Thursday, April 20, 2017

A failed citizenship application to Australia in five years time


"Kiss the flag."

"Kiss the?"

"KISS IT!"

[kisses flag]

"NO! On the Union Jack!"

"Sorry."

"Here is your return ticket home."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/speak-english-respect-our-values-malcolm-turnbulls-next-citizenship-crackdown-20170419-gvnq0y.html

Or alternately, if you fail to express the sort of love in this song by country punk act Sydney City Trash...



There's a nation they call Down Under
But I to me, it's on top of the world
But I love this nation so goddamn much
I'd marry it if it were a girl
And when you talk about this nation I love
Well it cuts me deep inside
Coz I seriously love
I mean actually love
Well I'm just so filled with Aussie pride....



A Dalziel and Pascoe Episode: A Summary


Anyone who knows me, like really knows me, knows two things:

1) I love murder mysteries of all sorts
2) I am completely up-to-date in all fields of popular culture.

And so, given this, I decided to provide an entirely accurate, all-purpose episode summary of every Dalziel and Pascoe episode ever made! And only 10 years after the series wound up!

A Dalziel and Pascoe Episode: A Summary

It is bleak in Yorkshire and the working-class streets of Wetherton, with their dull brick walls and faded curtains, seem grim. A dead body found in the local reservoir is even grimmer.

Dalziel and Pascoe arrive at the crime scene. Dalziel is grumpy because he has been woken up early after drinking too much whisky. Pascoe is already rolling his eyes and sighing at his superior's antics.

But when the dead body turns out to be directly related to Dalziel's past, things get murky. Dalziel is shaken, but refuses to speak about the case from two decades earlier, when he was suspected of corruption/investigated for police brutality/in love with a key suspect.

His behaviour becomes more and more erratic, driving Pascoe to despair. Finally, Pascoe confronts Dalziel and tells him: "I'm trying to help you here, Andy!"

Dalziel, hurt that by his friend's seeming lack of trust, growls furiously and storms out. He goes home to get drunk and mope miserably on his couch.

They eventually catch the murderer, but it is clear to all that the real crime here is what Thatcher did to the north.

It also turns out that Dalziel was above reproach all along. Pascoe apologises and they go to the pub to drink and mend their wounded friendship.

All men have secrets and here is mine
So let it be known
For we have been through hell and high tide
I think I can rely on you...
And yet you start to recoil
Heavy words are so lightly thrown
But still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you
So, what difference does it make?

Andy Dalziel might play this song to Peter Pascoe, or vice versa, if either of them where the sort to play The Smiths.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Jesus and the Rabbit: The True Story Behind Our Easter Traditions


It's like Christmas all over again. All the fun from a mass consumer frenzy aimed at propping up a tottering late monopoly capitalism in a death spin is taken away by politically correct libtard elitist cucks doing the bidding of ISIS.

For instance, I used to love hot cross buns until all of a sudden supermarkets would only sell those Halal ones with the cross replaced by "DEATH TO ALL INFIDELS" written in Arabic.

But some people still think the whole idea of a “War on Easter” as part of a general assault on Western Judeo-Christian traditions is a farce, because what the Hell has Jesus got to do with a rabbit or eggs, what has a rabbit got to do with Jesus or eggs, and what do eggs have to do with fucking chocolate?

Too few people know the real story, due to unfortunate editing out of the New Testament, but below is the actual truth.

***

One day, Jesus of Nazareth was walking home from Damascus, having drunken a little too much of His own Water-Into-Wine Homebrew(™) and eateth too little of His Own Brand of Freshly Baked Bread(™) in order to line His stomach, like Judas, who frankly spent most of his time trying to sort out the Son of God’s shit, kept saying He should.

As Jesus Christ Our Lord staggered down the dirt path, He fell into the mud on the side. And there lay Our Saviour until a humble rabbit just happened to hop by.

The rabbit watched the poor man flailing pathetically in the mud, not realising He was Our Saviour. Hopping up, he kindly asked the King of the Jews whether He needed any help?

Looking up, Jesus saw an honest soul and said simply: “I could murder a kebab!”

The rabbit knew the nearest kebab store still open at that time of night was all the way in Byzantium. But having only just been introduced to the historic Palestine region by the Romans, he also knew where to get the best ones in that city known today as Istanbul.

And so, taking pity on the Lord and remembering the state he was in himself just last weekend, the rabbit hopped all the way there and back with Jesus’s order of a lamb kebab with garlic and chili sauce.

“Oh that was awesome!”, a much-repaired Jesus said as he took his last bite and wiped some garlic sauce off His chin. “Thanks heaps!”

And then Jesus Christ Our Lord said unto the rabbit: “What can I give you to repay your kindness? For I am the Son of God and I can do miracles and shit.”

The rabbit thought carefully for some time. This was Our Lord and Saviour, so it had to be worthy. He definitely did not want to fuck it up and ask for something embarrassing or weird.

Finally, the rabbit spoke. “I have always envied the hen,” he began.

“Where the Hell is this going,” thought Jesus, but he said nothing for He was always polite, even after He’d had a few.

“And, well,” the rabbit continued, “look… tell me if you think this is a bit weird or anything, but I guess I’ve always… well fantasised is probably the right word. Yes. I’ve always fantasised about laying eggs.”

“What the FUCK?” exclaimed the King of the Jews.

The rabbit added quickly: “Yeah, and like, make them chocolate!”

“Mate,” said the Lord, sadly shaking his head, “it’s your wish, but fucking Hell, you should maybe see a psych or something.”

And with that, Jesus granted the rabbit the capacity to lay chocolate eggs. And the rabbit, whose name was Frank, laid many. Day in and day out, Frank laid chocolate egg after egg, eating his own products in a disturbing act of sweet self-cannibalism.

Jesus, meanwhile, soon found himself in even greater trouble. The pigs were after him for some property damage suffered by some very important bankers during one of His more out-of-control binges. By this time, Judas had had it and was not cleaning up after any more of Jesus’s messes, no matter how fucking Holy the Lord was. And so he gave Our Lord up to the cops.
Having attacked the authority of Rome, the wealth of the local financial elite and sold dodgy home-brewed wine that made a 4-litre cask of goon for $10 taste like the finest Champagne, Jesus was always gonna swing.

But this was not, as we know, the end of the story.

Jesus was crucified and then rose again after three days. Which was actually better than managed by many of the consumers of his Finest Fish Products (™).

History records that it was Jesus’s “friend” Mary Magdalene who arrived at His tomb on Easter Sunday and discovered His Holiness alive and well. But this is the full tale.

For three days, Jesus was kept company by Frank. The rabbit did not abandon his magical mate, but stayed with him, laying chocolate eggs for His sustenance until He rose to His Eternal Kingdom in Heaven.

Frank tried to tell people that Jesus had been alive the whole three days, and even had some very important messages to pass on to humanity, mostly about how awesome chocolate eggs were.

But people were not willing to listen to some rabbit, especially not one with a sick chocolate egg-laying fetish. Like, sure, the Roman occupiers were into some fucked up shit, but even they drew a line somewhere.

Jesus, however, did not forget the rabbit’s final act of kindness. He granted the rabbit Eternal Life and said unto him, “go forth and lay chocolate eggs then hide them for children on Easter Sunday, but not before fully stocking supermarkets for months in advance.”

And Frank the rabbit was happy. For he really, really loved laying chocolate eggs. Like, TBH, maybe a bit too much.

So please, ignore the Islamist conspiracy to destroy Easter by removing the word “Easter” from Easter eggs. Our Lord made it Frank’s Holy Mission to lay those eggs to be sold at marked up prices in the days before Our Saviour’s crucifixion and resurrection, and dramatically marked down in the days afterwards.


'He went to France, he went to Spain...' Country singer John Prine offers a different version of Jesus's story, yet fails to mention Frank the Easter Bunny.

Saturday, April 01, 2017

''Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky'... The Tossers include new version of The Foggy Dew on latest album



Things are pretty dire. What the world needs now is obviously another Celtic band releasing a new version of the old Irish rebel song The Foggy Dew about the Easter Rising. The Tossers, as ever, step up and deliver, ending their new album Smash the Windows with their version of track, first written by an Irish priest some time after 1919.



It is, as is to be expected from the Chicago-based Celtic punk veterans, a very solid version. It breaks no new ground, but there is no call for it to do any such thing. This is in keeping with The Tossers modus operandi, as a band without any pretence at "evolving" their sound, merely seeking to do what they've been doing well since the early '90s even better.

And that is being the self-proclaimed "world's loudest folk band", with a seemingly endless well of songs of drinking and carousing, of working-class people surviving an often hostile world of war and exploitation, and of Irish history and tradition, filtered through Chicago's Southside.



Of course, it might be said to be timely as the Easter Rising had its 100th anniversary last year. Also, amid the chaos of Brexit, the united Irish republic the rebels fought for may be closer than ever (in form, if not exactly the progressive social content the rebel's' Proclamation envisaged.)

But really... there is never a bad time to record a version of the best song about the Rising, when Irish rebels struck out for freedom as the horror of World War I engulfed Europe. By 1916, the British crown that was not just pillaging Ireland and impoverishing its people, but sending increasing numbers of young Irish men to their untimely deaths. in the conflict. Many Irish men signed up in a form of economic conscription -- the Crown's shilling beat hunger. But the threat of actual conscription hung in the air.

The contrast — between dying seeking to free Ireland from colonial chains versus dying for its colonial rulers in a faraway land in a futile war between empires — runs right through the song.

As the song declares in the second verse: "'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar."

And, later, reflecting on the "lonely graves are by Suvla's waves or the fringe of the great North Sea", it reflects how much better it would had those Irish men "died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha".

The rising, of course, failed, but violent British repression swung public sympathy behind the cause of Irish freedom. As the song concludes "For slavery fled, O glorious dead, when you fell in the foggy dew."

The album also features an original track about another decisive moment in Irish history. Called "1969" it is about, as the earth-shaking events in that year in the six counties in Ireland's north still claimed by Britain. Irish Catholics, suffering discrimination and oppression in the statelet, marched for civil rights, only to face extreme repression, setting in motion the violent conflict known as the Troubles that wracked Northern Ireland the next couple of decades.

No one can deny that this one is timely — in a way the band could not have predicted. The life and activism of veteran Irish republican leader Martin McGuinness, who died on March 20 died aged 66, was defined by the events of 1969 in his beloved home town of Derry, at the very centre of the storm. I talked about all that in my last post, but the song also tell the tale.




1969

Long ago, far away, far across the sea
There were those in Ireland who had marched for equality

So that everyone would know
Everyone would know
That civil rights are something now
That everyone should know

Oh and still I hear their voices cry

God bless Ireland
And keep her evermore

They were burned and battered everywhere
By cops and mobs of men
And still they walked and still they marched
Unto the bitter end