Stuck as I am, I cant help but wonder
Why I stay and seldom wander
To linger longer or lumber yonder?
Trapped between these pages plenty
Forever twelve and never twenty
The sense is gone, the meaning empty
Questions elude understanding
But darn it! They can be demanding
So on what literateau are you standing?
Vast numbers of different theories
All bring up even more queries
My confusion grows until it wearies
But if you stop and if you think
Then you will see a common link
The one who put their thought to ink.
Emily was starting to get rather tired of sitting by her sister on the park bench, and of having little to entertain herself with: a few times she took a peek at the book her sister was reading, yet she deemed the language of the book to be somewhat stupid, and just a tad too ridiculous. She also had a problem with the illustrations, thinking that the girl looked odd and old-timey, wearing weird, old-fashioned clothes. “What is the point of a book,” thought Emily, “if it is but a bunch of outdated nonsense?”
Turning away from her sister and looking a few yards away from the bench, over near the bushes, Emily spied a sandpit and ruminated, (as best she could in the undesirable heat that currently consumed Sydney), as to whether or not the effort of going that far would be worth the fun that could be had in the sandpit, when suddenly a little girl wearing a pinafore ran around from behind the bench and off into the distance.
There was nothing terribly out of the ordinary in such a display; nor did Emily think it so very unprecedented or out of the ordinary to hear her rabbit on in a fashion so fitting for a fool, muttering, “Oh dear! Oh dear! Where could he be?! Where could my Author be? Oh dear!” Afterwards, it occurred to Emily that this was not the most conventional thing one could witness and that she ought to have wondered about the queer way this scene seemed to be unfolding, but once she realised that it was the girl from her sisters book, Emily started on her feet, for a thought flashed across her mind - never before had she seen the character from a book in real life.
“Christ,” thought Emily, “how on earth am I to catch up with her? Argh. Knowing names or having read that nonsense book wouldv’e been a helpful move around about now. I could, like, you know, get her to wait, or stop, or whatever. Ugh. God damn it.” It was around about now that what would have been a strikingly simple thought to most (and I hope the reader is, like the Author, part of this cohort) struck her. She could simply go back to her dearest sister and find out. Hurriedly, Emily doubled back and seized the book from her sisters hands, much to her sister’s annoyance, and held it up. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” She was present only momentarily before beginning to depart once more. Her sister, who did not think kindly of young Emily looked up, and was about to call out in hope of her return, but refrained on the basis that life without Emily was life with less annoyances and thus a life most improved.
“Aaaaaalliiicceeee! Stop my dear! Stop! Wait, just wait!,” screamed Emily, and in a moment she was running through the park to find her, never once contemplating how on earth she would find her way back to her sister; a problem considering her penchant for getting lost.
In another moment, Emily spied Alice a short distance away. Alice appeared as if she was looking around, disorientated by the confusion that currently consumed her. However, Alice’s confusion could not compare to that of Emily’s. For Emily spied something most strange and unnatural. Alice, as it were, looked as though she were ripped right out of the pages of a book. Oh yes, oh yes! I deceive you not, for Emily no doubt had a firm grasp on what one would call sanity. From what I understand and have thus far written, Emily is one of the few featuring any common sense around here, and even she saw that Alice looked like a picture; a picture propagating a powerfully potent projection of 3-dimensionality that previously would have been purposeless. But yet here we are as we discuss the queer nature of Alice managing to look so very two dimensional whilst looking so strikingly three dimensional… 2-D or not 2-D? That is the question.
And with such a question, only more arise. For example, if she is not 2-D what is she? Surely she could be 1-D, or perhaps even 4-D. We are clearly not restricted to 3-D. Also, Emily, like all humans, only sees in 3-D, so how would she know what 2-D things actually look like in the confines of a 3-D world? But let us suppose that this is “the” question, for this is what Emily did and, in doing so, she could not help but feel her grip on reality sneakily slide away from her. I say sneakily because, one moment it was there (those moments before she secured sight on Alice), yet it disappeared a moment later. So in a simple moment or two, reality was yanked away from underneath her. And thus she fell from the dizzying heights of sanity down to the depraved depths of insanity, no longer capable of differentiating between reality and its antithesis. But really, what’s the difference?
“Excuse me, Madam,” started Alice in her typically polite manner, “this will sound strange - so please don’t be too taken aback by this, for I did warn you- but…. Oh, how do I say this without sounding kind of crazy?”
“Well, you could say it English, that generally helps. And if not, I guess you could try French,” replied Emily..
“No, no, no. For you see, it is not language that is the problem,” confessed Alice, “but rather what it is that I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to express.” Alice, in her youthful arrogance and naivety, clung desperately to her belief that despite being a child - and a fictional one at that- that she could indeed adequately articulate everything she wanted to say. The poor girl was wrong.
Alice sighed. Then she began to speak again, ‘ Okay. I’ll tell you. But do you promise to believe me?” Emily nodded politely, perhaps the only thing she could do. “Alright. I’m looking for my Author.”
Now its one thing to feel reality slide away from you, but it is another to be consumed entirely by the surreal. For Emily’s world was fast becoming overrun and overpopulated by total madness and some kind of crazed unreality. Amidst her strange haze of confusion and her vague, largely useless attempts to understand the many unbelievable things that kept happening to her, Emily found herself speechless. However, her mother did say that if one has nothing nice to say, one should say nothing. It didn’t seem to fit this situation, though. It just didn’t seem true in this instance.
“Uhm… That’s quite an unbelievable tale you’ve got there. I’m not too sure I can stomach it!”
“Oh goodness gracious me!” remarked Alice. “Whatever are you on about? I haven’t a tail, and, if I did, I surely wouldn’t let you eat it!”
“No, no, no!” replied Emily. “I meant “tale” as in a story, not a tail like what a rat or a monkey has.”
“Why, I shall have you know that it isn’t a story at all, its all a true. As true as the sky is blue,” came Alice’s indignant response.
Frustration fluttered by Emily, swirling around until it encompassed her. Was she alone in this frustration? An unlikely situation. However, it would be but a benevolent assumption premised on madness to think the feeling was shared equally. Emily’s frustration was but minuscule compared to Alice’s.
And who can blame her? Alice had, after all, before suddenly appearing in the “real world” had to deal with some of the most stressful and complicated and confusing questions known to mankind; why am I here and where am I going?
“Alright,” continued Emily, “So, lets assume for a second that I believe you. Like, why do you want to find your Author? What’s the point?”
Seemingly getting quite fussy and stressed about the entire situation, Alice exclaimed dramatically, “Oh goodness, gracious me. You are a bit of a silly one, aren’t you? So I can find out how my story finishes. So I can understood just who exactly I am. Why else would I want to find them?”
Emily stood there and thought over this statement briefly. Thoughts flurried around her head like a flock of pigeons scattering from a young child’s loud and angry interjection at their feeding frenzy. She finally voiced one of these many thoughts. “So do you mean an Author is the reason for everything, ever?”
Alice looked shocked, and for largely obvious reasons. Emily had communicated the very words on the tip of Alice’s tongue.
However, insofar Emily failed to see the clearly religious, almost godlike connotations of her previous statement. For are the reasons she depicted not similar to the reasons for which one pursues religion?
At this point, (“this point” being a convenient point in time for such a thing to occur), Emily, perhaps by some stroke of divine intervention, noticed a church off in the distance. The gears in her head began to turn, And then, with a blinding flash of common sense, it struck her. The Author was like a God.
“Alice, if the Author knows everything about you, which I reckon he must, because he wrote you and invented you and stuff, well… he’d be like a God, right?”
Alice, after giving herself a few moments to think about this, nodded and replied, “Yes, I think that could be so.”
Emily thus concluded that Alice must indeed find her Author - it was him exerting his power and influence over an original text that defined all meaning. A brief discourse followed in which it was decided that the work must be a whole in itself that all springs from the same common root of genius. ( I would have thought this to be obvious.) Unfortunately though, neither Alice nor Emily had the slightest idea on how to actually find her Author. But on a lighter note, Alice found it reassuring that she was part of a work of genius and profound originality, and promptly decided that this must mean that she means something very important. After all, any work that is comparable to a blooming spring emerging from a barren waste must be rather important, truly the work of a transcendental genius.
A voice interjects intermittently
Disrupting thoughts quite suddenly
With questions of the literary
Her Author, Carroll, gone or not?
When in his grave he doth rot
No longer present, but not forgot
This time as well, the same applies
But his meaning dons disguise
Presently, I must apologise
For connecting meaning straight to me
Is, alas, unfortunately
Relying upon a fallacy
When what I mean, I may miss
You can’t say, “the Author meant this!”
Otherwise, why have analysis?
Watch as it splits apart from the whole
Meaning goes down the rabbit hole
Further from common sense’s control.
Emily and Alice, after much deliberation, had decided that the logical place to begin their search for the latter’s Author was a large library; the kind forever haunted by eager readers, stressed students and pretentious intellectuals. Alice, however, felt somewhat uneasy about the idea, for she feared that people may be shocked to see her, as she is traditionally little more than the product of ones imagination. She feared that the minds of those who saw her may suddenly snap, crackle and pop and spiral into madness. Consequently, Alice found herself utilising the path of entrance into the library used by all fictional characters; the book return slot.
The book return slot went straight on like a tunnel for quite a while, and then spiralled down suddenly, so suddenly, in fact, that both Alice and Emily found themselves without even a moment in time to consider stopping their descent before falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.
Perhaps they fell slowly, or perhaps the book return slot was very deep indeed, for both Emily and Alice had plenty of time as they fell further and further down to look around at their surroundings, and to ponder what may happen next in this strange scenario. Alice found herself overwhelmed by a peculiar sense of déjà vu, leading her to sigh to herself and to exclaim, as if she were a cliché character in a children’s movie, “Oh dear! Here we go again.” Alice, as she looked about, found herself under-whelmed by her current surroundings, perhaps even bored by the repetitive nature of it all. Emily, on the other hand, was simultaneously both delirious with excitement and frozen with fear as she looked about, noticing that the sides of this book return slot, in all its seemingly never-ending glory, were filled with cupboards and bookshelves. Fuelled by her own curiosity, (which would surely be a problem for the plot were she a cat and not a girl), Emily stretched her arms out as far as she could, and grabbed a book from a shelf as she passed it; it was labelled “The Death of the Author,” but to her great disappointment it was an essay; she was too careful and polite to feel comfortable dropping it and potentially scattering and ripping all the pages, and so she held it with a firm grip. Alice, who was still quite apathetic about her surroundings, was examining her nails in great detail, seemingly enthralled by their appearance, and was also wondering what all Emily’s fussing and bothering was about.
Down.
Down.
Down.
“Well!” declared Emily, who was by now uncomfortable with Alice’s silence as her only company, “we surely have fallen quite a remarkable distance, haven’t we? Do you think this fall shall ever come to an end? In fact, I find it quite remarkable that we have even managed to fall so far down a book return slot. How is that possible?” Although she had never had the impetus to read Alice in Wonderland, Emily had indeed, like almost all children in our modern age, watched the movie adaptation. Emily thought herself to be rather clever, and although her school teachers recognised that she was intelligent, there was undoubtedly some disparity between her own views of her intellect and theirs. However, she could not help but notice the strange similarities between the lengthy fall she and Alice were currently enduring, and the fall Alice had faced in her original story.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Emily was adamant that the fall would never end, whilst Alice knew that even if it were to take a while, it would end nevertheless. Suddenly, as if some transcendent figure had anticipated our characters boredom, a humungous and hefty book, a combined encyclopaedia and dictionary, came crashing down on poor Alice’s head, when suddenly, thump! Thud! Alice and Emily tumbled down onto a heap of books and paper, and with that, their fall had ended.
Alice’s head was still aching from the book that had fallen on top of her head. Emily, however, was not hurt a bit, and leapt to her feet in no time at all: she looked up, but she struggled to notice anything but darkness, and so she looked down instead, and at first glance the floor looked to be covered in strange, asymmetrical tiles of multiple colours, but when she bent over and inspected them closely, she ascertained that they were in fact books that had been scattered all over the entire floor. It was at this point that Emily realised that she was still holding that essay she plucked from the shelf, and so she delicately placed it on a nearby shelf. Alice groaned and murmured, then she began to speak. “Golly gosh! What a terrible decision this has been! Oh, how I wish we had entered this place in a more conventional manner. Surely no Author would admit to writing me in the state I am in now… What a fussy and whiney character they would assume I‘ve become! I guess I should‘ve taken more care, I should’ve clung to his writings.”
Emily interrupted Alice. “Hush your whining. You’re very cynical, Alice, did you know that? Besides, look over there.” Emily pointed towards the opposite end of the long corridor they had found themselves in. This corridor, in fact, was so long that Emily was unable to see where it ended. “What am I meant to be looking at, exactly?” asked Alice, who was quite upset by Emily’s rudeness and saw nothing significant about this corridor. “There’s nothing there,” continued Alice. Emily put her palm to her face, and reluctantly explained what she was pointing out. “It looks like it shrinks. How could you be so unobservant as to fail to notice that?”
Agitated by Emily’s hoity-toity attitude, Alice smugly pointed out that of course it would look smaller at the other end of the corridor, that it must be a trick of the eye, and that everyone who has ever looked at an artwork should know this. “It’s called perspiration. It’s especially important in art.” (Alice was completely ignorant of the fact that the word she was searching for was “perspective” and that “perspiration” merely refers to fluid excreted by ones sweat glands.) She began walking down the corridor to prove her point, and was consequently quite surprised when she found her head colliding with the ceiling after only a few paces. “Oh dear. It would appear you were quite right Emily,” said Alice indignantly…. “Oh dear! I wonder where this strange place leads,” continued Alice curiously, and so she moved onto her hands and knees and began to crawl down the corridor, whilst beckoning Emily to follow suit. ( Alice’s intensely curious nature is quite renowned, leading me to assume that she is thankful that she is not a cat. I assume also, that the reader is aware of the dangers associated with mixing cats and curiosity.)
For a while they crawled, crawled and crawled, until the ceiling and the floor had become too close together to crawl any further. Alice looked up, and although she was dismayed by how much further the corridor seemed to go, when she strained her eyes she could faintly make out a sign on the door situated at the corridor’s end. The sign read, “DO NOT DISTURB. CREATIVE GENIUS AT WORK.”
“That’s odd,” started Alice, “for what kind of genius would ever be so small?” Emily was frightened by the strangeness she faced in this queer place, and scurried away back to the larger side of the corridor. “I want to go home, I want go home!” exclaimed Emily. So quickly did she scurry along backwards, that she failed to notice the table that had appeared behind her, and found herself tumbling over it and onto her head. A loud thud accompanied her fall, as well as a sharp, high-pitched cling-clang. “This place is all wrong. Everything is weird and topsy-turvy!” yelled Emily. Alice also moved back to the larger side of the corridor, and helped her frightened friend back to her feet.
In doing so, Alice noticed that there was a small bottle next to Emily’s feet, which was quite unusual since there was certainly no bottle there when they first went past. However, it did explain the cling-clang sound that occurred as Emily tripped over the table, (“which certainly was not here before,” said Emily), and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “Do not drink me” raggedly written on it in obscurely sized letters.
“Do you think it’s poison?” asked Emily, who had enough common-sense to think it a bad idea to drink anything that explicitly states that it should not be consumed. Alice, however, had dealt with just enough equally bizarre situations and weirdly labelled bottles to decide that it would surely not be life threatening to drink it. And so Alice said, “Nope. I think that it would absolutely okay to drink. It must be reverse psychology. Why fill up a bottle with a liquid if not to drink it? We can only not drink it, if we entertain the possibility of drinking it. It’s surely a test. If it’s purpose has nothing to do with it’s consumption, then why mention anything about drinking it to begin with? Let alone on the bottle itself!” Once she explained her twisted logic and assumptions, Alice grabbed the bottle, ripped out the cork and curiously took a sip. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “What?!” enquired Emily frantically, assuming the worst. Alice took another sip, and “Oh!” said Alice once more. “What? What!? What?!” yelled Emily.
“It’s really tasty.”
A brief silence, in which the two girls nervously stared at one another, followed Alice’s consumption of the oddly-labelled drink. Emily was expecting something horrible and surreal to happen to Alice, “perhaps she shall grow and grow, until she is as tall as a building. Or perhaps she will shrink down to the size of a mouse, which would surely be frightening, as people could easily squish you under their feet if you were that small,” thought Emily to herself. They were fairly close to accepting the drink’s normality when the rumbling noises began. Alice said something like; “I feel a bit light-headed, maybe I should lie down…” And all of a sudden there was a terrible roar, and the walls began to shake and rattle in the wind that flew down the corridor towards the tiny door, which looked much more frightening than it did before. And a voice was screaming; “Holy Jesus! What are these long-haired creatures?”
Then it was quiet again. The small door had been opened and Lewis Carroll peered through it, to see what all the fuss was about. “What on earth are these girls doing here?” he muttered, observing the two little girls with only one eye visible and the rest of his face obscured by the walls surrounding the small door.
“Good grief, I guess you shouldn’t have had a drink from that bottle!” cried Emily, “this is total madness.” Carroll snarled and then Alice cried out; “Oh crap! Emily, look at that eye…” but at the same time Carroll was ranting and raving; “What are you doing here?” the questions continued quickly, as did Alice’s previous statement. And so poor Emily, trying to decipher what each of them were on about, could only make out, “Oh Emily, are you that I?” (And I assure you this was a difficult question for her to answer; she was not even aware of the eye peering through the doorway yet.) Emily sat there, dazed and confused, trying to figure out which “I” she was being asked if she was, and what was wrong with Alice’s voice, the deep tone of which she assumed could be attributed to the strange liquid. She just knew that it wasn’t safe to drink from that bottle.
It was then that Emily noticed the eye. “What the flip?” she cried, and as she jumped back in terror the eye focused on her; it widened suddenly like a diverging train track and stared her down. The rumbling noises began again - Emily heard strange banging and clanging noises come from down the corridor - and a voice boomed, “Juvenile delinquents! I don’t believe it. Who are you? Do you know Dodgson?”
“Dodgson? Dodgson who?” shouted Emily, as she slowly backed further away from the tiny corner of the corridor. Alice crouched quietly behind a tower of books. The voice said, “if you don’t know Dodgson, then why are you here?” Alice looked back guiltily at Emily, who hadn’t had time to hide, and thus had to deal with the big, freaky eye and the deep, booming voice.
An uneasy silence followed; it was almost awkward - the kind of silence that is accompanied by a sense of nostalgia harking back to the simpler days of primary school and the frightening voice of an overzealous teacher, who screams (in a stress-induced state of madness) that you’ve “done the Wrong thing!” Emily was quite accustomed to such silences. It was typical of Emily to, during such undesirably quiet moments, to smile tentatively, charming onlookers with her childish cuteness… and with that, both parties would be at ease. This was an exception, for the silence was unexpectedly broken by soft footsteps and the creaking, creaking sound of an old door opening. The sound startled both the girls. Previously, they had failed to even notice the presence of this door - they had both been too distracted by the other, much smaller door at the end of the queerly shrinking corridor. This particular door was larger than the other one, and was situated only a few dozen steps behind them.
They turned around, frightful and anxious. Creak, creak, moan. The door opened further and further. The shadows around the door were long and dark, and a silhouette danced across the floor; its hands long and claw-like, its head appeared exaggeratedly large amidst the messy, birds nest hair resting on it’s crown. The looming and lanky shadow edged closer and closer, until the figure was no longer obscured by darkness. A short, stout and scruffily dressed man stood in the doorway. His face was long and drooped downwards, adorned with a pair of oversized coke-bottle glasses - the kind Buddy Holly wore, only this pair was far too large and wide for such a skinny face. The glasses made him resemble a beetle of some kind, and attributed to his generally timid demeanour. His name was Charles Dodgson, and he was a complicated character. To an extent, he has become a controversial figure.
Dodgson’s eyes narrowed, and he peered curiously at the two girls. In a very polite tone, he said, “And just who exactly do you think you two are? Why are you here? This is my private library, and only guests I‘ve invited are allowed to be here!” A terrible silence engulfed the girls. Dodgson looked away from the two girls, and over towards the door at the opposite end of the corridor. Both girls expected him to be shocked by the weird eye peering through the door, perhaps even scared. The girls followed Dodgson’s gaze, and were bewildered by the door now being shut - both the eye and the voice were gone. Dodgson, however, knew something about what lurked behind that tiny little door that is yet to be revealed to Alice and Emily. He, you see, knew that it was merely the entrance to Lewis Carroll’s room. It was as it looked - a door, nothing more and nothing less. Carroll, however, was a curious creature.
Alice suddenly found the entire situation to be overwhelming. “Hey, excuse me, I need some help. I’m looking for my Author. Who are you? Can you help?” asked Alice. She had spoken very loudly and clearly, attempting to stress the urgency she thought the situation had. Emily’s eyes darted about apprehensively. Dodgson, raising his eyes at young Alice, said, “Isn’t the real question who you are?”
“Me?,” asked Alice. Dodgson nodded.
“I’m Alice,” she said.
“Alice who? You have to have more than one name. I know an Alice. She’s a lovely girl,” remarked Dodgson.
“Uh…What do you mean? I’m just Alice,” replied Alice, who was quite confused by Dodgson’s question.
“Well hey, Just Alice, I’m Charles Dodgson. What’re you doing here?” Alice was unsure what to say; she was struggling to keep up with the constant stream of questions.
Emily spoke; the confusing conversation had started to irritate her…she had endured enough insanity at this point. “Gosh darn it! Can someone just tell what in the blazes is going on here? This is undoubtedly the most whacked library I’ve ever entered. Get me out of here, or explain what on earth is going on…that door, for example - down the end of the corridor - what the heck is that thing? And the eye! The eye! And the voice; the voice most intolerable and omniscient and loud!” (Emily was unaware that once again, she had chosen the incorrect word, and that the word she was searching for was, in fact, “ominous.”) She was about to continue ranting and raving, when Alice interjected, “Stop it. I think you forget that this isn’t about you. It’s about me. I’m trying to find my -”
“Shut up. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Oh, and you think I don’t? Surely you realise that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, I’m also here. I was just trying to help you when I was unexpectedly roped into this madness.”
Dodgson interrupted. “Quiet in the library! Even as children you should be aware that one is quiet in a library,” he said. He pointed his index finger towards Emily, “You, Just Alice’s friend, you’re being far too loud. As the librarian, I will have to ask you to leave unless you maintain socially acceptable behaviour. I am a man of few rules, and so the only behavioural prerequisite I ask you to adhere to is that you be quiet.”
Emily flew into a rage. “I don’t care, tell me what the heck is going on and then I’ll happily leave“, she said, and then she pointed out that the corridor got smaller and smaller, and that whatever was in that room was yelling a lot and frightening the living daylights out of both herself and Alice. Dodgson simply replied, “That’s Lewis Carroll’s room. The corridor get’s smaller and smaller because he get’s bigger and bigger. But this is your final warning, be quiet or you’ll have to leave. I don’t like to disturb Carroll, he‘s a genius, you know. ” Alice, being the polite girl she is, respects her elders and so she asked, in what was barely more than a whisper, what it was that made him a genius.
“He writes books,” replied Dodgson.
“What sort of books?” asked Alice. Emily was not convinced that this constituted genius.
“Children’s books,“ he replied. “Alice in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass. Perhaps there is more, but I‘m not too sure. He is wonderful and he is gifted but he is also quite tragically, insane.”
“Woah, hold the phone!” shouted Emily, once again disregarding the rules of Dodgson’s library. “Alice, that’s your book! That’s it. I’m sure. My sister was reading it when I saw you run past. I remember having looked at the picture Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland… Lewis Carroll must be your Author.”
“You’re both mad,” said Dodgson, “get a grip on reality girls. And get out of my library. Neither of you are welcome any longer.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said Dodgson, “otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Alice failed to see how this proved she was mad; however, before she could articulate an argument to the contrary, Dodgson suddenly scampered away. Alice, who had by now been somewhat desensitised to all things weird and wonderful, thought that there was nothing particularly odd about this display, nor did she think it without precedent to hear Dodgson say to himself, over and over again, “Oh dear, oh dear, I must be mad. Be mad I must. Must I be mad?” He disappeared through the door from which he had originally entered. Emily and Alice followed.
They had entered another long corridor. They were roughly halfway between each end. Doors of all different shapes and sizes lined the walls, which were in turn adorned with books, books, and even more books.
Dodgson, however, was nowhere to be seen.
This corridor, oddly enough, was exactly unlike the last one in a single and strange way; this corridor became bigger and bigger the further on it went. Neither young girl could fathom how this was possible. “If it get’s bigger and bigger, surely it get’s smaller and smaller from the other end,” thought Alice. Emily verbalised her agreement. There was a broken mirror decorating the door which Alice had just closed, and while she stood there looking at her fractured reflection, she decided some disgusting delinquent must have vandalised it; “it’s broken and some naughty child has scribbled all over it. They must have terrible handwriting, or be from another country that uses a different language, for I cannot read a word of this,” said Alice. She said this more for her own benefit than Emily‘s. The mirror was adorned with the following.
CAROLLWOCKY
‘Twas represfictive; both untrue and uncouth.
‘Twas riddled with oniony layerings,
And obfuscated by portmanteau.
So “Why?” frightful nonsense sings.
Emily puzzled over where she picked up this piece of superstition and what language this peculiar message was written in for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. “Why, this is not a foreign language - it’s not French, at the very least. Of course! I know what it is - it’s a looking-glass language. If we find another mirror, and hold it up to the glass, the word’s will go the right way again!”
This was the poem that the two girls read.
CAROLLWOCKY
‘Twas represfictive; both untrue and uncouth.
‘Twas riddled with oniony layerings,
And obfuscated by portmanteau.
So “Why?” frightful nonsense sings.
‘Beware the Carrollwock, my son!
The mask he dons, his fake veneer!
Beware the Authors words, and shun
The frumious balladeer!’
He took his subversive pen in hand:
For paragraphs his foe he sought -
So he rested by stanza number three,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Carrollwock, with his nonce words,
Declared as silently as he could,
That all of this was just absurd!
To the beasts plight, he held the pen tight
And scribbled all over the Carrollwock’s name.
And with that motion, that poisonous potion,
The Carrollwock fellapsed in shame.
‘Twas represfictive; both untrue and uncouth.
‘Twas riddled with oniony layerings,
And obfuscated by portmanteau.
So “Why?” frightful nonsense sings.
“It seems very nice, almost pretty in a strange way,” said Alice when she had finished reading it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (The fact of the matter was that Alice merely refused to admit, even to herself, that she understood nothing of what she had just read.) “It seems to fill my head with all sorts of thoughts - only I’m unsure what they are! However, somebody vandalised something: that’s obvious, at the very least -”
“But oh!” said Emily, suddenly grabbing Alice’s attention, “if we don’t make haste we shall never find Dodgson again, and we need to find him so you can find your Author. You have things to learn, and questions to be answered. We’ll have to look through every room, and that will surely take forever.” They were out of the corridor in a moment, and disappeared through a door labelled, “Carroll’s Cafeteria.” Both girls reckoned that, despite an Author being akin to a God, that Carroll would surely still need to eat at some point. Using this logic, his own cafeteria seemed a sensible location to begin their search.
* * * * * * * * * * *
A Mad Tea-Party. .
There was a table set out under a fake, plastic tree in this strange cafeteria, and Humpty Dumpty and the Mad Hatter were having tea at it; the Cheshire Cat lay fast asleep between the unlikely pair, who were using the poor critter as a cushion. “How cruel,” thought Emily, “as surely that would be most uncomfortable for the cat. It is asleep, however, so maybe it just doesn’t mind.”
The table was large, perhaps excessively so, yet this peculiar trio were cramped together in one small corner of it: “The table is full! The table is full!” they cried out when they saw Emily and Alice approaching. “Good grief! Not only is there plenty of room, but this is important, and we haven’t time for tea, anyway,” scoffed Alice indignantly. Emily decided this was an appropriate opportunity to share her thoughts on their crazed choice of cushion, and said, “Don’t you think it’s a bit mean to use a sleeping animal like that?”
The Mad Hatter seemed shocked by her suggestion. “Why would you say that,” he said, “for the cat is not asleep. He is wide-awake, far more awake than you or I!”
Emily, who was now quite confused, said, “But he’s snoring! He must be asleep!”
“Nope,” replied the Mad Hatter, “he’s just purring. His mind just works faster than most. Ask him anything, I bet he knows the answer.”
Emily was not convinced in the slightest that the cat was not asleep, and so she slowly edged over towards him. She looked long and hard at the cat; it’s eyes were closed and he seemed very relaxed. She remained adamant that he was asleep, but she poked him softly on the top of the head, just to make sure.
“That’s not very nice, you know,” said the Mad Hatter, who seemed genuinely taken aback by Emily’s behaviour. “Just ask him a question.”
“Do I have to?” asked Emily.
“No,” replied the Cheshire Cat.
Emily had not expected this. “Oh,” she said, “I was sure you were asleep, I guess you weren’t though, hey?”
“Zzzzz….I am asleep,” replied the cat. “I’m so fast I’m asleep.”
“So fast you’re asleep? Do you mean you’re fast asleep?” enquired Emily.
“No,” said the cat, “I’m just so fast, so quick in the head, if you will, that I’m asleep. That’s how things work around there parts. You know, you also have to run to stay in the same place, otherwise you start going backwards.”
Emily, who was always ready for an argument if she was certain she should was right, said, “But then surely we would be going backwards right now, wouldn’t we? I mean surely-”
“You clearly have no understanding of Time,” interrupted the Mad Hatter.
“What’s to understand? Time is what it is,” argued Emily.
“Preposterous!” cried the Mad Hatter. “Not only is it not just what it is, it is not an “it” but rather many “its!” the Hatter knowledgably declared. The Mad Hatter removed a pocket watch from his blazer pocket, and looked at it curiously: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing more to say and so he sighed disappointedly. Emily and Alice looked at him with wonder and confusion.
“What’s the time?” asked Alice, “Because all this seems like a bit of a waste of time, and we haven’t time to waste.”
“My dear, if you knew Time as well as we do, you would never be so mad as to talk about wasting it! It does not like being treated like a commodity. And it’s the fourth.”
“Do you mean four o’clock?” enquired Alice.
“Heavens no! I believe I know what I said, and I said that it’s the fourth,” said the Hatter.
“But do you mean that it’s four o’clock?” asked Emily, “For Alice did not ask what you said, but rather what you meant.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alice, “You should say what you mean.”
“I do,” the Hatter hastily replied; “at least- at least I mean what I say - and I think that’s the same thing.”
“Not at all true,” Emily said confidently, “for you may as well be saying that “I see what I write” is the same thing as “I write what I see.” That’s too much writing for anyone!”
The Hatter chortled. Then he said, “I can write what I see! I can see your shoes, and I can write them as well.” He quickly pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket, and scrawled the word “shoes.” “See! I told you,” he confidently cried.
Emily did not seem impressed. “That’s just a word,” she said, “It’s not my shoes. It makes me think of a shoe, but you didn’t write my shoes. You just wrote the word, there‘s a difference, you know.”
The Hatter looked at Emily. He seemed confused. He raised one finger into the air, and shouted, “Ahah! I’ve got it!” Once more he grabbed his pen and paper, and wrote “my” just before the word “shoes.”
Emily put her palm to her face. She was dismayed by the Hatter’s insistence that he was right. “Don’t you see,” she politely said, “It’s still not quite the same.”
“Zzzzz…What I think she means, Hatter,“ said the Cheshire Cat, who was still so fast he was asleep, “is that the word signifies those ugly little things on her feet, but no matter what you do, it’s still only a word. You can never actually write them, you can describe them and do this and that and, but no matter what you do with that pen and paper, it shall never be anything but words. Words, words, words! Meaningless things!” the cat cried. He then vanished in what seemed like a puff of logic. After all, this does seem the kind of place where logic is not allowed.
Alice, who was growing increasingly frustrated by this very silly conversation, once again asked the time.
“Well,” said the Hatter, “back in the day, when Time and I were very good friends, I was able to persuade him to altering the time to whatever I liked. However, we had a falling out. We quarrelled a bit, you see, after I was singing a song about him. Would you like to hear it? It’s important to the story!”
“I’m not sure we have the time,” said Alice.
“There’s always time, nowadays. You’ll understand that very soon!” he happily yelled. He went on with his story. “So I was singing a song about Time, as I was about to say-”
“You already said that; you said that before,” interrupted Alice.
“So as I was about to say, I was singing a song about Time,” reiterated the Hatter. “Perhaps you’ve heard it,” he went on, “it went a little something like this:
‘Twinkle, twinkle, little time!
Don’t you know you‘re so divine!’
Do you know this song?”
“It reminds me of another song I know, it’s very similar,” said Alice.
“It goes on for longer,” the Hatter said, “in this way:
‘All around the world you fly,
Like a spectre in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle - “
The Hatter suddenly stopped singing his song. He glanced about the room suspiciously. Then he whispered, “This is where everything started to go wrong! Mr Dodgson decided I must have murdered time, since I implied it’s a lot like a spectre - that’s a ghost, by the way - and so he suddenly screamed, ’Erase this hideous madman! He’s Murdering the time!’”
“Oh, good gosh!” exclaimed Emily and Alice together. Alice looked at Emily and said, “perhaps we don’t want to find him, I don’t want to be erased!” She seemed genuinely scared by the idea.
“And ever since that day,” the Hatter went on in a sombre tone, “It’s been stuck at six o’clock for me.”
“Why did Dodgson react so cruelly?” asked Emily.
“Well, I was looking for my Author, and once I had figured out that this was his library, I thought he could help me,” said the Hatter.
“Wait!” cried Alice, “I’m looking for my Author right now!”
“Funny place to look for him,” snarled the Hatter. His voice dropped and he said, “And between you and me, I’d stop looking now. Dodgson has some weird secrets he’s trying to hide. He’s a total madman!”
“So what made you stop looking? And does this mean you don’t know where Carroll is?” Alice asked.
“There is incongruously no point in searching for him!” said Humpty Dumpty, who had been quiet until this point.
“Because there is never any time anymore! It’s always six o’clock, which is also dinner time. I just don’t have the time to look for him, and I don’t even have the time to wash up after dinner! We have to just keep rotating around the table so we can keep having dinner,” interrupted the Hatter. “Wait,” he continued, “why are you searching for Carroll? You may as well be searching for me or Humpty!”
“Speaking of Humpty,” said Emily as she turned to face the eccentric egg, “what’d you mean by there is “incongruously” no point in her searching for her Author?”
“I meant “there’s a definitely a hundred percent certainty that there is,” said Humpty Dumpty contemptuously.
“But that isn’t what “incongruously” means!” cried Emily.
“Incorrect!” Humpty scornfully declared, “for when I use a word it means whatever I wish it to mean!”
“Stop distracting me with your irrelevant garbage,” boomed Alice, and all of a sudden everyone went silent. There was something strangely scary about a grumpy young girl yelling so ludicrously loudly. “We were obviously about to find out something very important about my Author,” she continued, “and you two went and distracted me with your nonsensical ramblings about words! Who cares? They’re only words. They mean what they mean.”
“Hmmphh,” said Humpty, “perhaps you forget that “Author” is just a word as well!”
“Shut up with your nonsense!” interrupted Alice. She sighed and said, “Hatter, what were you about to tell me?”
“Carroll is but another character!” chortled the Hatter, “that’s why you may as well be looking for me.”
“…What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“I mean what I say,” replied the Hatter.
“But Carroll is the Author,” insisted Alice, “and I need him to tell me how my story ends! To find out who I am, where I’m going, why I’m here.
The Hatter eyed Alice curiously, and leant close to her. “Well, between me and you,” he said, “and that means that this is a secret, Dodgson wrote Carroll.”
“What!?” gasped Alice. “So why does he have a different name?” she asked.
“It’s a pseudonym,” replied the Hatter, “he made it up by translating his first two names back into English from Latin and reversing their order.”
Thud! Thud! Thud! A ruckus developed outside the cafeteria.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Bang!
The door flew open. A tall, thin man stood in the door way. His name was Charles Dodgson.
“The table is full!“ screamed the Wonderland characters. “Oh dear! Dodgson will surely erase us all!” whispered the Hatter, more to himself than to anyone else.
“But he’s not Dodgson!” yelped Alice, “Dodgson is short and stout!”
“It’s his library, my dear,” said the Hatter, “and he does as he wishes and he wishes to be many.”
“W-w-what are you doing here?” screamed Dodgson, “don’t you know this is my library?”
“Mr Dodgson,” said Alice loudly and confidently, “you’re my Author! Please may you tell me how my story finishes? And why is there many of you?”
“Your story was meant to end some time ago,” snarled Dodgson. “Also,” he continued, “it’s not like there is only one of you, either! Why, otherwise you wouldn’t be here!”
“What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“Does it matter? This is your story, not mine,” he replied.
“But what do I mean? How does this finish?” enquired Alice frantically.
“Well,” said Humpty dryly, “if you used words as well as me, you’d mean whatever you like!”
“But words are just words!” cried Alice.
“Until someone else decides they mean something,” quipped Emily.
Humpty looked at Alice and smiled. He said, “finished is also just a word.”
Saturday, January 8, 2011
How George Bush kicked the American Dream right in the gonads by Felipe De Laysk
The American Dream, with regard to democratic ideals, upholds rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”# On September 11, 2001, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners, two of which were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, one into the Pentagon, whilst the final plane crash-landed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. The responsive actions articulated by George W. Bush in the wake of these attacks catalysed an uproar, and caused a greater tragedy inherently contradictory to the American Dream. Evidence of this can be seen in the unnecessarily excessive War on Terror#, the human rights violations that occurred in Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre and the civil liberties violations of the governmental reforms implemented.
A plethora of diverse opinions on Bush’s reactions were (and still are) present. Writers and social commentators, Hunter S. Thompson, Gore Vidal, Michael Moore, and Noam Chomsky all expressed criticisms of the implemented actions. Bruce Schneier, a security expert, members of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), John Gilmore, an American citizen and Declan Mcullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET, criticised governmental and security reforms, particularly those infringing on civil liberties. Former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, opposed the invasion of Iraq. Neoconservatives however, were often fervently in favour of Bush’s decisions. For example, Jim Phillips of the Heritage Foundation supported the awful treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre, treatment portrayed in a satirical political cartoon appearing on website, “Mikes Noise“. Max Boot, an author, historian and neoconservative, supported Bush’s rationale for war.
After the attacks of September 11, the US government claimed that Iraq was now an actual threat to their security and that of coalition allies due to Iraq’s alleged possession of WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction), and soon began pressing for military intervention within Iraq. This rationale was not a black and white issue and was thus highly contentious. Bush stated that the United States should “be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”# This would imply attempted protection of ideologies reflected within the American Dream, and this pre-emptive war rationale was supported by Max Boot, who actually stated “we ought to go further.”# It may also be interesting to note that despite US knowledge that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda members were residing in Afghanistan, Iraq was, as stated by Bush, the “central front in the War on Terror.”# This perhaps gives credence to Thompson’s statement that “all he (Bush) knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he….has been chosen to finish it Now.”# Kofi Annan stated that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not in conformity with the UN Charter…from the Charter point of view, the invasion was illegal.”# Many other harsh criticisms of the War on Terror were present. American intellectual, Gore Vidal, argued that the war was a “perpetual war for perpetual peace”# as the underlying ideologies that fuelled the war held their basis in Bush’s tirade against the abstract notions of sin and evil, rather than a defined enemy capable of defeat. The September 11 terrorist attacks claimed the lives of 2,819 individuals, whilst the number of lives lost in the War on Terror equates to 62,006, thus giving credence to Noam Chomsky’s statement that, “The new millennium has begun with two monstrous crimes; the attacks of September 11, and the reaction to them…”# This blatant disregard for human Life, and Liberties of fellow humans wherein their Happiness was unmistakably disturbed by the horrors of the War on terror, make it obvious that this war was inherently contrary to the American Dream.
Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre# is a detainment facility run by the United States government since 2002. The Justice Department advised that GBDC could be considered outside of US legal jurisdiction and therefore, subsequently, the US asserted that the detainees weren’t entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention. Jim Phillips stated that "some of these terrorists who are not recognized as soldiers don't deserve to be treated as soldiers."# Critics of U.S. policy say the government has violated the Conventions in attempting to create a distinction between "prisoners of war" and "illegal combatants." Accusations of torture have been presented by many past detainees, and idea portrayed in a satirical cartoon appearing on website, “Mikes Noise.”# The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urged George W. Bush to "just shut it down", calling Camp Delta "... worse than an embarrassment."# On June 29, 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan Vs Rumsfeld that the detainees were entitled to the minimal protections under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. As the American Dream upholds certain egalitarian ideologies, these actions can be seen as contrary to the notion, through the discrimination and persecution of detainees.
Complaints pertaining to the violation, or possible violation, of ones civil liberties came about due to the Information Awareness Office (IAO). The attacks of September 11 served as a catalyst for the introduction of the IAO, which was established in January 2002 by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. The mission undergone by the IAO was to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness."# However, critics were sceptical, positing that large-scale information aggregation and analysis technologies are a grace threat to privacy and civil liberties, and that it may lead to a mass surveillance system, described by Declan McCullagh as “Orwellian.”# Following this staunch public criticism, in 2003, Congress ceased funding the IAO, but several of the projects run by the IAO have continued under different funding. The infringement upon civil liberties evident within this can be seen as oppositional to the American Dream, and the Liberties encapsulated within the notion.
The arguably unconstitutional nature of the security reforms implemented posed another quandary. In Gilmore Vs Gonzales, John Gilmore sued United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and US Attorney-General John Ashcroft expressing the idea that showing identification as a prerequisite to boarding domestic flights was tantamount to an international passport, and therefore unconstitutional, as it restricted his right to travel, to petition government and to speak anonymously. Controversy also pursued when the airlines and government failed to show the directive under which they were acting, with accusations of the public being subject to “secret law” running rampant. Bruce Schneier asserted that the security reforms were completely unnecessary, and it can therefore be seen that they did little more then infringe upon civil liberties; an unfortunate and seemingly frequent trend contrary to the American Dream.
The provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act# predominantly purposed to deter and punish terrorist activity whilst simultaneously expansively enhancing law enforcement power. Michael Moore and the ACLU both criticised the introduction of this act and, in addition, the ACU (American Conservative Union) refused to support this piece of legislation, thus forging an unlikely alliance. The ACLU asserted that the act was excessively vague in stipulating its circumstances of application and, as a result, understandably feared pursuant violations of civil liberties. Section 215 of the act, it was argued, lowered the standard necessary for probable cause below that of the Fourth Amendment, and hence was unconstitutional. Section 206 brought about accusations of confusing language that may allow for privacy violations of anyone encountering a suspect. In his film, Fahrenheit 911#, Michael Moore drives around in an ice cream van reading out sections of the Patriot Act, before getting a congressman to admit that he did not read it before approving it. The level of extra governmental powers that this Act allowed sparked Michael Moore to claim, “We have entered Orwellian and Bradburian times.” On March 9, 2007, these fears became reality after a Justice Department audit exposed the shocking revelation that the FBI had “improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the Patriot Act to secretly obtain information”# about US citizens. From this, it becomes evident that the Patriot Act, particularly the civil liberties violations it precipitated, was in direct opposition to the American Dream, specifically the liberties entailed with the notion.
Since the early 19th century, America has been regarded as a shining beacon of Liberty and Prosperity, a notion reflected within the American Dream. The actions with which George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks were inherently contrary to the American Dream. Lives were lost in the war on terrorism as a result of his decisions, civil liberties were violated due to governmental reforms he implemented, and in Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre, basic human rights were denied. From this it can be seen that by orchestrating the American reaction to the monstrous crimes that were the September 11 attacks, George Bush broke the heart of the American Dream and created a far worse and far-stretching tragedy
A plethora of diverse opinions on Bush’s reactions were (and still are) present. Writers and social commentators, Hunter S. Thompson, Gore Vidal, Michael Moore, and Noam Chomsky all expressed criticisms of the implemented actions. Bruce Schneier, a security expert, members of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), John Gilmore, an American citizen and Declan Mcullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET, criticised governmental and security reforms, particularly those infringing on civil liberties. Former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, opposed the invasion of Iraq. Neoconservatives however, were often fervently in favour of Bush’s decisions. For example, Jim Phillips of the Heritage Foundation supported the awful treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre, treatment portrayed in a satirical political cartoon appearing on website, “Mikes Noise“. Max Boot, an author, historian and neoconservative, supported Bush’s rationale for war.
After the attacks of September 11, the US government claimed that Iraq was now an actual threat to their security and that of coalition allies due to Iraq’s alleged possession of WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction), and soon began pressing for military intervention within Iraq. This rationale was not a black and white issue and was thus highly contentious. Bush stated that the United States should “be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”# This would imply attempted protection of ideologies reflected within the American Dream, and this pre-emptive war rationale was supported by Max Boot, who actually stated “we ought to go further.”# It may also be interesting to note that despite US knowledge that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda members were residing in Afghanistan, Iraq was, as stated by Bush, the “central front in the War on Terror.”# This perhaps gives credence to Thompson’s statement that “all he (Bush) knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he….has been chosen to finish it Now.”# Kofi Annan stated that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not in conformity with the UN Charter…from the Charter point of view, the invasion was illegal.”# Many other harsh criticisms of the War on Terror were present. American intellectual, Gore Vidal, argued that the war was a “perpetual war for perpetual peace”# as the underlying ideologies that fuelled the war held their basis in Bush’s tirade against the abstract notions of sin and evil, rather than a defined enemy capable of defeat. The September 11 terrorist attacks claimed the lives of 2,819 individuals, whilst the number of lives lost in the War on Terror equates to 62,006, thus giving credence to Noam Chomsky’s statement that, “The new millennium has begun with two monstrous crimes; the attacks of September 11, and the reaction to them…”# This blatant disregard for human Life, and Liberties of fellow humans wherein their Happiness was unmistakably disturbed by the horrors of the War on terror, make it obvious that this war was inherently contrary to the American Dream.
Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre# is a detainment facility run by the United States government since 2002. The Justice Department advised that GBDC could be considered outside of US legal jurisdiction and therefore, subsequently, the US asserted that the detainees weren’t entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention. Jim Phillips stated that "some of these terrorists who are not recognized as soldiers don't deserve to be treated as soldiers."# Critics of U.S. policy say the government has violated the Conventions in attempting to create a distinction between "prisoners of war" and "illegal combatants." Accusations of torture have been presented by many past detainees, and idea portrayed in a satirical cartoon appearing on website, “Mikes Noise.”# The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urged George W. Bush to "just shut it down", calling Camp Delta "... worse than an embarrassment."# On June 29, 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan Vs Rumsfeld that the detainees were entitled to the minimal protections under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. As the American Dream upholds certain egalitarian ideologies, these actions can be seen as contrary to the notion, through the discrimination and persecution of detainees.
Complaints pertaining to the violation, or possible violation, of ones civil liberties came about due to the Information Awareness Office (IAO). The attacks of September 11 served as a catalyst for the introduction of the IAO, which was established in January 2002 by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. The mission undergone by the IAO was to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness."# However, critics were sceptical, positing that large-scale information aggregation and analysis technologies are a grace threat to privacy and civil liberties, and that it may lead to a mass surveillance system, described by Declan McCullagh as “Orwellian.”# Following this staunch public criticism, in 2003, Congress ceased funding the IAO, but several of the projects run by the IAO have continued under different funding. The infringement upon civil liberties evident within this can be seen as oppositional to the American Dream, and the Liberties encapsulated within the notion.
The arguably unconstitutional nature of the security reforms implemented posed another quandary. In Gilmore Vs Gonzales, John Gilmore sued United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and US Attorney-General John Ashcroft expressing the idea that showing identification as a prerequisite to boarding domestic flights was tantamount to an international passport, and therefore unconstitutional, as it restricted his right to travel, to petition government and to speak anonymously. Controversy also pursued when the airlines and government failed to show the directive under which they were acting, with accusations of the public being subject to “secret law” running rampant. Bruce Schneier asserted that the security reforms were completely unnecessary, and it can therefore be seen that they did little more then infringe upon civil liberties; an unfortunate and seemingly frequent trend contrary to the American Dream.
The provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act# predominantly purposed to deter and punish terrorist activity whilst simultaneously expansively enhancing law enforcement power. Michael Moore and the ACLU both criticised the introduction of this act and, in addition, the ACU (American Conservative Union) refused to support this piece of legislation, thus forging an unlikely alliance. The ACLU asserted that the act was excessively vague in stipulating its circumstances of application and, as a result, understandably feared pursuant violations of civil liberties. Section 215 of the act, it was argued, lowered the standard necessary for probable cause below that of the Fourth Amendment, and hence was unconstitutional. Section 206 brought about accusations of confusing language that may allow for privacy violations of anyone encountering a suspect. In his film, Fahrenheit 911#, Michael Moore drives around in an ice cream van reading out sections of the Patriot Act, before getting a congressman to admit that he did not read it before approving it. The level of extra governmental powers that this Act allowed sparked Michael Moore to claim, “We have entered Orwellian and Bradburian times.” On March 9, 2007, these fears became reality after a Justice Department audit exposed the shocking revelation that the FBI had “improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the Patriot Act to secretly obtain information”# about US citizens. From this, it becomes evident that the Patriot Act, particularly the civil liberties violations it precipitated, was in direct opposition to the American Dream, specifically the liberties entailed with the notion.
Since the early 19th century, America has been regarded as a shining beacon of Liberty and Prosperity, a notion reflected within the American Dream. The actions with which George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks were inherently contrary to the American Dream. Lives were lost in the war on terrorism as a result of his decisions, civil liberties were violated due to governmental reforms he implemented, and in Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre, basic human rights were denied. From this it can be seen that by orchestrating the American reaction to the monstrous crimes that were the September 11 attacks, George Bush broke the heart of the American Dream and created a far worse and far-stretching tragedy
I have a bee in my bonnet, and I'm not afraid to buzz and blog about it.
You know what really grinds my gears? Most things, actually, but I won't bore you with every single gory detail, I'll just rant and rave about this one. I'm not a huge fan of medicine, look up,it says so in the blurb under the title quite clearly. I know it sounds a little on the self defeating side, but I'm not convinced that medicine is healing people. In fact, I think it's become a religion.
Huh? Nah, religion and science/medicine are opposites, everyone knows that......except for when they're exactly the same. I was raised in a church going family, we'd go to church on Sunday, girls rally, youth group and play group for the littlies. Our church community formed the moral bedrock of our lives, and gave us a guide as to how to live best.
Medicne now tells me how to live best. It tells me how to often feed my kids, and what I should feed them. Medicine tells me, based on it's incontrovertible research, how to discipline my children, how much sunshine they should be exposed to, how much they should sleep and what natural illnesses they should be prevented from ever having, regardless of whether or not there's any likelihood of them having adverse effects from said illnesses, and regardless of whether or not they're ever going to be exposed to these illnesses.
Bubonic plague, for example. Why aren't my kids immunized against bubonic plague? Its deadly! And every single year there's a few cases where Yersinia Pestis raises its ugly head, thanks to more marmots than the traditional villain of the piece, the Norwegian Black Rat. Surely we should all be immunized to prevent the return of a killer? Not worried? That's right, you have FAITH in medicine and science to do whats right for you, and that is nothing at al like faith in God or another spiritual belief
Anyone who trusts in religious beliefs to save them from inevitable illness is obviously psychologically unstable, ignorant of the real facts and is guilty of not being as sophisticated a thinker as us educated, rational types, and they're probably wearing a rather fetching hat made out of tinfoil.
God didn't save me from acne. Neither did medicine.
God didn't stop me from nearly bleeding to death with some weird, undiagnosed bleeding disorder. Medicine doesn't have a clue about my bleeding disorder and nearly killed me when they used the standard protocols. My daughter would not be alive if I'd continued to take medical advice during her pregnancy. (Thankfully, the hematologist agreed, he said he didn't know what caused it, and therefore couldn't safely treat it)
God has never relieved my migraine pain. Neither has medicine
God hasn't cured my son's autism. Neither has medicine.
You feel unwell, depressed, alway irritable? See your doctor. But why? Emotions are normal, they don't need to be eradicated. Some people would talk to a priest, rabbi, mufti, minister or what have you when presented with the same symptoms. And we'd think they were crazy. Maybe we should all just talk to a friend, I know there's no profit for church or medicine in that, but it might help. Certainly sounds like its worth a try.
Yet for all medicine's apparent omnipotence, how many illnesses can we really cure? Not many times, or a few times, how many can we CURE each and every time? If i break my leg, disembowel myself, have a heart attack or get meningococcal seoticameia, I'm going to the hospital, so they can set my leg (and give me painkillers), stitch me back up with my insides on the inside, check my heart is still going, or pump me full of antibiotics because those things do work.
For funerals and weddings, I'm probably going to get a minister. In that situation, they also work very well. And from what I've gathered from many conversations with those who suffer what medicine terms a mental illness, sometimes spiritually of some sort is effective. Maybe not immediately, but Zoloft doesn't work straight away, in fact it takes months. The minister, priest, mufti, rabbi or whatever may very well afford you some relief and support in a much faster time frame.
Our priests, our wise men have been replaced with doctors. We're baptized into the religion of modern medicine at birth with vitamin k shots and hepatitis B vaccines. We tell our children "eat right, its healthy, you'll live longer", where we used to tell them, "do good, be good, believe and you'll go to heaven". We're not that into heaven these days, we replaced it with living far longer. Good health is the only path to salvation and righteousness. Smokers are sinners, alternative health practioners and those who use them are heretics, doomed to an eternity of self induced ill health, and all due to their lack of faith in the one true God- the unholy, but scientifically proven trinity of Science, the father, Medicne, the son, and Profits, the holy ghost.
And any good believer in medicine will ensure their child receives regular blessed sacraments of paracetamol, vaccines, and antibiotics (even when its a virus or something else that antibiotics cant help. See that figure running away in the distance? That's your immune system, running away from a broken home). If you don't follow the rules of the new church, you don't deserve to be a parent. This church requires total obedience, and lets face it, having the TV and media acting as a twenty four hour a day sermon about how great our new god is was probably the sort of public relations coup that God should have thought of, but didn't. To the victor go the spoils...........
I could go on and on for days about this, but I'll try to contain myself. Medicine lies, or at least isn't as awesome as it wants you to think. Smoking does not necessarily cause cancer, its one of many risk factors, its not been proven to be 100% causative. Do 100% of smokers die from cancer? No.Is HPV implicated in lung cancer? Yes! Does smoking have some health benefits? Yes, it even protects against ome really nasty things, like thyroid cancer. Yeah, protects from cancer. Thyroid cancer, and endometrial cancer. Good for ulcerative colitis, reduces the chances of alzheimers, but isn't fantastic for your respiratory system, I type as I cough.
Try telling someone smoking isn't all bad and you'll get a reaction like you're in a catholic church at Easter and yelling, "BOLLOCKS!", because you would be uttering a blasphemy.
Both religion and medicine have and are turning huge profits off our "faith", and not doing a whole lot for us as thanks. If you believe in God, then you believe you were given free choice and intelligence by a creator. He might just want you to use those facilities. If you believe in science/medicine, you believe you evolved intelligence and the ability to make rational decisions. You might want to try using that facility.
Maybe instead, we should put our faith in the one thing we can trust. Our own ability to rise above the bullshit and demand better. Just maybe we can learn to rely on each other and demand truth from our doctors and leaders, be they spiritual or polical. There's a lot of false gods. I'm going to believe in me, my ability to choose right from wrong, based on all available knowledge and retaining the right to change my mind. I'm also going to believe in you. If I have a religion, its that we can all do better. And next time I'll do better at editing (ipads have quirks)
Huh? Nah, religion and science/medicine are opposites, everyone knows that......except for when they're exactly the same. I was raised in a church going family, we'd go to church on Sunday, girls rally, youth group and play group for the littlies. Our church community formed the moral bedrock of our lives, and gave us a guide as to how to live best.
Medicne now tells me how to live best. It tells me how to often feed my kids, and what I should feed them. Medicine tells me, based on it's incontrovertible research, how to discipline my children, how much sunshine they should be exposed to, how much they should sleep and what natural illnesses they should be prevented from ever having, regardless of whether or not there's any likelihood of them having adverse effects from said illnesses, and regardless of whether or not they're ever going to be exposed to these illnesses.
Bubonic plague, for example. Why aren't my kids immunized against bubonic plague? Its deadly! And every single year there's a few cases where Yersinia Pestis raises its ugly head, thanks to more marmots than the traditional villain of the piece, the Norwegian Black Rat. Surely we should all be immunized to prevent the return of a killer? Not worried? That's right, you have FAITH in medicine and science to do whats right for you, and that is nothing at al like faith in God or another spiritual belief
Anyone who trusts in religious beliefs to save them from inevitable illness is obviously psychologically unstable, ignorant of the real facts and is guilty of not being as sophisticated a thinker as us educated, rational types, and they're probably wearing a rather fetching hat made out of tinfoil.
God didn't save me from acne. Neither did medicine.
God didn't stop me from nearly bleeding to death with some weird, undiagnosed bleeding disorder. Medicine doesn't have a clue about my bleeding disorder and nearly killed me when they used the standard protocols. My daughter would not be alive if I'd continued to take medical advice during her pregnancy. (Thankfully, the hematologist agreed, he said he didn't know what caused it, and therefore couldn't safely treat it)
God has never relieved my migraine pain. Neither has medicine
God hasn't cured my son's autism. Neither has medicine.
You feel unwell, depressed, alway irritable? See your doctor. But why? Emotions are normal, they don't need to be eradicated. Some people would talk to a priest, rabbi, mufti, minister or what have you when presented with the same symptoms. And we'd think they were crazy. Maybe we should all just talk to a friend, I know there's no profit for church or medicine in that, but it might help. Certainly sounds like its worth a try.
Yet for all medicine's apparent omnipotence, how many illnesses can we really cure? Not many times, or a few times, how many can we CURE each and every time? If i break my leg, disembowel myself, have a heart attack or get meningococcal seoticameia, I'm going to the hospital, so they can set my leg (and give me painkillers), stitch me back up with my insides on the inside, check my heart is still going, or pump me full of antibiotics because those things do work.
For funerals and weddings, I'm probably going to get a minister. In that situation, they also work very well. And from what I've gathered from many conversations with those who suffer what medicine terms a mental illness, sometimes spiritually of some sort is effective. Maybe not immediately, but Zoloft doesn't work straight away, in fact it takes months. The minister, priest, mufti, rabbi or whatever may very well afford you some relief and support in a much faster time frame.
Our priests, our wise men have been replaced with doctors. We're baptized into the religion of modern medicine at birth with vitamin k shots and hepatitis B vaccines. We tell our children "eat right, its healthy, you'll live longer", where we used to tell them, "do good, be good, believe and you'll go to heaven". We're not that into heaven these days, we replaced it with living far longer. Good health is the only path to salvation and righteousness. Smokers are sinners, alternative health practioners and those who use them are heretics, doomed to an eternity of self induced ill health, and all due to their lack of faith in the one true God- the unholy, but scientifically proven trinity of Science, the father, Medicne, the son, and Profits, the holy ghost.
And any good believer in medicine will ensure their child receives regular blessed sacraments of paracetamol, vaccines, and antibiotics (even when its a virus or something else that antibiotics cant help. See that figure running away in the distance? That's your immune system, running away from a broken home). If you don't follow the rules of the new church, you don't deserve to be a parent. This church requires total obedience, and lets face it, having the TV and media acting as a twenty four hour a day sermon about how great our new god is was probably the sort of public relations coup that God should have thought of, but didn't. To the victor go the spoils...........
I could go on and on for days about this, but I'll try to contain myself. Medicine lies, or at least isn't as awesome as it wants you to think. Smoking does not necessarily cause cancer, its one of many risk factors, its not been proven to be 100% causative. Do 100% of smokers die from cancer? No.Is HPV implicated in lung cancer? Yes! Does smoking have some health benefits? Yes, it even protects against ome really nasty things, like thyroid cancer. Yeah, protects from cancer. Thyroid cancer, and endometrial cancer. Good for ulcerative colitis, reduces the chances of alzheimers, but isn't fantastic for your respiratory system, I type as I cough.
Try telling someone smoking isn't all bad and you'll get a reaction like you're in a catholic church at Easter and yelling, "BOLLOCKS!", because you would be uttering a blasphemy.
Both religion and medicine have and are turning huge profits off our "faith", and not doing a whole lot for us as thanks. If you believe in God, then you believe you were given free choice and intelligence by a creator. He might just want you to use those facilities. If you believe in science/medicine, you believe you evolved intelligence and the ability to make rational decisions. You might want to try using that facility.
Maybe instead, we should put our faith in the one thing we can trust. Our own ability to rise above the bullshit and demand better. Just maybe we can learn to rely on each other and demand truth from our doctors and leaders, be they spiritual or polical. There's a lot of false gods. I'm going to believe in me, my ability to choose right from wrong, based on all available knowledge and retaining the right to change my mind. I'm also going to believe in you. If I have a religion, its that we can all do better. And next time I'll do better at editing (ipads have quirks)
The start of a novel that is yet to be completed. By Felipe DeLeask
During a rather tortuous period of my life, I was disturbed by my discovery that I had lost my keys, and a thorough search of my persons revealed that I had also misplaced my mind; I resolved to do the logical thing and write a book. I found my keys soon after. They were in my bag, but they pretty much always are, aren’t they? Then the microwave started beeping.
I hate microwaves. I hate that they’re so loud and obnoxious, and the high-pitched beeping they use to grab your attention angers me. Oh, and I’m not even gonna start on the difficulties of setting the time on them…
So I ripped open the microwave, and then calmly grabbed the hot cup of coffee. I placed it on the bench and added milk and sugar, two teaspoons. I grabbed a Dunhill, briefly felt like Hunter S. Thompson, then went outside and lit my cigarette. There was a cold breeze blowing through, which added a pleasant edge to the hideous heat that blasted down upon Western Sydney. I lent on the balcony railing and the picturesque scene ahead got me smiling, as always.
I decided that one day I would take a picture of it. My knowledge that it would perfectly capture the vulgarity and depravity typical of the area pleased me to no end. I thought about photography and other frivolous things until I finished my coffee and cigarette. I then returned to my humble abode; a bed-sit apartment in Mount Druitt - however, it’s not in Mount Druitt. I just tell people it is. Signs and maps and street directories will tell you this area is Whalan, but they may as well be lying and Whalan may as well be called Hebersham or Tregear or Plumpton because they‘re all just suburbs pretending they‘re not Mount Druitt.
And I thought to myself; “you should probably remember that for your novel, that is a stellar sentence…” I grabbed my bag, pulled it over my shoulders, and swung open the door and:
“Holy Calamity,“Yo,” I said, answering my mobile.
Scream insanity
All you ever gonna be’s
Another great fan of me.”
(I’m not terribly sure when I began using this hideous slang, but it seems to have spread like a virus. In my circle of friends it began with Stu. He then infected Jaz, who in turn infected me. Although we all sound a little silly saying this, it is I who look the most foolish; as a skinny white guy who wears scuffed sneakers and tight pants, there‘s something inherently comical about my use of colloquialisms such as, “yo.”)
“Oh. Hey man. It’s Jaz.”
“Yeah? Sup?”
I had a feeling he was going to ask me to engage in some, shall we say, questionable extra-curricular activities.
“Not a lot. How‘s tricks?”
“Yeah, you know, not bad. ”
“Yeah, so I was wondering if you’d be interested in a chill today, your place? I have to get on and everything, though. Getting together a fifty.”
“Huh?” I said, “how’d you get the money for that?”
“Ah, I just hocked some shit,” Jaz replied. I laughed.
“Yeah well, I just gotta go round my Mum’s for a bit - “
“Remember you owe me a sesh, right?” interrupted Jaz.
“Yeah.”
“Awesome, see you in an hour. I’m waiting for the bus now.”
Beep, beep, beep.Goddamnit, I thought. An hour? I legged it down the stairs, jumped the apartment complex fence and jogged down through the tunnel towards my Mum’s place.
I arrived at my Mum’s panting and tired. I flung open the screen door, and jumped triumphantly into the room violently screaming, “Put ya hands in the air, motherfuckers.”
My mother shrieked in fright.
“What the fuck, Texas?! Don’t do that; you scared the shit out of me. That’s it; Rob! (“yeah?”) from now on the screen door stays locked at all times, even if Beau isn’t here.( “Did Tex‘s entrance startle you again?) Of course it did, the little lunatic.”
I regained my composure after several bouts of hysterical laughter, repetitively gibbering, “Haha, you should’ve seen your face.”
“Anyways, anyways,” I said, “can you take me to do that shopping?”
“Yeah,” Mum sighed, “but I want a coffee and a cigarette first.”
“Ahh, that’s an issue - Jaz is coming round, and in his typical fashion, he has given me a sudden and unexpected timeframe with which to work.”
“When’s he get here?”
“Aye? Well… an hour was before so, ionno,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “Oh wait. He’d arrive in say, forty-five?”
And then Mum said; “Yeah, that sounds doable,” before slipping on some shoes and lighting a cigarette as we went outside towards the car.
She turned towards me and said, “Remember, you’ve got an appointment with Christoph-Mike-Sleu” (she says his name like an infant impersonating a retarded person) “and Jackie tomorrow.”
“It’s gonna be a fuck around and they’re gonna treat me like an idiot again. There’s a fine line between madness and stupidity, and these people clearly don’t recognise it.”
“Yes,” said Mum, “I know, I know. Walls always tumble when madmen wield swords. But you need a diagnosis.”
“Yeah I’m positive I’ll feel less crazy once I have a piece of paper that officially declares my insanity.”
“Get in the car and stop wasting time.”
I got in the car. Whoosh.
The shopping was shopped and purchased without disaster rearing its ugly head.
Back at my bed-sit I packed up my wonderful goodies, my delicious snacks and refreshing beverages, and headed down the road to the Bus Stop near Victor’s. Victor is a young, non-descript asian male. It didn’t take me long to conclude that he must prefer to avoid arousing attention; his clothes are similarly non-descript and he wears nothing of flamboyance or style. His clothes are simple and plain, rarely shifting from a t-shirt with track pants - this is more or less the uniform of Mount Druitt. He too resides in the charming town of Whalan and comes from a working class family. However, unlike myself, Victor has discovered a clever way to make a quick profit- the age-old hobby of buying and selling illegal substances for personal profit. He is, in laymen terms, a Drug Dealer.
Five minutes passed before I saw Jaz’s bus turn the corner. The bus was in fact due to arrive ten minutes prior to it’s actual arrival, although this did not surprise me; if there is one thing you can count on in Western Sydney, it is the unreliability of our public transport system. Of course, that is not to say that the transport system is entirely at fault; the blame also falls upon the Neanderthal lads who reside out near Shalvey. (As I previously mentioned, many suburbs pretend not to be Mounty County; Shalvey is one such suburb.) Stu once enlightened us with a story of some Shalvey boys rocking buses:
“And I was like, what? You rocked the buses? You live in Shalvey! How’re you gonna get anywhere? What do they say? Ahh nah cuz, we jus’ rock da kents for the rep, the cred. But without buses you’re stuck there - you cant even get to Mounty. Aye? Yer bu’ ya gotta. And cuz - we ran out dere, the side of the street, right? We ran dere’ an’ picked up da rock’s and frew em, shoutin, “awwh yeah, cuz. Shalvey reprasant!” But den some fookin’ gronk, a total gronk I tells ya, dey start makin’ our business their business, y’know? Dey dun told us not ta frow rocks! So we told em what fer, told da deekhead ta mind ‘is own fookin’ bishness!…Fair enough, fair enough. But something still doesn’t make sense; why do want reputation more than you want transport? Aye? Ya get da rep and people come namadder what. Ya rock some buses, an’ den no kent wanna fuck widge ya; ya one of da Shalvey boys - an’ ya don’t fuck with ‘em ‘cos they’ll fuck ya up, just like they did the buses.” Yep. And that, my friend, is the problem with this place.
Mounty County; we’re not just stupid, but violent as well. You see, the problem is that stupid people are my mortal enemies. And there’s just so many of them around here - Mount Druitt is a festering cesspool of idiocy.
I hate microwaves. I hate that they’re so loud and obnoxious, and the high-pitched beeping they use to grab your attention angers me. Oh, and I’m not even gonna start on the difficulties of setting the time on them…
So I ripped open the microwave, and then calmly grabbed the hot cup of coffee. I placed it on the bench and added milk and sugar, two teaspoons. I grabbed a Dunhill, briefly felt like Hunter S. Thompson, then went outside and lit my cigarette. There was a cold breeze blowing through, which added a pleasant edge to the hideous heat that blasted down upon Western Sydney. I lent on the balcony railing and the picturesque scene ahead got me smiling, as always.
I decided that one day I would take a picture of it. My knowledge that it would perfectly capture the vulgarity and depravity typical of the area pleased me to no end. I thought about photography and other frivolous things until I finished my coffee and cigarette. I then returned to my humble abode; a bed-sit apartment in Mount Druitt - however, it’s not in Mount Druitt. I just tell people it is. Signs and maps and street directories will tell you this area is Whalan, but they may as well be lying and Whalan may as well be called Hebersham or Tregear or Plumpton because they‘re all just suburbs pretending they‘re not Mount Druitt.
And I thought to myself; “you should probably remember that for your novel, that is a stellar sentence…” I grabbed my bag, pulled it over my shoulders, and swung open the door and:
“Holy Calamity,“Yo,” I said, answering my mobile.
Scream insanity
All you ever gonna be’s
Another great fan of me.”
(I’m not terribly sure when I began using this hideous slang, but it seems to have spread like a virus. In my circle of friends it began with Stu. He then infected Jaz, who in turn infected me. Although we all sound a little silly saying this, it is I who look the most foolish; as a skinny white guy who wears scuffed sneakers and tight pants, there‘s something inherently comical about my use of colloquialisms such as, “yo.”)
“Oh. Hey man. It’s Jaz.”
“Yeah? Sup?”
I had a feeling he was going to ask me to engage in some, shall we say, questionable extra-curricular activities.
“Not a lot. How‘s tricks?”
“Yeah, you know, not bad. ”
“Yeah, so I was wondering if you’d be interested in a chill today, your place? I have to get on and everything, though. Getting together a fifty.”
“Huh?” I said, “how’d you get the money for that?”
“Ah, I just hocked some shit,” Jaz replied. I laughed.
“Yeah well, I just gotta go round my Mum’s for a bit - “
“Remember you owe me a sesh, right?” interrupted Jaz.
“Yeah.”
“Awesome, see you in an hour. I’m waiting for the bus now.”
Beep, beep, beep.Goddamnit, I thought. An hour? I legged it down the stairs, jumped the apartment complex fence and jogged down through the tunnel towards my Mum’s place.
I arrived at my Mum’s panting and tired. I flung open the screen door, and jumped triumphantly into the room violently screaming, “Put ya hands in the air, motherfuckers.”
My mother shrieked in fright.
“What the fuck, Texas?! Don’t do that; you scared the shit out of me. That’s it; Rob! (“yeah?”) from now on the screen door stays locked at all times, even if Beau isn’t here.( “Did Tex‘s entrance startle you again?) Of course it did, the little lunatic.”
I regained my composure after several bouts of hysterical laughter, repetitively gibbering, “Haha, you should’ve seen your face.”
“Anyways, anyways,” I said, “can you take me to do that shopping?”
“Yeah,” Mum sighed, “but I want a coffee and a cigarette first.”
“Ahh, that’s an issue - Jaz is coming round, and in his typical fashion, he has given me a sudden and unexpected timeframe with which to work.”
“When’s he get here?”
“Aye? Well… an hour was before so, ionno,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “Oh wait. He’d arrive in say, forty-five?”
And then Mum said; “Yeah, that sounds doable,” before slipping on some shoes and lighting a cigarette as we went outside towards the car.
She turned towards me and said, “Remember, you’ve got an appointment with Christoph-Mike-Sleu” (she says his name like an infant impersonating a retarded person) “and Jackie tomorrow.”
“It’s gonna be a fuck around and they’re gonna treat me like an idiot again. There’s a fine line between madness and stupidity, and these people clearly don’t recognise it.”
“Yes,” said Mum, “I know, I know. Walls always tumble when madmen wield swords. But you need a diagnosis.”
“Yeah I’m positive I’ll feel less crazy once I have a piece of paper that officially declares my insanity.”
“Get in the car and stop wasting time.”
I got in the car. Whoosh.
The shopping was shopped and purchased without disaster rearing its ugly head.
Back at my bed-sit I packed up my wonderful goodies, my delicious snacks and refreshing beverages, and headed down the road to the Bus Stop near Victor’s. Victor is a young, non-descript asian male. It didn’t take me long to conclude that he must prefer to avoid arousing attention; his clothes are similarly non-descript and he wears nothing of flamboyance or style. His clothes are simple and plain, rarely shifting from a t-shirt with track pants - this is more or less the uniform of Mount Druitt. He too resides in the charming town of Whalan and comes from a working class family. However, unlike myself, Victor has discovered a clever way to make a quick profit- the age-old hobby of buying and selling illegal substances for personal profit. He is, in laymen terms, a Drug Dealer.
Five minutes passed before I saw Jaz’s bus turn the corner. The bus was in fact due to arrive ten minutes prior to it’s actual arrival, although this did not surprise me; if there is one thing you can count on in Western Sydney, it is the unreliability of our public transport system. Of course, that is not to say that the transport system is entirely at fault; the blame also falls upon the Neanderthal lads who reside out near Shalvey. (As I previously mentioned, many suburbs pretend not to be Mounty County; Shalvey is one such suburb.) Stu once enlightened us with a story of some Shalvey boys rocking buses:
“And I was like, what? You rocked the buses? You live in Shalvey! How’re you gonna get anywhere? What do they say? Ahh nah cuz, we jus’ rock da kents for the rep, the cred. But without buses you’re stuck there - you cant even get to Mounty. Aye? Yer bu’ ya gotta. And cuz - we ran out dere, the side of the street, right? We ran dere’ an’ picked up da rock’s and frew em, shoutin, “awwh yeah, cuz. Shalvey reprasant!” But den some fookin’ gronk, a total gronk I tells ya, dey start makin’ our business their business, y’know? Dey dun told us not ta frow rocks! So we told em what fer, told da deekhead ta mind ‘is own fookin’ bishness!…Fair enough, fair enough. But something still doesn’t make sense; why do want reputation more than you want transport? Aye? Ya get da rep and people come namadder what. Ya rock some buses, an’ den no kent wanna fuck widge ya; ya one of da Shalvey boys - an’ ya don’t fuck with ‘em ‘cos they’ll fuck ya up, just like they did the buses.” Yep. And that, my friend, is the problem with this place.
Mounty County; we’re not just stupid, but violent as well. You see, the problem is that stupid people are my mortal enemies. And there’s just so many of them around here - Mount Druitt is a festering cesspool of idiocy.
Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Are you sitting comfortably? I don't really care, but you're more likely to keep reading if you're comfortable.
There's a moment for every pro wrestler, when you're standing backstage, waiting anxiously for the cue that sends you through the curtains, when time stops, the crowds roar dims, and you seriously leave yourself behind. A dead-mans moment, when you cease to exist, and find yourself held hostage by a character that may not be of your making. I was having one of those very moments. JessieLee departed, and Poison Ivy entered, stage left.
I watched the monitor, and ruminated on how the match wasn't working. The guys in the ring were both blessed with the kind of physique only ego and steroids could achieve, and although they looked the part, they weren't up to standard, and were so lacking in cardiovascular fitness that three minutes into the match they were showing signs of exhaustion. Their clumsiness annoyed me, in fact, most things in the business annoyed me..............
At last, I spotted my badly performed cue move, and as my the first notes of my theme music started, I burst through the curtains, aluminum shovel over my shoulder, paused for the camera, and then sprinted to the ring, rolled in, hit them both in of the back of the head with said trusty shovel, posed for the camera again, and then scarpered just as the comrades and/or sympathizers of the fallen came to rescue them.
Lets get this clear, pro wrestling is a hideous bitch goddess, and no good comes to those who worship at her temple. I was a veteran, and had done 18 years hard time as penance for being dumb enough to think it might be a fun thing to try. Which, by the way, it is. Fun, I mean. If you do it right. Otherwise I imagine it may hurt. The debate that has been ongoing since two atoms smashed together and started a chain reaction that culminated in life as we know it, over just how much of what happens in a wrestling ring is real will be put to rest now, by me. Its fake, mostly. But only as fake as repeatedly, intentionally falling down, sometimes from a fairly appreciable height. Take a moment now, if you will, and consider how much of your life you've spent specifically avoiding falling down, particularly from any kind of height, and maybe you can begin to appreciate the peculiar art that is known as pro wrestling.
We call it bumping, but it is the fine art of falling down without catastrophically injuring yourself. You learn, you train and it becomes natural. At least most of the time. Call it what you want- a sham, fake, faux, acting even, there's absolutely no denying that it is inherently dangerous, much more so than working at the supermarket, which I imagine is fraught with its own dangers. But they never ask you to throw yourself over a shoulder high rope, that I'd like to point out is designed to keep you in there, and land on the wooden dance floor at ringside. I've heard it speculated that it's actually padded and is cleverly disguised t look like a hard, unyielding wooden floor, but if that is the case, I must say that the masquerade is so perfect that the floor doesn't even feel padded. Every move is a bump. There's front bumps and back bumps, the occasional side bump, the arse bump and the rolling bumps. Add in some chain wrestling to make it look like you might really know what you're doing and that's basically it. Faces get cheered and heels gets booed, everyone gets paid, some people get the shits, and they all take off their tights and go home.
Except for the times when I wore the tights home. Which were many, because I firmly disliked getting undressed in the back of a truck surrounded by sweaty behemoths that smelled of wrestler, a unique and pungent odor particular to those who chose a career as a cartoonesque figure and then never washed their costume. This was to be one of the nights I wore the tights home, but thankfully it was by choice, and because they looked amazing. I may have been forty, by by god, I still looked good in spandex.
Spandex, as you may know, is a very unforgiving fabric. It's use in pro wrestling costumes is entirely justified because pro wrestling is an unforgiving vocation, and as surely as confused young men are drawn to the priesthood, thus sacrificing many of lifes pleasures, so we wrestlers also sacrifice. We sacrifice our bodies, our psyches, and our bank accounts, because let me tell you, rich wrestlers are few and far between. Conversely, there's an abundance of poverty stricken, injury racked, soon to he crippled workers out there, nursing bruises and waiting for old age and arthritis to do it's wicked form of magic on their aging and sorry carcasses.
My own carcass was feeling the toll. It's no career for a single mother. Do you know why? Being a single mother is a full time job. I was in the game as an income supplement. Cash in hand. And no one needs to know. It wasn't good money, $200 a show, but when we had a run of shows the tune changed. We were just finishing up a run of six shows and I was hoping to celebrate my suddenly cashed up status by getting gloriously drunk, telling some stories that veered between exaggeration and lies, smearing my mascara everywhere, staggering home as dawn broke, sleeping for three hours and then spending the afternoon alternately reminiscing on the evening before and regretting everything.
******************************************
Please note the above work is fiction. Any resemblance to anything is probably coincidental. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yeah, well, the stupid upload deleted the ending.
There's a moment for every pro wrestler, when you're standing backstage, waiting anxiously for the cue that sends you through the curtains, when time stops, the crowds roar dims, and you seriously leave yourself behind. A dead-mans moment, when you cease to exist, and find yourself held hostage by a character that may not be of your making. I was having one of those very moments. JessieLee departed, and Poison Ivy entered, stage left.
I watched the monitor, and ruminated on how the match wasn't working. The guys in the ring were both blessed with the kind of physique only ego and steroids could achieve, and although they looked the part, they weren't up to standard, and were so lacking in cardiovascular fitness that three minutes into the match they were showing signs of exhaustion. Their clumsiness annoyed me, in fact, most things in the business annoyed me..............
At last, I spotted my badly performed cue move, and as my the first notes of my theme music started, I burst through the curtains, aluminum shovel over my shoulder, paused for the camera, and then sprinted to the ring, rolled in, hit them both in of the back of the head with said trusty shovel, posed for the camera again, and then scarpered just as the comrades and/or sympathizers of the fallen came to rescue them.
Lets get this clear, pro wrestling is a hideous bitch goddess, and no good comes to those who worship at her temple. I was a veteran, and had done 18 years hard time as penance for being dumb enough to think it might be a fun thing to try. Which, by the way, it is. Fun, I mean. If you do it right. Otherwise I imagine it may hurt. The debate that has been ongoing since two atoms smashed together and started a chain reaction that culminated in life as we know it, over just how much of what happens in a wrestling ring is real will be put to rest now, by me. Its fake, mostly. But only as fake as repeatedly, intentionally falling down, sometimes from a fairly appreciable height. Take a moment now, if you will, and consider how much of your life you've spent specifically avoiding falling down, particularly from any kind of height, and maybe you can begin to appreciate the peculiar art that is known as pro wrestling.
We call it bumping, but it is the fine art of falling down without catastrophically injuring yourself. You learn, you train and it becomes natural. At least most of the time. Call it what you want- a sham, fake, faux, acting even, there's absolutely no denying that it is inherently dangerous, much more so than working at the supermarket, which I imagine is fraught with its own dangers. But they never ask you to throw yourself over a shoulder high rope, that I'd like to point out is designed to keep you in there, and land on the wooden dance floor at ringside. I've heard it speculated that it's actually padded and is cleverly disguised t look like a hard, unyielding wooden floor, but if that is the case, I must say that the masquerade is so perfect that the floor doesn't even feel padded. Every move is a bump. There's front bumps and back bumps, the occasional side bump, the arse bump and the rolling bumps. Add in some chain wrestling to make it look like you might really know what you're doing and that's basically it. Faces get cheered and heels gets booed, everyone gets paid, some people get the shits, and they all take off their tights and go home.
Except for the times when I wore the tights home. Which were many, because I firmly disliked getting undressed in the back of a truck surrounded by sweaty behemoths that smelled of wrestler, a unique and pungent odor particular to those who chose a career as a cartoonesque figure and then never washed their costume. This was to be one of the nights I wore the tights home, but thankfully it was by choice, and because they looked amazing. I may have been forty, by by god, I still looked good in spandex.
Spandex, as you may know, is a very unforgiving fabric. It's use in pro wrestling costumes is entirely justified because pro wrestling is an unforgiving vocation, and as surely as confused young men are drawn to the priesthood, thus sacrificing many of lifes pleasures, so we wrestlers also sacrifice. We sacrifice our bodies, our psyches, and our bank accounts, because let me tell you, rich wrestlers are few and far between. Conversely, there's an abundance of poverty stricken, injury racked, soon to he crippled workers out there, nursing bruises and waiting for old age and arthritis to do it's wicked form of magic on their aging and sorry carcasses.
My own carcass was feeling the toll. It's no career for a single mother. Do you know why? Being a single mother is a full time job. I was in the game as an income supplement. Cash in hand. And no one needs to know. It wasn't good money, $200 a show, but when we had a run of shows the tune changed. We were just finishing up a run of six shows and I was hoping to celebrate my suddenly cashed up status by getting gloriously drunk, telling some stories that veered between exaggeration and lies, smearing my mascara everywhere, staggering home as dawn broke, sleeping for three hours and then spending the afternoon alternately reminiscing on the evening before and regretting everything.
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Please note the above work is fiction. Any resemblance to anything is probably coincidental. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yeah, well, the stupid upload deleted the ending.
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