Full Marx

Deep in a pile of half discarded books, in a lacklustre suburban library far from the bright lights of the chich inner city there sat a book. It was alone. It was an old book, a Penguin Classic, yet despite its prestigious pedigree it had been rejected from its place amongst the library’s collection, to be sold to the general public for a mere price of 50c. Perhaps it was the stained plastic contact which lay over it’s surface, the decaying binding, or the graphite lines which underlined much of its pages. Perhaps it was the small print. Perhaps a newer, shinier more user friendly version of the same book had arrived to replace it. They were all viable options. But equally viable was the possibility of conspiracy. Conspiracy most fowl.

For this book was controversial. It was radical. Extremist. It had been written in a time of tumultuous change by a bearded German journalist, and another bloke who was also German, probably a journalist and probably bearded too. It was the Communist Manifesto…

Hurrah! It seems I have obtained, that is to say, the people have obtained, a copy of the Communist Manifesto. It was written in 18 somethingty-something by those twin German spunks Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They probably wrote in a coffee shop. I’m pretty sure they did actually, in London. Amongst all the workhouses, pickpockets and other cliches, minds fixed on how to create a system of government that was perfect, utopic and would provide them with a bucketload of sex. Well, perhaps if you are a fan of Freudian psychology, and if sex was measured in buckets. If anyone’s is I’d be impressed in an unsettled way.

Troll or Gorgon? Marx Was Turned To Stone Here In Chemnitz in 1989, When He Glimpsed His Own Reflection In a Mirror.

Reading through the manifesto, which has a foreword and series of prefaces longer than the manifesto itself, I realised I wasn’t half as clever as I thought I was. To fully comprehend what these blokes were saying, I had to read the words aloud and slowly, pausing every couple of paragraphs to think, relating what they’d said to today’s society, my own experiences, and other totally random things that burst into my thoughts. Like fairy bread. Strange.

As of now I haven’t finished reading it. TV requires much less effort to concetrate on, and bearing in mind time, space, mood and the presence of an omnipresent deity that may or may not be insectoid in fashion,  just as productive and valuable. What I have noticed so far is the context of it. It was written in the late 19th century, when people in Western Europe actually worked in factories that made things. Crazy right? I know. Many of the predictions and assumptions made rely upon things that seemed evident at the time. For instance it doesn’t take into account the existence of aliens. A fatal oversight in my humble opinion. It also does not go into detail much about hippies, Indians, hedgehogs, sheep, radical fundamentalism, music and other stuff which I thought about, but have since forgotten. It’s also too sure of itself.

Cats Are Often Elitist in Outlook, And Are the Enemies of the People. Marx Prefers Ferrets

I, for instance, cannot commit to anything. Except relationships. I’m really good at committing to relationships. And complimenting women. I’m a quite nice guy, I give to charities when I have spare change, I’m not fat and I like short walks on the beach, where I stare wistfully out into the horizon, contemplating existentialism and whatnot. If that interests you, my email’s on my Gravatar thingy. Get in touch.

Apart from relationships, I can’t commit entirely to many things. I cannot consciously believe in that many things with every iota of my being like some people can. That’s why I’m not religious. It’s also why I’m not an atheist. Additionally it is why I am not a Marxist. Whilst I may agree a lot with what that chubby bearded lovecat may spout, and share many of his sentiments along with a vague Rheinish heritage, I cannot say I’d agree with every bit of his doctrine. I’m sorry but it just won’t work.

And that is why, although I’m reading his seminal work (sounds vaguely dirty doesn’t it?), and I’ve bought his book it does not mean I’ll undergo a wholesale and pentecostal conversion to Communism, waving little red flags around, calling people Comrade who I don’t actually know, and keeping a small yet virile mongoose under my bed for uses “come the revolution”.

A Comprehensive History of the Labor Party

Considering the outrageous success of my last post, a Fraction Too Much Factions talking about factionalism in the hard left movement, I’ve decided to pen a hit sequel. About the Labor Party! Here’s a brief synopsis. I’ve done a lot of research, though there may be some factual inconsistencies.

The Labor Party was founded in 1854, behind a chicken coop at Eureka Stockade, by Peter Lalor, Karl Marx and Ronald McDonald. Originally planning an international franchise specialising in cheap and kitsch nativity woodcuts, the sudden arrival of British troops changed all this, and much to the chagrin of Marx, the Labor part morphed into a worker’s movement.

Ronald and Marx escaped the fiery conflagration which followed  the battle at the Stockade, whilst Lalor was captured by Him’s Majesty’s forces and taken to the throne of Queen Victoria. Before the Iron Lady’s gilded throne, Lalor was made to answer for his crimes of treason, shoplifting, and making lewd comments concerning certain breeds of dog. It was at this point that Lalor spouted his most famous quote. A quote that has subsequently been lost.

Lalor was transported to notorious Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana, where he languishes in a malaria ridden state of delusion to this very day with Alfred Dreyfuss, Simon Crean and Captain America. Do not attempt to rescue him, as there are many sharks.

Meanwhile back at home, Marx had moved to Germany to pursue a degree in Ice Hockey, and Ronald to America’s Midwest, converting to Buddhism and rehashing the Labor Party idea yet again into a transnational conglomerate that rapes the Third World for resources and has a catchy jingle. The Labor Party itself remained dormant, the papers lying hidden, covered in a thin layer of dust, in a basement deep under the Michell Library in Central Sydney.

Wherever There Are Americans, There Is Ronald

But like Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the Labor Party is both shiny, old and corrupting to all who join it. It also has the power to call to its victims across the trivial bounds of time and space, and thus, Gough Whitlam was lured.

Gough was a bright faced young Liberal, who liked picnics, prayer, alcohol and blood sports. Upon his joining of the Labor Party however all this changed. In an eyeblink the man became a fiend. A devious monster infected with the disease of progressive reform. He abandoned the wholesome ways of the world and took up the cause of the degenerate lower classes. He brought in new laws that brought women out of the kitchen and into the laundry. He robbed poor hardworking British lords of their ancestral homes in the Northern Territory, and brought in that legendary farce, Medicare, in which even commoners can be treated for wounds and ailments!

Thanks to a divine union of good old-fashioned English values, kindly white folk, and the Power of Menzies, the heroic Viceroy, Billy the Cur banished Whitlam to the hellish furnace of the badlands (Dubbo). At that point the scourge of the Labor Party seem’d vanquished. But the plans of the glorious right had not yet  come to complete fruition! Operation Lizard was about to begin.

Dubbo's Infamous Road of Tears. Now Complete With Hungry Jacks Restaurant!

Using their alien allies in the Andromeda Galaxy, Emperor Menzies, known at that point as Ming the Merciless, installed a double agent in to the party. He was known as the Lizardman, but his alias was Keating. Keating masqueraded as a harmless Irishman, not exactly rare in the Labor Party, by drinking copious amounts of alcohol and consistently wearing the colour green. Soon the IRA sympathisers of Labor accepted him as one of their own, dubbing him ‘Patrick’. 

Patrick Lizardman Keating, once in a position of power, ousted fellow yacht-loving alcoholic Hawke off  the peak of Mount Druitt. Now in a position of power, he began to implement his devious agenda. One by one, like a mass of devout termites, he destroyed the planks of the Labor Party, replacing them with the iron foundations of those of their perennial rivals, the Tories.

Here The Lecherous Lizardman Slinks His Slippery Arm Around Our Righteous Sovereign! Gasp!

Privatisation was pushed to the fore, a dogmatic yet fully justified worship of America, and a general ditching of that common lot’s interests for those of the more important soon followed. With Labor weakened to the point of emaciation, and with the rise of the apocalyptic Fish Cult, the misguided people of Australia turned to the frail, bony arms of Dark Lord Howard.

Lord Howard’s regime put a stop to all of that communist riff-raff and helped the economy and whatnot. Aborigines and poor people were suitably ignored. They didn’t have all that much money, and were plainly the wrong sort. But who could stop the Dark Lord now? The Labor Party was emasculated, like an Albanian goat in the spring time. Those pinko Greens in Tasmania couldn’t lift but one of their eleven fingers. A bright future seemed assured.

But thence came the Third and Most grievous coming of the Laborites, whence Lo! From the green hills of Outer Brisbane, rode KRudd on a mighty steed. Vanquishing the hosts of the dark Lord before him. KRudd occupied the palace of Kirbilli, and for a while, held all of Middle Earth in his sweaty palms. But no sooner had they come to power, then the deviant communists began fighting amongst themselves. Rudd’s lieutenant, the Fiery One, stabbed KRudd in the back with her mighty dagger, and so took Australia.

Now is a horrid time for the right. But the weak halflight of victory is visible on the horizon, for the Labor Party is fractured and so weak. The time is ripe for a revolution, so more power can be handed to the benevolent corporations and political class. Stand with me brothers. We shall overcome.

Bungwahl

Hands up who has heard of Bungwahl? And should we explore the idea of socialism in it’s humbled groves?

That was a silly thing to say. I’m sorry. Despite the special powers outlined in previous posts, and my uncanny ability to navigate through rural towns in the early morning, I cannot see your hands. Perhaps if you scanned one of your hands and uploaded the jpeg to a Wikipedia article about a Virgin Islands basketball player I would be able to gauge an accurate answer to this question/directive. But like the social benefits of unregulated capitalism and polyester, this is immaterial.

Bungwahl is a town within our beloved and glorious Great Lakes region of NSW. It is within the area of land that rightfully belongs to our free democratic association of socialists, and therefore is of some interest to us. Much like a boil or wart on the sole of one’s foot, which you  attempt to ignore, but occasionally become aware of when climbing a specific incline, or inspect one’s toes for tinea, fluff or sudden and unexpected inbreeding.

Bungwahlians are Often Bemused by Large Puppets

Like a boil or wart, Bungwahl is small, sweaty,  forested and has reputation for inbreeding.

According to some interweb people with a website and that, Bungwahl has a population of 211. However, I know someone who lives there, and he says there’s “like seven people here”, and since I know all of those seven people fairly well, I’m more likely to believe him, then a cabal of dodgy mustachioed, fez-wearing, wine-skulling foreigners on the internet who are probably overly fond of mice and collect model planes. Model planes are irritating. I once watched a movie with a German in it and a plane that crashed in the desert. The German said he built planes, so everyone was like “Cool! Rebuild the plane!” and he was like “Ja. OK.” But then in the end he turned out to have only built model planes, so a fat English guy got angry with him, and someone drank all the water. Irritating right?

Germans and rucksacks aside, I visited Bungwahl recently for some fraternal socialist communion. Not religious though. Religion is the opiate of the masses, says Marx, and he had a beard and his dad was a Jew, so he’d probably know better. Anyway, when I went there, after unloading some Polish furniture and walking up a long steep driveway with the smell of numbat in my nostrils, I noticed there was water in a ditch by the road. There was also a dog in the water. This has several key impacts on revolutionary policy. Water means that there is mosquitos and that means malaria. The forces of capitalism would never dream of searching for us in a malaria ridden hole like Bungwahl. Also the added threat of numerous, perhaps plentiful dogs means that aerial reconnaisance is out of the question. Dogs are also known to guard against most forms of malaria, and their happy-go-lucky attitude and willingness to learn will make them good socialists, and better bakers.

Demotivationals Are Almost Never Wrong

Bungwahl is also much endowed with trees and green things like uranium. That was a lie. There’s no uranium in Bungwahl that I know of, there’s far more simple and unsettling ways to explain the prevalence of extra limbs, toes, fingers and organs amidst the local population. That will be explained further on. Luckily the whole tree thing is being fixed with chainsaws and whatnot, and the government says that all this leafy nonsense will be over and done with fairly soon. That’s also a lie. I’m saying a lot of them now. I just ate a Monte Carlo biscuit, and as we all know the Count of Monte Cristo was a notorious lier. Need I say anymore? That said, there is some logging underway, and we all know how animals like wombats, bears, dolphins and Greenies hate logging. We could draw a local militia from the disgruntled forest folk, and reach out to the no doubt disgruntled and oppressed loggers, gruntling them together into a mighty force for good. We can use the trees or, depending how long it takes to convert the loggers, stumps to hide in from the capitalists. We can use the dogs to climb the trees and act as lookouts.

Inbreeding however is double edged spoon, and like a splade, fickle and cynical to the ways of the world. The extra digits of the local folk might mean their ability to handle peaceful revolutionary weapons of virtuous lethality would be hampered, their low IQ and high birth rate, does however counteract this. The inbreds, due to their smell, unsavoury appearance and awkward culinary habits are ostracised by our bigoted society, this combined with the promise of fresh meat should see them flock to our banner. Once our doctrine has been memorised by rote, they will make good albeit somewhat rigid socialists. The lack of morals, contraceptives, and things to do in Bungwahl means the birth rate is relatively high, allowing our armies to be replenished with ease and speed.

Unfortunately, I’ve never actually seen an inbred in Bungwahl, and most of my ideas about recruiting them come from a movie about inbred hillbillies that go crazy and kill people in America. The plot was implausible and I found it made light of certain socio-economic problems and social issues in the Appalachians that should be confronted in a more serious manner.

Be that as it may, I have made up my mind, as have you and the Grand Council. Efforts in Bungwahl will redoubled and tens of dollars of funds poured into a number of dog training and jazz piano programs. The red flag will fly over Bungwahl within an indefinite period of time, and become a bastion of our ideology, and haven for the eleven (or twelve) toed peoples of the world.

Yes We Khan

Given recent most confidential events that aren’t that confidential but fairly eventful, I need another past time to entertain my gargantuan, bloated mind. I have found several things to do but I’m yet to decide what one to pick.

1. Travel to Mongolia, find Genghis Khan and join his warband, conquering all before me. There a number of major issues to solve here. There will most likely be ideological differences between myself and the Great Khan, leading to tensions within the warband. While Mongolia was a Stalinist country throughout most of the twentieth century, leaving them somewhat open to collectivist ideals, Genghis Khan and his crew were around slightly before this. I imagine both of us will have to fight it out for control of the warband. We’d probably be shirtless, though not without pants because its quite cold in Mongolia and I’m still fairly conscious about my body. We’d fight in the snow, with all of the warriors around us, cheering their favoured contestant on, I’d be the underdog, because the underdog always wins. Apart from the raucous cheering and whatnot, there would be dead silence. An eagle would soar in the background. The warband’s Shaman, who is old and probably wounded in some way, would proclaim this an omen and there would be an silence.

A Modern Day Depiction of My Duel With Genghis

I would of course win, in a nailbiting fight, using a technique Khan tought me himself. I would stand on top of his body, and scream out in primal rage at the sky, with semi-congealed blood oozing down my masculine torso. The warriors would then bow down to my iron will, learning the ways of socialism, and creating a world utopian republic without the transitionary phases of feudalism, capitalism and state socialism dictated by the great Groucho Marx.

Another issue to resolve here would be the whole time-travel thing. Genghis died over 800 years ago I think. I’d also need to get to Mongolia, which means I’d need money for air fares, but I’d obtain those via cake sales and craft stalls. If anyone asked me what the money was for I would have to lie. Animal welfare always brings on a few dollars.

There were a few more ideas, but bugger it. This one is foolproof. You can give me feedback if you want, but I’ve already made my mind up. The posters are being photoshopped, the cakes are in the oven and I’ve bought a time machine over the internet from a kindly Spaniard for a bargain price. Yeah, just don’t bother giving feedback at all. Like the inexorable Sting, “You know my mind is made up, so put away your make up” If this post is written in Mongolian, you’ll have known that I suceeded.

I Feel Like A Musical…

A few days ago it was my birthday

(Yay! Happy Birthday Paco! Thank you! Your welcome! Do you want to hang out? Sure! Are you interested in Byzantine Neo-Classic Architecture? Am I ever! Maybe we can organise a day where we can take a few books out to the park and you can bring the packed lunch-)

As I was I saying, it was my birthday a few days ago, and my beloved progenitors gave me a Pink Floyd double CD. Progenitors is a fancy word for parents. I use this word because it makes me sound intelligent, and because it also sounds like a character from Transformers. I think it would be a robot that could turn into a tank…

Yes, I got a Pink Floyd double CD, named The Wall. I really like it. I put it on and ate heaps of chocolate and then watched the Dragons win the Premiership. I did this because I am quite masculine and enjoy watching and playing sport. I am also a Dragons supporter. It was glorious! The first time I had EVER seen the Dragons win a premiership, and convincingly too! We smashed those Roosters to a pulp! We charcoaled their foul bodies! That there was a pun. A pun is a play on words. Foul, meaning awful and disgusting is a homonym of the word fowl, which is the word for a type of small ground bird. This implies a humorous connotation. The same thing applies to paltry/poultry another avian-detractive characteristic pun which can be used in similar circumstances.

So The Wall. Yeah. The Wall was really good, but I got listening really intently right at the end of the second disc. Here there are two tracks. Waiting For The Worm, a cool track about how fascists are evil, and The Trial. The Trial is an entirely different track. Its quite different from the rest of the disc. Stylistically and lyrically its like a musical, and as I was singing, I realised, how I love musicals…

I want to create a musical, an epic sounding, epic looking epic. Here are my ideas.

1. Stalin comes back from the dead as Llama. I will call it Llama-Stalin: A Ballad of the Andes. Llama Stalin is born in the mountains of Peru on a Llama farm outside Cuzco. He soon works out that he and his fellow Llamas are being exploited rather inefficiently and unequally. He vows to make an end to this, and to exploit efficiently and equally all of his dromedarian brethren. After a brief Revolution and civil war, Llama-Stalin takes control, fashioning a moustache from a broom-head, and becomes a brutal animalistic despot. This plot has nothing to do with that of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which I recently read. This one’s about Llamas. Are their any Llamas in Animal Farm? No.

Llama Stalin's Second-in-Command, Lloyd, Toils in the Brutal Rock Mines.

2. Scotland in Space. A small Scottish town is transported into the darkness of the void. The air dissapates and everyone dies.

3. Satan Wears A Tie. No I’m not stating the well known fact that the Great Deciever is a smart dresser. My story will take place in the near future, when the CEO of a large banking firm is possessed by the Devil. It will detail his angst and personal trials as he struggles to get rid of the diabolic presence in his mind, and avoid repaying the Government’s bailout loans. Finally Satan will win, creating a massive Trans-national business corporation. No discernible differences in company policy will be noticed.

4. Count Von Burgenberger. A story about a small German count who possesses a large plot of land outside of Wiesbaden. It will detail his journey across England, from Southampton to the Orkney’s Island. A kindly old gentlemen with a stutter and a little puppy named Schnappi, the twist in the tale really occurs when the Count detonates a nuclear device in London and sabotages the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow for the “Greater German Reich” and sadistically tortures a field mouse to the brink of insanity.

5. Full Marx. A troubled student at Hyacinth Marlborow High, a small school in suburban Melbourne, finds self-discipline and a free source of facial hair, when a mysterious substitute Carl Marks appears.  Karl Marx Carl Marks teaches Marty Schuker about the gloriousness of Communism and the Soviet way. Using Carl Marks’ teachings Marty Schuker confronts bullies, teachers and the Bulgarian Mafia in a heart-warming story of Fidelity and revolution. At the end Marty leads a popular revolt, and installs himself as first citizen of the school, killing off Marks, all the teachers, and any of his comrades deemed revisionist in a series of bloody purges.

Any other ideas? No probably not. They’re pretty awesome. If you can think of any (I doubt it though) then tell me so I can steal them. After all my friends, that’s how Facebook was created.