The Angry Exile: January 2012

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, 28 January 2012

A plea

A plea to both of my readers (hi, Mum). I have been quiet for a while, which is partly due to connection problems but mostly because early in the New Year I moved over to Wordpress. I tried to post to both simultaneously for a bit but I forgot a couple of times and then I ended up being unable to post to either for more than two weeks. This place will remain as it is here but barring anything that Wordpress do to annoy me there will be no further posts. Anyone who has me on a blogroll or RSS feed please update to the new addresses where the usual bile and venom against authoritarians and pricks will continue to be delivered.

http://angryexile.wordpress.com and http://angryexile.wordpress.com/feed.

Ta.

Tuesday, 3 January 2012

Yet more work

So I thought I’d imported all my tags from this old place but I see that WP has decided that they’re categories, though having accidentally put a category cloud in the sidebar instead of a tag cloud this isn’t too big a problem right now. It is something else on the list of jobs to do though, and I wonder whether re-importing the old posts might fix it. This is going to have to be done anyway since I’ve just noticed that some of the older posts appear just as titles and the actual post content didn’t make it, which kind of defeats the object of importing them. Bugger it – this is stuff I thought I’d got sorted before I opened the place up. Oh well, pass me that hammer, will you?

Iranian Defence Ministry - same as everyone else's apparently

Well done, geniuses. And how many battleships are currently serving with the navies of the world? With the Yanks having retired their last ones years ago I think the answer is very roughly approximately none. Yes, America has aircraft carriers to sink, but you don't need to sink one to put it out of business - you just need to do enough damage to bugger its ability to launch aircraft. I'm no expert but I guess that might be the reason the Yanks don't let them sail around on their own but supply each carrier with a bunch of other ships to support and protect it. All of which makes me think this 'sink a battleship' stuff is more about willy waving than anything else. No doubt it will go bang nicely if it hits a ship that gets within the 125 mile range but realistically that's not going to be the US Navy all that often, and it's not going to be anyone with a battleship except time travellers from the past. Tankers and freighters on the way in and out of the Persian Gulf, yes, but why make a battleship sinking missile for that?

No, I think this is more about giving the rest of the world the shits, and the only sensible response is the mature and dignified one. We all run up to the nearest Iranian embassy and yell "H4, H5, H6" at the top of our lungs and then run away again.

More work

Max Farquar's just brought up my need for an RSS feed button on the new place somewhere. This is one of those things I now see I should have had on here ages ago. Every time I've wanted to add a feed I've just clicked the little RSS button that appears on the right hand side of the URL field in my browser and assumed everyone else was doing the same thing.

Except I've now realised that they'd only be doing that if they used Safari. Firefucks, Opera and Internet Exploder doesn't have it. Sorry, folks. Assuming just made an ass of me alone on this. I know a few people do follow me by RSS and I've no idea how you managed it because I know you don't all use Safari, but I'm putting up a button to make it easier. The only trouble is the goddamn thing hasn't bloody appeared and I don't know why yet. In the meantime the feed address is as follows:

feed://angryexile.wordpress.com/feed/

Hopefully that'll do until I get it to work.

Welcome to the new gaff

Cross posted from angryexile.wordpress.com

Well, this has been a while coming, and there’s alway an outside possibility that WordPress will lock us all out, but I’ve finally made the move. There’s a few things still to do, the blogging version of pictures not hanging straight and being unable to find the box with the teaspoons in, but I’m in. Admittedly this is pretty slack of me since I was in ages ago and just haven’t made the time to sort it all out properly, so for a while it will be a work in progress with the occasional appeal to those more experienced with WordPress for advice on how to do things. In fact I’ll start with one of those right now – over at the old place one of the things that was starting to annoy me was the increasing length of the blogroll despite my having broken it up into sections and kept feeds only from the regular reads. I’d planned to follow that through even further here and almost have several blogrolls, which you can see over on the right there [well, not the right here, which is looking like it has for ages, but obviously the right at the new place - AE], but ideally I wanted them in drop downs or something similar showing only the first ten or twelve, and to keep those regular reads and residents of the Orphanage as feeds and displayed in recent post order. Anyone know, and does anyone know if I can make this white background that the posts appear on semi-transparent?

On the subject of the blogroll, you may notice that it’s a little longer than at the old place. Several people have been on my RSS for a while but because this move has been in a state of ‘just around the corner’ for months I’ve not added them. One seems to have given up blogging in the meantime but I’ve still added many more starting with the personal blogs of each one of the Orphans of Liberty (with the exception of one who I think only blogs at the Orphanage – Chuckles, if you read this and I’ve got that wrong please let me know and I’ll add yours), and in addition I’ve added links to some fine female bloggers: jredheadgirl, who I discovered only recently via a comment at either Dick Puddlecote’s or Velvet Glove, Iron Fist; Misanthrope Girl, who’s been in my RSS for a while; and Subrosa and Woman on a Raft, both of whom I should have added ages ago and can’t think why I didn’t. There are also additions in the Smokers and Drinkers section (itself an addition, and which includes a few of blogs from the regular reads/Orphanage sections because of some of the content), such as the aforementioned jredheadgirl, Smoking Out The Truth and Stand Fast, and also in the Climate Bloggers and Sites, the Thinkers, Pollies, Parties Etc, and the Other Sites sections. This means that my carefully albeit intermittently maintained pages of A-Z links that I’ve copied over almost verbatim from the old gaff have been buggered and need to be added to the list of tidying up jobs. If the world could arrange for there to be nothing to blog about for a week or two that’d be great, and if there was anyone on the blogroll at the old place who got missed here just wave at the screen and shout ‘Cooeee’ until I pay attention. Or leave a comment or contact me.

Anyway, welcome and do come in. Most of the old furniture is in the virtual garden and there are a couple of virtual ashtrays out there along with a virtual esky full of virtually freezing virtual beer out there. Mi casa es su casa… ooooh, houseplants, lovely. Do go on through, put your feet up and make yourself comfy, but excuse the changes as I try to get things more the way I want them.