THE GRAVY TRAIN

Recently as anyone with a TV, a computer, a subscription to Woman's Day, or a Centrelink card would know--- a young mother; Shweta Verma of picturesque Ashburton, VIC, failed to have the pram brake secured whilst she hitched up her pants "for a moment" and her young son and the pram popped onto the tracks at a train station where it was run over by an approaching train. Fortunately for Ms. Verma (or is it Vermin?) and her son the baby did not become a falafel roll but was rescued relatively unscatched by a teenager. Happy Ending. Especially for the other people at the station and subsequent stops who would have been held up for hours waiting for Connex to figure out how to put a new train on the tracks while wiping baby bits off the wheels of the offending train.

Well, before you can say "thank Vishnu and significantly high undercarriage clearances" Ms. Verma did the rounds on TV en route to her $100,000 exclusive sale of the story to the popular women's magazine. By popular, I mean that the print is big enough for it's core readership (woman who left school before Year 6 and have 3 or more children and dream of a Delfin home) to enjoy without getting bogged down with small pictures or challenging words.

This poses an interesting shred in the fabric of conventional workplace apprenticeships in Australia, with now an astonishing 96% of all Indian, Pakistani, and and Sri Lankan mothers residing in Australia claiming they will push their babies in front of a speeding train in order to gain $100,000 cash. Somewhat similar to the premise of THE BOX, but without Cameron Diaz and dropping the critical "person you do not know" catch to get the money. The same survey amongst Chinese and Korean mothers produced the same figures, but were only willing to sacrifice their female children. Japanese mothers surveyed said "only if my child resembled a dolphin" and it should be noted the Sri Lankan mothers wanted to sell the pram wreckage separately on eBAY, and it was predicated on them getting off the boat first and explaining to them just what the fuck a train was. But they liked the cash payment part and understood that without fail. Most of the skippy mothers said they'd rather wait until their kid was old enough to go backpacking in Croatia and get murdered or get totally fucking lost bushwalking and rescued because they'd rather be fucked than endure public transport in Melbourne for any amount of money. And I'm not against cash payments for great stories. Trisha Broadbridge deserved any amount of money for having to endure nothing but endless footy stories from new hubby Troy over and over and over for her entire honeymoon including during sex and must have thought all her Christmases had come at once (or Boxing Days to be more accurate) when the tsunami hit. And you had to feel for Stuart Diver, listening to his wife whining "it's cold Stuart...STUART...it's cold...I'm not a good swimmer and I didn't want to come skiing either this year you selfish bum!" for about 73 hours straight whilst he was freezing his ass off and wondering if the 4 Star Accommodation would have been worth the extra $10 per night; not including breakfast. "Okay honey, soon as I get these 43 tonnes of building materials off my face I'll make plans for a warmer holiday next year! FUCK!"

Think of the future? In twenty years there would be no taxi drivers in Australia and a virtual plague of funeral homes catering to tots springing up. Woman's Day would have the "Train Baby Calendar Centrefold" each year with the best-looking baby of each month that 'went training...so-to-speak". Videos of dead babies would be on YouTube with the music track (sic) "The Tracks of My Tears". It'll be worse than Australian Idol and I suspect even Rove will have a few baby carcasses on his desk to pick up ratings a bit.

It's a tough one. I believe we've really opened up a Pandora's Box here with cash payments for mini miracles that would normally be payment enough for the 'victim' just to have survived the ordeal. Maybe if Shweta hadn't purchased her pants from Omar the Tentmaker of Narre Warren or had thought of something preventative like maybe, a fucking belt---she wouldn't have emailed her kid to the bank.

I know the experience because I was a young father once. When young Gein 2.o was a baby, I used to sometimes get dialed out of my mind for days and come Mondays accidentally put him on the roof of my car and put my phone into the baby seat and drive off in subzero Midwestern winter weather to take him to the Phillip Garrido Childcare Centre in Northwest Eastern Sioux City, Iowa. I'd be driving down icy streets screaming at him to stop making 'ringing sounds' and realize it wasn't him but a large mobile phone brick ringing away in the back seat while the young bugger rolled off the roof screaming to high hell and trying to grab onto the trunk lid before sliding off into traffic. I knew it was him because I could recognize his little red face crying a river onto the back window en route to Pavement Land reflected in the rear view mirror. I despised that because not only did I miss important calls (voicemail not being common back then) but I had to stop and freeze my ass off to tippy toe back and get him from under whatever Buick he had slid under. Did I ever try and sell my story to the Sioux City Journal or Wisconsin Cheesefag Tribune? No fucking way! No harm no foul!

Today for some inordinate reason young Gein still cries when he boards the train from Federation Square to his humpy near St. Kilda where he moonlights as a Pixel Acquisition Consultant for Bit Torrent. He is saving up enough money to open up a Vampire Coffee Shop and Internet Cafe called BITE TORRENT (c) and he is focused and mature---but still cries alot around trains. It shits me no end.

So I'm going to take this beautiful Saturday off, since I don't feel like working and only have enough cash on me for a flutter or two, and head out to Flemington where I will wait amongst the rose bushes until I see a spectacularly drunk and heinously large and ugly female racegoer hanging out of an impossibly small skirt, and push her in front of the first goddamn train I can. This will not only make room for more suitably sized people and enable 24% more passengers travelling home from the Derby, but will also provide a bit of fun for members of the Montmorency Football Club as they clean up the tracks and find a near naked female torso---since they won't be going back to Phillip Island for some time...

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE FUN--the black plague widens

I remember when I was a young boy growing up in Wisconsin, back in the 1950's. That time of year (Autumn) was special. It was a wonderful time sitting on the back porch of Great Great Grandaddy Gein's cheese plantation watching all his slaves pick the cheese from the fromage trees in the blazing sun. The sight of them lugging those massive aromatic bags slung over their shoulders silhouetted in the setting sun as they sung hymns and wrestled with those pesky leg chains always made me giggle and be proud to be an American. 'Pappy (as we used to call him) used to pound a gallon of scotch before noon, which was immediately before he started pounding Great Great Granma Gein---and he used to teeter back and forth and tell us the same old story every fucking night but when you're a kid it's like a hypnotic metronome ticking back and forth and putting you to sleep with a big smile on your face.

'Pappy, who in his school days in rural Illinois used to manufacture Rohypnol for some of the wealthier people in town, actually had gone to school with Abraham Lincoln and they had stayed fast friends for years. "Honest Abe" as he was known before he became the 16th President---was known in Washington as a massive partier and big on the Laudanum scene at the time. (Lincoln used to love DEADWOOD and would always have people over to the White House to get high, watch episodes, and yell "cocksuckers!" out the window at passersby). But one night, 'Pappy' gave him a batch of Rohypnol and as legend has it, Abbie Baby disappeared for almost two fucking years! He woke up next to his wife--who legend also has it was the meanest ugliest white woman in history until Laura Andrassy came along---bolted upright in a cold sweat, shat the bed, looked around the room and screamed to no one in particular:

"I freed WHAT!!!!???"

Well, I don’t have to tell you what happened the next day. Lincoln traveled to North Carolina to have a post-war brunch and debrief with Al Gore’s great-great-grandpa Al “Hardcore” Gore, Sr on his tobacco plantation where they both decided they’d made some big mistakes and had to move on. Sweltering in 110° heat on the porch sipping mint juleps and Laudanum, 'Hardcore" blamed Lincoln for the demise of his slaves which meant he had to start dealing with unions and criminals (the two basically inseparable) and declared "one day one of my boys is gonna be President and fix this fucking country up AND sort out this global fucking warming" as he wiped his brow with the panties of his housemaid, Jemima. Lincoln shook his hand, smiled knowingly, and said "I've sworn off politics. I need this shit like a hole in the head---I'm gonna go see a play tonight and retire..."

Those were the days. Back then if a black man came running at you carrying a big stick and threatened to take your money and steal your blonde girlfriend there'd be hell to pay! Today we call that same man Tiger Woods.

So it was almost a hundred years later that John F. Kennedy got up and gave that famous speech about civil rights and that since there wasn't slavery anymore, that everyone---including Canadian children and Gomer Pyle could and should go to the same school--even if it meant putting them on buses and driving them 83 hours each way to prove it. My mom and dad had been saving up for a Lincoln Continental convertible just like Kennedy used to ride a lot because they both admired him. They liked his sense of fairness and the fact that he took drugs and fucked Marilyn Monroe and wore nice suits. In later years they were upset that their car lost 93% of it's value one November afternoon when they took it to Dallas to return some books. Returning books has caused a lot of grief over the years, I'll tell you.

Knowing that the demise of American cars, returning books, and the country as a whole was around the corner, I left for Australia in 1995 just ahead of the PC wave and when I arrived one of the more popular TV shows here was in it's waning moments---HEY HEY IT'S SATURDAY. I was amused because the show wasn't even on a fucking Saturday but midweek. This is one of the endearing things about Australia to this day. Time and schedule doesn't matter. A TV show or sporting event may or may not start at the scheduled time and certainly won't end with any regularity or confirmation. A TV network here (sic) might show the ending or simply whisk you away to the news or more importantly a cricket match being played in some pathetic fly-infested third world outpost where they are continually perplexed about why their buses or hotels were under constant attack from local terrorists. Go figure.

But "Hey Hey" was interesting. It was like "The Ed Sullivan Show" but with guests of no particular importance other than they had been important somewhere else at some previous time, and were available. It had wonderful music, strange live ensemble performances from local children who had escaped the special bus, a man with a head on a stick, a pedophile running around in a gigantic duck costume, relatively hot women, and a host who whilst engaging, was certain to be a closet alcoholic and wife-beater as he just had that look---kind of like Don Adams in Get Smart. It was engaging to watch and I felt a certain warmth sitting on the sofa in Paddington popping large amounts of high quality ecstasy scooped up from the sidewalk aftermath of Mardi Gras,and drinking Bundaberg rum through a straw. I felt instantly Australian, and cemented this by stopping work and registering at Centerlink with a fake NZ passport I had lifted from a transexual backpacker named Clover who later went on to new lows as Lord Mayor of Sydney. Apologies to Laura Andrassy for the previous remark....

By the time I had worn out my welcome in Sydney and the little woman (GeinSpouse 2.0) had realized I wasn't going join her in stupid activities like "saving money" or "coming home on time or at all" and banished me to Melbourne, "Hey Hey" was only a memory. Australia had found cable television (or semblance thereof) and you could actually watch quality (read: AMERICAN) TV series within the same decade that they were aired in the USA. The era of fat country cops in shows named after a fucking dog and variety comedy shows hosted by dwarves who were neither funny nor particularly talented had arrived.

Last evening (sigh) I was ensconced in paperwork deciphering mounds of Excel spreadsheets, receipts, notes, bank statements, and years of garbage collecting with Glen Wheatley and Wesley Snipes assembling a tax return that would at least appear like I had a modicum of business knowledge--noting that prostitutes and cocaine were items that are tax deductible so long as they were during the opening and closing hours of a film festival or within 50 metres of a Beyond Blue office. Without warning, our book keeper, who has worked tirelessly for three years without one cent of remuneration but has probably consumed $98,450 of champagne per quarter in this loyal service---shunted us over to the TV whilst gargling her Moet and burbling "Ess Hay Hee Ooos Sooterday". Yes, Part Deux of the "Hey Hey It's Saturday" reunion was live on TV and certainly cause to drop all work in Australia---not that one ever needed a reason.

There was a wonderful skit in progress of five grown men reprising their Jackson Five skit from 20 years ago. Led by an Indian (an out of work taxi driver turned cardiologist) in whiteface as Michael Jackson, and the rest in blackface---they danced and sang and brought the time before my arrival in the Year 6 B.G. (Before Gein) to the delight of many, or most...or some.

One of the judges in the skit comp was the previously interesting and mildly talented Harry Connick, Jr. Best known as the only white man living in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina (when George Bush called him the week before and said "I'm a gonna bring a big fukkin' storm down there and clean up the area---why don't you jus' go on tour and get your white ass outta there Harry?") and also known eons ago as the guy who married Victoria Secret goddess Jill Goodacre. I used to have her lingerie photos in my wallet when I was a travelling man, and keep them handy for the bathroom or bedroom or any other time I needed some assistance before Viagra was invented. ( Please note these were photos taken BEFORE she had three children and is now modeling for Big and Tall Girls of Des Moines) I still have a few matted glossies slipped between the mattress and bedframe that GeinLove (c) hasn't yet found and will have to take action lest she want to 'flip the mattress' sometime soon...

Well, as you would know by now, Prince Harry went mental and gave the band a "zero" and was embarrassed and upset to be part of a 'racist' performance. A white man, from the Deep South, embarrassed to be part of a 'racist' performance. (once more please, with vigor:) A white man, from the Deep South, embarrassed to be part of... okay okay you've got the picture.

I called my black friend Rick this morning in Thailand to wake him up and ask him about this. I suspect that his name is Rick, and I know he lives in Cambodia--but he calls himself David and has a Thai address. I've never met him but we've been friends for a couple years. I know he's black because he's in the film industry, is from New York City originally and is a Giants Fan. I admit I've also seen his picture on Facebook but I knew he was black when he said the Giants were the greatest team in NFL history. If he was in musical theatre and from Sydney I would know he is white and gay. If he liked Rugby League and pack raping young girls I'd know he's from Western Sydney via Beirut. But that's not the point. The point is that in all the years I've spoken to him the 'black' thing has never come up in any of our hours of conversations and SKYPEs and emails and things.

So I tried to ask David what his thoughts were about the whole thing but he was busy frying up some chicken necks and pigs' ears and with eleven children under twelve in the house he was way too busy to talk and said we'd talk later when he could rustle up some prepaid and call me back in a week or two.

So I'm in the dark here (no pun intended). If you dress up and do a skit on religious Jews, it's FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. If you make fun of Arabs, it's THE CHASER AT THE G20. If you make fun of Indians, you've never been in a fucking taxi in Melbourne or Sydney. But if you do a parody or skit about blacks and you are not blacks, you're a racist inhuman yobbo redneck motherfucker. Please explain? (NB: In Australia doing a skit about children with cancer has repercussions too but not internationally. Proof positive people fear blacks more than children with cancer for no logical reason)

What would Obama say about this? John Safran was going to tell us but I suspect that show will be lifted before it sees the light (or darkness) of day. I'm perfect content with the abolition of lynch mobs and the dissolution of manchester sales (eye holes sold separately) in Alabama and I am proud of my Four Tops and Diana Ross CD collection (which I do keep on the bottom shelf, in back, behind the Neil Young boxed sets, mind you). So when did it happen that suddenly only blacks were immune from criticism? Was it when O.J. got set free and LA celebrated by burning the entire south side to the fucking ground in pure joy? When will Las Vegas people learn he's misunderstood and let him free to go back and play golf?

The point of this, and there is a point my friends, is that when you do something out of satire, entertainment, pure joy, homage, or nostalgia as what we saw last night and most hopefully within this tome----it is something to admire and enjoy. It is not ignorance nor hatred nor racism. Rather the opposite--- it is the ignorance and fear that cause those who condemn it most, as those who fear that they might be seen as racist or ignorance for understanding or enjoying the event.

Maybe Harry Connick, Jr needs to take a step back and see things in context. Maybe we all need to lighten up a bit and understand the difference between well-meant entertainment and hatred is fear and ignorance, small-mindedness and insanity.

Mebbe the boy needs to get hisself some manners?

Kill the Premier! Cut off the judge's ears! Indian taxi drivers must die!

Now that we have your attention....

Okay, here's the new order. The new world order. 92.8% of all GeinWorld readers are basically moral individuals. We occasionally drive drunk just to get our cars home (how the fuck else do we get them home?) We tell the occasional racist joke (what good are Sudanese anyway?) and other than recreational drugs and sleeping with our daughters (California and Gippsland residents only) we're all generally pretty good folks.

So now it's time for justice. Premier John (as in toilet) Brumby goes to fucking India. Why? He's worried about a few fucking cab drivers mauled or killed? They had it coming! Indian students? Studying what? Telephone sales? Oops! Sorry! Can I have my knife back? Colonel Armstrong Custer had it right when he said "an Indian's head is worth more than his soul..." Although he originally meant American Indians it was only because he wasn't well-travelled. Even the most revered (and over rated) Aussie author Robert Hughes agreed with me after a well-oiled interracial vehicular sojourn in Western Australia.

Here at GeinWorld racism is abhorrent...but I swear to fucking God you fill my taxi with rogan josh and take me to the wrong address and I'll stab you through your turban until you bleed like a stuffed pig. A halal pig if that's accurate depending on your religious belief.

Further...A drunken Puneet Puneet (eliminate anyone with a duplex moniker regardless of their origin--trust me on this one) kills an Aussie and escapes with the wrong passport back to CurryVille... ???? Please explain...:

1. How the fuck could Customs (which worries more about white 60 year old males bringing in vitamins than a STOLEN FUCKING PASSPORT) fuck this up? "Oh sir, are you bringing in honey or bark from New Zealand...?? Please let the raghead curry muching killer cunt next to you step ahead of the queue so he can go back to Bollywood, please..."

2. Why would Vic Police and Fed Police maybe let this cunt have bail? (At least he wasn't showing "suppressed pictures" at a gallery exhibition in Carlton. Priority One here! Make sure artists or people with too many parking tickets are arrested but let murders and rapists shop at Coles and Woolies so they don't miss out on bargains...)

3. Brumby (who sucked Brack's dick after it took him 4 years to find it which is fair because he doesn't have one of his own) is worried more about a half dozen future telemarketers and unwashed cab drivers than an Australian citizen who was run over like a chicken on a country road. Fuck him. "It wasn't a priority.." That's what that crackhead truckie said when he forgot to look both ways at Kerang a few years ago...

4. Sorry about the ham-handed segue here... I'm starving and have to order a pizza... A fucked up Narre Warren man (I know, an oxymoron at best) hacks off a dog's ears and tails and it takes TWO MONTHS to psychologically asses him??? He's a cross between Austen Tayshus and Hannibal Lecter. HANG HIM! I swear if a judge lets him off without significant time in jail lets ensure the judge has his ears and dick (or breasts if a female judge ---equal opportunity supporter here...) hacked off and we'll assess whomever does that for a few months and then make him/her head of Stonnington Council.

GeinWorld is offering a rare competition for readers:

Bring us the head of any Indian taxi driver or student who calls you trying to sell you long distance, discount energy, or computer support for each day it takes to get Puneet Puneet's ass back here for trial and we'll give you 10% off a Labor Party Membership. Head must be intact and in semi-working order. Delivery and competition TACs to follow.

BONUS! Bring the ears and tail of John Brumby and win a hiking trip to the Blue Mountains with Minister Tim Holding and Chemotherapy Expert Rob Hulls. Details to follow.

Operators are standing by...

What do Michael Hutchence and Stephen Milne have in common?

Yes, correct! Both are world class chokers. But that's where the similarities end. Michael Hutchence was basically fucking himself when he jerked off into the TARDIS and left INXS behind him and traveled to wherever the fuck it is people who have everything in life travel to. Stephen Milne, on the other hand, decided to jerk off at the MCG in front of 100,000 close friends and essentially fuck all the St. Kilda fans on the planet in three quick strokes. Hutchence's private choke--a superior career move-- left behind a legacy of great music and cemented his status as unquestionably the coolest, sexiest male rock star rock star in Australian history. There is no contest here and any cumsickle who argues with me on this can go discuss it with Shirley Strahan at the next Rotary Club meeting...

Milne, on the other hand, choked in front of a few million TV fans and a stadium full of rain-soaked victims who paid the equivalent of a mortgage in Ascot Vale to freeze their asses off and watch John Farnham lip synch the chorus of the only half decent song he ever did. What top drawer entertainment! The difference here--again; so many details---is that unless you're an Albanian heroin dealer or gypsy or criminal of some lower-than-flounder calibre you would never admit to having a mortgage in Ascot Vale let alone ever having been to the toilet there. But you could admit to having sat in freezing rain for hours to see an electric Grand Final and having been on hand to watch Stephen Milne 'choke and stream' his way to the $25,000 cheque he'll be cashing at Bendigo Bank in Highton on Monday, which he'll use to take Cameron Mooney and an eight ball together to the Rydges in North Melbourne for a gay cluster fuck while they watch home movies he shot back in 2004. But everyone has a hobby and is entitled to privacy. Ask Gary Ablett, Sr. You can bet he bought Junior an alarm clock after his stay at the Park Hyatt in case the youngster celebrates a bit too hard this weekend.

Regrettably, after a particularly nasty bought of surgery I returned home under heavy sedation and in a modicum of pain was forced to watch the match from my sofa at GeinWorld, in front of the 94" Laser Infused Mega Ray (c) LCD Plasmatic Video Screen that I've been asked to test for Dr. Geoffrey Edelstein. He is convinced that future Brownlow broadcasts featuring his strumpet (I couldn't find the 'accent' key for fianceee' so thought the thesaurus was undeniably helpful here) will look "elegant" and that the TV can actually digitally remove the medically horrific effects that "WTS" (White Trash Syndrome) inflicted on the poor girl. And by poor I mean taste. This TV will allegedly make everything exponentially improved. Supremely better than HD and Blu Ray. In fact, some of the match attendees who accompanied Gein-Love and myself on the sofa such as the attending nurse from Monash with the endless bucket of Panadein Fortes thought "it made Brenden Fevola seem like a Rhodes Scholar even whilst drinking". Other comments were "it makes Rove seem taller and actually funny" and "wow it makes Bindi Irwin look adorable and human". We dismissed these comments as a result of two many Lychee Dacquiries and Oxycontin but even Collingwood fans thought it made Nicky Winmar look two shades lighter, so who knows? Maybe it will make Chris Judd watch more Steven Segal films? Who the fuck knows? By the way, let it be known that the Cats deserved yesterday's win fair-and-square; they were the better team on the ground---no hard feelings from Geinocology here. But let's not forget that Hitler could run faster than FDR and the Nazis had better uniforms, too. Or that George Bush ran better torture camps in Guantanimo than the Japs did near Changi, even though David Hicks deserved his fate. So on any given day... (Editor's Note)

Regardless, Down Under the footy season is over. (Unless you're a criminal, Samoan, from Western Sydney, or any combination thereof) Even Eric Bana was speechless. I was hoping he'd get into The Beast and wait outside the "G" and run over Stephen Milne and Cameron Mooney and do the whole world a fucking favor. If he'd done it last night it would be in time for him to get an Oscar nomination in 2010 which would have been sweet. But for now he'll have to wait. But I could see it in his eyes. That's why he put on the shades when I txted him.

Then again, as a moment in time---we might be emerging from the TARDIS ourselves a year from now and life could be totally different:

The Saints might win a tight rematch with the Cats and Stephen Milne might kick the winning goal at the buzzer?

Michael Hutchence might come back for one more tour and sing "The Voice" with John Farnham at the "G"

People in Marysville might decide to rebuild the community as an amusement park called "FIRE WORLD" and hire Markson Sparks to publicize it.

Jesus might return.

Mohammed might visit the glory hole.

Ron Barassi might be able to defend himself on Fitzroy Street.

Suzie Wilks might visit Moe for a segment on POSTCARDS.

John Lennon only asked us to Imagine...

WHAT IS FAIR? WHO IS DESERVING?

Since I was forced to leave the United States in the mid 90's under duress from my colleagues both in the entertainment industry and erstwhile penal colony that became the YooEssEh?, and move to Australia (and proudly become a citizen/denizen) there are still some innate idiosyncratic transmogrificational mutations of Western civilization (sic) that absolutely confound my limited analytical skills more than that big green fucking "E" that accompanies any Excel spreadsheet sent unsolicited from either my travelling business partner or GeinLover (c) who now has begun her relentless and systematic blitzkrieg into my Fortress of Solitude to dwell within for time eternal (or until gypsies rule the Earth, there is a female US President, or there is a Centrelink website that allows us to download petrol through a straw ). But she is hot, educated, and captured the last granules of GeinRomanticism (TM) available in this lifetime and gets a free pass so don't even go there, you naysayers of heartfelt cupidistic nanotechnology.

One of them is the 'fair go' doctrine that for no reason applies to the retail purchase of "big events" such as the impending "AFL GRAND FINAL". This is the Australian equivalent of the Super Bowl and although Aussies can't do awards ceremonies (our attempts at the Oscars and AFIs are like fingerpainting with Sierra Leone children devoid of hands) we do have the most outstanding sports championships; especially AFL which is like gridiron without pads sans massive hits but with NBA speed. The AFL is run by an archaic group of businessmen (like the NFL in the USA) who comprise seemingly Orthodox Jews who pretend they don't watch Friday night games, Greek restaurateurs who whose personal hygiene rivals that of their pariah-like outlets, a fat fuck who makes baby products, a former Muslim drug dealer who wasn't fit enough to walk the footpath in front of his own house in Brighton, a street savvy game show host who hails from the same suburb as the former Muslim fatality who is the puppet master behind Australia's biggest TV network, and various other non-telegenic but interesting machers of modern Australian business. They have somehow dictated that if you're a junkie fuck with nine children of various denominations and sucking snot out of a sewer for your daily crust that you have the same right to a ticket as someone who is working 90 hours a week and giving almost half of their income for taxes to feed and clothe your pockmarked highly-available ass (arse). To wit: There are no "scalpers" allowed. Meaning you queue for a month to get tickets and pay for them and suddenly companies like TICKETEK (who give blowjobs to corporate Australia to operate -- which is good because if you see most of corporate Australia a blowjob would be impossible for them otherwise... including the Prime Minister's wife who now has lost enough weight to get both down and up on her knees which she couldn't find before the most recent election---with or without a concentration camp, Kyle). Why can't we pay top price for top tickets? Why should people who don't pay taxes and are on the dole have the same rights to buy tickets as the people supporting them? Please explain? Why is it that Cricket Australia bans scalping when the only people who would PAY big bucks to go to a fucking cricket match are more retarded than people who think Maoris have careers after Rugby League or as strip club bouncers on King Street or the Cross in Sydney? Puzzling! The average Australian (esp Queenslander) sports fan can barely catch a train in Germany let alone find the fucking stadium so why penalize him/ her? nbbb

So there are zillions of fans who lined up like Russian wives on a breadline, paid their dues, and now their tickets might be void. SURPRISE! Why not have people who contribute to society be able to log onto Ebay or whatever an buy tickets? Who cares how much they pay? Why not give 10% of seats FOR FREE to the great unwashed and let the rest of us who went past Year 5 in school to pay whateverthefuckwewantto to get a seat?

It worked for Stephen Spielberg? He bought an Emmy for Toni Collette earlier yesterday and he wouldn't even know what the fuck the AFL is? This is one of the most successful Hollywood producers ever and yet he thought Steve Irwin knew the difference between front front door of a 7/11 and the tail of a killer sting ray. Ooops!

Anyway, if I was Tina Fey I'd go down on Sarah Palin before I paid homage to Toni Collette but then I haven't worked the stripper poles as hard as Diablo Cody so what would I know?

Anyway, speaking of fuckers, I was quite surprised that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia (Australia--kind of like being Captain of the Titanic and saying "it floated longer than anyone suspected...") called a bunch of his staff "fuckers". I love it! This week President Josef "Dark Stalin" Obama called Kanye West a "jackass" and Kevin "Buttplug" Rudd called key staff "fuckers". These guys are human! Well played! Of course the press is worried that Obama spent more time considering a 2nd rate musican who if he was white wouldn't even get a recording contract, and family groups are concerned that Rudd who has never been fucked without money changing hands knew how to conjugate "fucker" properly and in context.

But this is what the world revolves around. Pointless day2day rubbish. And we love it.

I think we can all relax now that two great Western leaders have their finger on the button. If they cross-collateralize at the current G20 I will go back to taking yoga and fellate myself on YouTube. If Kevin Rudd calls Obama "a fucking jungle bunny" and Obama tells Rudd "I'm happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Bob Hawke was the greatest Labour fuckwit in Ozzie history" then this blog will end faster than a first date in Antioch with an eleven-year-old or a family reunion in the Latrobe Valley (Party of two?)

It's what we dream about. It's what makes us great. It's what makes me about to retire.

SHOULD POOR PEOPLE BE ALLOWED TO BREED?

Now that we have your attention.

I saw a film at the AFI screenings the other night and have been mulling what to share, if anything. And it deserves a post for a number of reasons. BLESSED. It's from Anna Kokkinos who brought us the very confrontational and bold HEAD ON. And then lost her way with BOOK OF REVELATIONS. But that's okay. HEAD ON was awesome and singlehandedly ensured Alex Dimitriades of no major lead roles for the rest of his life but fate deals an interesting hand sometimes. Ask Dorothy Stratton.

Anyway, as the only person in the cinema who wasn't gay or dressed completely in black I stood out like Crazy John Ilhan at this year's City to Surf Run and took my seat---an aisle, right--near the front at the beautiful ACMI Cinema at Fed Square. The ACMI cinemas are an anomaly as they are the most beautiful and technically enabled digital Godhead megascreens in the Southern Hemisphere. They lie empty 93% of the time unless there's an AFI function or something else going on and if you try and hire them for something no one will faciliate a deal ensuring they lie empty 93% of the time. There is no popcorn. Though we were given invisible brand champagne and / or sparkling water to being. But there was no popcorn. What kind of fucking cinema won't give you popcorn? I'll tell you what kind: the same that some Serbo-Croatian fuckwit Alex who ran the Chauvel in Sydney some years ago operated and now witness his Nazi Empire of No Popcorn and Fucked Seats that is now history and I hope he's working cleaning deep fryers at Red Rooster in Werribee or some suburban yeast-infection of a venue.

Anyway, I digress.

Seven minutes into BLESSED after witnessing the most fucked-up children I'd seen on screen since MAMA MIA my travelling partner left---she had experienced a most difficult week and couldn't take the depression.

I thought it would descend into a pantheon of Western Suburban battling hell of gay Greek boys, drug-addicted moms, and fucked up ethnic battlers crying and whinging about their stupid retarded children whilst fucking away and having more kids.

And of course it did.

But it did it in such an elegant and sophisticated manner that I was totally sucked in, and then it went in another direction completely that I didn't expect. I didn't give a fuck about the mothers. It was ostensibly a story about mothers and their children. Well, (and excuse me moms and dads or mums and dads depending on where the fuck you were born) any loser can have a kid and abandon him or her. A total loser can have many kids. Abandon them or misplace them...and have some more. There are so many fucking children around that they should be culled like kangaroos or gypsies or cockroaches or people who like Austen Tayshus. When I walk into the Melbourne CBD on a Saturday night and stand on the corner of Swanston and Bourke I like to close my eyes and imagine shooting thousands of rounds of ammunition into the four corners and cleaning up the intersection for the weekend. And you know what? There wouldn't be one person living who finished school and who has a job and lives in a postcode that can spell "condom" let alone know what the fuck one was that would argue with me.

But Anna K fashioned the most amazing kids' roles and dialogue and realism that you really just couldn't get away from the film. These kids were mostly mongrels. But interesting riveting mongrels because they had interesting broken little humans for parents... Which brings to mind the dilemma:

If you're uneducated, poor, battling, stupid, behind the 8 ball of life, or just this side of Fail and Aids... why the fuck would you want to have kids that are going to start off in last place? What really is the attraction with children and the obsession losers have with duplicating themselves over and over and over? I don't get it. If you're fanatical Muslim you trying and populate yourself into world domination and I can understand that flawed but optimistic plan. But if you have zero money and no job or a shitty one and can't make ends meet and your one child is a Taint Dweller why have more? There is a scene where a Greek window seamstress cuts her incorrigible daughter with a scissors. She should have put the scissors through her daughter's eyes and done us all a favour. But nope--- Miss Caterpiller Eyebrows 2009 escaped to go out shoplifting. Which if you're Winona Ryder is cool because it's research and she was hot in HEATHERS. This girl was not. Angry, unattractive, ungrateful, and smarmy, and mean.

Back to BLESSED. I really really liked this film and everyone in the Gein Universe will say "what the fuck is wrong with you?" and one of my acquaintances from Upper Blogville cornered me afterwards and we chatted about that---but it affected me alot---albeit probably in the wrong way than intended from the film maker. Fucked up kids are intriguing. They rarely succeed but amaze you along the way. There are those two girls in the film who need and so deserve to be bashed within an inch of their lives but escape unscathed. And a young brother/sister who deserve a break but burn to death in a charity box. (the irony cannot be ignored). The score is beautiful. The camera work and direction wonderful. The editing pristine and performances steller. William McGinnes and Miranda Otto particularly riveting in a wonderful chance encounter. But every one of the mothers, especially Frances McDormand (who has a big enough forehead on which you could launch an outdoor Imax cinema) is a candidate for mandatory abortion. It kind of wanted to be like CRASH (Paul Haggis' not David Cronenberg's) but never connected the various stories which actually worked well in this well-crafted multi-strand narrative. Not as well as it could or should have---but hard to fault in the setup and execution and miles ahead of most local productions.

It's like there's some God-given thing that the more fucked up you are the more kids you have to spit out to the world and as much as I loved the film I felt like strangling any woman who was pregnant coming out of CentreLink the next day or any fucking guy who wasn't keeping up his children support and was driving a car valued at over $20k. As a younger Gein I never sent child support but took the kids to 5 Star Hotels where they could order room service while I tested South American exports in the privacy of my suite. I thought that was fair.

But I'm both elated at how skillfully crafted the film was, and disappointed at how forgiving it seemed to be to a powerful closing shot of a person whose only contribution to society was pain and despair and poverty and failure.

It wasn't about losing children or failing with them---BLESSED was about misplaced values and loyalties and obsession with the unatainable. But it did it all so well one couldn't ignore it.

This post is tired and disorientated. Gein World served too many pizzas and A & W Root Beer Floats (spiders) tonight and the sugar lock is setting in . But I felt compelled before retired for the evening. The film has stayed with me for days, warts and all. It deserves an audience of women considering children. It will do us all a favour.

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it....

Starting your day with news of Ted Kennedy dying isn't like winning the lottery. It's close. It's like waking up to oral sex...as the recipient... Let's not get too excited about someone who's only skill was being born with the right surname to weasel his way into the U.S. Senate and and trying to socialize the entire economy faster than Josef Stalin...or Barack Obama who is basically a taller Stalin with better communication skills, nicer suits, and a tan.

But it's often been said that Kennedy should have been forgiven for his "lapse of judgement" when he plied Mary Jo Kopechne with alcohol (since rohypnol wasn't around yet or for sure he would have had a stash of that in the car) and smashed his car into the creek at Chappaquiddick in 1969 killing his 'passenger' whom he left to drown as he escaped. He was so busy thinking up an alibi that it took him a whole day before he managed to remember to report the accident to police. And they say his sister was retarded?

The sad fact about the late 60's is that the only good Kennedy (Bobby) got shot in a kitchen when he should have been sitting in his hotel room watching My Three Sons and the worst of the three (Teddy) lived to be 77. Massachusetts would be possibly the most fucked-up state in the USA except it's not even a state... It's a Commonwealth. And except maybe for Boston Legal and some good seafood there is really no reason to ever set foot in the Commonwealth unless you're a coke dealer, socialist, or tech manufacturer who wants illegal kickbacks to place your company there.

We hope his last months were painful, and look forward to his stay in hell when he relives his speech explaining 'the inexplicable' events of that night when in the most simple terms... a below-normal intelligence black sheep of a fucked up family went to cheat on his wife and drove drunk off a bridge killing his date. And didn't have the guts to admit he'd fucked up and face the music.

He was a mongrel. His career was a golden calf paraded around losers, retards, wannabees, and neer' do-wells for his own self gratification. Anyone who admired him is a devil worshiper and
devoid of accountability.

There are and shall forever be many great men who were or are flawed. There are, of course-- many horrible men who have had flashes of genius or moments of greatness.

Ted Kennedy was neither great, nor intelligent, nor aspirational of genius. He was the bad apple in an already rotten bushel of fruit whose few bright pieces had already been eaten by the world over four decades before.

Lest we forget.