It's only 8 days till Christmas ... the Christ Mass ... And throughout the land, the devout, the pious, the desperately fearful and fearfully desperate take to the streets to spread the word of their beloved and loving lord and saviour ... to bring the sweet reason and poetry of the sweetest gospel of them all to the doors of the unbeliever, the skeptic, the pinched of heart, the shabby of mind and the sour of soul.
With fliers and pamphlets and booklets and bibles, nice suits and haircuts and big grinning smiles, sincere and sweetly they offer you things, submission, salvation, the realm of the king ...
When the door’s knocked, when the bell rings, when you’re feeling drab, just hop off that sofa and open your heart, and then you won’t feel ... so bad ...
“Good morning, sir. We’re visiting your neighbourhood today to talk to people about the word of god and of his son, our lord Jesus Christ, and we were wondering if we may take a few moments of your time?”
Well, heavens above, it is Christmas after all ... what’s a few fleeting moments between strangers, especially as these particular strangers seem so inoffensive, so serene and respectful, and so willing to devote so much of their time to what must be such a thankless task at the very best of times.
And so, being not one who has made a habit of rejecting the tender mercies and small kindnesses that have, on occasions past, been visited upon your person, you decide to accommodate the entreaties of these weary pilgrims with a welcoming smile and an inviting wave of the hand, suffused as you are with the spirit of generosity and patience that has come to define this most holy and sacred of seasons ...
“Why, of course you can have a fucking moment of my fucking time, you fucking plug-ugly fucking lumps of fucking maggot shit ... Haul your fucking arses in by all fucking means ... Would you like a fucking glass of fucking water or a fucking cup of fucking tea while you’re fucking here? ... Sit your fucking selves fucking down on the fucking sofa and make yourself fucking home ... Would you like a fucking biscuit? ... Help your fucking self ... Have two fucking biscuits if you fucking like ... Fuck me dead, were you fucking born with that fucking face? You poor fucking cow ... Never fucking mind ... How’s the fucking tea, all fucking right? Would you like some fucking milk or some fucking sugar with your fucking tea? ... Don’t be fucking shy ... feel fucking free to fucking dig in ... I’d introduce you to the fucking wife but she’s not fucking here right at the fucking moment, but if you’re fucking okay with fucking waiting for a fucking bit, I could whip us up some fucking yummy fucking treats to tide us fucking over till she fucking gets back from wherever the fucking fuck she fucking is ... Jesus fucking Christ on a fucking cross, I’ve been so fucking tense all fucking week ... Excuse me a fucking moment while I fucking whip out my fucking willy and fucking masturbate with wild fucking abandon ... Mind your fucking head.”
Happy Christmas.
Smelly Tongues will be in hiatus till mid-January.
From 1987, The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl “Fairytale of New York”
In his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything", Christopher Hitchens draws attention to the edict (or rather, damnation) issued by the elders of the Amsterdam synagogue in 1656 upon the person of Baruch Spinoza who had the audacity at the time to question the immortality of the soul and call for a separation between church and state. It went like this ...
"With the judgement of the angels and of the saints we excommunicate, cut off, curse, and anathematise Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and of all this holy congregation, in the presence of the holy books: by the 613 precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping and cursed be he in waking, cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him, the wrath and fury of the Lord shall henceforth be kindled against this man, and shall lay upon him all the curses which are written in the book of the law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun, and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the book of the law"
What a sweet bunch of fellas.
Yet, 350 years later, one does not have to go ranging all that deep, far and wide throughout the internet to find that today’s very own self-anointed sunbeams for Jesus don’t differ all that much from their ancestors in their attitudes to unbelievers...
From the “reviews” of Hitchens’ book on Amazon, here’s a little taste (my emphases added)...
“Every knee shall bow, including the author's, but then it will be too late. Those who hate God will spend eternity in hell in unbelievable pain and suffering. Books like these can lead people astray from the truth about which Jesus said, "If you mislead someone away from Me, it would be better that a boulder would be tied around his neck and be thrown into the ocean." It would be better if he were never born.” (Review from August 23, 2007)
“I can't believe people get away with writing stuff like this in this country. Maybe in the USSR, but not America. I thought people got blacklisted for having opinions such as this. I guess I was wrong, our country needs a new Senator McCarthy. This guy promotes atheism, a dead give away that shows without a shadow of a doubt that he is a communist. Communists should not be allowed to have the same rights as people. This man should be blacklisted, and taken to prison, and possibly deported to Cuba or North Korea. It appears that even though the Soviet Union collapsed, they won the Cold War after all. The number of people killed by religion is nothing compared with the number of people killed by atheist communism!” (Review from June 10, 2007)
“WHAT A WASTE OF TREES!!! THIS BOOK SHOULD BE BANNED!!! It is such a shame that people continue to TRY to disprove the existence of God and do not acknowledge THE ONE AND ONLY LORD JESUS CHRIST.” (Review from July 22, 2007)
“WARNING: Christians out there, BEWARE of this DEMONIC film! You really wanna see what BLASPHEMY truly is: This piece of filth! Do not watch it! You'll be sorry if you did! This movie does NOT deserve any stars PERIOD! Point blank! Instead of bashing a really true and inspirational film like "The Passion of the Christ", start thinking about doing so to a debris like this useless data, if you want to call it data at all.
By watching this GARBAGE, one is completely doing the same as BLASPHEMING my Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST!!! That is why I did not watch it. Some years back, when I saw this TRASH of an ABOMINATION advertised on AMC, I knew it was a DISGRACE and BLASPHEMOUS to the Word of God. I mean, are you that illiterate and ignorant??? Can't you tell that just by reading the name of the title "The Last Temptation of Christ" that it is SICK?? This is totally off-based from the Holy Bible. Not to mention, it is adding and taking away from the Words of the Bible, as it clearly states in Revelation 22:18-19. I pity the fools that watch this film, I surely DID NOT!! If you want to know what really happened to JESUS CHRIST, and what He really was about, then do one or both of the FOLLOWING: (1)Read the Holy Bible AND/OR (2)Watch the true DEPICTION of JESUS in the 2004 film, "The Passion of the Christ"!! In case some of you out there don't know what the PASSION means, it literally means "SUFFERING". That is what Jesus Christ did, He suffered for all the SINS of humanity. I mean, SUFFERED! He even refused myrr (which was sour wine used to numb pain) all because He was willing to take in every pain WE humans deserve! Get a reference from Psalm 69:21, Matthew 27:34 and verse 48, and John 19:28-30. That is what my Savior JESUS CHRIST is all about!
A little FURTHER reminder to those sick HYPOCRITES that agree with this ungodly Martin Scorcesse film of "The Last Temptation of Christ": You are blasphemers to say and believe that Jesus had ever given into temptation of satan by ignoring His duty on the cross and marrying Mary Magdalene and having children. SICK SICK SICK! I am so disgusted with you cults! How dare you disgrace the HOLY name of our Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST! You will definitely be accursed for that! "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." [Galatians 1:8] "Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." -Jesus Christ [Matthew 12:32] It is the ULTIMATE SIN that by its very nature puts a man beyond the opportunity of SALVATION. Wake up and get a clue, people!” (April 28, 2004)
Umm ... Okey-dokey, then.
You know, one could be easily forgiven for thinking that the loving bosom of the Lord so often invoked by the faithful and the pious is nothing more than a soggy, string bean tit spitting naught but bile straight to the limp little noodles of these idiots.
I’m definitely staying away from the red cordial this Christmas ... it makes people go all daffy in the head.
In possession of a "dramatic" range that, on the evidence to hand, appears to extend no further than a butterfly fart in a brisk breeze, Nicole Kidman inexplicably continues to attract people's attention for doing little other than flashing her eerily inexpressive eyes and Tic-Tac teeth on any public occasion in the direction of a camera; an anemic-skinned, perpetually sheath-clad and curiously sexless presence forever tottering up and down the red carpets of the known universe for the delectation of those camera-toting flashbulb junkies of the gutter press known as the "paparazzi" and the peanut-brained halfwits whose lives revolve around bouts of serial drooling over amateur footage of this wraithlike creature who, sans clothes, would probably resemble little more than a pasty streak of pelican shit on a pavement.
Even David Thomson, a normally astute critic and commentator on all things filmic, was so moved in the mandatory mid-life crisis that afflicts middle aged-men of his ilk the world over, that he devoted an entire book to the woman, the thing itself being little more than a thinly-disguised, self-indulgent masturbatory fantasy about how keen he'd be to bonk the little bony bint.
Why on earth is this mammalian stick-insect so popular? What is the significance of Nicoleus Insectus Kidmanus to and in our lives, and why are we forever being inflicted with article after article and column inch upon column inch of torridly turgid tripe that strives so to convince us that not only is there a significance, but it is the type of significance which, in ancient times, may have moved nations to erect temples in her name and indulge in a little sacrificial throat-slitting of small children in her honour?
"Oh look, Nicole and Keith went up the shops on Saturday morning for a carton of milk ... what a lovely photo. Don't they look sweet?"
In a period of 18 years, from 1989("Dead Calm") to 2007("The Golden Compass"), there is nothing among that lot that could even remotely be considered a "classic" work of cinema or, unless you're prone to futile exercises in optical self-abuse, much worth bothering with again if you've already seen it once ... (I will cede that Anthony Minghella's "Cold Mountain" contains some excellent moments, but the best and most successful of these do not involve “Our Nicole” and revolve instead on sub-plots and situations played out and populated by an outstanding cast of supporting players including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ray Winstone, Brendan Gleeson and Eileen Atkins among a multitude of talented others. No, I did not forget to mention Renee Zellweger, I just didn’t want to, okay?).
Five films from Kidman's oeuvre (or ordure, if you will) to consider: Stanley Kubrick's final film "Eyes Wide Shut", a sluggish bucket of icily sterile crap that is widely held as his worst ever film; an emotionally crippled exercise in dirty-old-man-ism that makes "Barry Lyndon" look like part of the "Die Hard" franchise by comparison; "Batman Forever", the death knell of that series at the time and almost the death knell of George Clooney's career to boot; "Bewitched", in which she bravely attempts to channel the spirit and essence of Marilyn Monroe ... through her nose; "Days Of Thunder", a ridiculous Bruckheimer-Simpson film (is there anything Bruckheimer and Simpson ever did that wasn’t ridiculous?) about racing cars that memorably featured a scene where Robert Duvall, the greatest actor of this or any other generation quite frankly, was required to give a pep-talk to a fucking automobile for Chrissakes (one hopes he was extremely well recompensed for his efforts).
And then there was “The Hours”, in which Kidman, sporting a silly putty nose, picked up an Oscar as Best Actress in 2003 for sporting a silly putty nose, drabbing it up as Virginia bloody Woolf and putting us all to sleep in the process.
Nicole Kidman won an Oscar. If there is a god, he’s one sick little puppy. Yet Julianne Moore, in the same film and whose astonishing talents would be noted in cinema history forevermore if she’d stopped working after “Safe”, “Short Cuts”, “Boogie Nights” and “Far From Heaven” did not. You have got to be kidding.
In only 5 years (to Kidman’s 18, remember) spanning 1952 to 1956, Grace Kelly starred in these five films: Fred Zinnemann’s “High Noon” with Gary Cooper; John Ford's "Mogambo" with Clark Gable; and for Hitchcock, "Dial M For Murder", "To Catch A Thief" and, most unforgettably, "Rear Window". It was in the latter that Kelly delivered unto James Stewart and film history a kiss so charged with raw sexuality and relentless eroticism that it could probably have reduced the entire pantheon of Roman and Greek Gods to bubbling little puddles of goo.
Furthermore, Grace Kelly was never so addled in the membrane as to consider for even one one-billionth of a nanosecond hitching her spunky little wagon to a stunted fuckwit such as this bleach-toothed, sofa-hopping tit.
Kidman did adopt a couple of wee bairns, and that was sweet of her I guess, though I suspect she only did so because given the extra-minus size of her hips, she could probably no more birth a busted Sao biscuit than I could pass a melon through the tip of my penis.
But as to the precise nature of “The Kidman Effect”, puzzled cinemagoers everywhere still anticipate delivery of that special feeling which is forever being promised by the snapping hounds of P.R. departments the world over and denied us by actual experience, as thus far, the only noticeable effect in evidence is that we, all of us, have been deprived of 15 bucks which would have been far better spent on a knees-up at McDonalds and a packet of toothpicks for after.
"In the office in which I work, there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of 20, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person ... "
"... We wise grown ups here at the company go gliding in and out all day long, scaring each other at our desks and cubicles and water coolers and trying to evade the people who frighten us. We come to work, have lunch, and go home. We goose-step in and goose-step out, change our partners and wander all about, sashay around for a pat on the head, and promenade home till we all drop dead."
At the Australian Cartoonist's Association (ACA) Stanley Awards ceremony a few years ago, host Bill Leak made the comment that a sense of community was to be found among illustrators and cartoonists that he had never found among “fine arts” practitioners. As I'd spent a couple of years working with both groups on a range of issues in a previous job, I found myself in wholehearted agreement, “fine arts” practitioners being a catty little bunch of often overly-precious tools at the best of times. (At the worst of times, one would be quite happy to see the whole damn lot of them fall under a bus).
It was James Kemsley, the then President of the ACA and Ginger Meggs cartoonist for well over 20 years who was in large part responsible for nurturing this sense of community among his cartooning colleagues, working tirelessly on their behalf to ensure that ACA members were armed with advice and resources and the support of their more successful members to make a go of their craft in an increasingly banal and insipid world where economic impact statements and productivity reports are forever being regarded as the high-water mark in modern civilisation, "art and entertainment" being that thing better left to poofters and losers who didn't have what it took to "get a real job".
I didn't know James well enough to be the type of person who'd just turn up out of the blue at the door of his house for a chat and a beer, but I do know that if I'd ever dared to pull such a ridiculous stunt, Kemsley would have been welcoming, polite, warm, generous and all those other soggy little adjectives that are too often applied to men and women in this life who wouldn't know grace from grapefruit.
James died on Sunday, December 3, 2007 from motor neurone disease at the age of 59. I knew he was ill as he had cited health reasons in his decision to step down from the Presidency of the ACA. But I'd no idea this horrible disease was the reason for it, myself having left the visual arts field of work a couple years ago and being in scant contact since.
Rest well, James. You will be sadly missed by anyone and everyone who ever had the pleasure of your company.
I posted this piece on the new Jack Marx blog recently and it elicited a really nice response from a number of people. So, here it is again ...
From “Rebus Flatbush’s Famous Fables & Folk-Tales from the American Mid-West” ...
“Now ... Feetus, Teetus an’ Meetus, you boys git in here and settle yerselves up for bed cause I’m a gunna speak a story at yer ... This here’s a story ‘bout Brit-nay’s momma ...
Once upon a time Brit-nay’s momma done once lived raht here in this ol’ trailer park, an’ afore she done popped out Brit-nay, she useta set in her trailer a’drinkin’ an’ a cussin’ at herself ‘cause she weren’t a fam-ous person. She’d rub her big bumpy belly and take a big swig a’ corn likker and tell herself, “Mah baby’s gonna be someone one day, yessir she is, I’m a gonna show ever’one I ain’t no common piece ‘a trailer trash, no sirree I ain’t! I gots talents! An’ so will mah chil’, dagnabbit!!”
Then she’d let go of a buncha burps and farts so loud they fair stunned all the woodchucks fer miles aroun’ and set the grizzlies a-runnin’ for higher ground and then she’d fall down lahk a dead person an’ set fire to herself agin an’ we’d all haveta come a-runnin’ with buckets ‘a water and put her out. This useta happen, oh ... ‘bout every day or two.
Anyhoo, Brit-nay was popped outta her momma’s belly one afternoon in the toilet block while she wuz givin’ Otis the janitor a seein’ to ‘bout sumfin’ (though why they wuz both nekkid at the time ah ain’t ever been able to figger, but ah guess that’s a’ no mind of mine to think upon), an’ she picked her baby up outta the toilet bowl an’ says “I gots myself a ticket to a fortune at last!”
An’ she taught that chil’ how ta dance an’ swivel her liddle hips an’ poke out her chesty bits and sing into a hairbush, all the time tellin’ her, “You gonna be fam-ous, Brit-nay, yes you are, an’ ah don’ wanna hear any arguments about it, you gonna be someone and ahm gonna be someone too! ... Now you gotsta learn how to poke out yer liddle baby pillows sum more and smile when all those nahce men from the talents agency come ‘round ... Oh!, that reminds me ... we gotsta git yer teeth bleached agin! ... You stay raht there now whiles I git the Persil.”
An’ sure e-nuff, Brit-nay got herself fam-ous an’ made a whole buncha money, an’ her momma made a whole buncha money too coz she done went and made herself Brit-nay’s manager person.
An’ then one day, when Brit-nay was a lot older, she started actin’ jes lahk her momma what with the drinkin’ and the smokin’ an’ cussin’ an’ gettin’ herself tattoos an’ havin’ a baby wif some fella who lahked to wear his pants ‘round his knees so as to show off his unnerwear an’ such ... Yessirree, she was actin’ up sumfin’ feerce all the time, an’ she got herself a dee-vorce an’ lost custody a’ her own l’il baby, an’ on top a’ all that, she went an’ tol’ her ol’ momma to go feck herself, ‘cause she was mahty sick of her.
An’ her poor ol’ momma soon found she had no more money left an’ she weren’t fam-ous no more an’ she had to come back an’ live with Otis the janitor in the toilet agin’.
Now, the moral of the story, boys, is this – no matter how many times you change the size an’ shape of yer trailer, the trash’ll always stay the same ...
(Er, Teetus ... take yer thang outta Meetus’s earhole and git yerself off to sleep, son.)”
Frequent coarse, abusive language and adult themes. No attempt whatsoever at any type of political balance. Feel free to point out an error of fact, i.e. a date, name, source, broken link or similar, however, if you want to ponce about trying to "correct my thinking", then just piss off somewhere else.
The message “This video is no longer available” occasionally appears on an embedded video from YouTube even though the video is still actually available. It’s a YouTube issue – click the player menu button, then copy the URL and paste it into your browser – the video should appear on the appropriate YouTube page. Life is such a pain at times, ain’t it?
