Una's

*



Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden.



They shouted at windows at him, "murderer", time encusted on every lamp post. When a srikingly handsome, charismatic, alright gorgeous, fascinating and personable young woman started going on about how she might bonk a really old person, say someone in their 50s, for a billion dollars, but she wouldn't marry them, not for all the money in the world. No amount of money would be worth submitting to something so utterly gross. They all agreed, the bright, astonishingly good looking young group of 20 somethings. It was about then he decided to take his 57-year-old body home to bed, or at least home to the couch to watch Wimbledon. Lleyton Hewett won his match last night, the little Aussie battler now in the final round of 16, putting him amongst the best tennis players in the world. Oh how he wished things were different; how crowded was his head; how deep his longing for another life.

Joyce, about to turn 85, who's heroic story and charming manner had endeared her to him long ago, wanted a plain feed, so as they were in the area he took her to Una's, now a busy, popular German restaurant in the Cross. "I remember Una's when it was Sydney's only 24-hour coffee shop, I used to know the original Una's," he said. "I was 16 and looked young for my age and I would stumble in drunk at two or three a.m. She was always very kind to me. She would sober me up with icecream and black coffee. She encouraged me with my studies, to finish high school. She was a really nice woman. That was more than 40 years ago." He sighed. Joyce listened abstractedly, for she was dying of leukemia and loved being out with what she saw as a handsome young man.

"I never thought I would be out like this ever again," she said. "Out with a nice looking fella." He laughed. The days when he classified as a nice looking fella were long gone. The gruff waittress with the offhand manner, the one who could barely be bothered to notice them until he shouted: "Mind if we order?", took their orders. No one here, almost no one in the city, would remember the original Una. How nice she was. How kind she had been to him. How much it had meant, someone on his side, after he had escaped the extreme and insistent bashings by his father and had become a real person, a delinquent youth, in that place which had always fascinated him, Kings Cross. William Street crossed with Victoria and Darlinghurst Street underneath the giant Coca Cola sign to form a kind of a T-intersection, or a cross, and he always thought of himself as being "sacrificed on the Cross".

"He should be at home with his mother," the voices whispered, as he swayed unsteadily on his legs, the almost empty bottle of whisky still in his hand, the massive damage he was doing himself of no consequence. For who wanted to live forever. Forty, forty two years later, he sat with this elderly woman in Una's, so differnet to the cafe he had known, which had been tiny and astonishingly colourful, full of late-night drag queens, rent boys, the gay crowd. He couldn't believe it when a drag queen swept her manicured nails across his cheek and said: "You'd look lovely in drag". This was nirvana, so far away from the terror he had known and endured only months before. Derek, if that was his real name, swanned in, complaining about the number of clients he had serviced that night. A dozen, or so he said. Nothing that came out of Derek's well used mouth was very reliable, but nonetheless he was fascinated by him.

And Una, Una was always there, a substitute mother, someone who cared. He shared his dreams about finishing high school and going to university. None of the other boys had dreams or ambitions, beyond meeting a rich sugar daddy or having the op or staying out of jail for another month, and she treated him as her own special adoptee. He could have asked her for anything, she would have helped. She always wanted to know how his studying was going. She always said he would make something of himself. And then Una sold up and went back to Germany; and he never heard or saw of her again. The cafe migrated down the road to its present site, and she sold the business and returned to her homeland. She would be a woman in her seventies now; maybe no longer alive. He wished he could reach across time and thank her; and tell her that yes, things had worked out better than anyone could have possibly imagined.
He had a good job and two children and yes, he had finished high school and gone to universithy; and graduated. How proud she would be. How kind she had been.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-jackson-tv27-2009jun27,0,5837449.story

Michael Jackson was the first great pop star whose career was shaped by television -- not merely showcased by it, like those of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but inseparable from the medium. He was indebted to it and influenced it in turn. Across his four-decade career, he was often someone to listen to, but he was always -- for better and sometimes for worse -- something to see. A lifetime of pictures came back into focus on the day of his death, as cable news outlets ran bits of old videos and Facebook bloomed with links to YouTube clips.

He first appeared on TV in 1969, on "The Hollywood Palace" and "The Ed Sullivan Show" at the time of the Jackson 5's debut single, "I Want You Back." The sound of that single is astounding -- like Jackson's moonwalk, it seems to deform time. But the song told only part of that story: There is the dancing and the colorful funk of the costumes, and above all there is the face of Michael Jackson, the face of Things Beginning. The song is about a loss, but there is only elation in his performance. Watching that "Ed Sullivan" appearance now, he looks fearless, clear-eyed, beautiful and in charge. That he was only 11 years old -- you couldn't ignore it, and it was completely beside the point.

A family-friendly family band then, before they became a thing of tabloid fascination -- expressed in a 1992 TV movie, "The Jacksons: An American Dream" -- the Jacksons were made for television, and appeared there often in the twilight of variety. (They also became an animated cartoon, like the Beatles before them.) But as time went on, as Michael grew taller and unpredictably different, they seemed momentarily to fade. Things were changing, but you couldn't see where it would lead.

That was settled on the night of the 1983 TV special "Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever," in which he appeared with his brothers, but also, for five minutes, claimed the stage for himself -- performing a song not released on Motown, "Billie Jean," seizing upon the occasion to remake himself utterly. (He had already begun to remake himself physically.)

The appearance replayed the look and moves of the song's video; he wore a suit of spangles, a fat white glove, pants cut short to show his ankles and make his long legs look even longer. The dancing was encyclopedic, one move following hard on another: spins, crouches, kicks, Bob Fosse angles, Gene Kelly silhouettes, and of course the brand-new moonwalk. But the smile of the happy kid or the earnest entertainer was gone, replaced by a pleading anger that would thereafter become the dominant note in his self-presentation. It was a beginning, and it was also

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8579812

Further tests will be needed to determine whether prescription drugs played any role in Michael Jackson's death, coroner's officials have said.

The results of the post-mortem examination were deferred, possibly for between four and six weeks, and attention turned to Jackson's doctor, who was with him when he fell ill.

Dr Conrad Murray, a cardiologist who practices in California, Nevada and Texas, will now be questioned further by detectives, while his car was seized from outside Jackson's house in case it contained drugs or other evidence.

Charlie Beck, assistant police chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said it was "way too early" to draw any conclusions about the singer's death.

He said officers spoke to Dr Murray immediately after Jackson's death but now wanted to carry out "an extensive follow-up interview".

Craig Harvey, operations chief of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office, said there was no evidence of foul play or trauma on the superstar's body but further tests were needed.

He said he could not comment on any specific drugs which Jackson may have been prescribed, but added: "We know he was taking some prescription medications."

He said: "There was no indication of any external trauma or any indication of foul play on the body of Mr Jackson."

The post-mortem examination took about three hours and Jackson's was later released to his family, he said.

A source close to the investigation said Jackson appeared to have suffered a heart attack. A heart attack would not rule out drugs playing a role in his death, but could also indicate a long-term problem such as heart disease.

http://www.tmz.com/2009/06/27/michaels-estate-may-turn-around/

It's the ultimate irony -- Michael Jackson's death could make his struggling estate flush with cash.

It's simple math. Jackson spent millions of dollars every year. He was paying $100,000 a month just for renting the Holmby Hills house.

We're told the bottom line could get significantly better and quickly.

That brings up an obvious point -- with significant child support on the line, there's even more of an incentive for Debbie Rowe to fight for custody. If she does, there will be an epic fight between Rowe and Katherine Jackson.

Spindly Stalks

*



Where I come from, no one knows
Where I'm going I can't disclose
but I'll wear no labels upon my clothes
on the day of my ascension

I deal the pack by remote control
I pluck straight aces from a garbage hole
but I won't take with me what I can't hold
on the day of my ascension

Chorus
From this moment on, all laws are reversed
Truth will be revealed to the creatures of this earth
on the day of my ascension

There's always someone I have to lose
I've got 4 freeways from which to choose
I'll have 8 exits that I can use
on the day of my ascension

People love me, well, people try
I have to leave them all by end by
Some day I'll leave them high and dry
on the day of my ascension

Where I come from no-one knows
Where I'm going I can't disclose
The angels will shriek when the engine blows
on the day of my ascension

The Triffids



"I heard 'hotel room' and I was there," the young man, a friend of his son, babbled excitedly; and they all laughed. They had all been at a dance, Uni Fest, in a club in Kings Cross. How different it was living with teenagers, in contrast to the cute little blond things which used to cling to him so determinedly. Even now, sometimes, if he happened to be walking down the street with his son and daughter, he would notice how they would walk so close to him on either side, as if they couldn't get any closer. After everything that had happened, everything they had been through, it was understandable, the clinging. "It wasn't easy," he said, often, and they stood in circles at yet another farewell, this time for the old News photographer Bob Finlayson, who has been made redundant at the age of 70. Join the queue. What was going on?

"Dad, will you drive us down to pick up Todd, they won't let him into the hotel room, he's down at Darling Harbour," my son said. It was four a.m. He had just got up. They had just got home. How funny they were. "Alright," he said, pretending he, too, might have once been young. "You don't have to get out of your pyjamas," Sam said. He shrugged. "No worries." As if anything mattered anymore. In these dark times. At least someone could laugh. Suzy gave him a peck on the cheek and wished him happy birthday; for his 57th. "How much can the passage of time solve," Bernard said at the farewell, when he retold the story. Their conflict, his fight for his children, had been legendary around the office, and even now the first question many people asked was, how's your kids?

"The boy's in university," he would say and they would express astonishment, for they all remembered him and his sister as little blond knee high kids running around the office while he desperately tried to file. All was lost. All harked back to the eighties. The photographers were settling in for one of their tribal gatherings, at the Aurora, the once seedy pub near Central which had now been renovated and was filled to the rafters with office workers on a Friday night. Many hadn't bothered to go home. Someone had put $500 on the bar. It was going to be a wild night. All else, all out, he could feel the cold fires burning in another place, he could see the night descended on the scrappy, depressed, over controlled city, where sniffer dogs hunted the citizenry and parking cops tyrannised the public. Where totalitarianism was only one step away.

We are certain, we really are, that in the pyramidic forces, in the shallows and even in the deeper waters, with the flash of silver fish and bright brick colours of the water and the sun drenched, colour drenched hills behind, of finding our fate. God has chosen you for a higher purpose, the voice intoned. Not just witness. Not just celebrant. To expose the human condition, to make sense of the unfathomable. To understand why, at Hawke's Nest, a little girl was deliberately starved to death by her parents, why the most evil of things could so easily happen. "Dead Evil" the father had tattooed on his knuckles. It was so cruel, beyond cruel, the staggering indifference these people displayed, the horror, the horror, hidden behind suburban doors, a little girl locked in a room, peering out.

It was perhaps the worst case of child neglect Australia had ever seen; and as the government continued to pour ever more greater sums into ever more dysfunctional departments, and the increasing swathes of welfare dependent under-class grew and grew and grew, and Labor politicians bleated about the country's most vulnerable, and did more harm than good with their bleeding heart rhetoric. A weak man needs someone weaker to make him feel strong; the ideology of the left ensured a public discourse ripe with victimhood, and the toiling masses, those who lived decent, simple, humble lives, just got up and went to work while bureaucrats built ever expanding empires and politicians, the pimples on the pie, spouted nonsense with all the profundity of a genuine believer. But they didn't really believe, he knew that. Their sole motivation, like every other life form, was survival.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26331380

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday his hopes for a direct dialogue with Iran had been affected by what he described as the brutality of Tehran's "outrageous" crackdown on protesters in the aftermath of its disputed election.

"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks and we don't yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran," Obama told a joint White House news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"There are going to be discussions that continue on the international stage around Iran's nuclear program. I think the direct dialogue between the United States and Iran and how that proceeds, I think we're going to have to see how that plays itself out in the days and weeks ahead," he said.

Obama rejected a demand for an apology from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said Obama was interfering in the Iranian election.

"I don't take Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran," he said.

The U.S. leader praised Iranian protesters, saying: "Their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice. The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous."

He said Ahmadinejad's chief rival, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, had "captured the imagination" of Iranians who want to open up to the West.

Obama reiterated U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which Washington fears is to develop atomic weapons but Tehran says is for generating nuclear energy.

"Iran's possession of nuclear weapons will trigger an arms race in the Middle East that would be bad ... for the security of the entire region," Obama said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8578947

The cause of Michael Jackson's death may not be known for weeks, investigators have said.

Los Angeles County Coroner Jerry McKibben said an autopsy (post-mortem examination) was being held on Friday but results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, which could take several days and maybe weeks.

However, if a cause of death can be determined by the autopsy, the results will be announced, Mr McKibben said.

Police said they were investigating the death, standard procedure in high-profile cases.

Officers are searching for a doctor who they hope will help in the investigation.

A Los Angeles police spokeswoman said they towed from Jackson's house a BMW owned by one of the superstar's doctors.

"We have not been able to interview the doctor yet. His car was impounded because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death," she said.

Celebrity gossip web site TMZ.com reported that the doctor lived at the home. The spokeswoman said she could not confirm that and did not know the doctor's identity. She stressed that the doctor was not under criminal investigation but coroner's investigators wanted to contact him.

Jackson's brother Jermaine earlier said: "It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known."

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/turnbull-was-as-shocked-as-everybody-else-20090626-czv2.html

LIBERALS are fretting over what Godwin Grech may tell the police after the Treasury official was coughed up as the Coalition's Treasury mole.

Mr Grech, who has been in hospital for the past week, is understood to have started helping police with their inquiries into the fake email which has embarrassed the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull.

The investigation has also been widened to cover other leaks to the Coalition from Treasury over the past 18 months concerning Fuel Watch and the bank deposit guarantee.

Liberal sources have outed Mr Grech as the Coalition's mole in the Treasury, ostensibly to back Mr Turnbull.

If previous information was solid, Mr Turnbull could not be criticised for believing the email to be real, one source reasoned.

Mr Turnbull's leadership was damaged by the fake email affair, with Liberals agreeing that it was only the lack of an alternative that was preventing widespread destabilisation.

Mr Grech was the Treasury official who told a Senate hearing on June 19 of an email purportedly linking Kevin Rudd to efforts to assist car dealer John Grant. Mr Grant had given Mr Rudd a ute.

If the email were true, Mr Rudd would have misled the Parliament. The email turned out to be a hoax and it subsequently transpired that Mr Turnbull and his chief inquisitor, Eric Abetz, had had a secret meeting with Mr Grech in the lead-up to his Senate inquiry appearance.

Mr Turnbull and Senator Abetz have refused to confirm or deny the meeting, saying the whole fake email is subject to a police investigation.

Dark Wilderness

*



On stinking hot days when the ground burns your feet
You stare at the ceiling; the trains break your sleep
The roads have got pot holes, and your car falls apart
And the milkbar attendant would like to sell up

And our neighbours hold on to the things they know best
They sweep out verandahs and cry for their kids

The primary school children on the gravel school yard
They've got grins that start one side and go all around
Happy as they play make-believe games with themselves
For a while

And it's the older Greek women who are the ones dressed in black
Not new wave guitarists with cows on their backs

And the Thistle Hotel is a dream on it's own
And every pool table has blood on the cloth
The motor car workshop has dogs chained and tied to the fence
For the night

And the further you travel the longer it takes
Your car takes a beating, the roads aren’t the best
And I don't think the Colbys have been out to Thomastown
And somehow I doubt that they will
Somehow I doubt that they will

Thomastown.



There were so many shadows, it was like battling through a forest. But what was astonishing - and new - was that there was hope. Too easily wound back, they had said. Unfortunately their words were prophetic. Social movements came and went, but now, in the 21st century, the tyranny of the dominant ideologies had become all encompassing. No one was allowed to disagree, or debate. If questions were raised you were labelled an immoral person. It was an effective manner of shutting down debate. Everyone wants to be accepted. Everyone wants to be part of the pack, loved and admired. There was no independence of thought. There was no courage. There was no grace. The graceful cathedral towers of yesteryear had been painted in a bright, sickening yellow, and soared against a dark, polluted sky.

Their medieval origins, the faith people had put in these institutions over centuries, only made them more vulnerable to attack. He was mustering a uniform; he was seeking sustenance of the soul, to reach back and find a belief system which could service him now, in 2009. The inbetween year when the planet plummeted into the future, dizzying in speed, dazzling in intent. We were such tiny, frail creatures, and as attention moved away from the baby boomers, who had thought their generation was the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the most progressive, most morally correct, most committed, most talented generation of them all. What a shock it was for them to realise they weren't the centre of the universe after all. Even outsiders had been caught up in the fervour, in a higher moral cause, and believed their lives worthy.

We were shadows. They had grown fast and strong, out in the paddock, in the sunlight, but they had seriously over-reached. Now their spindly forms could barely sustain their own weight. The hypocrisy of the arguments was so apparent the myths could not be sustained. I'm trying to get ordinary dads on to the show, he had said, thrusting a microphone underneath the man's nose, his kid squirming with curiosity or frustration. His own children were teenagers now. How quickly the focus had shifted, how quickly things had changed. He had loved them so dearly. They had been such georgeous little things, blonde, cute, bubbling over with personality. Now they were gallumphing big things with their own personalities and their own lives; and he had been caught out with utter surprise when the principal kissed him on the cheek. The left wing principal who was always promoting some leftwing cause or other.

She had kissed him on the cheek and his daughter had prospered, so all the tiny things he could have picked a fight over he just ignored, let through to the keeper as the saying went. Life was so busy. He hadn't slept in four days; and finally passed out from exhaustion. I don't sleep anymore, he had cheefully announced. I'm getting so much done. But in the end we're all flesh and blood, ordinary souls, ordinary frames, and the astonishing images which marched through his brain, at once like soldiers and again like random episodes, veils, sheets of half completed narratives. These glimpses of a bigger, more chaotic world, assailed him from dawn to dusk. In the wee hours the thinking became more linear, but even then the parade of images was nonsensical, urgent, pointless, emotionally overwhelming.

Disgrace had been the movie, J.M. Coetze, the winner of so many literary prizes, the author of the book on which it was based. Was this the ultimately politically correct movie? the disgraced John Malkovitch, his fine, intelligent, older face dominating the movie, the sweeping African landscape. Joyce, the 84-year-old lady he took to the movies once a week, wriggled in her Dendy seat and afterwards they looked at each other quizzically. What was all that about? Did you like it. Full of moral ambiguities, like life itself. He had sex with a student and was in disgrace, yet displayed no remorse. His lesbian daughter was raped by a gang of black youths, yet she kept the baby. Just because I'm a lesbian doesn't mean I hate children, she said. And so we shrugged, not knowing what to think, acknowledging we had been rivetted, drawn into a world, walking in beauty, as the film's theme song went, and we didn't know what would drive us, as we walked out of the cinema, how much longer any of us had to live, how fast the late-life leukemia would destroy her.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345610

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is acting like a three-year old throwing a tantrum by refusing to co-operate with police investigations into the OzCar affair, the government says.

Senior Treasury official Godwin Grech has been leaking unofficial information to the coalition since the days of the Howard government, Liberal MPs have told the ABC.

Mr Turnbull on Wednesday said the opposition would refuse to explain to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) its relationship with Mr Grech.

'There has never been a case where parliamentarians have assisted governments in trying to trace down leaks from the public service,' he told ABC Television's 7.30 Report.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said Mr Turnbull's actions were comparable with those of a toddler.

'His performance today has reminded me a bit of my three-year-old daughter throwing a tantrum after she's been caught scribbling on the walls,' Mr Tanner told ABC Television's Lateline.

'It's not going to work for Malcolm Turnbull, it doesn't work for her.'

An AFP search of Mr Grech's Canberra home on Monday uncovered a fake email, which purported to have Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's office seeking to give Queensland car dealer John Grant special access to the government's $2 billion OzCar financing scheme.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345547

Kevin Rudd's flair for languages isn't limited to Mandarin - he's spoken Spanish to welcome the King of Spain and his wife Queen Sofia to Australia.

The prime minister impressed visiting Spaniards when he used their native tongue to welcome the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, and his wife Queen Sofia to Australia at a reception at Parliament House on Wednesday.

The Spanish royals were on their first state visit since the Australian bicentenary in 1988.

They arrived in Canberra on Wednesday morning, part of a three-day visit to the national capital and Sydney.

Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull paid tribute to the shared values of Australia and Spain as modern democracies.

They thanked the King and Queen for the contribution their homeland had made to one of Australia's iconic industries - sheep farming.

Prized Spanish Merinos arrived in Australia via South Africa about 20 years after European settlement.

Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull will both have an official audience with the royals at Government House on Thursday.

The King and Queen will then fly to Sydney, where they will open the Instituto Cervantes, a Spanish government cultural institution.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345613

Rental vacancy rates across NSW have dropped even further with Sydney recording its lowest rate in 12 months, Real Estate Institute figures show.

The Hunter, Central Coast, Sydney and the Illawarra have fewer rental properties available, new monthly figures from the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW) show.

Sydney's vacancy rate plunged 50 basis points from 1.5 per cent in April to 1.0 per cent in May.

'This is the lowest result recorded since May last year and is extremely disappointing,' REINSW president Steven Martin said in a statement.

Over the same period, available rentals dropped in the Illawarra from 1.9 per cent to 1.6 per cent.

In the Hunter, rates fell by 20 basis points to 1.7 per cent.

Mr Martin said first-time home buyer grants and record low interest rates had not boosted rental vacancies.

'These results are a double-edged sword - great news for landlords but grim news for tenants,' he said.

Second Class Warriors

*



I recall a schoolboy coming home
Through fields of cane
To a house of tin and timber
And in the sky
A rain of falling cinders
From time to time
The waste memory-wastes
I recall a boy in bigger pants
Like everyone
Just waiting for a chance
His father’s watch
He left it in the showers
From time to time
The waste memory-wastes
I recall a bigger brighter world
A world of books
And silent times in thought
And then the railroad
The railroad takes him home
Through fields of cattle
Through fields of cane
From time to time
The waste memory-wastes
The waste memory-wastes
Further, longer, higher, older

Cattle and Cane, The Go Betweens.



He couldn't believe he had been robbed, yet again. Show the slightest vulnerability and they attack. These are the country's allegedly "most vulnerable". But it's perfectly alright for them to call us "white c...s". Why? Was the grumbling old right winger rising in him again, that one who had embarrassed him before, ranting against the injustices perpetrated by the pack mentality of the left. And yet he, too, had once been happy to accept the label "marshmallow left"; so long ago. So long ago there had been love and triumph and long wild nights as de rigeur; as the way things were. Stumbling, because you hadn't had a night out unless you experienced at least one black out. "I was thinking of making a pass at you," he said; and the handsome young man looked startled, and put his feet back in the car. "Were you?"

From all these days to ancient days, when Tennessee Williams haunted the back of cinemas looking for trade and the Dancer from the Dance bloke moaned about caring for his mother, about how all his friends were dying of AIDS. About how the great gay liberation movement had descended to a few ragged queens shuffling their pride porn collections from rented apartment to rented apartment, deteriorating in quality as they grew sicker and their finances dried up. And the fabulous nights dried up. And everything dried up. And rather than turning heads and hearts; they attracted nothing but a sympathetic stare from the young. How could you have let yourself go so badly? Time was cruel, but to the untouched, to the fantasist, to the secret lovers, to the young and young at heart, time was indifferent. They would never grow old.

Something to be, something to say you had been. That was the phrase that rang in those far off days, when he wrote deep and meaningful, fractured, incoherent, barely readable stories about the encroaching sterility of the modern world, the crystalline frost eating into the fabric of everything. How sad he had been, for no accountable reason. Living life on the bottom of a lead aquarium, squashed by the weight of the liquid mercury which passed for water in this terrifying place. There would be no saving grace. Except in oblivion, which he constantly sought. Except in the adventures he thought would mark him out; smashed as, never trust a man who doesn't drink. The increasing contrast between his private life and the mainstream job he now held down ultimately led to a schitzsophrenic break. The crippled dwarf hiding behind all those shields, it just wouldn't come out.

And so, ultimately, these strange constructions formed on the back of a wave of alcohol and other substances; abuse; oblivion. It was cute when he was stumbling into Una's at 3am as a young looking 16-year-old, and Una, a German woman who had come out here and established Sydney's first 24-hour coffee shop, would sober him up with black coffee and icecream, and all around him the voices: "He should be at home with his mother". But oblivion, desperate incoherence, a deep drunkenness; all of it was increasingly pathetic for a man in his 30s, 40s, 50s. There would always be people circling, that he had learnt. They were never well intentioned. They circled in the school yard and they circled in later life; and the deeper darknesses which had haunted his every waking moment, they were gone amidst the clutter of lost loves and uncompleted projects.

What was the lesson, if any? Live each day at a time, don't waste whatever you have left? Be humbled. Show an attitude of gratitude. He didn't think so. The lesson was one of narrative strength, of structure, of the broad sweep of people's lives. Don't take anyone for granted. Don't jump to conclusions. And so he smiled, in what he thought was a gracious way, and did not rise to the bait; the jackals sliding off him into the night. I'm so horny I'd f... a monkey, the rent boy loudly declared; and the old queen literally put his wallet back in his pocket. Easy availability cheapened the price. The desperate grunts. The frantic backs and forths; preying they would come quickly. So many young faces populated these tortured dreams; this life so far from any suburban normality. Television had changed us; media had changed us. And now what had once been a glittering surface was opaque, shot through with contradictions, complexities. He was sacred and he was ready; but the person he had waited for all his life, that great love which would override physical abnormalities and psychic tortures, the crippled, drunken dwarf who had lived so triumphantly in all his dreams, was not to be. He passed by every opportunity; and instead opened the door to strangers.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25681459-661,00.html

VICTORIA'S first swine-flu fatality remained critically ill at a country hospital for several hours because no intensive-care beds were available anywhere in the state, his family claim.

Anthony Splatt, 35, died on Saturday, two days after collapsing at his Colac home, becoming the second Australian to die from the flu strain.

Last night, his devastated parents Brian and Judith told of their nightmare, saying they believed their son had to wait about three hours while fighting for his life for a bed to be found, eventually at Maroondah Hospital early on Friday.

"His poor GP was pacing the floor in Colac because he was getting sicker and sicker," said Mrs Splatt, a nurse.

An angry Brian Splatt, 73, said: "There were no beds in Victoria. It seemed like forever (before a bed was found).

"We hope in a way his death makes more intensive care beds available."

The family told how Anthony, described by his shattered mum as "a gentle giant", had appeared to be suffering only a common cold last week.

"Anthony appeared to have an ordinary common cold with the usual symptoms," his mum said.

"He didn't complain (but) he was probably feeling a lot worse than he let on.

"He collapsed when he went to get up on Thursday."

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-06-23-voa26.cfm

Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf describes the declared victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's recent presidential elections as a "coup d'etat."

Makhmalbaf says the present situation in Iran is not the result of voting irregularities, but a true and proper "coup d'etat."

Addressing the foreign media in Rome, the man who has become the official spokesman abroad for Mir Hossein Mousavi, spoke out strongly about the situation in Iran following the presidential election.

No peace

Makhmalbaf says opposition candidate Mousavi was preparing his victory speech when military commanders came to tell him he could not be the winner. He adds that the people of Iran do not want to be ruled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the next four years and there will be no peace in Iran if he is the leader.

Makhmalbaf spoke of the slogans called out by the people in Iran, saying they do not want the atomic bomb, but democracy. The people, he says, feel they have been robbed of their vote and that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not their president. He says they shout out that they do not want a dictatorship, but a free society.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25682399-601,00.html

AT first you don't realise the young woman is actually dying.

She's lying on the ground, people around her, looking stunned.

Her eyes swell. She looks traumatised. Her eyes swell even more.

It's all happening so quickly that it's hard to work out what's going on - all you can see now are her swollen white eyes.

She could be any woman in Iran - a young Iranian woman with all her adult life ahead of her.

Except that she's been caught at the receiving end of her government's crackdown.

Suddenly you see blood start coming from her mouth. Then men around her begin screaming. It's not clear what they're shouting, but within seconds the shouts go from cries for help to shouts of horror.

Then she dies. She dies in 10 seconds. We sit in an internet cafe in Tehran and watch her die.

Since we first watched the video, the world has come to know the woman as Neda.

But before the world saw Neda Salehi Agha Soltan's death, the video had gripped the internet cafes of Tehran that particular day. There's a different one each day.

In this strange civil war, internet cafes have become the command-and-control centres of the opposition.

A man who had been sitting opposite me in a booth called me over - he gave me headphones and wanted me to watch and hear the 26-year-old music student dying during Saturday's protest in Tehran. Then he showed me others. Then someone else in the cafe beckoned me to their terminal. They had photos they wanted me to see.
We're all sitting at our computers in a suburb of Tehran, looking at the latest pictures from the city's killing fields.

A Dying Tomorrow

*



I opened a notebook, it read The Darlinghurst Years
I snapped it shut but out jumped some tears
I didn't have to read it, it all came back
Dragging my fingers through my hair
Hiding behind her back

Gut rot cappuccino, gut rot spaghetti
Gut rot rock'n'roll through the eyes of Frank Brunetti
And always the traffic, always the lights
Joe played the cello through those
Darlinghurst Nights

One more coffee and I must go
Back to my room more chapters to go
We'll meet up in an alley with more places I know

I'm going to change my appearance everyday
I'm going to write a movie and then I'm going to star
in a play
I'm going to go to Caracas because you know I'm
just going to have to get away

Marjorie and Kim, Andy and Clint, Debbie, Bertie, people came and went
And then there was Suzie who we never ever saw again

And always the traffic always the lights
Climbing that hill star studded nights
Joe played the cello

Alright.

The Go Betweens, Darlinghurst Nights.



So there were shadows; and the memories which kept playing could have been yesterday, they were so vivid. These days he was always awake at two and three in the morning, the nights crawling by. It was impossible to sleep. Six foot strangers. Sandy haired, handsome young men. We were all in this together. The ancient queens, or they seemed ancient to us, some of them were barely even 30-years-old, always circled. They all made it very clear that without money they were not available. The only way any of them would ever come across was if the customer was willing to pay. What did they think, they were doing this for fun? Love besotted queens were always the most lucrative, most willing to pay. He barely lifted a finger. he was the one to be worshipped. He hated the thought of touching them; and insisted there was always a bottle of scotch in the hotel room; so that he would remember nothing. Their hands, their mouths, creeping over him.

Alan said once, one afternoon when they were pissed and stoned, that he'd do it for nothing if he wanted, he didn't mind, they were friends, and they suspected he might really be gay; gay and happy, a poofter not yet old enough to be a queen. Hit me with your handbag, hit me with your handbag, they had chanted in the school. He was driving to East Maitland today, in the smart new environmentally friendly Prius, fuel efficient, fool resistant, like driving a toaster. He was shocked by everything, the thoughts which kept him awake throughout the early hours, the simpering sympathy he could not abide, the aches and pains of old age. He wanted to become the person he was capable of, the being he had denied himself. He wanted to fulfil his potential. Oh how he ached, his heart, and his eyes kept filling with tears for no accountable reason, and if all was lost, lost, these were manufactured emotions and beyond that was some other, greater distress.

He didn't understand what was happening to him. Previously, genius, major projects, had driven him through the restless nights. And as an oblivion seeker he fore swore common sense. He stepped off the edge of the cliff. He dived through into the darkness. He went, on tight arse Tuesday, to the movies; Startrek, the latest, where a young James Kirk Jr often found himself clinging astonishingly to the edge of cliffs. In tight, milli-second precise rescues. In amazing adventures. How good was that, his teenage son declared; and for once they were in complete agreement on a movie. Oh shadows, shadows, I can see you lurking in alcoves, standing in doorways, want some fun, hon?

He had always loved red light districts, and his own city was no exception, even though this half-arsed place, with its tawdry sex shops and the Piccollo Bar, a tiny cafe he had been going to since the late sixties, had always seemed a shallow reflection of its European sisters. As if, on the other side of the world, was a more genuine, solid, authentic place. Sydney, as travel writer Jan Morris had observed, had a transitory feel about it; as if man had impertinently built a city of glass and concrete on the edge of a great continent, and it could all be washed away at a moments notice. Two am and the sounds of shouting, arguing, partying, drift up from the Block on the still night air. He wanted to go back across his blog and delete the embarrassing bits; the grumbling right wing malcontent who had no place in a modern, progressive, left wing world; the drunken old queen who's stale breath left them winding down the car window; the earnest, disturbed young artist, the boy who was so badly bashed.

But all those voices, those personalities, formed an aggregate whole, and he resisted the urge to make himself more presentable. Sometimes darkness and flaws are the only windows the soul provides. He was surprised, but also deeply moved; and they came for him now, the vipers from the past, if only to ensure his troubled spirit remained productive, to mock the aging process, to find comfort where no comfort lay. Beware. Trust no one. And they urged others to trust; and he couldn't be free. Ignore what that wanker said; the old jail bird said; and he took to heart the psychic bullying, the weak preying on the weaker, the emotional vampires who were always going to take advantage of his vulnerability. He was strong, he could be strong, in a world not suited to his fragile spirit. His ancient home world had delivered him here; and he searched and searched for an explanation. There was none. He peered out at the humans who were sitting all around him and the sign came up in his head yet again: Trust No One. He could feel them reaching out, and he shuddered, just as he had shuddered all those years ago at their damp, clammy hands and their loving, fetid mouths.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345197

Govt hounds Turnbull over OzCar affair
Updated: 19:51, Tuesday June 23, 2009

Labor government ministers lined up, one after the other, to hound Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull in parliament over the OzCar affair on Tuesday.

Nearly 24 hours after a forged email caused the collapse of Mr Turnbull's case alleging Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had misled parliament, the government stepped up its calls for Mr Turnbull to apologise and resign.

While mystery still surrounds the fake email, which police suspect was fabricated by Treasury official Godwin Grech, Mr Turnbull admitted he had spoken to the public servant in the past two months.

'I mean Mr Grech is very well known and I have certainly spoken to Mr Grech. I know Mr Grech as I know many public servants in Canberra,' Mr Turnbull told ABC radio on Tuesday.

The Nine network reported on Tuesday night that coalition sources suggest Mr Turnbull and one other Liberal frontbencher had been communicating with Mr Grech for some time.

Federal police were continuing their investigation into the email, which they say originated in a computer in Treasury and was sent to Mr Grech's home computer.

ABC TV news reported police would question Mr Grech about a series of leaks from Treasury in the past year including adverse advice about the FuelWatch scheme and an email exchange between Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and Treasury head Ken Henry about the bank deposit guarantee.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8112829.stm

There is an uneasy stand-off in Iran after a deadly weekend of clashes, and skirmishes on Monday between police and protestors. Four experts assess possible developments.

Kasra Naji

"My guess is that sporadic street violence will continue in big cities and at universities."
Kasra Naji, special correspondent for the BBC Persian Service
Professor Haleh Afshar

"Without the re-run of the elections the regime can only continue by extreme oppression."
Baroness Haleh Afshar, Professor of Politics & Women's Studies at the University of York
Karim Sadjadpour

"There are already signs that the opposition is entering a new phase of civil disobedience."
Karim Sadjadpour, associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Elaha Mohtasham

"Unless the demonstrations spread to other cities, it is difficult to imagine them continuing indefinitely."
Elahe Mohtasham, senior research associate at The Foreign Policy Centre in London

KASRA NAJI
What will happen next is anyone's guess. The fact is that both sides are weighing their options.

On the government side, there are signs that Iranian leaders are divided as to how to proceed and how to crush this movement. Some are more hardline than others. Some want to give some concessions to the opposition in the hope that it will be enough to calm tempers.

But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's hardline speech on Friday in which he again put his approval and seal on the election results, makes it difficult for the government side to back down even slightly.

On the opposition side, obviously, the realisation that the hardliners are going to use all means at their disposal, including violence, has led to some soul-searching. There is a debate about whether a nationwide strike is an option.

My guess is that sporadic street violence will continue in big cities and at universities and people will continue to shout "Allahu Akhbar" ("God is Great") from the rooftops every night.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25679882-26103,00.html

THE chance of an early election based on climate change appears to have faded for the time being after the Senate delayed a vote on emissions trading.

In the last week of Parliament before the long winter break, senators voted to consider other Bills ahead of the emissions trading scheme legislation.

That means a vote on emissions trading is unlikely this week.

It probably will not take place until August, which would kill off the chances of the Government getting the first stage of a double dissolution election trigger before the break.

In order to get a double dissolution trigger, the Government must fail to pass the same Bill twice, with a gap of three months between the two votes.

Nonetheless, the emissions trading scheme, due to get under way in 2011, appears doomed to fail in the Senate because no one likes it but Labor.

The Coalition teamed with two crossbench senators to push back the vote on the scheme today.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong accused the Opposition of "playing political games''.

"They have been filibustering, wasting time, using every tactic they can to delay debate on this Bill,'' Senator Wong said.

It would now be "very difficult'' to find the time to debate the Bill this week.

Senator Wong urged the Opposition to allow for extended sittings of the Senate this week to get through all the Bills.

Second Chances

*



In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,
We argued about blowing up the world,
But you were living backward, so each night
You crept a moment closer to the breast,
And they were living, all of them, those frames
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,
And most your father, the old man gone blind,
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments
And tablets cut with dreams of piety
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men
Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment
At cargoes they had never thought to bear,
These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.

Where have you gone? The tide is over you,
The turn of midnight water's over you,
As Time is over you, and mystery,
And memory, the flood that does not flow.
You have no suburb, like those easier dead
In private berths of dissolution laid -
The tide goes over, the waves ride over you
And let their shadows down like shining hair,
But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend
Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;
And you are only part of an Idea.
I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,
The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,
And the short agony, the longer dream,
The Nothing that was neither long nor short;
But I was bound, and could not go that way,
But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.
If I could find an answer, could only find
Your meaning, or could say why you were here
Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath
Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells.


FIVE BELLS, Kenneth Slessor's elegy for his friend Joe Lynch, who drowned in Sydney Harbour in 1927, is arguably the most famous poem written about Sydney.



Vicious souls and manufactured hysterics, the dark forces of government and the evil spin meisters, they came often, they came early, they circled the camp and there was no reasoning with them. He had only heard stories, having been born well after the last major attack. The legends had placed them as wraiths, unreasonable beings, as ghostly shrouds. Despite his size, despite his prowess as a warrior, he was frightened. Although the rest of the villagers were looking up to him for protection, he had to admit it to himself, standing alone there at the edge of their circle of grass thatched houses, listening to the forest for any signs of danger approaching. There were booby traps everywhere, but he did not really expect them to work, not if what he had heard was true. This was not a situation where dignity, self worth, his powerful frame, his status as a village elder, would help. He was cold, and pulled his jacket tighter around his frame.

The dogs howled. Restless, irritable, discontent. No one took any responsibility for anything. These spirits could slag men off with impunity; and no one would move to defend them, or to shut down the hate speech. Easily manipulated, dangerously compliant journalists reported the hysteria as if it was real. He remained shocked at the brutality, the juvenile viciousness, of these things. How dark is the hour? How fast are the forces mustering? How sad to see everything they had worked so hard for disappearing with the stroke of a pen. Our elected representatives did not answer their phones. Cold crisis, cold comfort, there had been so many different lives. As he stood on the wharf in Singapore, watching the sun rise, still drunk from the copious quantities of alcohol he had consumed in the pier restaurant. Snickering soldiers. Let's go down Boogy Street.

Let's escape everything. Let's go down a different path. Let's avoid every emotional confrontation, for to feel is to hurt. It was wonderful to be at least partially grounded, not to have to rely on the church, or the meetings, or the kindness of strangers. Not to die a street alcoholic. Not to muster the shadows; not to be warned of salvation. The homeless man who had been hanging around Newtown, who he had always spoken to and occasionally given money to in return for keeping an eye on his car, began talking to him. Although difficult to understand, he was strangely lucid for a street person. While he occasionally saw him drinking, he did not appear to be drunk, and in essence was one of those people who prefer to sleep rough. It's cold at night, he said from inside his mountain of filthy clothes. Cold. Too cold. Where you sleeping, he asked? And the answer was garbled, imprecise, but he gathered it was in some sort of culvert or alcove near the railway lines, a little cave that only he could find.

The Rudd government has made homelessness a priority, one of their many priorities in a scatter gun approach which involved so much spin people had begun to seriously doubt their integrity. Turnbull over reached, calling for Rudd's resignation over the slightest thing; and now the dogs were baying in every direction, in an unquiet peace, the dogs barking in the village. He could hear them coming and he remained frozen. He knew he was going to die. The howling of the dogs grew louder, and sleepy, concerned villagers began spilling out of their homes and tents, worried about what was happening. He was quickly joined by other young men, their spears in hand. The shadows of the wraiths moved through the forest; a deathly chill of an ancient evil passing through them all. They had not been thus tested for three generations, and the desire for peace was strong amongst them. It was not to be. The phantasms moved quickly, and now he could see the shadows themselves in the forest, moving faster, faster.

He said to the homeless man, I'll try to help you, I think I know someone who can help. He had heard the convoluted tale of his approaches to the Department of Housing, but without a home and without a phone, how could they contact him even if it was true? He claimed he was on some sort of waiting list, waiting for a home. All he wanted to do was come in for a while, out of the cold of winter, away from the new breed of youngsters who were likely to bash him. This stranger who was talking to him, who he regarded as an important man, a man of stature, a man with a home, was promising to do something, and he sat on the door step of a terrace next to the Glengarry and waited for him to appear. The man would make the phone call, he would get a home, he would have a place of his very own. He might even get a heater. The ancient terrors were still there, just out of sight, but in the modern world there were little boxes where people could hide, could dwell, where no one could get to them. It was shocking, he had to admit that. But between ancient fears and modern perils, it was as if his head had been spiked on a pole, as if the world was ridiculing him and there was nowhere to hide, as if here, too, in every place and every time, things were going savagely wrong. The wraiths went straight for his throat.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/22/iran-protests-revolutionary-guard

Revolutionary guard warns Iran protesters to be 'prepared for confrontation'

Military force threatens 'rioters' as authorities admit irregularities in presidential vote occurred on wider scale than disclosed

Iranian security officers pass burning debris on a Tehran street during clashes on Saturday. Photograph: Reuters

Iran's revolutionary guards today threatened to crush any further opposition protests as the authorities admitted irregularities in the disputed presidential vote had occurred on a much wider scale than previously disclosed.

The country's most powerful military force ordered demonstrators to "end the sabotage and rioting activities" and said their resistance was a "conspiracy" against Iran.

A statement posted on the revolutionary guards' website warned protesters to "be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces".

Earlier, Iran's powerful guardian council – which last week agreed to investigate some voting complaints – admitted that irregularities were found in 50 constituencies, but claimed this had no effect on the result.

A council spokesman, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was quoted on the state TV website as saying the investigation showed more votes were cast in these constituencies than there were registered voters.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/ozcar-battle-blows-up-in-turnbulls-face-20090622-ctur.html

All it took was four days to turn up a fake.

What began as the first major political crisis for the 19-month-old Rudd government with calls for the prime minister and treasurer to quit because of corrupt behaviour has blown up in Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's face.

Australian Federal Police, called in by the government on Saturday, found that an email linking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's office to lobbying on behalf of a car dealer friend of the prime minister's was a fake.

By early Monday afternoon the firestorm known as ute-gate had leapt from licking at the feet of Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan to engulf Turnbull and his own office.

Police searched the Canberra home of Treasury official Godwin Grech and were keen on interviewing a former adviser to Turnbull who left the leader's office some weeks ago.

Grech is the public servant who was in charge of OzCar, the special purpose operation set up to provide finance for car dealers after two US providers, GE and GMAC, departed the local market late last year.

At the heart of the opposition's argument is the allegation that Rudd and Swan abused their positions by using their offices to assist Ipswich Kia dealer John Grant get access to the OzCar scheme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8112504.stm

Iraqi police say early morning bomb attacks have killed at least 11 people in different areas of Baghdad.

A car bomb exploded on the road to the government compound known as the Green Zone killing at least five people.

Another attack in the eastern Sadr City area killed three students on a minibus as they were on their way to an exam.

The rush-hour explosions come days before US troops are due to withdraw from Iraqi cities under a security pact with the Iraqi government.

Reports say at least 62 people have been injured in Monday's bombings.

In addition to the explosions in Karrada and Sadr City, which was caused by a roadside bomb in Hamza Square, there was another roadside bombing in Shaab neighbourhood in north-east Baghdad which killed three people and wounded another 30.

There are also early reports of a suicide attack west of Baghdad, although details were not immediately available.

Attacks in and around Baghdad are common, despite an overall drop in violence in Iraq.

On Saturday, a bomb attack near the northern city of Kirkuk killed 72 people - the deadliest in Iraq for more than a year - and injured another 200.

The US plans to withdraw its troops from Iraqi cities and major towns by 30 June, and is due to end combat operations across Iraq by September 2010, leaving Iraqi security forces to cope alone.

The Day That He Remembered

*



We went there for everything we needed. we went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.

My personal list of needs was long. An only child, abandoned by my father, I needed a family, a home, and men. Especially men. I needed men as mentors, heroes, role models, and as a kind of masculine counterweight to my mother, grandmother, aunt and five female cousins with whom I lived. The bar provided me with all the men I needed, and one or two men who were the last thing I needed.

Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and when I was a young man the bar embraced me. While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us. Naturally I embraced the bar right back, until one night the bar turned me away, and in that final abandonment the bar saved my life.

J.R. Moehringer

www.thetenderbar.com



And so, so far away, desire and destiny mixed with blood and snot, add liberal doses of alcohol. He had always sought oblivion, there in the wee hours, there in the dawn. As an observer, sent here to document the days before him, he had a sacred duty to stay, to watch, the record. Everything was so intensely fascinating, he could not bare to drag himself off the bar stool, resenting even the time it took to go to the loo, dragged away from the fascinating seen in front of him. No one had ever expected him to live, dragging him out of pools, off streets. Picking up that hopeless bundle. It might have been cute when he was young, it was simply pathetic when old. The pathos did not stick. Tragedy needed a good looking player. I can't believe it, I'm shocked, the ex said, giving him a fumbling and unexpected peck on his 57th birthday.

"I never had any intentions of living past 30," was the way he put it. But the lust for oblivion was deeper than that, more tragic, more desperate. "As a teenager I used to get bottles of grog and drink them until I was unconscious," he would glibly say, glossing over a decade of agonia and hysteria, tears and triumphs. But this day, the day that he remembered, he had just turned 16, he had begun drinking early. It was hard to get into the bars, 18 being the drinking age, and the only bar where a kid of his age was welcome was The Rex, where they were used as attractors, bait, for the old queens who frequented the place. Young, rough trade, that's what they liked. He drowned himself, completely drowned himself, in whisky, and even now the smell of it would bring flooding back the crawling hands, the hotel rooms, the views, their panting breaths.

This day, the day that he remembered, he had walked from his tiny $6 a week room next to the incinerator at Allen's Private Hotel in Kirribilli, past the old drunks who lived up under the alcove at the southern end, their drunken laughter, the sound of smashing bottles, scaring him every time he walked past. He'd had acquired a bottle, in later years a bottle of Black Douglas shisky had been the drink of choice for drunken excess, but at 16 he had no idea and bought cheap brandy when he could; and, of course, pills from the chemist. He had begun drinking early; and by 5pm he was in virutal blackout, stumbling towards Circular Quay, where Sydney's picturesque ferries came and went all day, ferrying the suburban masses, the north shore business people, the reams of office workers. He didn't care if he didn't live, he was beyond hope, certainly beyond human help.

He passed out in the gutter, right there at Circular Quay, with thousands of officer workers dashing for their ferries. They were stepping over him; and he could remember the mist as he looked up to see the tromping forces, the straight people, the office workers, the cruel indifference of the human form, the cruel indifference of the rich, he looked up to see their tramping faces; and began to cry. A middle aged queen, well to him anyone over 20 seemed old, stopped to ask him if he was alright. He mumbled incoherently; he didn't know, but he needed help and queens were always ready to help. He didn't remember how he got there, but his next memory was of showering in the queens apartment, submitting for the obligatory blow job, pulling on a clean he had leant him, and accepting $20. He would have done it for $5. He remembered the awkward moment, when he made it clear that he appreciated the show but if he wanted anything physical the queen had to pay for it. He remembered slipping the red $20 note into his pockets. He remembered looking down at yet another person working away; and he cared so little, he cared not at all, and wondered as the man puffed and groaned and squirmed, how quickly he could get out of here, how quickly he could get to a bottle shop, how quickly he could get back into unconsciousness, how quickly he could drown every last feeling, every last thought, how quickly he could die.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25669112-5007146,00.html

IT IS now crash or crash through for Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull as the controversy over car finance and car dealer mates gathers momentum.

The Prime Minister cannot step back from his insistence he has not done special favours for dealer John Grant; the Opposition Leader cannot retreat from his charge Mr Rudd gave "favourable treatment".

Treasurer Wayne Swan has been drawn into this complicated affair and will continue to be pressed on why emails - supplied by the Government - seem to show him taking a personal interest in Grant's case.

But this is primarily a contest between Rudd and Turnbull, a high speed game of chicken with little room for Swan - or for Grant and public servant Godwin Grech.

And one way or another, it was always going to happen.

The election of Malcolm Turnbull as leader of the Liberal Party brought a stark and significant change to the Opposition's broad strategy under predecessor Brendan Nelson.

It became the hunting party, on the alert for lame ministers and backbench stragglers to attack.

There was a clear boost to the aggression and direction of offensives, as seen in Senate estimates proceedings.

That matched Turnbull's style, which was to debate the policy but not neglect the individuals. And it wasn't just him.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop gave her troops an apt history lesson at the start of the week in which brought the June 4 resignation of Joel Fitzgibbon as defence minister.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25668680-661,00.html

TREASURER Wayne Swan and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull will both face heated demands to resign in a Ute-gate showdown in Parliament today.

The Opposition yesterday warned it would demand Mr Swan answer accusations he gave special attention to a friend of Mr Rudd's, Queensland car dealer John Grant.

Mr Turnbull said the Treasurer had "used the influence of the Government to seek a financial advantage for a crony and benefactor of the Prime Minister".

But Mr Rudd fired back yesterday that Mr Turnbull had the "clock ticking" on him to produce proof of his claim that pressure was exerted on Treasury officials to help Mr Grant, a neighbour of the PM who has given him a ute to use as a mobile office.

Mr Rudd said Mr Turnbull had to produce the alleged email - purportedly written in February by a Rudd adviser to Treasury official Godwin Grech - seeking finance for John Grant Motors.

"(If) Mr Turnbull fails to produce this email for authentication, he has no alternative but to stand in the Parliament, apologise, and to resign," Mr Rudd said.

After claiming he had seen contents of the alleged email over recent days, Mr Turnbull yesterday described it as "contentious". "We do not have a copy of the email. We have never stated we have a copy of the email," he said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25669046-5013871,00.html

DID John Grant, the Ipswich car dealer who provides the Prime Minister with a ute, get special treatment from the Rudd government?

To an outsider, the email trail back and forth from Wayne Swan's office to Treasury official Godwin Grech suggests he did.

Mr Grech, who says he was told Mr Grant was an associate of the Prime Minister's and that he believed him to be "not your average constituent", replied to the first email regarding Mr Grant from the Treasurer's office within half an hour, saying he had already spoken with Mr Grant, had suggested some financing options, and had undertaken to speak to him again the following week.

A few hours later, at 7.27pm on a Friday, Mr Swan's departmental liaison officer, Andrew Thomas, sent the Treasurer a fax at home, saying that both he and Mr Grech had spoken to Mr Grant and set out the alternative financing possibilities for Mr Grant in detail.

The following Monday, at 8.23pm, Mr Grech, who had been at a pre-arranged meeting with Ford Credit in Melbourne that day, emailed Mr Swan, four members of his staff, Treasury chief Ken Henry and three other Treasury officials, saying that he had raised Mr Grant's case and Ford had promised to "actively look" at taking on Mr Grant, that he had received a call from Mr Grant, who was in Auckland, to say Ford Credit had already been in contact with him on that day and that Mr Grant had "seemed pleased".

That Friday, Mr Grech again emailed the Treasurer, Treasury head and the senior officials to say Mr Grant had met Ford Credit and that Mr Grech had told Mr Grant to "keep in touch and let me know if Ford show concerns or resistance".

"I will not speak with Ford again on this unless it is absolutely necessary to push it through," Mr Grech wrote.

Starting All Over Again, Again

*



In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles.

In and around the old houses there are flyblown restaurants and Italian fruit-stands and cheap apartment houses and little cloudy candy stores where you can buy even nastier things than their candy. And there are ratty hotels where nobody except people named Smith and Jones sign the register and where the night clerk is half watchdog and half pander.

Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work.

Raymond Chandler, The High Window.



He was shocked at the consequence. He turned 57 - today; birthday; and it was impossible not to reflect. On the dark times and the good. On the insane seas and the troubled dives and the fractured presence of other intelligences, of half formed souls, of malignant shadows, of an overwhelming good. Faces crowded in on an already crowded mind. So many things had gone wrong. So many things had gone right. He had made the deadline for self-improvement, but the gales of tears had been hard to deal with. Someone should have been able to bend down and say a kind word, mark the soldiers, be kind and apathetic all at the same time. For a great indifference had settled across the country. Disenchanted with the latest Labor incarnation, the Kevin Rudd propaganda machine, they switched off in their tens of thousands. They had been betrayed once too often.

So it was in the cold, pre-dawn dark he continued his writing rituals; continued to leave a tiny, humble little snail trail through the days, the weeks, the months. Just like in his day, it was a youth culture. The world belonged to the young. Technology dated and marginalised older people, just like that. Anyone here under 20 can show me how to do this? And of course, it was ever thus, from the day the Europeans brought weapons and the easy availability of welfare, destroying the traditional hierarchies. Their country, their place. Where they belonged. It was all favouritism. He had survived so many regime changes. She was quick and wicked and blew hot, stale air on his face as he sought shelter behind the old warehouse, rearranging the cardboard boxes. He walked out on a stage to massive applause. He bowed quietly and wished he could disappear.

For oblivion seeking had been his main raison d'etre for many years and he regretted the astonishing number of mistakes on the record. They flung private words he had said to a counsellor 20 years before in his face. They got simple things like dates wrong. The day of judgement was a flawed human event. There was no justice. There was no sanity higher up the food change. Indeed, the higher you rose, the more the obfuscation. Facts, the sights before him, jelled less and less with the truth of the occasion. To quote Feminist Jurisprudence: Facts are just weapons that men use to batter women and perpetuate the system. In our university days we had all been talk to overthrow the system, to deride the nuclear family, to hold in contempt the nations institutions, the common, peasant qualities of dignity, hard work, truth. For all was lies and these people had been lying for so long they could not tell the difference between truth and fantasy.

Their lives were so shallow nothing would ever be the same again, because if anything did pierce the fluctuating veils of myth and mismanagement, you would be able to bless me, reach down and touch. But that was not to be. The heartless faces of the rich people's houses, their arrogant stance as they flashed by in their black Mercedes four wheel drives, all of it led to an unsustainable social structure. You could not ignore the voices of the people forever. He thought he had been sent to tell their stories. But the government rhetoric had become so soaked in talk of the "country's most vulnerable", so soaked in apology for poor behaviour, that any kindness, any reaching down to the lower ranks, the disaffected and the dispossessed, immediately embarked the individual on a path crowded with social workers, lawyers, academics, bureaucrats, the ubiquitous clip boards.

So it was he came to long for a different truth. He wanted to start again. He wanted to step aside from the sobbing ebbs of suppressed emotions, from all the dangerous, bizarre images which populated his imagination. He wanted to gain a higher purpose without a higher power. Trust no one. Trust no thing. Adherence to the truth was no longer a value the culture held dear. Dignity in labour had long been abandoned. The churches lay empty. The factories were boarded up; all manufacturing had moved to China. Short steps or long, baby steps to the moon, the whistling cold, arid landscapes from which he had come, none of it made any sense in a society abandoned to spin, a government which functioned in exact sync with the 24-hour news cycle, with politicians who didn't believe a word of what they uttered. So it was he reached an advanced age he had never thought possible; wandered, staggered or lurched into an old age he had no desire to embrace. He would rather pay attention to the giant, impossible sign: GO BACK YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/21/iran-protest-mousavi-khamenei

The momentum of Iran's "green revolution" - triggered by allegations of electoral theft earlier this month - appeared to stall yesterday, as thousands of plain clothes and uniformed security officials swamped Tehran, using tear gas and water cannon on a hard core of about 3,000 demonstrators.

The latest clashes on Tehran's streets came as defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi released a letter he had sent to the Guardian Council - Iran's top legislative body - insisting that the results of the election be annulled and claiming that a plan to rig the 12 June poll in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been planned months in advance.

Eyewitnesses said that protesters who had tried to gather for demonstrations were beaten by police, who also fired warning shots into the air. Video footage showed scattered knots of protesters fleeing as tear gas canisters were fired amidst shouts of "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great, one of the calls adopted by the protesters.

In other places, witnesses described demonstrators holding their ground against motorbike-mounted members of the feared Basij militia.

Helicopters hovered over Tehran and the sound of sirens echoed through the streets as up to 60 injured demonstrators were taken to the Imam Khomeini hospital. Tehran's university campus - another focal point for the protesters - was also blocked off yesterday by lines of police. Supporters of Mousavi were rumoured to have set fire to a building in southern Tehran used by Ahmadinejad supporters.

"This is like [the revolution in] 1979," said one older man on the streets yesterday. "But it's more dangerous. People had money in 1979 to escape and to get by for months. Now they don't."

After stern warnings from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during Friday prayers and amid a climate of growing fear in Iran, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands who had earlier marched against what they claimed has been the rigging of elections to favour Ahmadinejad, appeared to have remained at home. Khamenei warned opposition leaders to end street protests or be held responsible for any "bloodshed and chaos" to come.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25666837-421,00.html

FEDERAL Treasurer Wayne Swan remains under pressure over "Utegate", having admitted buying a Toyota HiLux from the Queensland car dealer involved and personally discussing the businessman's finance problems.

As debate over a "fake" email implicating the Prime Minister in "Utegate" continued yesterday, the full force of the controversy was being felt by Mr Swan.

A series of emails released on Friday night showed the extent of the attempts by Mr Swan's office to assist Ipswich businessman John Grant, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

Mr Grant, a personal friend of Mr Rudd, gave him a utility to use in his electorate.

Mr Swan admitted yesterday he had also bought a car from Mr Grant for use in his electorate office, but said he had paid full commercial price.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25656383-2702,00.html

WHEN Tim Winton won his first literary award, The Australian/Vogel Award in 1981 for his first book, An Open Swimmer, he borrowed a pair of elastic-sided boots - Cuban heels, square toes and all - and boarded a plane for the first time in his life to travel from his West Australian home to Sydney to accept it.

Last night, he was announced the winner, for a record-breaking fourth time, of the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Breath, but was nowhere near the gala dinner at the NSW State Library in Sydney.

Winton has shunned award nights since his first Miles Franklin, in 1984, for Shallows.

"I was overawed that first time," he said yesterday, using a borrowed phone, talking from near his beloved Ningaloo Reef, off Western Australia's North West Cape.

"It was odd and strange and I think I was almost as surprised as everybody else, but I haven't been to an award night since then, once I realised you don't actually have to go.

"I don't go to many festivals either, I've just usually got other things to do and I'm not good in a crowd."

Winton also won the Miles Franklin Award in 1992, for Cloudstreet, and 2002, for Dirt Music.

Breath, his 12th book of fiction, is about a young man's initiation into the twin dangers of sex and surfing.

It begins with a traumatic scene of death by self-strangulation, setting the scene for Winton's exploration of what happens when personal morals are subjugated to the desire for physical sensation.


The Block, late afternoon.