Saturday, November 21, 2015

In which the pond borrows cut-up techniques to better understand former chairman Abbott ...


(Above: and more fond Pope memories here).

The pond admits a certain debt to William Burroughs and his use of cut-up techniques, which he borrowed from others but which he refined and perfected in his own bid to become totally unreadable ...

The technique happens to coincide with a certain interest in the fate of losers, failures and dropkicks, who hang around like ghosts in a Christmas fairy story or a Bruce Willis film.

And what greater loser or dropkick could there be than Tony Abbott, save perhaps former Chairman Rudd.

And now it has become clear that Abbott aspires to be as nasty and as vicious and even more nakedly obvious than the former Chairman ...

And so to the cut-up. First out of the gates is Phillip Coorey at the AFR:


But wait, over at the reptiles, there's bloatware in chief, doddering pedant designed to make Polonius seem an economical user of words, so here comes Paul Kelly, and look at the contrast in style ...


Back to Coorey, more economical with his words:


Back to the ersatz Polonius, still blathering away, with nary a thought of that succinct term "sissy" and all that it implies about Abbott, not when the Grand Mufti can be dressed down, and Abbott can be allowed to get away with his own appalling statements:


Back to Coorey, who has the decency to point out the folly of Abbott's wild card prescriptions:


Back to the faux Polonius, still seeking to excuse Abbott by celebrating his acute instincts ... so acute he was even more widely loathed than Bill Shorten:


Now usually after a flurry of gobbets like this, the pond would set questions regarding the meaning of the texts on view.

Warrior students, take out your Bembrick, learn this gobbet by heart, veni vidi, vici. Oh hallowed times and memories ... to have actually known the mysterious Bembrick ... as opposed to merely suffering because of him ...

Never mind, the moral is apparent. The reptiles still yearn for the posturing, macho, tough he man in budgie smugglers.

The Bolter, brave keyboard warrior that he is, has been letting loose the dogs of war on a daily basis; the bromancer, we know know, yearns for some hardened men, experienced in the ways of rough trade, to go off and fight for Bolter, bromancer and country ...

Where are these bearded warriors now? Lost behind the keyboard, indifferent to the clarion cry to form a square and un-jam the Gatling ...

Coorey rather gives the game away in his final gobbet, where it becomes clear that he takes an actual view of Abbott's behaviour, as opposed to the blathering and fog-induced smokescreen erected by Polonius on Abbott's behalf.

Kelly spends an enormous amount of time providing explanations and justifications for Abbott's chairman Rudd-style disgraceful deeds, but Coorey comes to the point:


Actually it's a whole new level of low, but you won't find a word of that in Kelly's piece. 

But at least thanks to the cut-up process, the pond achieved a whole new level of consciousness:

Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag 
Take a newspaper 
Shake it gently 
The poem will be like you 
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag 
Cut out the article 
And there you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar 
To make a dadaist poem 
Copy conscientiously 
Take a pair of scissors 
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem (here).

Ah well, the cut and paste functionality these days does as well as scissors, and so this poem is done, but as Greg "the bromancer" Sheridan so famously observed this very day, soon there be trouble at mill ...

Abbott, the wrecker, the destroyer, is back on the job ...

Having devoted his energies fucking up Australia for two years, he is now intent on destroying Turnbull ... and like the scorpion of old, he doesn't care who or what he takes down while doing it ...  and the keyboard warriors of war will cheer him on, because that's how the faint-hearted fight...

Is it possible to imagine a better argument against migration?


A man who even argues against the teachings of Christ when he was once a famous disciple?


A man celebrated for his profound banality of weevils?


A man still making trouble even after they took away his matches and lighter?


Will any of it do Abbott any good? 

Probably as much as it did former Chairman Rudd as we make our way to Xmas ... 

Ah good old Xmas. The pond can feel a war coming on ... there's troubled times ahead, for sure ...


5 comments:

  1. I reckon the Grand Mufti was a step ahead of Kelly. Kelly'a essence, the ideology of extreme and violent Islam, he explains, is caused by Western racism, Islamophobia and foreign and military policies.

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  2. If you don't mind the cut-up job, aka cut 'n paste, that "flurry of gobbets" from Pompous Paul had a familiar ring.

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  3. Hi Dorothy,

    Abbott is a fascinating psychological study of a man who can only define himself by what he opposes. He isn't really a conservative, he cares little for the status quo. His personality was shaped by reactionaries who hankered for a return to a mythical right wing past where everyone had their set place.

    Abbott however has no real relationship with this safe, white, patriarchal society as his formative years were spent in a period where societal attitudes changed dramatically. Feminism, homosexuality, atheism, equality, multiculturalism were all major topics in Abbott's poltical university years and he opposed them all.

    The nature of the man now is to oppose anybody or anything that he considers were his ideological enemies from the 70's.

    Turnbull therefore is a heretic and a turncoat pushing a progressive message which is abhorrent to Abbott.

    More crazy for the foreseeable future, which can only be good for you DP.

    DiddyWrote

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    1. Spot on DW and yes more than ever there's the whiff of a moth-balled B. A. Santamaria about the man. If there was any justice, he'd end up doing a ten minute weekly rant for commercial television entitled Point of Nattering Negativity View ... and yes, since the pond is dedicated to teh crazy, so long as chairman Rupert is in charge and the lizard Oz hosts Abbott, teh crazy will continue to flourish ...

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  4. I commented on one of Tony's pieces that "[He] had an honours level mouth and performed kindergarten level deeds"

    I quite liked that. Thought it encapsulated his efforts nicely.

    Why is our country beset by such arrant fuckwits?

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