Mangled Thoughts

Meant to do this earlier in the week, alert readers to a calamity.

Early this afternoon, one will pack the fly rod, the elephant express load rifle, the duck blaster, waders, scotch, cigars, as yet unread Spectators, a couple of volumes from my adviser, Bertie Wooster - taking Jeeve’s advice has always served well I assure you, into the charabanc and, with pedal to the metal, fleeing the site of the Kremlin, Melbourne, arrive at a hospitable destination for a fortnight’s worth of killing fauna, sitting out, in this fine spring weather, a garden socking away G. and T. and, generally, being as indolent as I can possibly be. Yah, “life” , as the hordes of delinquent youfs turned out of zoos each year would say, “ will suck for a couple of weeks”.

Yes, I feel like a snake in the grass, betraying our friends in the U.S. as their Civil War Day looms like headlights in a pea souper of a fog. One will not be able to bring to bear the heartening babble of Nostradamus. It is a calamity. Old Nostrils didn’t help Howard kick Lathamite butt and how, he masterminded the flight path of golden winged Victory. One will throw in a quickie, however, for Americans in this their hour of peril : Latham is bad, a national socialist who, if he’d won offce, would make Bracks seem like a modest bar-fly - yes, not bar support. A Kerry win, however, that would be like a mongrel dog which has drunk a bottle of meth and pukes over the lounge room rug, a very large rug. Mongrel dogs can be shot, perhaps Kerry should be, in view of his many crimes, but for some odd reason, that is not permitted - you can tell, Bracks and his fellow commie thugs still live.

So: Typhoon by Joseph Conrad.

The drift is: young man and his ship about to sail into a stiff southerly breeze, a ship beater of a breeze, a beeze to stir that odd cocktail of courage, thrall and a rumbling deep within of terror undiluted. If crew and ship were a martini, they come shaken not stirred.

Conrad wrote Typhoon for his son, who was soon to depart for the trenches of WWI, a father comforting his son about to endure a stiff breeze. And all he is saying to his son is, whatever he faces, it is whether he stands up to it, how he stands up to it, and how he will merge at the end of it all, counts. Kippling would have appreciated it, his son was killed in action along with most of his battalion on a rough day out in the breeze, and did the distressing job of writing a history of his son’s regt.

One afternoon, recorded in his secret diary, I managed to attach to my paws to and run off with it very fast - bluebottles are just too damned fit these days -gad was I puffed, the insides not only hurt, they heaved, felt sicker than a turps drinking dog, is the following:

Fed at the trough. Had only dropped into the club for a tipple and a smoke when M. walked in. Always enjoy his company so stayed. Asked about T. I’ve just begun. Said, it’s a good’un. What’s it about M asked. I s.: about young man facing danger head on. Anything else, M asked. I repd.: Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s also cocking a snook at a mummy’s boy, John Kerry, old Nostrils wrote about, you remember the Nostril’s m.s. I showed you, about the fairy and traitor who wants to be President of the United States which, according to old Nostrils will do much to scourge the earth of nasty thugs.

M.: I do my dear friend, vividly, that Kerry, if he were alive today why he’d only be a rent boy to queers.

I: That’s the one M.,yes. So the short and the long of it is, in T. I’ve concealed a bit of the warning in the book.

M.: How so?

I: The contrasts, one gallant sailor against a boy pretending to be a man. The one is out on a wild ocean, the other galumphs about in a dinghy in the enclosure of a Yacht club, Rhode Island I believe, pretending to be sailing a launch deep into enemy territory, in the course of which cruise eliminating half of ,according to Nostrils’ m..s.- the pertinent bit about Kerry’s fantasies, an Army called the N.V.A. , to penetrate an enemy H.Q. , swipe top secret plans and make it all the way back alive, and all the while commanding the U.S. army in a country called Vietnam.

Face it M., how can sane adults even contemplate putting a bed wetting story teller in charge of , what is to come, one of the finest armies in the world? Incomprehensible, I say.

M: If he were here today, ran for No.10, won by some bad stroke of luck, I’m pretty sure Parliament would just shoot him as soon as he entered chamber. Why, I was chatting with L. the other day, he was groaning about that bloody B. According to L., every man of them , right to the last obscure backbencher are agreed, he must go. SO, they’ve put in an order into Stangles and Rope for a portable gallows, finely decorated, which can be used in the new Parliament. B. might save himself some embarrassment right now and shoot himself. I mean to say, who wants to be noted in the history book for the unique disitnction of having been the only Prime Minister, indeed even just an m.p., to have been hung inside the House, I ask you, a chap would have to be stark raving mad or a moron, a stark raving mad moron.

I.: Quite so, M.

M.: Does N. predict this Kerryboy will win and be hung, drawn and quartered inside the Oval Office.

I: No, Nostrils declares, the U.S. voters will lynch him polling day.

M. Good enough for me Jo, good enough for me, can’t let twits like that command an army, they , the army, wouldn’t stand a chance, the bastard would knock them off before they even met any enemy they’re supposed to set about destroying. I tell you, the lads at the Regt. wouldn’t suffer that. Why, young Freddie was saying only the other day, if the P.M. makes J. Minister of Warfare, he will march his platoon straight away on Downing Street and `make sure the ugly doesn’t live long enough to issue a single jot of a single order’.

I sympathise, even checked with C.in C. , old Busby, if any man who can be trusted to do his duty unswervingly it’s old Busby, and I quote: `Should that eventuality arise, there is no legal obstacle, young Freddie might even be up for a D.S.O. , gad, rare thing, even could contemplate Sir Freddie, though would stop short of recommending a V.C., would be a smidgeon short of that.’

Luncheon out the way, we shoved off to our several parts.

There you have it , as dark as things seem, Nostradamus is definite on it, Kerry will be booted black and blue from one end of the U.S. to the other. So black and blue, Kerry might fly to Alaska and sit on some pack ice, just to ease the pain a bit. Yah, alright, so he’ll get a bit of frost bite and hypothermia and probably not return, being lost in a wilderness and all that, but he’s a moose after all, he’s told us so about his moose sniffing days, and moose enjoy, thrilled by it, living in freezing cold climes, lost in some god forsaken nightmare of a forest stuck in between some unscaleable mountain range in the middle of nowhere many have not heard off and can’t locate on a map, I’m sure I can’t, and I wouldn’t care to check a map should Kerry take a side trip to cool a scorched backside. Flip, one is not inclined to leave the warm fireside to rescue a moose lost where it belongs anyway, and just damned silly, you don’t treat wild animals used to living in frozen wastelands as house pets, consider the carpet for one thing . No problems if it ran rampant through the house of course, just lift a rifle off the rack and shoot it before it does too much damage but, it is best the moose be left to roam in the wild. Perhaps he’d meet up with Bob Brown and, come the rutting season, they mate and produce something hideous, Kerry would be a lucky, happy man, no one sane would be, but John and Bob, why , they’d just be two peas in a very large and frozen pod, with hideaous little spastics cavorting around their fetlocks - can’t get better than that eh. Someone whisper to Bob , “quick Bob, grab an airline seat for Alaska, Kerry has eyes for you and feeling a little randy”, and Bob would be off like a shot.

And all in that book, Typhoon, which many have mistakenly believed was only a tale about courage, character, and nerve before a stiff southerly breeze.