Tassie Tango – Doing the Brown Sign Boogie – Part 3

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The CB and I had ever so briefly been to Stanley many (many) years ago and it obviously never registered what a charming, picturesque place it is even if, like all other Tasmanian coastal towns it is exposed to elements which would have daunted the most intrepid of explorers.

I did most of the planning for this trip (after a suggestion from GF1) and up to now it’s been a resounding success which is just as well. Can you imagine (if you are a man) being in a car for hours on end with three disgruntled females. But I hadn’t expected the response to cute little Stanley. It was positively orgasmic. The place is full of neat, immaculately presented period houses and they all seem to have views to die for. As we were leaving yesterday, GF2 demanded the car be stopped so she could get out and buy a house. And then there’s The Nut, a large rock that sticks up out of the land (50%) and the sea (the other 50%) like a miniature Ayre’s Rock.

And there’s penguins. Back along the coast a few kilometres there’s a place called Penguin but their attempt to corner the region’s penguin driven tourist economy failed when word got out that there are penguins all along the coast. Common as bums they are, but they still generate the sort of reaction generally reserved for tiny babies and puppies. So we duly went down to the sea wall / boat ramp / wharf a couple of nights ago to watch and listen as the juvenile penguins whinged and whined for their food like so many tiny babies.

The old pub in Stanley was a welcome respite after a few hours in the car and for an hour or so, we were the only ones there. “How’s the serenity” one might say if one was in an iconic Australian movie or in a quiet (when the bloody jukebox was on recess) country pub. But eventually we were joined by other tourists and perhaps the odd local.

Now we’re all of the friendly persuasion and are quite happy to converse with those of a similar bent. Unfortunately GF1 inadvertently opened a conversation with a gentleman who had ignored the two women he was with but was happy to talk at us with a relent that would have done the ever persevering Wylie Coyote proud. I tried to do a Road Runner on him to shut him up by saying I was holidaying with my three wives and this was the one time of the year they are allowed out in public, but he was unphased. Admittedly my “wives” were wearing jeans and skirts rather than freedom sacks and we were in a pub and we were drinking so my attempt at cultural intervention failed miserably. I should have said I was a Mormon.

But back to The Nut which so dominates this place. There’s a chairlift that takes you to the top which never gets more than a few feet off the ground. GF1 who doesn’t like heights, figured this was her kind of chairlift after the somewhat more challenging experience of the largest single span for a chairlift in the world over the Cataract Gorge in Launceston. During the 2km circumnavigation of the top of The Nut the clouds and rain moved in. This was more like the Tasmania we knew and loved in our three year Tasmanian sojourn many years ago.

Tassie Tango – Doing the Brown Sign Boogie – Part 2

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Up to last week, in my long(ish) and mostly satisfying life I estimate I had seen around four sea horses. This rather obvious deficiency was spectacularly righted when GF1 insisted we visit the sea horse farm at Beauty Point north of Launceston. Incidentally, and I digress, there was a general complaint among my female travelling companions regarding the fact that most if not all things in this part of the world are named after men. Then I pointed out that Beauty Point is in fact named after a female….cow. Hurt feelings were not assuaged I’m afraid.

Anyway I am now an expert on the reproductive ins and outs (if you’ll excuse the expression) of the seahorse. I know there are 54 species of seahorse of which 23 are in Australia. I’ve seen them in their thousands and they are exported to aquariums all over the world. I’ve even held one and let it twirl its long tail round my finger. But I still don’t know what you call a tank full of sea horses – a herd, a school, a posse, maybe a saddle of sea horses.

And who knew there were things such as hand fish which look like a miniature version of Thing from The Adams Family. They are almost extinct and of one species there are estimated to be only 70 adults left in the world, all of them in the Derwent River. When they sit on the river bed and don’t move much you’d think that would be an open invitation to predators to partake of the hand fish buffet. So it’s not surprising there aren’t many left.

Up to now the trip’s been mostly about animals (Tasmanian Devils, platypuses (platipi?), echidnas (hello Randall you cute little three legged critter), kangaroos, the aforementioned sea horses, wombats and assorted bird and snakes. Oh, and bridges – Richmond Bridge, Batman Bridge and the Hobart bridge that was hit by a barge many years ago, collapsing one of the spans. I had the t-shirt to prove it which in hindsight was a bit morbid and insensitive because there were fatalities. But we joke about everything provided there has been a respectable interval between tragedy and comedy. Why were the Japanese crying poor after the Fukushima tsunami. I saw one house with eight cars and four boats in the driveway. See what I mean.

Time to switch from animal to mineral and The Nut at Stanley.

Tassie Tango – Doing the Brown Sign Boogie – Part 1

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I could have started this travel saga by saying that I don’t know how or why I allowed myself to be talked into it and you would be none the wiser. But that would be disingenuous. I actually volunteered to embark on a 10 day holiday with three women. Admittedly one is the child bride and the other two, GF1 and GF2, are good friends who I’ve worked with and socialised with for many years so it won’t be heaven or hell but it will be a lot of fun

We’re now four days in and I haven’t had a chance to add to this because the days have been as packed as a porn stars jocks. And we’ve pretty much been left to our own devices as it’s Easter and Tasmania is closed apart from the touristy stuff. So driving has been quite leisurely and just as well because we didn’t want to be snapped by one of the four speed cameras in Hobart, the locations of which the hire car lady kindly revealed. I won’t reveal the name of the hire car company or the authorities may send Constable Dan Adams of Liawenee after her. That would give him something to do because the town he patrols has a grand total of no people apart from him. It’s that sort of public servant to public ratio which puts Tassie in the same mendicant status as Greece and California.

Politeness is a state-wide trait which makes the people a delight to interact with. We found the only French waiter who has been privileged enough to be given a working visa to wait tables in restaurants in Tasmania. His countrymen (and women presumably) would be permitted to scowl at diners in the less courteous parts of Melbourne and most of the city nosheries in Sydney, but not here because of the politeness directive. Luigi, as we christened him (Italian I know, but we’re on vacation so the normal rules don’t apply) was the Manuel (Spanish I know etc etc) of Hobart – bumbling, eager to please to the point of obsequiousness and somewhat forgetful. We ordered four entrees and four mains. Three entrees arrived together and three mains arrived together. A 75% strike rate in some activities, baseball for example, would be exceptional. When it comes to delivering meals in a high end restaurant it’s a 13 on the par 3 12th at Augusta National. But as soon as he was reminded in a very non-Fawlty Towers way, I might add, he immediately offered the missing meals free of charge. This offer was obviously accepted. That meant an extra 60 bucks for booze so were we happy – bet your life we were.

Just in case you were wondering about the brown sign reference, tourist signs are brown and GF1 was running shotgun on them. There are millions of them even in a tiny place like this so while we didn’t check them all out we did our share.

A Master Stroke?

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I took up golf on a semi-regular basis about 18 months ago after playing intermittently for years but rarely in Australia. I spent so much time on the road I was playing more golf in Korea than here. There was this one time (not at band camp), early one morning in early spring, so it was still very cold, I hit a perfect wedge onto a green and it bounced almost as high as I hit it and finished up adjacent to the next tee. But that’s another story. Now that I am back playing it’s likely there will be more golf stories. Here’s the first.

The Masters finished recently and the Tiger is back. Will Augusta retain its aura or has the fact that the winner was someone who hasn’t won a major for 11 years, rubbed off some of the mystique. I suspect this says more about Tiger than Augusta but we’ll see.

Augusta National Golf Club is said by some, to be the most exclusive club in the world. Not as exclusive as the “Fell 30,000 Feet Without a Parachute and Survived” club or the “Olympic Medal for Underwater Swimming” club or the “Duelling Survivors” club but still rather difficult to get into.

When the Masters comes round each year I get an attack of the Groucho Marx’s. Most people (men mainly) would give their wives to be members of Augusta National. It’s not particularly expensive to join (if you’re reasonably well off) but it’s by invitation only and if you make it known that you’d be receptive to an invitation, forget it. In this vein, some of the rules and regulations are rather quaint which gets us back to Groucho.

Groucho once said he wouldn’t be a member of a club that would have him as a member and I’m sort of that way with Augusta. Not because they wouldn’t like me (said he, gazing into a mirror) but because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like them. Not least of these quaint ways is the “Fight Club” rule – the first rule of Augusta is you don’t talk about Augusta unless you’re the chairman. Fair enough I guess if we’re talking about secret men’s business (there are a few women in the membership of 300) but having the New Year countdown at 10.30pm is just ridiculous. And there’s no running, no cell phones, no sitting or lying on the grass etc etc.

So where does that leave us? Augusta will never invite me but if they did I wouldn’t join. No no, it’s no use begging. I’ve made my mind up. I’m more than happy hacking my way round Nudgee Golf Club’s south course or whatever it will be when the renovations finish. I’d rather be fighting off the midges than smelling the magnolias. Never did like magnolias.

 

Peter Ridd

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Hearty congratulations to Professor Peter Ridd for his bravery, conviction and ultimate triumph over the forces of scientific (and by extension societal ) darkness. If you believe in the idiotic concept of scientific “consensus” can I remind you, you have a fundamental orifice where you can store it in perpetuity.

Forget you peak oil tipping points and your climate tipping points because this is a very real tipping point that will sew the seed of the reversal of the peak stupidity currently blanketing the world on so many levels.

Hashtag This

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Now that the Mueller Report is out, I believe it should be safe to publish this. I wrote it a couple of months ago and filed it away for future reference. The future is now and I feel ever so slightly vindicated because I think I have already  heard one or two mea culpas . Read on to find out what this is all about.

Alright blog, what do you think of this? The Spectator magazine is running an essay competition and the topic is “The Next Great Hashtag”. I’d love to enter. I’ve been threatening to submit something or other to one of these competitions or to a magazine for ages but it’s unlikely to happen here sadly because I’m not familiar with the mythical (to me) power of the hashtag or indeed why it isn’t still just that little sign you put in front of a number to indicate that it is a number, as in #3 or “number three”. There’s a degree of redundancy there you’d have to admit so someone somewhere has decided that # is being grossly under-utilised so is in need of a higher purpose. So dear blog, to continue concealing my hipness ignorance (“hignorance’ or “hipnorance” – could have invented a new word there) from the rest of the world because only three people regularly read you, I’ll subject you to a discourse on the topic at hand.

I’m a child mostly of the previous century so the significance or indeed the aforementioned power of a hashtag eludes me. My football mad relatives write comments on Facebook followed by #ManU  #Football  #SirAlex or such like. Why? What’s the point? Does this magically transport the comment to …..somewhere or someone? That Twitter thing uses them a lot but I don’t wallow in that sewer so am none the wiser there. I remember a picture of a pouting, frowny faced Michelle Obama holding up a sign with “#Bring Back Our Girls” written on it. The parodies were hilarious which just goes to show that unless you can genuinely fake sincerity then forget success (attrib. George Burns or someone called Jean Giraudoux or someone else). Come to think of it, Michelle Obama’s fake sincerity doesn’t seem to have held her back. Neither has Bill Shorten’s for that matter – once more with feeling Bill, the director might shout. But why is that noughts and crosses thing needed at the start of the comment?

So not understanding the authority of a hashtag makes me eminently qualified to expound prophetically on the next “big thing”. If it’s okay for humanities professors to lecture me on climate change and get away with it, then cop this.

No, I can’t do it. My curiosity has got the better of me and I’m going to have to do a bit of research.

Later that day……………..

Apparently, according to that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, a hashtag links messages with a common theme, much like a common theme used to. During my in-depth research I went onto Facebook and clicked on a hashtag to see what would happen and bugger me, all of these Facebook entries appeared and all were related to the same, wait for it, theme. So there’s the clue. The Next Great Hashtag has to be linked to today’s most ubiquitous, prevailing (“trending”?) theme. And what might that be, said he, asking the most obvious question in the world?

Before I answer that question, let me say that I follow American politics reasonably closely. Closely enough to not have to read the numerous articles written by the work experience kids who populate some of our online “news” websites. You know the ones – they regularly point out where Donald Trump continues to go wrong or expound on the five reasons he will be impeached or resign or somehow or other be kicked out of office in the next three or six or nine months. This has been going on for more than two years. Predictions of his downfall or at least that he would achieve nothing and be the worst president since the last one have come and gone like so many climate tipping points.

Consequently I’m predicting that The Next Great Hashtag will be #Iwaswrong as in I was wrong to underestimate, demonise, mock (pick any number of abusive adjectives) Donald Trump and not give any credit where credit is due, which is all Donald Trump (and the rest of us for that matter) can ask for. I accept that this will be a stretch for those suffering the most chronic, incurable strains of Trump Derangement Syndrome, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of face to lose here. Mea culpa’s of the “It’s a fair cop, Your Honour; guilty as charged. I was wrong” type, will need to be levered out of CNN for example, with a crowbar.

In a parallel universe a casual observer might feel sympathy for someone who has put the bank account, the house, the car, the wife, the kids, the credibility and the beer can collection on a sure bet like Hillary Clinton who then rather unsportingly loses. If not for the billions squirrelled away in the Clinton Foundation, you’d almost believe that the fix was in. And the flashing red lights were there for everyone to see. Fortunately the “someones” in question in our universe are celebrities lite, 90% of the media, the self proclaimed elites of the bureaucracy and academia plus random undergraduates with nothing to lose and as would have happened with a different election result, nothing to gain. So they get no sympathy.

These clowns (for want of a better word) painted themselves into such a tight corner with their samurai-like commitment to Hillary, the only way out for some of them if she lost was the Hollywood version of hara-kiri – moving to Canada. When this level of devotion takes you to your own version of Jonestown, there is no backing down. The only way out, up to now, has been to totally discredit everything Donald Trump said, says, did and does, past present and future, so that upon his downfall they can say “See, I was right all along. It just took a bit longer than I thought to play out.”

Sadly for them, it’s not playing out. Consequently we have the tragically pathetic sight (and sound) of an actor at the top of his game (debatable, I know), Robert De Niro contributing a philosophical “F…Trump” to the discourse thereby proving that even the most inspirational actors are orally vacuous unless someone else puts words into their mouths. In fact the two years of Trump’s presidency have played out like the speeded up versions of left-slanting news shows on CNN and MSNBC on election night which are preserved for posterity on YouTube  – initially euphoria but morphing into equal parts feral aggression and despair. If the leader of the free world didn’t have such a profound and ongoing impact on global machinations, those shows would have represented the pinnacle of Trump’s presidency before it even started.

Now we know most of the Trump opposition is of the left; not exclusively but predominantly. And we know that leftists like collectives because, let’s face it, most of them don’t have the courage of their convictions when confronted by arguments which rely on facts, logic, common sense and human nature. They need a protective outer cloak of like minded automatons. Watching Ben Shapiro or Brendan O’Neill or Jordan Petersen or the late Christopher Hitchens skewer emotive half-baked arguments with these axioms, even though a couple of those people mentioned would not necessarily consider themselves to be of the right (socially and/or economically), is a latter day version of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, such is the mirth-making.

Returning to the hashtag, the aforementioned emotive collective (“emective” perhaps – I’m on a roll with these new words) has nowhere to go especially if the Mueller probe into God knows what turns up nothing of significance and the now Democrat dominated House of Representatives turns out to be, as expected, all piss and wind.  I’m predicting that the dam will break when one prominent leftist admits they erred in condemning everything Trumpian and tweets #Iwaswrong. Collectivists being what they are will initially try to isolate this clearly deranged outlier until someone else realises that maybe he/she is right. Then other collectivists, because they are, will want to join the party to show how woke they are and hey presto, the trend is on its way.

Incidentally I was torn between #Iwaswrong  and #Wewerewrong but such is the power of #, I have found, it doesn’t matter because in social media world # is the great gatherer or more appropriately collector, if we want to stick to our leftist shtick. It turns out the armour provided by “we” won’t be required.

Now I’d love to do a piece on the “Green New Deal” but it would look something  like this byooooootvglsek5bvdktgb,bsc              after I fall face first into the keyboard laughing like a drain.

Eagles

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When the child bride and I relocated in April 2017 it had taken 12 months of marketing, six months of bridging finance the mafia would have been proud of, countless sleepless nights and almost as many grey hairs before we could move out of our acreage based country house and into our city based townhouse. On Friday this week (it’s now Sunday) my mother put her house on the market and on Saturday (yesterday) received an offer which was bang on the money. I consider this rather unfair. As unfair in fact, as favourite musicians dying while at the height of their powers. Which brings me to last night’s Eagles concert.

It was our sixth – 1976, 1994, 2005, 2009, 2015 and last night, the first since Glen Frey left the building in 2016. Now 2005 was called the Farewell 1 Tour which I guess makes last night’s concert part of the Farewell 4 Tour although they appear to have abandoned that naming protocol like Led Zeppelin stopped numbering their albums after 2,3 and 4.

Things have changed in so many ways, not least the Eagles line-up and their relative popularity. Back in 1976, the CB and I were wandering past the now demolished Festival Hall in Brisbane’s CBD and noticed on the hording above the main entrance that the Eagles would be appearing so we walked in to the box office where there was no queue and bought two tickets on the side, half way up and about 15m back from the stage. For all subsequent concerts getting similar tickets is like winning the lottery and you just about have to anyway to pay for them. So we each sold a kidney (now we’re on dialysis – the other two went for the Rolling Stones tickets a few years ago) and got tickets in a similar location, albeit in a different venue from all those years ago at Festival Hall.

As it happened, the seat location turned out to be rather problematic. I have to admit I’ve been doing it rather tough these past few weeks. Not genuine refugee tough but compared with a month ago, a bit challenging. If you read the few posts prior to this one you’ll see I had dental issues, an infection which turned out to be in my prostate which sent my PSA from a relatively benign 2.1 to something better measured by the Doomsday Clock and more recently a stiff neck which feels like my vertebrae have been fused together. So last night I had to either swivel to the right in my seat or gingerly turn my head to get a good look at what was going on. I had managed to turn it enough to be able to look straight at the stage but now my head is permanently locked at 10 minutes past the hour.

You thought this was going to be a review of the concert didn’t you and up to now the connection between this blog entry and the concert has been somewhat tenuous. But here goes.

The vocals and musicianship were predictably flawless so I’ll leave those aspects alone but there was one exception.

Joe Walsh forgot the first two lines of “Walk Away” and the magnificent screen behind the band had a ten foot high picture of his face on it at the time. They carried on regardless and never missed another beat. Status Quo would have admitted it and pissed themselves laughing about it but we’re dealing with a more serious entity here although everyone had a chance to chat and the mood was pretty relaxed throughout. But Joe is one of my favourite guitar players – the flamboyant artist to Steuart Smith’s technician – so he gets away with it. Add Vince Gill who selfishly combines terrific soaring vocals with stunning guitar chops – why does one person get to quarantine the outstanding talents of two – and you have a guitar line-up second to none in modern music.

A band with three gun guitarists plus two other competent players and a bass player lined up across the stage is my kind of band. Add five different lead vocalists and back-up musos who’ve been with them for decades plus an unrivalled back catalogue and I’ll be lining up for number 7 if the opportunity arises. By adding Vince Gill and especially Glen’s son Deacon Frey to the line-up, the average age of the band has plummeted. It doesn’t make the older guys any younger unfortunately and while 60 may be the new 40 (I’m prepared to stretch this even further) I’m not sure we’ll get to see 7 in Brisbane, if at all.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Brisbane concert (or Sydney, of Melbourne I expect, especially Melbourne) without the obligatory clown yelling “Aussie Aussie Aussie” and expecting the predictable follow-up. It didn’t work the first time and he got howled down the second time so mercifully, there wasn’t a third. I guess this is a reflection of the evolving demographics at Eagles concerts. We took our kids when they were youngsters (Hell Freezes Over in ’94 I think) and there were families there last night doing the same. So it wasn’t quite the Hollies or Status Quo crowd who we are starting to recognize and nod acquaintance to. But no doubt we’ll see elements of them and most of the Eagles crowd at Fleetwood Mac later in the year.

And to the prick who kicked a bottle of water all over my man-bag (phone, wallet, glasses, keys if you must ask), thanks for making it an even more eventful night.

My mother thinks Frank Sinatra was the duck’s nuts. I’m happy to listen to the duelling guitar solo (duet?) at the end of Hotel California on a continuous loop until I disappear into the flames.

For the record, here’s the set list. There were three encores and to all of those people who left after the first and second encores, hahahahahahahahahaha.

  1. Seven Bridges Road (all)
  2. Take it Easy (Deacon Frey)
  3. One of These Nights (Don Henley)
  4. Take it to the Limit (Vince Gill)
  5. Tequila Sunrise (Vince Gill)
  6. Witchy Woman (Don Henley)
  7. In the City (Joe Walsh)
  8. I Can’t Tell You Why (Timothy Schmidt)
  9. New Kid in Town (Vince Gill)
  10. Peaceful Easy Feeling (Deacon Fry)
  11. Love Will Keep Us Alive (Timothy Schmidt)
  12. Lyin’ Eyes (Vince Gill)
  13. Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away (Vince Gill)
  14. Those Shoes (Don Henley)
  15. Already Gone (Deacon Frey)
  16. Walk Away (Joe Walsh)
  17. Life’s Been Good (Joe Walsh)
  18. The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
  19. Heartache Tonight (Vince Gill)
  20. Funk #49 (Joe Walsh)
  21. Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley)

Encore 1

  1. Hotel California (Don Henley)

Encore 2

  1. Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
  2. Desperado (Don Henley)

Encore 3

  1. Best of My Love (Don Henley)

 

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Rule 1 – No Dick Heads

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We’ve all started new positions during our working life. Admittedly some people do it only once and these are generally public servants or Japanese although the job-for-life the previous generation of Japanese workers expected is not quite as ubiquitous these days.

Before you start a new position you generally have to negotiate your way through an application to get an interview, then fill in some questionnaires to make sure you’re not a psychopath or a sociopath. And here’s the rub.

Did you ever wonder, once you’ve got to know your workmates, how some of them jumped those hurdles. Some of them wouldn’t be able to jump rope if it was lying limp on the ground. How did these thoroughly unlikeable individuals slip through the fuck-wit filter? Were they interviewed by like minded people? Are they put there as a management challenge for everyone else? Do they know someone or have photos. Or are they simply the beneficiaries of the only job generating programme left-leaning governments throughout the world know – employing more and more bureaucrats. Because let’s face it, many of these people work in government. One of the few privileges private enterprise enjoys compared with government is the ability to fire someone. That person has to have committed an atrocity three times or three different atrocities before human resources will stop wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth long enough to risk a trip to the unfair dismissal tribunal. But such are the “rights” of employees over management these days.

Back to our work-place wankers. You know the type. They work to rule absolutely when it advantages them. Breaks are taken at exactly the time they are meant to be taken. This doesn’t necessarily mean one returns to work at the allotted time. One has to finish one’s cigarette, doesn’t one. They are the ones who loudly assert their rights at work. If there’s a union presence they will utilise it as often as my mother calls her local member of parliament. They will leave their workplace exactly at knock-off time even if it means leaving a nail half banged into a piece of wood. And they will gossip, maliciously.

There is an Australian Football club that famously implemented a “no-dickheads” rule which is a bit like the fuck-wit filter mentioned above. This meant that if you were up yourself to the extent that you disrupted the team’s cohesion, it didn’t matter how good you were, you weren’t welcome and you weren’t selected. And it worked because the club enjoyed considerable success.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will work everywhere. Imagine applying it to an NBA franchise. Overnight you’d be down to about three players. And NFL teams would lose whole defensive lines – you know the ones who carry on like they’ve cured cancer after making one tackle. Unfortunately when you see an eight year old soccer player put on a Hugh Jackman routine when they score a goal, to the raucous cheers of Mum and Dad, you know the future supply of dickheads is secure.

When the no-dickheads rule is rolled out to all work places in the country we will have platoons of embittered ex-administration officers roaming central business districts all over the country, stopping outside their previous places of work, sucking on fags and abusing passers-by. In the US they will occasionally (rarely thankfully) return to their old workplaces with guns. Stringent application of the no-dickheads rule at the appropriate time could have nipped a tragedy in the bud. Or more likely simply shifted it to another location.

Unfortunately it seems we are stuck with these people and now that political correctness has sunk it’s cold dead claws into every facet of life, especially the fun bits, they can claim victim hood status as well. Best to just ignore them.

What You Will

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I received this letter from the future. It’s rather a long one so I figured it needed a title. On reading it “Brave New World” sprung to mind but that’s been taken as has “Back to the Future” and even if “How Green was My Valley” hadn’t been taken, I wouldn’t have used it. No, it needs a unique title. “Earl” fits the bill – get it, Earl, title, but “My Name is Earl” is also legally off-limits. So let’s call it “What You Will”. Here it is:

It all began in the second quad-mester of 2019. The second quad-mester used to be called autumn but seasons were banned because summer in the southern hemisphere discriminates against winter in the northern hemisphere. Anyway this was when the fascist scum Morrison called the last election. We haven’t had one since – that one was enough apparently.

Billy-boy won that election but then suffered an unfortunate accident when he stupidly tried to fake way too much sincerity, experienced a stress induced Uriah Heep attack, turned dark green (if only briefly) then black as coal (how ironic and culturally appropriating?) and kicked the proverbial. We now have the Utopia we have always dreamt of but didn’t dare to articulate before, under pain of terminal ridicule and Goebbellian censorship, except on the ABC and free to air TV channels, in Nine/Fairfax publications, on countless blogs and in the halls of every university and school in the nation. We will not be silenced any longer by the Howards and Morrisons of this world and their bastard devil’s spawn like Tony Abbott.

Person how things have changed since those dark days. Praise the Justine because everyone has a disability pension now as it was discriminatory to allow some to have one and others to not. For a couple of weeks there it was $150,000 per year until Gina’s and Andrew’s and James’ and Kevin’s money ran out. Now it’s down to $1.50 per week but we don’t actually see it as it has to be saved in a special account for the good of the collective.

Also, everyone has a right to public housing for the same reason we all have disability pensions. My mate Johnno, lucky bastard, he got Gina’s place after the billionaires were told to leave. Who knew there were so many billionaires in Australia – about three million if you include the kids. I actually knew one and didn’t even realise it. The internet guy was a billionaire, or I assume he was. I thought he just fixed things but he actually ran his own business and employed two people. I’ve no idea whether he took any Aussie dollars with him when he left but I hope he did because they’re completely useless now. Those greedy bastards deserve everything that’s coming to them wherever they go. He gave me a cheery wave as he boarded the plane and shouted “read Atlas Shrugged you moron”. Now I believe “Atlas Shrugged You Moron” is a book but I haven’t read any books. They don’t teach reading in schools anymore other than as a gender metaphor in interpretive dance.

I wonder where they did go. Not to Indonesia of course because we banned Indonesia. They light fires there and kill things to eat. And they have cars. And they’re not contributing to population control to save the planet like we are. Their population has gone up by five million in the last 12 months according to the Information Directorate In Our Town. Ours has gone down by 8 million in the same time so I ask you in (please excuse) Hockey speak, “who’s doing the heavy lifting now?”

The place has improved so much and we’ve never been happier. Justine, who’s been in charge since the revolution after the last election and had nothing to do with Bill’s accident, honest, was seen to skip (once). She threw a Birkenstock, holed a tight and cracked a smile and unfortunately her face fell off but we screwed it back on and re-inserted the lemon so everything is back to normal.

It’s a bit tricky actually finding out what’s going on in the world now. Five states are without the internet because, as I said earlier, the internet guy left. Apparently Tasmania still has it but of all of the people who’ve tried to swim across Bass Strait, none have made it back, so it’s a bit of a mystery. That running dog poopy pants Murdoch Minor doesn’t pump his propaganda into our sub-conscious anymore either. We ran him out of town on a rail and he took his 150% of the media with him. So we don’t know anything now but at least what we don’t know is pure and unadulterated.

“Unadulterated” is now the official adjective for the ABC. Strangely, many of the once familiar faces are no longer there. Okay, we haven’t had power for a while but even when we did we noticed that they disappeared from our screens about the same time as when the planes left. We assume they went to heckle and see the billionaires off the premises but they never came back. They were foot-soldiers for the revolution so surely none of them were billionaires as well?

As I mentioned, the power’s off now. My windmill won’t turn because there are three dead birds jammed in it and a meteor hit my solar panel (curse you Tony Abbott). But that’s okay because food’s really cheap so I don’t need a refrigerator. I can put caviar on my toast (if the toaster worked) because it’s as cheap as corn flakes. Justine tells us the food’s going to last at least for another month so nothing to worry about there.

Unfortunately the pharmacists all left when Justine threatened to end their monopoly so the drugs ran out six months ago. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, there’s been an extremely responsible reduction in our population so the planet can be saved. This means we don’t need as many drugs (or as much food for that matter) as we did before, so win-win. The latest government forecast has the population reducing even more dramatically in coming months which is fantastic and a testament to environmentally responsible totalitarianism. Shame on you Abbott you fascist pig for encouraging the nuclear family and responsible family planning. Nuclear – I ask you?

It’s amazing how much we’re saving on food and drugs (if we had any) and power (if we had any) by responsibly allowing the population to once again reach equilibrium with our incredibly fragile environment. It’s so good to see the rainforest reclaiming the CBD. Another high rise, those phallic symbols of the capitalist scum, just fell over. Good; that’s more building material for those who have the absolute right to public housing but don’t actually have a public house because there aren’t enough after the May razing got out of hand during the celebration of Democratic People’s Freedom Day. We’re intending to pull down more of these huge apartment buildings to provide even more material to build even more public housing. Next job – find some builders. There’s no problem finding wrecking crews and it stands to reason that if you can pull it down you should be able to put it back up again so that’s another box ticked.

This is too easy. Have to go now; the Population Enhancement Transgression  Association is coming through the window.

The Hollies – a Tribute to Time Served

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The child bride and I took off for the Gold Coast on Thursday. The last time we went, to see Status Quo (reported on here), we hadn’t planned the most efficient route and therefore encountered about 47 red lights. This time we did it right which is just as well because the CB drove. I’ve been feeling like death warmed up since Wednesday or as an old boss of mine used to say “half fucked and let go”.

But I wasn’t going to let that prevent us from seeing the Hollies so, as I said, the CB drove. Now I’m not going to comment on her driving because we are safely back at home now. Suffice to say, I don’t tail-gate, I don’t lane-hop and I manage to keep my road rage more or less under control. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, as a great philosopher once said.

We’ve been lucky enough to see most of our musical heroes from our yoof so while it was great to see the Hollies last night, I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities because they tour relentlessly. They are probably the longest surviving band in history having performed and toured every year since the formative year of 1962 and the eventual settlement of most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame line-up in 1963. Bobby Elliot and Tony Hicks have been with the band since 1963 – no hiatuses (hiati?), no taking a year off to pursue individual projects. Now that’s stamina. Actually, we may not get to see them here again because as you can calculate, those two are getting on a bit.

After performing Bus Stop, Carrie Anne, He Ain’t Heavy etc etc etc for all of those years you’d expect them to be pretty tight. Of the other four band members, two have been there almost 30 years and the other two 15 years. So they are able to reproduce that typical sound. Peter Howarth, the lead singer said some heckler in the audience at a previous concert yelled out “I didn’t expect you to be this good”. That sound was honed back in the 60’s with some rather accomplished session musicians – how about Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Elton John.

And when they came on stage at the start, they were all dressed in white shirt, black tie, black trousers and shiny black shoes. The drummer had his top button undone and his tie was all over the place but that’s drummers for you. I haven’t seen performance uniforms like that since I went to see the Halle Orchestra in Manchester in 1973.

The crowd was the Status Quo crowd and the Eagles crowd – SKI’s (spending the kid’s inheritance), COB’s (cashed up bogans), GLAM’s (greying, leisured, affluent, married) and GOFER’s (genial old farts enjoying retirement). We were six rows from the front so I’m speculating on those who were behind up but I’m pretty confident in my CUOA (compulsive use of acronyms).

So as I said, I’ve not been well, in fact I’m not well now so this post is not quite as hilariously funny and irreverent as previous ones. The concert was a welcome distraction but I hit the wall a few hours later and woke up at 4.30am thinking I was sleeping on the inside of a water bed. Hopefully a course of antibiotics will do the trick. Personally, I think it was the mouthful of bacteria I experienced during a tooth extraction two weeks ago. Maybe the course of antibiotics that followed didn’t complete the job. Let’s hope (well you don’t have to but I certainly do) this course does the trick.

It’s all I can do to tap on these keys at the moment but it just goes to show – if the desire and incentive are there, adrenaline will get you though.