The Angry Exile: Idiot.

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

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Idiot.

I must be approaching middle age to read this and immediately think 'idiot'.

Sierra Leigh may be only three but she's tech-savvy, knows her way around an iPad, and likes a little online retail therapy from time to time.

The Sydney toddler settles down in a chair with the iPad she is supposed to share with her siblings and lets her fingers do the walking ... all the way to the Apple store.

So it came as something of a shock when her 29-year-old mother, Lisa, of Moorebank, received a bunch of email invoices from Apple for apps she knew nothing about.

It seems Sierra had managed to buy - with her mother's credit card - about $50 worth of different apps that took her fancy.

"She's a big fan of the iPad," Leigh said.

"She uses it every day for a few hours, but I didn't think anything of it.

"She was just playing with it until later when she had gone to bed and I was checking my email and I saw that I had paid for a whole bunch of apps that I didn't remember buying."

She also looked back over old emails and saw it wasn't the first time Sierra had gone shopping online.

"I checked over the list and one of them was $17 - I didn't think you could buy an app that was that expensive!" Leigh said.

I can only assume it's because iPads and even computers in the home weren't around when I was three, but I cannot believe my parents would have let me play with a $600 plus piece of electronics. I can almost hear the words, 'Angry, put it down, it's not a toy.' Still, maybe it's different when you buy it for the kids in the first place.

Wait, what? (My emphasis.)

"So I picked up her iPad and looked at them and there was all these new apps on there that I hadn't bought and then I realised she had somehow got in and bought them...

Seriously?

As for her daughter owning her own iPad, which Leigh says was actually meant for all her children but hogged by the three-year-old, "she's not really good with the [computer] mouse, which is why the iPad is so good.

/facepalm

Oh, well. It's your money, love. But the people I know with three year olds seem to find their happy with brightly painted wooden blocks and plastic things with hidden bells that go DING when they hit them over their siblings' heads, and if my own memories of childhood are accurate that was pretty much where the cutting edge was 35 years ago.

5 comments:

Angry Exile said...: Is Sierra her actual name, do you think? I'd assumed her mother had just given them call signs. It's okay for Charlie, Mike and Oscar and obviously you can get away with calling a girl Delta in Australia, but pity poor little Hotel and Uniform. As for Papa, that brings up all sorts of weird possibilities that is illegal everywhere except really sick jokes.; 15 September 2010 at 23:55
Bucko said...: As long as Papa isn't doing the naked Foxtrot with young Sierra after a Kilo of Hotel Whiskey.; 16 September 2010 at 00:46
microdave said...: If any young kid of mine (don't worry, it 'aint gonna happen) wanted their own iPad, they would be told in no uncertain terms to Foxtrot Oscar.

Why didn't her stupid parents call her Sierra Cosworth??

Give 'em a Meccano set and let them learn how to build something.

What a bunch of Charlie Uniform November Tango's....; 16 September 2010 at 01:21
Angry Exile said...: Bucko, you're a sick Papa, er, puppy.

microdave, this is Down Under we're talking about. The equivalent would be Falcon XR8 or Commodore GTS or something, and even Frank Zappa would have thought twice before saddling his kids with either of those.; 16 September 2010 at 01:45
SadButMadLad said...: The Watchdog TV programme here in the old mother country had a piece on iPods and how they run up enormous bills when in the hands of kids.

Apple allow through their heavy handed vetting certain games which are aimed at kids through the use cutsy graphics but which allow the buying of "tokens" to extend/enhance gameplay. Normally, the kids wouldn't be able to buy the tokens because they wouldn't know the PIN. But iPods (and iPads) remember the PIN for some time after entry to allow multiple purchases. So if an adult entered their PIN for something, then handed their iPod to their kid, the kid could buy things without knowing.; 16 September 2010 at 06:43