On Star Wars, ANZACs, Superman and a little bit of Jung

The recent news that there is going to be another Star Wars trilogy made has brought out all the usual sinchellectual nonsense about Star Wars the original movie being a dud story with bad acting saved by a vague use of technology and other heathen misunderstood rants. However, reading one of them the other day has me thinking about what it is about Star Wars that made it such an iconic film and such a huge step forward in the sci-fi genre. Battles in space; mythical beings that could use clairvoyance and telekinesis, light sabres and the rest of it were not overly new concepts. Even Darth Vader’s look and sound can be traced back through history to see an earlier incarnation of them in some way, such as the 1938 films The Fighting Devil Dogs:-

Many of the ideas are taken right out of Flash Gordon and many common fairy tales such as the Frog Princess and other collective subconscious ideas of our society. I know that you are probably wondering if I’ve changed my mind from last week’s rant that Genius can take what talent borrows, but this is not what I am asking. What I am asking is - what is it about the original trilogy, and even more so, the original film that was such a step forward? 

Reality. 

For my understanding, Star Wars was the first sci-fi movie that was totally accepted by our culture where the characters were actual people and the story was quite believable. Sci-fi stories had, up that point, been plagued by obscure and awkward narratives and characters that one couldn’t really relate to. Speculative fiction as a genre has a long history of being outside of any form of reality. From modern day vampires that sparkle right back to the beginning of it all, stories of vampires, ghosts and the like have a long history of being told “A long, long time ago, In a galaxy far, far away.” Their authors seem to be as confused by the scene as one would expect reading Lord Byron’s vampires with food poisoning, 

However, Star Wars was not. Star Wars was a story with scenes and characters that could have taken place in the current era, in the current day.  Why? Because Luke Skywalker wasn’t anything more than a farm-boy, as were the ANZACs and many other successful military people history has recorded, then morphed into something else. Luke Skywalker, as he was introduced by his best friend toward the end of the original movie, was “...the best bush pilot in the outer rims.” He is this normal guy, working on a farm for his uncle and aunt, wanting to get away from it all and then a few things happen and boom, there he is blowing up the Death Star and sticking it to the man. That could be you in a month or two couldn’t it? You didn’t come from Krypton, but you are an ordinary dude, aren’t you? 

Looking back through history, Lord Byron started Bram Stocker on a rant about a certain villain, Dracula. Interestingly, in the original book, there is no understanding given as to why Dracula is the way he is, how he became it or why. The characters seem lifeless and infallible. Scan forward to the1992 retelling of the story and there is a huge recounting of a noble and strong lord being tricked by his enemies, lost his wife to suicide and cursed his God for His lack of passion.  

In HG Well’s The War of the Worlds, the beings are not really known to us, nor are the heroes because there really weren’t any. No one won that war, the Martians lost due to a strange incompatibility that existed. Stories from Superman and Spiderman and all these other speculative fiction franchises never really presented a character that we could like. Did anyone actually want to be Superman? I remember wanting to be able to fly like he could, to be as strong as he was and, especially as I grew older, wanted that whole vision type thing. But did I want to BE him? No...not really...he was kind of a dick. At the very least, he wasn’t really a person. He wasn’t believable as a character. Neither was Louis Lane, who apparently was a good reporter that at the same time couldn’t see through the unbelievably complicated Clark Kent disguise. Damn those glasses, who could ever have penetrated that disguise? Then, from my experience, the Louis Lanes of the world don’t really see glasses or the eyes behind them, they are looking elsewhere. 

But there is this supernatural nature behind all these stories that glosses over the main plot-development story. Did Superman deserve to be Superman? He just was, there was no why, when or how. But the simplicity of this type of story breeds a lack of relatability to the characters and can be un-humanised easily to the point of absurdity. Did the whole plot scene just fall on its own sword with a little bit of prodding around the incompatibility of a person from Krypton to live on Earth and dig Earth chicks? How could Superman live a normal life even if he wanted to?  A modern relationship with Louis or any woman would have killed him. He couldn’t possibly ever have gotten any, because in order for them to have sex, he would have to wear condoms made out of kryptonite, given that that would be the only substance capable of stopping the little guys. Or what is the alternative? Unprotected sex? Surely that would leave many pissed off little Superboys flying around and growing up with single mums that could not have plagued our collective imagination in those times, or even now for that matter. Then what happens when Superman gets a super-STD? The alternative, we are lead to believe, is that he was abstinent. Yeah right....he’s looking buff as, all the time, even when deliberately nerdifying himself as Kent, he still gets serious lady cred, he can fly around and see things (see through things) and he’s not after any? Yeah right. 

Fast forward to Star Trek, where there is a lot more humanity involved in the scene. While there is this ever present God-like Spock, it is usually the very human Kirk who is the hero. While Kirk does have a military background and persona, and takes on a persona more akin to the six million dollar man or the like, he is a character with flaws and phobias that we can relate to. We are able to know him. 

But Luke Skywalker...who didn’t want to be him? Or Han and Leia for that matter? They were real people. And that is what makes a good story – you have to be able to relate to it in some way, the characters can’t be super-awesome all the time. They have to be fallible. It is in their ability to fail that makes them able to succeed. Think about Superman for long enough and his seemingly inability to fail and you start to wonder whether cheering for Lex Luther would be more to our liking. Lex was the underdog: cunning, rich, ruthless and the like, but he was always biting off more than he could chew. It was only when Superman became vulnerable due to criminals from his planet who matched his power and then some that he became kind of interesting. 

So who would we rather be, Luke Skywalker or Superman? Luke or Vader? We associate with Luke because we like that he is fallible and so are we, so we crave him as a hero. Vader is cold and seemingly all-powerful while being beyond ruthless (at least in the first two movies). Luke could have been an ANZAC, he would have fitted right in. But then there is the obvious problem: ANZACs haven’t always been like that. While Luke would have fitted in with our version of ANZAC today, he would not have fitted in with the historical ANZACs, but Vader would have been right at home. 

I guess there is the old question as to what the purpose of war is. Is the main feature of a good warrior that he dies or at least risks his neck for Queen and Country? Or is it that he kills for Queen and Country or just because that’s who he is, that’s what he does. As Bono so wonderfully puts it “... What's the glory of taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children?” Yet isn’t this what Luke Skywalker does at the end of the first movie? A battleship that big would have to have thousands of living quarters for family of crew. Schools, children’s clinics, health clinics, socio-legal research centres of excellence and do we care? No, they’re all blown up cause the good guys have to win. 

But you don’t have to go back too far in history where apparently there is a different story to be told. The historical ANZACs were ruthless killers whose bloodlust was not only marked, but kind of feared by the British at the time. They certainly wouldn’t have preferred having a yarn and a game of cricket with the enemy, this is a modern invention . The ANZACs were successful because they were great at killing people. The British War Correspondent, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett  wrote, in the Argus in May, 1915 that 

“In less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position either bayoneted of fleeing. But then the Australians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet...These raw colonial troops in these desperate hours proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons, the Aisne, Ypres and Neuve Chapelle. Early in the morning of April 26 the Turks repeatedly tried to drive the colonials from their position. The colonials made local Counter-attacks, and drove of the enemy at the point of the bayonet, which the Turks would never face” [1]

So in 1915, the ANZACs would have appeared more like storm troopers really: ruthless and unfeeling. Years ago, that made them successful, now it would make them the bad guys. So what happened? Well, history was revised and rewritten. Bill Gammage’s 1974 study The Broken Years, Patsy Adam-Smith’s 1978 The Anzacs and the movie Gallipoli replaced the true nature of the First World War with a clean and innocent young group of men who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into[2] and didn’t shirk from their responsibilities to die for King and Country (as opposed to kill for King and Country). 

Peter Costello, the then Deputy Prime Minister in 2003 stated that “There are problems in the world today just as there were in 1915. You cant turn your back on them...and young Australians, even today, are serving in the Middle East because they want to make a difference...And you think back how their grandfather and great grandfathers would have felt the same in 1915.” [3]

I guess Kim Beazley makes a decent point when he thought that without the modern myth of the ANZAC, no Australian government would be able to justify sending troops to war[4]. But also think of the expense of it all. While an army is perhaps necessary for peace in historical terms, have we not grown beyond that nowdays? Thomas Hobbes theorised that peace is not the absence of war, it is the absence of the threat of war. Surely in today’s Australia, the army represents the biggest threat to that peace rather than the protector of it. 

So there goes my theory about Star Wars, and it’s a little lame to say that it was the first movie that presented the modern version of the warrior hero, although notice the tight timeline between these few points in the late 1970s. 

Allow me to have another swing at it. Jung made a distinction between sagas, fairy tales, myths and legends. In particular focus on a fairy tale, he made observations about them and the characters within them. The hero never expresses emotion, he is lifeless; he kills the bad guy because he is the good guy; the bad guy generally does what he does out of compulsion or the like, certainly not out of self-interest or controlled rationalism. Luke Skywalker goes from being a normal person in the first movie, to the ultimate fairy tale hero in the last movie, right up until just before the end. He kills Jabba the Huttt because he wants his friends back. He doesn’t show any emotion about it. “You can either profit by this, or be destroyed” he tells Jabba, not threatening or skiting, just telling it the way he sees it. He is slightly conflicted meeting Yoda again, but then kills the bad guy (well, cuts off his hand and overpowers him). He then stops being the fairy tale hero: he throws down his sword. I mean, how cool is that? He enables his father to redeem himself. That’s even better than killing all the bad guys and saving the girl, he’s not only a good guy, he’s a good guy we can again relate to. 

Or maybe it’s just the cool swords we all wish we have. 

This post’s lame joke : You might be a bogan Jedi if

•     You ever uttered the phrase, "May the force be with yuz"
•     You have ever used your light saber to open a box of goon.
•      At least one wing of your X-wing is primer colored.
•     You have ever had a B-wing up on blocks in your yard.
•    Wookies are offended by your B.O.
•    You have ever used the force to get yourself another beer so you wouldn't have to wait for a commercial.
•     You have ever had your R-2 unit use its self-defense electro-shock thingy to get the barbecue grill to light.
•    You have a ‘love it or leave it’ Aussie flag painted on your flight helmet.
•     You kinda think that Jabba the Hutt had a pretty good handle on how to treat his women.
•    The REAL reason you got into a fight in the cantina was because you ordered Fosters Light...and they didn't have it.
•     You knew Princess Leia was your sister all along.

This post’s inappropriate over share: 

There was this one time, when I was about 17 that 

[REST OF POST REMOVED BY ADMINISTRATOR]

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[1] See Lake and Reynolds What’s Wrong with ANZAC? The militarization of Australian History.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

[4] ibid

Genius takes what talent borrows

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a genius? Have you ever wondered what it actually means to be a genius? What rights does it give you?  Like most people, I decided that I was going to be a genius long before I decided what I was going to be a genius about. I am still pondering on exactly what, although I have the basics worked out. I have met many people who claim to have genius-like talents: uber-intellegence; photographic memory; above and beyond a normal ability to comprehend and maintain access to trivial facts: inappropriate body odour and other things, but their claims have all crumbled when put to a simple test on the subject matter. 

I’ve been thinking about this for a few reasons lately. Firstly, I have seen a few movies and read a few books lately that deal with the understanding that genius is something more than humanity, or something outside of it. It has me wondering why our culture is filled with stories that externalises genius as a concept. Genius seems to be retold as an externality to humanity. It is the work of God, Satan or some other factor. I found myself re-watching the classic “Crossroads” the other night. There are two competing versions of genius in that story. 

Firstly, Robert Johnson’s abilities as a musician, like that of Blind-Dog Fulton, when briefly talked about, were the work of a deal with the devil. Albeit it wasn’t a spell or talent that was given, they were given lessons from the devil, but nonetheless, it was super-human. The obvious points that tend to get a bit lost in all this is that the music for the movie was provided by the very talented and very human Steve Vai and Ry Cooder who both learnt how to play guitar by skill and perseverance. But are they geniuses? Can they take from wherever they want? Ry Cooder is particularly interesting here as his work in ethnomusicology has been scorned for doing just that – taking from a culture that he has no claim to. Secondly, the Blues, as a concept of music does not stand out in the scheme of things. It can be placed on a continuum between the Romantics, the Jazz era and the modern Rock era. While it is outstanding music, it fits in perfectly in a spectrum of human history and artistic development. No external forces were needed for it.

Interestingly, in ‘Crossroads’ it is in Eugene’s return to classical music, a very Mozart inspired song by Steve Vai - “Eugene’s Trick Bag” that defeats Jack Butler. This is interesting because Mozart is another case in point about a man who history tends to regard as not possessing or actually having the talent that he was credited with. He was possessed by the angels or the like, and his talent was devoid of, and removed from that bratty young man who apparently died penniless from syphilis in his thirties.

The second feature is  that the film’s plot sticks closely to the main character wanting to find a supposedly lost and unheard-of, 30^th song of Robert Johnson’s, so that the main character could blast his way into the blues scene by taking something that was not his and combining it with his genius to get showered in glory. What if he had done this? The character has a clear musical genius – young and capable of out-playing the devil, or so it would seem. Could a genius take an unknown blues song and, using outstanding musical skill (to the point of genius) turn it into a new work of art that he alone gets credit for?

The more savvy of our lot here will be thinking ‘mmm...musicians who take obscure old blues tunes and, through their genius, turn them into brilliant works of art...sounds like you’re talking about Led Zeppelin, not Crossroads’. And you’re right I am.

There seems to have been a resurgence in tall poppy bashing about Led Zeppelin lately. And they did take a fair bit, but the question is, were they entitled to? This is probably more than one question and more than one depth of appropriate appropriation. Songs like “Black Mountain Side” were seemingly just taken and not improved upon at all from the original save for the addition of drums; at one end of the spectrum. Songs like Stairway and How Many More Times, where you really need to creatively listen to the supposed ‘original’ to hear any decent similarity at the other end of the spectrum.

Perhaps a response to the former end of the spectrum, Black Mountain Side - would be ‘who cares’ – that’s not a very ledded, Led Zep song, not like  Dazed and Confused.  But have a listen to what people claim is the original of that; the, Jake Holmes’s version. It sounds like that stoner brother of the boring girl you went too far with when you were a teenager, doesn’t it? He still scares you doesn’t he? And you still don’t know if he ever knew and was just playing with your mind, or whether he was that annoying and grumpy.

The baseline, the melody, the drums, the lead guitar and almost all of the words (except for those three little words of the title) were completely changed to create one of the greatest rock songs of all time, the Led Zeppelin version. But should it have still been credited? Should Jake Holmes have gotten some dosh for his song? What about old blues songs like ‘You Shook Me’ or “The Hunter” that were recorded by an artist or two, but were traditional blues songs; why should Led Zep have credited them when that meant giving them money for something they themselves took from somewhere else. Surely all art stands on the shoulders of the giants who came before.

Shakespeare is another case in point. There is yet another movie which I fell asleep in this week, ‘Anonymous’ which presented another weird take on why Shakespeare wasn’t actually responsible for Shakespearean plays and verse. At least it’s not Francis Bacon credited in this dog of a film, but it presents a reason as to why Shakespeare is so far removed from normal, that genius itself is so far removed from normal: possession and insanity of some kind. The author (who is not Shakespeare, himself is possessed and keeps writing “merely because it is the only way the voices stop” or something like that (I am sorry for the inaccuracy, but I fell asleep for half the movie, and was half asleep for the rest).  So again, Shakespeare the person is divorced from Shakespeare the genius due to the genius coming from either insanity or supernatural voices/beings.

But what is the reason? Well, maybe it gives us some comfort knowing that genius is beyond our reach and beyond our control. We then don’t have to compete with it or excuse our lack of genius. If Shakespeare the genius is a spirit, a ghost or possessed man of some kind, I can feel at ease not being as good of a writer. 

Hell, I can even not put a full stop at the end of this sentence

Maybe I can even put an emoticon in here, J ...lol

But returning to the first point; can a genius take from society without acknowledgement? Can a band like Les Zeppelin simply take old blues songs and give them a new look and claim to be their authors? The answer I guess would have to be yes, but that depends on how much the appropriating artist has given to the song and how cool the artist is. I think that this is a big consideration  – how cool is the appropriating artists in comparison to the artist whose work has been appropriated and other relative standing between the two points of view. If Vanilla Ice were cooler than David Bowie (I know, it’s hard to image that, for two reasons; firstly, it’s freaken Bowie we’re talking about here, and secondly, it’s freaken Vanilla Ice we’re talking about here). But what about the Culture Club and the Violent Femmes (albeit the Femmes did credit their work)? They were so much cooler, but is it removed enough? What about Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah; is it removed enough from the original Leonard Cohen to be considered a work of art in and of itself? On the question of coolness and talent, this is probably an unfair question given Buckley is one of the most talented singers ever, whereas Cohen sounds like Darth Vader would the morning after he’d been to a AC/DC concert.

On top of all this, I have been reading some more of one of my favourite authors, George Orwell’s Decline of the English Murder. And yes, I know, I know, I am that tragically daggy (well, actually I’m not that person, because I actually do read his stuff and don’t go around telling everyone that I do, and to prove it, for those who doubt, I think Nineteen Eighty Four was one of the worst books he ever wrote). But he had a decent swing at Salvador Dali on this point (as well as calling him a fraud and a coward). Dali, in the eyes of Orwell, could be admired as an artist and spat upon as a man. Further, that it is not the case that Dali could say or do anything at all, so long as it was said artistically. For Orwell, we could still openly spit on the man while enjoying his work.  I am not so sure that this is a correct point, but Orwell makes a good point.

“[T]he first thing we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet, even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’ Unless one can say that, one is shrinking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being,”[1]    

Apart from the general freedom of the artist, surely there has to be a line, a point in which someone has created a completely new piece of art from a vague appropriation, but that should not mean crediting the appropriated any more than just recognising them in the continuum of human progression in the arts.

Take a listen to John Coltrane playing “My Favourite Things” At the start, the melody is recognisably appropriated from ‘The Sound of Music’ and Rogers and Hammerstein ought to be credited. The rhythm, phrasing, orchestration, the very feel of the song is completely removed though. However, by the time the song gets to the end, there is no similarity to the original work of art. Somewhere along the way, it became a new composition...but where and exactly what?

 So is it mere recognisability? Does Patti Smith owe anything to Van Morrison apart from a tongue in cheek ‘that’s how it’s done Chad’ type comment for her version of the old Van Morrison tune?  Or is it in the concept as an atom? Does Aerosmith owe a debt to the Yardbirds for their concept “if you can judge a wise man by the colour of his skin, then mister  you’re a better man than I’? Do they owe a debt to the Kinks for their concept Lola/Dude looks like a lady?

Or is it more appropriate to say that we should stop externalising greatness. We should be thankful that there is so much talent and creativity and beauty in our world, and stop cutting down tall poppies.

This post’s lame joke: Why do violin players put a handkerchief on their shoulder before they start playing?

Because a Violin doesn’t have a spit valve on it.

This post’s inappropriate over share:  When I am editing my writing lately, and I’ve done this for a while, I have this kooky need to not delete everything from a word that I am changing. It’s as though changing all the letters of a word will mean bad writing, bad consequences or something and the more of the original word that I keep, the better the writing will be.... and by the way, I know you’re thinking “and this post is what you’ve come up with...dude”.

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[1] Benefit of Clergy p26-7 in The Decline of the English Murder and other Collected Essays.

In my time of dying, I want nobody to mourn...

What is it about some deaths, disappearances and murders that capture our attention so much? As this year draws to a close, one thing that is fascinating is the events that catch our attention, or at least the media’s attention more so than others. Politics, Economics and self-interested rambling of the media aside, there doesn’t seem to be anything more fascinating that a decent murder, especially one that is wrapped in mystery and preceded by debauchery.[1] While in any given year, there are around 1.2 reported murders per hundred thousand people in Australia, how many murders are not reported? More to the question is: can we, as a populace, let alone those fuzzy control freaks that make up the media and political circles, deal with the seemingly severe lack of control that we have over our lives? 

What is it about looking from a distance at a family who has lost a loved one through violence? We rubber neck through the facts and try to find a reason as to why this wouldn’t happen in our house, yet we are fascinated by it. We can’t seem to stop at just sinchelectually deconstructing the facts and motives on the players. We go beyond that, to lay blame on the victim, or worse, to excuse them. We look at the Jill Meaghers and the Baden-Clay families around us and moralise and philosophize as to why they are different to us. Why we would never be a victim or be guilty of a crime like that. Crime dramas still plague television and movies more so than most other genres, and the news of someone being killed, being raped and/or going missing still dominates over other stories. I wonder whether the main reason for this is that there is no voice of the victim in a homicide related crime; so we can speak for them, or at least, speak about them without fear of them telling us we’re wrong. There is also an asymmetry of ability to respond available from the culprit. Take for instance, the inability of 2day FM’s Mel Greig and Michael Christian to be able to say something like “The idea that someone would top themselves over a dumb prank is just plain bullshit [and] If you’re dumb enough to fall for a prank like that, you at least deserve to be fired, and so does your boss, who ought to have known better than to release such info.”  However, if that were said, there would be further outrage from people who seek to “speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongue.”

Looking into it a little more, there tends to be a polarisation of these interest stories. We are fascinated by two types of death stories. Firstly, and mainly, the ones that involve a respectable member of society, both of the victim and the accused, that is able and willing to plan out an elaborate series of events that hide the motivations and premeditations of the scene and people. They then seemingly slip up somehow on the most bizarre or uncommon occurrence that begins to unravel their disguise; as if God herself took a moment to intervene. We wonder at the marvels of the Inspector Grishams of the world who always get to the bottom of things, regardless of how carefully planned the murder was. We hide every experience we have ever had with real life police, who generally have trouble finding their way to McDonalds without tasering themselves in the pills, let alone have any ability to solve a crime.

The second type is the polar opposite. The victim may be one of us, but the accused is not from our realm. The accused is without morals, without education and without social standing. He is a gutter dweller that has slightly graced our realm, bringing the horror of Dionysian dualism to our newspapers, radios and television screens to mock our sense of control. The police here are what we want them to be, stupid Neanderthals that bash up the clearly guilty persons, for they are not guilty of an action, they are guilty of simply being who they are. They are murderers, rapists and paedophiles. It is not in their actions that these types are guilty, it is in their very existence that they are guilty and as such, they have no rights, no reason to seek redress from brutality toward them.

When crimes are reported, the ones that are reported generally do not match the average of that crime. This year, the violent deaths that have captured our attention are only a few: Alison Baden-Clay; Jill Meagher;  Azaria Chamberlain. The common theme of murder doesn’t seem to get reported, as it is, at least partially, here.  The theme of the reports is about trying to lay blame somewhere. Some may say that the victim brought it on herself by the way she acted or dressed, others may lay blame at the family and friends, yet more lay blame on society at large in an attempt to hide from the very real horror that there is nothing stopping us from oblivion just as there wasn’t anything stopping the victim from meeting her end. Are we trying to lay blame or create a reason as to why it will not happen to us? Do we not have control over our own safety?

To start with the sheer numbers; the Australian Institute of Criminology reports that somewhere between 250 to 300 people are reported as being the victim of murder or manslaughter each year. This seems to have been continually decreasing over the years, and many peeps have pointed to the development of medical science to explain this trend, as it also matches with a growing number or assaults, so the theory is that people who, in past times would have died from their attack are now getting medical help and living and as such, their assailants are getting nicked for assault rather than murder or manslaughter.

But then, that is only the reported crimes. Given that the Australian Federal Police tell us that someone gets reported as missing every 15 minutes, the reported crimes may be only a tiny portion of the actual occurrences of people getting killed by someone. Notwithstanding the fact that 95% of people reported missing turn up in the first week, of the 35,000 people reported missing each year, 1,600 a year seem to stay missing. It would be a fairly decent assumption to say that a good deal of these people are buried in someone’s yard. And yet again, these are only the people reported as missing; which means they have to be missed by someone, which would probably not include the murderer, unless they were stupidly trying to create a type of explanation and alibi.

In Brisbane, the disappearance and death of a former beauty queen, mother and wife in the leafy suburbs, Allison Baden-Clay who is then found ten days later, 14 kilometres from her wealthy home captured the attention for weeks. For some reason, the media and facebook posts all showed shock about the husband being charged with her murder, despite allegations of a troubled marriage and wandering eyes and hands and despite the statistics that overwhelmingly show the family home to be by far the preferred location for violent crimes. After all this, a further twist revealed the possibility that Mrs Baden-Clay may have taken her own life. That she had high levels of an anti-depressant medication in her blood and an empty box of some Mother’s little helper in her newly leased car. This type of suicide is blanketed by ads asking if you are, or know anyone that’s a little depressed, which we’ve spoken of before.

These silly little wankers seem to blanket most of the reports about the case of the English nurse, Jacintha Saldanha who supposedly killed herself, and supposedly killed herself after allowing two DJs from Sydney access to the future Queen of England’s private nurse.

The idea that a dumb prank could be seriously held to blame for an apparent suicide is a nonsense and hides from the notion that any person or organization that holds personal information of any sort on someone must have considerably better standards in place to stop this type of thing happening - the most noticeable element about the prank itself was how ludicrous it was and they really didn’t sound very convincing.

During the prank, the DJs even commented that “Are they putting us through?...if this has worked, this is the easiest prank call we’ve ever made...your accent sucked by the way.”  They sounded more like Barry Humphrys than the Queen and that was probably supposed to be the joke, that they would and should have been hung up on, as the DJs later confirmed - the idea that it worked is such a concern - if anyone, whether they be a nurse, doctor, lawyer, accountant or whoever hands over such information on what was clearly a stupid hoax to any reasonable person, they ought to be close to being shut down.

Funnily enough the boss of the relevant hospital, John Lofthouse ... ”denounced the action as foolish and regrettable.“This was a foolish prank call that we all deplore,” he said. “We take patient confidentiality extremely seriously and we are now reviewing our telephone protocols.”“

SuPERB

If you have nothing in place to stop a staff member at a hospital from revealing very personal information to a dumb prankster about the future head of state , then it’s a bit thick to say that you take confidentiality seriously guvna. The reports were then about possible criminal charges, police looking into it etc, however it apparently escaped police’s finest minds if impersonating the head of state is actually a crime...

But that’s dodging the main issue: that you can’t say that someone who kills themselves; a wife and mother of young children who takes her own life can be blamed can she? Her family and friends can’t be blamed can they? It’s much easier to look at a weird joke from two larrikins and blame them. Walk into a room with a corpse, a suicide and don’t look at the note, don’t look at the family, don’t look at the friends, don’t look at the don’t look at any of the circumstances, but then see a copy of ‘the Catcher in the Rye’ in the corner, or a painting on the wall, or a CD in the player; something that can be removed, something that should have been removed; and you can lay blame and throw it out with the rest of the crap that a life cut short collects. And you can reason that you have that control; to be able to throw out that element that doesn’t deserve to be in our realm, as it didn’t in that poor lady’s.

The (hopefully) final verdict on what happened to Azaria Chamberlain was given this year. This is the perfect case, and always has been, about our ability to create an ‘other’ out of our fellow human being. Mrs Chamberlain in particular has always been scrutinised way beyond the point of absurdity; that she didn’t act like a grieving mother should, that she was a witch or that she was one of those religious cult types, we have always repelled the notion that, in some circumstances, in most circumstances, a dingo is never very far from our door and there is little we can do about that. Instead, we hide from that fact and create an ‘other’ out of people who have been through such circumstances.

Then there was the troubling case if Jill Meagher, an ABC journalist in Melbourne disappeared after a late night party and was found dead and raped. At the time, there was so much facebook, faking about whether she was dressed appropriately, whether one of the ‘marrieds’ should act/dress/be like that; whether society could be blamed; whether it is a symptom of a sickness in society that such an event could happen to ‘one of us’.  People honestly saying things that equate to laying blame on the victim. How dare she drink, enjoy herself and not cover herself up. Very strange. There is an element of naivety or throwing caution to the wind, but the element in all these types of comments is one of ‘that wouldn’t happen to me or mine because I could/can/do control the whole situation away from that happening.’ I can keep the dingo, the rapist, the murderer from my door.

Another story that didn’t overly catch the public eye, but almost did, was the tell-all tale of Major General  John Cantwell (ret.). The one thing that I am talking about is his recollection of the American strategy in the first Gulf War called ‘industrialised killing’. In order to avoid trench warfare, the put bull-dozen blades on the front of tanks and buried the Iraqi soldiers alive. The theory is that this would result in considerably less allied loss of life than traditional warfare. But doesn’t it strike you as wrong? Soldiers dying in battle by being buried by sand from the waring opposite army sounds so much worse than the same soldiers being shot by the opposing army. Is it because they don’t have a chance to shoot back? Well, they never really would have against such a well organised and well funded force and they did what they were supposed to do. It’s hard to remember that point I guess. Soldiers are trained to die. The good ones are trained to avoid this, but in terms of a war, the victor is the army that inflicts a heavier casualty on their opponent than their opponent has placed on them. This is why the ANZACs, the Red Army, the Vietcong, the IRA and the like were so successful, they inflicted greater loss on their opponent relative to their own situation. 

The poor Iraqi soldiers though, buried alive and probably didn’t even ever realise how. All of a sudden, these soldiers stop being the invaders of Kuwait and the bad guys and become these people, these anonymous to us people that we may identify with and object to their demise based on the idea that when someone dies, when anyone dies, there should be some sense of justice. You should be able to understand, to reason or to negotiate with the person or thing that comes along to kill you no matter how bad you have been. What a silly notion this is.

This post’s lame joke

When Seamus died at the age of 89, there was a problem, rigor mortis set in and they couldn’t close the coffin lid. The undertakers called in Seamus’ wife, Dot, to see the problem.

“Well, what do you usually do in this situation?” Dot asked.

“Well ma’am,” replied the undertaker, “We generally cut it off and re-attach it to his body...you know... around in the back.”

Dot thought the whole thing strange, but the undertakers assured her that this was quite common practice and no-one would know.

The next day, Seamus’ funeral was a beautiful affair; a solemn, yet beautiful ceremony filled with distinguish guests, family and well-wishers.

Dot was very happy with the turn-out. Looking into the open coffin of her late husband, Dot knew that he was in a better place, at peace with everything and at the same time, looking as though Seamus was still very much a part of her life; there with her, loving her. Some condensation from the humidity of the day collected around Seamus’ cheeks and then formed a droplet of water that ran down his face. Dot loving reached over to wipe it up. With a smile on her face she quietly whispered to her dearly departed husband, “See, I told you if freaken hurt.” 

This post’s inappropriate over-share

I used to like a few bands that either now, or at some stage, I stopped liking because of other people. Guns and Roses were an example. For a few years, I really liked their stuff, then all of a sudden, all these dorks at school liked them and, just like that, I stopped liking them. Not only that, I actually sold off the albums that I had of theirs and turned my back on the whole thing. Years later, I got back into it a little, but never too much. But just recently I have been trying to collect some music from here, there and everywhere for car tapes and running type compilations and have remembered this really groovy cover that Avril Lavigne did of some song that used to be on an old mini-disc player, blaring out at me on my morning ride to work. I found the song, here, only to find out that it is a Metallica song...like really...Metallica...now I don’t really like it. I have thought about the idea that I can’t stand the Culture Club, but quite like the song ‘Do you really want to hurt me’, so long as it is sung by the Violent Femmes. But I guess I am just vain at heart.

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[1] Then again, I am not sure that the public’s attention is ever really grabbed by something as much as the media would have us believe; the constant talk of the 24 hour news cycle seems a furphy. Listening to most media outlets, it would be more accurate to call it a 24 day news cycle, because that’s about the time most editors seem to take to realise that there is no interest left in a given story.