The catch 22 in the office.

Here’s a catch 22.

We’re told by those anti tobacco Nazis that our habit is costing the public purse billions year in treating smoking related illness.

They say this, then change hats and crack their Malthusian shit about how the earth can’t sustain so many people living so long and blah fucking blah. See the logic of ten year shorter life expectancies?

I do. Come inside, the water’s warm.

Perhaps this isn’t a real catch 22. A real catch 22 is a mind wrecking logic bind with no apparent solution. My solution to the tobacco problem is to blow smoke at those sandal wearers.

A real catch 22 is the kind of problem that needs solving, but anything you do will just fuck it up even worse, or fuck something else up just as bad. Sooner or later you’re sitting on your hands, knowing that a poorly timed twitch in any direction could send the whole nasty thing to an uncharted area of destroyed.

You think you can deal with this, but not in any way that wouldn’t give you a nightmare. You can choose which consequences you’d prefer today, eg “Hmm, I think today I’m in the mood for...unmitigated disaster with the Finance people.”

This is typical for anybody who works in an organisation where the word “Stakeholder” is mentioned at all. Everybody is a stakeholder. The Director is a stakeholder. The fellow who comes around, empties the bins and presumably doesn’t steal loose things from unattended desks is a stakeholder. Any given day can be ruined by any number of players in any number of ways.

A stakeholder can be anybody you want, but most of the time it’s everybody you don’t want. It is customary for two of them to want things that are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t matter because the boss has made a rule prohibiting both.

There is a way out of this, but normally it involves drinking and not giving a shit. You need a healthy level of cynicism. The obstructive rule is only there so that a certain practice is seen to be controlled, or seen to be taken seriously. All you need to play this game is be seen to obey the rule.

Likewise, you don’t have to please everybody. Find out who the kingmakers are and give them
what they really want. Use the backing of your new friends to threaten common enemies. Above all, have fun with it.

If all that doesn’t work, simply turn your back, wave and shut the door while conspicuously pulling your hip flask from your suit jacket. Any problem that can't be solved must at least be left in an awe inspiring mess for the next guy.

The Truth

The average man is stupid, mean or both, and democracy has crowned him sovereign. And as king, his first act was to abolish all information that didn't relate to his well-being and comfort. If it couldn't be boiled down into a ten-second sound-byte or a single photo or a catchy jingle, it was contraband. So for the average man, the world is black and white - truth is cheap, abundant and simple. Pre-loaded with an opinion (in the delicious flavours of Lemony Left, Chocolate Centre or Raspberry Right), he proceeds to buy his truths from the rack as he would a shirt. When he grows too fat or too lean and the truth no longer fits, he simply buys a different one, each with its own simple, pre-digested worldview, its simple causes and associated products.

So much for the man of the Mean. For the wretched outlaws who cringe at unsourced statements and leap aside from the Prevailing Wisdom like they would an approaching freight train, things are not so simple. The universe is a hugely complicated mess of cause and effect - enormously unpredictable but yet if gazed upon closely seemingly following a certain logic. We seek this logic and call it Truth.

But gaze closely upon any part of the Universe, and see that just beneath the surface of cause and effect there is another layer, and beneath that another. Layered like the skin of an onion - the logic, increasingly minute, complex and unending, and the layer beneath always promises the Truth, the end of the search. Meanwhile it calls into question assumptions made earlier on in the investigation and makes mockery of the crudities employed to dig even this deep.

We run here into the brute walls of time and human understanding. We will all die in less time than it would take to follow any investigation to its proper conclusion. At some point our animal brains will be buggered by the immense complexity of the questions surrounding our search. Bleary-eyed we can peer no deeper into the Truth, and it inevitably escapes into the murky unknown. We dig as deep as we can, and label what we have seen.

The Catch 22 for us reasonable but not overly-intelligent types is this: if we dig deeper, we find that at considerable cost we are less certain about the universe than when we began. If we cease digging and stake our claims on the truth, we understand that we have let the Truth go and therefore cannot believe that our knowledge is true. While easy answers abound (and can be bought off the shelf) for the intellectually dishonest who deny rationality and Truth in the hopes of sounding smart at keggers, to follow this path for the likes of us would be utter suicide. Our worlds would fall down and we would join the Mean.

Logic shakes the rational man far more than the beast. The Truth makes the honest despair. The dishonest man simply Knows.

New topic.

You were late and you should be skinned alive, you bastard. Anyway, new topic, as noted above. Plenty of time for this one - afterwards we can tighten up the deadlines if everyone is comfortable with it.

This one comes from Io. Based on an arbitrary method of picking who chooses the next topic, unless anyone has some burning desire to do so it may as well be Eric.

Hillary is bad.

It’s late.

I have been on Work trips this week.

Accept it, don’t accept it. See if I give a fuck. I just learned how to make an F-111 do a dump and burn.

In the contest to select who will be the most powerful man (or indeed, she-elephant) in the world, only 2/3 of the people eligible to vote will turn up. The US had that turnout figure for the 2004 election and polling booths couldn’t handle it. People were waiting in long lines. Booths had to stay open until 11pm.

At unprecedented levels of people giving a shit, the yanks only got a 65% voter turnout. This is on a par with the turnout for the 2005 Iraqi election, where death threats were imposed on anybody who showed up.

Why is this happening? There are more foreigners than you can shake a stick at who are on the edge of their seats anticipating the result. For the record, I hope Obama beats Hillary Clinton in the primaries. If he doesn’t, then I hope McCain beats her in the election.

It’s not easy to explain why I’m not a fan of Hillary. Perhaps it’s too much riding on Bill’s coat tails. It’s too much believing that being the president’s missus counts as Whitehouse experience.
OK so Hillary knows the idiosyncrasies of the thermostat. Good for Hillary.

If Hillary gets the Whitehouse, we can expect to see more of the same sleaze and corruption that we’ve come to expect from Bush. I believe that Hillary Clinton is capable of perpetrating electoral fraud. What Hillary lacks in Whitehouse experience, she makes up for in experience at being a right piece of work.

I can see plenty Democratic Party hacks saying “So what, let’s give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine” Nice, only John McCain has already tasted George Bush’s medicine.

Having a Democrat in the Whitehouse pretty much thwarts the return of The West Wing, or any other show like it to our TV screens. That show was a fantasy, a depiction of an ideal leader that educated, progressive people all over the world could admire. People wanted a president like Jed Bartlett, they wanted his team running the show. They believed that if they could just get a Democrat’s arse in the chair then fantasy would turn into reality and the whole world could breathe again. Obama would probably bring this ream back to reality

I see Obama as more of the golden boy dream candidate. There are similarities between him and Howard Dean in that sense. He is a powerful orator, but unlike Dean, he has the booming voice that you expect from a brother. Unlike Dean, he runs a reasonably tight ship. That won’t matter if he’s not petty enough and full enough of shit to beat Hillary at her own game.

John McCain has the only combination of political experience mixed with a degree of human decency. He has the maximum amount of decency that can be expected from a politician.
McCain is up against it. If the results of the 2006 congressional election are anything to go by, something like half of America suddenly exclaimed ”Do you mean to say that young men die when we go to war? Fuck!” The outcome of this particular penny dropping has been that Republicans are now about as desirable as herpes, but probably easier to get rid of.

We face the inevitability of McCain losing. The only variable is the margin, and whether or not that margin is small enough that Hillary’s dirty tricks will have to come into play.
Hillary Clinton is the George W Bush of progressive politics.

The most likely outcome is that we’ll see more of the same sleaze. It’ll be pandering to different special interest groups, such as unions, feminists and the environment, but this really doesn’t matter. Lust for power is the same all over.

A person’s perception of entitlement to that power is that same all over

The world is guaranteed at least four more years of disgraceful horror.

Anyone got much to say? That was respectably murderiferous and amusing.

What do y'all think of the next topic being "A Catch 22", 500 words with a week to work on it? Or other suggestions?

That man has a nasty glare

“What Slobs thinks of Australian elections: The mildly coherent but thankfully short ramble”

I like elections, they're greatly entertaining if done properly but they often leave us wanting when it comes to results.
The main flaw of elections is that in a democracy everybody expects to have a say, a noble thought but flawed since a lot of people would have trouble picking the difference between Kevin Rudd and Tony Jones should they ever watch Lateline, which they don’t, exacerbating the problem further.

The Australian electoral process is worse than the usual as it's startlingly sterile and boring, a drawn-out press conference of frustrated po-faced protestant-class underarm shit slinging ending with a trip to the local church or primary school to throw my opinion into a box and then watch the results unfold at a spectacular piss-up where the nice people leave early and someone is quite likely to kick a TV.

All this means that for our candidates to be electable by the wears-a-hat-indoors crowd they need to be as boring as possible. Any controversy and it's all over. Rudd weathered a fair bit of flak over his Scores visit which in some other countries would hardly have rated page 3 even if the initial story had been true.
Elsewhere they have a lot more fun about it and get to elect far more entertaining leaders, even if they are cheerful fuckups - case in pictures, we get this, other countries got (for better or worse) this, this and this. Come on, Rudd's not even doing anything interesting with his hands.

The parties too campaign on pretty well known and worn lines, I'd like to the parties properly divided on issues, choosing parties shouldn't be a matter of comparing tax breaks and interest rates as if we're comparing specs on a whitegoods purchase, it should be a matter of conviction in a system of rule and management where only a monumental fuckup would ever change one's mind.

I want a conservative party that's properly conservative, I want a left wing that's actually left wing and a centrist party that swings wildly between which side it's pretending not be beholden to.
While we're at it throw in an ultra-right party, some anarchists, libertarians, Raelians, the FARC marching band, and just for laughs, the Australian Democrats.

It doesn't really matter though, none of this matters - any party that can bring the price of a pint at the pub down by a dollar will be left holding a landslide so large they can sling that mud right back in our faces and we’ll cheer like automatic cheering machines.

Woooooooooo!

The Grim Slide to the Centre, and What all You Bastards Deserve

No one except die-hard Labor supporters and a few rotten gamblers were affected by the rise of Kevin Rudd's Australia on January 24. Don't be deceived by the swinging parties, the horrible machete injuries, the screaming and the carrying on - for all the morning-after glow, Kevin Rudd's Australia was John Howard's Australia with a fresh paint-coat, a different hat and slightly less obnoxious right-wing press.

The entire country had been smashed to its knees for about a year before Howard announced that we'd be going to the polls. The cagey bastard was waiting for Rudd to make a slip up, but the man was a machine - no more capable of a mistake than a calculator, it simply tallied the numbers and gradually co-opted the policies of the Liberal Party. Both sides were running those same numbers, of course. There were a few rotten bastards in a few marginal seats who had badly overextended themselves on unsecured finance. Most of the populace was bound to vote one way or another. If the Coalition had run on a platform of feeding farmers into woodchippers, they still would have picked up all of the rural vote. Although Labor was basically running on that platform for the unions, they still got every union vote in the country.

For this, every major institution in the country outside of the Reserve Bank and the RSL was effectively crippled for a year. Parliament went into election mode the day Kevin Rudd took over the Labor pary and became a row of very uninteresting soapboxes for the duration. Because the government wasn't doing any governing, the media obsessed over the phoney election campaign. If Howard sneezed, Fairfax would run a poll and it would cover the first three pages of every piece of printed press in the country for the next week as journalists and editors interpreted, dissected, devoured and regurgitated every possible giblet for the edification of the public. This was at best. In general the media just served to bombard the voters with advertisements from both parties.

All this to grab the votes of a few people - by definition, the lowest common denominator - who were beginning to default on the loans they never should have been offered. The election was a rotten sham. The entire population was effectively disenfranchised, but in the process was bombarded into numbness by a hysterical media picking over the few slight differences between the main parties. In the end we changed brands, and as a rusted on voter for a party that is congenitally unable to win a federal election it was a Good Thing, but I know that we really changed nothing of any huge importance.

The same feeling of political numbness seems to pervade Britain. Kevin Rudd seemingly learned a lot from what Tony Blair did in order to get into office - adopt almost all of the policies of the government of the day, convince the populace that the economy would be in safe hands under him, and then point out that he's not the guy who you hate. And the same thing seems to be happening in America, where the choice is between a rich white woman, a rich white man or a rich black man. All are vague on their plans for Iraq, for instance. None of them stand for anything. All of them are running on a platform of, "I'm not them", with a rich, nougatty centre of maintaining the status quo.

If you're not in the position to receive your tri-annual barrel of pork, it's easy to understand how a year of this stuff dominating your favourite programs and bombarding you with sleazy campaign propaganda can generate a certain amount of frustration. By the end of the 2007 election campaign, polls were showing that a majority of Australians were bored and furious with the election process. It makes absolutely no functional difference what party you voted for - your taxes will still be spent on the same bribes for the same narrow constituency. The politics of the economic rationalist centre will always prevail.

Just why that is lies outside the scope of this rant, but loosely it's because the prevailing political flavour is economic rationalism and diplomatic realism. In other words there are only one possible set of circumstances that will allow for maximal economic performance and safe international relations, and you can eat it if these arrangements don't benefit you. Utilitarianism is fun that way.

Within this framework there is little wriggle room - this is why election campaigns are so unspeakably dull if you've got half a mind (unless you like baiting people and laying bets, both of which I enjoy immensely). Almost everyone is excluded.

So, what does a literate population -many of who are interested in politics but frustrated by their effective exclusion - do on a Saturday night? Why, they protest! Although their own system is sufficiently closed to them to prevent them doing much to it with their feet - refer to the political changes wrought by the massive Iraq war protests if you don't believe me - there are certain avenues for political rage-related venting allowed open to them.

One of the cute things I like to blame on American dominance of the world is the mangling of the English language. For instance, in the last eight years, certain words have changed their meaning. For example, the word "regime" was something I used to read on the back of shampoo bottles in reference to the habits a user had in regards to washing their hair. It is now used exclusively as a pejorative term against unpopular governments.

So if a bunch of protesters come out swinging against an unpopular regime, say, China, who's going to stop them? Certainly not their unpopular governments at home. Regimes (other than their own), give the politically motivated something to take out their boredom on between ballots, and provide a nice contrast against the blandness of domestic politics. But the problem with this is that as the politically motivated find they enjoy their political anger, they may become more assertive at home. One day they're swinging at Chinese security guards and assaulting athletes, the next it's British police officers and firebombs at Number 10. When does it stop?

It stops, of course, when the government says it does. The current situation exists because people are keen to abrogate responsibility for their actions whenever possible. Wherever they can they have given up their right to choose an alternative in the name of domestic security and fiscal responsibility. Owning a house has always been more important than owning self respect. So when they cross the line in taking out their repressed political anger - when the batons come down and the boots sink in, they'll crimp and crawl and apologise and do what it takes to avoid a criminal record.

The people get the government they deserve. What they have richly deserved so far is a government that doesn't represent them, doesn't care about them, and may very well start beating them at a moment's notice.

I deserve a large bet on McCain and a serious drink.

Bread and Circuses

I think I voted twice in my life and I’ll be damned if I remember what, where, and why I voted. My opinion in the matter is as valuable as a frozen onion hence I will write a story about a simple man, his peasant life and the elections. This is not an epic or cautionary tale. It’s an unimpressive slice of life and nothing more.

Elections are a fun event for everyone. It provides a subject of discussion in taverns. It means you might finally get to bend the bones of your irritating neighbor when you had two too many pints of beer. You feel knowledgeable because you are watching derogatory TV shows filled with very “opinionated” nobodies suddenly promoted to the high ranks of political experts. And, most importantly, you get free “mici” and beer. This is the Romanian electoral tradition: feed the population! Gain the votes one beer at the time! Just like in old Roman days: “panem et circenses”. We are proud of our ancient roots.

Our man Mitica lives in Cacaleti, a small, picturesque village, right in the middle of the country. And then a bit to the right. Move down slightly. I said slightly! There it is! His house, hidden between the hills, is surrounded by green fields, and orchards where trees are bending under the weight of the ripen fruits, and cows are grazing graciously. No cars can reach here, just horses and carts. Corporate slaves chained to their desks in steel and glass buildings surrounded by concrete from all sides fantasize about such places. If it wasn’t for the lack of current water, gas and sometimes electricity, these places would sell like hot buns straight from the oven, even during credit crunch. Fortunately the winds do not carry thus far the intricate scent of fresh manure with heavy wood-fire base notes which graces the nostrils of almost half the population.

Mitica is a 40-something man; the lines on his face are 20 years deeper. He spends all day outside, in the fields. The orchards are not his. He only scythes the grass twice every summer. His wife, once a gentle and naive creature, has been twisted by the hardship of a poor life and lost all love and respect for him. Now she has many others who place the food on her table. She is always picking a fight with poor Mitica. People in the village say that’s how he lost his front teeth.

No matter how poor he was, and how many beatings he got from his wife, Mitica always found money for beer. He owes everything he has twice to the village tavern. The only precious thing for him is, however, his TV. It’s his peace haven and his source of political entertainment. He likes it when these big guys throw filth at each other. Mitica’s rough nature rejoices when he smells blood. And elections are a field day for Mitica.

Luckily for him, it is elections time again. Mitica descends every night, religiously, into the village for research at the tavern. His main source of information is Costica. He snuck into the warm embrace of a party. Mitica can never keep up with the changes in titles and movements between parties. It’s all the same to him. Costica is good at providing dirt about all candidates. How many houses that one has, and how many factories the other one pocketed through privatization. Mitica knows that word well, though he doesn’t understand the meaning. He is proudly and loudly using it, like he knows what he’s uttering.

Today he sees a bit of commotion. There is a group of youngsters sloshing out on beer and pigging out on the “mici”. He approaches the table and recognizes the son on one of his cousins. All the boys of the village were congregated around him while the owner was rushing down pint after pint and plate after plate. Where was the pot of gold?

“Vasile, what are you doing here boy?” tries Mitica in a friendly voice. Vasile was his favorite relative. He was a funny and handsome young man who had all the village girls tied up in barns and where not. Vasile was getting his vote of approval.

“A pint of beer for my uncle here!” he shouts. “We had a tough day, uncle. We put up posters for the party. We’ve been all the way to the city. We had to cut a police man some meat because we were placing the posters on the walls of the mayor’s manor. Do you know the mayor has a golden Jesus on a cross planted in his yard? You can stare directly at the sun, but not at the mayor’s new gilded toy. I say boo! Down with his party! Our party is the best.”

“What is your party, Vasile?”

“It’s a new alliance, uncle. And Bacanu is for president!!” Hurray everybody!”

“Hurray!” chanted the others, on command, spitting out the beer they haven’t had time to swallow.

“Bacanu? Wasn’t he with the mayor’s party at the last elections?” asked Mitica puzzled.

“Trans-politician” muttered Costica, who was obviously upset about all the commotion Vasile and his crew was causing.

It was an old concept with a new label in the political scene of the village. None of this mattered to Mitica. His subconscious quest was to find a scapegoat - the best possible clown to entertain him during the cold, lonely nights in front of his TV. He did not like Bacanu that much. He seemed a bit of a soft dick. Clearly sold out to the Russians, and Americans, and all the rest, he will not make a good president, thought Mitica while pouring down the cold beer and swallowing the tasty meat at the same time. It was the best meal he had in months.

“And we still have a top of posters for each of us left to bring home” continued Vasile. “Here, grab one, uncle. You can use it for starting the fire or something”.

He reluctantly picked up the heavy package full of posters with Bacanu smiling and gazing confidently into the future. A future Mitica did not feel comfortable with. He walked back to his house together with Costica, trying to voice his concern.

“Not to worry Mitica, you know how these elections go. There is a lot of barking from all sides. Everyone votes with whomever they want and from the polls wins who must win”, Costica tried to soothe him.

That night was restless for Mitica. In the morning he went outside to the toilet to do what nature intended for a human to do and found himself out of toilet paper. Instead he found a pile of last night’s posters. He picked one and tried to soften it. After using it, a sick curiosity made him hold on and look at it…Bacanu had his face full of Mitica’s freshly produced shit….it looked like a mustache has grown there.

With a smirk on his face, Mitica let out a sigh of relief: “He might be president material after all.”

Hélène Sobolewski: Election

MY UNIVERSITY days were quickly coming to an end. I was feeling nostalgic. I had handed in my last assignment, a thesis on the cultural codes in Spanish cinema in the nineties. I didn’t know what to do; more study would raise my HECS debt and put me behind in the job hunt. I was feeling skittish. When I was asked to run for co-editorship of the student rag, I signed up. I had loved that little doozy of a mag. My heart pounded the first time I saw my name in print and I trembled with joy. I was chuffed to think I could be a greater part of it.

I did not hesitate then to sign up to become the last co-editor of the student rag before voluntary student unionism poisoned it.

I was 12 the last time I acted. I was a ‘jolly jam bun’ instead of a jolly jumbuck in a production of ‘Warts off Matilda’ instead of Waltzing Matilda. I wore a cardboard box and I swung my hips and sung like Elvis. “You ain’t nuttin’ but a jam bun.”

It was in front of a lot of people. My little theatre group and I had been chosen to go to the next level in a Tournament of Minds and perform our piece in a lecture theatre, a step above the school assembly. It’s funny to look back now to see my child self pelvic-thrusting in a cardboard box where I would later go to lectures. It was there where I would think myself grown up.

My child self would not believe the second time I acted, just as my adult self wonders how could I ever have donned a cardboard box and pelvic-thrusted my way to obscurity.

The second time I acted was when I was determined to win the student election.

We tried on the t-shirts, all of us getting in each other’s way to grab our size out of the box. The girls wore the tighter t-shirts to show off the outlines of their breasts.
They were orange, similar to the shade Viktor Yushchenko’s party used when they won the 2004 presidential Ukrainian election. It was a strong and inviting colour. It is hard to go past action red combined with friendly yellow.

Our t-shirts stood out in the sea of liberal blue. We hoped the colour would repel any poisonous attacks from the young liberals vying for this short-lived success.

We were three on our team and who knows how many on the ticket. The other smatterings of orange were running around trying to get votes to become office bearers.

We had three days to run around the plaza, chasing votes, winning friends, burning smiles on the retinas of voters.

I think of myself as shy. Never would I have thought I would go up to strangers, my peers, stop them from getting to the bus on time so I could tell them how my team and I would better the uni rag. I made them care what happened to a magazine they never read. I made them vote.

I was pleasantly vicious in convincing possible voters, extraordinarily quick to corner the meek ones I knew would vote for me. They had no choice. I was eloquent, charming, determined.

My Jekyll and Hyde transformation was shocking. The possibility of power, even a power dismissed by people outside of university and by many at university, was so dear to me that I took myself out of my skin and into the skin of someone whose limits had no end. That skin had scales and it was impenetrable.

I forgot to eat and yet I was buzzing full of energy during that campaign. My usual self starts to whimper and wilt when food intervals are too long. I carry nuts and berries with me to keep my energy up. But I didn’t during election week. My campaign fed me.

I scared my future co-editor. He was not so interested in getting votes as he was getting the attention of beautiful young things walking past in their short skirts and low tops. Those darling little strumpets in their short skirts were distracting him and they were too cool to vote. I spat fire and shooed the non-voters away. I had a talking to him. He saw my eyes flitter, the iris turn long like a cat’s and blacken even more. He was soon seen running after votes. I cannot remember what I said, or did but it was worth it.

It was a landslide win, the first in the history of the university.

A few days later I settled into the editor’s desk and shed my campaign skin.

Delayed post posting of posts.

Word up wiggles, if you go to draft.blogger.com to access the Word War you can apparently schedule your post to appear at a time in the future, say, the deadline for the Word War.

:edit - it seems to fuck up on timezones. Either that or I'm not skilled enough at working my computing machine.

--Slobs

Welcome

Greetings.

Welcome to this Thing - it is not a new Thing, just the latest in a series of similar efforts such as The Great Literary Jam, Billingsgatry and Word War III. In essence we post topics and limits of various kinds for drawing and writing. We post at exactly the same time so as to avoid seeing what we have all done (or at least post and not look at the site until after the deadline). We then discuss what has been posted, declare a winner and post new topics for the next week.

Do your thing well, and invite anyone in who you think can hold their own.

The first topic is Elections, for both drawing and writing. Interesting things are afoot politically. Quite a few of you witnessed the Australian election. The US elections are currently drawing themselves out. Probably other things are going on. Write about them, draw about them, do whatever you have to do.

Check the side panel for your objectives and may your bombs fall right on target.