The Angry Exile: Mixed vegetablists.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Mixed vegetablists.

On the one hand we've got a pair of architects explaining that in order to save the planet we'll need to have pets we can eat such as rabbits and guinea pigs instead of fellow meat eaters such as cats and dogs (glossing over the fact that in some parts of the world cats and dogs are eaten anyway). On the other hand we've got a political economist saying that in order to save the world we must all become vegetarians (and incidentally lecturing President Obamessiah on the need for him to attend the alarmist talking shop in Copenhagen). Despite the fact that they're not climate scientists they are dignified with terms such as 'climate expert' simply because they're on message about warble gloaming.

Okay, first off pets we can eat would not be pets. The word is livestock, and we have that already. Second, the Vales based the comparisons on vehicles doing a very fucking modest 10,000 km per year. That's barely 6,000 miles, or less than half my average annual mileage was in the UK. What other figures needed to be viewed through a filter of massive fucking optimism (or pessimism for all we know) to get the answer that Mr Whiskers' carbon pawprint (fuck, I can't believe I've even typed that) is a little larger than a VW Golf and Fido's is much greater than a Toyota Land Cruiser. Third, as pointed out be a commenter on another blog (might have been WUWT), if the Vales are actually right an alternative view would be that personal transport is no big deal because the carbon footprint is less than that of a small domestic animal. This has been blogged extensively elsewhere, so I don't need to add more on this pair of know-it-all, authoritarian, happiness haters except to note that they're rather off message saying we can have edible pets when a renowned authority says we should have no meat at all.

Nick Stern - or Lord or Baron or whatever if you absolutely must - is banging the same drum but for two legged carnivores rather than our four legged friends. No doubt he's giving Paul McCartney wet dreams. Look, fucknuckles, if you seriously think people are going to start asking about the 'carbon content' - which, since everything we eat is some form of carbon based life, is a scientifically illiterate term - of their food in increasing numbers when believing in warble gloaming is now on a par with believing in ghosts and 13.5 billion year old invisible friends, you need your head looked at. You've based all your work on a presumption and if that turns out to be incorrect everything you've worked on and said on the issue is invalidated, not to mention the damage you may be doing to the farming industry may come back to bite you in the balls. I would take your pontificating far more seriously, or at least with a pinch more respect, if you had the stones to say this loud and proud yourself. The dishonesty in warble gloaming science - refusal to release data so results can't possibly be independently verified, ignoring of contrary evidence, failure to be open about the uncertainties and keeping quiet about work based on assumptions - is part of what turned me from a believer into a sceptic.

I really am getting fucking tired of hearing this shit over the past thirty or so years, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I was taken in by the predictions and assertions when I was a kid but three fucking decades on they still haven't changed the music. We mustn't have meat or meat eating pets because cows fart and burp ~~plant food~~ poison into the sky, we mustn't drive because our cars ~~have less impact than our pets~~ make the Earth weep bloodied tears, we mustn't generate electricity by burning anything because of the carbon monsters it releases, by nuclear fission because we'll all glow in the dark, by tides or wind power because ~~it's shit~~ it hurts birds and fish**, or by solar because it ruins the desert.

Okay, cunts, what the fuck will you still allow us to do?

Three fucking decades of shit predictions after which the world hasn't fucking warmed, the song is still going and some of these people are making a fucking fortune out of the rest of us. I'd laugh if I didn't feel like battering someone to death with a packet of frozen Quorn.

Fuck the lot of 'em. Fuck 'em hard and fuck 'em sideways with a broken cricket bat.

UPDATE: Usually I don't go a bundle on Wikipedia vandalism but every now and again there's something appropriate to the moment.

* Yes, some species are endangered but obviously nobody would eat those except possibly to annoy people like Nick Stern.
** That'd be be penguins and flying fish, obviously.