In Defense of Camel Milk

Finally. 

            Finally, we have camel milk demanding the sort of attention it clearly deserves from the Australian public as a viable alternative to the tired old liquid we have traditionally extracted from the udders of cows.

            Long have I heard Australians bray in distress about the pitifully small selection of milk—and milk sources—we have available.

This sacred white nectar of the desert beast, then, is the very least we deserve.

I say: we milk cows, goats, soy beans, rice and almonds, so why not milk a camel? Why not enjoy its life-sustaining treat? Why limit ourselves when confronted with a product that demands a milk additive to archaic tradition and subjective notions of taste? Why, when I am enjoying cereal, tea, coffee, or perhaps making a dessert, should I be constrained in my choice of milk when there is camel milk out there, waiting to be consumed and appreciated?

Choice is a core value in a democratic society and I feel that there can never be enough choices. Particularly, when it comes to something which as vital to the functioning of life as milk.

And why don’t we ever think of the nomads? As a society, Australians value hard work, ingenuity and creativity. To then ignore camel milk is to ignore the determination of the brave—one may say, ‘heroic’—desert nomads who first thought to themselves, ‘I’m gonna have a crack at milking that wild, spitting, grumpy, humped bastard. Because, dammit, I really need something to wash these weetbix down and water just doesn’t cut it no more.’

We owe it to those plucky souls to enjoy the fruit of their toils; to appreciate the sheer genius of attaching a handmade, ivory tap to the hump of a camel to withdraw its milk, a task as harrowing as it is later fulfilling when downing a warm, nutritious cup of camel milk.

They have given us what we didn’t necessarily know we wanted, but which, deep down, we were subconsciously crying out for. They have filled the recesses of the camel milk void in each and every one of us. We are now a more satisfied people as our milk choices expand out before us reaching out to animals and plants and possibilities we never dreamt could become reality. Surely, owl milk is just over the horizon?

Friendly to those who are lactose intolerant, with more salt on the palate, and additional Vitamin C, camel milk lurches past the faux health benefits of soy and almond milk, whilst easily evading the fallacies of skinny (or skim) milk. Moreover, the very act of drinking camel milk is loaded with an imparted self-satisfaction, so that in swallowing it the recipient feels the kind of heavenly bliss we usually associate with being inarguably correct.

Why would you not want to drink a camel milk caffe latte? Why would you not submerge your Special K with camel milk? Why use formula for your baby, when camel milk is the perfect substitute for breast milk, coming as it does from a similarly shaped hump?

I, for one, am planning to invest in camel milk farms, where hundreds of camels with industrial sized taps attached to their humps reign freely, spitting and making their spittle-loaded throat noises, waiting their turn to have the tap turned on and, thus, be milked. It is the future of not just milk, but the entire culinary culture of Australia.

Let us all enjoy a refreshing cup of camel milk. Let us bow our heads to our wild herds of camels as more than foul-tempered pests. They are divine creatures, filled with a satisfying treat.

Bless you camel milk.

Malaysia Airlines MH17

There will undoubtedly be a stream of Facebook statuses and tweets about the Malaysian Airlines plane that was shot down overnight in Ukraine. These will be updates and news articles, alongside messages offering hopes and prayers, sympathy and tears, perhaps anger and retribution. Social media will grieve. It’s a process I am usually averse to, finding that it cheapens the ‘real’ grief of those who are the subject of the largely anonymous voices of the Internet crying out as one.

            Yet, I find myself sitting here, reading through the news coverage of flight MH17 facing a nearly unbearable sadness. And I don’t feel any need to hold that back.

Such an utterly senseless loss of life.

298 people, three of whom were infants, one a premier figure in AIDS research, the rest someone’s daughter, son, sister, brother, mother, father, lover … people who boarded a plane never thinking that they would not arrive at their destination, innocent of any involvement in the Crimea, never believing they would be blown out of the sky, now lying scattered among charred wreckage somewhere in Ukraine. Never to come home.

The world is subject daily to tragedy: lost homes, lives, futures. It is the startlingly simple antithesis to the grace of our existence; something we, as humans, must face. And sometimes when something like MH17 happens, I fear we cheapen the impact of these tragedies, forgetting in the force of the news cycle’s main event that all over the Earth people are suffering needlessly. I worry that in the rising crescendo of social media we can conveniently forget these other happenings to latch onto what is more immediate in our modern short-term consciousness.

What a cynic am I.

For as I write this, knowing full well that I am adding my own voice to the growing pool—soon a flood—of voices that are in essence only trying to make sense of things, I realize that this is just the age we live in; that there is nothing cheap or disingenuous about trying to make your feelings heard when we are provided, have even created, the platform to do so. We all have our digital soapboxes and if we want to climb atop them to cry to the heavens that are the endless reaches of the Internet then why should we not? Who is anyone, and who am I, to belittle anyone’s expression of grief, hope, fear as anything less than honest? As anything less than genuine?

And in releasing our feelings about MH17 online, I wonder whether rather than pushing other tragedies to the periphery of thought, we are in fact putting these into a kind of relief. Reminding ourselves how fallible living actually is. For our shock is the realization that the randomness of the event means that it could have been you, me, a loved one. There is no telling when or how a life will end. When we express our horror and our sympathy, we express, in a sense, our joy of life beside the guttural, deep sadness that anyone can have theirs cut short, irrespective of the tragedy and the way in which we wish to tell our world.

Our focus may fall here on MH17 and the almost nameless sensation that accompanies the idea that a passenger plane can just be shot from the sky for no reason other than the perfect awfulness of the circumstance, but really it is more than that. We don’t forget about the rest of the world—Africa, Gaza, refugees, so on and on and on—and we don’t rob people directly related to the incident of their grief, presuming to adopt some of their pain. What we do is lend ourselves to the social collective that is humanity, reminding ourselves of how we belong to something greater than our own selfish beings, how we are all suspect to machinations very much outside our control. It is these things that we all have in common, which any expression of grief implicitly acknowledges.

For this reason, I will mourn and feel immense sadness that so many people can have their lives cut short; remembering also, that it is an unfortunate part of the human condition, all over the world. 

My thoughts and hopes with those lost aboard MH17.

Some True Facts About Immigration Minister Scott Morrison

I have from a distance always had a special spot of loathing for Scott Morrison. I mean anyone who continues to promote and condone Australia's utterly xenophobic, fear-driven and cruel policies of handling supposed 'boat people' is worthy of such scorn, particularly in the sense that it is now more to do with vote gathering politics than it is with dealing with, you know, real people who have suffered terribly in their home nation and have seemingly run out of options. But Mr Morrison is a whole other kettle of shit in a party, nay parliament, filled with vessels of shit. A grotesque flabby excuse of a human being at the forefront of the Coalition's (and in some respects Labor's) race to the bottom in matters of how to address our apparent 'problems' of refugee boat arrivals: a question of who can establish the most craftily nasty way of 'turning back the boats'; of making Australia so damn unappealing that the risk of escape and resettlement is just not worth it. Pathetically (and pathetic is a word that goes hand in hand with this trumpet cunt ((TC is back))), Morrison acts out like a kind of Big Brother, desperately trying to control the refugee narrative through his controlled, infrequent press conferences, limitations of media access and continual insistence to incorrectly alter the semantics of the issue by amending the title 'illegal' to refugees. They are not 'illegal' refugees. They are simply refugees. It is not a matter of legality. It is simply a matter of an inherent strand of racist fear that runs through Australia that politicians are all too keen to play on, rather than try to change.

But the latest to come out of Morrison and the Coalition is one step too far. Essentially (I am speaking generally here throughout), they are dramatically altering the terms of whether or not a refugee is in danger in their home country, which in turn decides whether or not they will be forcefully sent back. The current threshold that decides whether a refugee is in real danger (I'm talking torture, deprivation of rights and death here) is around 10%; that is, if there is a greater than 10% chance of them facing serious danger, they will be considered for protection and not sent back. The proposal by Morrison is to raise this to above 50%. The refugee needs to prove that if they were to be sent back there is a better than 1 in 2 chance of them facing torture. By the way, they need to prove this on their own because they are refused, or not allowed, legal aid. Hypothetically, if you can only prove a 48% chance of torture, tough titties you're heading home. How these statistical probabilities are to be established is a bit of a mystery. Indeed, how the likelihood of danger can be measured in any respect seems fairly screwy. Who puts this numerical value (even the 10% threshold) on a person's life? To assume that 55% is better odds than 35% when we're talking about FUCKING TORTURE is utterly unhinged - this isn't a bet, this is someone's well-being; their goddamn existence.

We've already boiled these people down to being little more than words - 'illegal refugees' - little more than statistics - how many boats last month? - little more than mouths to feed and bodies to cater for on an island out of sight, out of mind, and now the Coalition is making a mockery of the kind of perpetual danger these people are escaping from by boiling it all down to the chance of this danger doing bodily harm, conveniently forgetting the kind of psychological hardship one has to face when there is still a 35% chance they might be tortured or killed; forgetting that in a place with a 35% chance of horrid things happening there is no standard of living that would be considered acceptable by most people (although, fuck me, but I don't have the statistics to back that claim up).

As a grand get stuffed, I present Some True Facts About Immigration Minister Scott Morrison:

·        He feasts on baby pugs. They are his primary source of protein.

·        His bloated, unhealthily red, piggish appearance is a tribute to both Kim Jong Un and Al Capone. He believes that his fat expresses power and prestige. He always enjoys second helpings of pug.

·        He denies the existence of rainbows.

·        He only reads Ayn Rand.

·        His closest cousin is a sack of rancid potatoes.

·        He sleeps in a coffin draped in the Australian flag, surrounded by poison ivy, in Western Sydney.

·        He believes that the Earth is still flat, the fractures of the ozone layer a myth, and that somewhere right near the edge of world is a nifty temperature control device that is just waiting for someone brave enough to venture that close to the precipice of nothing to turn it down a touch. This will solve global warming.

·        He feels that he is too valuable a human to risk getting that close to the edge of the world. He likes to point out his credentials: media control, genuine understanding of the supposed refugee ‘plight,’ wordsmith, penmanship, pastry chef par excellence, and Parliament hotdog eating champion.  

·        His favourite hobby is to continually push over children. He is particularly fond of nudging toddler’s off-balance.

·        His laugh sounds like a dehydrated goat bleating through a crackly megaphone.

·        He attends Hillsong and subscribes to their evangelical, religious-right doctrine, except the bits about caring for your fellow human beings. This, he believes, is open to subjective interpretation. One can admire Jesus, but gee whiz he sets some lofty standards.

·        He believes that the role of the press is to write what he says. He views his press conferences as a kind of circus act where he is the ringmaster and the press corps his clowns. He honestly believes he could get them all to fit in a two-door Nissan Mirage.

·        He believes he could have been a ringmaster in another life.

·        Information and fact is what Scott Morrison says is information and fact. Scott Morrison is, in fact, the embodiment of an absolute Information and Fact. He is the Truth.

·        He knows the danger, for he is the Danger.

·        He believes that seeking refuge is an illegal sin.

·        He thinks 49% is still pretty good odds.

Arthuring Your Hangover

My brother and I went out last night.

            Today I feel like a well-trodden area of grimy dirt speckled with dead flies, some bird shit and a few scraggly weeds. It’s just moist enough to be squelchy and clings desperately to anyone who passes through it. Nothing will grow there. It is utterly barren.

            We started with a bottle of wine at home. We then went to Kong (a new, and excellent, Korean BBQ joint in Richmond). We had to wait for a table, so pottered down to the Prince Alfred for a couple of ales served by surly bar staff with flaccidic[1] dispositions. We received a call from Kong informing us of our table’s availability. We ordered a litre of the house wine. We ate and drank with overly enthusiastic gusto. We left Kong. We were both a little drunk. We wandered down Chapel St to the Sweetwater Inn behind the Jam Factory. We drank five dollar tinnies of Melbourne Bitter. We watched a snowboarding video.

            …

            I don’t really recall much more of what happened. I do remember feeling like I stood out at the Inn due to my lack of hat and beard, along with the aesthetic anomaly of my boisterous blondeness and neatly cultivated neck/chin fluff. I vaguely recall talking to various hospitality people my brother knew about waiting work, slurring credentials that probably went: ‘Mate, I’d love to work there. I know Russian.’ Or: ‘Buddy, you’ve never seen a man with hips as snake-like as mine. I weave through tables like a granny knitting a particularly egregious scarf. I also know Russian.’

            I also know we caught a cab home. But I only ‘know’ in the sense that I woke up this morning in my bed with my pants only half-way off, a receipt from the trip dangling out of one of the pockets. For all I remember, without the evidence of the receipt, we could’ve saddled some salamanders (that’s not innuendo for a particular type of person by the way, I actually mean overgrown lizards) and ridden them home, gleefully whooping at the fun of it all.

I took the receipt because when I reach a certain level of intoxication I completely lose all faith in cabbies as honest human beings, levelling them with distrustful, hate-filled stares of blonde malice, accompanied by muttered unpleasantries and curses (as in Gypsy curses where I don’t just curse the driver, but also his entire familial lineage). I always demand (not ask, demand) receipts in case they decide to add a little something more to the fare, examining them through the narrow slits of my drunk, angry eyes before disembarking.

            Anyway, to speak in general and understated terms, my brother and I were not in particularly high spirits upon waking. Our rooms had the pungent odour of alcohol, our eyes were bloodshot and leery, and the best we could say to each other was, ‘I have a headache,’ dosed with a liberal use of the word, 'fuck.' Reckless pantlessness (my brother was also vesting hard with no shirt) was the order of a large chunk of the morning as we took to that hopeless, dazed, zombie-ish wandering around the house that is the affliction of any hungover person trying to make sense of the cruel world.

            We decided to go and get breakfast. Over the course of the drive we heard Steve Winwood’s ‘Call On Me’ and Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown.’ Neither of these songs were at all reflective of our state, it was just a neat run of songs. We tried to crank the radio in the Party Mirage, cracking the windows so Chapel St could enjoy their majesty with us, but it pathetically begins to crackle over ’20.’ Still, the Party Mirage presides.

For maybe an eight minute drive, the conversation got surprisingly weird really quickly:

·         We discussed hybrid dogs that have been bred from poodles and other hounds. Our favourite was the spoodle (part cocker spaniel, part toy poodle). This quickly degenerated into using the term as pure euphemism. As in: ‘Dude, I’d give her the spoodle.’

·         Spoodling, as we came to affectionately call it, continued into a conversation about ‘docking’ or, more amusingly, ‘aardvarking.’ From UrbanDictionary: When two men touch their penises together tip to tip and one man rolls the foreskin of his penis over the penis of the other man. It is necessary that one man is uncircumcised. We wondered at how this ever came about and, indeed, how one would proposition another man to a bit of the old ‘aardvarking.’

·         ‘Aardvarking’ reminded us of the children’s cartoon Arthur. The titular character, an aardvark, looks nothing like an aardvark (see below) and presumably behaves nothing like an aardvark. Of course, I am only assuming that aardvarks don’t wear lame sweaters and learn lessons of basic morality/growing up on a daily basis. ‘Aardvarking’ became ‘Arthuring.’

·         Some flannelette shirts in a store distracted us from the peculiarities of ‘Arthuring’ and aardvarks with rabbit best friends (I know, what the fuck?), and we robustly discussed that weird trend of not actually wearing the shirt, but using it as a belt. Like inverse grunging. Flannelette is a shit belt was the gist of it. 

·         We arrived at the café.

So, all this aside, I still feel really quite terrible. My eyes are trying to gnaw their way through vision, I keep breaking out into awkward sweats, and my stomach has expressed continually to me its displeasure. 

Please let know if you’re open to gently swaddling me in a blanket and holding me. You can whisper sweet soothing words of nothing into my ear and feed me bacon. We can watch episodes of Arthur together.

Think of me as the puppy. Look how much it needs your affection and soft touch. Look at how fun it is. I can be this fun. After the right amount of bacon.

             

---

[1] ‘flaccidic’ – a floppy, cranky acceptance of being in a mental state akin to erectile flaccidity – example: ‘he appears full of hopeless scorn and anger, what a flaccidic gentleman’

why I don't drive

I'm known for many things: my charming disposition, my way with grilling most meats, my attachment to cream cheese, my extensive library, my odd predilection to remember random passages/information I read in some leftist newspaper I found in a city alley months ago but almost always forget where I am and sometimes where I am going. Everyone's favourite trait though is that I don't drive. At the ripe old age of 27, edging dangerously close to 28, then even closer to 30, I am without a license. This state has unfolded in a variety of ways: frequent close proximity to public transport, friendly friends, an almost obsessive foreknowledge that I will perish in a car crash, the unbearable truth that I will never get my hands on the ghostbuster station-wagon. Yet, there is more to the story. A list:

·      I’m too cool.

·      I need to be known for at least one annoying trait, for otherwise I have none.

·      Someone needs to be the designated lift weasel.

·      I’m a Triple A-Plus Mark Seven Walker. Meaning: I recklessly stroll into a strut purpose designed to take me places, like the shops, park, or the spaces between Time.

·      I worship at the altar of the Walk.

·      A gypsy named Olysandra in a prophetic cask-wine dream foretold of The Blonde Man Who Should Not Drive, sometimes referred to in gypsy culture simply as, The Blonde. He is an awe-inspiring figure of natural movement; the harbinger of The Stride; the final bastion of The Leggéd Shuffle. I am this man.

·      I am a defender of fossil fuels. I believe them best left in their natural habitat, not in the slave service of the car.

·      Cars have a tendency to startle me.

·      I’m sure cars are haunted by (literally) blank-faced Papua New Guinean children with self-esteem issues. They are their doomed vessels to the afterworld, which we are burdened with never arriving at.

·      I have the spatial awareness of a blinded-folded, thrice spun around, drunk toddler with Attention Deficit Disorder and a severe fear of not being able to see, while being attacked by a falcon This is not a state conducive to driving a car.

·      Steering wheels are one of life’s great mysteries.

·      I’d probably be prone to ramming people with very little reason. Cut me off: ram. Beep your horn at me: ram. Drive slowly: ram. Drive quickly: ram. Friendly wave: ram. Old lady walking across the street with her basset hound, a portrait of her deceased war hero husband and an armful of knitting: ram.

·      They call me Angry Dave for many reasons, and I’m sure driving will bring forth the Angriest of the Angry Dave’s. My eloquent hate-filled rage, though, would be something to behold: I’m thinking ‘Cock Goose,’ ‘you Bryan Fucker’ or ‘Empty Arse Sink’ will be frequently uttered; as in, 'you morally inept cock Goose! Go and fuck Bryan you vapid, empty arse sink!'

·      I don’t have a license.

escape from camberwell (with kurt russell)

Let us go then, Kurt and I,

leave Camberwell behind just like a sty,

to mimic the cask wine hipsters in a city park

we’ll let loose another calamitous cry:

I’m drunk!

Distorted!

Distended!

Stumbling from the Smith,

my Cherubic features gone awry!

I am no saint,

my halo has fallen to my feet

and, clearly, I am only mortal meat

looking for loquacious ladies

suspect to my suspicious spell

(it’ll all be another poem to tell).

Chapel St shimmers incandescent scintillation.

I’m in Lala Land!

With Grey Goose vodka, ice, and fresh lime in hand

there are no cardigan scarf geriatrics,

no extra hot skim milk caps

served in a poor man’s skull,

no Indian word that means ‘slow death,’

only a sky we call down to us,

snort a star and see resplendent light.

Revs roar for me.

We’ll have another VB.

It tastes like tar gone to cool crystal, but

I could not be anymore goddamn cheerful,

like a man trying to abuse sobriety,

and lose the same old memory,

I run my fingers through the fissures of the sofa fabric,

then ineloquently across my gums,

and my grin, once manic, becomes suddenly plastic.

Kurt is dolewave dancing!

Disenchanted, but drinking!

He’s Dick Diver grinding.

Or is it Melbourne shuffling?

Until some tattoo mask of sinking spirals

stops the fast forward motion.

Kurt stares at me,

his face twitching commotion,

and, over everything, he bellows:

“Have you heard of the portly prince of Prahran, Apollinaire?

Always assumes a Parisian air,

loves an obese obscenity

like a minstrel gently fucking a shark.

He’ll bring the clown car:

the means of our getaway

we’ll take with us to our horizon

—these stars taste terrific.

Did I tell you recently that I love you man?”

He licks my cheekbone.

“Did you know her man?”

Kurt stays behind to seduce the sun.

Solo, I walk High St,

a pinched pint of balmy beer

all that bears witness to an idea

which brings you back in.

These weekends will not be the same.

I need to remember how to forget. 

yo momma

Yo momma so German she’s a Volkswagen.

Yo momma so rigorous she always prepares a litter box when she lets the cat out of the bag.

Yo momma howl so loud she’s destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging herself through the negro streets at dawn looking for a megaphone to further up her decibels.

Yo momma so pedantic when she rides through the desert she names her horse.

Yo momma so fearful of marsupials she equates any enclosed moist space with a pouch and refuses to enter, and never has a nice word to say about kangaroos who have almost had enough of her petty insults.

Yo momma so hirsute her moustache married your dad and gave birth to three yetis: Paul, Arnold and Marilla.

Yo momma so weary of this ancient world she purchased a DeLorean.

Yo momma so cranky the chip on her shoulder is crinkled, has a deceptive gravitational pull and at times seems to illustrate a certain self-consciousness.

Yo momma so confused she spent a season in hell where every wine flowed and she took Beauty in her arms, but thought she was in Ireland.

Yo momma so accepting she don’t just bite the bullet, she makes it into a fine bullet seafood stew.

Yo momma so creepy she’s Abbott’s wink.

Yo momma so hip hop she don’t just raise the roof, she elevates the ozone layer, and when she crunk the world crunk in time with her.

Yo momma is a collage eliminating any notion of her as a single, stable idea: she is a grumpy cat, a Joycean pun, a Grecian urn, Wesley Snipe’s better half, a goat singing Swift, a dice cup, an awkward typographical arrangement, and a love curse uttered by a witch-gypsy in the final throes of her obsession with lust and knitting.

Yo momma so transcendent nothing can describe her.