The Angry Exile: Bipolar bear

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, 4 June 2011

Bipolar bear

Well, not so much bipolar as suffering from epic cognitive dissonance. Via the Real World Libertarian, the latest example of ecomentalist half-formed thought - having a ten tonne ice sculpture of a polar bear melt away at Circular Key in Sydney as a symbol of blablah warble gloaming yadda yadda arctic endangered wah wah might seem a bit silly, but having the bloody thing brought halfway around the planet? Really?

The block was frozen around a bronze skeleton in Britain before being sent to Australia where it was lifted by crane into Customs House Square.
Renowned English sculptor Mark Coreth...

Never heard of him.

... who usually works with bronze, says he got the inspiration for the sculpture during his stay with the native Inuit in northern Canada.
"I'd been carving polar bears in the side of icebergs," he said.
"The Inuit guide I had said, 'Great, you've seen a polar bear, you've sculpted a polar bear, but how on earth are you going to go about sculpting the real issue we have here?' - the warming Arctic."

And assuming, rather uncritically, that the guy was right rather than mad, uninformed, wrong or just buttering up some poncy artist by telling him the sort of thing he wants to hear, it seems that Coreth believes contributing further to the problem with the associated emissions involved in shipping ten tonnes of ice to Sydney for a fucking publicity stunt is going to help in some way. I mean Christ, did you bring enough drugs for everybody, Mark? No? Then please put them away.*

Whatever next, Family First promoting sexual abstinence with a fucking for virginity campaign?

* And when you come back down please tell us who paid for this. I shall be pissed off if, as I fully expect, it was the Australian taxpayer.

Comments (12)

Logging you in...

Dashboard | Edit profile | Logout

Logged in as

+1 Vote up Vote down

Groompy Tom · 720 weeks ago

I really need to stop using blogs as my information sources and go back to reading newspapers. Big Brother's propaganda rags put such a tasteful spin on things and leave out all the angles, that blogs like yours include AE, that leave me smashing my forehead repeatedly into the keyboard.

Ice sculptured fucking polar bears indeed. Twats!
My recent post Anything You Say In A Taxi

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Is that why you've got mirror writing saying IUYTR, KJHGFD, MNBVC across your head. Get yourself a rubber keyboard, mate. Less painful.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Jack the Lad · 720 weeks ago

The Aussie gov. are a bunch of wankers. What the fuck is wrong with these fucking idiots?

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Yep, regular Aussies are sound as a pound, but the governments are dickheads. And the awful thing about the current lot is that at least two or three times a week the Opposition actually make the government look good.

'Kinell!

+1 Vote up Vote down

Chuckles · 720 weeks ago

At first I wondered why, if he had the inspiration in Canada, he hadn't shipped it to Canada. Your footnote resolved that one fairly quickly.

Still, let's look on the bright side, it probably improved Circular Quay, not a bad thing in and of itself, and it answered the old question - You don't have to sell ice to Eskimos when you have Australians available?

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Actually having looked into it a little closer - the fucking bear has a Faecesbook page - it looks like it's not directly or wholly paid for by Aussie taxpayers. It's the usual mob of Big Eco NGOs and companies who've chipped in, many of which of course get money from lots of different governments. It's probably as fair to say that British taxpayers have chipped in to send it here as we have to have it brought. Doesn't change the fact that it's a monumental load of wank though.

+2 Vote up Vote down

wh00ps 35p · 720 weeks ago

Aha! ok, if I'VE paid for it, I can officially have the arse about it.

The real thing that pisses me off about stories like this is the way that these wankers always think that the "need" to reduce emissions or whatever so obviously doesn't apply to THEM, because naturally there is some carbon offset involved because they are spreading the message or some such nonsense.

Whatever happened to leading by example? This case being particular bad, as there is no reason why he couldn't have iced up the thing in situ rather than shipping it halfway around the world in a climate-controlled aeroplane.

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Oh, I think just the hypocrisy alone justifies everyone getting the arse about it.

+2 Vote up Vote down

thylacosmilus 62p · 720 weeks ago

"Sculptor Mark Coreth rides his life size ice polar bear in Circular Quay in central Sydney."

Life-size? Oh, you have to be kidding me! Not since the Pleistocene has the world ever seen a bear of that size! I mean, yes, they're big animals (the hunting museum in Paris has a mounted specimen on its hind legs that's pretty awesome, but come on! That's at least a third too big for the biggest known specimen.

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Good point. Some artistic licence, i.e. bullshit, going on there, or maybe Mark Coreth is 2/3 scale himself?

+2 Vote up Vote down

thylacosmilus 62p · 720 weeks ago

"..."When the ice goes from the Ice Bear, there will always be a bear, but it will be very different bear. It will be a skeleton, a pool of water, and a powerful message."..."

That water's not going to evaporate? In Sydney? Huh?

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Eventually, yeah, but to be fair it won't do it in a hurry - it's nearly mid-winter now. Not cold by British standards but not boardies and tee-shirt weather either. Coreth was certainly wrapped up warm, but then I suppose you need to be when you're trying to freeze your sperm while it's still in your bollocks by sitting on several tonnes of ice.

Post a new comment

Comment as a Guest, or login:

Tweet this comment

Connected as (Logout)

Email (optional)

Not displayed publicly.

Submit Comment

Subscribe to

Add insightful or amusing remarks for me to think on and respond to. Or add annoying comment spam for me to waste time deleting, in which case may your genitals turn square and fester at the corners.

Unnecessary ranting and gratuitous profanity is strictly encouraged.

NB - due to some annoying pricks comment spamming lately all comments with three or more any links go into a moderation queue. If it's not spam I will publish all comments even tenuously related to whatever I was rambling about in the post. Otherwise please refer to the comments policy.

Comments by IntenseDebate

The Angry Exile

Commenting.

Content Warning

The longer musings of an Angry Exile

Good Stuff From Other Bloggers

Blog Archive

Ranting and spitting venom

Take The Party Political "Pepsi Challenge"

As if you give a stuff...

Fragile earth

Quotes

Gallery

The Hangman

Angry Places

Saturday, 4 June 2011

Bipolar bear

Forgot password?

Comments (12)

Post a new comment

Search This Blog

Repeal the smoking ban

Orphans of Liberty

Internet Censorship

De-Niemöllerisation

The Soft Totalitarian State

Repeal Bill Links

People who read upside down

Regular reads

Trough Watch

Other interesting sites

Mainstream Media

Not so mainstream

Help Me

Sponsoring the final solution