Cheese

Cheese!

Even the sound of the word excited him. Cheese. Cheeeeeese. Like the whirring of some marvellous contraption, a futuristic machine designed for pure human delight. He could see it in mind's eye: gears spinning, pistons pumping, steam bursting joyfully from the chimney atop the device, whistling to let all know that the cheese was ready; the Delight-O-Tron spitting forth divine hunks of yellow and white, and even blue and green, magical slabs of pungent paradise for all to consume and sate themselves with ecstasy.

This is what he saw. Reality was sadly different, and as the wrappers piled high in the corners of his flat, he knew he must be content with daydreams. In this harsh capitalistic world, nobody else saw cheese the way he did. The other invention he fantasised about was a new kind of nuclear-powered spectacles, attuned to a specific cheese-friendly frequency. When you put them on, your appreciation of cheese would intensify beyond belief. Looking at cheese with these glasses, one would experience such dizzy heights of joy...everyone would know what it was like for him. He had been born with Cheese Specs. He yearned to bring them to the world. Alas, he lacked the technology. The fact was that all the time he could have spent learning of physics and electronics and mechanical engineering had been entirely taken up with the consumption and appreciation of cheese. And so, his love of cheese had robbed him of the ability to fulfil it. This thought could at times reduce him to such despair that he would collapse in a puddle of paradox and lie weeping for hours, nibbling melancholically at a wedge of Jarlsberg.

He knew there must be, somewhere, the answer to that question that had burned inside him as long as he could remember, like a dairy-based blowtorch. It was hard to bear, and even harder to understand: cheese satisfied him, more than man has ever been satisfied by anything, at least as far as he knew. Casanova looking back on his legions of female conquests, Michaelangelo recalling his incomparable catalogue of artistic supernovas, Caesar himself surveying all the lands he had brought to heel before his standard, none could possibly have felt such surges of euphoric content, such electric bolts of all-consuming happiness, as were his at the end of a day getting to grips with a consignment of Gorgonzola. And yet... 

And yet it seemed that satisfaction, so far from being dissatisfaction's mortal foe, was in fact its meek and humble handmaiden. For no matter how satisfied he became, it was not satisfied enough. Always, the gnawing began again...

Cheese was his, and it was glorious. But the glory of his personal affair with the sublime curd was nothing, a speck of plankton in a wall of baleen, when compared to the glory he imagined, saw in the distance, felt tingling at his extremities, heard echoing within his skull, tasted, dancing, on the tip of his tongue...the glory of spreading cheese to all the world and bringing that indescribable joy to the masses, disseminating his love infinitely and watching the whole world rejoice in cheese's benevolent embrace. The glory imagined dwarfed the glory realised by so far that every day he woke up with a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, a metaphysical famine that a quickly scoffed Camembert wheel could dissipate only temporarily.

And so, finally, after years of enduring the burning ache, he made a decision. A decision that would change not only his own life, but the very world itself. A decision that in the pursuit of the ultimate goal, he would make the ultimate sacrifice.

He would give up cheese.

He could see, all too clearly, that cheese was standing in its own way. Eating cheese took up too much time; the buying, the unwrapping, the setting out, the savouring of aromas and tender prodding of textures. The long, lingered-over consumption, the reverent afterglow. The recording of details in his dark blue Cheese Log. The agonised composition of words to do justice to the delicacy, lest he someday forget a single bite. It devoured his time, and left not a second for planning and plotting, for devising of schemes to encircle the globe with cheese.

He must, therefore, set cheese aside, and bend every sinew towards his greater goal. Though it would be torture, his reunion with cheese at the completion of his task would be all the sweeter for the knowledge that it was earned.

Torture, in fact, was far too mild a word for what the coming weeks brought him. Every day, as he sketched blueprints, constructed scale models, sat in the library behind piles upon piles of weighty, sombre volumes, he felt the siren song of Lady Mold calling him. Every night, as he sat by the light of an inadequate lamp, scribbling madly in exercise book after exercise book, ruling lines, measuring angles, feverishly tearing pages out of phone books and pasting them in esoteric configurations on huge slabs of cardboard, he felt the knives of cheese-lust hacking away at his flesh.

Oh, he ate, but poor fare. Bread. Butter. Meat. Vegetables. He drank waters and juices, and even milk - O sweet tantalisation, so near yet so far - but cheese passed not his lips. Passed not even his doorway; he knew the limits of his willpower.

And so he worked. He became gaunt and ragged. His clothes grew filthy and began falling to pieces. His eyes assumed a staring, haunted look. His face was pale and pinched. The marks of obsession were stamped upon him like the imprint of Surchoix upon an Appenzeller. Soon, soon, he would waste away to nothing. Soon, the cheese would claim him, as it had his forebears.

Oh, nobody knew of them, of course. It was not widely reported when a lone lunatic fell victim to the ravages of cheese. Felled before their plans could reach fruition, they were anonymous, unloved and unmourned. But he, yes, he knew them. He had read, he had learnt, he had come to know just what a lethal endeavour he had embarked upon. The names floated like ghosts before his weary, bulging eyes. Lippinziger, Rothwell, Gerdell de la Bosconi. Noble men, men who had believed in cheese, who had looked cheese in the face and smiled as it took their lives.

He knew he was destined to join their ranks. Perhaps, then, he would know peace, he would know bliss. He would be transported to Cheese Heaven, where even Brocciu is endlessly available, and the only company would be those other brave men who understood his passion. But one way or another, he was heading down that road. The cheese was coming for him. Fate had drained the whey. The desire for just one wedge, just one slice, just one smear across a cracker...it would overwhelm him. To go without cheese for a day was agony. This...this was the Inferno.

And that's when it happened.

This emaciated shell of a man, this ghoul, this half-crazed banshee, sitting one night, eight weeks past the start of his project, staring at his notes, his blueprints, his maps, his scrapbooks, his models, his painstaking graphs...found the answer.

And when it came it struck him with the force of an Emmental fired from a Howitzer. It had been there all along. He was a genius without knowing it. The Cheese Conundrum had been solved.

And suddenly, that cold night, flickering candle dimly lighting his laughing, dirty, whiskered, madman's face, he knew that the world was his for the taking.

The rest of the night, he sat happily in the doorway of the shop across the street, rocking, a contented smile upon his face, and when they opened, he bought every last scrap of Gruyere in the place, and ate it right there, grinning from ear to ear.

Not that it was that simple, of course. Yes, he had the answer, but the practical work had still to be done. Construction was undertaken. A score of strong men were hired and told of a hefty share of the profits if they bent their arms to the task with all possible vigour. Day and night they laboured in his new makeshift factory, hammering, riveting, bolting, welding, scraping and oiling, but still their hours were as nothing compared to the work he himself put in.

The word went out. Clever men in suits were employed to spread the message, to bring habringers of the coming of the new age. Rumours of the miracle of this fresh invention were carefully and scientifically placed and propagated in all corners of the green earth.

And after months of preparation, it was ready. He rented a suit. He stood nervously on the steps of the Town Hall, dignitaries surrounding him, press confronting him, a crowd hanging on his every word as he stammeringly, haltingly, did the best he could to put into words what he knew words could never describe. His vision, his dream, come to life. The device that would change all of their lives, and so much for the better.

He knew as he spoke that they were there, not to celebrate cheese, or to experience the possibility of altering their lives forever. They were there to capture failure in its first blush. They were there to see him fall. And he prayed, as he prepared to pull aside the drapery, that it was not all for naught. It had been tested...it would work now, wouldn't it? His dream...it was not a foolish fantasy? It really was real, yes?

It was time.

He unveiled.

And...the gasp.

The gasp that was heard around the world. Such a thing of beauty. Of impossible elegance and perfection, yet of such undeniable, irresistible substance and functionality. The first sight of it sent a shockwave of excitement through the crowd. When it was turned on...the thrill went to the core of every human present and struck outwards, like ripples on a stone-addled pond, like an exploding wheel of Brie.

Within a day the world was abuzz. Within a week seven hundred more devices were in production.

Within six months cheese consumption had multiplied tenfold. Within a year, a thousandfold.

Cheese had conquered the world. The plan had worked. Good had triumphed. Now, he could rest. And rest he did. Fabulously wealthy, wanting for nothing, he spent his days reclining in luxury, bringing forth from his vast refrigerated cheese vaults such a cornucopia of wonders as he would never have considered possible for such a poor, unremarkable specimen as himself. Now and then he spoke, he lectured on cheese, its significance, its history, its inimitable beauty and unparalleled mystique. He gained more honorary doctorates than he knew what to do with. He was in demand from social sets the world over. And always, the cheese. Whatever cheese he wanted. Soft, hard, pressed, unpressed, cow's milk, goat's milk. He discovered the exquisite taste of cheeses he had hitherto only dreamed about. Rare cheeses, exotic cheeses. Brie, Camembert, Roquefort, Geitost, Mozzarella, Ricotta, Mascotta, Cheshire, Gloucester, Romano, Edam, Gouda, Colby, Pecorino, Munster, Stilton, Urda, Cas, Neufchatel, Paneer, Queso Fresco, Brousse, Chevre...these were a mere appetiser for the universe he was now wandering through. He had all he wanted, but far more importantly, to him, he had made a difference. He had opened the eyes of the world to cheese and all its possibilities. His goal was achieved, his purpose fulfilled. The world was a better, more fragrant, more joyous and lovely place because of him. People everywhere were happy, and cheese-filled. With this in mind, he could have remained a stick-thin pauper and been happy.

And then one day...not long after the unveiling...

He awoke and strode to the kitchen. Days of emaciation and filth long behind him, now sleek and filled with joie de vivre, he felt he would start another wonderful day with a hearty breakfast. His mood was mellow and old-fashioned. He decided on staunch traditionalism, withdrawing a mighty hunk of blazing yellow Swiss magic from its shelf. Seated at his broad breakfast table, he plunged in his knife, and took a weighy slice from the body, biting into it with the enthusiasm of the perfectly balanced. And as he bit, he felt something he had never before felt while eating cheese.

Nothing.

He blinked, confused. He bit again. Still nothing. No thrill, no tingling, no explosion of flavour, no electricity, not even the smallest frisson shooting through his body.

Perhaps, he thought, he had been overdoing the Swiss lately. Returning to the fridge, he withdrew a pungent slab of Limburger, and devoured the whole thing on the spot.

Nothing.

His tastebuds remained stoically indifferent. A sense of unease rising within him, he pulled out a ball of mozzarella, and gulped it down, with no more reaction from his physiology than if he had gorged himself on week-old rice cakes. No pleasure, no fizzing fireworks in the brain.

A wheel of Camembert, a scrap of Edam, a desperate scraping of Monterey Jack, all shovelled down, all with no result but a slightly heavier sensation in the stomach. Unease had turned to panic. Tears pricked his eyes and he fought them. This was cheese, he couldn't be feeling nothing. He simply had to find the right one to spark his old self to life again. Perhaps he had overslept and his system was not yet fully awake. He would perk himself up, and in the blink of an eye, his love affair with the curd and the mold would resume as passionately as ever.

And so, as he frantically boiled and downed a jug of coffee, he hurled as much cheese as he could into a saucepan and turned up the heat. Within minutes, he tipped the pan up and poured the cheese like boiling wine down his throat. The stream of boiling yellow fire scorched his oesophagus, but no more. Gasping, he fell to his knees and rummaged through his stocks some more.

Pulling cheese after cheese out, he tried each one. Yellow, white, blue, red, green...the most exotic cheeses from the most far-flung lands, the most unexpected animals, the most bizarre of homespun and high-tech techniques...and none of it changed a thing. Tears streamed down his face, his burning throat screamed at him, and his heart felt near to melting and running out his pores.

Finally he got to the back of the cabinet and brought forth the last. With wrappers and discarded pieces of cheese littering the floor around him, he sat miserably in the centre of his dairy graveyard and held the chunk of ordinary everyday cheddar in his lap. Cheddar was the beginning of his journey, and now...the end? Of late he had forgotten about good old cheddar, intoxicated by the enormity of his gift to humanity and the seemingly endless variety of impossible rarities hurled at him by the world's grateful cheesemakers. And yet...cheddar was the heart and soul of cheese, was it not? Cheddar. His old friend cheddar. He nursed it against his cheek, enjoying the coolness on his skin and whispering to it as to a secret lover. Cheddar would save him. he angled it wearily towards his aching, exhausted lips, and took a bite.

He chewed.

He swallowed.

And he knew, as the fragment travelled to its final destination, that he might just as well have bitten into the polystyrene packing the fridge arrived in. The truth fell on him like a ton of Parmesan.

He was dead. Dead to cheese.

He threw back his head and howled. All his work, all his striving and passion, returned in the shimmering air before his eyes, taunting and cackling at him.

And he fell face down on the kitchen floor, as the gutted Camembert mingled with his tears.

WHO SAID IT?

Our prime minister, Tony Abbott, sure is a piece of work. Sometimes the things he says are so outrageous it's hard to tell whether they're really quotes from the elected leader of our nation, or from a far-fetched fictional movie character.

That's how we came up with the idea for this quiz. How many of these quotes you can correctly attribute to their source: Prime Minister Tony Abbott, or feisty proto-feminist icon and heroine of Canadian literature Anne "Of Green Gables" Shirley? The results may surprise you!

WHO SAID IT: TONY ABBOTT OR ANNE SHIRLEY?

 

1. "Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have pass through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed."

2. "We just can't stop people being homeless if that's their choice."

3. "Would you please call me Cordelia?"

4. "Climate change is crap."

5. "You know something, Diana? We are rich. We have sixteen years to our credit, and we both have wonderful imaginations. We should be happy as queens."

6. "I think your Gilbert is awfully bold to wink at a strange girl."

7. "I would not want to see any relaxation of the law prohibiting human cloning."

8. "Once people come to Australia, they join the team."

9. "The smart way to improve broadband is not to junk the existing network but to make the most of it. It's to let a competitive market deliver the speeds that people need at an affordable price with government improving infrastructure in the areas where market competition won't deliver it."

10. "He called me Carrots!"

11. Faith is important to me. It's important to millions of Australians. It helps to shape who I am."

12. "Go away Marilla. I'm in the depths of despair."

13. "I think that marriage is, dare I say it, between a man and a woman, hopefully for life and there are all sorts of other relationships which should be acknowledged and recognised, but I don't know that they can be recognised as marriage."

14. "Mrs Hammond told me that God made my hair red on purpose and I've never cared for Him since."

15. "Whyalla will be wiped off the map by Julia Gillard's carbon tax."

16. "I don't see any need in being civil to someone who chooses to associate with the likes of Josie Pye."

17. "I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax?"

18. "Why isn't the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?"

19. Well, again Kerry, I know politicians are gonna be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks."

20. "Please, Matthew. You need help. We've got to get a doctor."

Haha! Almost unbelievable how similar they are, isn't it? How did YOU do sorting fact from fiction?

Guy Writes The Most Hilarious Complaint Letter After Realising He Has No Life

It has been a heated debate whether dickheads should be allowed to fly on planes. To be politically correct, I believe that if someone is, through genetics or upbringing, a dickhead, they deserve the right to travel like anyone else. However, the question is, when being a dickhead affects other passengers, how should transport authorities deal with the situation? It would be like policy to isolate a contagious passenger that could make other passengers sick. In this case, sitting next to a dickhead undoubtedly "affected" fellow passengers. Below is my letter to the airline:



Dear Jetstar,

Do you like riddles? I don't, but I thought it might me seem funnier to people on Twitter if I started this letter with one. What is more irritating than a mosquito, less irritating than a nuclear holocaust and is as fun to be around as a hyena's bowel obstruction? No idea? How about, what becomes sexually aroused by unhappiness and has the personality of zip-lock bag full of urine? Still nothing? Right, one more try. What's as annoying as fuck, constantly talks shit and should be forced to ride on the wing of a Jetstar flight? That's right, it's the man an unfortunate overweight fellow sat next to on my flight from Perth to Sydney yesterday.

Passengers were no doubt mentally high-fiving themselves on the excitement and adventure of affordable air travel as they boarded the plan, before being suddenly distracted by what appeared to be an adult human being located halfway down the aisle, but which turned out to be a sort of cross between a particularly spoilt two-year-old and a faulty smoke alarm.

Soon after taking their seats, the passengers caught what was to be the first of the man's many whines, possibly triggered by the fact that the man sitting next to him wasn't allowing him the breadth of personal space that his personality usually generated in his immediate vicinity, but also possibly triggered by the fact that the man can't achieve an erection unless someone else's life is being made harder than it has to be. Considering the kind of guy he is, I found it strange that none of the cabin crew punched him in the groin. To be fair, they may not have noticed him, because they had jobs to do, which also infuriated this knobtwizzler. Perhaps this photo will jog their memories:

Although to be honest, probably not.

Bewildered by the refusal of the world to conform to his personal specifications, the insufferable cock-nostril stood up, scuttled to the back of the plane and started pestering the cabin crew to upset someone else's trip in order to cater to his individual comfort and constant gnawing desire to ruin people's day. I don't know the names of the three flight attendants, but for the purpose of this letter, I'll call them Normal Human 1, Normal Human 2, and Maintaining a Sense of Humour Despite Harassment By Human Garbage (MSHDHBHG). After his request, Normal Human 1 and Normal Human 2 continued their conversation, presumably about how they've got better things to do than mollycoddle petty little man-ferrets all day. He then asked if he could sit in one of the six vacant seats at the back of the aircraft, to which MSHDHBHG responded that they were for crew only. The fact that this bipedal cowpat failed to understand this pretty basic and clearly reasonable rule makes me think he may be suffering from some form of mental impairment.

He tried to relocate himself on his own, but unfortunately there was nobody on the plane operating on the specific frequency of whiny bullshit that he lives his life on, and so he had to suck it up and stay in his own seat like a normal person. He made his way back to his seat and spent the remainder of the flight thinking up dehumanising insults to use to describe the man sitting next to him in the nasty vindictive letter he planned to send upon landing so that he could fulfil his lifelong dream of getting other snivelling wads of rancid smegma like himself to tell him how hilarious he is on the internet. You could imagine his surprise when he saw both "crew-only" rows occupied by non-crew members. I can only assume the cabin crew decided to pull a bit of a prank in an attempt to make him feel as bad as he deserves to. Well, that's not quite true - another thing I can assume is that he's lying, because he seems the type.

Imagine going out for dinner and a movie, only to have your night ruined by a fat mess who eats half your meal then blocks 50% of the screen. Isn't that exactly the same as having someone who can't control their calorie intake occupying half your seat on a flight? Of course it isn't, that's why only the sort of congenitally obnoxious crotch-stain who actually thinks being forced to spend a few hours in close proximity to a fat person is the same as having someone steal your food would have the naked fuckfaced gall to demand a full refund for what would have to incorporate a flesh-eating virus to qualify as a first world problem.

But Jetstar, you sold this failed experiment in human-guano crossbreeding a ticket, so I'm looking to be compensated for the pain and suffering caused by having read the half-witted doggy bag of petulant foot-stamping and braying bigotry that the beetle-browed dicksnorter vomited up for the entertainment of his fellow drooling dickgoblins. My brain is in agony and I had to type this letter with a stick between my teeth because of the intense migraine I get whenever I think about this scrotum-faced little shitcrumpet and the crybaby corpse gas he emits onto the internet whenever he can't find a towel to wipe his penis on.

To discuss the thorny stick he jammed into his rectum just before writing to you, email him at [redacted], or tweet him at @RichWisken.

Regards,

Ben Pobjie

Hyper-Auto-Repellence: A Personal Plea

What should we make of Christopher Pyne?

Some kind of glovepuppet?

This week Australin politics farewelled a titan in Gough Whitlam. Many people voiced opinions on this, ranging from Prime Minister Abbott's opinion that Whitlam wasn't the best PM ever, to Julia Gillard's opinion that he was actually so great he was a lot like Julia Gillard, to every News Ltd columnist's opinion that he ruined everything for everyone and it's a good thing that finally his ring has been cast into the fires of Mount Doom.

But, Abbott's somewhat faint praise notwithstanding, most of the tributes from actual parliamentarians were quite complimentary and very respectful. Even Philip Ruddock said some pretty nice things about him, and Philip Ruddock dug his own soul out of himself with a rusty lino knife when he was eight. 

But Pyne...well, Pyne made a jolly little speech in which he noted that when Whitlam was dismissed, his mother cried, and "I have to let you in on a secret, she was crying out of joy"

It was a delightful moment

Now, of course, that is an insight into the life of the young Pyne that opens up all sorts of questions. For example, does Christopher still watch Adventure Island, or now that he is in his forties does he prefer Mr Squiggle?

But it's not so much the substance that I want to dwell on: the fact that Christopher Pyne has been forced to spend his life coming up with a dazzling array of excuses to explain away the fact his mother was constantly crying whenever he was around is neither here nor there. What I want to examine is the psychology that caused our Honourable Education Minister to think to himself, "Hmm, Gough Whitlam is dead...this might be a good time to tell the country how much my family hated him".

What process produces these thoughts? Is there a process even taking place?

Evidence is so far inconclusive

The real problem is that Christopher Pyne, despite a respectable upbringing. an expensive education, and Amanda Vanstone cooking all his meals, seems to have developed a pathological need to be the most hated man in every room he is in. It's actually quite a rare psychological phenomenon: hyper-auto-repellence. In other words, he can only be satisfied by making others loathe him. Obviously this has been an advantage to him in his rise through the ranks of the Liberal Party, but at this point in his life is it becoming a liability?

It's not that I hate Christopher Pyne. I mean, I do, but that's not the important thing here. The important thing is that every word out of his mouth, every action he takes, every step in his life up to now, has seemed perfectly calculated to force me to hate him. And frankly, though I hate the man, I also worry about him. When a fellow is so desperate to be disliked that he stands in parliament to merrily spit in the face of the old man who just died, there is something quite concerning going on behind his smooth, shiny facade.

Very very concerning

I don't know if Christopher reads this blog - no idea why he wouldn't - but if he does, I'm here to say: Christopher, I am no longer enabling you. I will write no more about how awful you are, now that I realise it's just feeding your addiction. Instead, I urge you: get help, Christopher. Don't be afraid to reach out.

You might think you can't be happy, Christopher, unless you're being hated. But believe me: you CAN. With a caring therapist and a good support system at home, you might even find a way to derive pleasure from being liked.

And I promise Christopher: when you do, we'll all be a lot more relaxed.

Girlie-Man or Corr-Man? You Decide

If there is one thing that makes me angry, it is a good man's words being twisted and used against him. Luckily, there is actually more than one thing that makes me angry, or my conversation would be extremely monotonous. Nevertheless, this issue is a burning one that sticks in my craw like a collar in an uncoordinated cat's mouth.

Let's look at Senator Matthias Cormann.

Now let's stop looking at him.

Instead, let's THINK about Senator Matthias Cormann, about what he represents, what place he occupies in the modern Australian dialectical discourse. Let's not get bogged down in semiotics, but rather let's examine Matthias Cormann from all sides and make up our own minds about what he symbolises for a culture in crisis.

To put it another way, he has a pretty funny accent.

But forget about the accent for a moment: making fun of people's accents is a big part of being a progressive, but it's not the only part. It's what they SAY with those accents that is the important part, and what Matthias Cormann has said with that hilarious accent is this:

"Bill Shorten is an economic girlie-man,"

This has caused a furore in some circles, as it as been seen as an attack on women, an attack on equality, an attack on our children's futures, and by some even as an attack on Bill Shorten.

But is it really such a terrible thing to call someone "an economic girlie-man"? Let's unpack this, shall we?

First of all, the derivation of girlie-man: etymologically, the term originates in the two separate words "girlie", meaning resembling or bearing characteristics of a girl; and "man", meaning a person who is a man. So we can assume that Cormann was saying that Shorten is a man who in some way resembles a girl.

Our starting point must be to determine the truth value of this assertion. So let's look at Bill Shorten:

How much does he resemble a girl? "Not very much," you might say. BUT what if you look at him from this perspective?

Well. Doesn't THAT put a different complexion on things? Can anyone who has seen the above photo truly say that there is nothing in Cormann's assertion?

But what of the broader implications? Is it true that, in using "girlie-man" as an insult, Cormann is demeaning women by suggesting they are weaker and less capable than men?

I say, not at all. Because let us be clear, Cormann did not actually call Shorten a "girl", That would, indeed, have been reprehensible - to suggest that being a girl precludes one from being an effective leader is disgusting. To suggest that any girl is as bad at her job as Bill Shorten even more so. I have personally known many girls, and watching them burgeon into womanhood is a very different experience than watching Bill Shorten burgeon into Shortenhood.

Also, Cormann did not call Shorten a "man", which would obviously have been slanderous.

What he called him was a "girlie-man", and that is a horse of a different flavour.

Think of it this way: a dog can be a very useful thing, and a tractor can be a very useful thing, but a dog shaped like a tractor? That is entirely different. 

What Cormann was saying was that Shorten is a kind of tractor-dog, a hybrid of two things that are excellent in isolation, but when combined lack a certain something. You might like girls, and you might like men, but is a girlie-man something you'd like? Probably - it sounds like a lot of fun - but is it someone you want in charge of the economy?

After all, remember the old song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Maybe a girlie-man doesn't just wanna have fun - maybe they do have other interests - but there can be little doubt that they will probably be a little bit more frivolous than what you'd ideally like in a person whose duties will necessarily include stamping repeatedly on unemployed people's faces. 

Is Matthias Cormann sexist? Well, if it's sexist to suggest that an economic girlie-man is not the sort of tractor we want ploughing our kennels, then sure, he's sexist. But if it's sexist to not suggest that women can do anything they want without fearing that they won't be criticised for not being men if they're genuinely not as good at their jobs as another woman might be if she wasn't not a man, then I'd say that the answer is clear for all to see.

To sum up:

Girls are good. Men are good. But girlie-men are girlier than is ideal, and manlier than a girl should be. And saying so isn't as bad as you think even in a weird accent. Not that having a weird accent should ever be acceptable.

Thank you.

MONDAY HOROSCOPES!

Find out what YOUR week has in store, based on something to do with stars or planets or stuff!



ARIES: Wednesday holds many mysteries - wear something waterproof. A chance encounter with an old friend will leave your hand sticky and you not knowing why. At some point during this week you will collide with a cow. Don't overreact.


TAURUS: Your hair is too long and you must get it cut. You look like a damn scarecrow. Around lunchtime on Friday your mother will probably either die or kill someone. Don't try to stop her, she is a grown woman with the right to her own choices.


GEMINI: Just as your sign is the Twins, you will give birth to twins sometime tomorrow. This may come as a shock if you didn't know you were pregnant or if you were a man. But this isn't about you. Think of the children. On the weekend you will abandon them at a fire station. This may haunt you in later life, though I won't know for sure till next week's horoscope.


CANCER: You have eaten too much and will regret it. Your job is unsatisfying, but a ray of light emerges this week when your boss is impaled on a fence.


LEO: A trip to the movies may provide more than just entertainment when you are attacked by a tiger quoll. The facial reconstructive surgery goes badly and you live out a bitter, hate-filled existence in the shadows of your decrepit home. Be frugal with money; your lucky colour is green.


VIRGO: Your new job as editor of the motoring section of a major Sunday newspaper hits a snag when you lose the use of both your arms. On the upside, a strange man agrees to marry your father.


LIBRA: Your poor dress sense will get you in trouble, as will your friend Marvin. Stay away from cats and asbestos removal technicians. Money problems may rear their ugly head, as will your friend Marvin.


SCORPIO: You get some good news from home, which is immediately retracted. You deserve some pampering - why not visit a spa? There is a very good reason in fact why you shouldn't visit a spa, but it's a secret. Remember to thank the trustworthy people in your life for being trustworthy and to spit on the others. You may be accosted by a beggar mid-week. Bear in mind that nobody will even care if he is murdered.


SAGITTARIUS: Just as the shark must keep on swimming, or else he'll die, you must keep swimming, or that shark behind you will eat you. Stop reading this and swim.


CAPRICORN: If you are truly honest with yourself, you will admit that you are extremely racist. There is nothing to be ashamed of, but you should probably go away for a while.


AQUARIUS: Try not to walk under low-hanging branches, as the moon is in Venus and this indicates that monkey attacks will be a real problem. For those on the cusp there are many topical creams which can address the issue. Be kind to your parents this week, as they do not know the terrible news their doctor is hiding from them. Don't be kind to your grandparents though, as they are fervent supporters of fracking.


PISCES: Large, expensive dinners will catch up with you when you are arrested for stealing food, a common trait amongst Pisces. Avoid oily fish and books about the cultures of central Asia. If a woman you've never seen before offers you a tube of liquid cement, my advice is to take it.

BACHELOR RECAP: PIES, POLO AND PUPPIES

We begin with a preview of tonight's episode, in which Laurina will be extremely disappointed with the way her life has gone and not before time. We then move on to the now-traditional moment where Amber says she really really wants to go on a date. Osher enters and says there'll be no group date. Amber takes the opportunity to catch some flies with her mouth, and then moves on to bitching about the other women. How does Amber cope with not living in a house full of women, with nobody to constantly complain about?

The others think the new girls will be picked to go on dates. "I haven't been on a single date and all my friends think I won't, that's great," says Amber in a particularly nasty tone of voice; which is to say, her normal tone of voice. If only she knew that she's mistaken: she has no friends.

Off goes Same, who hasn't had any quality time with Blake lately - here we are working on the assumption that "quality time with Blake" is even a concept that has any meaning. Every time Sam is around Blake, she feels nervous, which is probably normal when you associate with sociopaths.

Sam doesn't know what Blake has planned, so it'll come as a surprise when she finds out he has nothing planned - all the planning was done by the show's producers. What THEY have planned is a ride in a helicopter, which I'm pretty sure has been done before but I guess when you have access to a helicopter you need to get as much use as possible out of it.

The helicopter lands at the Sydney Polo Club. "I'm definitely a country girl," says Sam, taking on the challenge of self-identification with gusto. Apparently being from the country means you're used to hanging around in clubs for incredibly rich city people.

Blake and Sam sit on the grass and eat strawberries and Sam talks about how vulnerable and scared she is, because that's her sole personality trait. Blake is so happy she felt ready to open up to him. "Our relationship is really progressing," he says enthusiastically, excited about another woman he gets to feel up before getting rid of her once he's bored.

Laurina thinks Sam may be too young for Blake "if he's looking for a woman". It's pretty amazing the way Laurina has identified fatal flaws in every woman in the house except herself. Her perceptiveness is stunning.

"I wanna know how far we can go," says Blake, hastily adding "in our relationship" when he remembers he's not supposed to admit he's just there to get laid. Apparently it's getting easier for Blake to imagine a future with Sam. She's, like, third or fourth now on his list of women he can imagine a future with. He's doing so much future-imagining he's like the Nostradamus of sleazy dickwits.

"It's an awesome feeling to know that he likes me," says Sam, her low self-esteem screaming with pleasure at all the attention. Blake wants Sam to know that she's definitely "in this"; as a smooth operator, Blake knows that what every woman most wants to hear is that she's got some kind of chance of being picked ahead of all the other women he likes.

Then they kiss and it's a magical moment and time seems to stand still a lot like when Blake kissed all those other chicks.

Back at the mansion the women are talking total nonsense in accordance with their contracts.

Now time for Blake's date with Lauren, the first "new girl" he's taken on a date. He just wants to know if there's chemistry between them, so he can decide whether all that crap he was saying to Sam earlier is worth going on with, or if he should say it to Lauren instead. Blake has taken Lauren out for Italian, which is a pretty original idea I reckon. They have spaghetti, as part of Blake's plan to humiliate Lauren.

Blake is weirded out by the fact Lauren has never been in a long-term relationship. People who've never been in long-term relationships sicken him. He, personally, has been in hundreds, most of them simultaneously. Meanwhile Lauren senses a real genuineness about Blake, which is fair enough: The Bachelor is one of the few places you can find a man who is totally honest about the fact he's cheating on you with multiple partners.

"Thank you for coming along on this Italian adventure," says Blake, vastly exaggerating the properties of a bowl of spaghetti, as he gives Lauren a rose, and she, brainwashed by an artificial romantic ideal, accepts it.

Time for Blake's date with Laurina. Sam doesn't really consider Laurina a major threat, because she's met Laurina.

Laurina doesn't know what Blake has planned, but has dressed up extremely fancy because a producer with a sense of humour told her to. Laurina thinks it would be pretty good if Blake had a private jet lined up, because she's mistaken being a Bachelor contestant with being Marilyn Monroe.

Blake wants to know if Laurina can "throw caution to the wind and enjoy a more simplistic date", or in other words, he hates Laurina and wants her to be unhappy. Which she is. "That's unacceptable," says Laurina, in reference to the fact that Blake has taken her bowling. "Hashtag clown shoes with a cocktail dress. Hashtag awkward," she fumes, having learnt to say "hashtag" out loud from her favourite book, Making Everyone On Earth Hate You For Dummies.

Laurina starts to enjoy the bowling, having realised that Blake doesn't put out for pouters. The pair strike a wager: if Laurina wins bowling, Blake will give her a romantic dinner; if Blake wins, he gets to throw her into a landfill. Laurina wins, which means she's about to be disappointed again.

Laurina says she's hoping the place Blake takes her will be cocktail attire-appropriate. Blake chuckles darkly, much like a homicidal maniac might. Because he is taking her to a pie shop. It's Harry's Cafe de Wheels, one of Sydney's most iconic locations. Blake claims he's been waiting to visit for years, which is a bit weird because it's a very easy place to go to if you actually want to.

Laurina is not happy she's been taken out for a pie, beginning to suspect that Blake is enjoying her suffering which to be fair he is. She is furious that other women have gotten yachts and planes and fancy dinners, while she gets "a dirty street pie". But it's a funny coincidence, because in high school Laurina was voted Most Likely To Eat And/Or Be Referred To As A Dirty Street Pie.

Blake feels his date has backfired, as he giggles on the inside. "Time to get this date back on track," he says, hopefully meaning he is about to tie Laurina to a railroad. Actually what he's going to do is give Laurina a puppy, as a metaphor for how he feels about her personality.

It's Laurina's own puppy, which means Blake has broken into her house and kidnapped her dog.

Back at the house, Amber is furious that Laurina's dog got a date, and she hasn't, because Amber doesn't really understand how this show works. It seems unlikely that it's the first time a man has chosen a dog over her though, so she can't be that shocked.

"I feel sorry for Amber," smiles Blake's favourite Jess, who always has sympathy for the underprivileged in society.

At the cocktail party, it's the birthday of one of the new girls but I don't know her name. It's the one who's a bit like the netball one I think. It's pretty hard to care, I think you'll agree. Oh her name is Rachel maybe?

It's not important: what's important is that Amber is having a sulk. This isn't news, of course, it's just the continuation of a trend that began in the early 90s. Blake comes in and asks Laurina to go for a walk with him, mainly because so Amber knows he doesn't want to go for a walk with her. Blake wants to clear up some issues regarding their date. Laurina admits she was a pain in the arse, but she's only referring to the date, not to the entire rest of her life. She feels pretty remorseful for judging Blake so harshly before she found out he was a dog-thief.

Blake returns and asks Jess to go for a walk. "Are you kidding me?" says Amber for the eightieth time this series. It becomes clear that Blake's family and Amber's family are participants in a centuries-old feud, and Blake has only entered the show in order to take his revenge.

Finally Blake asks Amber for a chat. He wants to tell Amber exactly how he feels, possibly with the aid of colourful graphs and a recording of hyenas laughing. He needs Amber to understand that although she's yet to have a single date with him, he considers her to be one of the most special crazy vicious skanks that he has ever been told by the executive producer to not send home too early.

Blake begins by talking to Amber for a very long time without saying anything, but eventually gets to the point. "I think you are an incredible woman," he lies, before telling her that there is no connection between them and he never wants to see her again. So weird how the incredible women are always the ones that Blake doesn't like. Blake doesn't want to put her through another rose ceremony: he thinks it wouldn't be fair to her, or to his own desire to not look at her goddamn face anymore.

Back at the mansion, Osher emerges once again from his basement lair. He tells the ladies that Blake has just kicked the rungs out of Amber's love ladder. The women's reactions run the gamut from not giving a shit, to not giving a shit but acting like they do.

The bonus for the remaining women, of course, is that since Blake just took Amber out to the garden and then put her in a car, all her possessions are still in the house to be divvied up. Meanwhile Amber herself is driven off a nearby cliff, and we are promised that tomorrow night Blake will continue preferring Jess to everyone else and Laurina will continue objecting to everything that happens.

Below: Blake and Laurina enjoy a tender moment together

How I Became Funny

I remember my first encounter with the world of comedy. I was four years old, and a clown came to the door of our house offering to wash our dog for food. I laughed at his funny red nose and bright purple wig, and then my father shot him, and that too was funny in its way. It was then I thought seriously about going into comedy myself, and by the age of five had written an eight-hour one-man show, entitled, "Laughter: The Harbinger of Death".

I performed this show daily in front of my parents for the next six years, and it was, I admit, a source of tension, argument and self-mutilation at the time. Nowadays we laugh about it, but at the time, the comedy was so bitingly real that my mother was at times moved to tears, and at other times moved to Calgary.

I gave up the one-man show at eleven, and began work on my sitcom. Amusingly, my dictionary was missing some pages, and so I gained a false impression of what a "sitcom" was. In fact, rather than working on a sitcom, I began working on a stegosaurus, which was a far more thankless task, and less funny than I had anticipated. It got even worse when the stegosaurus ate our gardener. I had thought stegosauruses were herbivorous, but then I found I had read the instructions wrong. It seemed that every book in the house was missing pages, and later on we found out my father had been eating them. I asked him why and he said he was trying to stop the cravings he had to eat the gardener. I suppose that in the end, my sitcom DID end up being quite successful, though not commercially.

In my teenage years, my love of comedy did not wane, but it did go in exciting new directions. I explored the possibilities of physical comedy, experimenting with comedic sexual intercourse and slapstick ethnic cleansing. But I soon grew tired of the cheap and easy laughs to be had by setting Koreans on fire, and by my graduation year was ready for fresh challenges and strange new worlds of humour.

It was at university that I began devising a surrealist, avant garde brand of comedy, beginning with jokes such as:

Q. What do you call a man with an octopus on his face?
A: Glenn

Q: How many ligtbulbs does it take?
A: Twenty-eight (laugh malevolently)

These jokes found great success among the cafeteria ladies, and emboldened, I set out to expand the themes I was working with, thus:

An Englishman, an Irishman and a rabbi walk into a bar. The Englishman says, I can't fall out of this plane, my goldfish are dead. How did the Welshman know?
A: The surgeon was his mother.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson are out camping, and Watson says, Why the long face, to which Holmes replies, I am a cocaine addict. He then makes Watson lick yoghurt off his violin until dawn. What does this tell you, Watson, he asks. Watson replies, Now comes the viola solo. (laugh malevolently)


Many people loved my new brand of comedy, and I found great acclaim among the Beat Generation, who were by then terribly old and mostly demented. However, the cultural elite did not, and there were calls in several thousand newspapers for me to be banned for life from all sporting events and chemically castrated. Years later I found out all of these newspapers were fakes printed on a home press by my mischievous prankster college roommate Fuzzy Slamwindow. How we laughed. But at the time I was most distressed and went into exile in Tibet, where I learned how to love again.

Upon my return, I set to work rehearsing for my most ambitious show yet, "Breasts: The Musical". The show consisted entirely of me standing on stage in a rubber catsuit showing slides of dead strippers and groaning rhythmically.

The show was a commercial and critical success, described by one eminent critic as "the funniest thing I have ever seen", and by another as "mmmmm". Although box office receipts were huge, I suffered from my poor judgment in signing a contract which guaranteed 80% of ticket sales would go to Richard Branson's Virgin Corporation, in return for which I would have a long needle inserted into my brain. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

And so we come to today. I am not resting on my laurels, by any means. In fact, I just published my book, "Not Resting On My Laurels", which is a collection of humorous essays and line drawings of rabbit ovaries. I am about to release "Not Resting On My Laurels Too", a collection of the same humorous essays, but with a foreword by Kirstie Alley.

All in all, I have learnt a lot about comedy in my seven or eight years on this planet. What you need to remember is, it's all about the audience. You're not up there for your own glorification, you are up there to make the audience laugh, and if they don't laugh, to be honest, you deserve all the poisonous gases you get. So the lesson is: make them laugh at all costs. If that means that you have to take off your pants, or eat a small boat, or hang yourself from a tree, so be it.

Laughter is everything, and I assure you, when you hear a roomful of people laughing and clapping and gently tongueing your thighs, you'll know that it was worth it.

Franz Kafka: Grocery Boy

Franz looked up at the shelf stretching away into the upper reaches of the store, and sighed deeply. His only option was to use his pogo stick, and it had only three pogos left before it lost all power and had to be sent to Battery Land for fresh lessons. He scratched his thighs absent-mindedly and found it came clean off. He wept quietly to himself for several minutes, before climbing onto the lower shelf and curling up to weep quietly at others who passed by. A bucket walked past with purposeful gait, and Kafka quick-wittedly tripped it up and climbed inside.

He was instantly transported to a realm of pleasure seldom seen in everyday Budapest. The Bucket-Folk accepted him as an equal, and did not judge him for his views or the size of his bedroom, which was quite small and contained an entire Irish Elk.

But alas, like all good things, his visit to the Bucket-Folk came to an abrupt end, exemplified by the fierce scarring on his nose, and he found himself back in the grocery store, bouncing high into the air, hurling boxes onto the shelf, and sneezing violently on the manager's hair, an act that brought relatively few short-term reprisals, but would, unbeknownst to him, result in his being banished to the lowest circle of hell and poked with teflon spatulas for several millennia.

As the last box tottered in place, and then tumbled gracefully to the floor, killing the Queen who had popped in for a bag of pepper, Franz felt an unearthly tingling in his immoral regions. He sighed. He was turning into an insect again. And still twenty minutes till his break. That was all he bloody needed. 

Memories of Rockweld

Ah, Rockweld. I can still see his furrowed brow, poring over ancient Sumerian texts in the study we shared for all those years. Come away, let's relax for an evening, I would say, but he would not budge from those parchments. He was determined to find proof that the Sumerians had a widespread potato crisp industry.

"I know it, and I must have the proof!" he would cry, his hair standing on end and his ears rotating slowly. "It is here somewhere!" I humoured him, but was amazed when he proved his theory and published his monograph. It was utterly ignored by the world, but Rockweld felt vindicated, and was content for a while. He even took up pipe smoking, until instructed not to by a plumber.

Rockweld was, in many ways, my alter ego, my mirror image, and certainly the best friend I could ever have. Today I feel quite wistful, recalling those long days spent in fevered debate and discussion, testing our wits and logic against the keen razor of the other's intellect. How fondly I remember those lengthy, jocular sparring matches, as we argued vehemently back and forth over which was "the weird one" in Shakespear's Sister. Happy days indeed, as we lived off our modest stipends, and imparted wisdom to our students and ourselves.

I remember when his first novel was published, Rockweld came bustling into our rooms, delighted and waving the first copy above his head in triumph. We drank long into the night in celebration, and he was quite red-faced later when I informed him that in his intoxicated state, he had attempted to write a thesis on the prevalence of fennel in aviary kiosk menus. How we laughed, as I showed him the ornamental Japanese bread bin he had worn on his head, while standing by the fireplace and demonstrating a new dance he had just invented called "The Menorah Bop"

Unfortunately, Rockweld's joy had quickly turned to dust as his book was an unmitigated failure. He blamed the reviews, and there is no doubt that certain critics had harmed the commercial prospects of the work when they pointed out that the plot was predicated entirely on the (supposedly) fanciful notion that the lead character was a zebra who had managed to convincingly disguise himself as a wealthy stockbroker with a stapler and some felt. If one did not give credence to this idea, claimed the nitpickers, then the book, as a narrative, made no sense at all. After sales plummeted from their already subterranean levels, Rockweld, fixated upon literary respect, embarked on a much-publicised experiment to prove that a zebra could, in fact, achieve this task. He failed in this attempt, too, becoming bitter and retreating to our study to drink heavily and occasionally snort derisively at my interior decorating skills.

Still, there is no doubt Rockweld had a dizzying intellect, and I will forever think of him as the most admirable academic, indeed the most admirable man, of our times. It was only later in life that his wits were dulled to a certain extent, and where once he would dazzle parties with his rapier wit and best any challenger at chess, checkers, or whist, he now mainly went to the cinema and threw jaffas at Chinese people.

At least, in this phase, he was happy, and I think his seventy-third birthday, around this time, may have been the most joyous of his life, especially considering his early childhood, when every year his parents would pretend to be wheeling in an enormous cake, only to pull off the cover to reveal an assortment of huge, venomous spiders, which they would then exhort young Rockweld to "round up and pacify", or he would get no presents. Once he had performed this task, they would chuckle knowingly and give him an Al Jolson commemorative keyring, engraved with the wrong initials. Rockweld later discovered that they were, in fact, laudanum-addicted psychotherapists who had stolen him in infancy to perform mind-experiments on, but the hurt never fully healed, and all his life he looked for these people's approval.

I do remember that awful day, the beginning of the end. Rockweld had been unpredictable in his moods of late, and on this day, the final straw appeared to be placed on the camel.

We were calmly sitting, reading and enjoying the view of the black smoke from the smelting plant across the road, when I passed an innocent remark to the effect that I considered West Side Story to be too heavily stylised for my tastes.

Rockweld instantly flew into a terrible rage, hurling his brandy glass out the window, striking me sharply with the corkscrew, and accusing me of being a crypto-fascist and in league with Hammerskjold. I tried to placate him with promises of compensation and trips to the zoo, but he kept up his abuse, screaming that I was trying to trick him into voluntary organ donation, and then crawling under the rug, biting his fingers and crying out "I'm a linen press, you mustn't look at me!"

Sadly, I had to call a doctor, who sedated Rockweld and took him for the last time from his beloved study. He didn't last long after that, of course, dying peacefully in his sleep after confiding to me that he had never really loved his wife, and in general preferred Italian cheese. It was a sad end for a great man, but I shall always remember him with fondness, respect, and...yes, I should say, love. 

Themroc van Harryhausen, Gnu Buster

The kid looked down at the dirt and spat his tobacco out, killing a passing centipede instantly.
'We movin' out?' the kid asked, trying not to show his impatience.
Themroc van Harryhausen, the greatest gnu-buster the West had ever known, looked up from the fire where he was raking over the embers of the morning, swallowing the last of the toasted marzipan.
'You're too eager, kid. I know, I was once like you.' Themroc looked at the sky, almost blinding in its mixture of bright blue and damnation orange, and felt tears prick the edge of his eyes. He refused to cry. He hadn't cried in nigh-on thirty years, and he wasn't about to start now. Standing up and hitching up his belt, he applied his medicated eyedrops and blinked for an hour or so. Finally, he nodded to his protege, and they made their way slowly to the horses.
They were called horses, but Themroc knew, in that deep, elemental, dry-boned way, that they were horses only in name. In fact, the kid's was actually a dachsund. For himself, Themroc had secured himself a thoroughbred ibex, but as had always been the way amongst gnu-busters, the apprentice rode a dog. Some traditions were worth holding onto.
The weary-faced 'buster allowed a smile to insinuate itself across his face with the memory of his own apprenticeship, when he himself had ridden tall in the saddle on a fiery shih tzu. That had been under the tutelage of the famous Portobello Siffredi, and in some ways they had been the happiest days of his life. In other ways they hadn't, for instance, the intermittent hand-holding and French kisses, but he was willing to forget that for the sake of the gnu-busting secrets Siffredi had vouchsafed him. Those days were long gone now, and Siffredi's mantle had been quietly devoured by Themroc himself. Some days, though...he wondered...
The kid was looking at him strangely. It took a few minutes for Themroc to realise that this was because he had been captured by a lynch mob and hung from a tree during his previous musings. Shaking his head at the kid's bulging eyes and throaty gurgles, Themroc cut him down with his shiny gnu-machete, laid him gently on the savannah and kissed his eyelids tenderly.
'Gotta watch for the mobs in these parts, kid,' he said after the young fellow had recovered and they were mounting up. 'Some people don't take too kindly to gnu-busting. Post-modernists and such. City folk. Russians. Franciscan monks.'
'But gnu-busters built this land,' protested the kid, outraged at such goings on and suspecting, as always, that it was all Jack Kerouac's fault.
Themroc sighed and stabbed his ibex in the neck to get it moving. 'Times are changing, kid,' he said wistfully and with a touch of lavender. 'The ranges ain't so open no more, the grass don't grow quite so tall, folks ain't free and easy with their vittles, the towns have swallowed up the prairie, the hippo's gone a-lookin' for greener pastures, and the nabob, we he just up and scuttled, y'all.'
The kid was silent. He looked down at the neck of his dachsund, and stroked it thoughtfully. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering in his heart of hearts what Themroc was talking about. Sometimes it seemed they spoke a different language. Sometimes they did speak a different language, and it was Urdu. Some days all that was ahead of them was grass, heat, a herd of giraffes and an overdraft, and if it wasn't for his faith in gnu-busting as a man's pursuit, he would crawl into the bottom of a whisky bottle and make a model ship.
Themroc noticed his partner's taciturnity. he reached over with the gnu-prod and shocked him with concern.
'K, kid?' he asked, with the lazy southern drawl that he had picked up last week in a saloon. 'The gnus'll be comin' up by an' by.'
'I'm fine, sir,' said the kid loyally as his arm slowly slipped from its socket due to a congenital disorder. 'Just doin' a mite thinkin''
'Better wrap it up, son,' said Themroc, smiling evilly for the hell of it. 'Them gnus be comin' over the horizon, and there's bustin' to be done.'
He spoke the truth. In two minutes time, they were the centre of a heaving, sweaty tornado of hoofs, horns, wild, unbridled grunting and whispered murmurings of romance and indiscretion. At the end of it, seventy fine gnus had been busted, and many hundreds more were dead. The kid, screaming wildly, was feasting on the remains, face covered with blood and pale as a midnight hamster. Themroc laid a weatherbeaten glove on his shoulder.
'None o' that, son,' he said. 'We came to bust these gnus for Mister Gramboko, and we done busted 'em. Now we bring 'em in, but let the rest bury their loved ones. Never step on a gnu' religious traditions, it shows disrespect. And out here, sometimes, respect's all a body's got to stop him becoming sexually confused.'
'They're just gnus,' the kid protested, mouth full of the peculiarly sticky mass you get in gnu bladders. 'And ain't we gnu-busters?'
'A gnu-buster don't despise the gnus he busts, kid. That's a lesson you gotta learn if'n ever you wanna get offa yer dachsund. We fight 'em, we bust 'em, we even kill 'em, but we respects 'em. We're like brothers. Who kill each other. Man and gnu gotta be able to look each other in the face, or else, there's no point to this crazy ol' world, and we may as well just go pick up whores in Nairobi. Treat 'em with honour, kid, it's the only way. It's the gnu-buster's code.'
'What's the gnu-buster's code?'
'3X-ZQF-40.'
'And what does that mean, huh?'
'You'll find out, son, you'll find out.'
'And Themroc, with a dig of his heels and a vibration of his thighs, wheeled his ibex around and headed for home. but in his heart he remembered the day he found out what the code meant, and the way his life was never the same afterwards, as family, friends, and motor function left him and he found himself out on that lonesome savannah, busting gnus, bedding women, eating spinifex and playing practical jokes on slow-witted zebras. Life could never stay in one place for a gnu-buster, not even the greatest the world had ever known. because that world was changing, and no matter how many times he busted a gnu, trained an apprentice, married a Filipino or rode that long, lonesome trail from Cairo to Cape Town, the aching would remain. The aching that said...Themroc, your time has passed...
He felt the pricking again. He wiped his eyes, dug his heels in, and rode...away.