Of Needles in My Ear.

 

            So, Esso gas stations have now taken up blaring advertisements from their pumps.

            Advertising is obnoxious at the best of times, but there is something particularly, murderously, irritating about it coming from a gas pump. Perhaps it’s the proximity to my ear: a TV blaring in the distance, or a loudspeaker overhead, can somewhat be tuned out. But a speaker blaring directly in my ear like an airhorn – that’s my personal space right there. My poor old ADD brain can’t handle disembodied voices in my ear while I’m trying to perform a task, even one as simple as pumping gas.

            Especially one as simple as pumping gas.

            Fact is, I don’t want those little needle voices injecting themselves into my brain at any time. I don’t care what the reason are, it’s an intrusion, and I don’t want it.

            We live in an era where commercial interests feel entitled to blare noise at you at every given opportunity, and society as whole, enamoured as it is with noise, feels no need push back. Silence in the public sphere is treated much like farmland or green space: empty voids to fill with things, preferable profitable. Of no intrinsic value in itself. These days even libraries are blaring inane shit through loudspeakers and screens.

            Ray Bradbury predicted it all of course. A huge theme of Fahrenheit 451 is not just the burning of the books, but the sheer amount of noise inflicted on everyone all hours of the day, so that no one is ever alone with their thoughts. I’ve lost count over the years of how often I’ve felt like the protagonist Guy Montag, as he sat on a subway train trying to remember some lines of poetry.

 

            Trumpets blared. “Dendam’s Dentrifice!”

            “Shut up!” thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field

            “Dendam’s Dentrifice!”

            They toil not. . .

            “Dendam’s. . .”

            Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up!   

            “Dentrifice!”

            He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking.

            “Dendham’s! Spelled ‘D.E.N…”

            They toil not, neither do they. . .

            A fierce whisper of hot sand through an empty sieve. . .

            “Dendham’s does it!”

            Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies. . .

            “Dendham’s Dental Detergent!”

            “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

            It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet.

 

            How often I’ve just wanted to scream shutupshutupshutup! at the incessant racket all around – not least on the trains, as the recorded voice repeatedly warns people, in English and French, not to stand in front of oncoming trains. At least they’ve not introduced advertising or muzak yet, which I am sure some folks would be only too pleased to have (don’t get me started on those cretins who actually tried to put muzak in schools. In Bradbury’s book, people wanted the distraction, actively feared and dreaded silence, and the unwanted thoughts that might emerge within it. Our world has very much fallen into that pit – can anybody be alone with their thoughts anymore, without whipping out the phone?

 

            I’m not blameless in this regard: my own pohone has become something of a defence against other people’s phones. Like going armed with one’s own six-shooter into a wild west saloon, it feels necessary. My ADD brain may crave the dopamine, but my soul recoils at it.

            Again, I must defer to Bradbury. In “The Murderer”, a man is jailed for waging his own personal war against noisemakers. His description of the phone feels prescient: the “Ghost Machine. Voices without bodies.” He then goes on to describe the long term effects of phone dependency: “it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality.”

            I’m tempted to quote “The Murderer” in full, every line being so damn perfect. Substitute a few words, and you’ve got the exact encapsulation of our modern lives:

 

The telephone’s such a convenient thing: it just sits there and demands you call [text] someone who doesn’t want to be called [texted]. Friends were always calling, calling, calling [texting, texting, texting] me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the television or radio or the phonograph [Facebook, Youtube, Tik-tok], it was motion pictures at the corner theatre, motion pictures projected, with comericials on low -lying cumulus clouds. . .music by Mozzek in every restaurant; music and commercials on the busses I rode to work. When it wasn’t music, it was interoffice communications, and my horror chamber or a radio wristwatch on which my friend and my wife phoned every five minutes.

           

            In some ways Bradbury was too optimistic: his characters are bombarded with Beethoven’s 5^th, Bach, Hayden, Rachmaninoff, and Duke Ellington. We should be so lucky: autotuned, drum-machined, sampled, AI-Generated digital slop is what we get in our dentists offices and grocery stores. But the principle stands. The main character is driven to dump chocolate ice cream into every device he sees, and it is strongly implied that his prison shrink will come round to his point of view. Glorious wish-fulfillment fantasy.  

            Anyway, I get my gas at Petro-Canada now in glorious silence. Who knows how long they’ll hold out, or what I’ll do after they decide to puncture the bubble. Buy a donkey I suppose.

             I think it was Ambrose Bierce (though it might have been Gustav Flaubert), who defined patriotism as “the belief that one’s own country is best because one was born in it.” It’s as good a definition as I’ve been able to come up with. While I am not so humble as to not believe that most places aren’t improved by my presence, I don’t necessarily think that any one place, including a state, is necessarily better than any other place because it happens to be where I am.  I’ve long been skeptical of the idea that I automatically owe the state any particular loyalty, our acquaintance being largely based on cosmic chance.

            I’ve always rather taken to heart Robert Heinlein’s quip that “no state has any business putting its own survival ahead of my own” (or words to that effect), and think about them when I look around the world and see most states doing exactly that. In Russia, North Korea, China, and who knows how many other places, the state largely sees the citizens as the property of the state, as embodied (coincidentally enough) by whoever’s running it at the time.

            Whoever coined the adage that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel must surely have had in mind whichever scoundrel first declared “my country, right or wrong”, which so happens to be Yuval Noah Harari’s very definition of fascism: the idea that loyalty to the state should represent the entirety of morality. One owes everything to the state, and has no inherent loyalty to any human being, especially if they were born on the other side of the line in the sand. How may atrocities have been committed over the years under the aegis of this noxious principle? I think about that a lot. I remember thinking about a lot during the invasion of Iraq (“Gulph War II” I tend to call it), when “support our troops” was code for “never-ever question Government foreign policy”.

            Having said all that, it is possible for the state to earn some amount of loyalty, by being better than whatever else is on offer. Canada, for all its faults, continuously tops lists of most livable countries. There is a remarkable amount of bullshit we don’t have to put up with that others do. A lot of people come from elsewhere to make their homes here. My own grandparents thought this place a vast improvement over nazi-occupied Poland; a veritable oasis in fact, after watching relatives executed in the streets, and faking death to escape the SS. For them and others like them, Canada had earned their loyalty.  I think providing safe-haven to people is a much worthier goal and loftier ideal than whatever it is those who would keep them out claim to aspire to.

            Not having fled nazi-occupied Poland (or Stalinist ruled Poland for that matter) myself, I will have to defer to their judgement. I will confess to a rather deep gratitude to have Come to Be here rather than there. Besides this, my affection stems from sources rather more mundane: when I hike the Bruce Trail in the fall or look out across the Niagara Escarpment, or scale the moss-covered rocks of the Canadian Shield. This, I realize, is affection for a place rather than a State, but I find places altogether more worthy of affection than States. No politician provided those and no national stereotype accounts for it. There is no pride there, as neither I nor anyone else can take any credit for it. Only gratitude.

            (That the current Captains of the Ship of State, Doug Ford and Mark Carney, are more than willing to bulldoze such places further demonstrates the gulf between State and Place – the State can claim very little affection from me if it fails to protect the Place.)

            When I wander these Places, and consider that I am there rather than some GUlag, that my Gran’s final hospital stay will not bankrupt the family, and that my nephews will probably not be shot in their elementary schools; when I listen to loons or listen to Rush, watch cartoons on TVO, and even scarf down a dishwater-like Tim Hortons Double Double, I am forced to admit that whatever this weird convergence of Place and State is, I should like it to continue to exist, and that whatever replaces it must not be that nihilistic kleptocracy to the south.
            Happy Canada Day, eh? 

Who We Go Again.

The world being what it is, it feels a trifle irresponsible to spend so much ink on something that isn't a desperate defense of dying democracy. At the same time, there is such a thing as trying to enjoy life, if for no other reason than one's own mental health. There are times when the pit of despair is just too despairing. With that in mind, here's some Doctor Who. . .  

Robot Revolution – 6/10 

I will probably never be reconciled to Disnified Doctor Who. The intrusive music, the bloated, virtually

unrecognizable theme. . .the cartoony robots, the spaceships right out of Toy Story, the ultra self conscious and cloying attempts at contrived whimsy – someone really wants it to look like some long-lost Micky Mouse cartoon, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. That’s how it’s going to be from here on in. 

Which is too bad, because beneath all that crap is a decent story. Once they get to the rebel base, and the Doctor starts doing his Doctor thing, it’s not that bad. Killer robots and underground rebellions - parallels with Terminator (or Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future maybe? Nah. . . ), notwithstanding, it’s a pretty straightforward upward revolt against the forces of dominant evil, for which I’ve always been a sucker. In the hands of a different set designer, background musician, not hell-bent on making everything so damned cute, it might have been kinda cool. 

And of course, there’s Russel T. Davies, who doesn’t know how not to be sanctimonious. Platitudes are delivered with all the subtlety of a peppermint buttplug.  Of course the Doctor can’t just say “let’s go home” at the end; he needs to rattle on about “destiny” and display the emotional intelligence of an eight-year old, whom the program is trying very hard to appeal to. Between that and the tiresome beginning, the decent story is kind of sandwiched.  But I suppose I should be grateful that it’s there, and hasn’t been completely overrun with cotton candy just yet, despite the best efforts of the bean counters.  

Lux – 7/10

Okie doke – since Doctor Who is a Disney franchise now, it was only a matter of time before it got its very own Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Credit where it’s due, it is immensely clever. It’s fun and exciting, and it’s a blast to listen to Gatwa spout technobabble. As the Doctor and Belinda have to almost literally tear down the fourth wall to escape their predicament, it becomes, probably inevitably, the single most meta episode ever. 

I have mixed feelings about meta things. They can be mind-blowing or indulgent, largely depending on the execution. Lux falls somewhere in between, a cute little in-joke that is amusing, but falls well short of what the possibilities allow. Davies chose to spoof the fanbase (not without affection) rather than get into anything truly metaphysical. I suppose we’re meant to recognize ourselves and chuckle – yes, yes, I know I’m amongst the worst – but I gotta say, if the Doctor himself appeared in my living room, I’d rather talk about the secrets of the universe than gush about. That said, I probably would not have so helpfully recognized the solution like they did – you know, it being completely arbitrary and all. 

Disappointing how there are no musings on the immortality of fictional characters – how they don’t really die as long as their fictions are remembered. Maybe that would be too meta. 

Funny how these meta-fans criticize Davies’ plot holes – on some level he must be aware of them. Alas, he chooses not to fill them. Fortunately, they’re not so egregious here. 

No, what’s truly egregious is that bloody Murray Gold muzak, which is more treacly, intrusive, cliched, overwrought manipulative, and damned irritating than ever. Whether its schmaltzy violins or tinkly pianos or blaring horns obliterating the natural mood, it makes several scenes all but unwatchable. It has utterly ruined the main theme. He clearly wants to be Danny Elfman, but Danny Elfman is not the one to emulate. Besides which, there is appropriateness to purpose: the raging timpanis of Basil Paledorus are great for Conan, the martial marches of Akira Ikifube are great for Godzilla, the Wagnerian blasts of John Williams are great for Star Wars as are James Horner for all its imitators, melodramatic space operas all, in the almost literal sense: none of these would work for the altogether more cerebral Doctor Who. My God, could someone turn him down? 


The Well - 8/10 

Right-o, here’s what we’re going to do for the peace of mind of all parties concerned: let’s just ignore the pre-credit scenes of all stories from here on in. Just pretend they don’t exist because they all routinely suck. Then, we can get on to the real story, which so far has been pretty good. 

The Well is definitely a win for style -over substance – but what style! A spooky dark planet with a

mystery to solve, and a massively high body count to go with it. We haven’t had this kind of out-and out space-slasher since, when, Oxygen? If the story is more basic than it appears to be, and its connection with Midnight tenuous at best, the atmosphere is a triumph, dark, tense, and at times, genuinely scary. At least until Murray Gold’s shrieky string section kicks in, diffusing the tension like a leaf blower to a sand-sculpture. Ye Gods, can we please bring back Segun Akinola? At least he respected Delia Derbyshire’s theme! 
 
Credit must go to co-writer Sharma Angel Walfall presumably injecting some guts into the proceedings. 

 

Lucky Day 2/10

For the first time in forty years - in forever really – I skipped the intro. I can’t do it anymore, sorry. I should have skipped the episode. I did skip large segments of it. 

Pity about Conrad. I liked him. I suppose we were supposed to. He was more than a bit of a buffoon, but I was attracted to his burning curiosity and open mindedness – qualities I admire. I thought he’d have made a good companion, and yes, I thought he and Ruby made a cute couple. I suppose that’s what’s supposed to have given the story its dramatic punch. Instead, I felt it to be more of a bait-and-switch, following an agonizing sixteen minutes of set up. 

I suppose I should be grateful that the schmaltz was undermined in such brutal fashion, but that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t begrudge Ruby her boyfriend; I just didn’t want to be stuck in an elevator with them. And for God’s sake, I didn’t want her suffer. It was squirmy and awkward and uncomfortable, and didn’t at all make up for the torturous sixteen minutes. It felt mean. 

And how about this throwaway bit of dialogue: 

“Was he [the Doctor] your boyfriend?”

“Oh no. If he were here, he’d be flirting with you.” 

Notice: once again, it’s entirely the sexuality of the character/ actor that determines whether the Doctor
fucks his companions. NOT because he’s an ALIEN!!!! Not because he’s more than A THOUSAND YEARS OLD!!!!! No one ever brings that up. Why tf not?  

Anyway, if Pete McTighe’s script offered a much needed take down of conspiracy fantasists and online post-trutherism, well that’s great, but it also made for miserable television.  



The Story and the Engine – 8/10

Holy shit, did he really name his ship “Nexus”? Bugger all, that was a key term from MY latest fiction! Bloody hell, it was the title! Granted, it was always a tentative title, but now I’ll have to come with another one.

  

But onto the story: we are taken to the heart of bustling Lagos, where an interdimensional spider-shaped vessel fueled by fiction is disguising as a barbershop. It’s an inspired, almost brilliant idea that makes for immensely entertaining television. Here’s the thing: I rather like stories, and have always been a sucker for stories about stories. So something like this has me in from the beginning. It’s rather reminiscent of “Rings of Akhnaten” in terms of this theme (another, much maligned, tale I just melted for): some big malignant entity craves stories, and who knows more stories than the Doctor? I suppose I could quibble with the Doctor’s contention that a night in the life of Belinda is more compelling than his adventures with Cybermen and Ice Warriors – it ain’t. 

A more serious quibble might be that there are altogether too many mini-climaxes, so many long, drawn out triumphalist speeches underneath Murray Gold’s ear-splitting score - and I cannot emphasise enough, for the fifth time in a row, how much this hackwork ruins the episodes (who knows how they might have been under a more sensitive artist).  It feels like the episode spends nearly a third of its running time ending itself. When things are going so well, what’s the hurry? 

I’m also not thrilled about the Doctor hobnobbing with “gods” – we’re in full mythological territory now, but then again, we have been for quite some time. The abandonment of rationalism is something I deeply mourn. 

 
Interstellar Song Contest 7/10

Argh! It looks like music won’t be getting any better between now and 2925, and I’ll be stuck with drum machines forever. Argh! 

Alas, alak, if we could side-step the episode for a moment, I wonder if some audience members who balk at values espoused in episodes from fifty years ago might similarly bat an eyelid at the presumption inherent in this on that human culture, to say nothing of Western pop-culture, will not only survive but remain fundamentally unchanged for nine hundred years. I grudgingly accept that to mention it is to rather curmudgeoningly overlook the (undeniable) joys of the story, but I can’t help myself: it is a grumble I have with virtually every show of this nature, not just Disney-Who. Granted, it is impossible to predict the future, and not the purpose of every story to do so, but disappointing how few even bother to try. 

Ce serra, the story is otherwise a hoot, mandatory sentimental drek (as probably mandated by Head Office) notwithstanding. I was tickled by the idea of some scruffy rocker type hijacking the futuristic Euro-vision, and the actor Freddie Fox’s superficial resemblance to a young Thomas Gabriel Fischer even more so, but it is probably for the best that the story did not go down this road. Besides which, the character states quite unequivocally that his favourite music is pop: I choose to believe that he meant it and was not just making an incredibly morbid pun. I would be willing to bet that far more mass murders have been committed by pop fans than rockers, but am in no mood to compile that data. 

Back to the point, I was distracted from this train of thought by what I thought might have been the biggest onscreen body count in – nevermind Doctor Who, in television history. I’m glad it wasn’t – the spectacle of a hundred thousand dead human beings (and other species) floating around like so much glitter was truly nasty. 

As per usual, schmaltzy violins ensure we never break out into autonomous emotion, and we are somewhat encouraged to believe that a song can halt a world-wide corporate genocide. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the power of Song – just not that one. That, and how tacky is it to suggest our pop-culture habits have the power to influence such things? Sheesh, they'll be saying Rock concerts can cure Third-World hunger next. . .

Whatever. Gatwa’s a blast, Sethu’s earned my respect, and if I don’t particularly like these song contests, at least I take comfort know that in that space station’s museum, there is probably an exhibit for Lordi.

(Yes, yes, this isn’t Eurovision, but don’t YOU get technical on me!)  


Wish World – 5/10

One of these days, I will avoid the spoilers. 

I think I managed to miss one of them, but it was so damned obvious it was hardly a surprise. The other one might have been, but I’ll never know. I’m takin’ it all in stride now. It’s almost like the big reveals don’t work anymore. We’ve come a long way from the time Derek Jacobi revealed himself as the Master.  For one thing, they’re all practically unrecognizable, often sharing not much more than the namesake of the originals (I think only Davros got through unscathed). That, and it’s almost become routine. Who’s left I wonder? The Black Guardian most obviously. But who else? The Meddling Monk? Morbius? The Graf Vinder K?   

How is this new reinvention? Well, Archie Panjabi is a delectable Rani. She drips evil, and megalomania, and even somehow delivers her lines like Kate Omara used to, even though her latent sexiness is miles away from Omara’s virtually robotic psychopath. Possibly we’re meant to think of Michelle Gomez’s Missy instead, though I doubt Missy would have the patience for. . .whatever the fuck this is. 

Damned if I know what she’s up to strutting about in that celestial Fred-Flinstone palace. Something about getting all the energies aligned so that the Seventh Son of Seventh Son (no Iron Maiden in the soundtrack? Wasted opportunity!) becomes the Wish Master god who creates a world only so that it can implode and crack open the fabric of reality and unleash Omega. . . but she’s failed to notice a differently-abled encampment underneath who will doubtless be key to unravelling her plans. 

I’ve almost stopped paying attention. There are so many disparate elements – Conrad, baby Poppy, two Ranis, the Wish God baby, the wheelchair Underground, a really big clock – I can’t tell you how it all adds-up, and pretty past caring because I’ve learned from hard experience that it probably won’t add up. None of it will matter because none of it ever does. The Rani will go “blah blah blah *something bad happens”. The Doctor will go “blah blah blah *something good happens” and it will end with long sentimental goodbyes amidst an ear-splitting violin assault. Destroying the world yet again will have no lasting consequences. It won’t make any sense because it never does. 

Last year’s emergence of Sutekh was at least cool. This is just a blob.  I don’t know why the Rani wants to bring back Omega. I don’t know how Conrad reading “Dr. Who” stories to the world every night contributes to the her plan.  Nor did I catch how her indulging Conrad’s retrograde fantasies serves her purpose; something about. . . oh why bother? 

 Taking the piss out of post-war American suburban utopia is old hat. It’s been done a hundred times from Stepford Wives to Wandavision. It reeks of complacency and smugness. It’s easier to satirize a long-dead social illusion from some seventy-five years ago than to turn the mirror on one’s own society. As for the mental slavery – the illusory world of false memories, false histories, and false contentment, well it all seems a retread of “Lie of the Land”. And we all know how badly that particular Hindenberg crashed and burned. . .  

Still; breaking through illusions, confronting doubts, defying the gods and thinking the unthinkable in defiance of the State are themes near and dear to my heart (why then am I not a bigger Matrix fan? Long story. . .). “Tables don’t do that” is a kinda neat moment. It made me long for a longer story which could unfold at a more natural pace and wasn’t so obviously a set-up for something that had been foreshadowed since last year. As is, it doesn’t amount to anything: the Rani breaks the illusion for him, which makes me wonder why she bothered putting him through it in the first place. (and of course we're meant to think "What was that dude on TV?" Oh god, more cryptic foreshadowing? We'll probably have to wait 'till the end of next year to find out grand canonically shattering moment that's going to be. . .)

Overall, I get the sense that there’s nothing new here, just the usual overblown setup to the traditional end-of-season letdown. I can’t get excited because I know nothing of consequence will happen. Magic will save the day and none of it will have mattered. Call me cynical, but hey, I’ve learned to recognize patterns. 

(And just suppose the next one, miracle of miracles, manages to deliver? Will that change my outlook? Probably not. A really good episode would have me caring what came next. A good follow-up may compensate for a poor build-up, but cannot retroactively fix its flaws). 

Reality War – 0/10

Right, we’re done. 

In which Just Deserts are Served.

 

 Just when one thought there was no good news anymore, Ukraine goes and blows up forty Russian heavy bombers. 

Yuppers, here's the link from a reliable news site.  

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/ukraine-launches-major-drone-attack-on-russian-bombers-security-official-says 

 I don't know anything about bombers. The types I heard were TU-25 Tu-22M3. They sound expensive. In the range of what, $7 billion? 

I hear the operation was called "Spiderweb". Drones hidden in shipping containers, placed right by the airfields (deep inside Russia), and launched automatically.  BOOM! 

This is some James Bond level shit right there. 

 This is almost too good to be true. Just when everyone in the hallowed halls were convinced Ukraine was down for the count, they pull this off. Those are forty strategic bombers Russia can't attack with anymore, and forty big expensive strategic bombers that won't be easy to replace. The Russian economy stinks, this is gonna hurt. 

Remember boys and girls: Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia has refused any ceasefire. Russia bombs Ukrainian cities night after night after night. Russia brought this on itself. Russia can end this war at any time.  Forget once and for all, the delusion of Russian invincibility. Don't think for a minute Ukraine doesn't have any more tricks up its sleeve. If we stick with them, they will prevail. 

Meanwhile, I need to go to bed. I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight. . .

Of Scatalogical Existentialism: In Which the Author Uncovers a Dirty Secret

 I swear, sometimes the convergence of life’s disparate elements is amazing. 

    Of the many fetid Facebook slime-pits where I inexplicably continue to waste my precious time, the Midnight Oil Fan Community is possibly the least offensive. If the gallery of near-total strangers modeling their band shirts and hosting gatherings I will never be able to attend are of no direct relevance to me personally, neither do they do me any particular harm. In fact, they occasionally do me well, as when I was able to show off my Midnight Oil poster and accompanying pun to great fanfare - the only place in the world I might have been able to do so (yes, I am still a fanboy at heart, worn firmly on sleeve).

    More recently, a chance posting by one of the aforementioned near-strangers (as in United-in-Oil, though naught else) allowed me to solve a childhood mystery. 

       The post in question was simply the image of the band’s 1990 single “Forgotten Years”, which is not only a great song, but also the song they closed with on their very final show in Toronto, making it the very last song I will ever hear them play live. So, associations are positive, if bittersweet. 

    What struck me about the most about the post though, was the image on the cover, which I had not seen before. It was not the standard picture of the band, or accompanying vista of the Australian landscape the band tends to prefer, but a cartoon of a jet plane coming apart mid-air. The words “Who Cares” (or “Who Care” technically, as the final “s” cut off by missing tailfin) were written in bright pink across the fuselage. They were so prominent, one might have thought that was the name of the single. It was a cute, eye-catching image, playful while somehow ominous, and in no way frivolous, that well suited the raucous tone of the song and the tempered-by-but-not-trampled-by-realism idealism of the band. 

    Thing is, I’d seen that somewhere before. Not the whole picture; just the pilot. The pointy nosed, wide-eyed cartoon character. I knew that character, and that style. Where? A rusty cob webbed door of memory slowly creaked open. 
 

    In the early 80s, my uncle kept a strange cartoon book in his cottage. On the cover was a headless naked body chasing three flying heads with a butterfly net. The comics inside were just plain rude. I vividly remember one cartoon of a chef taking a dump in one of his soup pots, as posh diners cluelessly carried on in the next room. Another was of a urinating man inadvertently pissing in his own face when he tried to watch a butterfly. Yet another had a man using a periscope to examine his own bum (with evident disappointment). You get the idea. They were crass and scatological, the kind of drawings that would certainly have been confiscated at school and got you sent to the principal’s office. The appeal to a five-year old could well-be imagined. To find every dirty schoolyard joke given form, drawn, bound, and published by a grown-up was just, well, too hilarious to believe. It was big piece of subversion, carefully hidden from Mom and Dad, mischievously revealed to Grandma (who was obligingly indignant), conspiratorially shared with my uncle, and eagerly sought out every time we visited his cottage.  It regrettably vanished when he sold the cottage and got married; my pious aunt would definitely not have appreciated its humour. 

    I was too young to remember the artist, so could not look it up in any library (who probably have refused to carry it anyway). I came across nothing like it in any second-hand bookstore.  For all I knew, the book would be relegated to that overstuffed cabinet of the brain which stores the near forgotten fever dreams of childhood. 

    But now we’ve got the internet, and our Borg memory can remember anything. Here I was confronted with a crashing airplane, on a Midnight Oil ep cover of all things, and I was certain it was that guy. Who drew it? Again, the near-strangers of the Midnight Oil Fan Community helpfully informed me this was the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. 

    Leunig. Leunig. Of course. 
   

 Leunig was apparently quite the figure in Australian media, named a “Treasure” by the National Trust of Australia, and seller of many books. He drew for the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne’s The Age, and a pile of other publications. He was a vociferous opponent of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and, less admirably, an equally vociferous opponent of masking and vaccines during the pandemic. He got canned from the Age after comparing an anti-vaxer to the tankman of Tiananmen Square (classy, eh?). He died in December of 2024. 
 

That book in my uncle’s cottage was The Second Leunig: A Dusty Little Swag. Unlce must have picked it up on one of his travels; to my knowledge, Leunig never made terra-firma in North America. I certainly never came across him until now.

 
  Finding the artist and looking him up though only made me wonder again whether I’d hallucinated the whole thing. The samples of Leunig’s work I’d initially been able to find online (admittedly a small one) were clean, Hallmark level earnest, and infused with heavy religious overtones. Nothing at all like the vulgar etchings I remember. Granted, The Second Leunig was published in 1979; his last cartoon was published just before he died in 2024. More than enough time for an artist to evolve. Still, the gulf was jarring.  Was it the same guy? No doubt: that was absolutely the book. By what tangling path does one get from that Point A to that Point B? 

    I examined the available cartoons a little more and dug deeper into my memory. Tenuous

connections began to emerge. The “new” ones (or more recent anyway) were not as innocent as they seemed at first, especially once he got into the anti-war stuff. But they were still earnest beyond earnest, and did not seem at all in keeping with the crudities of old. Yet, there may have been more to those than met the 6-year-old eye. 

    It wasn’t just the dirty jokes that drew me to those cartoons. There was a weird ambience about them that I found enticing. They were surreal, dreamlike, and a little ominous. They did not take place in any recognizable world, but in impressionistic landscapes, often empty and dreary, where night always seemed to be falling and things only made sense within the borders of the panel. Opening the book rather felt like falling asleep, and so not unlike the hallucinatory escapades of Halloween is Grinch Night, the Magic Shadows theme, Winnie-the-Pooh’s encounter with Hephalumps and Woozles, or Dumbo’s drunken visions. There was always a little darkness creeping in around the edges – literally and figuratively. I liked to dip my toes in that darkness. Just enough to see how it felt. I still do. I like to lift the rock of the subconscious and look at the little slugs hiding underneath. 

    The characters were wide eyed, big nosed, kid-friendly creations in a seemingly permanent state of confusion or mild-disappointment. The occasional happy ones (keeping in mind I’m relying on Google images to bolster 40+ year old memories here) usually sat blissfully unaware in environments otherwise suggestive of bleak despair. 
 

    A recognizable philosophy emerges. 
 

    Context helps. Reading them now, and seeing how involved Leunig got in socio-political issues, lends the older images meanings that were not previously apparent – to me anyway.  I notice things now that I didn’t back then. Life experience will do that to you. An English degree and a teaching degree will also do that to you, not to mention showing other people how to recognize symbolism for almost a decade. 
 

    Perfect example, this one here, the only one I’m certain was in the Second Leunig I’ve been able to find: 

    I remember grumbling that this one wasn’t funny. I didn’t like the idea of being held up on a stick. I figured the grown-up behind was just trying to be edgy, and turned the page. As a kid, I didn’t get it.

    As a middle-aged man, I definitely get it. When someone points to a dark void and says “face the future!”, it can only mean one thing.  Many adults use children to ward of fear of that one thing. They see children’s lives as mere extensions of their own.  

    Whatever you think of my interpretation (and who knows what specifically Australian context I might be missing) this is not merely an edgelord scrawl: it is rife with meaning, and almost certainly polemical. Looked at that way, the previously mentioned cartoons take on a new significance. The shitting chef could be seen as contempt for the bourgeoisie (or possibly a critique of Australian’s culinary scene, I’m just speculating here). The pissing man got pissed on when he tried to look up from the ground and follow something beautiful. And the periscope? An indictment of self-examination. How often does it reveal something not worth seeing? Even a half-remembered multi-panel sequence about a man who lost his underpants was something of a Kafkaesque tale of wandering naked and alone in the desert. 

    It would seem that nothing was as it seemed. 
 

    This Betooga Advocate described Leunig's cartoons as “bordering nihilism” (and him an "old shit stoner"). I’m not sure that’s fair - about the nihilism. True nihilists don’t take principled stances against war or poverty (and say what you will about the idiocy of his mask/vax stance, in his own mind it was a matter of principle.)  I would say they’re existential.  Explorations of life, musings on the meaning of existence. Attempts to clear off bullshit (sometimes quite literally).

    I’m not so invested in Leunig to be too disappointed that he turned out to be a crank (though it is dispiriting that yet another one went down that road). Yet, his work was a piece of my childhood, and all my predilections were formed in childhood. A tendency to navel gaze? A fondness for storm-clouds, shadows, and broken windows? Whatever came later, reading existential cartoons at the age of 5, 6, and 7 did its part. 

    Come for the bums; stay for the existentialism. 

In which an Imbecilic Thought-Experiment is Laid to Rest.

            It is a thing of beauty to hear Vlad Vexler taking the piss out of Jordan Peterson. Though Peterson is so yesterday’s news – a washed-up alt-right has-been so thoroughly debunked and discredited as to have all the relevance of past-due-date mayonnaise or a physical copy of The Royal Teens’ Greatest Hits – it is a delight to hear Vexler take him down.

Vexler is possibly my favourite content creator at the moment, a political philosopher of deep insight, with a calm, almost ASMIR-like delivery (which is useful after even a second of Peterson’s slaughtered-pig voice). He starts every talk by greeting his “beautiful community”. A life-long sufferer of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), he has recently taken to presenting from his bed attached to an oxygen tank. His determination is inspiring.

            As for Peterson, he was harping on that old canard of the nazis being a left-wing project rather than a right-wing one. The idea stems from the Randian idea that any amount of state-interference (possibly even the existence of the state itself) is an intolerable intrusion on human liberty, and a slippery slope to atrocity. By this reasoning, even setting up a minor health care system is the first step to Bergen-Belsen. Heavily implied in this analysis is the assumption that deep down, this is what all leftists want.

            “Extract a random sample of nazi policies and strip them of markers of their origin, and present them to set of people with conservative or leftist beliefs and see who agreed [sic] with them more,” screeches Peterson, before blasting social scientists for not “doing their bloody job”. As if that was their bloody job.

             Which nazi policies, I wonder, would Peterson extract for this purpose? Does he really think depriving Jews of citizenship, or outlawing mixed-race marriages would go over well with leftist audiences? Or does he propose to only show them nazi policies on filling potholes?  Thing is, you can’t strip nazi policies of the “markers of their origin”, as they are inherently recognizable and indelibly reprehensible. Unless Peterson can demonstrate that self-identifying leftists approve of mass-slaughter, he hasn’t proven a thing.

            Vexler goes deeply into the cultural origins of ideology and the inevitable cross-contamination that occurs when they spring from the same cultural milieu. The idea that two ideologies are actually the same thing because they share certain traits, Vexler dismisses as ridiculous, “no less silly than arguing bruschetta is a margherita pizza because they both have basil and tomato in it.”

            My own objection is simpler. It removes intention and motivation. Never mind what the road to hell is paved with, intention matters. What is it people actually want? Extermination of the Jews, enslavement of the Untermensch, and domination of the world were the stated goals of naziism from the very beginning, not some unintended consequence of their economics. 

            Which side today is dehumanizing vast swaths of people? Calling for mass incarceration and eliminating habaeus corpus? Worshipping their Leader? Peterson ought to know.