2007/12/07

In memory of Vincenzo Spirelli


Vincenzo Spirelli (1845-1912)
Known as the worst poet in Calabria. His work was so bad that review after review made him chronically suicidal. Nevertheless he soldiered on writing shockingly bad poetry until 1890s, when after two failed attempts to cut his own throat lead him to be committed to an insane asylum and a life-time of Gillette razors. To this day, on every 29th of Feburary, his hometown of TestaDiCatzo holds a festival of bad poetry, where townsfolk are encouraged to write and perform their own bad poetry while everyone laughs.

The List of Unspeakable Torments: Number 2

I’ve never been accused of being a bleeding heart, strangely enough, but someone, somewhere has to finally do something to stop those filthy, ignorant, moronic little Japanese cunts from slaughtering whales. There. I’ve said it. I’m not embarrassed by it. I stand by that statement. I whole heartedly believe it. I’m not backing away from it. It’s just the truth - plain and simple. As Shaw put it in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

And there you are, probably thinking I was hesitant about bagging the Japanese like that, in those virtually racist terms. Or else the inappropriateness of labelling any nationality as either filthy, ignorant or moronic. Or you thought I was being reluctant to use the dreaded C word that nobody would dare utter, and is now vaguely OK. Not really. I just have this thing for marine mammals, and the nimrods that refuse to leave them well enough alone. I don’t why and it vaguely shits me. It’s pretty much out of cultural character really. There are about as many Italian environmentalists as war heroes. By the way, for mine that Shaw quote is up there with the one wrongly attributed to Goring or Goebbels who was supposed to have said, every time I hear that word ‘culture’ I feel an irresistible urge to reach for my revolver. Now there’s Nazi gold for you. Genius[1].

Racism. It’s one of the very few true, long held Australian values. The thankfully now ex-Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, would take that statement as being blasphemous, un-Australian. As the world first confirmed garden gnome come alive, Howard didn’t have the required grey matter to engage his opponents with dialogue, facts or argument. He liked to call them names, and he pretty fond of calling people who disagreed with him un-Australian. Of the new natural talents of Australians, apart from chasing balls, drinking beer, white-anting success and doing things with wire, is that they’re good at spotting bullshit so ironically the un-Australian tag is good measure of Australianness. But racism is an undeniable Australian trait and not confined to little, stuttering, short-arsed, conservative toe rags like that stunted dickhead Howard. The ‘White Australia Policy’ (1901-1973) was basically a ‘No Yellow Cunts Here Thanks Very Much’ Policy. It actually had pre-Federation origins, and has lasted in various guises to this very day.

The telling thing about that illiterate, cross eyed, pasty skinned, pointy nosed, middle aged, vacuous modern Australia bigot, Pauline Hanson was that every time the urban intelligentsia (pretty much all six of them) tried to take her on and bring her down, not only did they all fail dismally, but pretty much fuelled her appeal. Why? Because she reflected what a large chunk of Australia thought. They didn’t give a flying fuck about whatever the likes of Pilger, Manne, Greer, or Horne said about her in Arena or any other lefty rag. In fact, it was proof that she had the guts to step up and have a go. Good on her, they thought. At last, some one was speaking for the ordinary people. The ordinary Australians. The ones that weren’t interested in Wittgenstein, ASEAN, or monetary policy but the ones that used to tune into the squawking B.A. Santamaria from the National Civic Council, watched the Sydney to Hobart on Boxing Day, knew about Kadoka, had a Jack Absalom print hanging in the lounge, and used Moretein Fly Spray. And the ordinary Australian’s just happen to harbor a thick vein of suspicion and mistrust of anyone that doesn’t look, sound or act pretty much like they do.

I remember being in a queue at a newsagent at the time Hanson was proclaiming herself as ‘Mother of the Nation when I’d overheard some tottering old biddy mentioning to her friend how that Hanson ‘had a lot of good ideas’ and ‘spoke a lot of sense’. I butted in. Sorry, but what do you mean? Exactly which policies do you think has merit? She spluttered away, clearly unable to answer, so she straightened up and retorted in an indignant falsetto, well I support Pauline, she’s a great Australian, that’s MY opinion and I’m sticking to it. And that doesn’t mean I’m a racialist.

I let it go. I wanted to say, racialist? RACIALIST? You can’t even say ‘racist’. You just called it racialist. I heard you. Just then. Its not pronounced racialist. It’s called racist. R-A-C-I-S-T. As for your opinion, your stupid, creatanous, misinformed opinion. Your pointless, valueless, arsehole of an opinion. The opinion that you’ve malformed after countless hours of meaningless drivel with similarly mindless friends, all of you stinking of old pee and death, over bingo and bowls. Each of you contributing your own nonsensical world view fed from twisted personal bitterness and the grim fact that that you’re all irrelevant to almost everything and everyone. That’s what I wanted to say. That’s what I was thinking anyhow. But don’t get me started. Old people. Can’t live within them, can’t dose them with kerosene and set them on fire. It’s a deeply unfair world.

As much as that might shit you, there are others all too ready to excuse any manner of vile behavior under the banner of cultural practice, which should not only be tolerated but apparently celebrated in some sort of spirit of inclusiveness, preserved as part of the rich social diversity of modern Australia. Yes, sure, like female circumcision. You don’t see anyone applying for council funding for a street festival celebrating female circumcision. People defend Japanese whaling the same way. The have the right to hunt whales and dolphins because it’s a Japanese cultural practice. It can’t be because they actually want to eat whales. Apparently it tastes like shit, is only eaten by pensioners and is mostly used as cheap school lunch meat for a couple of million public school kids. The fact that they claim it’s for research is stupid beyond words.

The only other reason they hunt whales, I suspect, is because the entire world wants them to not hunt whales (except for Iceland and Norway who are pretty much useless as countries go[2]). It’s like when you were a kid, and your older bother or cousin had your arm twisted behind your back, telling you to do something, applying more pressure every time you refused. You get to the point where you know there is no way you’re giving in, that he’d have to actually break your arm to get his way. It’s the equivalent to giving the world the finger. The Japanese don’t need to kills whales. They don’t particularly want whale in their kitchen freezers. They could live perfectly happily not killing whales. But they’ll go on and on on indiscriminately slaughtering them for one simple reason - the fact that we say they shouldn’t.

I once sent an email to the Japanese embassy in protest. I spent a morning crafting a reasonable sort of written appeal. It acknowledged Japanese culture and custom. It said vaguely flattering things about their society, its leaders, its history and national character. It tried to calmly and reasonably explain my own personal objections. In the end it humbly asked that they kindly consider an alternative position. I though the tone was right. I wasn’t being smart-arsey about it. It was genuine. Of course I received nothing in response. In fact I don’t know what I wanted to achieve. I thought I might get a response from some low level embassy bureaucrat that said something along the lines of, look, you have to understand that apart from a couple of hundred fishing industry heavies and maybe the odd Yakuza, we basically agree with you’. A response that claimed that the natural world and nature are closer to the Japanese soul then perhaps any other. That whale really does taste like shit and no-one knows why we still hunt it. And that he’d pass the email on to higher authorities. That would have been enough, plenty in fact. But there was nothing. Well fuck that and fuck them.

The only ones who seem to be really on the ball are those Sea Sheppard guys who have that black boat, the one with the pirate flag, who believe in taking direct action. They regularly harass the whalers out at sea, ramming the boats, scaring off the whales, flashing brown-eyes, that sort of thing. They should, of course, be armed with torpedoes and really get the job done. Simple arithmetic. There are 127 million Japanese. There are 10,000 humpback whales. What if you accidentally ‘wasted’ 10 Japanese fishermen in your effort to protect 10,000 whales, just as collateral damage? To let them know that if they go out there, illegally, on the hunt, for no good reason, they’re pretty much going to cop it. Just ten or so, maybe fifteen. Let’s say under twenty for argument’s sake. Is that justified? There would still be well over 126 million Japanese left. More than plenty. I say ‘hell yes.’ Let’s get some perspective into the situation.

It’s not just the Japanese either. Not by a long chalk. No sireee. What’s even more loathsome and unjustifiable are the grimy, amoral Chinese obsessed with eating endangered animal parts. Rhino, tigers, bears, lizards, snakes, you name it, the Chinese are busily scurrying around either draining off its bile or noisily scoffing it down with both filthy hands. I’ve got a particularly personal thing about the Chinese and their disgusting dog eating habits. And it’s not just the fact that they insist on killing, butchering and eating intelligent, loyal and noble animals like dogs, animals with personalities mind you, the same ones that work to keep out drug runners and bail up criminals, that would drive into a raging torrent to save your life, or search through a blinding blizzard to find you buried in the snow, or lead you around the rest of your days if you were blind, or just lick your face when you’ve come after a hard day. But worst of all is the inexcusably cruel way these filthy barbarians treat them. Stuffing them into wire cages, binding them up by their legs, throwing them around on market trucks, breaking their bones, inflicting pain. Leave the fucking dogs alone, you scum-sucking dickheads.

And it won’t be long before the burgeoning Chinese middle class has single handedly wiped out the world’s entire tiger population. Why? Because your average Chinese office jockey thinks it’ll help him get hard and he’ll feel like a man rather than a snot nosed arse-wipe. They’re killing wild tigers to get a hard-on people, a hard-on! It’s a vicious cycle with tens of millions of the most reprehensible fuck-knuckles as players. It goes like this. Mr Chinese Noodle Nut shells out some serious yuan to buy tiger penis. Naturally, having bought tiger penis, he’s been thinking about rooting for most of the day. He goes through the motions of preparing and eating the tiger penis, all the time thinking of missus Noodle Nut and how the tiger penis is going to help him bang her. Surprise, surprise. Tiger penis actually seems to works due only to its placebo effect. A colour A4 of Paris Hilton’s ‘ham sandwich’ probably would have done exactly the same. So, Noodle Nut sticks it to missus Noodle Nut as she’s bending over the washing. Naturally she pops out more junior Noodle Nuts. Not only do they all spend the next twenty odd years or so sitting down to regular dinners of sweet and sour dog and treating any manner of ailments with bear bile or snakes blood, but now there are even greater numbers of male Noodle Nuts and even greater demand for tiger penis. More cash to the tiger penis suppliers, more cash to the poachers, and basically every living tiger on this planet will have his head blown off so that someone can hack its dick off with a machete and sell it the millions upon millions of brainless, fuckwitted Noodle Nuts. Well fuck that and fuck them[3].

But what are you going do? No point refusing to travel there when you’ve either already been or have never been that much interested in going there anyway. Little point boycotting their imports when you’re pretty much a minimal consumer, and there are millions of others who’ll gleefully purchase shiploads of future Chinese made landfill. Are there any alternatives to calling them names and telling them to ‘get fucked’ like some belligerent, snot-nosed schoolboy bully in a useless blog that no-one will ever read? Probably not. But strange things do happen. Fate. Serendipity. Who knows. Perhaps N. Spirelli will receive a windfall. A huge windfall. Enough to hire ammunition, enough to contract assassins. I’d buy them all sharp suits, and get them around an oval table in a boardroom. I’d brief them on personal missions. Sniper attacks on Japanese whalers, torture and execution of Chinese dog farmers. I’d have them round up as many Noodle Nuts as possible, dump them in purpose built coliseum and let half a dozen tigers go to work. And I’d televise the lot on the internet and pirate TV. Two wrong might make a right and I think time has come for a bit of payback.

[1] Goring or Gobbles might not have been serious when they didn’t say that. It might’ve been a joke. They might have been sitting around having a beer at Oktoberfest, listening to Himmler spinning some yarn. Ja, Ja, nice one Himmler, but you know, whenever I hear you use that word culture, I can’t help but reach for my gun, har har (chinking steins). But you never imagine that the Nazis had a sense of humour, liked the odd gag. Apparently, a Berlin munitions worker was executed for telling this one. Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. Why don't you just jump? suggests Göring. Then there was this one. A senior Nazi visits a factory and asks the manager whether he still has Social Democrats among his workforce. Yes, 80 percent, comes the reply. Do you also have members of the Catholic Centre Party? Yes, 20 percent, the manager responds. Don't you have any National Socialists? Yes we're all Nazis now! Still, you can’t expect much from Germans humour-wise. If you want world domination, they’re your guys. Or snappy looking uniforms. Now those SS knew how to wear black. It’s like they’d hired Armani.

[2] What’s Iceland ever done for the world? Apart from that tuneless demented Bjork, famous for nothing apart perhaps for being the most boring weird person imaginable. Well, apart from Yoko Ono, whose similarly plain looking, terminally dull and talentless. As for Norway, all they’ve managed to do is pollute the entire world with mobile phones, and it’s because of freaking Norway that I’m forced to hear Shaz or Kylie-Anne or SuZianne inanely banging on to friends during every morning commute and AGAIN every evening. Thank-you Norway, a fundamentally selfish nation, populated by drunks and truck drivers, and mostly drunk truck drivers. At least the Danes made decent furniture.

[3] In this case, the sums here are even more ridiculous. There are currently around 5000 wild tigers left. There are 1.3 billion Chinese. My calcultor doesn't even have enough room to determine the number of Chinese per individial tiger but it must be a lot. If I had the resources I’d employ a food technologist to develop and release a couple of thousand kilos of fake tiger penis onto the black market, laced with a slow acting and fatal poison. If possible, one that involved rapid atrophy of the genitals. Word would soon get out. So, a couple of hundred Chinese pop off. Or even a couple of thousand. That’s probably less then twenty minutes worth of the current rate of Chinese reproduction worldwide, even without tiger penis hard on helper. No-one is going to miss them for crying out loud.