The Angry Exile: The only way to please a Greenie is probably to cut off your own head.

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

Thursday, 8 October 2009

The only way to please a Greenie is probably to cut off your own head.

Seriously, what the fuck will make these guys happy*? They go on and on and on and on about the devastating power of carbon, or more specifically carbon atoms with a couple of oxygen atoms tacked on, but they seem to reject just about all means of producing power. They'd sooner hack down a tree themselves for wood to burn alive the last panda than give any credit to fission power for reducing emissions, we all know that already, and similarly there's a history of them cracking the shits over hydroelectric projects. But now they're starting to turn on Windy Miller and his turbines for hacking birds to bits and wave energy projects, they've blocked construction of a solar thermal plant so as to preserve the surrounding area (it's a dried up lake in a fucking desert, by the way) and they consider it a victory having delayed the construction of a coal fired power station that was planned to be the first in the UK to use CCS technology. Technology that the fucking greenie warm-monger alarmists say we should be using and that, absent man made global warming, there is no fucking business case for in the first place. Let's be quite clear about that - the plan to build Kingsnorth with CCS was almost certainly just to make the greens happy, because if their fears are unfounded it would be an expensive and pointless white elephant that serves only to make the electricity generated at the plant cost more than necessary**.

So what the fuck will they accept? Is there anything at all that some fucker in the green movement won't oppose? If the development of net generating fusion power is announced tomorrow I bet they'd fucking protest that too because of the n-word again - 'Nuclear fusion, everybody, nuclear... that's the word they're missing out and it's exactly the same word they use for nuclear warhead and we all know about Chernobyl which was a nuclear power station, yaddayaddablahblahblah'. Sadly this would probably fly well with all the people who don't know the difference between fusion and fission and will simply focus on the n-word, so I expect the bastards to win that round too. I seriously believe that some won't be content until we're all living an Amish lifestyle, if not wandering around naked looking for nuts and berries and throwing sharpened sticks at animals.

Fuck's sweet sake.

*Apart from being arrested in front of a camera or two. They fucking love that.

** Not completely accurate if I'm honest, since it's also money for whoever makes the components of the CCS system. That'll be yet another part of Big Eco then.

3 comments:

Bill Sticker said...: They don't like Hydro-Electric power (Upsets the flow of the rivers don'cha know), Nuclear (All that Nuclear waste!), Tidal (But whaddabout the boids and da mud flats!), now wind (Birdie killers!) and large scale solar.

A modern society where most people don't starve and freeze is anathema to them. Let's just stop taking the idiots so seriously. They appear no more than children who simply can't do joined up thinking. Tell them to f**k off.; 9 October 2009 at 01:21
JuliaM said...: "I seriously believe that some won't be content until we're all living an Amish lifestyle, if not wandering around naked looking for nuts and berries and throwing sharpened sticks at animals."

Since the ones seen on tv appear totally unsuited for that lifestyle (being about 90lbs soaking wet, 10lbs of that facial hair - and that's just the women) I can only assume they hate mankind and want to see it wiped out, starting with themselves...

Which I suppose puts them one up on the likes of George Monbiot and Al Gore, who want to live a modern lifestyle while condemning everyone else to a subsistence level.; 9 October 2009 at 02:00
Angry Exile said...: They don't like Hydro-Electric power (Upsets the flow of the rivers don'cha know)...

Probably gives oysters headaches too. I throw all my out of date nurofen into the bay just in case.

Which I suppose puts them one up on the likes of George Monbiot and Al Gore, who want to live a modern lifestyle while condemning everyone else to a subsistence level.

In that they're walking the walk instead of just talking the talk? Or that they seem more likely to freeze in the dark and stop bending our ears? Either way they're the quintessential useful idiots for Gore, Monbiot, Porrit and the rest of Big Eco, so in my book they lose any points they got for not being hypocritical bastards on top of everything else.; 9 October 2009 at 02:15