The Angry Exile: Oh God…

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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, 20 August 2011

Oh God…

... no, please, no.

Click for link

Here we all were worrying, albeit only very occasionally, about the zombie apocalypse and none of us had any idea it would include TV shows that had died and been buried as decently as possible. Most depressing of all is that 5.1 million people had nothing better to do than watch it, though it's possible that some of the stricter churches might think this is actually good news as it strongly suggests that masturbation has gone out of fashion. And who are the slebs these 5.1 million people settling down to watch on this three month freakathon? So I’ve been to the CBB site and half inched the publicity thumbnails without reading the bios, and oh dear. Either I'm getting middle aged or the barrel bottom has been scraped all the way through the wood and out the other side.

Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff – no idea, but I recognise half her surname.

Sally Bercow - Mum I’d Like To Shut The Fuck Up, Please.

Amy Childs – like Pamela Bach-Hasslehoff, no idea. But more so.

Paddy Doherty – nope, no idea who he is either.

Jedward – gestalt talent show also ran with annoying bog-brush hairdos.

Kerry Katona – incomprehensible Scouse tabloid darling and Iceland ad queen.

Lucien Laviscount – no idea but with that name I’m assuming porn star.

Darryn Lyons – again, no idea.

Tara Reid – er… nope, sorry.

Bobby Sabel – no idea either.

So that’s precisely three people I’d actually heard of, or four if you count the gestalt creature Jedward as two, and of those three Jedward is the only one whose celebrity, if that’s even the right word, seems anywhere near deserved. Sally Bercow is famous only for being the wife of a the Squeaker of of the House of Commons, and the only reason a lot of people know him is because of the knives that were out for his predecessor over the parliamentary expenses scandal. Seriously, hands up who’d heard of Sally Bercow say three years ago when Gorbals Mick was Speaker and her hubby was just another Tory backbencher? Anyone? No? As for Kerry Katona, I know the tabloids always seem to be talking about her and she’s been seen now and then on British TVs going ‘Dat’s whoi mams go tah Iceland’, but to be honest I’m not entirely sure what she did that made her well known enough to be chosen to front ad campaigns for the Britain’s 9th most popular supermarket chain.

So, one mostly famous for being famous, one mostly famous for being married to someone who got a job most people normally don’t give a shit about at a time when for a brief period a lot of people did temporarily give a shit, seven people who I have absolutely no clue about at all, and the gestalt creature with stupid hair which did moderately well in some talent contest or other despite the massive handicap of having the gestalt creature attached to its roots. Could there be anyone in the country who genuinely knew of each and every one of them three months ago? I wouldn’t put money on it.
So, a note to Channel Five: the word ‘celebrity’, guys, please just buy a fucking dictionary and look it up. And a note to the five million people who watched: be honest, masturbation probably would have been a more productive use of your time, wouldn’t it?

P.S. Mrs Exile thinks Kerry Katona was in some girl band or other. This rang a bell and eventually we realised that she was in Atomised Kit-e-kat. We are both deeply ashamed that it turns out that we knew this, though Mrs Exile claimed mitigation because she doesn't know who Sally Bercow or the Jedward being is.

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Abc · 709 weeks ago

You know for someone who says he hates the UK so much, you sure seem to miss it a lot :p
This is a British show so you wouldn't expect Aussies to know most of these people anyway..

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Sorry, Abc, your comment got stuck in moderation limbo for some reason. Can't see why since you haven't used any trigger words or put in links so it shouldn't have happened, but annoyingly it does happen now and then and correcting it depends on me looking in Intense Debate at the right time.

I do miss a Britain but it's not one that exists now, and - touch of cognitive dissonance, this - I am still quite fond of the old place and I worry a lot about the direction it's heading in. As the banner says (beneath the bit about how I'd never felt homesick and had grown to hate it) the blog is mainly about British issues with the occasional Aussie story, and so most of my blogroll and about three quarters of my traffic is from the UK, and I know that a few of the others are fellow expats. That's nearly ten times the traffic from Oz. I may be blogging from Down Under, but essentially it's a British bloke blogging about British stuff for a mainly British readership (hi Mum). The point was that even as a Brit who still takes enough of an interest to read the online editions of UK papers every day I still didn't recognise more than three and could only explain the 'celebrity' of one of them. Ironically it was Mrs Exile who remembered that Kerry Katona was in a girl band, but we're trying to keep that quiet because the punishment for knowing about manufactured pap Pommy pop music is apparently having all her INXS CDs confiscated

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Pavlov's Cat · 709 weeks ago

So thats precisely three people Id actually heard of, or four if you count the gestalt creature Jedward as two

Oooh Snap! I actually felt quite superior that I'd only heard of 3

2 replies · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Don't know about feeling superior but I'd have been embarrassed if I'd known more than half. Probably says a lot about the cult of slebrity that people measure themselves on how few slebs they've heard of.

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SadButMadLad · 709 weeks ago

SNAP!!! here too.

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John Galt · 709 weeks ago

Sorry, but if it comes to a choice between the zombie apocalypse and watching Z-list 'slebs on Channel 5 trying to outdo each other in acts of unbridled chavery (Neologism watch), then I'll take the brain dead soul suckers every single time.

Sorry, just to clarify - I mean the zombies. Lovely people when you get to know them, but a bit bitey.*
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llqftmsjxH1qa5z...

* = Paraphrasing courtesy of ZomRomCom Shaun of the Dead.

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Agreed. Zombies every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

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Reinhard · 709 weeks ago

Tara Reid was pretty much the only familiar name to me. She's famous for being in American Pie and subsequently being the sleb every tabloid loves to hate. I'd be much more interested in a Big Brother: Politicians edition. People would crawl over broken glass to watch it and decide who to vote out fastest. The expense fraudsters would be favourite. That would make for rather a large house though, so maybe they could change the rules that if enough people voted then everyone gets kicked out. Now that's something I'd want to watch.

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Yes, a house large enough for about 650 or so. Hey, wait a minute... :D

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Longrider · 709 weeks ago

Same here. My recollection of Kerry Katona was her fall from grace when she was sacked by Iceland. Prior to that, I hadn't heard of her - not watching adverts and not following modern pap music. I was made aware of the Jedward thingy when staying with my sister last year. She insists upon watching this kind of crap and they were on singing something banal. I pointed out to Sis that they were flat and even I could tell that, so how come they had got so far in a talent contest? Apart from Bercow, like you haven't a clue and am not remotely interested. Big Brother was a dreadful idea the first time around. Never watched it then and won't now.

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

I think Big Brother was a good idea made awful by being pitched at the lowest common denominator. It could have been the social experiment that they initially talked about but instead they went for the freak show / car crash TV approach. I watched most of one of the early ones and then the beginning of some of the others in the vague hope that it'd improve, but it never did and I gave up in the end. Not surprised it died a death and it should have been left decently buried, at least until someone was prepared to more with the format than stick a bolt through its neck and pass lightning through it.

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nisakiman · 709 weeks ago

Jedward (?) is the only one (two?) I've vaguely heard of. Must have seen the name mentioned on a newspaper site or something. Like Longrider, I've never watched Big Brother, although it's impossible to escape reading about it. It looks like it must be the most odious crap imaginable. My opinion of TV generally is that it's a waste of life for the most part. There's been the odd gem, but few and far between. I just don't bother with it. I prefer to download the gems (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot and a few others) and watch them at my leisure.

Having a bit of a problem with the "submit comment" button, so if this comes up multiple times, my apologies!

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Yeah, commercial TV seems to be either dross or brilliance and not a great deal in between, and even the brilliance is often spoiled by stupid networks putting in extra ad breaks and buggering about with the schedule. My wife is annoyed with one network at the moment because with no announcement they took a show she likes off the air and replaced it with something from one of their other channels. Predictably enough she didn't watch it and if she and anyone else wanting to watch what was originally in that time slot either downloads it or buys it on DVD the network has only itself to blame.

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jimfryar 34p · 709 weeks ago

Off topic, but it looks like our old mate Bawb has sold out on us. Its too funny.

My recent post Australian polls; Labor leader, Gillard 12% support, Liberals Turnbull 11%.

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

Just went and had a read. Sniggered all the way through, especially at the bibliography.

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