THE ANIMALS WITHOUT FEELINGS ARE IN OFFICE

I don't care whether you're omnivore, carnivore, vegetarian or vegan - please tell me you don't believe this Tory delusion that animals don't have feelings and couldn't possibly be sentient in any way...
Are they fucking for real?
This isn't about empirical science - the more science we conduct, the more we're supporting the opposite assertion - that these are sensitivite, tactile and, for many of them, much to the militant materialists dismay, problem-solving creatures - i.e. they have the capacity to reason.
I was once in the thrall of science and the authoritative assertions that animals don't have emotions nor do they "understand" when they've done something "wrong" but I can assure those experts out there that once you've really lived with animals, especially groups of animals, you discern their individual personalities and the behaviour they exhibit is beyond simply a pre-programmed biological imperative. And this isn't merely and conveniently anthropomorphising animals I've known - this is about interacting and living with them as family members - decades of such observation and interface.
What supremely arrogant fucks there are ostensibly in charge of this world who make this assumption that only humans have that inbuilt ability to evolve.
One of the facets we tout as human uniqueness and that supposedly sets us apart from the "lesser beasts" is the gift of free will - the ability to choose and yet, as noted, the more we observe these so called lesser species, the more we are exposed to their adaptability and their capacity for making better choices even if it may simply be in the pursuit of food or survival.  If you analyse our purportedly evolved imperatives, we make those choices too and given that we're supposedly the supreme (sic) being on this planet, we (from a majority perspective) make the worst food choices imaginable even from a supposedly evolved position.
And now they're trying to tell us that animals are simply unthinking, unfeeling, commodities not deserving of our respect.
I can tell you where my disrespect lies - with these soulless ghouls who deign to think for us. They don't represent me or anything remotely human or humane.
I will side with the animals every time.
It's always about profit or "sport" with these creatures, and no, I'm not talking about the animals.
#unevolvedhumans

POOR WHITES...

Poor whites in South Africa

There's all this racial tension emanating from the US presently - more divisiveness, more hate-speech, more bullshit.
Having grown up in South Africa during the 70's, at the pinnacle of apartheid, I can assure you that exposure to that dynamic was beyond bizarre.
Apartheid was and remains an ethos of white supremacy even though it may have been sanitised and watered down during its tenure in South Africa - at its heart it was purely and simply about a ruling elite governing through a system of racial inequality, the bulk of the ruling elite at that time of the belief that the "black person" was of an inferior and less evolved stature than their white counterparts. This to the degree that racial profiling was compartmentalised into a variety of ethnic groups - black (African), coloured (mixed-caste), Indian (Asian Indian) etc.
Now there is nothing more insidious or dangerous than an uneducated, socially inept white minority believing they are better than everyone else and somehow (in many cases) engendering within them an ersatz authority and a license to act out their incipient bigotry through despicably brutish behaviour.
In many senses, this was a contemporary form of societal slavery.
That being said, however, with the slow (and unarguably brutal) transition from a subjugated society to that of a (so-called) democracy (I'm unapologetic about my disdain for this euphemism that purportedly describes an open and free society), it is indisputable that the lot of the South African black person (I also see no negative connotation in using the word black or white to variably and generically describe ethnicity - if I find the epithet "white" merely descriptive and inoffensive, I see no good reason that the word "black" isn't regarded in similarly innocuous terms) elevated across the board when one-man-one-vote became law and for the very first time, every citizen of the country quite rightly had a say in their lot.
Understandably, there were fears of violent reprisals during the transition from the Afrikaner dictatorship to the open voting dynamic yet this change was (to many) surprisingly peaceful. Mandela became the first democratically elected president of the "new" South Africa and the nervous whiteys collectively breathed out - nobody had introduced martial law nor dragged them from their beds to face tribunals (instead Archbishop Desmond Tutu championed the traumatic, humane and wholly cathartic [TRC] Truth And Reconciliation Commission hearings)  to answer for crimes against humanity - crimes which had undisputedly been perpetrated by the thousand against (mostly) black protestors, protestors who in the new dispensation would have been regarded simply as truth tellers. Back then, in the dark days of apartheid, these were dangerous subversives who spoke out against the state. If anyone is getting that old Nazi feel about this narrative, it's most likely because that's exactly what we were dealing with back then. I'm going to throw something in here that will most likely rankle but frankly I don't give a rat's ass as I believe it to be true. Someone in an earlier post on another facebook friend's page had announced his intention to unfriend the poster who had quoted someone else pertaining to animal rights - this seemingly impinging on his right to elect to consume meat as he saw fit. The post did no such thing but the vehemence of the resignation seemed to me to be a classic case of the lady protesting too much.
As someone who has through choice been a carnivore, an omnivore, a vegetarian and a vegan, remaining the latter to this day, I believe I have the right to an opinion on those topics (as do we all) and quite frankly anyone who objects, as this man did, to being accused of being a supporter of wholesale cruelty through dietary/lifestyle choices is, I'm afraid, living in abject denial. That isn't to say (and the poster never did) that anyone and everyone does not have a right to eat and live as they choose - of course they do - however, to imagine for one moment that the animals which are harvested daily for their eggs, milk, flesh, skin, bone and offal have the right to choice and don't undergo unimaginable trauma (even in the euphemistically named organic or "free-range" environments we create for them) is labouring within a profoundly delusional reality. We sanitise those realities, we lie to our kids about farms and abattoirs (if in fact, we ever discuss those facets of the dinner table fare at all) and we go about our daily business pretending that this is the best we can do when deep within us we know that it isn't. Again, nobody is saying don't consume what you want to consume but what I constantly assert is - don't bullshit yourself about it and pretend that those choices don't support cruelty and trauma - they do - period. The same thing obtained within the apartheid dynamic in 70's South Africa - everyone knew what was going on but only the brave and outspoken did anything about it - the rest of us just got on with daily life with that discomfort sitting in the back of our minds, gnawing away. For those that clung to the belief that this was right and holy and simply the way it was meant to be - fair enough - that's what they believed and they had every right to believe it. A young aspiring Austrian artist had a similar burning conviction during the 1930's...
The point I guess I'm trying to make here is that we have through time and experience had the opportunity to learn and evolve and ultimately make choices that serve a greater good without the marginalisation of any group of individuals whether this be ethnically, religiously or even species based.
I feel that we could and should be looking to confront any of these issues, unashamedly evaluate them utilising a premise that's based in choices that serve the broader good and does little or no harm to anyone or anything. Anything less than that isn't, in my view, living up to the potential that we all possess. Fear of giving something up does, however, seem to pose such a challenge to us - even when it's pointed out that such abstinence can be regarded as a tool of empowerment rather than one of deprivation.
I think when we get to that point, many of these volatile issues will simply evaporate.
I have spoken to many Afrikaners during and after the apartheid era where they admitted to being pathologically fearful of losing their cultural identity when the black government assumed power, when in reality the new constitution was conceived to enshrine and protect those very tenets of freedom that had so long been denied to millions of South Africans under the yoke of that same Afrikaner culture, the essence of which they sought to protect.
And now in South Africa, the social climate has assumed a mantle of reverse racism disingenuously accorded legitimacy in order for it to be proffered as political capital and a smokescreen for the more immediate and insidious blight of corruption and nepotism - the real reasons the previously disadvantaged South Africans (read: blacks) continue to be marginalised socially and financially.
These "poor whites" depicted in the piece above are just a by-product of the dysfunctionality that is South African society whereby the democratic saviours have systematically driven the economy into penury while feathering their own nests, unemployment running at around 28% across the board. They have sadly and simply embraced the lifestyle that the vast majority of black South Africans still endure 30 years on from the yoke of apartheid servility. That they have a say at the polling stations is true, that they are no longer suffering the humiliation of being barred from the white-only infrastructure built on the backs of their own labour - that too is true. What is similarly true is that there exists a more covert subjugation of the broader South African populace by a flawed government than had occurred under the blatancy of apartheid and both scenarios are despicably shameful.
The difference being - the Afrikaner nationalist government never lied about their policies and actions whereas that's all one gets from the ruling ANC.
The average South African in my experience is not an innate racist but the governments that have held office to date sure are.
And therein lies the rub.

WHEN IT'S RIGHT...AUSTRALIA DAY REVISITED

Today was particularly difficult day.
I don't dwell in the past but I do feel energetically synchronous with events that occurred on specific dates - they resonate with me, especially if they're significant events.

And none more so than those that seem to occur on or around Australia Day, 26th January.
It was on this day my little brother passed away - you don't just forget that - it's inside you like a stone - a hard, painful lump nestling in a cocoon of love, the love we shared and despite his absence, still do.
I speak to him when I'm in the car crooning Jim Morrison or Frank Zappa (yeah, Frank could croon a toon when he wanted to) - we used to do that together - sing. It was joyous, joyful, it was the best part of us - it was a duet of two souls in harmony, together, bonded, sharing moments.
Continents separated us physically and then death but nothing has severed the harmony or the joy or the love.
It's there every Australia Day - bittersweet.




Then, of course, there's the honeymoon debacle of 2008 - the dream turned nightmare as, on Australia Day at Kingsford Smith Airport Sydney, the Tahiti Nui airline clerk denied us boarding access to our flight to Pape'ete - our visas (or lack thereof) disavowed us the dream honeymoon and island wedding ceremony we'd planned and paid for months in advance.
The travel agent had cocked it up and we never got there - silver lining, of course, if we hadn't got stuck in Australia, traveled to Alice Springs (luggage to Darwin courtesy Qantas) then Uluru where we were overwhelmed by a spiritual experience the like of which we'd never known - we might never have emigrated to the red land at all...
Insult to injury became manifest when the same sleazy travel agency gave us the heave-ho when we approached them for compensation as they'd promised when still in Australia. A long, protracted legal battle ensued where we sought merely reimbursement and some compensatory damages, after all they had bollixed it.
Instead, they lied, they connived, they falsified documents and this, along with a fatally incompetent judge, handed the suit to them with damages - that really hurt.
There must be a very special place in Hell reserved for lying, thieving fuckwits who would deny a woman her dream wedding and honeymoon, knowing full well that they were the guilty party...
Again - Australia Day - bittersweet...

Today, the day after Australia Day heralded the arrival of our furbabies from Adelaide, these poor confused children who were happily wandering around the bush environs of Magaliesburg one day then were suddenly and unceremoniously (well, not true - there was a deal of ceremony involved) whisked away to a cat hotel for a month and half before enduring the gruelling slog to Sydney, a ten day quarantine followed by yet another flight to Adelaide where they were greeted by manic shrieks and howls from an altogether unfamiliar bushworld.
Jeremy, we suspect, enjoyed the comforts of a loving home once, saw his "staff" packing boxes, fuhreaked out and gapped it for more stable climes - that would be us. Little did he know, he'd wake up on another continent one day let alone another farm.
He saw Karen packing boxes, withdrew and knew full well another trip was on the cards.
I collected them from Jet Pets (this time we doubled them up in larger carriers which helped them stay calmer) with Jeremy, odd man out again...shame, poor baby.
I was contemplating these logistics this morning when Karen called to tell me they'd been delivered to the airport her side - all good. She then proceeded to relay to me that I had received two penalty notices (fines) in the mail from NSW for driving illegally up and down a T-Lane reserved for buses.
Ordinarily this wouldn't have bugged me but as I realised my faux-pas at the time (totally unfamiliar with this T-Lane concept) I made a U-turn on the T-Lane and headed back to the exit point (stupid country hicks...) Nett result - not one but two fines - one for traveling in each direction!
And not shy with the penalties either - $325 each way!
The money is one thing but along with these financial penalties were the chilling words - 1 demerit point - with each event. I say chilling as unknown to you all, I am currently sitting on a 12-month good behaviour stint for having clocked up 12 demerit points in Adelaide in 2 years, the detail and nature of which are too long and painful to recount here. Suffice to say, I am not permitted to clock up 2 or more demerit points without losing my licence for a year!
And here were 2 demerit points over a foolish mistake - just being an ignorant prick.
I went cold. I was feeling physically sick.
Plan of action was to apply for the NSW licence and hope for the best - maybe these damnable things would slip through the cracks...maybe I could say I never received them given the timing of our move. Truth is, I didn't know what to say or do.
I applied for and received the NSW temp licence this morning - no questions raised over my declaration of disqualification and subsequent 12 month good behaviour status.
The pleasant Indian-Australian lady processed me, took my mugshot and off I went.
Off to get the cats and another chilling bag of snakes in my gut as the Australia Day weekend curse had struck again...
I couldn't understand it - everything had just clicked into place for us to be here in Sydney - job, house, company paying up front for the move...why suddenly this turd in the swimming pool?

The arrival of the babies did cheer me up somewhat despite the traffic leaving Sydney on the Parramatta Road.
They were sniffing and exploring frenetically, not too enamoured with the confinement of the house and verandah but over the last few hours have calmed and become the same bunch of delinquent misfits I've always loved.
Karen phoned as I plonked onto the bed to read and check out Facebook..
"I've just been to the post box," she says. "Are you sitting down?"
"Oh for fuck sake!" I groan. "What the fuck is it now?"
"Have you got a beer?"
"What is it, babe?" I plead. I'm almost in tears. "There can't be anything else - surely...?"
She starts to read the following notice:

I could have wept, I was so relieved.
What I'm taking from this is the fact that we're meant to be here for sure and the NSW Office Of State Revenue have some real human beings who realised this out of town dickhead had no clue what he was doing so gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Australia Day hoodoo officially broken methinks...
Namaste, mothersuckers...
Phew....

OF GREEN-SKINNED THINGS

This is Gaia, she's my bottle-green Subaru, my Scooby-Doo. 

And she's pretty old already. But I love her. 

She's great and despite the fact that she may have cost a bit of money to repair over the last two years, she's looked after me when lesser machines might have failed....

Yes, I've had to be collected once or twice and yes, she's left me stranded too but that's only because I tried brainlessly to kill her, not intentionally you understand - but I was the guilty party. 

There was the time she kept cutting out and I thought there was some intermittent electrical problem so I kept on going until one day she stopped and said - fuck you - listen I've got a problem. And she did. She'd kept going for goodness knows how long and far with a knackered water pump, and overheating block and yet she got me to where I needed to be. A lesser car would've destroyed itself. 

And I hadn't even noticed. Prick. 

More recently she did it again. Protected herself that is. 

Remember I wrote recently that the gods were taking the piss - her aircon belt snapped (shredded would be more accurate) halfway between Adelaide and Sydney and this in 35°C plus temperatures with a holiday weekend looming as I arrived and no service until after New Year. 

This resulted in goggle-eyed people starting visibly as the open windowed car pulled into various car parks along the way with Hugh Fraser projecting volubly through said windows, the narrative from the pen of one much beloved and seriously twisted Dame Agatha Christie, murder yarner extraordinaire.  Hey, as the heat and speed increase, so too commensurately the degree of window openness, the external wind noise and inevitably the audiobook volume to which I'm riveted. Fraser bellowing period Christie prose in a fabulously BBC-styled accent through the echo chamber of an underground car park is a joyful endeavour indeed. 

People are perplexed at the widower's intimate revelations as I park my trusty green steed. So, it must be said, am I. I've heard them all before but can never remember whodunnit nonetheless. The joys. 

I do, however, digress. 

So off I go, I scout around and find a decent outfit who'll do the job - shouldn't be more than $160 

Great. 

It's Saturday morning, Trump has been inaugurated, women are taking to the streets in America, some maniac has gone on a motorised rampage in Melbourne killing innocent pedestrians and Gaia is up on the lift having her innards examined. 

A perfectly ordinary morning in a nutty world. 

The mechanic strolls into the waiting area where I'm shaking my head at the goings on being beamed at us on repeat from the flat screen on the wall - he's expounded the opinion that this is just another New World Order tactic to maintain us in a yoke of fear while not so subtly removing our individual and collective freedom. I like him but I'm not sure the lone maniac was really a state programmed robot. I think the prick is just a twisted fuckwit who lost his shit. No matter. Well, it does, but not in this story. 

Graham, the mechanic, smiles wryly at me, drily at me even - if his name had been Riley it would've been funny - it would've been a Riley wryly drily smiley. But his name wasn't Riley it was Graham so it was just a wry Graham smile. Not as dramatic but the news his pained smiley lips imparted was onerous beyond amusement. 

"I need to show you something," says he.   

"Uh oh..." 

One of those concealed throat-clearing harrumphs by way of reply. Harrumphs in lieu of words, is a disaster, not unmitigated irretrievable like but not good, definitely not good. 

He pulls up short of Gaia's yawning front, clicks on a flashlight and beckons me look with a twisty faced leer and a glance toward the gap where an aircon belt and pulley should be. 

Only the pulley's in his hand. I look at that first. And I wince. 

"That doesn't look good," says I. 

"It's not," he says, " but look down there, mate. Look at the timing belt cover." 

And not being one to quibble over the demands being made by Baulkham Hills mechanics, I takes a peek at the spot from whence the nasty looking contraption has been liberated. 

"Ooh fuck!" Says I, thinking a working man with oily nails isn't likely to be fazed by this expletive, not that it was offered for effect - it was an involuntary ejaculation (too much period Agatha Christie?) occasioned by the sight of a ragged wound in Gaia's timing belt cover and a length of naked timing belt peeking out from the gloom almost shamefully.  

"What the...." says I, leaving the second exclamation deliberately expurgated. 

"Yeah," he says knowingly in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of a way. 

"What the hell happened?" says I, sensing his eagerness to reveal all. 

"Pulley seized, was being driven back more and more into the timing belt casing and if it hadn't snapped, would've snagged the belt and then you'd probably be looking at replacing the engine." 

I lets out a long mournful sigh. 

"So how much to fix?" says I. "And how long?" 

"Aw, around $890 and should be done by Monday arvo..." 

You little minx, I'm thinking as I gaze at my car. That could've been thousands but you got me here and didn't succumb. 

"Do it," I say. 

And as I wander back to the waiting room about to call one of my colleagues for a lift back to site, I see the pumpkin headed orange man, now US president, grinning beatifically at the cameras which gets me to making the comparison. 

A costly repair versus a whole new engine - the lesser of two evils. 

And there in the crowd sits Hillary Clinton, pale, stolid, unflinching. And just for a moment I imagine a translucent reptilian eyelid blinking across those cold orbs but I know it's just my mind. 

Today, I collected my beloved Gaia, all better and raring to go, solid, reliable, trustworthy. 

That's where the analogy must end. 

Namaste, mothersuckers. 

Peace