A Styrofoam World

*



The Opera House, Sydney, Australia.


"He handed the bag of pills to the bouncer at the entrance. "One for each girl," he said, then pointed with a glance toward the double-D blonde on stage showing off her tan lines. She had a pacifier in her mouth, a telltale sign that she was already on ecstasy. The drug sometimes made users bite their own lips and tongue, and a pacifier was a curious but commonly accepted way of preventing that. In a strip club, it had the added bonus of making it look as though she really loved to suck.
"Give her two," said Vladimir.
Beyond Suspicion, James Grippando.


If on a winter's night, clairvoyance, shadows, drunken episodes, past huddles. Everyone clung close to home. There was no money to do anything. Like the country folk who shut down all spending during times of drought, so the city folk were bringing their activities back to a bare minimum. It dovetailed with a Malthusian climb back into pre-industrial societies, global warming giving righteous cause to all those who wanted to simply their lives.

Al Gore's plane sat idling on the tarmac at Sydney airport, a giant machine bird from the world's most powerful nation, burning up more fuel than any of us could use in a lifetime while preaching the dangers of global warming and urging people to simplify their lives. We can't get Styrofoam cups at work anymore; and you have to wash out stale old coffee mugs just to get a drink of water. The Sydney Morning Herald is full of global warming, as if it was the only righteous cause. They've all got religion big time.

Only a few voices are raised in doubt, sceptics who say we can't spend billions of dollars and wind back our economy, with all the human suffering that would entail, based on theories not even the scientists can agree about. Is it the great climate change swindle or the greatest moral challenge of our age? How is any normal person supposed to work this out?

He was collapsed in a corner, trying to put a dignified robe around his aching flesh. There was no way to bring order to these clashing ideologies. A brutal criss crossing of the nation, the tiny desert communities, the drunken shouts, the beauty of the sand dunes and the aching pastel red of the rocky outcrops at dawn, every detail picked out in the clear desert light. He didn't know what the ywere saying. The frozen winds spoke of eternity. His own aging body spoke of mortality. He wanted to be victorious, unified, a force for good, and instead the vastness of the landscape and the complexity of the city from which he came overwhelmed him at every turn.

It had been years since he had written those pieces, insanity in the desert, Fragment Me Quick, Blue Queen, youthful enthusiasm. He was surrounded by the young. This area is a dormitory suburb for Sydney University, which is now in term. They're everywhere, young, purposeful, good looking. He looks out from the prison of his own past, his own grey hair, and they don't notice as they flurt with each other, carry the hopes of their parents, commune intensely about things they think matter, gossip about the most recent couplings and uncouplings.

Daylight saving has just begun this morning, and suddenly it's earlier than it's ever been. My alarm normally goes off at 4.30am and now I wake up automatically at 3.30am. And I'm 55 years old turning 56 in June; and my body aches in inconvenient spots and nothing is right, nothing at all. There were so many events he could have joined; so many occasions he could have befriended people. The last decades had been like a slow subsiding. The dog whined at the back door and he couldn't have cared less. He wondered now where all the energy and enthusiasm had gone.

Times were not right. Nothing is settled. Precious cargo had been aborted. Precious hope abandoned. He thought of Vincent van Gogh and his moments of madness, his letters to Theo, their beauty, their detail. He thought of the masterworks, and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. And everything coalesced. One more week of work and holidays. Cruelty, simple abject cruelty.

The arrogance of the chattering classes was what angered him more than anything; their self righteous holiness, the way they had pervaded all the institutions. They are everywhere now; and have taken over government. It's a stifling agreement in the name of community, the tyranny of diversity. He fought back and got nowhere; and wondered, the price he had paid, whether it was even worth the candle. Oh why had he failed to put in an appearance, why had he stayed isolating at home, why was the slow dissolve so full of echo chambers?

You live a rotten life, his friend said, bowed down, in pain, poverty stricken despite working long hours, alone, in pain, creatively frustrated, unrecognised, a life that was much like every one elses, as the most decent of people toiled and toiled for little reward, running to stand still, working their butts off just to pay the bills, the mortgages, the credit cards, the bills, the borrowings, all of them banked up to make city life impossible; and completely unrewarding. It was not a positive note; he couldn't find one this morning. The Gucci socialists who ruled us swanned from one fabulous tax payer funded event to the next; and the rest of the masses were entirely ground down. They had already been stripped of dignity, meaning, money, they had already been taxed into slavery. And he was just another Joe Blow, ground down, fed up, looking for a way out. Thank God for the bush, for rural retreats; thank God that once upon a time they hadn't been able to reach inside his head, that there were still memories into which he could escape.





THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/05/2208962.htm?section=world

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is at a conference in England with a range of world leaders including the British PM Gordon Brown and former US president Bill Clinton.

Mr Clinton helped start the Progressive Governance Forum in 1999, and he is at this summit outside London with 12 world leaders including the Mr Rudd and Italy's Romano Prodhi.

They want the Doha round of world trade talks to succeed but say it must be balanced with an aid for trade package for poor nations.

They say if this round of trade talks is not agreed soon there is even less chance of it working next year.

The leaders have raised many concerns about global food shortages and energy security.

Mr Clinton says the problem of bio-fuels being grown instead of food must be addressed because the world's rising population can not sustain this level of food and energy use.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKPQac6KsQiA&refer=home

Brown Leads Calls to Tighten Global Financial Market Regulation

By Svenja O'Donnell and Robert Hutton

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Global financial market regulation must be tightened to prevent a repeat of credit market turmoil, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders at a summit on Progressive Governance said today.

Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn joined Brown in calling for worldwide standards for banks to follow in accounting for assets and for changes to work priorities of the IMF and World Bank.

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23482845-5006549,00.html

KEVIN Rudd had some wobbles but he got the basics right on his trip to America. His first and most important job was to reinforce the stability of the US alliance at a time of changing governments in both countries.

It was a significant moment after more than seven years of strong personal friendship between John Howard and President George W. Bush, both conservative leaders with similar views of the world.

Mr Rudd was elected on a promise to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and withdraw combat troops from Iraq, measures opposed by the US Government, but President Bush could not have been more welcoming.

US politicians of all persuasions were eager to make the point that whatever party was in power in Australia and whoever won the US presidential election this year, the alliance would remain solid. Mr Rudd's support for the war effort in Afghanistan and his stopover at a NATO meeting to urge a greater commitment from European nations was appreciated in Washington.

He said all the right things, emphasising that the US alliance was the bedrock of Australian foreign policy. It showed up the nonsense of Liberal Party election claims that voting for Labor would undermine the US relationship.



``It's urgent, and there is a general agreement that we need new and clear rules for financial strategy,'' Brown told reporters at a press conference at the meeting today in Watford, England. ``We cannot allow a situation to emerge again where off- balance-sheet transactions are not reported. The write offs should be clearly validated.''

Joyce, 83, Redfern Resident.