m not suggesting that bin Laden harboured no malice toward the West. I’m claiming that we will now never know whether he was really behind anything.

That bin Laden was never brought before a magistrate is a cause of abiding shame. It makes a fraud of the supposed rule of law, of any (tenuous) claims of a moral imperative. The West, The East – we’ve been uniformly finger-fucked – all because some idiot wants to keep his job.

It’s all a bit late to talk of this now, though. Bin Laden has apparently been buried at sea, which rules out recovery, let alone an autopsy. We have witnessed a spontaneous outpouring of emotion from the American people matched only in its nationalism and religious fervour by every other whack job, evolutionarily stunted theocracy on Earth. I’ve seen people whipped into ecstatic states before. They fall into two classes – former girlfriends and dangerously deluded idiots. Watching all of the US turn into Alabama rates as one of the scariest things I’ve had the misfortune to witness. America – land of the free, world champion of democracy. Shoot the fucker before he opens his mouth. Namaste.

 

 

 

 

ROAD TRIP – CALLING ALL WONKS

My nipples are indecently erect. Carol Duncan, starlet extraordinaire of wonkworld has announced a competition that we exist to win. Up to 20 of us can experience the glory of the Hunter with Carol herself. We win this – we give birth to a potential new institution. What will bring it on home is 200 words – carved from a flawless block of pure inspiration.

We need definite numbers – the first 19 wonks to register here make the cut. We also need to coordinate our entry. Let this be the forum. If we don’t win this then we have officially failed at life and should probably die quietly in a corner.

Let’s do it.

Interlude

Break bread and imbibe with me on this auspicious eve. Let me weave for you an air of rusted strings and broken voice, a dulcet dirge to herald the passing of all things hale and comely. Draw close. It is in tones conspiring that I warble in the dark to the few ears yet to turn away.

These are days of incandescent mediocrity. The age of conviction lies behind us as a maiden defiled. Shame hangs palpably from our wet lips as we bequeath the embers to progeny destined to feast on naught but the bitter fruit of our malaise. This is no song of hope.

Our once beautiful tongue has been usurped by the depraved and unhinged. It was not the violence of lusty battle or the failed, overreaching arc of our desperate pursuit of beauty that ferried the corpse to our door. The truth is far less palatable. We simply ceased to care. Let the mighty halls of time reverberate with our apathetic mumbles.

They do not love us, our new masters. That much is writ large amongst the letters of disdain their hackneyed machine spews forth. The machine voices the mouth, and the mouth has no eyes to appreciate its disabuse. The incessant drone of failed intellect pervades the ether like a wet fart while we quibble over the rights of the pygmies of measured thought. The sadness, the all-consuming idiocy would drive a monkey spare.

Love letter of despair to my fiance

Honey, peel off your panties and grab the cognac. We’ll roll back the sunroof, bust out of this paved prison and tear up the Hume in a streak of molten, righteous fury. Forget veering off into the city that never wakes, there’s no respite for us there. Hokey-pokey crackpot lawmakers with revolving heads are spewing enough venom to kill all the grass within a six mile radius of the special house. The air is polluted with populist hyperbole so thick that local cats are birthing two-headed kittens. No, push on we must. We’re refugees now and it’s Bandt country or bust. Crank up the Beck, we’re driving til we can scrape the tread off the Yokohamas with a cold butter knife.

It’s just not safe for us here anymore, sweetheart. The pond scum of the media have built themselves a moral vacuum that can suck the skin off a wild pig in full flight. People’s brains are spraying through their ears and the streets are awash with mega-litres of toxic zombie arse-clown. Climate change has got nothing. It’s the threat of concentrated stupid that seeks to destroy us now.

I’m not sure how to break this to you baby, so I’ll just put it to you straight. People hate you. You were born in a third world country, which makes you worth 35% of a nigger in the old scale, allowing for inflation. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how capable or how damned beautiful you are. You’re a parasite, a blight upon our way of life and a threat to national security. We have fridge magnets warning us of people like you. Hell, we have purpose-built detention centres and you’re so damned obstinate you won’t even avail yourself of their services. You’re an ingrate, and the community has had enough of you not costing the tax payer a cent after we’ve gone to such length and cost to incarcerate you.

The good news is that they hate me with an order of magnitude that dwarfs anything they may feel for you. I’m a class traitor, which is the most heinous intellectual position imaginable among those who struggle to imagine a bowl of porridge. Not only do I love you, I don’t even have the decency to be contrite about it. I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse (which is worth 82.5% of a cobbler’s curse in the old scale) if some woman wants to marry another woman. I want to marry you, and you’re only worth about a third of a nigger. Never mind that you’re of fairer skin than me, I’m white and you’re apparently not. Regarding you as an equal is an insult to every One Nation/LNP voting crab-walker with enough grey matter remaining to negotiate a decent lick of their bus window.

So put your hands or lips to this thing that has come between us, Mrs C. I’ll concentrate on pressing the pedal flat and possibly avoiding school children. Possibly. My sole concern is our survival now, and taking what few pleasures we can from the ever diminishing suite of rights the nutters haven’t yet legislated against. We’ll break into Bandt territory and claim asylum. They can’t turn us away under local rules regarding human decency. The downside is that we’ll have to live in Melbourne, but that’s another problem for another time.

A Brief History of Dickhead

Somewhere back in the dim recesses of time, when Happy Days was still new to the Earth, an evolutionary divergence occurred. Whether it happened by mutation or genetic obstinacy is unclear, but the human race split into two definitive and eternally irreconcilable strains. One branch, Homo Pragmaticus, was to progress and elevate humanity to new, hitherto unimagined realms of achievement. The other; Homo Spankis, devoted themselves to not understanding their children’s music and bitching a lot.

For a while the two subspecies coexisted somewhat peacefully, in an almost symbiotic fashion. Pragmaticus would write books that Spankis would use for heating and light, and occasionally as a source of food. The latter of course constipated them terribly, and it has been postulated that diet was a determining factor in their subsequent accelerated social and psychological regression.

Pragmaticus continued to evolve, however. They developed concepts like scented candles and universal human rights. They began to uncover the immutable secrets of existence and formulated theories to explain them – such as chaos and string theory, and if you pick up that acoustic guitar and play one more fucking Joni Mitchell song I’m going to punch you really hard in the fun-sack. These insights led to technological breakthroughs that culminated in the pinnacle of all human achievement, the Personal Computer.

The Personal Computer changed everything. It was affordable, and Spankis could for the first time communicate with a world that existed outside of their own stunted imagination. They didn’t even have to get on their knees to do it, although many of them still chose to out of habit and familiarity. For one glimmering moment it seemed possible for the subspecies to reunite under the universal banner of porn.

Alas, it was not to be. Spankis failed to grasp the concept, much as they had failed to grasp every precedent societal development. While they embraced porn wholeheartedly, they introduced donkeys and their Uncle Muriel then wept with guilt in the corner, effectively cruelling everybody’s fun.

Realising that the only way to counter Pragmaticus’ dangerously guilt-free and progressive behaviour was through repetition and loud complaints, Spankis prudently incubated a number of homunculi to utilise the tools of their perceived enemy, while they busied themselves building frightening structures with great big fuck off sound systems within which to preach the virtues of humility. War had been declared and was to be waged. Pragmaticus was caught entirely unawares, as it was collectively seeking a decent Pho and arguing amongst itself as to whether Radiohead’s artistic pinnacle was OK Computer or Amnesiac.

So began the war of the bleeding obvious, a gruesome battle destined to shed much blood, and not a little semen from those amongst the ranks of Spankis who had moved on from farm animal porn and into the rarefied glory of science denial. ‘Fuck you and fuck your scientists’ became the rallying cry of those who didn’t understand that their Personal Computer was a by-product of the science they held in such contempt. ‘Humans have no impact on the environment’ cried those who wept about the population explosion bringing strange looking people into their neighbourhood. ‘Their beliefs are an affront to our way of life’ said the people who threatened doctors with creatively painful deaths. ‘I’ll pray for you’ squealed those using medicine to keep themselves alive.

The war continues. It will probably outlast this generation, and maybe even the next. Spankis is a subspecies with an enormous bank of stupid and money at its disposal. Pragmaticus is weak from eating tofu and suffering an overwhelming fear of soap. The only thing that is certain to us at this crucial moment is that the battle will be dragged further into the sewer, and the victor is likely to be the subspecies which breathes best amongst the shit. Alas, we all know which fuckers have the gills.

The Shame of Being Australian

Here’s a thought swingers. How about we grow a pair and start stepping up to the crease? Why don’t we stop trembling in the corner like Aspidistras with Parkinson’s disease and actually take the fight to some of these festering rodents that somehow managed to get elected, despite their multitudinous social handicaps and glaring ineptitude? The last time I checked, our elected officials were meant to be servants of the public, yet they operate – almost to a man (or woman) as mouthpieces for the minority interest groups who fund their grubby campaigns. Our votes empowered them, and our apathy allows them to make the proverbial hay unchecked. Fuck that. I’ve seriously had enough, and I’m seriously pissed off with you for being so damned complacent.

The Liberals have acted so contemptibly for so long that we’ve become inured to their poison. Tony Abbott stumbles from one verbal travesty to the next and we don’t even blink anymore. Scott Morrison breathes excrement like the rest of us breathe air and nobody bats an eye. Hockey dares to display a hint of humanity and is forced to retract within one revolution of the news cycle, under the threat of crucifixion. Turnbull – perhaps the only creature of conviction within the leper colony – eats his own spine and stays stum, quietly hoping his party will implode so that he can rise from the ashes on the wings of ‘I told you so’. It won’t be so. This bunch of clusterfucks won’t countenance anther liberal Liberal in my lifetime. Most likely they never will again. It is the party of science denying, religious wingnuts. All hail the American Midwest. Fuck you if you don’t love my God.

Labor is no better. We just had to go and sacrifice integrity for the novelty of a woman in the top job. Hooray for Julia. Hooray for women. Without the women’s vote we would have had the grubby little failed social experiment that is Abbott. Unfortunately that’s not anywhere near good enough. Julia wheeled and dealt for the sole purpose of Julia, and time and again we’ve seen real reform laid out on the altar of political expediency. Every genuine reform effort Rudd made has been hopelessly compromised by an opportunistic idiot – a woman so enamoured with her own image as to render herself cripple.

The saddest, most pathetic card in the deck has to be handed to the Greens. Bob – here’s a tip for free. The Greens are no longer a ‘protest’ party. You doubled your primary vote in one fell swoop, yet continue to alienate your growing base. I voted for you because my conscience dictated so, but I can’t stand stupidity, and that’s what you’re putting out there. I know your policies. I’ve read them all. Yet you allow the press to misrepresent you on a daily basis without rebuke. It’s like you want to fail, and you will fail – for as long as you remain a party of wishy washy ideals and not a party of action.

I really don’t know how much more I can stand. Children are being whored out to the filthy uncle of politics. While I eat my dinner whole families are in prison, multinational mining interests are raping the land, and perhaps most importantly, we are becoming an embarrassing joke to the rest of the world. Do something, for fuck’s sake. It’s your vote, and it’s your voice. Make it count.

A dick in the mouth of democracy

While most of us were struggling to recover from, or still indulging in, the excesses of the stupid season, a ruling was made by the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal that all but flew under the radar. Indeed, if it wasn’t for Joe Hilderbrand’s article on the 27^th, I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all.

The tribunal found in favour of the Catholic church’s argument that to disallow them to discriminate openly against homosexuals was in fact a form of discrimination against the church. One can only attempt to grasp the nature of this logic when one remembers that these people believe in a god who fathered himself so he could commit assisted suicide because some naked tart took the culinary advice of a talking snake. The only approximation to ‘Catholic logic’ that I can find in modern literature is Doulas Adams’ improbability drive, although that requires far less suspension of disbelief from the reader.

Of course it is no accident that the ruling of this fruitcake tribunal was released smack bang in the middle of the festive period, when most of us were still so inebriated we were struggling to remember the purpose of opposable digits. Any political reptile knows only too well that if you have unpopular news, you release it when nobody is looking. It’s the media equivalent of timing your fart to the sounding of the vuvuzela in the stand behind you. All power to the NSW government, though. Through a skill born of years of necessary practice they have elevated the sneaky fart into an art form par excellence. With almost zero reportage, the release disappeared like a drop of pubescent semen into the vat of cottage cheese that passes for the Christmas news cycle.

So, years of ballooning public sentiment and robust argument in favour of GLBT equality have finally been found to be an assault on the legal rights of the long-suffering and imminently vulnerable Catholic institution. Truly a day of celebration for persecuted multinational corporations everywhere. I can only say, in the revered words of the Virgin Mary, thank fuck for that. Now we can properly get down to business.

The obvious first step in further extending the security blanket of the law over the church’s emaciated metaphorical thighs is to remove the heavy bourdon of tax exemption from their operations. I get to pay taxes, and therefore feel empowered to take my place in political discourse, rather than being some parasite that merely leeches off the sweat of others and should rightly remain voiceless in the public debate. The law in its misguided benevolence accords the same right to our evil gay oppressors. Hell, even minors get to pay taxes, though we rightly tell them to shut up and go their room at voting time. Denying the church this basic right is a criminally negligent oversight that needs our lawmakers’ urgent intervention.

It follows that the church should be invited to participate in full public disclosure of all of its business dealings, as all publicly listed companies have the right to do. I own shares in the company I work for, so I (and anyone else who cares to look) have the right to see how my money is being spent. As every person who puts money in the collection plate on Sunday is a default shareholder, surely they should be afforded the same rights as me, both in seeing how their money is spent, and voting on key issues of direct impact on their investment. Also, in the same manner that we extend the protective hand of law over our indigenous kin in term of how they spend their income, we need to protect the church from the possibility of its own bad judgement. Imagine if it was found that the Catholic church had accidentally invested in pharmaceutical companies that manufacture birth control medicine, or (heaven forbid) munitions companies. How on Earth could the church reconcile that kind of negligence against its divine and unchanging tenets? We owe it to them to prevent them making that kind of mistake, and legislation is their only Earthly saviour.

Finally, now that the law has acknowledged the evil of promoting GLBT equality, everybody who supports said equality should recant their sinful ways by placing an absolute boycott on all dealings with Catholics, as it’s the only way to save them from inadvertent persecution. It is our responsibility to save them from endangering their immortal souls by unwittingly accepting our tainted lucre. Worse still is that they should unwittingly fund our illegal activism by paying for our goods and services. I humbly beseech any business owners who are illegally persecuting the Catholic church by supporting GLBT equality to come clean. Place a sign in your window to dissuade Catholics from entering. I suggest the sort of friendly language they relate to. Something like “Catholics who shop here will burn in hell for all eternity” should get the message across in a subtle fashion.

Personally, I am in awe of the wisdom of our state parliamentary committee system, which obviously surpasses archaic institutions like the High Court in its understanding of civil rights. I have always known the gay community to be oppressive, but up until December 27, 2010 I thought it was for making me listen to Kylie at house parties. I know better now. I pledge to do my part to rid the world of gay persecution of helpless Catholics. Do your part. They need you.