The Angry Exile: Satire and reality - the line between them is blurring again

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

Saturday, 19 February 2011

Satire and reality - the line between them is blurring again

I laughed when I first saw that. Did you count all those bins? Nine of them. Nine! In addition to the real black, green and blue ones, which seem to be regular rubbish, garden waste and recyclables respectively, they got those two donuts to agree in principle to another one just for coloured paper, one for tins with labels on, one for plastic that's had food on it, one for 'wet food' waste and - and I don't know how those two householders didn't twig that they were having the piss taken out of them in buckets at this point - one each for lightly soiled toilet paper and bio-hazardous waste. Did it escape their notice that everything that currently gets spread across three bins of about 120 litres each (which are the capacity of our bins - these look the same size or possibly slightly larger) was going to get spread across nine? Didn't it occur to them that unless they were going to begin producing a lot more rubbish or store what they produce a lot longer than a week that going from 360 litres capacity to well over 1,000 would just mean nine bins with a small amount of garbage in each on collection day? And the shitty toilet paper and the lovely sounding mixture of nappies, dog shit, used tampons and dead rats, how could that not have rung alarm bells? What did they think can be done to recycle any of that, for Christ's sake? Take used toilet paper. At the moment it gets strained out (stop laughing at the back) at the sewage treatment plant along with similar matter and I assume it's either sent to landfill - composting on a grand scale and therefore right on - or simply incinerated. Well, instead of incinerating it we could try recycling by first using using heat to sterilise... oh, hey, it's on fire now, how'd that happen? Hahahahaha, 'kinell.

Well, all I can say is thank fuck it was just a piss take by a couple of libertarian leaning comedy magicians who are sceptical about nearly everything, and that there's no way this would happen in real l ... oh, no. From nanny Knows Best

The Taxpayers' Alliance has done a survey that shows certain councils are pushing their recycling mantra to extremes.
Seemingly the average council now expects residents to sort their household waste into four bins, bags and caddies.

Okay, well that's twice what I have to deal with, but it's still only four.

However, Newcastle-under-Lyme wins the prize for taking the recycling mantra to the extreme by insisting that is hapless citizens sort their waste between nine containers!

Nine, just like in the clip. Attention Penn & Teller: did you put these witless fuckers up to it?

Twenty other local authorities (including Chelmsford, Aberdeenshire, Guildford and Middlesbrough) give residents seven or more containers.

Not for the first time I'm going to explain why recycling works where I am in Melbourne. We have two 120L wheelie bins. In one of them goes all the regular household rubbish. In the other goes paper, glass and anything, and I do mean anything, that has a recycling symbol on. Both bins get wheeled out for the garbage and recycling trucks the night before collection day, and you don't get fined or your collection skipped if it's not in precisely the normal place (ours is somewhere different each week depending on where cars are parked) or if it's too full for the lid to shut. And that's about the full extent of the chore unless you include washing food off anything that goes in the recycle bin. In short, it's not fucking hard which is why everybody gets on with it without making waves. Oh, and I can't imagine people would stand for bins remaining un-emptied for a fortnight to help ward off warble gloaming when it's going to make hot summer days stink and encourage vermin and blow-flies.

Aside from the fact that local services anywhere cost enough anyway without making the person who pays do half the bloody work as well, most people are just too damn busy to deal with over complicated recycling rules and six or seven or eight or even nine bloody containers. If you make it easy it'll happen. If you make it so that not doing it is the path of least resistance then people won't do it. It's that simple.

And of course it might all be bullshit anyway.