I’ve just spent time in both Burma and India, so here are some of Adrian Mitchell’s New Elephant Poems

The Galactic Pachyderm
The elephant stands
among the stars
He jumps off
Neptune
bounces off
Mars
to adventures on
Venus
while his children
play
in the diamond jungles
of the
Milky Way

Tinkling the Ivories
There was an elephant
called Art Tatum
He played a piano
whose teeth were human teeth

Non-event
If an elephant could meet a whale
their understanding would be huge
and they would love one another for ever

Bring Your Own Tankard
How to get permanently drunk in the jungle!
One pint of elephant’s piss

Pride
The elephant
is not proud of being an elephant
So why are we ashamed?

Good Tastes
The vilest furniture in this land
is an elephant’s foot umbrella stand

Love Poem, Elephant Poem
Elephants are as amazing as love
but love is amazing as elephants
Love is amazing as elephants
but elephants are as amazing as love

Elephant Values
Nowhere in the world
is there an elephant bad enough
to make a career in advertising
or to play full-back for Leeds United

You Aren’t What you Eat
The elephant
who’s seldom flustered
despises calming food
like custard
Devouring curry
in a hurry
washed down with
a glass of mustard

Turn Turn Turn
There is a time for considering elephants
There is no time for not considering elephants

The infant elephant speaks:
I got a rusk
stuck on my tusk

From The Apeman Cometh, Adrian Mitchell. 1975

Hyvää huomenta ystäväni,

A long long time ago, we saw a cartoon which left a lasting impression on us-

A toad sitting on an umbrella shaped fungus, admonished another toad clambering onto another umbrella shaped fungus: “You can’t sit there Larry, that is a mushroom!”

If you are a toad, you are only meant to sit on toadstools.

Authorities are often said to treat us like mushrooms- they keep us in the dark, and feed us bullshit.

Before we set off on our yearly R&R, Yuendumu enjoyed a deluge. Some decades earlier a similar deluge caused a crop of edible mushrooms to pop up literally like mushrooms. We kardiya (non-Indigenous residents) feasted on this crop. Yapa would have nothing to do with the mushrooms… nyurnu-kujaku… “Lest they make us sick”, which yapa assumed the mushrooms would.

After the current deluge, I chanced upom a single lone mushroom. Nangala cooked and ate it. She tells me it was delicious, which she assumed it would be. I’m happy to report she is still with us.

My holiday reading included Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’- “…then all of us must be alert to that greatest of all limitations to wisdom:- The Assumption… “

It was assumptions such as “these half-caste children will have a better future if taken from their families” which led to what became known as the ‘Stolen Generation(s)’, and which prompted Kevin Rudd’s politically opportunistic apology.

Indigenous children in Australia continue to be removed from their families at a greater rate than ever. Similar ethnocentric assumptions are used to justify this.

Oh when will they ever learn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgXNVA9ngx8

There is a pointy shaped fungus which grows in Central Australia (Nguyu-parnta). Yapa used this mushroom to blacken the faces of half-caste children to prevent them from being taken by patrol officers.

Just as the modern fishing industry has become more “efficient”, so has the child protection industry. And just as over-fishing has serious long term deleterious consequences, so have the “improved” nets and increased catch of child protection. No mere pointy shaped mushroom will stand in its way.

Four years ago I quoted from ‘Martin Fierro’  (a 19^th Century Argentine classic):

La ley es tela de araña
en mi inorancia lo explico
no la tema el hombre rico
nunca la tema el que mande
pues la rompe el bicho grande
y solo enrieda  a los chicos

The law is like a spider’s web,
In all humility I explain:
the rich man fears it not
neither he that is in command.
The large beetles break free
and only the small insects are ensnared

Nothing much has changed- if anything the assimilationists have further tightened their grip.

On the internet I found this definition of ‘Deficit Model’:-

“Research grounded in a deficit perspective blames victims of institutional oppression for their own victimization by referring to negative stereotypes and assumptions…”

It didn’t need rain in Yuendumu for a crop of signs to pop up like mushrooms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U9TwG-uiDY

Painted on old car bonnets in vivid colours, the signs say:

“Stop the Violence”

“No Excuse for Abuse”

“No Violence Against Anyone”

“No Violence be Happy”

… Happy Days are here again….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbevg8lxiE0

I’m not happy with these signs. What is wrong with the signs? You ask.

I assume that which prompted some people to produce and put up the signs is the implied assumption grounded on the deficit model and perpetuating the stereotype of Yuendumu as a violent place rife with abuse.

Assimilationists make ample use of assumptions grounded on the deficit model. They’re not shy of perpetuating stereotypes either.

The authorities treat Aborigines like toads. They do everything within their power…

…they’ve got all the power…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duV9lkmMTCc (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)

…to prevent toads from sitting on mushrooms and to force them to sit on toadstools, even if it may be possible toads have been sitting on mushrooms for over 40,000 years.

If you are a toad, you sit on mushrooms at your own peril. It can land you in prison or lead to having your child removed.

Kunnes seuraavan kerran,

Frank

PS- If you have the time, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNXbwhW7NIg (Lucky Dube- Respect)

Assumptions, stereotypes and the removal of children are not confined to Aboriginal Australia.

Shocking! Earth sheds tears

Earth Tears. A continuous flow of warm, hot, emotional tears.

Dear reader, for long we’ve heard hypothesis after hypothesis as to whether the earth is in fact a living, thinking being. The foremost, the GAIA hypothesis is literally too monstrous to comprehend, and assumes that the anthropocene era is a just a blip in the evolutionary chart. indeed, so disturbing is the GAIA hypothesis that it has been declared “Untrue’ by Emeritus Professor Malcolm Roberts of the Flat Earth Polytechnic. He dismissed the claim as, “Poppycock’, We all know the earth is six thousand years old and coal incidentally is damn good for humanity’.

But we beg to differ. Startling images have arrived from Hawaii that prove once and for all that the earth is a living, breathing, sentient being and it’s “crying”. The first ever incidence of ‘Earth tears’ and not just a trickle but a great gushing cascade’.

Close up

“We have no been yet able to communicate with Earth at this stage’; claimed a spokesman from JPL laboratories in California, ‘and Its unheard of, but these truly are Earth-tears. Lava just doesn’t do that’! Senior research scientist, Will Full-bottle from the Scripps Oceanic Institute; “they clearly are tears, the rock crevice is in the shape of perfect test duct and there seems to be no other explanation for such an emphatic perfect stream of earth- tear”.

‘Sadly, world leaders choose to ignore crying earth and squabble about putting refugees anywhere else, global trade deals and the choice of colours for the Commonwealth games logo. Though the Commonwealth games logo is singular in its global importance, we hasten to add that the tears could be a precursor to something much more cathartic. Perhaps, and this is the guarded opinion of the last research scientist at the CSIRO, before taking up his Halliburton study tour of detention facilities, ‘the earth crying is unprecedented, and we should be thinking of the root cause’.

Earth as it was upon creation . Some six thousand years ago.

Spurned by his conjecture, we have consulted the worlds leading thinkers, and Professor Roots Causal, suggests; ‘they are a cumulative effect brought upon, by the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. It went to the ascension of Donald Trump. It’s called the ‘Trump-Singularity’. Shocked, we’ve seen the irrefutable truth, since inauguration seismic activity has gone off the scale, and all other indices are on target to suggest the earth, suffering alone and unregarded for countless aeons has had enough’.
“Nothing short of a complete physical breakdown’, suggested lead terrestrial psychologist, Wilbur Tremor-shake “ it’s unprecedented, and usually a period of prolonged emotional stress is followed by deep trauma. In a global sense this could be in the form of a seizure, reversal of magnetic polarity or in the worst case scenario a cessation of global movement. In simple terms the earth will cease to spin. And there’s nothing you can do about it. One side will permanently face the sun, the other will freeze to death’.
What can we do we asked?
‘There is only one thing you can do the expert answered. Hope the ‘Trump singularity’ will cease, and if that doesn’t work, talk to the earth.

If enough people believe in the earth, it may recover. But it needs to be convinced. It needs an individual of determination, intelligence and grit. Sadly, we have no one left in Australia, and our first choice had the opposite reaction, we had earthquakes all over the place’. Who was that we asked? ‘Oh your leader, Malcolm’. And why did it fail? Ooh he sold the earth to a higher bidder, most powerful man on earth to intercede. He is known as D.T and he (the D.T) deferred to a higher authority still’, Higher we asked? is that… God?.

‘No Rupert. He said he’d look into it make earth an offer. Earth would get a generous 1% share in his business empire. Why only 1%? ‘That’s the standard rate these days for the general public. Rupert was quite firm on that, and earth had no choice. And besides Rupert has more important things than an emotionally unstable earth to placate. And what could that be we asked? ‘His reputation’.

For what we asked?

‘As a world leader’.

Dear reader, another fragment from our glorious past, when courage was unquestioned and valour the very substance of what made this country tick.

(We advise though if you have a tick infestation see urgent medical advice. They are nasty little creatures and get under the skin, are difficult to remove and have been linked to Lime’s disease. Lime’s are good for you but over-consumption can lead to the uncommon condition Verdi- vulcanism, an explosive condition of the lower bowel. The symptoms are varied and treatment excruciatingly painful. But not so excruciating as this over-long and tedious description of this act of absolute stupidity. Only now can we bring you this ‘True Story’ as an alternate fact. For infinitely more implausible reading, and as a cure for insomnia we reccommend, Federal parliamentary Hansard.  Now for some light reading; 

Fairey’s over the Fish Market Oil on Canvas, signed 1940

Bischmarkt disguised as a JUNK. En route to Australia 1939.

In 1940, the ‘Fairey Battle’ was as yet untested as a fighter bomber and interceptor. Although rumours abounded that it was obsolete and no match for contemporary fighters it’s speed and relatively noiseless engine, (the earlier merlin Mk 11) led to the adoption of the moniker, “Stealth Fighter”. The RAAF ordered several hundred in late 1938, and the personnel at the Fisherman’s Bend assembly plant worked night and day in getting them ready in the event of war. During the assembly process some significant modifications were made to suit local conditions. The wireless communication was upgraded and the complicated larynx communication microphone ditched in favour of a speaking tube which ran the full length of the distinctive glasshouse canopy. Further improvements were made to the landing gear, the armament and the capacity to carry a greater payload. In March 1940, the Fairey’s, operating from Point Cook were engaged in anti submarine patrol work along the length of Bass Strait. Early signs of merchant raiders and anti commerce shipping seemed likely. Nicknamed the ‘Fairey fellows’, the pilots all wore a distinctive pink jumpsuit. It was felt that pink would be clearly recognised in the event of ditching, and the observer and gunner also complemented this attire with bright neon pink jumpsuit. Nicknamed the ‘flying pansies’, they were instantly recognised as fairey crew in the officers mess, and this saved precious time when alerted to patrol duty amongst the corps of other pilots.

Bischmarkt disguised as junk , ( HMVS Cerberus) on entry to Port Phillip Bay. Jan 1940.

In March 1940, the notorious german surface raider Bischmarkt was reported to be heading for southern waters. Leaving a trail of destruction not evidenced since the Shenandoah. The Bischmarkt had captured and sunk several dozen merchantmen, crippled an escort destroyer, and laid waste to the wireless stations at Cocos, Manaus and Nauru island, which were then being trialled as remote concentration camps for left handed jay-walkers. The Bischmarkt, could adopt a variety of disguises, and in one instance disguised itself as a hospital ship before anchoring off Rabaul in New Britain. The encounter, referred to historically as ‘Mad Monday’ resulted in the entire garrison of New Britain boarding the ship in search of care, comfort and repatriation, to which they were all captured. Not a shot being fired. In another instance, the Bischmarkt laid waste to the entire city of Brisbane and it was several months before anyone noticed.

On March 23rd, the Bischmarkt was reported to be sinking abalone and oyster smacks in the Flinders Island Group. Wasting no time the Fairey’s were despatched with torpedoes, to deal with enemy. After flying over the island group the pilot, Percy “Plunger” Postlethwaite, (late of Pulford), reported no sign of the Bischmarkt, and volunteered to return to base. The base radioed back, ‘at all costs you must destroy the Bischmarkt’. Misunderstanding the precise objective of the order, and confused by the echo effect of acoustics in the greenhouse canopy the pilot duly tuned northwards and an hour later the Fish Market was destroyed. The subsequent enquiry revealed the Bischmarkt had disguised itself as a kelp bed, and remained hidden till revealed by One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts in search of an intact eco system. Proof of the fallacy of climate-change. The voice pipe was deemed the culprit, and from thereon the Fairey’s and the “Pansies” who flew them were relegated to Back-room duties.

Commander of the Bischmarkt, Kapitan zur See Walther Linken-Klinken Pinkelwasser, in disguise as Josephine Baker. Naval and Military Ball. Melbourne 1940.

World Economics. As simple as “ABC”

An open letter to Michelle Guthrie

Dear Michelle, axing all those music programmes really did the trick. Consequently, we at pcbycp would like to apologise for the tone of the last piece on radio national as it was uncharitable.

reading from the ” Book of Murdoch”

The truth is, we thought you were trying to diminish the national broadcaster. WE were wrong.

We have a policy of never mentioning ratbags. As journalist, entertainment, and agitator none comes closer than Axxxxx Bxxx. he reads from “the Book of Murdoch’ and seeks to impoverish us. Why mention him then? And Axxx Jxxxx, the bleak shock jock from the near north is of the same cast. They offer a sort of aural pornography as ‘infotaintment’. Been doing it for years before Txxxx became president of the U.S. And way before anyone ever thought of the connection between ‘Alternate facts’ and George Orwell. That’s ‘info-tainment’. Titillating to some, but lowering the standard to a residual sub standard. They’re popular these days. That’s the essence of populism and provided they don’t challenge the conservatives politically, the coalition love em. That’s why we don’t want to talk about Dxxxxx Txxxx anymore. It’ boring. We know he’s a looney right wing ideologue who doesn’t care about much other than himself and his family. He just confirms what we already knew. That in our time, the apogee of the Anthropocene era, is marked by a hollowed out fundamentalism which makes the smallest of things very large indeed. And Mencken, who doesn’t quite get the coverage of Orwell nailed it. We’d never heard of Mencken until recently. Now he’s a sage who’s commentary on the great experiment of neo liberalism sings true. Not beer and circuses, reduced wages, the future, and everything, rings as he predicted, hollowed out and sadly true.

So, its with incredible relief to learn that the ABC under Michelle Guthrie is going stratospheric in its effort to make the ABC “NEW” again.

Just the other day it was remarked that those senior tiered abc executives who hadn’t jumped ship to the pubic galleries and museum sector were all Murdoch flunkies. Apparently the ABC is brim full of Murdoch’s. ‘A miasma of Murdoch’, collectively you might say. Consequently as we see the thinking identity of radio national diminished, and the aural side depleted with the loss of Lucky Oceans, who by definition had to go, ‘luck’ has nothing to do with it, and ‘oceans’ being a metaphorical shorthand for broad, expansive and infinite human potential was counter-cultural. Further evidence that Guthrie is on the ball. And what better evidence could you have now that PM and AM, have changed their jingle.

That’s it. Change and innovation. No longer the (very hard to type the musical nuance) ‘der da da da der da da da da’… but a much more explosive , percussive, deeply serious intro akin, to a morphing of the gun sequence of the 1812 overture, with Tannhauser, and a bit of “Funky town” thrown in. it’s for everything and evidence that in the senior management, the corridors are bringing full of thought bubbles, new ideas and innovation.

We’re hoping that the ABC national news may change it’s signature tune as evidence of further innovation and broadening the appeal of radio national to those normally tuned to Axxxx Bxxx and Axxx Jxxxx. We would like to suggest Liszt’s, funeral march or perhaps Mahler’s, kindertotenlieder, (songs for dead children) to truly reflect the narrowing of the national ethos as we succumb, willingly to fear, inwardness and the smallness of everything.

So it”s a hearty thanks to the ABC for reminding us, that we don’t need journalism. Science reporting is bunk, and ‘The Book of Murdoch’, is the song sheet from which all Australians must sing to ensure that we are Safe, and free from the taint of Imagination. ‘Our” ABC says it all , it’s text shorthand for ‘ON U Rupert’!!!