Rex in the City

So. It’s come to this then. The City is being retired. It had to really. It had done its job, and now its time to take it off line, strip it of all the salvageable parts and put it out of its misery.

I tell you. It was fun while it lasted. The City started by accident, but its going to finish on purpose. It became something to while away a bit of time, as I was forced to disengage from normal activity for a while. Things (I pray) are back on track now, and there is simply less time available to let my imagination run wild.

I had a few laughs along the way and I got to poke fund at conservative dogma, and especially the simplistic language that they employ.

I learned a few things out of this. I learned that The Herald Sun really is a manipulative piece of shite. I learned that the Australian is not all that bad, and I leaned that The Age is nowhere near as biased as the cookie cutter conservatives are trying to make out. Most of all I learned that the ABC really is the best cultural institution in this country, and heaven help any pricks that go after my ABC, ‘cause there’ll be hell to pay.

I also learned that it is piss easy to write tabloid newspaper copy. That stuff is so easy to churn out, and manipulate any way you like. If you’re looking for totally slack work, I can’t think of an easier job.

I learned also that the second slackest job is to be a conservative columnist. All you have to do is learn the language of conservatives, and start bashing away at an invented array of symbols that supposedly denote ‘the left’, whatever that is, and you’ve got yourself a job. I mean symbols like Che Guevara T-Shirts, or the Bill of Rights, or a term like ‘Academics’, or ‘the elite’ or ‘the greenies’ or ‘do-gooders’ or ‘Fairfax’ or ‘The ABC’. The trick (mostly) with being a conservative columnist is to pick a symbol that is a bit vague and ill-defined, and where there’s no one person or thing who really represents it, and then ridicule it while making yourself look good. Its fiction really.

Anyway. I’ve said my piece. I thank you for dropping by. I’ve enjoyed your company. You’ve been a great audience. You may see me around. You may not.

Deathly silence this morning from Typo Tim, and Andrew Landeryou and no doubt all the rest of the cookie cutter conservatives giving gratuitous advice to the ABC and more particularly Media Watch about their interpretation of bias.

Media Watch you see has, get this, apologised on air because they made an error. An error gleefully pointed out by these two gentlemen, neither of whom have been known to apologise whenever they have made an error.

Additionally Media Watch have taken the cudgels to one of their own. Something that Typo Tim in his usual sneering way had challenged the Media Watch team to do, and which Mr. Blair himself has never demonstrated any willingness to undertake.

The Conservative line is starting to look faded and worn, and totally unconvincing now that it persists in living in denial of the many mistakes and errors it has committed.

Last Saturday, Australia’s favourite newspaper, The Herald Sun gave Melbournians the inside goss on why Jimi Hendrix, 60s guitar player extraordinaire got booted out of the US Army. He was “one of the poorest soldiers in the platoon” they said. He “slept on the job, paid little attention to military rules, thought too much about the guitar that would make him famous” they pointed out. An important lesson for all of us who aspire to the US military, and probably the Australian military too for that matter.

They also alluded to a disturbing incident where Mr. Hendrix was caught in “a sex act in a toilet”. Melbournians were deeply shocked by this, and so The City decided to get to the bottom of this matter. After referring to Friday’s copy of The Age, where we presume the Herald Sun got the idea for their article, The City can reveal what Mr. Hendrix was up to in the latrines on that sultry evening.

Jimi it turns out was bashing-the-bishop, choking-the-chicken, fidgeting-the-midget. He was doing his patriotic duty by giving-the-general-a-five-finger-salute.

Now we don’t know why the Herald Sun didn’t make it clear that Jimi was flaying-the-emperor, getting-gnarly-with-the-knudster, plunking-the-twanger, grappling-the-gorilla, doing the Roman-helmet-rumba or tooting-the-flute, but we can only think of two reasons.

One : that bludgeoning-the-beefsteak, conking-the-cardinal, pounding-the-flounder, popping-the-purple-pimple, slaying-the-one-eyed-monster, strangling-the-serpent or doing-the-five-knuckle-shuffle on the old piddle pump is not something that the Herald Sun wants its readership to know about; or Two : that the Herald Sun sub editors are not familiar with the accepted canon of euphemisms for diddling-the-dinky, jerking-the-gherkin, rubbing-the-magic-one-eyed-wonder-weasel, playing-the-hairy-banjo, holding-the-sausage-hostage, buffing-the-banana or tonking the todger.

We reckon the Herald Sun readers can cope, and are not as naive as the Herald Sun would like to think, and so either way we think the Herald Sun sub-editors need to get out more.

Here's an interesting theory as to why brutal British judges are so popular on American reality TV shows.

Gee the Iraq war is going well at the moment. That is if you believe US President George Bush, who is determined to complete the mission. That’d be the mission he accomplished way back then on May 1st 2003.

"These terrorists and insurgents will use brutal tactics because they're trying to shake the will of the United States of America," says the President. "They want us to retreat. Make no mistake, we are at war."

Terrorist mastermind Ayman al-Zawahri makes his strategy pretty clear:

"There is no way out for Washington except by immediate withdrawal. Any delay in this decision means more killing and losses. If you don't withdraw today you will inevitably withdraw tomorrow, but only after tens of thousands are killed and injured."

Despite him being an individual with a “dark, dim and backwards” idealogy, I’m inclined to the view that his threat is real, and inevitably thousands more will die in Iraq.

Religious Right Conservative Pat Buchanan is suggesting that the Pentagon is sounding impatient to pull out. His reasons:

• The Polls – Americans are turning against the war
• The Iraqis themselves can’t or won’t stop the insurgency
• The lethality of the insurgeny’s attacks has increased
• The Iraqi constitution is looking more and more like Sharia law – Americans wont want to die for that.
  

He also reminds us that really Iraq is a civil war waiting to happen. The Shia, backed by the Mad Mullahs of Iran verses the nutcase Sunni insurgency.

That’s where this is going, and the sooner we all realise that Iraq is a lost cause, and we start making plans to cut ourselves loose from that godforsaken hole, and figure out how to deal with the fallout, and the terrorism and the refugees and the guilt that will come once we abandon these people to their fate, the better for us all.

And the good news? Well according to Mr. Chrenkoff, The International Republican Institute conducted a survey of Iraqis and a majority think things are heading in the right direction. Now I don't know about you but to me that is not really all that comforting, In fact it's rather ominous.

Does this mark the beginning of the end of the NeoCons? Does this mark the beginning of the end of Conservative domination of US politics? We could always ask Paul Wolowitz, but as Pat Buchanan points out. No-one's hearing from him any more.

Sometimes some stories cut through the armour and cut deep. Maybe it's the way they're told I don't know.

Its nothing but good news today, as Greg Sheridan gleefully points out in Rupert's Organ Of Freedom that that helping the poor doesn’t actually help them at all.

All that talk of giving aid to poor countries, that left-wing guilt machine, that forces you to put your hand in your pocket to donate when somebody knocks on your door and tells you about the heartbreak in Togo, is now bankrupt ideology.

The Headline sums it up: Aid is not the answer to poverty

Read the first paragraph of the article

WE'RE rich because they're poor. No proposition is more central to the left-wing view of the world than the idea that the rich West survives in its comfort because it exploits the poor in the Third World.

and savour the text all the way down to the fifth paragraph

The president of the Asia Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, who is visiting Australia, told me yesterday that a large aid inflow can cause currency appreciation which renders a developing economy uncompetitive and therefore retards economic growth. And the only way poverty ever declines is through economic growth.

Now you’ll need to skip pretty much the rest of the article and go on down to the last paragraph:

Overcoming poverty is up to poor countries themselves, an idea unwelcome to ideologues, theorists and most academics (except that tiny number still left in country studies) everywhere.

And there you have it. Proof, if you ever needed it that the Left’s outdated ideologies, and the freedom hating machinery of the compassion industry, are actually making poor countries poorer.

So next time you’re asked to donate to some apparently worthy cause, remind them that they’re not helping, they’re hurting, and try to talk them out of this folly before they can do any more harm. And after you’ve slammed the door in their face, spare a thought for those poor people in Togo, who can now climb that ladder of prosperity without the condescending stickybeaking of the latte left interrupting their experience of competition and freedom.

As they say, it’s the thought that counts, and the people of Togo will be grateful that you’ve even thought about them at all.

Have you patted yourself in the back recently? Have you splurged on a celebratory glass of champagne? If not then you should, because you are bloody fantastic, and so am I.

We’re all fantastic, because we’re all Aussies. Today The Herald Sun, Australia’s most fantastic newspaper tells you what you’ve known in your heart for a long time, but were just to damn self-deprecating to say out loud. We Aussies are the absolute top of the heap, best thing since sliced bread, and everybody’s talking about it except us.

A survey conducted by marketing and brand consultancy firm Anholt-GMI places Australia at NUMBER ONE in the nations brand index. We are absolutely loved by everybody, and why not indeed?

Canada comes in at 2nd, but in a contest like this you’re either first or you’re nowhere, and we are first, and its all thanks to you (and me), because where would Australia be on this list if it wasn’t for the Aussies hey?

Cop this will ya? Direct from the report:

The strength of Australia’s brand derives from an almost universal admiration of its people, landscapes and living and working environment.

"Almost universal admiration". You simply can’t get better than that, and it’s a credit to you that you’ve handled yourself with such good grace. There’d be plenty of others that’d let it go to their heads, but not you (or me).

So next time you see an American blabbing on about God’s own country, about how they’re so damn fan-bloody-tastic, just smile knowingly to yourself, in that much loved laconic Aussie way, and turn to them and quietly whisper. “Eleventh hey?, Fucken loser!”. They'll thank you for it.

Like all Melbournians at this time of year I would be gripped by a gnawing fear. These can be dreadful, bleak, depressing times, and I once would lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, knowing that in these wintry depths of Winter, the menace would be taking over………..my bathroom.

Winter is when it happens. It’s the dampness. The lack of air. It probably has something to do with football too for all I know. It grows on the ceiling. It snakes it way along the grout between the tiles. It colonises the plughole in the shower. It’s called Aspergillus, but you may know it as mould.

In the old days, I used to conduct chemical warfare. Commercial mould killers, chlorine bleach, Agent Orange, whatever I could get my hands on. Then I wised up to the dangerous effects of these substances, and converted to simple and cheap white vinegar, available from the supermarket in 2 litre containers.

That worked wonders, the vinegar. If things were a little tough, a dash of bi-carb soda and the toughest fungi would be cactus.

Still however, I knew that things could be improved. As you know I’m a perfectionist, and despite the success of the simple vinegar solution, and the satisfaction it gave me to flip the bird to Dow Chemical, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive & Co, I still needed to get down on my hands and knees and apply the elbow grease.

There’s got to be a better way I thought, and as usual I was right. Today I share my bathroom with three friends. Fred, Wilma and Betty I call them. I did have a Barney but he got squashed.

These guests are all members of the Limax Flavux family, and they happily live down in the shower’s plug hole, and come out at night when there’s work to be done. They are Slugs, and they eat mould like sheep eat grass. So just as some people keep animals to keep the grass down. I keep slugs.

Today the bathroom is spick and span, and requires very little maintenance, although there is still a little too much work to do for my liking. In fact, I’m looking for something to live around the S-bend. Anyone got any bright ideas?