The Angry Exile: Missing the point.

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 2 February 2011

Missing the point.

I suppose the effort should be acknowledged, and no doubt it'll be more than enough of a concession for some people, but scanners which show a gingerbread style line drawing instead of some false colour image of me with my dick waving around is not going to tempt me to fly again.

The US Transportation Security Administration yesterday began rolling out new airport scanner software that produces less revealing images of travellers.

The new software "enhances privacy by eliminating passenger-specific images and instead auto-detects potential threat items and indicates their location on a generic outline of a person," the TSA said.

What the fuck are you smiling about?

Now I do realise that many people do have a nudity taboo and many others have reason to be less than proud of their bodies, and so this is the principle concern for a lot of people. However, I feel I must explain something both to those people and to those involved in installing all this security theatre in airports:

We are not all fucking terrorists, you fucking bell-ends.

There is no practical purpose served by authoritarian cockweasels spending vast sums on questionable technology to be used on overwhelmingly innocent people, especially when the fuckknuckles then ignore the possibility of a bomb going off in the fucking queues they themselves have fucking created with this shite.*

I don't stay away because you want to look at my knob in a scanner. I don't even stay away because of the possible health risks of the scanners or because you'll want to cop a feel if I refuse to be scanned. I stay away because I am not a fucking terrorist and there is absolutely cube root of fuck all evidence for any fucker to believe otherwise, so I refuse to be treated like a fucking suspect by humourless apes with polyester uniforms and 200 word vocabularies. If I don't need to be on the other side of an ocean or continent in a hurry badly enough to make it worth my while putting up with hours of interminable queueing for securiteee - to have my shoes X-rayed and my luggage X-rayed and my pockets checked and my mouthwash sniffed and my drinks bottle measured and any harmless everyday objects, obvious toys or tee shirts with intimidating if unintelligible writing confiscated for some fuck to take home later, and finally to be made to stand in a giant open ended fucking microwave and have my bollocks warmed for little or no fucking benefit - if it's not important enough to go through all that then, to be blunt, I'm not fucking going. Especially when it's all so fucking unnecessary.

So turning me into a gingerbread man on the fucking monitor is not going to tempt me back. You'll see me when you fucking learn how to treat me as a paying customer again, you cunts.

Fuck. You. All.

* Yes, I know that the Moscow bomb went off in arrivals. That doesn't change the point that the possibility of one going off in the queue for one of the various new security measures is still there.