The Angry Exile: KILL DA WAAAAAABIT!

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

Sunday 20 June 2010

KILL DA WAAAAAABIT!

Oh, I'm so going to hell for laughing about this.

A GERMAN teacher is suing a student for teasing her about an alleged phobia of rabbits and drawing one on her blackboard.

The teacher, named only as Marion V, fled in tears when she saw the chalk drawing at a school in the northern German town of Vechta, De Spiegel reported.

Her 16-year-old tormentor had told classmates that Marion V. was terrified of rabbits and would "flip out" is she saw one, according to court documents.

The victim, who teaches German and geography, has refused to say whether she is afraid of the animals but is suing the youngster for defamation and for "infringing her rights."

Oh, the poor thing. I'd suggest she treats herself to a holiday Down Under but of course we've got something like half a billion of the things, so it'd probably be a case of Where The Bloody Hell Did You Go? So probably she should stay home, relax and put a DVD on to cheer herself up. Something to give her a chuckle. Some Father Ted maybe.

Or maybe not.

But piss taking aside I do actually have a point here. I don't particularly have a problem with one person suing another if there's some actual harm done but is this really defamation?

"The plaintiff, a teacher, teaches the accused pupil at a high school in Vechta and claims the pupil drew rabbits on the blackboard of the classroom and told fellow pupils the teacher was afraid of rabbits and 'flips out' when she sees a rabbit," a court document said.

"The teacher demands that the accused refrains in future from drawing rabbits on the blackboard and claiming that she, the teacher, is afraid of rabbits and flips out at the sight of them."

Oh, come on. It's hardly like saying you stab the bunnywunnies in the eyes with red hot knitting needles and then cook them alive for your dinner. There's also the point that something prompted you to leave the classroom in tears, which, if it was the rabbitness of the rabbit rather than the realisation that you were being teased, leaves the defamation point up for debate. As to the infringement of rights, it's far from clear what 'rights' are being infringed. The right to not see rabbits or even just crappy drawings of rabbits?

Ooops, sorry.

The right not to be frightened? The right not to be offended or upset? Y'know, I'm guessing that we might be getting warm, and as it says up there on the left, there's no right to not be offended. There can't be, because I for one would be offended if anyone tried to enshrine such a right. It was a sixteen year old kid., okay?

And now the serious bit's over I can go back to the giggles.

Kim's mother told reporters: "The teacher didn't talk to me before she filed the complaint.

"My daughter has had rabbit stress all year because of this."

Oh, not her as well. Rabbit stress? Pppffffffttt.

Harden the fuck up, the pair of you.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: Hey, if we could get rabbit lady to team up with monkey lady and fight crime, we'd have the beginnings of an amusing buddy-drama that we could flog to US TV executives!

If only we had a time machine that would take us back to the early 80s...; 20 June 2010 at 15:32
Angry Exile said...: Hmmmmm. There's an idea....; 20 June 2010 at 17:38