Chris Sibly's blog

Summertime and the living is........

Summertime and I’m feeling good – I’ve got three weeks off work. But summer brings crowds. I’ve never liked crowds, I gave up serious surfing because of crowds....and maybe because of drugs and alcohol as well.

 

The worst days of all are Sundays when the sun is out.  Because as soon as the sun comes out, out come people like blowflies. Wide-eyed and guffawing – not that blowflies guffaw but you get my drift.

 

I try to ensure I’m not out between midday and 6pm on these days. Boneheads on motorbikes, families in Camrys and ugly groups of fat guys on bicycles who think they look pretty in their gay, tight riding gear.

 

There’s something about Sunday suburbia that makes me sick – maybe it's because I’m faced with the pointlessness of things head on and in the glaring, revelatory summer sunlight.

 

A host of human beings who even though they’re wearing colourful uniforms, remind me of those black caterpillars that mass together in trees, all entwined, writhing and spitting.

 

Life is an illusion and it can be an ugly one at that – it’s full of bad actors. Death is far more real – at least the acting stops. Not that I want to die – not today anyway.

 

A little self-medication, sex and music get me through. A song like Teenage Fanclub’s “Ain’t that enough” is sweet and beautiful and as medicinally powerful as seven gins.

 

Why do people do it? Hee-haw about in crowds. Maybe it’s a mating thing. In my experience, the best things are found in shadows and darkness and anyway, old people who aren’t looking for mates are out there too.

 

Apart from not understanding my fellow human beings, I’m feeling good and enjoying being away from the race of rats. Fish are jumping and I’m feeling high – now there’s a pathetically corny line.

You can't always get what you need.

The election race has been run and won - it was the dullest (and longest) campaign ever and the victory speech had neither heart nor movement. It may have been what Australia deserved - an extremely conservative society with extremely conservative leaders - a match made in hell.

Where were the questions from media interviewers to make the contenders accountable? Isn't that one of the tasks of journalists? Here's what I'm talking about. According to my observations of the election campaign, the word TERRORISM was never mentioned. Yet it has been the reason put forward by the coalition for invading Iraq and the rationale of both major political parties supporting the presence of our troops in Afghanistan and was the driver for some extreme legislative change, the anti-terrorist legislation. Yet neither side of politics mentioned it. And what's worse, journalists were complicit in the process by not mentioning it either. They allowed the parties to set their own dull agenda and travel the long campaign road without being brought to account.

Yeah, we've probably got the government AND the press we deserve but I don't reckon it's what we need and with no winds of change on the horizon, Australia will be mired in conservatism for some time yet.

Another brilliant idea.....in the right measure

It was a warm night but the sea breeze was quite strong. I was sipping on my gin and soda, looking out to sea, waiting for the boys to come over for cards. Still a few people walking on the beach, some with their dogs and a few on the footpath, making the most of the last minutes of sunlight. A couple of girls walked by wearing shorts. One of them with chubby legs had CRAZY written across her arse - I have no doubt in the world she was. But I came up with what I believe is a great idea. For girls with extra big arses, you could have shorts with sentences printed on the back, like  "ROLL OUT THOSE LAZY, HAZY, CRAZY DAYS OF SUMMER" and "MY OTHER CAR IS A MERCEDES".

I'm no Nelson Mandela

I have a dream. I guess it's a few years in the future and it's John Howard being led to face war crimes in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

A man's gotta do

Don’t know what I was listening to, it was the radio and we were on our way to drink and play snooker. I think it was a program about movies and they might have been talking about the Jesse James and Robert Ford movie. The woman was speaking about her grandfather who, she claimed, had to rely on himself for EVERYTHING – he even made the bricks for his house, blah, blah, blah. “Now,” she continued, “everything is done for us blah, blah, blah ....” and on and on she went. The host should’ve cut her off, she was wanking in my humble opinion. A man still has to rely on himself – there are just different pressure points today, that’s all.

Forever

Some people say you should live each day as if it were your last. But I say it's preferable to live each day as if you have forever.

Most of the time I've got nothing to say

I'm not your ideal blogger. I'm not interested in lots of stuff and don't have much to talk about. Don't get me wrong, there are things I like. I like most animals and some people, I love music, nature, the sea, rain and the night. But generally, I don't have much to say about these things.

There are bloggers out there who write about the minutia of their lives. "Now get this, you'll love this. Today I woke up. I breathed in and guess what? I breathed out and then I breathed in again and then I...." You get the idea, not all that interesting in my view but probably interesting to their friends, family and neighbours. Although I wouldn't want to inflict that stuff on anyone, let alone anyone close to me. Maybe their virtual friends are more open or less discerning than my real friends. In the long run, it probably doesn't matter.

But developments in communication media have expedited our transformation from mainly consumers of media to producers of it, while associated developments in the web have given us an audience. It is an interesting social study to see how we employ this technology and how we impose our individual codes of ethics on the stuff we produce.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO BLOGGERS - "By the way did you hear about the blogger in our neighbourhood who died?" - Nah, who was it? - "Bobby, that guy who's blog was called Groans From the Gutter." - Yeah, now I know, his blog was along the lines of I breathed in, I breathed out, I breathed etc. Fascifuckenating! How did he die? - "I think he choked on a hotdog or something." - Well we've still got Susie and her blog Tales From the Trailer and her dull self absorption so no damage done. - "Right, no great loss."

I think it's these sort of blogs of mine that have lead once enthusiatic neighbours to pack up and move house over time. I realise that I'm firmly in the minority. People seem to love the breathe in, breathe out stuff. Not me. Now of course my dwindling group of neighbours will rally to my cause, offering comments of support......well, I'm waiting. Come on! Is anyone out there? Nothing?.........I told you I was in the minority.

 

ANZAC day and a search for meaning

Human life is a search for meaning, we seek it in a myriad of different directions and pursuits

From drugs to the spiritual supermarket, from raising a family to growing vegetables                                         

From waving the flag and blowing the bugle to art, fashion and automobiles

Not that there's too much distance between any of these things when all is said and done.

 

We no longer celebrate the harvest or the change of seasons or the sun, moon and stars

Our harvest is year round as we graze in supermarkets and seldom look to the skies

Masters visit us to show us something then and there but we start religions upon their departure

National pride is filling the void for many as we observe ANZAC day and learn to see what isn't there.

 

PEACE

Peace - graffiti in Madrid

Counterinsurgency and honour

The original rationale for the invasion of Iraq was to find and destroy Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

No weapons.

The next rationale for war was to remove “the totalitarian menace threatening all of Western civilisation”.

The next rationale was to liberate the Iraqi people.

Now all we want to do is exit with honour – an extra 21,500 troops should deliver that honour, shouldn’t it?

Anyway, now that the joint is all but wrecked, isn’t it really the Iraqi’s responsibility to fix things up, even Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are saying this.

The US is very bad at foreign policy and even worse at undertaking counterinsurgency operations. They’ve never been able to do it. They’ve never bothered to learn how. And the troops’ hearts aren’t in the fight. They’re good at lashing out in fear but awful at close quarters’ fighting.