George Orwell famously wrote in his iconic novel "1984": If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
If you want an accurate representation of working in Leederville on Melbourne Cup day, imagine a piece of toilet paper sticking to a pair of cheap stilettos purchased from Betts and Betts Mirrabooka and being unwittingly dragged into Alasdair Beer's work - forever.
Australia is a curious place. This seems to be the only country in which public drunkenness is a crime, but which seems intent on finding reasons to very publicly write itself off. Grand Final Day, Australia Day, New Years, Melbourne Cup Day, Spring in the Valley, Kwanzaa, Arbor Day; any excuse will do. It’s a unifying experience, too; cabinet makers and property developers alike rejoice in the egalitarian experience that is walking up and down Oxford Street on your phone yelling:
"CHAPPO! CHAPPO! NAH, FUCKING…CHAPPO YA CUNT! WE'RE GOIN TO NICHE! NICHE! HAHA OI I CAN'T EVEN HEAR YOU, BRING THE GIRLS! NICHE!"
I'd like to think it'd be a kind of poetically just demise if I got to slit their throats with their own MotoRazrs but alas their simian chattering echoed throughout the street, leaving my soul barren like so many deserted Human Movement lectures nationwide.
The fashion of the corporate jock is something that intrigues me. Ostensibly, the Leedy was offering some kind of "Dress like Jay Kay from Jamoroquai and receive free watermelon breezer" promotion, and the amount of hats and pinstripes was truly staggering. I didn't see any "Press" cards protruding from them, but I suppose Men's Health and FHM only have so many contributors: Perhaps they were filming another Godfather movie where the Corleones try to muscle in on Cosmos Kebabs. Regardless, the corporate Mohawk is a difficult style to manoeuvre into a hat, and I respect the ingenuity of all who succeeded in doing so. Also, judging from the broad cross-section of people I saw sporting their sunglasses, "D&G" stands for "Dullards & Guidos."
It rained hard today and human flotsam was bobbing up all around me; I saw one guy with some pretty impressive deltoids being swept away in the deluge. Referencing the colour of his dress shirt, I quipped (to no-one at all): "I thought salmon usually went upstream."
A party bus pulled up and some discerning gent leaned out the window and tried to yell to a girl on the corner of Oxford and Newcastle: "The subtle Auburn of your hair reminds me of the golden fields of my youth, and were you to be mine the sheer volume of my love would prove overwhelming to this earthly vessel; verily, my affections would rupture, tear at the seams of my being, now rendered wretched and inglorious against your splendour and I would shatter - willingly - into a thousand fragments that would festoon the skies with so many celestial monuments to the scope of my infatuation."
Instead, he got tongue-tied and what came out was: "VIEWED! YIIIIIII-EWWWWWW!"
He did have the Japanese symbol for "bold" tattooed on his forearm, and I respect a man who stands by his principles. That the rest of his tattoo, loosely translated, meant "baseball/ Gamera /baseball" seemed not to matter. His shell necklace indicated he was a man of the world.
The rain persisted, arks were cobbled together from Asahi bottles and the women performed their ethnic sea shanties
"I'm here with all of my people/WAAAA--AHH-AHH!"
and I was deeply moved by these creatures and their near-human behaviours.
Horse racing is not a sport. Drinking should be done in front of a typewriter on your own in the 1940s. The Warwick train line should be napalmed. Fuck hats.
The End
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment