Kevin Andrews for PM

Throughout most of his university years, Australia’s newly-elected Prime Minister was assistant to a well known Melbourne undertaker. His style was idiosyncratic. He would remove all of his clothes before dressing the day’s corpses in a variety of pantomime costumes. One of his workmates at the time alleges he tampered with the elder pauper corpses, the ones he dressed as Robert Menzies. After a lacklustre career in law and theatre restaurant acting, he made a name for himself co-designing two key Howard government policies: the Pacific Solution and WorkChoices.

Long Legs (The Reprisal)

Thought I'd Just Mention

Thought I'd just mention.

Gadarene Swine

via Laudator Temporis Acti

In all exorcisms except one, Jesus simply expelled the demons. But at Gadara (or Gerasa or Gergesa), Jesus sent the demons into a herd of pigs. Matthew 8.30-32 (cf. Mark 5.11-13 and Luke 8.32-33) wrote:

And there was a good way off from them a herd of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

(The poor creatures. What did they do to deserve that?)

Softening Bishop's Landing.

Oh dear. The OZ is trying to whip up a plagiarism scandal by claiming that Kevin Rudd in his recent Monthly essay used the same quotes (of Nicolas Sarkozy and Wang Qishan) as Roger Altman in January’s edition of Foreign Affairs. These quotes were, of course, properly referenced.

For the benefit of the paper's chief political correspondent, Matthew Franklin (the whipper) here is the OED definition of plagiarism: “The action or practice of taking someone else’s work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one’s own.”

Repeat: passing it off as one’s own.

(Ah, they’re up to their old tricks again, adopting the “tarred with the same brush” spoiler strategy that worked so poorly for them during the 07 campaign (their assumption being that most people can’t make the distinctions required to separate, for example, plagiarism - bad- from coincidental quoting - not bad).)

Evolving Uncertainty

Interesting that a quarter of the Bulgarian population is “not sure” about the validity of evolution theory. What is it about Bulgaria that inspires so much uncertainty?

This Wiki-snippet doesn’t help:

Most Bulgarians (82.6%) belong, at least nominally, to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the national Eastern Orthodox Church. Other religious denominations include Islam (12.2%), various Protestant denominations (0.8%) and Roman Catholicism (0.5%); with other denominations, atheists and undeclared totalling approximately 4.1%.

But the recent emergence of “one of Europe’s most bitter [theological and political] schisms” involving the pre- and post-communist Bulgarian Orthodox Church might offer a clue.

Ho Chi Sin

Good to see David Clarke is keeping the communist threat at bay in NSW. At an invite-only preview of an exhibition called Viet Nam Voices hosted by Liverpool Council on January 29, the uninvited Opus Dei operative is alleged to have thrown a “temper tantrum”. The details are unclear, but it seems a group of Vietnamese protestors, offended at a “pop art depiction of Ho Chi Minh”, asked Mr Clarke to act on their behalf and shirt front a few curatorial and council staff.

(Oh, the tawdriness!)

Look out Barry O’Farrell. If it isn’t the communists stalking around behind you, it’s David Clarke.

Recall

The Howard Years should not be available to minors. An article in this month’s issue of Science cites the work of a team of Brisbane-based pediatric neuroscientists who have discovered a dangerous link between mental illnesses such as depression and dysthymia and exposure to any information related to John Howard. This is only evident among children aged between 3 and 16.

Nook

Oughtn't we cross the lough?

In a section titled Irregular spelling in a chapter titled How we write and spell in a book titled How Language Works, is this: "Though the rough cough and hiccough plough me through, I ought to cross the lough".

listen

Joe Hockey the Barbecue Clown Part III

We pick up the story of Joe Hockey the Barbecue Clown at the point where Joe, confident that the kangaroo patties he has laid out on the grill can be left to cook unsupervised for a few minutes, refastens his Deutsche Bank apron and resumes drinking from a large bottle of beer.

Joe Hockey: Well, there we go. Whooee!
Neutral Bay Battlers: ...
JH: Oh come on. Look. Take this and smash the pig.
NBB: ...
JH: It's a three iron. A Ping. Swings like a dream. Whack the pig and get a handful of shibboleths.
NBB: ...

Joe Hockey the Barbecue Clown Part II

In Part I of Joe Hockey the Barbecue Clown, Joe became distracted whilst cooking some chops and sausages for his constituents. Subsequently, the sausages burnt.

Joe Hockey: Okay. We've lost them. Sorry.
Neutral Bay Battlers: Boo!
JH: More Labor taxes.
NBB: ...
JH: Carbon.
NBB: Boo!
JH: So let me see what else is in the esky.
NBB: Yay!
JH: ... (rummaging) ...
NBB: Boo!
JH: What?
NBB: ...
JH: ...
NBB: Yay!
JH: ... (rummaging) ...
NBB: ...
JH: Ah-Ha! Roo patties.
NBB: ... Y ...
JH: Eh? Oh Christ, the chops are burning.

One Angle

Joe Hockey the Barbecue Clown Part I

Joe Hockey: Right, the chops are on.
Neutral Bay Battlers: Yay!
JH: Yep. And the snags.
NBB: Yay!
JH: But none of that organic muck the Birkenstock crowd prefer.
NBB: Boo! ... Yay!
JH: And beer. Fifteen slabs of full-strength Avuncular.
NBB: Yay!
JH: Yeah, but none of that nanny state herbicide the fun police prefer.
NBB: Boo! ... Yay!
JH: And look - a pinata!
NBB: ...
JH: It's Karl Marx.
NBB: ...
JH: As a pig.
NBB: Boo!
JH: Full of sugar-coated Whitlam-era shibboleths.
NBB: ... B ... Y ...
JH: Lollies.
NBB: Yay!
JH: Oh Christ, the snags are burning.

The Shopping Scientist and Mr Rat Part I

The Shopping Scientist: So, what do you reckon Mr Rat?
Mr Rat: About what?
The Shopping Scientist: What you're eating.
Mr Rat: I'm not eating anything.
The Shopping Scientist: Yes you are. (sotto voce) The reporters are here, remember. Is it sugar Mr Rat?
Mr Rat: No.
The Shopping Scientist: Well, if it were sugar, and you were eating it, you might be able to tell us whether it was fresh and hence a good buy, mightn't you Mr Rat?
Mr Rat: Probably not.
The Shopping Scientist: Well, probably yes that should be, actually, shouldn't it? Because sugar is just one of the thousands of ordinary shopping items we test for value and freshness.
Mr Rat: Sugar doesn't go off.
The Shopping Scientist: Oh, I think you'll find it does. As you and all of the journalists gathered here would know, each packet of sugar has an expiry date.
Mr Rat: Which doesn't mean anything. And anyway, if you're relying on the expiry date to work out whether something's fresh, why am I here?
The Shopping Scientist: You know, I'm going to end this conversation now. I mean, no one forced you to test the Ratsack yesterday ... that is all I will say.

The Defilements

Poetry-wise, Arthur Rimbaud lived a very short life. As Wallace Fowlie notes in his introduction to Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, the Symbolist prodigy's "literary work was over" by the time he was 19. In November 1891, he succumbed to cancer (a tumour, which was first thought to be an arthritic disturbance, claimed his right leg in May of that year). He was 37.

The following poem is the third in a collection of erotic sonnets called Les Stupra.

Dark and Wrinkled

Dark and wrinkled like a deep pink,
It breathes, humbly nested among the moss
Still wet with love that follows the gentle
Descent of the white buttocks to the edge of its border.

Filaments like tears of milk
Have wept under the cruel wind pushing them back
Over small clots of reddish marl,
And there lose themselves where the slope called them.

In my dream my mouth was often placed on its opening;
My soul, jealous of the physical coitus,
Made of it its fawny tear-bottle and its nest of sobs.

It is the fainting olive and the cajoling flute,
The tube from which the heavenly praline descends,
A feminine Caanan enclosed in moisture.

Doubled

I approached
calmly
Like an animal
that has eaten

I took nothing
from the air
except
death

I wanted it back
the moment
before this

so painfully
I doubled
and lurched

somersaulting

into breath

or

finally

some kind of forgiveness

Eggplant

Sneaky Satires

According to Edmund Gosse,* John Donne's Seventh Satire "closes with an outburst of splenetic raillery against political personages in high places."

But I'm buggered if I can find any more than five of Donne's Satires. Meaning that I may never have a juicy (Jacobean) example of "splenetic raillery".


* Writing in The life and letters of John Donne, dean of St. Paul's.

Found Under the Sink

Lacy Jags

From Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (the original 1855 edition):

I too am not a bit tamed ... I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air ... I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

The Dancing Mania

The Dancing Plague of 1518:

Most of the 400 people of Alsace affected by the still-misunderstood mania died from heart attack, stroke or exhaustion. They had been dancing without rest for days.

The Dancing Plague of 2008:

Most of the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange affected by the still-misunderstood mania went home rich but complaining. They had been dancing without rest for a few hours.

Key concepts:

- mass psychogenic illness
- genital retraction syndrome (or "penis panic")
- ergot poisoning

Curious observation (by historian John Waller):

"... there is no evidence that the [Alsace] dancers wanted to dance ... [they] showed expressions of fear and desperation."

Autumn Ivy

autumn ivy
tickled by sleepy draughts
gathering in whorls
ingeniously
on stone
until first light

shape of man or lizard
climbing through
a window
open
partially
inviting
any deciduous invader

cool ledge
body gone
last dim slink
then rapidly
unnervingly
unseen

no one suspected
it was a bedroom

Better For the Remembering

Remembering small black moons,
the burnt patches we circled with our fingers
or fingered with our circumscriptions
whenever we spoke of night
or the impermanent surfaces of home.

My skin on yours,
an overcoat stretched to meet
each suggestion of colour,
each hint of a bruise,
but covering only the flesh,
that was your birth sign,
passed from your mother and father
who also knew the circular marks
of incomprehensible Love,
the bewitching talk,
the double-dyed surprises,
and all the dark vertiginous exhilarations
it gives rise to.

Your eyes slunk against the cold,
your body a grey heap
pressed into mine;
your kisses picking and playing
a folk tune around my neck:
darkness embroidered again
without resolution
but better for the remembering.