This post was first published May 29, 2012

Bonjour,
They say ‘time is money’. A concept that drives the global economy, that house of cards that has the imperative for perpetual growth, as realistic a concept as perpetual motion.
‘Time is money’ as abstract a concept as zero divided by zero is infinity.

http://youtu.be/MUt7qmSvxLI  is http://youtu.be/8_ofFa50LzY  ; http://youtu.be/2hM3CNOhkFs divided by itself is infinity.

Soon the NTER (Northern Territory Emergency Response) will ‘celebrate’ its 5^th.  Anniversary, when like the Cheshire Cat it will vanish leaving only its grinning bare teeth in the form of Stronger (Stolen) Futures. We will have to grin and bear it.

A figure of $2B is bandied around as the money spent on the Intervention. Now please bear with me as I do a few calculations. $2B in 5 years is $400M p.a. In round figures that is $1M per day. Around $40K per hour. Around $600 in the time it took you to read so far, around $15K if you took the time to listen to the nice music. Can you feel the Gap palpably closing?

On last night’s Q&A (ABC TV) there mercifully were no politicians on the panel (unless you count ex-politician John Hewson and Barry Humphreys’ alter-ego Sir Les Patterson). It was a hilarious episode.

Much about ‘Australian Identity’ was discussed and whilst admitting to racist elements in Australian society the consensus was that Australia with its multiculturalism and ethnic diversity was a great place. Not a single mention of the First Australians. Much mention of the First Profession.

An Australian politician is in deep water because he’s been sprung spending 10 Intervention Minutes ($6K) on prostitutes using a Union credit card. The Federal opposition is hounding Craig Thomson, purportedly because they feel he’s guilty of grievous immoral unethical and dishonest behaviour. The fact that should Craig Thompson be replaced in a by-election the likely consequence of this would be that Tony Abbott would replace Julia Gillard as our non-elected Prime Minister of course has nothing to do with it all. Nothing whatsoever. Perish the thought.

The press is also hounding Craig Thomson. It is even alleged that a TV Station is prepared to spend almost 2 Intervention Hours ($60K) for an interview with a prostitute that, before the NTER was launched, serviced Craig. What a fascinating interview it will be: “seven years ago he did it with me”. Well worth 2 Intervention Hours I think. Undoubtedly she will be banished from the Prostitute Guild for breaching client confidentiality

Another discussion on Q&A ensued regarding Gina Rinehart, believed to be the world’s richest woman with a fortune of 72 Intervention Years ($29B) and Clive Palmer worth 2 Intervention Decades ($8B).It was stated by one panellist that it was thanks to the likes of Gina and Clive (sounds a bit like Bonnie & Clyde n’est-ce pas?) that Australia had been immunized from the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and was now ‘enjoying’ an unprecedented ‘Mining Boom’. Never mind that it wasn’t all that long ago that the iron ore mountains of the Pilbara and the coal deposits of the Bowen Basin belonged to the Commonwealth (get it? ‘common’ ‘wealth’) and again never mind that the First Australians didn’t get to own even the surface of Terra Nullius let alone what was below it.

I’m sure that Gina Reinhart is not even remotely related to Django Reinhardt but why pass up the excuse to play this?

http://youtu.be/ooYmovGaFQU

So how does all this differ from Medieval feudalism? Je ne sais pas. How is it different to post-communist U.S.S.R. (Russia) where Vladimir Putin is suspected of hiding a personal fortune of as much as an Intervention Century ($US40B) Je ne sais pas.http://youtu.be/Yn3YqoRDTQo

What is it these people have done to deserve such a large slice of the pie? Why is it seen as normal? Why is it no one seems to ask the question? Why is the disempowerment and marginalisation of Aboriginal Australians seen as normal? Why are Aborigines regularly omitted  from the vision of a diverse multicultural multiethnic Australia that we can all be proud of? Will future Q&A episodes provide the answers?

Is this what we deserve?
Is this what we deserve?
Is this what we deserve?
Can you tell me now
Is this what we deserve?

Your laws are so unjustified
Our basic human rights have been denied
You come up with excuses, that your hands are tied
But you go on committing genocide

http://youtu.be/sRD8ofq3xUY

The Craig Thomson ‘scandal’ has occupied the Australian Parliament for days on end in sharp contrast to the passing of the Stronger (Stolen) Futures legislation in the lower house which they ‘achieved’ in the blink of an eye.

Most Australians know who Craig Thomson is. Not that many know who Djiniyini Gondarra and Laurie Baymarrwangga are. No, they’re not foreigners, they’re Australian as is Gurrumul Yunupingu

http://youtu.be/bawDFY8G-o4

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois

François

by Cecil Poole

My stove and I are back together again, close, with a warm, caring and trusting relationship.

We’d had a tiff, not that I noticed at the time.  Looking back it has been a rough couple of months, for both of us.   Poor communication.  Renovations.  My stove and I had grown old together, comfortable, understood each other, recognised our strengths and our foibles, or so I thought.  I think we both made assumptions, she thinking life would go on as usual, me looking for change, yet not consulting her.

Firstly I disconnected the water, so the jacket that had kept my stove in wonderful equilibrium now held none of that moderating liquid.  Then without so much as a by-your-leave I moved her, put her on rollers and scooted her across the floor into what had been the laundry.  (I never called her fat, although 200kg is quite a weight to carry.)  There I sat her up on a new base, not the brick hearth she was used to, but a modern compressed cement sheet atop a steel subframe.  If I gave her any thought it was only that I thought she’d be pleased with her new aspect.

Perhaps it was the new induction cooktop I’d cleverly installed right next to her that caused the upset.

(And (sotto voce), between you and me it is all it promised, controllable, with an even temperament.  I’d even taken to cooking my porridge on it.   And while using that new contraption I caused further humiliation by using her as a bench, a repository for dirty dishes, and hot pans.)

Perhaps I’d become blasé, and taken her too much for granted.  Maybe I was preoccupied with matters that should have been no concern of hers.

However, there are dangers in a woman scorned. . .

Knowing how I like my bread, slightly soft in the centre with a rich golden crust, my stove took revenge.  Got herself worked up, I believe, hot under the collar.  So hot in fact that the crust was blackened, and the centre dry.  The taste was substandard, not quite bad enough to throw out, but certainly not good enough to give away or share with visitors.  Pointedly, it had a slightly bitter taste.

I apologised for taking her for granted, tended to her needs with respect and an absence of condescension.   I gave her a good clean out, and a nice blacking.   Time to start over.

I gathered together the equipage, pages from the Herald Sun, (she always likes that, knowing that I wont be tempted to stop midway to read something), some well seasoned cedar kindling, and a few secondary pieces of spotted gum decking offcuts, and some wonderful blocks of split yellow box.

With trembling hand I lit her fire.  Gently, very gently I opened the draught and the damper, just enough to get a small blaze, slow enough to ensure a gradual rising of temperature once the box wood is added.

She really hates it when I rush, when I’m impatient, ‘premature‘ she calls it.  All in good time she seems to say, and, in good time, she began to smell the way she used to in days gone by when she was ready.   So I gave her the dough, two batches at once, and left them in for a full hour, then a quick twenty minutes with a flat bread, and after that a third coming with a roast of beef, surrounded by potatoes, onion, carrot and garlic.  When she’d finished she was exhausted, she knew she’d pleased me, and, for once she didn’t even smoke.

I’m hoping we can do it again sometime soon.

by Tarquin O’Flaherty

It is Milton Friedman’s opinion that the post 1929 banking collapse was the principal cause of the Depression. This is undoubtedly true but what this glaringly ignores is why the banks collapsed. Friedman’s conclusion appears to treat the collapse as if it were an isolated event, as if ’29 hadn’t occurred.  It is my opinion that the short term irresponsible activities of the banks almost single-handedly brought about both the ’29 collapse, the banking collapse and the consequent Depression.  It was not the collapse of the banking system but what caused that collapse that brought about the Depression.

Friedman et al advised that in the event of a re-run of the 1929 crash, we must not allow the banks to fail again.   Well, in 2008, 1929  happened again, the banks failed spectacularly again, but this time they were rescued with massive amounts of government money. Well, Glory Hallellujah… Despite this rescue there has been, for years now, massive unemployment in both the US and Europe, millions of mortgage repossessions, and millions more small businesses have gone bankrupt.  Walk down Main Street anywhere and half the shops are boarded up.  People everywhere are quietly, desperately, scratching for a living.

Meanwhile, Britain’s billionaires (London has at least eighty) have seen their net worth double since the recession, with the richest I,000 families controlling 547 billion pounds (827 billion dollars) These families have at their disposal  more money than the poorest 40% of British households combined. In the last year alone (2014) their wealth increased by a staggering 77million pounds  a day. (Guardian Weekly (1.05.15)

Bank shareholders, the Dow Jones and share markets around the world nowadays get the jitters if bank quarterly profits, measured, not in millions but in billions, shift even slightly up or down.

Following the crash of 2008, the US banks were on their knees to President Obama, begging to be rescued.  The US administration, with the banks at their mercy, had an unprecedented opportunity to utterly reform the banking system.  Criminally they failed in this responsibility.  They did nothing of the kind.  Instead they simply shovelled money into the bank’s coffers and told them to carry on.  Obama and his Democrats could have changed the world and written their names large in American history.  Instead and almost inexplicably, they have contributed to making the world an infinitely less equal place.  This was an astonishingly spineless betrayal of the American people which stupefyingly, leaves the banks reassuringly aware that if they  blow it all over again, if they create another Depression, they will be rescued.

In 1789, the French, sick to death of inequality, the serfdom involved in the feudal system, the excesses of both the clergy and the aristocracy, and the demented extravagance of their king, Louis XV1, stormed the Bastille, set up Madame La Guillotine, bumped off the aristocracy and in 1793, beheaded Louis, their king.

In 1830, the British, who had already experienced mass revolts and riots up and down the country, and terrified of a repeat performance of the French experience, granted the vote to men of what was essentially the new and burgeoning, monied middle class.  The working class and the women would come later.

Much later, but for precisely the same unequal reasons, (feudalism, massive inequality and excess) the Russian people, in 1917, took the Royal Romanovs out and shot them.

Considering the gaping and growing inequalities in our present societies, I wonder if governments will be astute enough, and quick enough to remember the past and do that work essential to redressing this dangerous  situation.  Otherwise, if things remain as they are, we will, undoubtedly be tediously required to go through death, famine and war before the greed of the new aristocracy is curtailed either by government, or by other means.

Tomorrow: Relationships by Cecil Poole

by Tarquin O’Flaherty

The calculated financial lunacy initiated at the Chicago  School of Economics and eagerly taken up by Western leaders, has brought the US and most of Western Europe to their collective economic knees.  The results of these much vaunted economic manoeuvres has been nothing short of catastrophic.  Our present economic stagnation, unemployment and soup kitchens are the direct result of sound advice offered to us by the Nobel Prize winning Austrian economist Friedrich August Von Hayek, together with those of fellow economist Milton Friedman (who introduced Hayek to Margaret Thatcher) and one or two other of Austria and Chicago’s brightest minds.  The result of all of this dizzyingly cerebral economic calculation, thirty years later, is available for all to see.

Spanish poet, philosopher and novelist, George Santayana famously once said that ‘…those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it…’

Simply put, the 1929 crash happened because a vast conflict of interest arose when both lending and investing went on under the same banking roof.  American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the wake of the crash, brought in the Glass-Steagall Act which forbade this practise.  Banks, thereafter, could do one or the other, but not both.  Outraged, investment houses and banks, like rats round a cheese barrel, have been gnawing away at this restriction ever since.  By the time U.S. President Clinton revoked the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 it had become a relatively emasculated piece of legislation.  Nevertheless it still remained an irritatingly sufficient deterrent to those on the wilder shores of financial speculation.  With its removal and within a relatively short space of time, the cat was out of the bag and the economic lunatics out of the asylum.

Despite the horrifying example of 1929 and the consequent Depression, in the last few years the practise of lending and investing, once more allowable beneath the same banking roof, is once more producing the same dire consequences.  Meanwhile, the meretricious have had a field day doing precisely what they did in the 1920s.  Creating worthless stocks and bonds (and derivatives), talking them up and then selling them again and again until, inevitably, confidence in these ‘stocks’ fails, the scam is discovered and the whole box and dice falls on its face.   When the orgy was over and reality returned, the West was bankrupt and some of the greatest modern banking institutions had gone to the wall.

Despite banking propaganda to the contrary, the vast majority of American banks were involved in this predatory practice and only survived because they were bailed out by the U.S. government.

A lot of what I’ve just written is old news now, but I thought it worthwhile to trawl through it in order to point out out one or two interesting facts. Following the Wall Street crash of 1929  at least 400 banks collapsed.  From their ivory towers, disgraced speculators, banking magnates and sundry other establishment pillars were defenestrating themselves in droves.

To be continued – tomorrow

Yes, a reprint today

A Fowl Education. by Ira Maine

When Miranda came round, she looked over my ground,
And pronounced it a haven of peace.
And she observed over tea, ‘Niall, between you and me,
What you need is a couple of geese’.

Taken somewhat aback, I tried to backtrack,
Though the notion was not unattractive…
Well, what can I say?  I could see right away
That I’d soon become goose interactive!

She’d hardly departed when my tools and I started
A superbly constructed enclosure.
Little did I suspect when Miranda came next,
Her goose bill would threaten foreclosure!

Well, it’s all now too late but what did eventuate
Really only crops up in a film,
But if my torments to cease, if I catch those two geese,
I’ll not claim’em, or tame’em, I’ll kill’em!

On a freezing cold night when the moon was alight
From the pen came this terrible roaring.
So I jumped out of bed and dashed down to the shed,
But both geese were asleep, gently snoring.

Full of mystified wrath, a sub-zero bath
Wasn’t something I’d usually have thought of,
But slippers on ice are an idiot device,
And I fell arse over tit in the horse trough!

Saturated, I screamed, my head hit a beam,
Semi-conscious, I dreamed my decease,
Then I fell to the ground, head pounding, half drowned,
And was immediately assaulted by geese!

Midst the frostbite and blood, I never thought I would
Ever again see my book-lined interior,
But it’s amazing the gain you can make over pain
With two geese trying to fleece your posterior!

Next day on the dam, they wrecked all my plans
To get them back in their enclosure.
Then one freezing day they rose up, flew away,
Leaving me hospitalized with exposure.

So, if your pride has been ravaged, your bum cruelly savaged,
Go scratch yourself on the verandah.
There’s no ambrosial tincture to succour the sphincter
That’s been thoroughly goosed by Miranda!.

IRA MAINE. May 2013

Musical Dispatch from the Front- Intelligent Parasitism– May 2015

Ní féidir teacht ar Gaelacha na hAlban ar Google Translate mar sin tá a shocrú don Ghaeilge. Beannachtaí chun tú go léir,

In March 2012, a Musical Dispatch titled Metaphors and Euphemisms was launched into Cyberspace. Yet another modest contribution to the accumulation of meta-data.

In the Dispatch, the Scottish Clearances where alluded to as an earlier example of Closing the Gap.

“The 19^th.Century Scottish Clearances were driven mainly by greed and xenophobia. When it became far more “economically viable” to run sheep in the Highlands than have “non-viable” communities of Scots minding their own business and not playing the game, refusing to become English, these populations were disempowered, stigmatized and their social (tartan) fabrics torn apart.

Back then there were no bulldozers. The homes were torched.

From Wikipedia: “…the widespread evictions resulting from the Clearances severely affected the viability of the Highland population and culture. To this day, the population in the Scottish Highlands is sparse and the culture is diluted…… Although the 1901 census did return 230,806 Gaelic speakers in Scotland, today this number has fallen to below 60,000….”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK9uyioAPZU The landlords carried out “Improvements” to their estates. The improvers said the eradication of the Gaelic way of life, with its antiquated Clan loyalties and low rates of return, was necessary to bring the Highlands into the modern era- I guess they were Closing the Gap.”

If all this sounds familiar In the light of the latest push to close remote communities in Western Australia, it does because it is. As the French say c’est la même.

The Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland are some of the last remaining bastions where Gaelic is spoken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxVlmUn3K8g

They are also where in February 1941 the ironically named SS Politician ran aground with a load that included 28,000 cases of whisky. The locals invoked the Law of the Sea and proceeded to salvage the cargo. Local Customs officer Charles McColl had at least one thing in common with modern day Australian assimilationist officials, he lacked a sense of humour. McColl succeeded in having locals pursued and prosecuted. None of the whisky had paid a penny of duty, and he railed against this loss to the public purse, not unlike modern day Australians that rail against tax payers money being ‘wasted’ on Aborigines. Never mind that very little of the obscene amounts being spent actually trickle down to said Aborigines, and never mind that Australia is about to embark on spending $40billion on half a dozen submarines, not even likely to be built by Australians. But I digress.

Charles McColl’s campaign culminated with the hull of SS Politician being dynamited much to the disbelief of the locals. They were perplexed and flummoxed and not a little pissed off. As Angus John Campbell, was quoted, “Dynamiting whisky. You wouldn’t think there’d be men in the world so crazy as that!” Well sadly such crazy men continue to exist and flourish. We continue to be perplexed and flummoxed and not a little pissed off by them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TehFZ38kt6o

Opposition to the bulldozing of the remote Kimberley community of Oombulgurri prompted West Australian Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier to say that demolition was necessary to reduce further vandalism and theft… I wonder what Angus John Campbell and the residents of Barra island would have made of that?

A plebiscite was recently held in Scotland in which the question was posed ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ the Highlands returned a 47% yes vote, and 53% No.

As a non resident non Scottish person I fully accept that it isn’t for the likes of me to decide the future of Scotland, I none the less feel I’m allowed an opinion and was greatly disappointed but not surprised by the result of the referendum. When the Banking sector threatened to pull out of an independent Scotland, I thought it would have the same effect as Charles de Gaulle had in Quebec in 1967. “Piss off and mind your own business” (Emmerder et l’esprit de votre propre entreprise– according to Google translate). It wasn’t to be. Our illustrious Prime Minister is also allowed to have an opinion, and he has many: ‘‘I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect…are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.’’ is part of what he said in England. The colloquial Australian expression summing up such utterances is ‘sucking up’.

In August 2009 James Anaya, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, criticized the NT Intervention which he declared “further stigmatizes already stigmatized communities”. Our former  illustrious Opposition indigenous affairs spokesman (Tony Abbott) told ABC Television at the time that “I think this is the kind of nonsense we are used to from these armchair critics,”

Why does this make me think of the Goose and the Gander? (must be my warped mind- you wouldn’t think a single dose of LSD half a century ago would have such long lasting effects).

Britain is about to have an election, and a delicious irony is that the Scottish National Party is likely to hold the balance of power. I vaguely remember hearing the phrase ‘intelligent parasitism’ which came to mind in relation to the current situation in the United Kingdom. Holding the balance of power in a Great Britain, is likely to be of greater advantage to the Scottish population than being an independent not so Great Scotland.

So I looked up Intelligent Parasitism. Anthropologist A.P. Elkin used it to describe a stage in Australian Indigenous adjustment to the overwhelming forces of Colonialism.

In 1996, R. McGregor wrote ‘Intelligent Parasitism- A.P.Elkin and the Rhetoric of Assimilation’. I hope to get the time to read it. I wonder if R. McGregor’s ancestors were subjected to the clearances, they probably were.

In January 2012 a Musical Dispatch titled ‘The Business Intelligence front Door’ was launched into cyberspace. It referred to Don Watson’s book ‘Bendable Learnings’.

“Centrelink is quoted five times in ‘Bendable Learnings’ including:

The Centrelink contact point for statistics, previously known as the Knowledge Desk is now known as the Business Intelligence Front Door.” and from a Centrelink brochure on multi-cultural services: “If you cannot read, this brochure tells you where to get lessons. (¿Que?) Are we dealing with a talking brochure?

More importantly the Musical Dispatch quoted Mahatma Ghandi:

Mahatma Ghandi was charged with “bringing or attempting to excite disaffection towards His Majesty’s Government” (Yakara! Heaven Forbid!)

He was invited to make a statement to the court on 23^rd March 1922 at Ahmedabad, India, and subsequently sentenced to six years imprisonment under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.

This is part of what he said:

“The greater misfortune is that the Englishmen and their Indian Associates in the administration of the country do not know that they are engaged in the crime I have attempted to describe. I am satisfied that many Englishmen and Indian officials honestly believe that they are administering one of the best systems devised in the world, and that India is making steady , though slow, progress. They do not know, that a subtle but effective system of terrorism, together with an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other, has emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation. This awful habit has added to the ignorance and self deception of the administrators.” (my emphasis) 

Further along in his speech Mahatma Ghandi said: “In my humble opinion, Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is Co-operation with good”    

Na toghcháin sa Bhreatain ar siúl, mar sin seol mé níos fearr as seo i gcás fuair mé mícheart é!
Gach an chuid is fearr mo chairde, go dtí an chéad uair eile
Frank

Somewhere over the rainbow…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I

Flabbergasted of Tolmie

We at PCBYCP Central are disturbed yet again at the headlines, this time the story about the baby born to major welfare recipients in the UK.  Not that it is Charlotte’s fault.  Still we would like to take you back to last week’s beat-up with some comments from our Sydney correspondent, Tony, in response to Executions, Promotions

(Ira), I was mightily impressed by your piece about the Bali 9 ringleaders – and agree with everything you say.

The Imperfect Enjoyment

A poem by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester(1647-1680) in which he admonishes his Dishonourable Member for twice failing a lady in her hour of need.  Comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor after the poem

Comments:
To begin with Wilmot and Corinna are in bed where her nakedness, her arms, lips, legs, her nimble tongue all combine to bring John Wilmot to the point where, he is now rigidly resolved-

‘…to throw the all-dissolving thunderbolt below…’

[does this adequately describe a chap’s entry to the Promised Land?]

And then, as is usual to the etiquette in these matters;

‘…her busy hand would guide that part…’

It would indeed were it not for young Wilmot’s over eager acquiesence to the demands of her softly guiding fingers.

Alas and alack, he is undone…

Before even the portals of the Promised Land are breached he confesses;

‘..in liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er,

Melt into sperm and spend at every pore…’

Come, come, Mr Wilmot…

Then, having survived this little death, this little disaster, not unreasonably, the young and sexually aroused lady, noticing Wilmot’s failure to produce a second ‘thunderbolt’, asks the question;

‘…is there then no more?… all this to love and rapture’s due,’

[The intensity of his love caused premature ejaculation the first time, but now?]

‘Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?…’

Surely, Rochester, you can raise another thunderbolt?  Surely we can have another crack at it?

A not unreasonable request, and one a chap of Wilmot’s young age might easily supply, but then the point of the poem would be lost.  The point being that Wilmot finds,on this occasion at least, that he cannot, like Zeus or Thor, produce thunderbolts at will.

I sigh, alas! And kiss, but cannot swive…’ [swive; perform sexual intercourse]

Wilmot’s analysis of the situation;

‘…eager desires [ejaculatio praecox] confound my first intent.

Succeeding shame does more success prevent,

And rage at last, confirms me impotent…’

Embarrassment, shame and rage all combine to render him impotent.

Pitifully, hilariously the poet tells us that despite having conquered countless ‘…balmy brinks of bliss…’  in the past, right now, at this very moment;

‘..a wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie…’

Thus far, dear reader, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, has confessed to both premature ejaculation and impotence. What else might be in store?

Well, whilst talking of his Honourable Member and of where it has found itself in the past, he does say that;

‘…stiffly resolved, ‘twould carelessly invade

Woman or man, nor ought it’s fury stayed:

Where’er it pierced, a cunt it found, or made-…’

But now it is;

‘…shrunk up and sapless like a withered flower…’

Well, lah-de-dah, bless my soul and sundry other breathless expressions…

We now become aware that Prem. Ejac. And Impotence were simple appetizers. The Earl of Rochester also enjoyed a stroll on both sides of the street.

‘…woman or man…a cunt it found, or made…’

Finally, the poet sets about wishing all the pains of hell on his Dishonourable Member in return for this awful betrayal.

Why he asks of his old fellow, are you so eager and upright a citizen when it comes to ‘stews’ [brothels] and yet, when love is involved, do you fail me utterly?

‘…so true to lewdness, so untrue to love?

What oyster-cinder-beggar-common whore (17^th century parlance for ladies of easy virtue in whose company his Honourable Member has never in the past failed to stand for re-erection)

Did’st thou e’er fail in all thy life before?…’

He compares his member to an unprincipled swine who is always the first to volunteer;

‘…when vice, disease or scandal lead the way…but if his King or Country claim his aid, the rakehell villain shrinks and hides his head…’

Wilmot in the end wishes on his deflated companion all of the painful horrors it deserves for failing him in love.

‘…mayst thou to ravenous chancres be a prey…’[ulcers]

Or in consuming weepings waste away…’ [ unstaunchable weeping sores…]

‘…may stranguary and stone thy days attend…’ [painful urination and gallstones]

May urination itself be denied you because you failed absolutely when I most needed you.

Then the dismissive insult that;

‘…ten thousand abler pricks agree

To do the wronged Corinna right for thee…’

That other more able members would be infinitely better able to satisfy Corinna than you, you;

‘…treacherous, base deserter of my flame, 

false to my passion, fatal to my fame…’

The Restoration in England threw off the bonds of Cromwellian Puritanism and celebrated the pleasures of the flesh in no uncertain manner. What Rochester was doing in verse, Congreve, Wycherley, and a host of others were doing on stage with plays like ‘The Country Wife’ and ‘The Way of the World’.  People flocked to the theatre in great numbers to celebrate the loosening of restrictions. Respectability and ‘seriousness’ crept back in the early 18^th century but not before some of the most splendidly rude Restoration comedys were written and performed. They are still being celebrated today.

Sadly, John Wilmot contracted syphilis, a then incurable disease, where blindness, madness and unbearable pain must be endured before death.He was 33 years old.

His work is well worth hunting out and reading. I commend him to you.

This dispatch was first published 22 May 2013

Guten Tag Freunden,

In the TV Series ‘Planet Word’ Stephen Fry discussed the resurrection of the Hebrew language with an Israeli professor. The professor said it could be looked at two ways. A Phoenix rising from the ashes or a cuckoo. Wendy immediately caught on to what the professor meant; I had to have it explained and think about it. A Yiddish egg had been laid in a Hebrew nest.

Whilst everyone learned to speak the resurrected language, the psyche of the speakers, their mind-space, their weltanschauung was Yiddish/Jewish rather than Hebrew/Israeli.

Stephen Fry pondered what if Yiddish had been chosen by the chosen people as the official language of their new nation. He concluded that Israel would have been a lot funnier if it had.

It does make you wonder if the likelihood of that once ‘jewel of the Mediterranean’, Lebanon, having been bombarded would have been lessened if their neighbours used such wonderful words as meschuggenneh, kvatch  and schlemiel not to mention the verb schlepping in their everyday speech.

Cuckoos are a family of birds. http://youtu.be/r0wKxFPCz1Y

Many species are brood parasites laying their eggs in the nests of other species….. Cuckoo eggs hatch earlier than the host species’ eggs and the cuckoo chicks often push their step brothers and sisters out of the nest. They claim ownership of the nest.

Cuckoos are clever. In the Black Forrest of Germany they have learned to count and tell the time. They also can dance.
http://youtu.be/bHNPKkvcK38
In the Warlpiri region there are several cuckoo species:

Karlpurrukarlpurru or pinparlajarrpa – Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike

Purrjurtururturu– Ground Cuckoo-shrike

Nyirawu – Horsfield’s bronze cuckoo

Nyirawu ngulaju jurlpu kuuku-kurlangu (The nyirawu bird belongs to the kurdaitcha man).

The kurdaitcha men traditionally used to wear emu-feather boots (so as to leave no tracks) and sneak up on their enemies to extract revenge.

Kurdaitcha men are known in Warlpiri as janpa or kuuku pronounced (you guessed it) cuckoo.

When Yuendumu first got a police station, a kuuku on a revenge mission got drunk and was arrested. Virtually the whole Yuendumu population gathered outside the station wanting to get a look at the kuuku. Our curiosity wasn’t satisfied. Police snuck the kuuku out of the back of the station and took him to Alice Springs to face alcohol related charges.

Jenny Macklin (The responsible minister at that time, Ed) recently announced that under the Stronger Futures initiative, four new Police Stations will be installed on remote Aboriginal communities. They don’t call them Police Stations anymore. They’ve been rebadged ‘complexes’. The odds of any of these Police Complexes holding drunken kuukus in the Stronger Futures are slim.

Remote police stations used to employ police tracker chicks, the cuckoo police chicks have pushed the police tracker chicks out of the nest.

Remote health clinics used to employ ngankayi (traditional healer) chicks, the cuckoo health worker chicks, have pushed the ngankayi chicks out of the nest.

At Yuendumu there was a WYN Health nest (Willowra-Yuendumu-Nyirrpi) that was supposed to eventually take over the feeding and looking after of the chicks. Territory Health cuckoo chicks have pushed out the WYN chicks and Territory Health cuckoos have taken ownership of the WYN Health nest.

Remote Housing Association chicks have been pushed out of their nests by Outside Contractor cuckoo chicks. Territory Housing cuckoos have taken ownership of the nests.

This is getting rather monotonous. Suffice it to say that the Intervention is one hell of a giant cuckoo mother…

The Interventionists lay lots of eggs and take ownership of all our nests. Only then do they bother to feather them.

Auf wieder sehen und Shalom,

Frank

PS- Another reason why I’m so glad that my family didn’t stay in the Netherlands:
http://youtu.be/IQEXYBbcHkM

And as an antidote to the Dutch kvatch, another song about cuckoos
http://youtu.be/oSbYOqydOlI