You call me, my distant love
I hear you,
I miss you.
From so far away
I read you into my thoughts -
you clutter the pages of novels
and the stanzas of poems
with your existence;
our brief time together
burned into my mind.
They tell me you are cool,
distant,
impersonal.
They do not know you.
You are wonderful,
alive,
amazing.
You thrill me.
I will return to you,
to our secret spaces,
our knowing nooks.
I will be with you again,
sweet gotham.
They had made their own star. It adorned the heavens, a jewel in the crown of their technological triumph. It was not, of course, actually a star, but rather a satellite – a space-station, to be precise. Not the first of its kind, but the first to be so large as to be visible from the surface with the naked eye, as it passed through the night reflecting the burning, invisible sun.
The occasion of its launch had been one of great fear. So many things, after all, could go wrong. But when it settled neatly into its orbit, most of its creators breathed a well-deserved sigh of relief. Most, but not all. One watched on with a particular concern. Surely, he thought, it would now be obvious to them? They would realise the truth long hidden in plain sight?
The war had been almost incomprehensible in its scale. Vast aeons of time could not disguise the shattered remnants of the all too human cost it had exacted. Ships in the thousands – millions, even, had burned. Too many to clean up, too few left to do it – they drifted aimlessly as centuries passed, macabre monuments to the folly of man and the brothers who had killed one another.
So much time had passed, in fact, that the war was all but forgotten. Only the barest few knew it had ever happened, and carefully swept all traces of it from sight. All traces, except the ships. But the people had never questioned those – merely accepted the explanation provided, and carried on, regardless.
The nearest one always seemed the largest, though in fact it wasn’t, though it was by no means small. A colony ship, it had been entirely black once, its hull blending into the night. But for millennia it had shown a face – its bow scorched by fire of extraordinary vehemence, it shone a bright grey. The forces of gravity held it forever facing down, its heavier stern pulled away, into the skies, as it spun around the earth. The result; a perfectly circular beacon in the night – for it too reflected the sun – and so they told the people it was spherical, and called it the moon, and if you didn’t think about it too hard, you could believe it.
Further out, the fleet of a million million ships glittered in space, still carrying their long dead crews through the aeons. And they called them stars.
(Wherein our intrepid hero proposes a little revisionism)
Brendan Nelson is a man betrayed. Not by his turncoat party-members, nor his inconvenient principles and unpopular beliefs, nor intractable politics or uncomfortable truths. No, Brendan Nelson is a man betrayed by his speech-writers. Those of you that watched, listened to, or read his sorry speech are sure to agree, it could use some work. The meandering monologue was filled with qualifications, misdirection, justifications and double talk – the true meaning behind the words carefully hidden. It is in some ways a miracle that anyone could divine the true meaning of his words – but fortunately the more enlightened minds of our nation were, at least, able to get the gist of it. The problem is that whilst all the polito-speak is perfectly acceptable for typical use in parliament, this was not a typical situation. It was one of those nationally defining moments that calls for one of those great lines: “Ask not what your country can do for you…“, “The only thing we have to fear…“, “I have a dream…“. I get the feeling, somehow, that Kennedy wouldn’t have had quite the same impact with “In these materialistic, self-centred times, it is important that we recognise the necessity of contributing the vital welfare of our nation, even at the expense of ourselves.”
The key, you see, is to do it succinctly. It is a cliché of “good writing” in fact, that good writing is short writing – and this was the real failure of Nelson’s speech writers. The speech was too long, and the real sentiment, whilst still pretty obvious, was nevertheless far too obscured by the gluttony of lazy speech writers. Nelson could have achieved a much better result with a far shorter speech; one more in line with his character and that of his party, one that truly gave us a glimpse of the workings of that magnificent mind – one guaranteed to be remembered and repeated as it echoed down the long hall of history. He needed, in fact, only say one line:
“I’m sorry… but it’s not our fault you’re a bunch of darkies.“
My services are available on either a freelance or contract basis, just as soon as Kevin Rudd repeals Work Choices.
Once again, dear readers, we find ourselves witness to the political lunacy that deservedly earns that tag “only in America, folks!” I am speaking, of course, of the website Less Jobs, More Wars. Now, before you start lambasting me with incredulity; “what’s wrong with that?”, “that’s a great idea!”, &c., let me explain something: the site is satirical. That’s right. The truth of the matter is that their real beliefs are so palpably absurd that they’re practically obscene: these panty-waist liberals don’t actually believe in the excellent philosophy of less jobs and more wars. Quite the opposite; they actually want more jobs and less wars. That’s right, you heard me, MORE jobs, LESS wars. And what’s worse, they actually mock the rational (pro-unemployment, anti-pacifism) view. Extraordinary!
Indeed, even as you sit (undoubtedly at your office desk) reading this, the liberals are conspiring to steal your precious free time and replace it with back-breaking hard work! There was another political leader who gained prominence for revitalising a flagging economy and creating new jobs – you know what his name was? Hitler. That’s right, I said it, Godwin’s law be damned, these jerks are out-and-out Nazis. Not only is it bad enough that they think that you should be working more, but they want all sorts of other people in the workplace – women, for instance! even single mothers! Indeed, so great is their fetish for suffering (“employment” being the “politically correct” parlance) that they even want to put criminals in the workplace! If you don’t believe me, just ask one! They’ll tell you that “reformed criminals” deserve a “fair go” in the workplace – apparently we’re supposed to believe that just because they’ve “served their time”, little Johnny-baby-eater can be trusted with our precious paper-clips. NOT IN MY STATIONERY CUPBOARD, thankyouverymuch.
Now, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve decided to compound their sins by taking away our god-given right to blow shit (and people) up. Human beings love war, we revel in it – it’s in our very nature. We invented flint weapons before fire, the wheel, writing and religion. Just look at the predominant genres of computer games currently being sold: First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy. We love movies like Saving Private Ryan, A Few Good Men and Forrest Gump. Who here can honestly say they didn’t stay up all night devouring Sun Tzu’s The Art of War the first time they read it? Who doesn’t get weak at the knees at the sight of John Rambo, Horatio Hornblower or Winston Churchill? There’s nothing we love more than a good war – so much so that we’ll go to war on the flimsiest of excuses. And yet these long-haired hippy pinkos want to take away a universal pastime that pre-dates history itself, an activity so natural even ants do it – and for what? Because it’s not “nice”? Not “good for us”? “A tool for major corporations to exploitatively reap huge profits at the expense of innocents”? Mark my words; give in, and they’ll use the same excuse to take candy from babies next. War is what makes the world a place worth living – just imagine a world without war; what would we do? Sit around crocheting place-mats? Have high tea and discuss the latest BBC miniseries staring Colin *swoon* Firth? The men of the world would end up such a bunch of pillow-biting nancy-boys that there sure as shootin’ wouldn’t be any baby makin’ getting done.
At least it would save them the trouble of stealing the candy.
The dream, dear friends, is at an end. Any hope that we might be an egalitarian and moral society has been quashed. The Liberal party, you see, has agreed to say “sorry”. To the naked eye, that might seem like a good thing, but remember:
For so long, under the auspices of the Howard government, the Australian people loved their native inhabitants. We loved them stubbornly and unrelentingly. We loved them even though they didn’t love us back. We loved them even though they didn’t appreciate all that we had done for them. We loved them even though they didn’t deserve it. We loved them even when we held big marches to say that we didn’t. But now, with a few poorly-chosen words, we will wash that all away, destroying centuries of loving relationship. Now, with that last great bastion of tolerance and open-mindedness sailing off into the twilight, it is painfully apparent that our nation is at the beginning of a long painful decline into unthinking prejudice and intolerance. Farewell, John, we’ll miss you.
