They are at it again! I can hardly believe it! Just a couple of posts ago I took steps to foil Turkish deviants by changing a couple of words on my blog. Then on 25th June I had a hit from Israel. The Israeli had come to my blog via a Google search using the words “doris feline big tit”. That’s just taking the piss, that is. I bet it’s Mossad getting back at me. Bastards!
Korky is at the door of The Dandy and God is in Gleneagle. Both are equally uncertain of what will happen next, a confusion they share with this writer. However, it must be remembered that the Bogan CEO, Prutile Frogshide, has sent another on a quest and Sean Bean is similarly nonplussed. He is sitting alone at the Bogan Council boardroom table idly picking his nose and wishing he had taken up the option to become Kevin Rudd.
(Sean is depressed. Nobody likes him and nobody wants to help him. If he has a familiar then it is following the example of the others and ignoring him. Sean cannot remember a single human being who has accepted him for what he is and liked him for himself – except perhaps one.
It was such a long, long time ago. Sean remembers the warm, tobacco and whiskey smell and the touch of a hand softened by loose and wrinkled skin. The dim recollections waver but he can still feel the downy texture of flannelette pyjamas pressed against his face as he lay safely in the arms of ‘Pampa’.
Pampa. Even the word is enough to calm him but, this time, the calm is overlaying uncertainty. He felt it when Frogshide mentioned The Beano and Sean wondered if he should speak out. But then again – why should he? Perhaps it was nothing, another of the coincidences that has plagued Sean all his life. No - best be silent and let Luke discover for himself just how tightly the past was entangled in the future and just how loosely the present held to both. But still, there was that delicious calm so seldom felt and Sean needs more of the same - much more.
He leaves the council offices and looks to see if his car has been missed by the daily raid of vandals and is pleased to find it still has all its wheels and most of its windows. When he turns the key the engine fires so all is right in his world as Sean Bean drives away from Bogan, heading south.
He is aware of strangeness in the landscape. He had seen it from the council offices window but had only been puzzled by an oddity he couldn’t quite identify. Sean’s perception is weak and he missed the turmoil Mayor Porker and the others saw so clearly when they joined him at the window and saw the world with ‘true sight’ for the very first time. Occasionally, however, Sean is shocked to find himself inexplicably far away from where he means to be but then a landmark suddenly appears and proves him closer than he thought. Doggedly he pushes on, always turning south.
So it is less than an hour later when Sean drives into a narrow, tree-lined avenue leading to a clearing where he parks and leaves the car. He walks slowly along rows of marble crosses and concrete tombs. Sean is searching half remembered places for a half remembered feeling. He is searching for Pampa and a long lost emotion that might possibly be love when, abruptly, he stumbles and falls across the prostrate body of God.)
Sean: Shit! What the hell are you doing stretched across the path? You could have busted my bleeding leg you dozy old sod!
God: I’m terribly sorry. It’s this annoying mist, I was trying to see under it like car fog lights are meant to, but it doesn’t seem to work for me.
Sean: What mist? There isn’t any mist.
God: Oh dear, I was afraid of that. So it’s only me that’s blocked. What a nuisance. Would you be kind enough to help me up …? Thank you. Ahhhh, that did the trick.
Sean: What did what trick? Who are you meant to be?
God: When you helped me to my feet the contact between us was enough to dispel the fog. I acquired your perception. It’s a God thing. I’m God, by the way, pleased to meet you face to face at last. You don’t go to church much do you?
Sean: Right. Well you can drop all that crap. Pampa told me all about it and besides, I saw you pop out of the light when Luke called up his familiar.
God: Ah yes. Um …. Pampa? The name is unfamiliar. Pampa is …..?
Sean: My great grandfather. Just up here …. yes, this is his grave. The inscription on the headstone will interest you.
God: The Beano. Born 1899 – Died 1979. Beloved husband of Doris Bean and great grandfather of Sean.
Sean: Thank you for not laughing at my great grandmother’s name. It’s a bit of a family embarrassment. It’s actually pronounced ‘Does’. You know, like in female deer and Cockburn.
God: I was wondering more about ‘The Beano’.
Sean: Ah yes, The Beano. That was a typo or perhaps it should be chiselo. Pampa’s name was Theo Bean but the stonemason at Beaudesert Monumentals Dorised it up and carved the ‘o’ at the end of the wrong word. The bloke was pissed or dyslexic - not sure which. But great grandmother managed to get a good half-price deal on the headstone so it was never corrected.
God: That’s all there was to it?
Sean: Pretty much. Oh, there were rumours and all sorts of local legends started up about The Beano. Some said he was in your trade – a holy man, some even said he was a God, but that’s the sort of thing Pampa would have claimed when he was alive. He was a funny old bugger. He was special though.
God: You said .. uh … Pampa told you all about it. All about what, exactly?
Sean: All the nutty stuff that passes for religion in the country towns and villages around Bogan. Witches, warlocks, goblins and the War of Devotion - that kind of thing. So when someone claims to be God, it’s not something new to me. Pampa said there were dozens of your kind squabbling over market share. I’d forgotten until now.
God: Well I’m the proper God. My son is called Jesus, you know.
Sean: Hey, I knew a kid called Jesus. He was in the same class as me at Beaudesert High. Longhaired kid, thick as pig shit. Watkins! That was his name – Jesus Watkins. The bugger used to preach to us and said he was the son of God. We baptised him in the school bogs. His hair got stuck in the S bend and we nearly drowned the sod, had to bail the pan out with his lunch box before he could breathe. He was such a prat.
God: He still is, I’m afraid.
Sean: Oh, sorry. I didn’t know he was your boy.
God: That’s quite all right, don’t mention it. Did your Pampa say anything else?
Sean: I remember one thing he said. If I needed to know more I should go to the church.
God: Which church?
Sean: I assume he meant his local church. You can just see it down there among the trees at the bottom of the hill. It’s pretty much a ruin now but it’s still a church; Saint Martin of the Plagues, House of Devotions. Do you want to take a closer look?
12 HOURS EARLIER – THE DANDY, JIMBOOMBA.
(Korky and Roscoe Lunchpack entered The Dandy. It was early evening but the place was already packed. The troll at the door nodded to Roscoe and ignored Korky but grabbed the next person to walk in and gave him a good kicking to justify the presence of a troll at the door.
The dance floor was heaving as patrons gyrated and went through exaggerated body positions that would be embarrassing anywhere else but a dance floor. Most dancers mimed sexual congress, some mimed taking a shit and some combined the two. Korky wondered what would happen if the music were to suddenly stop and it seemed someone else was wondering the same thing because the music did stop. Amazingly the dancers carried on as if nothing had changed. They continued to writhe accompanied only by the sounds of shuffling feet, the creak of leather jeans and the rasp of innumerable involuntary farts.
Roscoe forced a path through the crowd until they stood before the biggest table in the club and around the table sat the Coven. They were all there including Mayor Porker and Korky stared open mouthed at the brain-buggering image of herself in the midst of another life. Mayor Porker stared back but did not seem perturbed by the experience. Korky realised that she was not really looking at herself at all. Korky was a ‘familiar’ and as such, was only an assistant to a soul with multiple sources. There might be a million Mayor Porkers but who was counting? This particular Mayor Porker soon lost interest in Korky and turned to a Shizeknicker who had been telling her about the profit to be made on literary prostitution.
Beside them Sean Bean was performing conjuring tricks and Winnie Quark sat gazing impassively into her glass of prune juice. The rest were attendant on the quiet leader of the group, Andy McDuck, who seemed content to smile winningly and let his charm ooze like fish oil. Eventually however, McDuck tired of the simpering adulation and he spoke.)
An Andy McDuck: Ladies and Gentlemen, now that we’ve dumped that horrible music and we can hear ourselves think I believe it is time for regional reports You seem excited about your region, Arnell. Perhaps you will give us the literary prostitution overview?
An Arnell Shizeknicker: Sure, Andy. Things are looking up and the sky’s the limit. The old favourites like ‘Naked Lunch’ and ‘Black Beauty’ are still pulling the punters in but the big money is in the recent edited adaptations of old favourites. I’m talking about books like ‘Dora the Explorer Cops a Dose’ and ‘Foreplay School’ and ‘Anne of Green Pustules’. These books have opened up a whole new market. Instead of damp, smelly reading rooms catering just for the dirty raincoat brigade we now have bright family reading areas opening up in every major shopping centre. I predict literacy will soon be back above the 50% mark and that means more readers for hard-core adaptations like ‘From Here to Maternity’ and ‘Horton Hears a Whore’. But – and this is the exciting bit – we aren’t ignoring the illiterate punters. I’ve brought in dozens of educated young women who have been trained as erotic readers. These girls, many of them with mugs like bags full of spanners, are now pulling in more revenue than the glamour girls who dance in our clubs. So, just to sum up, we’re doing great and takings are up 30%.
An Andy McDuck: That’s wonderful, Arnell. Well done. Okay, what’s next – Magic and the Supernatural. How’s it going Sean?
A Sean Bean: In a word – rubbish! How you expect me to compete against goblins, elves and trolls I just can’t imagine. All I’ve got are card tricks and pulling dollar coins out of peoples nostrils. Have you seen that troll’s act over at Flagstone Flagellation Club? The bugger saws a dozen women in half every night of the week. Okay, it’s no trick, he really does saw them in half and it’s messy but the whole point is the spectacle of it! Nobody wants to come into our Conjure Booths after that kind of show. They can get our tricks in a Christmas cracker for God’s sake. What I need is some real magic. Look, I know we said we didn’t want to go down this path but I honestly think we need to sign up a few genuine witches and warlocks. We need thunder and lightning, the clatter of cloven hooves, manifestations of evil and flags of all nations ex-rectum.
An Andy McDuck: But, Sean we claim to be the genuine witches and a warlock don’t we and therein lays the problem. How would it appear if we brought in outsiders who were more impressive practitioners of the black arts? We would look like fools and, even worse, we would appear weak. This is not the way, Sean. The problem is not with our lack of power but with the perception of our power. For instance, instead of pulling dollar coins out of peoples nostrils we should pull red-hot pokers out of their arses. I can assure you of an audience for that and a well deserved respect from anyone who doesn’t want a red-hot poker pulled out of their arse – that would be just about everybody. It’s simple, effective and unforgettable. That, my dear Sean, is magic. Look everyone; let’s not continue with the regional reports today. We will make them in one weeks time when you will all be able to report a 30% increase in revenue just as Arnell did. Sean, perhaps you will practice your pokerwork just in case there are any disappointments. In the meantime, my public awaits.
(To a chorus of barely suppressed groans McDuck ambled onto the tiny stage and picked up the microphone. He raised one arm and began to snap his fingers in no particular rhythm because there was no music and then he launched into a jaunty rendition of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ accompanied by Tarquin Troll - Maestro of the Comb and Paper. It was an excruciating performance of schmaltzy dross that ended one hour later with McDuck’s favourite selections from Sound of Music culminating in the Cuckoo Clock number with McDuck acting out all the parts of the Von Trap children. He even ended the song by falling asleep on the step and carrying himself off to bed. It was awful. He returned to the group at the table who had not been game to leave, unlike the rest of the nightclubs customers who had slipped away as soon as the lights went down.)
An Andy McDuck: Well guys, I think we have one more stop before calling it a day. The Olympus Games start tomorrow so I think we should check out the venue.
Korky: Olympus Games?
A Roscoe Lunchpack: It’s a time when the Gods come together to decide The Supreme Being for the next 30 years. They call it The War of Devotion; it’s a sort of get together and elimination match.
Korky: The Confluence.
An Andy McDuck: That’s right, familiar Korky, how clever of you. Whoever prevails at The Confluence controls our universe for 3 decades. Well this time is going to be my time so we will all now study the playing field. It’s at a little place called Saint Martin of the Plagues in Gleneagle. Come on, it’s not very far.
TO BE CONTINUED.
6/30/09
6/24/09
Coven - Part 6
Leaving Korky staring at the flashing sign for The Dandy nightclub we return to the Bogan Council Chamber where Luke Skypilot has been striving all day to discover his particular familiar so that he might begin his own quest for The Beano. Roscoe Lunchpack and Grimy Hobo are little help as they chant the names of comic heroes dredged up from a misty, distant past.
Roscoe Lunchpack: We tried Biffo the Bear didn’t we?
Grimy Hobo: Yes and Keyhole Kate, Minnie the Minx, General Jumbo, Lord Snooty and His Pals - all that lot.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well they wouldn’t work anyway. They were all Dandy characters I believe.
Grimy Hobo: Desperate Dan?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Desperate Dan was definitely The Dandy but I think Minnie the Minx might have been The Beano come to think about it, not sure.
Luke: None of them are working anyway. I think we’re on the wrong track. What else was associated with The Beano? Come on, you guys; I’m getting really frustrated here.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Can’t think of a thing.
Grimy Hobo: Beats me.
Luke: Oh, God Almighty!
(There is a flood of light so bright it should have blinded but is perfectly illuminating instead. It fills the room and seems to become the room. Luke is aware of every mote of dust that swirls about him and the dust is aware of him – he becomes the dust and sees the congealed dark matter that keeps the dust apart. All things can be seen in this light, it casts no shadow and has no apparent source. This is the same light by which Schrodinger’s cat saw a radioactive atom begin to decay and the cat therefore knew it was totally Dorised. This is the Light of the World and there is no mistaking it. After a few moments the brightness lessens. The light does not actually dim but withdraws into the rather short old man who now stands in the exact spot from which Luke has recently vanished. To make doubly certain there is no ambiguity the little fellow has a large badge pinned to his flowing white robes. The badge has jolly carton style lettering on it that reads, “ Six days – piece a cake. Thank Me for Sundays”)
God: Is this flesh and blood thing always so smelly or does one get used to it?
(Ron Yuteman: Why not? I take the piss out of everyone else. If the Old One exists I’m betting he’s got a sense of humour. If he hasn’t, I’m Dorised anyway. Oh look, Grimy and Roscoe have fallen to their knees and are crossing themselves like a skydiver who can’t find the ripcord on his parachute.)
God: Oh I wish you wouldn’t do that chaps. It makes me feel so self-conscious. I remember talking to Queen Victoria about this sort of thing. Everyone she met seemed so stiff and formal. She didn’t know they were all trying desperately to control their bottoms. Do you know, the poor woman went through her whole life without hearing another human fart? She thought it was just her that did it and wondered what ghastly affliction she had. So, please gentlemen, fart only if you must but at least relax and just talk to me as if I were any other vastly superior being that just happened to drop in.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Blatha nagga ba-dong gatha clatherblah ta Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha …….glorpht.
Grimy Hobo: I think what my friend is trying to say … uh .. sir … sire … uh .. thou-est, is that he is really honoured to be … well, for thou to be hereith withith usteth and blatha nagga glaphablath ptoing pting whampaclath.
God: Jesus!
(Poof.)
Jesus: Yes, Dad?
God: What did I tell you this morning – don’t interrupt – I told you to mind the shop didn’t I? That was the last thing I said after I said I was going to pop out for a few hundred years wasn’t it? What is the point, I mean, what-is-the-bloody-point of spending all that time on your training if you can’t follow a simple instruction? How are you going to learn the family business if you can’t be left in charge for a few centuries? Really - I might as well have given the job to that prat Gabriel for all the use you’ve been lately. What is your problem boy, tell me that, what is your bloody problem - eh? Don’t interrupt. Now get back there and start behaving omnipotent and all ghosty wobbly. Go on, sod off!
(Poof.)
God: Kids! Where’s the way out of this dump?
(Going for the short cut, God walks through the wall but forgets to turn on the Holy Spirit and makes a dreadful mess. He comes out the other side of the wall covered with plaster dust and bits of wood. After passing through a mains cable his hair and beard stand straight out from his head and he has set off every alarm in the building. Shaking the dust off, God moves in a mysterious way up the corridor towards the exit. He meets the entry guard who seems put out by the damage God has caused.)
Guard: Oy!
God: Are you talking to me?
Guard: Oh no, I was talkin’ on the phone to me Mum – of course I’m talking to you, you really naughty person! What the Doris do you think you’re Dorising doing?
God: Look I’m sorry but I’m in a bit of a rush. Could we continue this conversation some other time?
Guard: What’s your Dorising name smartass?
God: God.
Guard: All right Mr. God. Assume the position on the floor where I can comfortably give you a good kicking. And no curling up into a little ball either. I want to be able to see a clear boot trajectory into your bollocks.
God: I really have to go. Goodnight to you.
Guard: Stop or I’ll fire!
(As God carries on toward the door the guard opens fire. He empties a whole magazine and then throws a grenade that explodes around God with absolutely no effect. God is obviously a little peeved by this and he turns back to the guard who is looking crestfallen but resigned.)
Guard: You are God and I’m Dorised aren’t I?
God: ‘Fraid so.
Guard: What will happen to me?
God: Either upside down in 3 feet of shit or have your entrails picked at by eagles, both go on for eternity without the option – your choice. Personally I’d go for the eagles, we get all our shit from Bombay and it’s 90% curry.
Guard: Does it have to be forever?
God: Well, after a few hundred thousand years I might bring you back as a cockroach, but only long enough to get stepped on then it’s back to the day job.
Guard: And there was me thinking it was the Devil that lobbed out this sort of grief.
God: Yes, it’s always amazed me that people assume we are two different forces. Both sides of the one coin really. Heads, tails - good, evil - window looking out, window looking in. It’s all the same thing and morally dependant on your point of view. It’s the same with the punishment, after a few years you’ll probably start to enjoy it and wonder how you ever managed without soaking your head or feeding the birds. This is paradise, you will say - and perhaps you will be right.
Guard: Eagles or shit eh? Can I have a bit of time to decide? Talk it over with the wife and that?
God: Of course, I’ll send one of my people round to pick you up in the morning but I’ve got to be going now.
Guard: Yeah, right. Cheers God - and thanks.
(God leaves the building. He pauses briefly in Bogan Central to cause a flower to bloom, which isn’t quite up there with the parting of the Red Sea but pretty spectacular for Bogan Central all the same, and then he hops onto a passing Beaudesert upheaval just as dawn begins to break.
Thus God comes to Beaudesert for the very first time. Despite the bible bashing and pulpit fulminations, particularly from the Lutherans, Beaudesert has always been a Godless place. The population’s reputation for piety and simple faith is always second to its predilection for begetting and Beaudesert’s farm boys’ tendencies to “know” anything with a hole in it, including the livestock, doesn’t help. It was only recent closer links to the outside world that halted the popular Saturday night lynching of black fellas who had attempted to “know” a white Missus (or refused to, in some particularly ugly cases).
God knows he stands on shaky ground in this town. Beaudesert people will not appreciate a God at variance with their expectations no matter how many miracles he can pull out of his arse. The Beaudesert God is a jealous God and will brook no other. God will have to be very careful indeed because it is a virtually unknown fact that God can be killed and of the infinite number of places in the Universe, Beaudesert is the most dangerous place for him to be.
He stands at the war memorial searching the faces of the passing, bare-foot, drooling throng. The air is thick with cow shit and the sound of banjos drowns the roar of trucks and the bellow of cattle stampeding through the streets. It is market day and fat farm wives carry impossibly huge bundles of produce to market with the same silent stoicism that will take them home, each carrying a drunken husband on her back.)
God: Excuse me, I wonder if you can …..? Excuse me, would you ….? I say. You there. Hello, would you possibly know ….? Oh dear. I’m a Lutheran you see, or a Catholic if you prefer. Anglican? I’m definitely not God though. Goodness me no. Wouldn’t be God for quids. Hello …..
The Last Mayor of All: What’s the bother, old fella? You look a bit lawst. Can I ‘elp you?
God: Thank goodness, I thought nobody would stop. It was as if I was invisible and I know I wasn’t being that. I turned invisibility off, you see. And you are …?
The last Mayor of All: Me names Joy. I was the last Mayor of Beaudesert Shire. What a claim to fame, eh? Now what’s the problem me old mate?
God: You’re very kind. I wonder if you can point me in the right direction to find someone or something known as The Beano?
The Last Mayor of All: The Beano? Too right I can, mate. Everybody knows The Beano, at least, the old buggers like me do. The Beano’s a bloke, or ‘e was. Died in 1979 of the smallpox. You’ll find ‘is grave up in Gleneagle bone yard. You won’t miss it; it’s the biggest gravestone in the cemetery. So, what do you want with The Beano, friend of yours was ‘e?
God: No, not really. I wonder why I didn’t know about him? Where is this Gleneagle cemetery?
The Last Mayor of All: About 4 miles north. Fit old bugger like you could walk it in an hour. Take my tip though, don’t mention to anybody that you’re visitin’ The Beano. Not everyone is as forgivin’ as me - if you get my drift.
God: Thank you. I know how hard that was for you. Uh….when you come back … next time. I would like you to be Queen of the Lorikeets. I think you will enjoy it.
The Last Mayor of All: Yes, yes I would, very much. We understand each other, don’t we, you and me? These others can’t know what it means. Sometimes I despair, but I hold together. There’s not too many left and none like you. It’s been a pleasure old man.
(The last Mayor of All turns away and, despite her harlequin suit, is soon lost in the crowd. God heads north and quickly passes beyond the outskirts of the town. He is vaguely aware of a Beaudesert youth and his girlfriend knowing each other like nuclear rabbits in the scrub beside the road. This is common enough and hardly deserving of note but something about the union draws him. With a shock he discovers that the spermatozoon and ovum destined to meet will produce a being with a potential intellectual capacity to rival Einstein’s. However, realising the child will then grow up in Beaudesert, God decides that the conception is pointless so he blocks it to avoid the frustration.
But he is confused. If he can be aware of things like that and see the entire universe in a glance, why does he know nothing about Gleneagle and The Beano? Who is The Beano? What is he? Furthermore, why does the village of Gleneagle, that is now very close, seem to be cloaked in a mist absolutely impenetrable by the gaze of God?)
TO BE CONTINUED.
Roscoe Lunchpack: We tried Biffo the Bear didn’t we?
Grimy Hobo: Yes and Keyhole Kate, Minnie the Minx, General Jumbo, Lord Snooty and His Pals - all that lot.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well they wouldn’t work anyway. They were all Dandy characters I believe.
Grimy Hobo: Desperate Dan?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Desperate Dan was definitely The Dandy but I think Minnie the Minx might have been The Beano come to think about it, not sure.
Luke: None of them are working anyway. I think we’re on the wrong track. What else was associated with The Beano? Come on, you guys; I’m getting really frustrated here.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Can’t think of a thing.
Grimy Hobo: Beats me.
Luke: Oh, God Almighty!
(There is a flood of light so bright it should have blinded but is perfectly illuminating instead. It fills the room and seems to become the room. Luke is aware of every mote of dust that swirls about him and the dust is aware of him – he becomes the dust and sees the congealed dark matter that keeps the dust apart. All things can be seen in this light, it casts no shadow and has no apparent source. This is the same light by which Schrodinger’s cat saw a radioactive atom begin to decay and the cat therefore knew it was totally Dorised. This is the Light of the World and there is no mistaking it. After a few moments the brightness lessens. The light does not actually dim but withdraws into the rather short old man who now stands in the exact spot from which Luke has recently vanished. To make doubly certain there is no ambiguity the little fellow has a large badge pinned to his flowing white robes. The badge has jolly carton style lettering on it that reads, “ Six days – piece a cake. Thank Me for Sundays”)
God: Is this flesh and blood thing always so smelly or does one get used to it?
(Ron Yuteman: Why not? I take the piss out of everyone else. If the Old One exists I’m betting he’s got a sense of humour. If he hasn’t, I’m Dorised anyway. Oh look, Grimy and Roscoe have fallen to their knees and are crossing themselves like a skydiver who can’t find the ripcord on his parachute.)
God: Oh I wish you wouldn’t do that chaps. It makes me feel so self-conscious. I remember talking to Queen Victoria about this sort of thing. Everyone she met seemed so stiff and formal. She didn’t know they were all trying desperately to control their bottoms. Do you know, the poor woman went through her whole life without hearing another human fart? She thought it was just her that did it and wondered what ghastly affliction she had. So, please gentlemen, fart only if you must but at least relax and just talk to me as if I were any other vastly superior being that just happened to drop in.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Blatha nagga ba-dong gatha clatherblah ta Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha …….glorpht.
Grimy Hobo: I think what my friend is trying to say … uh .. sir … sire … uh .. thou-est, is that he is really honoured to be … well, for thou to be hereith withith usteth and blatha nagga glaphablath ptoing pting whampaclath.
God: Jesus!
(Poof.)
Jesus: Yes, Dad?
God: What did I tell you this morning – don’t interrupt – I told you to mind the shop didn’t I? That was the last thing I said after I said I was going to pop out for a few hundred years wasn’t it? What is the point, I mean, what-is-the-bloody-point of spending all that time on your training if you can’t follow a simple instruction? How are you going to learn the family business if you can’t be left in charge for a few centuries? Really - I might as well have given the job to that prat Gabriel for all the use you’ve been lately. What is your problem boy, tell me that, what is your bloody problem - eh? Don’t interrupt. Now get back there and start behaving omnipotent and all ghosty wobbly. Go on, sod off!
(Poof.)
God: Kids! Where’s the way out of this dump?
(Going for the short cut, God walks through the wall but forgets to turn on the Holy Spirit and makes a dreadful mess. He comes out the other side of the wall covered with plaster dust and bits of wood. After passing through a mains cable his hair and beard stand straight out from his head and he has set off every alarm in the building. Shaking the dust off, God moves in a mysterious way up the corridor towards the exit. He meets the entry guard who seems put out by the damage God has caused.)
Guard: Oy!
God: Are you talking to me?
Guard: Oh no, I was talkin’ on the phone to me Mum – of course I’m talking to you, you really naughty person! What the Doris do you think you’re Dorising doing?
God: Look I’m sorry but I’m in a bit of a rush. Could we continue this conversation some other time?
Guard: What’s your Dorising name smartass?
God: God.
Guard: All right Mr. God. Assume the position on the floor where I can comfortably give you a good kicking. And no curling up into a little ball either. I want to be able to see a clear boot trajectory into your bollocks.
God: I really have to go. Goodnight to you.
Guard: Stop or I’ll fire!
(As God carries on toward the door the guard opens fire. He empties a whole magazine and then throws a grenade that explodes around God with absolutely no effect. God is obviously a little peeved by this and he turns back to the guard who is looking crestfallen but resigned.)
Guard: You are God and I’m Dorised aren’t I?
God: ‘Fraid so.
Guard: What will happen to me?
God: Either upside down in 3 feet of shit or have your entrails picked at by eagles, both go on for eternity without the option – your choice. Personally I’d go for the eagles, we get all our shit from Bombay and it’s 90% curry.
Guard: Does it have to be forever?
God: Well, after a few hundred thousand years I might bring you back as a cockroach, but only long enough to get stepped on then it’s back to the day job.
Guard: And there was me thinking it was the Devil that lobbed out this sort of grief.
God: Yes, it’s always amazed me that people assume we are two different forces. Both sides of the one coin really. Heads, tails - good, evil - window looking out, window looking in. It’s all the same thing and morally dependant on your point of view. It’s the same with the punishment, after a few years you’ll probably start to enjoy it and wonder how you ever managed without soaking your head or feeding the birds. This is paradise, you will say - and perhaps you will be right.
Guard: Eagles or shit eh? Can I have a bit of time to decide? Talk it over with the wife and that?
God: Of course, I’ll send one of my people round to pick you up in the morning but I’ve got to be going now.
Guard: Yeah, right. Cheers God - and thanks.
(God leaves the building. He pauses briefly in Bogan Central to cause a flower to bloom, which isn’t quite up there with the parting of the Red Sea but pretty spectacular for Bogan Central all the same, and then he hops onto a passing Beaudesert upheaval just as dawn begins to break.
Thus God comes to Beaudesert for the very first time. Despite the bible bashing and pulpit fulminations, particularly from the Lutherans, Beaudesert has always been a Godless place. The population’s reputation for piety and simple faith is always second to its predilection for begetting and Beaudesert’s farm boys’ tendencies to “know” anything with a hole in it, including the livestock, doesn’t help. It was only recent closer links to the outside world that halted the popular Saturday night lynching of black fellas who had attempted to “know” a white Missus (or refused to, in some particularly ugly cases).
God knows he stands on shaky ground in this town. Beaudesert people will not appreciate a God at variance with their expectations no matter how many miracles he can pull out of his arse. The Beaudesert God is a jealous God and will brook no other. God will have to be very careful indeed because it is a virtually unknown fact that God can be killed and of the infinite number of places in the Universe, Beaudesert is the most dangerous place for him to be.
He stands at the war memorial searching the faces of the passing, bare-foot, drooling throng. The air is thick with cow shit and the sound of banjos drowns the roar of trucks and the bellow of cattle stampeding through the streets. It is market day and fat farm wives carry impossibly huge bundles of produce to market with the same silent stoicism that will take them home, each carrying a drunken husband on her back.)
God: Excuse me, I wonder if you can …..? Excuse me, would you ….? I say. You there. Hello, would you possibly know ….? Oh dear. I’m a Lutheran you see, or a Catholic if you prefer. Anglican? I’m definitely not God though. Goodness me no. Wouldn’t be God for quids. Hello …..
The Last Mayor of All: What’s the bother, old fella? You look a bit lawst. Can I ‘elp you?
God: Thank goodness, I thought nobody would stop. It was as if I was invisible and I know I wasn’t being that. I turned invisibility off, you see. And you are …?
The last Mayor of All: Me names Joy. I was the last Mayor of Beaudesert Shire. What a claim to fame, eh? Now what’s the problem me old mate?
God: You’re very kind. I wonder if you can point me in the right direction to find someone or something known as The Beano?
The Last Mayor of All: The Beano? Too right I can, mate. Everybody knows The Beano, at least, the old buggers like me do. The Beano’s a bloke, or ‘e was. Died in 1979 of the smallpox. You’ll find ‘is grave up in Gleneagle bone yard. You won’t miss it; it’s the biggest gravestone in the cemetery. So, what do you want with The Beano, friend of yours was ‘e?
God: No, not really. I wonder why I didn’t know about him? Where is this Gleneagle cemetery?
The Last Mayor of All: About 4 miles north. Fit old bugger like you could walk it in an hour. Take my tip though, don’t mention to anybody that you’re visitin’ The Beano. Not everyone is as forgivin’ as me - if you get my drift.
God: Thank you. I know how hard that was for you. Uh….when you come back … next time. I would like you to be Queen of the Lorikeets. I think you will enjoy it.
The Last Mayor of All: Yes, yes I would, very much. We understand each other, don’t we, you and me? These others can’t know what it means. Sometimes I despair, but I hold together. There’s not too many left and none like you. It’s been a pleasure old man.
(The last Mayor of All turns away and, despite her harlequin suit, is soon lost in the crowd. God heads north and quickly passes beyond the outskirts of the town. He is vaguely aware of a Beaudesert youth and his girlfriend knowing each other like nuclear rabbits in the scrub beside the road. This is common enough and hardly deserving of note but something about the union draws him. With a shock he discovers that the spermatozoon and ovum destined to meet will produce a being with a potential intellectual capacity to rival Einstein’s. However, realising the child will then grow up in Beaudesert, God decides that the conception is pointless so he blocks it to avoid the frustration.
But he is confused. If he can be aware of things like that and see the entire universe in a glance, why does he know nothing about Gleneagle and The Beano? Who is The Beano? What is he? Furthermore, why does the village of Gleneagle, that is now very close, seem to be cloaked in a mist absolutely impenetrable by the gaze of God?)
TO BE CONTINUED.
6/22/09
Coven - Part 5
Korky is in a Jimboomba with a Roscoe Lunchpack. She cannot remember a history that this particular Roscoe Lunchpack says he has lived and it doesn’t help that she now sees everything from the unique perspective of a highly individual worldview existing only for her. Everything around Korky is a cruel distortion of her expectations and the analogy of watching a State of Origin match between a NSW stochastic grain vignette and a Queensland radical opinion on the life and works of Brueghel the Elder springs to mind - and then, thankfully, springs out again before it can gain too firm a footing.
Have you ever wondered why a lot of the action in these stories happens in Jimboomba? It’s because the blog author lives near there and very seldom goes anywhere else. Now is that bloody sad or what? Pathetic really, but there you go. And I’m still pissed off about the hole I’ve dug for myself on this Coven thing. I mean, you would think I would start making a little plan wouldn’t you? Before I run off at the keyboard I should sit down and write up the bones of a plot. But no. Too bloody easy, that is. It’s as if I challenge myself with the most stupid thing I can think of on the spur of the moment and then say, “Get out of that then”. You wouldn’t do it like that, would you? Just imagine going up to a perfect stranger in the street – it doesn’t have to be a stranger, it could be your best friend or your daughter or the chap that stands outside the supermarket talking to himself, anybody really – and saying something like “My carriage awaits beyond the woodlice, how say you Breadsneezer?” The other person – friend, relative or stranger, doesn’t matter which – says “What do you mean?” and then you have to justify the remark (actually it was a question not a remark - or more accurately, both - but you know what I mean). You’d be completely Dorised wouldn’t you? And deservedly so. Why would you say something like that and bring all that grief down on yourself? You would say something sensible, something thought out. Even if you couldn’t speak you wouldn’t bother imagining saying crap like that. Even if you’d had your vocal cords removed and could only speak by using one of those mechanical things that make you sound like Stephen Hawking you wouldn’t waste the batteries saying something like that, would you? So why do I do it? It’s got me Dorised, I can tell you. God, I’m bored today.
Roscoe continues with his story of the last 8 years and Korky fights to stop the whirling in her head.
Roscoe Lunchpack: After the Lin Emhall incident the public turned right against us. McDuck and Rugarse were stirring as hard as they could until a State enquiry was set up. The upshot was the council was dismissed and McDuck and Rugarse were given the green light to form The Bogan Protectorate as an interim local authority. It was so successful in the first year the Protectorate became permanent and is now looked upon as a superior local government model that’s being considered for the rest of Australia.
Korky: How was it so successful?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Revenue. Bogan contributes more to State and Federal coffers than any other authority. It used to be local government going cap in hand to the big boys but not in Bogan.
Korky: So how is it done?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Simple. Everything that makes profit is legal - drugs, prostitution, gambling, banking and insurance. Everything that costs money is eradicated. The moneymaking schemes are imaginative. Just take my own area at the Military Police Academy. We devised a system for gathering speeding fine revenue faster than ever before. Every road in Bogan is speed rated at 5am each day. The rating is random and no warnings are issued and there are no signs. The rating can vary between 5 kph and 200 kph and anyone caught above or below the limit by more than 2% gets an automatic fine of 20% of the driver’s weekly income.
Korky: 2% of 5 kph? How do you do that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: We don’t, we just err on the side of the government.
Korky: Christ, the prisons will be packed with people that can’t pay.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Not really, prisons cost money. There are only two punishments under the law for anyone unable to meet a legal commitment and that’s death or permanent hard labour (slavery if we’re honest about it) and that seems to do the trick. If it’s death, we sell the organs on ebay and if it’s hard labour, we hire the criminal out to local industry. The sentence given depends on the state of the labour market at the time.
Of course, no system is perfect. We had a guy last week who successfully appealed the death sentence for ‘non-compliance with a rated speed’ because he was stopped at the traffic lights when he was booked. The trouble was, he had a very rare blood group and we’d already sold his kidneys for 3.5 million so we got him for being in possession of stolen property and shot him anyway. Look, Korky, rather than tell you all this it would be easier to show you. Let’s go on the Bogan World Tour, follow me.
(Roscoe heads back across Cusack Lane and Korky follows. When they reach the top of the ramp beside Mitre 10, Roscoe turns and indicates a landscape of blood red flowers stretching off to the south as far as the eye can see. Roscoe tells Korky the vast poppy fields of Cedar Grove are tended by toddlers rented out by the Bogan Kindergarten Cooperative. The children work from 5-30am until 6pm when their parents are released from the Opium Processing Plant built on the site of the old Jimboomba primary school. From the processing plant the refined heroin is shipped each day to the many “Horse Trader” kiosks that, for security reasons and to be close to their best customers, are usually positioned inside Bogan’s police stations.
Continuing the tour, Roscoe relates the story of the Woolies Riots of 2010. During the great economic down turn the Big Two comprising Woolworth and Coles were in fierce competition for share price. Each tried to outdo the other in price hikes to increase profitability and share value. They were confident in their joint monopoly of the food market and they squeezed the consumer to the point of malnutrition. In November 2010 Woolworth increased the price of milk and bread by 200% and the first window was smashed. Within one week Woolies was an empty, shattered ruin and Coles had been burnt to the ground. 87 people died in the food riots and during the following weeks hundreds more, mostly children and the elderly, starved to death. A few days later the BP service station was dynamited closely followed by the destruction of every other service station in Bogan. Cars were abandoned and ablaze. Every shop was looted and torched. The streets were filled with screaming, chanting rioters and the police cowered inside while the world of Bogan fell apart. It was at this point that the Bogan Council held the emergency meeting where Lin Emhall stood up to them. Shortly afterwards The Protectorate came to power, the army moved into Bogan and 7,238 starving residents were slaughtered before peace was finally restored.
Korky and Roscoe paused before what had once been Woolworth’s supermarket but now a garish, pink cake of a building stood there. It was so grotesque and obviously intended to be in the worst of taste that Korky couldn’t help comparing the structure to the architectural abominations of Las Vegas. It had crenulated purple towers and crudely moulded gargoyles. Plastic jasmine wound about its pink stucco walls and the exposed fibreglass beams supporting a roof of green glazed tiles. An enormous black display screen in a gilded piecrust frame was hung between the towers. The screen was blank now but at night it flashed its message of false promise to jaded patrons everywhere. Lurid posters advertised the delights of 2-up, Poker, Blackjack and Roulette. Other posters had photographs of showgirls in gaudy costumes who were claimed to be the most beautiful girls in Bogan but could only possibly hope to impress farm boys who have spent the last 2 years alone with cattle. The place was a dive, a nasty little back-street nightclub thrust to the front and forced upon a community robbed of self-respect. It was Andy McDucks nightclub where he and the Bogan ‘beautiful people’ went to be seen and to stridently reassure each other they were the biggest floaters in the cesspit that Bogan had become.
Next, Korky was led to Roscoe’s pride and joy - The Military Police Academy. Blue jowled trolls lumbered round the combat courses smashing, slashing and shooting whimpering convicted felons. Torture classes competed in the, so far, hopeless quest to keep a victim living long enough to scream and the competitors chuckled and joshed each other in the spirit of friendly rivalry every time they failed. Other classes taught the trolls to read and to operate the speed guns that blared the order to stop in 20 languages simultaneously. They also learned to set the rate of fire for the explosive shells the speed guns fired if a driver ignored the stop instruction or was confused or partially deaf.
But the greatest challenge to the trolls was learning the hundreds of spot fine regulations covering everything from refusing a police raffle ticket to littering a public place. The story is often told of a waiter at a police convention who was carrying a tray of drinks across the room. The waiter suffered from severe dandruff and the litter fines bankrupted him before he reached the other side of the room where he was shot for impecuniosity.
The difficulty in finding a police troll capable of remembering more than a couple of regulations led to the ‘general spot fine’ regulation being adopted which allowed an officer to impose a $1000 spot fine on ‘the suspicion that a regulation may apply for which an on the spot fine is applicable.’ Those that dispute the fine are only able to recover the money by going through a lengthy appeal process giving the authorities time to find a suitable regulation or devise a new one that invariably doubles the fine already imposed.
After the Academy visit, Roscoe paused briefly in the Jimboomba Library filled with books nobody read any more and showed Korky the Lin Emhall Shrine. Lin stood forlornly in his dusty glass case and his polished plastic eyes stared out at a public that once hailed him as a Champion and ‘The Man They Couldn’t Gag’ but after the events that followed his outburst the fickle fans cursed him as a troublemaker and wished he’d kept his sodding trap shut.
Korky left the library and wandered into the old school playing fields. She was profoundly distressed and filled with a dread she couldn’t identify properly. There were suddenly so many things to fear it was difficult to manage her emotions. She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t really think. Her world was twisted by a cancer so aggressive it even fed on itself and she couldn’t see the source of it. Life had become the disease that threatened its own existence and somewhere in this grotesque world a clock was counting down. But still Korky hoped and tried to calm her spirit with the view of silent paddocks and waving grass and jutting, blackened stakes.)
Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, you’ve found the Field of Stars.
Korky: Is that what you call it now? It used to be the school playing fields. Why ‘Field of Stars”? Sounds nice.
Roscoe Lunchpack: It’s because of the thousands of star pickets you can see stuck in the ground. That was where the heads of the food rioters were impaled back in 2010 as a warning to others. We still use them for serious criminals but there aren’t many of those now. Not since they legalised murder and rape anyway. We should get back now. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to be shot for being out after the legal light limit.
Korky: How dark is that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Depends on the officer’s opinion.
(They walk back to a well-lit area overlooking the old Woolies car park. Korky watches the crowds beginning to gather for the evening’s entertainment. She doesn’t recognise anyone.)
Korky: Do you see any of the old councillors these days?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes, I see them all. Well, all of them except Fondleschaft of course.
Korky: Why not Fondleschaft?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, it was a bad time after the Council was disbanded. We were used to scheming, fiddling, plenty of money. You remember what it was like, Korky. We were important people. It was hard to be nobodies again. Then Shizeknicker had an idea. She was always looking for the angles and she said people needed something to believe in and the best thing to do was to start a new religion. It seemed like a good idea. Money, power, influence, everything we wanted – so we looked into it. Then Bean made a joke about there being 13 of us, just enough for a coven of witches so why not make the religion Witchcraft – Devil Worship? We thought – why not?
Korky: You formed a Dorising coven?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Yes. What a hoot, eh? But it worked. Hardly any outlay, just a few black cloaks and pointy hats. I had the contacts with my job in The Academy so we could scare the shit out of anybody we needed to. We just made up a few mumbo jumbo ceremonies, had a few rallies and the money started pouring in. It was just like the old days again. Well, it was until Andy McDuck stuck his oar in.
Korky: He tried to stop you?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Stop us? Like Doris he did. The bastard wanted IN. We were making more money than he was from The Protectorate AND his stupid nightclub. We told him he couldn’t be part of it because our rules said there had to be 13 only on The Coven Council. The next day Fondleschaft was found face down in a ditch and ‘face down’ was spot on; it was just his head, they never found the rest of him.
Korky: So now McDuck is part of The Coven is he?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Part of it? He’s the Chairman, Head Cook and King Incarnate. The oily swine struts about the place in his Armani suit and his $1000 shoes. He calls all the shots and takes most of the money. The big ‘I am’. He slithers around the stage of his shitty nightclub singing Wiggles songs and selections from Sound of Music and Oklahoma. He just loves it. Thinks of himself as a socialite. A fashion guru. A fat, flaccid David Beckham, that’s all he is. And he insists everyone calls him Dandy Andy. What a prick!
Korky: He’s called Dandy Andy? That’s what you said? Dandy Andy?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes. Dandy bleeding Andy. He even named his crappy nightclub after that. See, it’s opening now. Look at the sign.
(The black screen between the towers bursts into life. A cartoon figure like the Johnny Walker logo in top hat and tails marches across the screen and then two bright orange words begin to flash on and off, on and off.)
THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Have you ever wondered why a lot of the action in these stories happens in Jimboomba? It’s because the blog author lives near there and very seldom goes anywhere else. Now is that bloody sad or what? Pathetic really, but there you go. And I’m still pissed off about the hole I’ve dug for myself on this Coven thing. I mean, you would think I would start making a little plan wouldn’t you? Before I run off at the keyboard I should sit down and write up the bones of a plot. But no. Too bloody easy, that is. It’s as if I challenge myself with the most stupid thing I can think of on the spur of the moment and then say, “Get out of that then”. You wouldn’t do it like that, would you? Just imagine going up to a perfect stranger in the street – it doesn’t have to be a stranger, it could be your best friend or your daughter or the chap that stands outside the supermarket talking to himself, anybody really – and saying something like “My carriage awaits beyond the woodlice, how say you Breadsneezer?” The other person – friend, relative or stranger, doesn’t matter which – says “What do you mean?” and then you have to justify the remark (actually it was a question not a remark - or more accurately, both - but you know what I mean). You’d be completely Dorised wouldn’t you? And deservedly so. Why would you say something like that and bring all that grief down on yourself? You would say something sensible, something thought out. Even if you couldn’t speak you wouldn’t bother imagining saying crap like that. Even if you’d had your vocal cords removed and could only speak by using one of those mechanical things that make you sound like Stephen Hawking you wouldn’t waste the batteries saying something like that, would you? So why do I do it? It’s got me Dorised, I can tell you. God, I’m bored today.
Roscoe continues with his story of the last 8 years and Korky fights to stop the whirling in her head.
Roscoe Lunchpack: After the Lin Emhall incident the public turned right against us. McDuck and Rugarse were stirring as hard as they could until a State enquiry was set up. The upshot was the council was dismissed and McDuck and Rugarse were given the green light to form The Bogan Protectorate as an interim local authority. It was so successful in the first year the Protectorate became permanent and is now looked upon as a superior local government model that’s being considered for the rest of Australia.
Korky: How was it so successful?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Revenue. Bogan contributes more to State and Federal coffers than any other authority. It used to be local government going cap in hand to the big boys but not in Bogan.
Korky: So how is it done?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Simple. Everything that makes profit is legal - drugs, prostitution, gambling, banking and insurance. Everything that costs money is eradicated. The moneymaking schemes are imaginative. Just take my own area at the Military Police Academy. We devised a system for gathering speeding fine revenue faster than ever before. Every road in Bogan is speed rated at 5am each day. The rating is random and no warnings are issued and there are no signs. The rating can vary between 5 kph and 200 kph and anyone caught above or below the limit by more than 2% gets an automatic fine of 20% of the driver’s weekly income.
Korky: 2% of 5 kph? How do you do that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: We don’t, we just err on the side of the government.
Korky: Christ, the prisons will be packed with people that can’t pay.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Not really, prisons cost money. There are only two punishments under the law for anyone unable to meet a legal commitment and that’s death or permanent hard labour (slavery if we’re honest about it) and that seems to do the trick. If it’s death, we sell the organs on ebay and if it’s hard labour, we hire the criminal out to local industry. The sentence given depends on the state of the labour market at the time.
Of course, no system is perfect. We had a guy last week who successfully appealed the death sentence for ‘non-compliance with a rated speed’ because he was stopped at the traffic lights when he was booked. The trouble was, he had a very rare blood group and we’d already sold his kidneys for 3.5 million so we got him for being in possession of stolen property and shot him anyway. Look, Korky, rather than tell you all this it would be easier to show you. Let’s go on the Bogan World Tour, follow me.
(Roscoe heads back across Cusack Lane and Korky follows. When they reach the top of the ramp beside Mitre 10, Roscoe turns and indicates a landscape of blood red flowers stretching off to the south as far as the eye can see. Roscoe tells Korky the vast poppy fields of Cedar Grove are tended by toddlers rented out by the Bogan Kindergarten Cooperative. The children work from 5-30am until 6pm when their parents are released from the Opium Processing Plant built on the site of the old Jimboomba primary school. From the processing plant the refined heroin is shipped each day to the many “Horse Trader” kiosks that, for security reasons and to be close to their best customers, are usually positioned inside Bogan’s police stations.
Continuing the tour, Roscoe relates the story of the Woolies Riots of 2010. During the great economic down turn the Big Two comprising Woolworth and Coles were in fierce competition for share price. Each tried to outdo the other in price hikes to increase profitability and share value. They were confident in their joint monopoly of the food market and they squeezed the consumer to the point of malnutrition. In November 2010 Woolworth increased the price of milk and bread by 200% and the first window was smashed. Within one week Woolies was an empty, shattered ruin and Coles had been burnt to the ground. 87 people died in the food riots and during the following weeks hundreds more, mostly children and the elderly, starved to death. A few days later the BP service station was dynamited closely followed by the destruction of every other service station in Bogan. Cars were abandoned and ablaze. Every shop was looted and torched. The streets were filled with screaming, chanting rioters and the police cowered inside while the world of Bogan fell apart. It was at this point that the Bogan Council held the emergency meeting where Lin Emhall stood up to them. Shortly afterwards The Protectorate came to power, the army moved into Bogan and 7,238 starving residents were slaughtered before peace was finally restored.
Korky and Roscoe paused before what had once been Woolworth’s supermarket but now a garish, pink cake of a building stood there. It was so grotesque and obviously intended to be in the worst of taste that Korky couldn’t help comparing the structure to the architectural abominations of Las Vegas. It had crenulated purple towers and crudely moulded gargoyles. Plastic jasmine wound about its pink stucco walls and the exposed fibreglass beams supporting a roof of green glazed tiles. An enormous black display screen in a gilded piecrust frame was hung between the towers. The screen was blank now but at night it flashed its message of false promise to jaded patrons everywhere. Lurid posters advertised the delights of 2-up, Poker, Blackjack and Roulette. Other posters had photographs of showgirls in gaudy costumes who were claimed to be the most beautiful girls in Bogan but could only possibly hope to impress farm boys who have spent the last 2 years alone with cattle. The place was a dive, a nasty little back-street nightclub thrust to the front and forced upon a community robbed of self-respect. It was Andy McDucks nightclub where he and the Bogan ‘beautiful people’ went to be seen and to stridently reassure each other they were the biggest floaters in the cesspit that Bogan had become.
Next, Korky was led to Roscoe’s pride and joy - The Military Police Academy. Blue jowled trolls lumbered round the combat courses smashing, slashing and shooting whimpering convicted felons. Torture classes competed in the, so far, hopeless quest to keep a victim living long enough to scream and the competitors chuckled and joshed each other in the spirit of friendly rivalry every time they failed. Other classes taught the trolls to read and to operate the speed guns that blared the order to stop in 20 languages simultaneously. They also learned to set the rate of fire for the explosive shells the speed guns fired if a driver ignored the stop instruction or was confused or partially deaf.
But the greatest challenge to the trolls was learning the hundreds of spot fine regulations covering everything from refusing a police raffle ticket to littering a public place. The story is often told of a waiter at a police convention who was carrying a tray of drinks across the room. The waiter suffered from severe dandruff and the litter fines bankrupted him before he reached the other side of the room where he was shot for impecuniosity.
The difficulty in finding a police troll capable of remembering more than a couple of regulations led to the ‘general spot fine’ regulation being adopted which allowed an officer to impose a $1000 spot fine on ‘the suspicion that a regulation may apply for which an on the spot fine is applicable.’ Those that dispute the fine are only able to recover the money by going through a lengthy appeal process giving the authorities time to find a suitable regulation or devise a new one that invariably doubles the fine already imposed.
After the Academy visit, Roscoe paused briefly in the Jimboomba Library filled with books nobody read any more and showed Korky the Lin Emhall Shrine. Lin stood forlornly in his dusty glass case and his polished plastic eyes stared out at a public that once hailed him as a Champion and ‘The Man They Couldn’t Gag’ but after the events that followed his outburst the fickle fans cursed him as a troublemaker and wished he’d kept his sodding trap shut.
Korky left the library and wandered into the old school playing fields. She was profoundly distressed and filled with a dread she couldn’t identify properly. There were suddenly so many things to fear it was difficult to manage her emotions. She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t really think. Her world was twisted by a cancer so aggressive it even fed on itself and she couldn’t see the source of it. Life had become the disease that threatened its own existence and somewhere in this grotesque world a clock was counting down. But still Korky hoped and tried to calm her spirit with the view of silent paddocks and waving grass and jutting, blackened stakes.)
Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, you’ve found the Field of Stars.
Korky: Is that what you call it now? It used to be the school playing fields. Why ‘Field of Stars”? Sounds nice.
Roscoe Lunchpack: It’s because of the thousands of star pickets you can see stuck in the ground. That was where the heads of the food rioters were impaled back in 2010 as a warning to others. We still use them for serious criminals but there aren’t many of those now. Not since they legalised murder and rape anyway. We should get back now. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to be shot for being out after the legal light limit.
Korky: How dark is that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Depends on the officer’s opinion.
(They walk back to a well-lit area overlooking the old Woolies car park. Korky watches the crowds beginning to gather for the evening’s entertainment. She doesn’t recognise anyone.)
Korky: Do you see any of the old councillors these days?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes, I see them all. Well, all of them except Fondleschaft of course.
Korky: Why not Fondleschaft?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, it was a bad time after the Council was disbanded. We were used to scheming, fiddling, plenty of money. You remember what it was like, Korky. We were important people. It was hard to be nobodies again. Then Shizeknicker had an idea. She was always looking for the angles and she said people needed something to believe in and the best thing to do was to start a new religion. It seemed like a good idea. Money, power, influence, everything we wanted – so we looked into it. Then Bean made a joke about there being 13 of us, just enough for a coven of witches so why not make the religion Witchcraft – Devil Worship? We thought – why not?
Korky: You formed a Dorising coven?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Yes. What a hoot, eh? But it worked. Hardly any outlay, just a few black cloaks and pointy hats. I had the contacts with my job in The Academy so we could scare the shit out of anybody we needed to. We just made up a few mumbo jumbo ceremonies, had a few rallies and the money started pouring in. It was just like the old days again. Well, it was until Andy McDuck stuck his oar in.
Korky: He tried to stop you?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Stop us? Like Doris he did. The bastard wanted IN. We were making more money than he was from The Protectorate AND his stupid nightclub. We told him he couldn’t be part of it because our rules said there had to be 13 only on The Coven Council. The next day Fondleschaft was found face down in a ditch and ‘face down’ was spot on; it was just his head, they never found the rest of him.
Korky: So now McDuck is part of The Coven is he?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Part of it? He’s the Chairman, Head Cook and King Incarnate. The oily swine struts about the place in his Armani suit and his $1000 shoes. He calls all the shots and takes most of the money. The big ‘I am’. He slithers around the stage of his shitty nightclub singing Wiggles songs and selections from Sound of Music and Oklahoma. He just loves it. Thinks of himself as a socialite. A fashion guru. A fat, flaccid David Beckham, that’s all he is. And he insists everyone calls him Dandy Andy. What a prick!
Korky: He’s called Dandy Andy? That’s what you said? Dandy Andy?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes. Dandy bleeding Andy. He even named his crappy nightclub after that. See, it’s opening now. Look at the sign.
(The black screen between the towers bursts into life. A cartoon figure like the Johnny Walker logo in top hat and tails marches across the screen and then two bright orange words begin to flash on and off, on and off.)
THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY.
TO BE CONTINUED.
6/19/09
Coven - Part 4
So Mayor Porker is now Korky the Cat from the old Dandy comic that was popular in Britain during the 1950’s and 60’s. Why the hell I let these ludicrous situations develop, I simply do not know.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I accept very little responsibility for the direction these daft stories take. When I was a small child my Mother once asked me how I got into some of the tangled mess-ups she had to get me out of and I told her I didn’t know – “it just happens to me, Mum.” 60 years later I am still leaping from foothold to toehold and applying the same rule I did all those years ago; just keep going and, whatever else you do, don’t look down. So, in the unlikely event there might be someone out there following these Tales of Bogan, please don’t think it’s just you that’s confused, I don’t have a clue either.
While I’m on the subject of confusion I must mention that I have decided to dispense with much of the profanity that has littered this blog. The reason is embarrassing but I’ll tell you anyway. On occasions I check out the Sitemeter data to see if there are still folk other than me reading this rubbish. Last time I looked it was after another long period of not posting anything so I didn’t expect any customers to have shown up but, surprisingly, on June 11th I had a reader - so I clicked on the details to see who it was. Sitemeter told me it was someone from Ankara in Turkey and they had reached my blog via a Google search. In that event Sitemeter even gives me the search words used by the visitor to find my blog on Google. On this occasion the Turkish reader had typed in “ man and dog fucketing”.
So there I was.
Stunned.
I thought I was being sooooo clever and coooool by using grown-up, no nonsense words and refusing to pander to the prissy pretence that we all talk like TV newsreaders or Catholic Bishops. But all the time my blog was drifting into that dirty little corner of Google patronised by Catholic Bishops and hairy Turkish deviants yanking frantically on their tent pegs.
Well, that’s me chopped down to insignificant dimensions. In future the “F” word is out and will be replaced by “Doris”. The “C” word becomes “really naughty person” and the rest can stay as they are because they aren’t too rude anyway. But they will be limited.
I apologise for any offence.
Ah well, back to the rubbish.
Where was I?
Korky the bleeding Cat!
Whatever next for Doris sake?
We are still in the Bogan Council chamber and Mayor Porker (who is now Korky the Cat) is preparing to leave for Jimboomba.
Winnie: You can’t leave looking like that.
Korky: What choice do I have? I didn’t ask to be turned into a Dorising cat.
Winnie: But you do have a choice. You will always be the cat but you can manipulate the image to an extent. It’s just a matter of filtered perception.
Korky: This is Winnie Rugarse talking is it?
Winnie: That’s right and if I can be Winnie, you can be Porky. Just slide your molecules around each other. Mentally mould the clay. Stand up straight, lose the fur and BE the Porky.
Korky: What, like ……. this?
Winnie: Not quite. That’s more like a hairy water cooler. Concentrate, concentrate. Make your eyes go narrow, focus and extend yourself …. not like that …… concentrate. You’re not trying, do it properly. Come on BE the Porky, BE the Porky……don’t forget the ears! What are you doing? I said concentrate… God, you’re really hopeless. Now FOCUS!
ONE HOUR LATER.
Winnie: I suppose that will have to do. It’s not right but it’s close enough.
Korky: Do I look like me again?
Winnie: Not really. You look more like Sean Bean with really big tits.
Korky: I can’t see any tits!
Winnie: They’re on your back. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. Wear a big coat.
Korky: I still feel different though. Sort of …. edgy.
Winnie: That’s because you retain all the characteristics of a cat.
Korky: I can lick my own arsehole?
Winnie: That and the ability to jump and land on your feet. Sneaky - stone-killer - nine lives and all that kind of thing.
Korky: Just the talents I shall need in Jimboomba. I’ll be off then.
Winnie: Good luck.
(The armed guard at the Council Offices entry ignores Korky as she leaves; he has been trained only to shoot people coming in. Korky wends her way between the burnt-out car wrecks and the temporary crack houses set up in the council car park. She steps over the bodies of the three women who were protesting against the opening of the drive-in abortion clinic on Wombley Road and then she makes her way to a queue forming near the sharps disposal bins. A scruffy, foul smelling dero at the head of the queue speaks to her. Korky recognises him as the Chairman of Woodsludge Chamber of Commerce.)
Chairman: Got any change?
Korky: You wouldn’t believe the amount of change.
Chairman: Where are you waiting for?
Korky: Jimboomba.
Chairman: Be along in a minute.
Korky: So, has the Chamber of Commerce decided what to do about all the looting in Woodsludge?
Chairman: We’re still denying it was us. What’s the Bogan Council doing about the extortion racket?
Korky: Rates have to be collected somehow.
Chairman: You wanted Jimboomba? Here it comes.
(A gigantic wedge of terrain swoops down and Korky leaps for the edge as it drops into the gaping trench where Woodsludge had been moments before. She lands nimbly in Cusack Lane near the bottle shop exit of Jimboomba Tavern.
Korky sees the small town differently now. It is a dark forbidding place, cold and dank. There is a smell of methane and carrion and a taste of copper in the air. Freakish sounds of screeching beasts startle the maggot stew of wandering goblin folk who mix with lanky elvish-kind and humans tied to trees. And those trees beside the road are nightmare growths that writhe rank on rank and have fleshy leaves all large and pocked and with pus coloured thorns about the edges. The leaves are hanging limp like rotten organs from the branching bones of a forest shaded by the dimmest glow of feeble, yellow light and everywhere is misted gloom, everywhere is melancholy. Jimboomba is not just a vale of tears it is a dreary, miserable, unrelenting sadness that sucks the joy from every living thing and leaves the dead less vital. It is howling - anguished - and a pit of tortured grief. So, outwardly, Jimboomba has not changed at all but, with her newfound feline instincts, Korky can now sense the difference and can trace the subtle underlying stink of urban decay eating through the township.
There is a shout. Across the road a familiar figure waves and stumbles across Cusack Lane and faces Korky, grinning like a fool.)
Roscoe Lunchpack: Korky? You’re Mayor Porker’s familiar aren’t you? I thought I recognised the tits on your back.
Korky: Roscoe! How did you get here so fast? I left you in the council offices counting your feet.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Yes, I do that sometimes. Like to keep abreast of things.
Korky: But why are you here?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I don’t follow you, Korky. I’m always here. I run the Military Police Academy now you know.
Korky: Military ….. Look, Roscoe. Read my lips. Why are you here in Jimboomba and how did you get here so quickly?
Roscoe Lunchpack: That’s a bit tricky, Korky old sprite. Not quite sure of the answer to that one. It’s usually two by the way.
Korky: What’s usually two?
Roscoe Lunchpack: My feet. When I count them. Usually two of the buggers.
Korky: Usually two?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well, I’d say invariably but it’s best to keep options isn’t it?
Korky: Jesus! Just forget your feet will you!
Roscoe Lunchpack: Fair enough, Korky. Shit! Crikey!
Korky: Not literally forget them. Oh do get up, Roscoe, and try to think for Doris sake!
Roscoe Lunchpack: No need to get shirty, Korky. Come to think about it, it’s probably you that’s confused. Familiars get like that sometimes. Something to do with the way you see the world. You might need re-booting – bit like a computer really. Set all your whatsits again.
Korky: You mean to say all this may not be real?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I think so, but don’t quote me. Gosh, I haven’t said that ‘don’t quote me’ thing since we disbanded Bogan Council.
Korky: Bogan Council has been disbanded? Since when?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Since 8 years ago when Andy McDuck and Bart Rugarse set up The Protectorate.
Korky: But Rugarse is dead. He was killed in Kevin Rudd’s slightly rectangular office.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Killed? Rugarse? My God! When did this happen and who is Kevin Rudd? There’s been nothing about this on the Datadrain. I’d better get back to the Academy.
Korky: Roscoe, wait! You mean to say that ……
Roscoe Lunchpack: I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that.
Korky: Keep doing what?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Telling me what I mean to say then describing something I don’t understand but that you think I meant to say.
Korky: Okay, Roscoe. I think we need to re-boot. Forget about Rugarse; just start telling me what’s going on. Start with 8 years ago. Why was Bogan Council disbanded and what has happened since then? I need details.
Roscoe Lunchpack: What, ALL the details? Even the stuff that shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as holidays, pretty flowers and babies?
Korky: What’s that about babies?
Roscoe Lunchpack: You really don’t want to know about the babies.
Korky: What happened 8 years ago?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I suppose it all started when Lin Emhall blew his stack at a council meeting. He really started to abuse us from the public gallery. It was very embarrassing; he even called me an incompetent jackass. Bloody cheek! Eventually the council charged him with inciting public dissent and illegal blogging. We threw the book at him.
Korky: So they disbanded the council for that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: No, not for that. I think it was when we sentenced him.
Korky: Bit harsh, was it?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Just a touch. We stuck him in front of a firing squad and shot him.
Korky: You … the Bogan Council …. shot Lin Emhall? In front of a ….. firing squad?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well, of course all the bleeding heart liberals made a fuss. We were hauled over the coals and accused of overstepping our authority, all that sort of bollocks. But then Andy McDuck and Bart Rugarse crawled onto the bandwagon. Oh, what a tragedy for free speech. Oh, what an abuse of office etc. etc. etc. We thought it would never end. Do you know, Korky, they even had Lin Emhall stuffed and set up in a glass case in the Jimboomba library? It’s supposed to be a memorial to freedom. The Bloggers Shrine they call it. Mind you, it looks really pretty at Christmas. They put little fairy lights in all the bullet holes and Lin stands there twinkling away. The kiddies love it.
Korky: …….And then what happened, Roscoe?
TO BE CONTINUED.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I accept very little responsibility for the direction these daft stories take. When I was a small child my Mother once asked me how I got into some of the tangled mess-ups she had to get me out of and I told her I didn’t know – “it just happens to me, Mum.” 60 years later I am still leaping from foothold to toehold and applying the same rule I did all those years ago; just keep going and, whatever else you do, don’t look down. So, in the unlikely event there might be someone out there following these Tales of Bogan, please don’t think it’s just you that’s confused, I don’t have a clue either.
While I’m on the subject of confusion I must mention that I have decided to dispense with much of the profanity that has littered this blog. The reason is embarrassing but I’ll tell you anyway. On occasions I check out the Sitemeter data to see if there are still folk other than me reading this rubbish. Last time I looked it was after another long period of not posting anything so I didn’t expect any customers to have shown up but, surprisingly, on June 11th I had a reader - so I clicked on the details to see who it was. Sitemeter told me it was someone from Ankara in Turkey and they had reached my blog via a Google search. In that event Sitemeter even gives me the search words used by the visitor to find my blog on Google. On this occasion the Turkish reader had typed in “ man and dog fucketing”.
So there I was.
Stunned.
I thought I was being sooooo clever and coooool by using grown-up, no nonsense words and refusing to pander to the prissy pretence that we all talk like TV newsreaders or Catholic Bishops. But all the time my blog was drifting into that dirty little corner of Google patronised by Catholic Bishops and hairy Turkish deviants yanking frantically on their tent pegs.
Well, that’s me chopped down to insignificant dimensions. In future the “F” word is out and will be replaced by “Doris”. The “C” word becomes “really naughty person” and the rest can stay as they are because they aren’t too rude anyway. But they will be limited.
I apologise for any offence.
Ah well, back to the rubbish.
Where was I?
Korky the bleeding Cat!
Whatever next for Doris sake?
We are still in the Bogan Council chamber and Mayor Porker (who is now Korky the Cat) is preparing to leave for Jimboomba.
Winnie: You can’t leave looking like that.
Korky: What choice do I have? I didn’t ask to be turned into a Dorising cat.
Winnie: But you do have a choice. You will always be the cat but you can manipulate the image to an extent. It’s just a matter of filtered perception.
Korky: This is Winnie Rugarse talking is it?
Winnie: That’s right and if I can be Winnie, you can be Porky. Just slide your molecules around each other. Mentally mould the clay. Stand up straight, lose the fur and BE the Porky.
Korky: What, like ……. this?
Winnie: Not quite. That’s more like a hairy water cooler. Concentrate, concentrate. Make your eyes go narrow, focus and extend yourself …. not like that …… concentrate. You’re not trying, do it properly. Come on BE the Porky, BE the Porky……don’t forget the ears! What are you doing? I said concentrate… God, you’re really hopeless. Now FOCUS!
ONE HOUR LATER.
Winnie: I suppose that will have to do. It’s not right but it’s close enough.
Korky: Do I look like me again?
Winnie: Not really. You look more like Sean Bean with really big tits.
Korky: I can’t see any tits!
Winnie: They’re on your back. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. Wear a big coat.
Korky: I still feel different though. Sort of …. edgy.
Winnie: That’s because you retain all the characteristics of a cat.
Korky: I can lick my own arsehole?
Winnie: That and the ability to jump and land on your feet. Sneaky - stone-killer - nine lives and all that kind of thing.
Korky: Just the talents I shall need in Jimboomba. I’ll be off then.
Winnie: Good luck.
(The armed guard at the Council Offices entry ignores Korky as she leaves; he has been trained only to shoot people coming in. Korky wends her way between the burnt-out car wrecks and the temporary crack houses set up in the council car park. She steps over the bodies of the three women who were protesting against the opening of the drive-in abortion clinic on Wombley Road and then she makes her way to a queue forming near the sharps disposal bins. A scruffy, foul smelling dero at the head of the queue speaks to her. Korky recognises him as the Chairman of Woodsludge Chamber of Commerce.)
Chairman: Got any change?
Korky: You wouldn’t believe the amount of change.
Chairman: Where are you waiting for?
Korky: Jimboomba.
Chairman: Be along in a minute.
Korky: So, has the Chamber of Commerce decided what to do about all the looting in Woodsludge?
Chairman: We’re still denying it was us. What’s the Bogan Council doing about the extortion racket?
Korky: Rates have to be collected somehow.
Chairman: You wanted Jimboomba? Here it comes.
(A gigantic wedge of terrain swoops down and Korky leaps for the edge as it drops into the gaping trench where Woodsludge had been moments before. She lands nimbly in Cusack Lane near the bottle shop exit of Jimboomba Tavern.
Korky sees the small town differently now. It is a dark forbidding place, cold and dank. There is a smell of methane and carrion and a taste of copper in the air. Freakish sounds of screeching beasts startle the maggot stew of wandering goblin folk who mix with lanky elvish-kind and humans tied to trees. And those trees beside the road are nightmare growths that writhe rank on rank and have fleshy leaves all large and pocked and with pus coloured thorns about the edges. The leaves are hanging limp like rotten organs from the branching bones of a forest shaded by the dimmest glow of feeble, yellow light and everywhere is misted gloom, everywhere is melancholy. Jimboomba is not just a vale of tears it is a dreary, miserable, unrelenting sadness that sucks the joy from every living thing and leaves the dead less vital. It is howling - anguished - and a pit of tortured grief. So, outwardly, Jimboomba has not changed at all but, with her newfound feline instincts, Korky can now sense the difference and can trace the subtle underlying stink of urban decay eating through the township.
There is a shout. Across the road a familiar figure waves and stumbles across Cusack Lane and faces Korky, grinning like a fool.)
Roscoe Lunchpack: Korky? You’re Mayor Porker’s familiar aren’t you? I thought I recognised the tits on your back.
Korky: Roscoe! How did you get here so fast? I left you in the council offices counting your feet.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Yes, I do that sometimes. Like to keep abreast of things.
Korky: But why are you here?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I don’t follow you, Korky. I’m always here. I run the Military Police Academy now you know.
Korky: Military ….. Look, Roscoe. Read my lips. Why are you here in Jimboomba and how did you get here so quickly?
Roscoe Lunchpack: That’s a bit tricky, Korky old sprite. Not quite sure of the answer to that one. It’s usually two by the way.
Korky: What’s usually two?
Roscoe Lunchpack: My feet. When I count them. Usually two of the buggers.
Korky: Usually two?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well, I’d say invariably but it’s best to keep options isn’t it?
Korky: Jesus! Just forget your feet will you!
Roscoe Lunchpack: Fair enough, Korky. Shit! Crikey!
Korky: Not literally forget them. Oh do get up, Roscoe, and try to think for Doris sake!
Roscoe Lunchpack: No need to get shirty, Korky. Come to think about it, it’s probably you that’s confused. Familiars get like that sometimes. Something to do with the way you see the world. You might need re-booting – bit like a computer really. Set all your whatsits again.
Korky: You mean to say all this may not be real?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I think so, but don’t quote me. Gosh, I haven’t said that ‘don’t quote me’ thing since we disbanded Bogan Council.
Korky: Bogan Council has been disbanded? Since when?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Since 8 years ago when Andy McDuck and Bart Rugarse set up The Protectorate.
Korky: But Rugarse is dead. He was killed in Kevin Rudd’s slightly rectangular office.
Roscoe Lunchpack: Killed? Rugarse? My God! When did this happen and who is Kevin Rudd? There’s been nothing about this on the Datadrain. I’d better get back to the Academy.
Korky: Roscoe, wait! You mean to say that ……
Roscoe Lunchpack: I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that.
Korky: Keep doing what?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Telling me what I mean to say then describing something I don’t understand but that you think I meant to say.
Korky: Okay, Roscoe. I think we need to re-boot. Forget about Rugarse; just start telling me what’s going on. Start with 8 years ago. Why was Bogan Council disbanded and what has happened since then? I need details.
Roscoe Lunchpack: What, ALL the details? Even the stuff that shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as holidays, pretty flowers and babies?
Korky: What’s that about babies?
Roscoe Lunchpack: You really don’t want to know about the babies.
Korky: What happened 8 years ago?
Roscoe Lunchpack: I suppose it all started when Lin Emhall blew his stack at a council meeting. He really started to abuse us from the public gallery. It was very embarrassing; he even called me an incompetent jackass. Bloody cheek! Eventually the council charged him with inciting public dissent and illegal blogging. We threw the book at him.
Korky: So they disbanded the council for that?
Roscoe Lunchpack: No, not for that. I think it was when we sentenced him.
Korky: Bit harsh, was it?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Just a touch. We stuck him in front of a firing squad and shot him.
Korky: You … the Bogan Council …. shot Lin Emhall? In front of a ….. firing squad?
Roscoe Lunchpack: Well, of course all the bleeding heart liberals made a fuss. We were hauled over the coals and accused of overstepping our authority, all that sort of bollocks. But then Andy McDuck and Bart Rugarse crawled onto the bandwagon. Oh, what a tragedy for free speech. Oh, what an abuse of office etc. etc. etc. We thought it would never end. Do you know, Korky, they even had Lin Emhall stuffed and set up in a glass case in the Jimboomba library? It’s supposed to be a memorial to freedom. The Bloggers Shrine they call it. Mind you, it looks really pretty at Christmas. They put little fairy lights in all the bullet holes and Lin stands there twinkling away. The kiddies love it.
Korky: …….And then what happened, Roscoe?
TO BE CONTINUED.
6/2/09
Coven - Part 3
The Bogan councillors have been through a very bad experience. Visions, dreams, whatever, have distorted their world already distorted by the Ouija Board. An annoying loose end from the last series has been tied off (you think). We are now into a new adventure featuring the dopiest collection of local government dross ever voted into office. For this the councillors must thank not only their family and friends who gave so freely of their time and energy but also an electorate with all the political nous of a lightly buttered bun.
Luke, a religious man in the style of Donny Osmond, is especially worried by events. During a brief discussion with his Maker he requests a sign – and conjures up a demon which is now sitting on an empty display cabinet designed to hold civic awards presented to Bogan Chitty Council.
Grimy Hobo: What the hell is that stink?
Luke: I think it’s this thing. It just appeared. I can only imagine I’m still hallucinating. What does it all mean?
(About the size of a fat hamster, the demon has a vaguely humanoid shape. Its head is large and has the usual number of features in roughly the usual places. It has extremely sharp little teeth that it displays in what might be a good-natured grin. If forced to generalise then it is generally like a fat, naked, bigheaded Buddha with a relatively enormous willy. It leaps gleefully from the display cabinet to Grimy Hobo’s shoulder.)
Mayor Porker: Grimy, don’t move! What the hell is it doing? Grimy, I should move if I were you!
Grimy Hobo: Make up your bleeding mind, Porky! And get this stinking thing off me, I can hardly breathe and what’s it trying to stick in my ear. Aaaargh! Geddoff you dirty little bastard! You filthy, filthy little brute!
Winnie Quark: Well I must say, that’s not very nice is it? You shouldn’t encourage it.
Mayor Porker: I agree, Winnie. This is all obviously some kind of illusion created by our reaction to some very peculiar circumstances. We are all under a great deal of stress and it has temporarily caused us all to view things from a most unusual…. angle. I think we will probably be best to just ignore it and it will simply go away.
Grimy Hobo: That’s easy for you to say, you haven’t got a putrid rat pumping out your ear bits. Get it off me!
Mower: Stop making such a fuss, Grimy. It’s only a little thing, just grab it and yank it off…like this!
Grimy Hobo: Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Jeeesus Christ!
Mower: Ah. Yes, I see what you mean. It’s really in there isn’t it? Must have a dick like a fish hook. Sorry about that, Grimy.
Lizzie: Should we try pouring boiling water over it?
Grimy Hobo: You come near me with boiling water and you will regret it. I promise you that!
Sean Bean: What we need is a claw hammer. It would be like pulling a nail out.
Grimy Hobo: Along with half my brain you thick prat! Can’t somebody dab a burning cigarette on its arse like you do with leaches?
Winnie Quark: This is a non-smoking environment. I believe we all agreed on that so………..
Grimy Hobo: Somebody shut her up before I kill her!
A FEW MINUTES LATER.
(The dirty little devil has finished its mucky little deed. Grimy, getting things arse about face and too late as usual, now has a headache. The council are once more seated around the boardroom table and trying to conduct a meeting. The demon is asleep on the Ouija Board.)
Mayor Porker: I think we all have to agree on just what has happened here.
Luke: Yes, but what HAS happened here? Are we hallucinating? I don’t feel as if I’m hallucinating.
Mayor Porker: I hope nobody is suggesting that thing in the middle of our table is real. Sean, are you going to contribute to this discussion or stare out of the window all day?…….. Sean? …………. Sean, what is it?
(Sean seems frozen and mesmerised by something he can see outside. Their curiosity aroused by Sean Bean’s peculiar attitude, the councillors all move to the window that overlooks the main Bogan thoroughfare. They can immediately see why Sean is dumbstruck and they join his wordless panic.
The outside world revealed to them is no world they have ever experienced before and reinforces the suspicion that they are under the influence of some powerful narcotic. Where roads and pathways once bisected the jumbled chaos of Bogan Central shopping precinct there are now rivers of people stumbling through a landscape of revolving nightmares.
A vast section of the scene before them distorts and rises four hundred metres into the air before sweeping away to the horizon where it descends once more into the plain. Its place is taken by another section of the earth rushing in from the east. This is a part of the Gold Coast and it brings fifty hectares of ocean with it. The Gold coast sinks and drags foaming surf, tumbling and roaring, into a mile deep chasm that is swiftly closed up by Jimboomba lurching from the west to fill the void. The whole world seems to be turning, heaving, rolling and winding through a bizarre dance of fractal images made fluid by precise uncertainty. It is a world of reflections on the mirrored surfaces of mighty beam engines, pounding and pumping and changing stroke with every revolution of a colossal wheel that turns, wheel within wheel, in all directions at once.
The people can be seen travelling through this machinery by moving from one zone to the next that passes. As a bus leaves Jimboomba it is swept up by Browns Plains and the passengers step from the bus having completed their journey in seconds. An old man and his wife on their way to the doctors find them selves at Logan hospital with no idea how they got there but grateful all the same as the man collapses from a heart attack that has been brewing for days. Another old man dies from his heart attack because the engine drops him at Kentucky Fried Chicken. A child and its mother are separated and another child is reunited with its weeping parent while a third is left alone… again.
Mayor Porker sees the bewildering complexity of life and knows there is a pattern to it. If only she had eternity to wait for the pattern to emerge she could control this engine and the lives of everyone a part of it. The first step then is to find the place where eternity is kept. Who would know that?)
Mayor Porker: Get the CEO down here!
(A bell rings in the penthouse garden on the roof of the council offices. Prutile Frogshide, the Bogan CEO, turns slowly toward the sound. He is laying in his de luxe, double hammock and had been on the edge of sleep. This interruption to his four-hour rest period is inexcusable, particularly considering the source of the interruption that a glowing light reveals to be a demand for his presence before the councillors. Frogshide allows himself a moment of rage and the destruction of three acres of native forest on the slopes of Tamborine Mountain. He hates talking to that mob of imbeciles at the best of times, in fact he hates talking and there’s an end to it.
Goblins do not talk well and can only do so by micromanipulation of the sphincter muscle. This makes the goblin voice muffled, indistinct and often incoherent. Those things, together with a reputation for very bad breath, means your average goblin often finds it less embarrassing to be seen and not heard. Prutile Frogshide, like the CEO’s in most organizations – particularly local government, is a goblin.
Frogshide sighs and, with a blink, he covers his warted nakedness with a midnight blue lightweight suit, brilliant white business shirt and his favourite pink tie with fine gold stripes. He decides to use the lift rather than subject the councillors to materialisation. Within moments he is standing respectfully before the Mayor.)
Mayor Porker: Good afternoon, Pru. Have you seen what’s going on outside?
(When Frogshide answers he moves his lips for the seeming but like a good CEO, he talks out of his arse.)
CEO Frogshide: You have been looking out of the window, Mayor Porker?
Mayor Porker: Any reason why we shouldn’t?
CEO Frogshide: If you will forgive me, Mayor Porker, it’s not something the councillors and yourself do as a rule. You are usually wrapped up in your own schemes and machinations – quite rightly and most admirably, I hasten to add.
Mayor Porker: Perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a look yourself and telling us what you see?
CEO Frogshide: Look out of this window? Ah, yes. Most impressive view, every bit as good, if not better, than my own view from my little attic.
Mayor Porker: Your penthouse, you mean. But please tell us exactly what you see.
CEO Frogshide: I see the jewel in the crown of South East Queensland. I see Bogan Chitty stretching as far as the eye can see.
Mayor Porker: And do you see ‘as far as the eye can see’ just a bit closer at times and do the closer bits sometimes whip off to ‘as far as the eye can see’? And is this all happening in a mixed and tumbled fashion?
CEO Frogshide: Oh, that.
Mayor Porker: Yes. That!
CEO Frogshide: You appear to be able to see The Confluence, Mayor porker.
Mayor Porker: The…….. ?
(The CEO walks to the widow and stands with his back to the room and the councillors. He wants his voice to be as clear as possible.)
CEO Frogshide: The Confluence, ladies and gentlemen. For some reason beyond my understanding you are now able to experience the true sight. Time and space folds and unfolds in most complex sequences and it is all part of the magichanical tissue which is the fundamental support of reality. There are, however, certain timeplaces where the energy of life is confused with the energy of when and here we find The Dandy, The Beano and The Confluence. If you can understand one it will lead you to the next and when you understand all three then there is nothing left to know. I believe the first may be found at Jimboomba. Find and become your familiar, Mayor Porker, then find the secret of The Dandy.
Mayor Porker: What do you mean ‘find and become your familiar’?
CEO Frogshide: Simply that. Councillor Axemen has already discovered his by accident and it sleeps upon your table. There are three levels. I can see that you, Mayor Porker, must run The Dandy down. The second is The Beano to be sought by Councillor Luke Skypilot but the third is the most difficult of them all and will require the application of a most singular mind.
Mower: I’ll take that little job. Me and my glock.
CEO Frogshide: It is not for you to choose Councillor Mower. The task chooses the man and in this case Councillor Bean is the chosen one.
All of the councillors except Sean: WHAT!!!!
CEO Frogshide: Apart from those few pointers I can’t help you. From now on you are on your own.
(The CEO smiles to himself and is pleased with his little spot of revenge as he imagines the idiot Bean struggling with the impossible. It will at least keep the annoying sods out of his way for some time.
In a puff of purple smoke and a scatter of twinkling glitter dust the CEO disappears.)
Grimy Hobo: Bloody hell, his breath stinks worse than ever.
Sean Bean: What did he mean about me looking for something? Is it dangerous? I’ve had enough fucking adventure over the last few fucking months, there’s no way I’m going into any more nasty fucking situations I’ll tell you that for fucking nothing.
Luke: We should be quite proud of the way we are taking this in our stride. Did you see the CEO just go poof?
Grimy Hobo: He’s always worn that pink tie, nothing recent about it.
Mayor Porker: Well, it looks like I’m off to Jimboomba. But what the devil is The Dandy?
Roscoe Lunchpack: The only Dandy I know is a pommy comic I used to read when I was a kid. It was very popular in the 50’s. Hey, Porky, perhaps you have to change into Korky the Cat. Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday. Every week I couldn’t wait for the new Dandy. The front cover always featured Korky the Cat in some sort of comical adventure. It was a really good comic. You would be too young to remember that, Porky……… Porky? ….. Porky? Has anyone seen Porky?
Mayor Porker: I’m down here - and if anyone steps on my bloody tail I’ll claw their arse to ribbons.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Luke, a religious man in the style of Donny Osmond, is especially worried by events. During a brief discussion with his Maker he requests a sign – and conjures up a demon which is now sitting on an empty display cabinet designed to hold civic awards presented to Bogan Chitty Council.
Grimy Hobo: What the hell is that stink?
Luke: I think it’s this thing. It just appeared. I can only imagine I’m still hallucinating. What does it all mean?
(About the size of a fat hamster, the demon has a vaguely humanoid shape. Its head is large and has the usual number of features in roughly the usual places. It has extremely sharp little teeth that it displays in what might be a good-natured grin. If forced to generalise then it is generally like a fat, naked, bigheaded Buddha with a relatively enormous willy. It leaps gleefully from the display cabinet to Grimy Hobo’s shoulder.)
Mayor Porker: Grimy, don’t move! What the hell is it doing? Grimy, I should move if I were you!
Grimy Hobo: Make up your bleeding mind, Porky! And get this stinking thing off me, I can hardly breathe and what’s it trying to stick in my ear. Aaaargh! Geddoff you dirty little bastard! You filthy, filthy little brute!
Winnie Quark: Well I must say, that’s not very nice is it? You shouldn’t encourage it.
Mayor Porker: I agree, Winnie. This is all obviously some kind of illusion created by our reaction to some very peculiar circumstances. We are all under a great deal of stress and it has temporarily caused us all to view things from a most unusual…. angle. I think we will probably be best to just ignore it and it will simply go away.
Grimy Hobo: That’s easy for you to say, you haven’t got a putrid rat pumping out your ear bits. Get it off me!
Mower: Stop making such a fuss, Grimy. It’s only a little thing, just grab it and yank it off…like this!
Grimy Hobo: Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Jeeesus Christ!
Mower: Ah. Yes, I see what you mean. It’s really in there isn’t it? Must have a dick like a fish hook. Sorry about that, Grimy.
Lizzie: Should we try pouring boiling water over it?
Grimy Hobo: You come near me with boiling water and you will regret it. I promise you that!
Sean Bean: What we need is a claw hammer. It would be like pulling a nail out.
Grimy Hobo: Along with half my brain you thick prat! Can’t somebody dab a burning cigarette on its arse like you do with leaches?
Winnie Quark: This is a non-smoking environment. I believe we all agreed on that so………..
Grimy Hobo: Somebody shut her up before I kill her!
A FEW MINUTES LATER.
(The dirty little devil has finished its mucky little deed. Grimy, getting things arse about face and too late as usual, now has a headache. The council are once more seated around the boardroom table and trying to conduct a meeting. The demon is asleep on the Ouija Board.)
Mayor Porker: I think we all have to agree on just what has happened here.
Luke: Yes, but what HAS happened here? Are we hallucinating? I don’t feel as if I’m hallucinating.
Mayor Porker: I hope nobody is suggesting that thing in the middle of our table is real. Sean, are you going to contribute to this discussion or stare out of the window all day?…….. Sean? …………. Sean, what is it?
(Sean seems frozen and mesmerised by something he can see outside. Their curiosity aroused by Sean Bean’s peculiar attitude, the councillors all move to the window that overlooks the main Bogan thoroughfare. They can immediately see why Sean is dumbstruck and they join his wordless panic.
The outside world revealed to them is no world they have ever experienced before and reinforces the suspicion that they are under the influence of some powerful narcotic. Where roads and pathways once bisected the jumbled chaos of Bogan Central shopping precinct there are now rivers of people stumbling through a landscape of revolving nightmares.
A vast section of the scene before them distorts and rises four hundred metres into the air before sweeping away to the horizon where it descends once more into the plain. Its place is taken by another section of the earth rushing in from the east. This is a part of the Gold Coast and it brings fifty hectares of ocean with it. The Gold coast sinks and drags foaming surf, tumbling and roaring, into a mile deep chasm that is swiftly closed up by Jimboomba lurching from the west to fill the void. The whole world seems to be turning, heaving, rolling and winding through a bizarre dance of fractal images made fluid by precise uncertainty. It is a world of reflections on the mirrored surfaces of mighty beam engines, pounding and pumping and changing stroke with every revolution of a colossal wheel that turns, wheel within wheel, in all directions at once.
The people can be seen travelling through this machinery by moving from one zone to the next that passes. As a bus leaves Jimboomba it is swept up by Browns Plains and the passengers step from the bus having completed their journey in seconds. An old man and his wife on their way to the doctors find them selves at Logan hospital with no idea how they got there but grateful all the same as the man collapses from a heart attack that has been brewing for days. Another old man dies from his heart attack because the engine drops him at Kentucky Fried Chicken. A child and its mother are separated and another child is reunited with its weeping parent while a third is left alone… again.
Mayor Porker sees the bewildering complexity of life and knows there is a pattern to it. If only she had eternity to wait for the pattern to emerge she could control this engine and the lives of everyone a part of it. The first step then is to find the place where eternity is kept. Who would know that?)
Mayor Porker: Get the CEO down here!
(A bell rings in the penthouse garden on the roof of the council offices. Prutile Frogshide, the Bogan CEO, turns slowly toward the sound. He is laying in his de luxe, double hammock and had been on the edge of sleep. This interruption to his four-hour rest period is inexcusable, particularly considering the source of the interruption that a glowing light reveals to be a demand for his presence before the councillors. Frogshide allows himself a moment of rage and the destruction of three acres of native forest on the slopes of Tamborine Mountain. He hates talking to that mob of imbeciles at the best of times, in fact he hates talking and there’s an end to it.
Goblins do not talk well and can only do so by micromanipulation of the sphincter muscle. This makes the goblin voice muffled, indistinct and often incoherent. Those things, together with a reputation for very bad breath, means your average goblin often finds it less embarrassing to be seen and not heard. Prutile Frogshide, like the CEO’s in most organizations – particularly local government, is a goblin.
Frogshide sighs and, with a blink, he covers his warted nakedness with a midnight blue lightweight suit, brilliant white business shirt and his favourite pink tie with fine gold stripes. He decides to use the lift rather than subject the councillors to materialisation. Within moments he is standing respectfully before the Mayor.)
Mayor Porker: Good afternoon, Pru. Have you seen what’s going on outside?
(When Frogshide answers he moves his lips for the seeming but like a good CEO, he talks out of his arse.)
CEO Frogshide: You have been looking out of the window, Mayor Porker?
Mayor Porker: Any reason why we shouldn’t?
CEO Frogshide: If you will forgive me, Mayor Porker, it’s not something the councillors and yourself do as a rule. You are usually wrapped up in your own schemes and machinations – quite rightly and most admirably, I hasten to add.
Mayor Porker: Perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a look yourself and telling us what you see?
CEO Frogshide: Look out of this window? Ah, yes. Most impressive view, every bit as good, if not better, than my own view from my little attic.
Mayor Porker: Your penthouse, you mean. But please tell us exactly what you see.
CEO Frogshide: I see the jewel in the crown of South East Queensland. I see Bogan Chitty stretching as far as the eye can see.
Mayor Porker: And do you see ‘as far as the eye can see’ just a bit closer at times and do the closer bits sometimes whip off to ‘as far as the eye can see’? And is this all happening in a mixed and tumbled fashion?
CEO Frogshide: Oh, that.
Mayor Porker: Yes. That!
CEO Frogshide: You appear to be able to see The Confluence, Mayor porker.
Mayor Porker: The…….. ?
(The CEO walks to the widow and stands with his back to the room and the councillors. He wants his voice to be as clear as possible.)
CEO Frogshide: The Confluence, ladies and gentlemen. For some reason beyond my understanding you are now able to experience the true sight. Time and space folds and unfolds in most complex sequences and it is all part of the magichanical tissue which is the fundamental support of reality. There are, however, certain timeplaces where the energy of life is confused with the energy of when and here we find The Dandy, The Beano and The Confluence. If you can understand one it will lead you to the next and when you understand all three then there is nothing left to know. I believe the first may be found at Jimboomba. Find and become your familiar, Mayor Porker, then find the secret of The Dandy.
Mayor Porker: What do you mean ‘find and become your familiar’?
CEO Frogshide: Simply that. Councillor Axemen has already discovered his by accident and it sleeps upon your table. There are three levels. I can see that you, Mayor Porker, must run The Dandy down. The second is The Beano to be sought by Councillor Luke Skypilot but the third is the most difficult of them all and will require the application of a most singular mind.
Mower: I’ll take that little job. Me and my glock.
CEO Frogshide: It is not for you to choose Councillor Mower. The task chooses the man and in this case Councillor Bean is the chosen one.
All of the councillors except Sean: WHAT!!!!
CEO Frogshide: Apart from those few pointers I can’t help you. From now on you are on your own.
(The CEO smiles to himself and is pleased with his little spot of revenge as he imagines the idiot Bean struggling with the impossible. It will at least keep the annoying sods out of his way for some time.
In a puff of purple smoke and a scatter of twinkling glitter dust the CEO disappears.)
Grimy Hobo: Bloody hell, his breath stinks worse than ever.
Sean Bean: What did he mean about me looking for something? Is it dangerous? I’ve had enough fucking adventure over the last few fucking months, there’s no way I’m going into any more nasty fucking situations I’ll tell you that for fucking nothing.
Luke: We should be quite proud of the way we are taking this in our stride. Did you see the CEO just go poof?
Grimy Hobo: He’s always worn that pink tie, nothing recent about it.
Mayor Porker: Well, it looks like I’m off to Jimboomba. But what the devil is The Dandy?
Roscoe Lunchpack: The only Dandy I know is a pommy comic I used to read when I was a kid. It was very popular in the 50’s. Hey, Porky, perhaps you have to change into Korky the Cat. Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday. Every week I couldn’t wait for the new Dandy. The front cover always featured Korky the Cat in some sort of comical adventure. It was a really good comic. You would be too young to remember that, Porky……… Porky? ….. Porky? Has anyone seen Porky?
Mayor Porker: I’m down here - and if anyone steps on my bloody tail I’ll claw their arse to ribbons.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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