Professor BunyipWednesday, June 16, 2004
Well that episode of illness took a bit longer to beat than most, but by late last week a semblance of good health had returned, even if the desire to renew blogging had not. A long weekend, the blessed absence of Young Master Bunyip, who had chosen to inflict his surliness on a host family for three glorious days of peace and quiet, a new set of spark plugs -- all the preconditions of pleasure were in place, so there was no resisting the lure of the open road. With the Queen of the Billabong mounted upon the passenger seat (which requires some flexibility, but can be done if the glove box is left open and the gear stick is jammed in first) and the sound of humming rubber to delight the ears, sunshine filled the Bunyipmobile, regardless of the weather outside.
Blogging? Who could be bothered when bliss was on tap in such abundance, especially when the world was taking so many unaided steps toward betterment. The situation in Iraq continues to improve, despite what the Fairfax press would have you believe. Mark Latham's intemperate passion for a geriatric rocker further reveals his lack of nous. And in Victoria, the government of Bracks the Thief is actually returning ill-gotten speeding fines -- albeit amidst confusing letters and the usual incoherence one has come to expect from a political party and philosophical movement that has expelled concise expression and clear thinking from the schools we taxpayers are forced to support. All in all, a state as close to perfection as the Great Bunyip is likely to permit before the dead are raised, virtue reigns triumphant, and Satan's imps draw lots in the Infernal Pit to see who will have the unpleasant and eternal duty of sodomising members of the Thief's cabinet with sharp edged radar guns and thick-rolled sheafs of road safetry literature.
Before a return to blogging, apologies to those who have written and found that their emails come bouncing back. The Billabong's letter box reached capacity some days ago, but that clog has now been cleared and all future correspondece will be gratefully received.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Monday, June 07, 2004
If Margo, Carlton, Ramsey, Adams or any other member of the ABC/Fairfax axis says a bad word against the memory of Ronald Reagan, they need to be dragged out of their offices and whipped. They won't dare, not right away, but a week or so from now the soggy biscuits circle will come creeping back into the open, like cockroaches when the lights are dimmed. Can anybody doubt that Helen Caldicott has already been contacted for her views, or that Opinion page editors aren't drooling for some Moonbat orthodoxy from the Guardian.
Screw 'em all. Not one of them is worth a clipping from Ronald Reagan's toenail. If the Americans have any sense of gratitude, the first thing they'll do is add his face to Mount Rushmore.
Now go and read Tim Blair's round up of reactions (if you haven't done so already), and don't skip the comments. There is more sense there than you'll find in a year's worth of Sillies.
UPDATE: The cockroaches didn't wait after all. Check out Marian Wilkinson's obituary in the Silly. Tomorrow, after a little sleep, let's analyse it, shall it?
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Wretchard of Belmont Club:
In all of Marxist literature, which reaches considerable heights, there is never a moment comparable to Christ's sermon on the Lilies of the Fields, a moment of certainty in the invincibility of love. In its place stands the conviction of the futility of life; of the awareness of existence in a dark room. Like Faust at his desk, it laments: "I have studied philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and worst of all theology, and here I am, for all my lore, the wretched fool I was before." Faust made a pact with the infernal spirits to accept damnation on the instant he found happiness, provided he was empowered to pursue the future, and failed. Yet like the Left, it was the simple happiness of others that shielded him in the end. When, after having ruined maidens by falsely pledging love and plundering the world of treasure which he unhappily piled up, Faust finally plants a garden and bequeaths it to the poor; and in so doing unintentionally experiences pure happiness, Mephisto comes to claim his due. And barring the demon's way was a cascade of flowers strewn by the simple girl whose love Faust took and whose pity he could not destroy. The Left should look out the window, and ask why Osama is not there.
The rest of the post is just as good.
Friday, June 04, 2004
That earlier post earlier post requesting translation services? Well, rest easy. According to the multilingual Kev Gillett, it was every good Musselman's guide to the little woman's dress and comportment. Nothing to worry about -- unless you happen to be a Muslim woman.
And thanks, too, to reader Joe Cambria, whose kind note quite lifted this Bunyip's spirits.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Heavens knows, we don't have too much to celebrate in this hard world, where even the things we want never quite turn out to be as satisfying as anticipation promised. One doesn't like to be bleak, but it's a shitty existence most of the time. Annoyances to the left, work to the right, and up ahead the frustration of knowing that there is a state of existence just somewhat closer to the ideal, a world where good intentions and pleasant character might be taken for granted, a world that would be just attainable with but a little effort and a thin smear of common sense. Not perfect-0-bility by decree, which is the left's fantasy ride and folly, but modest betterment, with initiative and industry the engines nudging life's improvements.
We would have all the benefits of science, for example, which indeed we already do in the marvelous cars and motor vehicles technology has matched with fine roads and tyres that, to take just one apparently humble instance of man's kinetic genius, are actually marvels of applied thought. And what do we do with it? Surrender their advantages to a political class of worrywarts and sermonising thieves, who set speed traps and limits according to philosophy rather than good practice. It you believe in progress -- that betterment by baby steps, gaining a few metres whenever circumstances permit -- it just breaks the heart. And not just because we hand over the freedom to go responsibly fast -- petty though that liberty might strike those who have never known the thoroughbred thrum of a mighty engine -- but the subsequent insults to intelligence that follow, for that is the price passivity inflicts. The radio in the Bunyipmobile isn't on for more than a few minutes without the voice of some pugnacious woman calling down perdition on those who go 4 kph over the limit, Satan's imps the lot us. It's the fervour, and the abstracted absolutist logic of a Temperance crusader's tub-thumper. Just when you think we're getting somewhere --phhht! - the possibilities are snatched away. Thrown away, more often.
That's probably why, ever since Australia liberated Iraq with U.S. and British assistance, the committed observer can only have been enervated at the spectacle of possibility actually taking flesh. The invasion wasn't a petty exercise, as critics decry it, but a cause consecrated with good intentions. Heavens, the best of intentions! Opponents have tried to make it cheap and tawdry, a criticisism that should be, but wasn't, devoid of force, since it is that lot's objection to every principle above their ken (most, in other words). The deep thinkers in those papier mache heads say it was about oil, as if ruthless capitalists would have waged an expensive war when bribery and a bit of the old realpolitik would have done the trick and at a bargain rate. For once, confronted by genuine wickedness, nations which could have postponed a fight steeled themselves to lay blood at the altar of higher purpose.
It's crazy for the left to think that way, really, but that has been its chant. Yet solid men -- Howard, Bush and Blair -- have ignored the racket and largely seen their project through. In Baghdad, when the Iraqis rejected both American and UN counsel and named their own leaders, they validated all the sacrifices and soothed the sting of what, in the Professor's case, have been some pungent dinner party slurs.
A worthy purpose, the end of a tyrant and the liberation of his subjects, reached for and obtained because it was there, graspable, and because the goal was good and nothing else. No claque of paid liars can cheapen that, just as nobody but the Iraqis themselves can now pluck out the tiny shoot of law and reasonableness that appeared yesterday for the first time in Baghdad. If Bush, Blair and Howard pay with their jobs for the decisions made over the past two years, well that will be sad, but it will further enhance the sacrifice and nobility of the cause.
Iraq's anxious rebirth has been a source of inspiration. For once, and hopefully not for the last time, we have seen that it is indeed possible to speed towards a better world, and that all the bitter words of know-it-all scolds and self-promoting hypocrites don't have to mean a thing if good men people find the courage to ignore them.
Read this. And tomorrow, when the news organisation that pays Margo to pretend she's a journalist, allows Marian Wilkinson et al to give Abu Ghraib her patented Tampa treatment, and encourages Alan Ramsey to go howling-on-the-heath mad twice a week about plastic turkeys, dead priests and fake filthy pictures, bear in mind that author David Warren is a Canadian. Yes, a Canuck who writes for the Ottawa Citizen. If Canada, of all places, can manage a newspaper that lets truth off the leash every now and again, why is Australia so habitually short-changed?
Quick, call the doctor, the Professor has come down with Margosis. First, in an earlier post, the rock band Iced Earth was identified as Frozen Ground. Then there was the Darby/Danby confusion. And finally, Chris Shiel's name was rendered with vowels transposed. Sooner or later, there will be a spare moment to fix those errors and republish. But not just now. Not when the Billabong's unflushed lavatory looks so very appealing -- and especially when a chorus of whispering voices is warning that the Yank might be along at any moment to destroy that festering bowl of ecological harmony.
Input from any readers who can translate this would be appreciated. It appears to be Indonesian or Malay and includes what may or may not be an interesting references to a certain religious group well known in Lakemba.
Here's the relevant paragraph from a very long text:
Dibawah ini adalah artikel Jilbab Muslimah yang saya kutip dari Kitab Jilbab
Wanita Muslimah Syaikh Nashiruddin Al-Albani dengan secara ringkas hanya
mengambil point-point terpentingnya saja dan juga beberapa kitab lainnya
seperti Nailul Authar Imam Syaukani, Ringkasan Tafsir Ibnu Katsir (setiap
dalilnya dilengkapi dengan catatan kaki) dengan tujuan memudahkan para
ummahat yang ingin membacanya pada waktu (dahulu)kajian/pengajian di Lakemba (sydney) semoga bermanfaat ....apabila ada kesalahan atau kekurangan mohon teguran dari ikhwah semua karena kita adalah manusia biasa yang tak lepas dari salah.Jazakumullah khair atas perhatiannya
UPDATE: Further to matters Muslim, readers intrigued by the Silly Moaning Hilmer's passing reference to documents "posted on the Shiekh al Maqdesse (sic) website from September 26 last year until May 10" in its story about the paltry $10,000 bail extended to terror suspect and former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal can get a taste of multiculturalism's rich bounty courtesy of Freeper Yonif, who posted an alarming excerpt from the site last October.
Incidentally, those curious to learn more about the website should google on the more common spelling "Sheikh Al-Maqdisi" and "Maqdisi" + "website". You'll find some interesting reading.
Over at the House of Blair, Tim and his readers have been wondering yet again about Hagfish Phil and the selective outrage that produced His Lardship's most recent column, the one about a belief in the Great Bunyip being the root of President Bush's boundless evil. Like Tim, posters marvel at Adams' brazen inconsistency. If Bush's references to Divine Will are a problem, why didn't Kennedy's and Jimmy Carter's invocations of the Almighty provide similar cause for concern. Somewhat innocently, they wonder where the Living Treasure gets such ideas.
Silly people! From the New York Review of Books, of course, where the Antiquarian digs up all the columns that don't hang on his Kew childhood, rotten dad (a man of the cloth, tellingly), or the close and personal friends who go on his show to flog their books.
This latest effort isn't slavishly copied, but if you consult "A Cautionary Tale" by Brian Urquhart in the 10 June, 2004, edition of the NYRoB, you'll find all the key elements waiting to be re-assembled.
There is the quote from Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, which Urquhart is reviewing, about Bush pacing in circles and asking for the Almighty's assistance as he puts the US war machine into gear, and Adams, who would like readers to assume that he has actually read the book, reproduces it right down to the elipses. There are the slighting, sneering references to the "muscular Christianity" of Tony Blair, whom the original presents as "Bush's Iraq soulmate". Urquhart talks of Bush's "religious war", Adams of White House "jihads". If pressed for time, readers are advised to skip straight to Section 5 of the review, the motherlode of Adams' inspiration, such as it is, where they will also find Urquhart's narrative comment, "There's the sense of Messianic, big ideas not properly thought through, a certainty that sometimes even hints at divine rightness and an undertone of manifest destiny under the guidance of Almighty God." David Marr may have a pressing appointment at the hairdresser, so let's save him the trouble: It isn't plagiarism.
But is curious, especially for what Adams chooses to omit. The one thing missing is any reference to the NYRoB -- almost as if the Antiquarian is a little sensitive about sharing with readers the font of inspiration that has served him so well. Why do you think that might be?
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
It's a terrible thing to see grown boys cry, but serial commenter on sundry leftoid blogs Dave Riccardo must be feeling just a little weepy at the moment -- and not just because Chris Shiel has no room in his locally made, environmentally responsible mystery vehicle to take him to an appropriate spot for some liquid consolation. Here's Dave's vision of Australia under Latham:
Anyway, of course it will go pear shaped. It always does. But that's not the point. What counts - at least for me - will be the sheer pleasure of watching the fear and loathing from the RWDBs when Eva Cox is appointed head of the human rights commission; when Philip Adams is appointed to the ABC Board; when environment policy is outsourced to Peter Garrett; when John Halfpenny is appointed to re-write the Workplace Relations Act (OK, not him since he's he's dead, but someone just as good); when Julian Burnside is appointed to the High Court (seriously, that might happen) - I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Howard's poll numbers have just taken a precipitous leap. A few more similar fantasies and the up-tick should manage another big jump.
The hope had been to find a few minutes here and there during the current road trip to get some blogging done, but things never quite work out as planned, so apologies for the lack of posts. And thanks to the Billabong's esteemed reader and volunteer proof reader A.C., who pointed out that the Professor had come down with a case of terminal confusion when writing of "Michael Darby" rather than Michael Danby. That error has since been fixed.
