sexiest woman room

Subject - The Chinese Government's detainment of, and legal proceedings against, Australian citizen and Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu on the charges of corruption and espionage.


We have noted a somewhat hysterical campaign in the Australian media relating to China's lawful detainment of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu. This discussion involved numerous Australian government officials, members of the opposition, academics, as well as experts from various 'foundations', all of whom theorised as to why Mr Hu had been arrested and what it all meant. In amongst this multitude of views, we noted that not a single individual raised, or even considered, the possibility that Stern Hu might actually be guilty of the crimes with which he is charged. It was as if the media brief had been: 'We must consider every angle of this story except for that one'.

We understand that the Australian people, like the Chinese people, are particularly partial to gambling. In this context, amongst all the possibilities that one might lay odds on here, the possibility that Mr Hu just might be guilty seems neither to have short odds, nor long odds, but rather not to be on the bookmakers board at all. Does this not strike anyone as curious?

We note that in the endless media coverage that crime warrants in the Australian media, discussions invariably pivot on whether the accused did or didn't do it. Keen as we are on Australian history, Schapelle Corby comes to mind. However, we were unable to find a single previous case wherein every commentator's starting position was an assumption that the charges must be false. We found many cases where guilt was assumed, such as that of Lindy Chamberlain, but none where the charged individual's innocence was so completely taken for granted that the entire discussion completely and utterly pivoted on the ulterior motives of the arresting authority.

We will admit that were Australia utterly free of corruption, the failure to consider this likelihood would not be unreasonable. And yet on the exact same newspaper front pages that refuse to consider the possibility of Mr Hu as being guilty as charged, is the story of Australian state politician Mr Gordon Nuttall, tried for high level corruption, being found 'guilty as charged'. Clearly Australian businessmen bribe Australian politicians in the hopes of receiving favourable treatment. Your own courts and royal commissions have declared this an incontrovertible fact. And yet despite this, and despite the historical precedent of Australian involvment in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, the Australian media utterly refuses to concede that Australian businessmen might replicate this behaviour in China.

That aside, we are not about to take any holier-than-thou stance on this issue. We freely admit that China, like Australia, suffers from the ills of corruption. And like Australia, the Chinese government arrests, tries, and punishes those involved in these pernicious acts. Indeed we punish corruption very harshly - certainly more harshly than the effective two year sentence (after time off for good behaviour) that was handed down to Mr Nuttall. Of course, Mr Nuttall's sentence is none of our business, as are all matters pertaining to the Australian legal system.

That being said, recent statements by the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, to the effect that the verdict in the Nuttall case was proof that the system works and also that the government and judiciary were serious in their efforts to root out corruption, could have been lifted word for word from Chinese government media releases. In many ways China and Australia have a lot in common.

Echoing this thought, as a people as proud of our country as Australians are of theirs, we also understand that the people of Australia would hold a dim view of us, or indeed any foreign government and media, wagging a collective finger at Australian legal proceedings. Keen to seek commonalities, we would consider viewing such behaviour poorly as perfectly reasonable.

With this in mind, may I say as China's Premier that China looks forward to a relationship with Australia that is free of rancour and distrust, and instead embodies harmony, well-being, and prosperity for both our countries.

The headline in Murdoch's Australian was perfectly marvellous - 'Israel slur fear forces boycott'. We thank that sub-editor for a salutary lesson in loaded writing. Shall I translate it? 'Due to our shock and horror at the possible unwarranted denigration of Israel we have no choice but to stay away [from the upcoming UN sponsored anti-racism conference in Geneva]'.


The headline is emphatically not - 'Australia - racism is bad unless it's Israel's' or 'Australia supports world's #1 apartheid state' or 'Israel cracks whip, we jump'. And God forbid - 'Australia sucks Israel's cock', with the sub-head - 'And keeps fingers crossed they leave ten dollars on the dresser on the way out'. Dreadful! What kind of sick freak would write a headline like that?!

I have no idea what this UN backed anti-racism conference is meant to achieve precisely. But I don't really care. For mine, it's a thing worth having just to see who boycotts it. Anyone who signs up for this boycott is declaring that they are a cheap whore who've utterly dispensed with dignity and are happy to take it up the arse, or swallow, or 'anything you like, Israel honey.'


If this country had some pretence at dignity, we'd attend the conference and abstain from whatever vote it is. The whole thing is symbolic after all. But we ain't even going to go through the motions. In whore terms, we've dispensed with wearing regular clothes when we go out in public. Fuck it, we're so hell-bent we'll not only tramp up and down Main Street in lingerie and high-heels, we even have 'WHORE' tattooed on our forehead.

Who's joining the tattooed whore gang? Oh look, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, and Poland all happy to publicly declare that they're whores and they're proud. Apparently Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Sweden got a tattoo but hid it under their panty lines. Hee hee, a little shy it seems. And where's the UK? Where's France? Surely they're not shy are they? C'mon Gordon Brown-Note! C'mon Nicolas Sukkosily! Declare your whoredom! You're big boys now, just stand up and say it.

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And where do we go from here? Our flagrancy at kowtowing to Israel is matched only by the flagrancy of their slaughter in Palestine. The most sickening massacre of civilians anyone has seen for decades and we in Oz have no words of condemnation. Instead we defend the indefensible. And the US and Canada is worse. No one is even pretending any more. A slaughter rate of 100 women and children for every Israeli soldier. Not forgetting that half the Israelis were shot by their own troops. Hmm... let's make that 200 to 1. Amongst all this blood we merely channel Debbie from Dallas, 'Ooh Mr Greenfeld, what a big cock you have!'

It seems we're in the run up to an exponential curve here. It's a single curve charting two things. One is of Israel's flagrant racist slaughter-fest and the other is our ever more transparent obsequiousness to that shitty little country. As this dual curve climbs into a near vertical orgasm of blood and degradation, something has to give. There's no future in it.


Certainly no future that makes sense. Unless of course the purpose of the exercise is Israel's own destruction, with the non-pedophocracy majority of the world giving a sotto voce cheer. It will necessarily be muted because, as ever, the reality will be one thing and its depiction in the media and the history books will be another. In this imagined reality, Israel will have been a tiny spark of hope for a hard done by people who valiantly went down fighting against a world of racists that hated them for no reason. Don't think they can't convince us of their innocence and our villainy. Honestly, are there any German nationals that don't view themselves as the greatest mass murderers in the history of the world? Bolsheviks or no? There probably are, but me, I never met one.

Regardless of what we think now, I reckon our lot in the future is to view ourselves with the same self-loathing that the Germans currently have. Honestly, right now, right this minute, we are madly declaring that the most racist people in the world are the greatest victims of racism. But that ain't nothing! The two global religions of this world, Christianity and Islam, somehow imagine that they're not Jewish sects. Ha ha ha, madness! Truthfully, there is no end to our ability to believe what we are told.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First comes Israel's inevitable destruction. The country created out of whole cloth by a handful of banking families, (who've curiously chosen not to live there themselves) will be gone. And we'll all sigh in relief. 'Surely this is the beginning of the end to all that shit!' we'll say. As much as I hate to be a party-pooper, I have it pegged as nothing more that the end of the beginning.

Pity the poor Australian Federal Police. The headline on today's front page of the Murdoch broadsheet The Australian is about as damning as it gets. 'AFP - no evidence against Haneef'. Haneef was the terrorist we had to have. He had brown skin, a funny name, and a ticket out of the country. As evidence the AFP presented a scrap of paper on which one could clearly read the letter 'p', a half eaten strawberry yogurt containing Haneef's DNA, and a shoelace. Just joking. They didn't have any evidence at all. Actually there was a shoelace but it belonged to a cop. It was on his shoe. And give the guy a break. It's not easy trumping up evidence.

AFP footwear aside, it was all bullshit. Just like Bill Keelty, the head of the AFP. I doubt there's a single man in Australia who deserves the sack more than this bullshit artist. Please imagine the following yelled at top volume - "KEELTY! Hang your head in SHAME! You are an abject DISGRACE! Who needs criminals when we have FUCKERS like you running around?! I call you CORRUPT to your face! RESIGN KEELTY RESIGN!"


Fucking arsehole... sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, in honour of Haneef's innocence (and because the original piece copped a hit in my statcounter thus reminding me of its existence) I'm reprinting a thing I wrote way back when. I apologise to long-timers who've read it already. But I got a laugh out of reading it again and maybe they will too. Yoroshiku.

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I make a very serious terrorist threat

Attention - Australian Federal Police, ASIO and other assorted terrorist-hunting task-forces of Australia. This is not a hoax - It is precisely as real as everything you've ever been told about terrorism.


I have planted a bomb - lots of them actually. Don't laugh. This is serious.

You may now rejoice. Finally a real terrorist! Let the hunt begin! So that you may know that I'm for real I shall precisely adhere to your long experience of real terrorists. Which is to say, what you've seen in the movies and on the telly. To this end I am leaving clues just like a real cinema-terrorist leading you to an impossibly complicated cinema-bomb. Er... bombs, sorry.


In the spirit of these impossible villains of Hollywood I will make impossible demands of you. You must run around and do them all or EVERYBODY DIES! Here is my list of demands -

Google - bomb in san lazaro
Google - michael meiring bomb philippines
Google - john martinkus dateline abdurrahman wahid bomb
Google - liquid bomb myth
Google - july 7 bomb peter power
Google - charles menezes witness discrepancy
Google - 911 senior military intelligence law enforcement
Google - al qaeda threat adam gadahn pearlman

I demand that you read every article on the first google page. And the second. And the third. Feel free to follow other links and pursue you own lines. These articles contain all the clues as to the certain reality of the threat that I represent. Do not wonder, not for a second, that nothing makes sense. Do not wonder that it's all bullshit. Do you wonder at the WMD's in Iraq? Of course not.

Don't think, just do what I command. Lives are at stake! And certainly do not ask yourself - 'When was the last actual terrorist attack in this country? Surely it couldn't have been that stick of gelignite in a garbage bin outside the Hilton Hotel thirty years ago?' That was before half of you were even born. Dismiss it as a dim memory. Know that the terrorism you have been told is real - IS REAL. The lack of any actual terrorist attacks in this country, or even half credible plots, is neither here nor there. You are not running around wasting your time and the taxpayer's money for nothing. You are not part of some insane fear-mongering hoax. It's all real.


I am real. I am here. Making threats! I am proof-positive that your government, or whoever the fuck it is, is not making this shit up. I demand that my file be named - TERRORIST THREAT HEFFALUMP. Clues as the very real nature of the Heffalump threat can be found in the pages of the subversive terrorist manual Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne. So that you may know what Heffalumps look like, the manual contains precise depictions by Ernest Shepard. Study them hard and know that terror is real. I demand that you write long detailed reports on the precise threat of Heffalumps. I demand that you sit in meetings and make contributions about how we might address the Heffalump threat. I demand that you contribute to the WAR ON HEFFALUMPS.

As the impossible mad bomber, I will now taunt you in a cinematic fashion. I laugh at all your mad capering around, arresting people on trumped-up bullshit charges. That bullshit Haneef case! Ha ha ha ha ha. Were you not ashamed by that? Was that not a slur on you and your whole organisation? Look to your boss, Bill Keelty, he has the answer to such embarrassment - Secret Trials! Feel proud that you are doing your bit to have your country join that hallowed list of 'Nations That Conduct Secret Trials'. Follow your leader. He has secret knowledge. Trust him. He is leading you to a new place. It's called Australia apparently. Who knew?


Whatever you thought Australia was, you were wrong. The new Australia is, bravely, all about fear. You know that fear. It's the fear a man has that if he stands up and says, 'This is all bullshit!', he'll get the sack. Do you know what I'm talking about? I suspect that you do. Ask Andrew Wilkie. Alright for him, says you, he doesn't have a mortgage. Between the fear of being sacked and of not making the mortgage payments, and the fear of me, the impossible terrorist - you can choose both! I, the terrible Heffalump, will keep you in a job. Of course you will chase me. Even if I didn't exist you would do so anyway. You have no choice.

Or do you? What is that nagging voice in your head? It's annoying isn't it? It says maybe all this is bullshit. It picks at inconsistencies in what the government tells you. Don't listen to it! It's only common sense. It's only you wondering at what kind of people we are becoming and what kind of place Australia is now. All those ads and posters telling us to dob in our neighbours - Is that us? Is this my country?


Pay no attention to that questioning voice! Stuff it back in its box. Relax safe in the knowledge that if you pursue these impossible terrorists long enough, they will appear! Kick in enough doors, raid enough mosques, humiliate enough people and lo-and-behold they will fucking hate you! Finally you'll be able to take that idiot phrase 'They hate us for our freedom' and smash it, bend it, stretch it into shape to explain their behaviour. That no man ever hated another for their freedom, only for their oppression, can be consigned to the scrap heap of common sense in your head. Like I said, Forget Common Sense. It will do you no good and certainly not pay your mortgage.

It will certainly not assist you in chasing me. Nor in finding the bomb. Er... bombs, sorry. It's important that you view everything I've written here as being a Very Serious Threat. I am not taking the piss. Dismiss that thought from your head. I am real. I am nobody. I am the mad terrorist Heffalump of your imagination. If you want to know how mad and irrational I am, know this - I Have No Fear. In a nation full of fearful people I am clearly insane and must be stopped.

Now boys, get to work and arrest me. Don't forget the requisite and absurdly expensive government media campaign telling us how fearful we should all be. I demand the following slogan -

Regulars will know I use a lot of obscure words and phrases here. Certainly I can choose to do so or not. I understand the appeal of not doing so. Foreign readers would be less confused if I stuck to some variation of international English. But I view this as a soft form of dumbing down. And besides, no one ever did this for me, ha ha.

I've been reading English and American writers all my life and none of them saw fit to narrow their vocabulary or explain anything for the sake of Antipodeans. So I would grab a dictionary and figure it out for myself. Often as not I just had to guess. Well now I get my own back, ha!

But don't worry. In a spirit of helpfulness, I have come up with this brief lexicon. It's a simple glossary of Australian English, archaisms and other unlikely words. It's not any variety of exhaustive. If I use a word that I suspect foreigners will be unfamiliar with, I'll whack it in here. Mind you, this is not such a simple matter. I'm constantly surprised to find words that I thought were universal, were no such thing. Just lately I discovered that 'offsider' is an Australianism. Who knew?

Further, it's not my intention to replace the dictionary. You won't find 'Jesuitical' there, for instance. Every English dictionary has it already (and what a marvellous word it is too). Rather, my purpose is to cover words that foreigners won't find in their respective dictionaries. And don't write to tell me that you do in fact have a given word in common use. It may still be unknown to other native, and second-language, speakers of English.

So! Let's exciting English! Yoroshiku.

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Aergia
noun - the Greek goddess of idleness. (Daughter of Aether and Gaia. She guarded the court of hypnos in the underworld. When she could be fagged that is...)

abo
noun - a derogatory word for an aborigine. (Racist epithets aside, in Australia aborigine and aboriginal are interchangable as nouns. It's meaning is simply that of 'original inhabitant')

Antipodes
noun - Australia; Australia and New Zealand (Literally - the far side of the world. Technically for Australia, the 'antipodes' would be Europe, but let's not confuse things)

arvo
noun - afternoon. (As in - 'Seeya this arvo'. This follows in the hallowed tradition of Australians taking words, shortening them, and adding 'o' or 'y' to the end. See telly, below)

Aussie
noun/adjective - Australian. (I understand everyone knows this word. I put it here to make clear the pronunciation, which is 'ozzie'. For some reason, Americans pronounce it 'ossie' with a hard 's'. For Australians, this grates like you wouldn't believe. See 'Oz' below)

bag out
verb - deprecate, derogate. (As in - 'He never missed an opportunity to bag out George Bush.' Is this Australian? Possibly)

bags
verb - to reserve a thing before anyone else has the opportunity. (As in - 'I bags the couch.' Or - 'You can't bags it because I bagsed it already.' Ha ha ha. It looks ugly written doesn't it? Never mind, it is what it is)

bloke
noun - man, fellow. (apparently derived from Shelta, the language of Irish and Welsh gypies loosely based on Gaelic)

Boggo Road
noun - a notorious jail in Brisbane, now closed.

bra
noun - bro, mate, pal. (Short for 'brother', sure enough. This is New Zealander/Pacific Islander English. I always found it curious that 'bro' is pronounced the way it's written. For mine, this makes more sense)

burl
noun - whirl, as in 'give it a whirl'. (I've heard vague rumours that this was originally Scottish. Maybe, maybe not)

c'arn/carn
imperative verb - Come on. (Made famous by Australian playwright David Williamson with his play The Club. The play was about the dramas within an Australian Rules football club, The Crows. The team was urged forward with the cry, 'C'arn the Crows!')

catholic
adjective - embracing many things; of, or catering to, wide tastes. (As in - 'Country and Western, hip-hop, easy listening, you name it, it's all good. My tastes are perfectly catholic'. As for the Catholic Church, it's no accident that it was named thus. For mine, it's a declaration that it is for all, and is an emphatic rejection of any sense of exclusivity)

chestnut
noun - an old story or gag that we know too well. (As in - 'Not that old chestnut!')

chook
noun - a chicken. (Australians, when feeding chickens, will inevitably say - 'here, chook, chook, chook.' I certainly do.)

clacker
noun - rear, derriere. (As in, 'That bloody tailgater was right up my clacker'. I would declare that on the scale of things this word is less rude than 'arse', mostly on account of its comedic resemblance to some kind of sound effect. Without being certain, I'm convinced it derives from cloaca a primitive physical arrangement found in many non-mammals that functions as both waste tract and sexual organs. Okay, so that's pretty yucky, but since nobody has ever heard of a cloaca, clacker is safe to be used in front of children, grandmas, etc)

cooee
noun/interjection - a high pitch cry used in the Australian bush to attract attention or denote one's location to those distant or unseen. (Used in conversation to indicate great distance. Thus - 'We broke down in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing within cooee')

cove
noun - man, fellow. (Dated English but originally from the Romany kova meaning 'thing or person')

crack the shits
verb - throw a tantrum. (As in - 'When he was told there were only light beers left, he cracked the shits.)

cracker
noun - a really marvellous thing, a shining example. (As in- 'Don't miss that new flick. It's a cracker!' Crackers are also small fireworks of the Chinese New Year's variety, as well as those paper things one pulls apart at Xmas to find a paper hat and small toy inside. Do Americans have those? And what do they call them?)

crawl up one's arse
verb - to behave in an obsequious or sycophantic fashion. (As in - 'I'm sick of that bloke, he's always crawling up the boss's arse)

dill
noun - a silly person.

dips me lid
verb - 'take my hat off'. (This is a quote from CJ Dennis' 1919 poem, 'A Sentimental Bloke'. Dennis along with Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson, and others featured in the then culturally significant 'Bulletin' magazine, and were the first Australians to write in a distinctly Australian vernacular. Whilst not quite reaching his genius heights, they are to the Antipodes what Mark Twain was to the US)

dob in
verb - inform on someone, rat someone out. (This used to be an arch sin in Australia. But under that shit Howard, the Australian Federal Government began running a campaign urging Australians to dob in their coloured, jibber-jabbering neighbours. It wasn't quite that explicit, but everyone got it. PS - Under Rudd, the campaign continues to run. No surprises there.)

fag
noun - a cigarette.

fagged
verb - bothered, as in a tiresome chore. ('The picture fell down but I couldn't be fagged putting it back up.' This is clearly derived from the English public school tradition of 'fagging' whereby younger boys would do the chores of older boys. This doesn't exist in Australia and subsequently the word persists only by way of the past participle)

feeding the chooks
verb - addressing, or otherwise answering the questions of, the media (This was coined by the famous, long serving, populist State Premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke Petersen. It was a clear statement of contempt for the media on his part, and still holds that connotation. Whilst I share his contempt for the media, that's not to excuse him. He was an arsehole)

full stop
noun - a punctuation mark denoting the end of a sentence. ('period' in American English)

furphy
noun - a falsehood, a piece of scuttlebutt, a red-herring. (Furphy and Sons were the manufacturers of water carts in WWI. These carts served the precise function of the scuttlebutt (water barrel) on a ship, ie. a place to stand around and chat whilst having a drink of water. Scuttlebutt is considered to be gossip that may, or may not, be true. A furphy, on the other hand, is never true, as in - 'The WMD's were a complete furphy')

gaijin
Japanese, noun - foreigner. (What I am in Japan. Literally 'outside country person')

g'day
phrase - Hello. (Actually 'hi' would be closer to the mark in terms of the casual nature of this greeting. Neither the Prime Minister, nor any newsreader, would ever begin any formal address with 'G'day'. It is emphatically not 'good day' which would, if anything, denote the end of the conversation and that one were leaving, presumably in a huff. To be honest, no one in Australia says 'good day'. Ever. Otherwise by way of pronunciation, it's closest relative would be 'Gdansk'. The elision of the vowel between g and d should be utter)

get on the fiddle
phrase - to be up to something of a lewd or sordid nature. (Another neologism of Roy and HG. See 'have a spray')

git
noun - a worthless or contemptible person. (I find this word useful as it's fairly gentle and makes no comment on one's birth, sexual orientation, intelligence, physical shortcomings, or race)

gweilo
Cantonese, noun - foreigner. (What I am in Hong Kong. Literally 'foreign devil' or variously 'ghost man'. Cool, huh?)

guernsey
noun - a jersey. (Jersey and Guernsey, both Channel Islands, became synonymous with the distinctive variety of knitted tops traditionally made there. Both words are now loosely used to describe the pull-over tops worn by football players of all codes. Thus, to get a guernsey means to 'be picked for the team' or otherwise 'make the grade')

have a spray
verb - to have one's say, to express an opinion. (I suspect that this is a neologism created by Roy Slaven and HG Nelson, two Australian radio and TV personalities famous for their singularly perverse sports commentary. More than a few of their expressions have entered the vernacular and most of them smutty, albeit in a cryptic fashion)

haiku
noun - a Japanese minimalist poem of three lines. (This is explained in more detail on the haiku blog. I merely mention it here to reiterate its pronunciation, which is 'high-koo'. Also the plural of haiku is haiku)

heffalump
noun - a creature which inspires fear but exists only in one's imagination. (Heffalumps appear in 'Winnie The Pooh' by AA Milne and illustrated by Earnest Shepard. Whilst the characters in Pooh are convinced that heffalumps are very scary things, any children reading the book (or having it read to them) will clearly understand, by way of the illustrations, that heffalumps are merely elephants and not scary at all. Disney later anthropomorphised heffalumps into yet more cute singing characters. I expect AA Milne rolled over in his grave. For mine, the Disney version of Pooh is execrable, a real piece of shit. The original on the other hand is a masterpiece of children's literature)

lamington
noun - a simple cake made from sponge that is cut into cubes (approximately two inches square) and covered in chocolate icing and sprinkled with dessicated coconut. (These are famously made at home and then sold at churches, or school fetes, to raise money for charity. This is known as a 'lamington drive'. Lamingtons taste pretty good. Fancy lamingtons are cut in half and have red jam smeared in the middle before being coated)

lizard of Oz
noun - a reference to the then Australian PM, Paul Keating, who had the temerity to place his hand on Queen Elizabeth's shoulder at an official function (This was the precise headline from an English tabloid. The media's tone was - How dare a commoner touch our Queen! Sure enough, there are commoners and there are commoners. I suspect if the right sort of commoner (Michelle Obama comes to mind) were to replicate the act, no one would say boo. As colonials go, Americans are infinitely preferable to Australians)

laowai
Mandarin, noun - foreigner (What I am in Mainland China. Literally 'outside country person')

mate
noun - friend, pal, buddy. (It's my considered opinion that none of these quite hits the mark. 'Mate' has within it an implicit solidarity, as in 'shipmate' or 'cellmate'. Officers and government officials aside, nearly all Australia's early settlers were one or the other. Subsequently, calling someone 'mate' is an unspoken acknowledgement that one is not a member of the ruling class)

moniker
noun - a name. (This is informal and operates thus - 'Just whack your moniker and address at the top of the form.' Do Americans use this? I only seem to hear Australians say it)

nisei
Japanese, adjective - second generation. (Used solely for Japanese who have settled abroad. 'Ni' means 'two' and 'sei' means 'life' or 'generation'. Ichi, ni, san (one, two, three) thus becomes 'issei, nisei, sansei', ie. 'first, second, and third generation')

offsider
noun - partner, assistant, a person comprising a third party connected to a second party. (Thus unlikely to be used to describe one's own friend. 'I talked to the bloke while his offsider had a cigarette')

onya
phrase - congratulations, well done, bravo. (Short for 'good on you', possibly present in other Englishes but certainly common coinage in Australia)

Oz
noun - Australia. (This was coined in the seventies by Richard Neville (who occasionally still lobs up on counterpunch) in a magazine of the same name. It's an obvious name given the correct pronunciation of 'Aussie')

packed to the gunnels
adjective - very full. (gunnels, a corruption of 'gunwales', are the upper sides of a ship, so called because they had cannon bowsed up against them. A 'wale' was a particularly heavy plank used for the hull)

Pat Malone
adjective/pronoun - alone, on one's own. (There's precious little true Australian rhyming slang but this is one of them. I suspect that there was no actual Pat Malone as such. Under the rules of rhyming slang, this should more correctly be shortened to 'pat', as in, 'He was all on his pat'. Me, I find this somewhat unlovely and prefer the full expression)

piker
noun - a person who backs out of a deal or otherwise chickens out. (In the verb form this functions exactly like 'chicken out' as in, 'He was going to help us move house but he piked out.')

pollie
noun - a politician.

Pom
noun - an Englishman. (The adjectival form being 'Pommy'. I suspect that English people have by now calmed down about this word. I notice The Times Crossword recently had a clue, 'Sounds like English stone fruit', with the answer being 'pomegranate'. Significantly the clue was not 'Sounds like English put down stone fruit', which is to say the clue acknowledges that 'English' and 'Pommy' are interchangeable and that the latter lacks any sense of derogation. Mind you, one can fix that by modifying 'Pommy' with the suffix 'bastard'. But that says more about 'bastard' than it does about 'Pommy', ahem)

Punt
noun - a small bet.
verb - to lay a small bet.

Punter
noun - the average man in the street, literally 'one who bets'. (I don't know about other places, but in Australia the age-old entertainment of the lower classes was to follow the horses. The majority of betting was through the government-run TAB (Totaliser Agency Board). No shopping street in any Australian town is without a TAB. Sure enough, it is now being pushed to the sidelines as gambling is being legalised and put into corporate hands. Who'll give me odds on the inevitability of corruption? Any takers?)

rapt
adjective - happy, pleased. (Who knows why this magical word assumed such a mundane role in Australia? Not me)

rort
verb - to bilk a system (in all likelihood the government) by fraudulent or dishonest means. (The insurance companies had been rorting the system for years)
noun - as above

same same/same-same
adjective - the same as. (Thai-glish usually delivered as 'same same, different' meaning 'just like that, but not quite'. Part of the vernacular of Asian expats)

sansei
Japanese, adjective - third generation. (See nisei, above)

shank's pony
noun - one's own legs as a means of transport, ie. walking. (Shank is not a fellow who owned a pony, it merely means leg)

shat
verb - past tense of shit. (Australians and the English have the irregular verb 'shit' follow 'sit' by way of past participle and past perfect. Thus, sit/sat/sat - shit/shat/shat. Americans have it follow 'hit'. Thus hit/hit/hit - shit/shit/shit. Which is a pity because it's a marvellous word, shat. Oh, 'spit' functions in the same fashion - spit/spat/spat)

stoush
noun - dust-up, brawl, kerfuffle.

telly
noun - television. (Australians have a habit of shortening words and adding a 'y' or an 'o' to the end. Thus 'Christmas presents' become 'Chrissy prezzies'. Foreigners view this as infantile but they fail to understand that it's done in a spirit of archness, which is to say that it's a joke and we all get it. To object to it is to not get the joke)

tuck-shop
noun - a shop, usually by way of a counter, where school students can buy food and drink. (The tuck-shop is usually run by volunteers, invariably known as 'tuck-shop ladies'. The 'tucker' sold in tuck-shops usually consists of pies, sausage rolls, chips, sticky buns, and soft drinks)

tuppence ha'penny
noun - two and half pence. (which is to say, a trifling amount. As in - 'I wouldn't give you tuppence ha'penny for anything he has to say'. In Australia, we shifted from pounds, shillings, and pence over forty years ago but the phrase lingers)

wakarimashita
verb - Japanese for 'I understand' or 'I get it'.

wowser
noun - a prude, a killjoy. (No one knows where this comes from. It's a great word though)

yoroshiku
Japanese, technically an adverb - regards, best wishes. (literally the 'well' from 'please consider me well'. Whilst functioning as 'regards' it does so in a backwards fashion by asking that the second party have regard for the first party, if you can dig it)

Here in Oz, we're thick in a discussion about saying sorry to Aborigines. I shall confuse things initially by declaring that white people saying sorry to Aborigines is bullshit. Don't wig out yet, just keep reading.

'Sorry' is what you say when you bump into someone. For obvious, simple and accidental events such as this, one word will suffice. The saying of it implicitly acknowledges three things: the presence of the other; that a transgression has occurred; and the nature of the transgression, which in this case was nothing much.

It's the three acknowledgements which are important. The word 'sorry' is merely a polite shorthand to achieve them. In more complex events, a single word like sorry is insufficient. It might cover the first two aspects of the acknowledgement but the third is woefully unaddressed. And the third is the crucial pivot. Really it's the only bit that counts. If it is done correctly the first two are taken as read.

Just saying sorry is a piece of piss. Anyone can do it, even through gritted teeth. A teenager who has conducted a screaming match ruining a social occasion on account of not being allowed to go and hang out at the mall might, without too much difficulty, be able to say 'Sorry'. He or she might even be able to say, 'Sorry I ruined everyone's dinner'. Each of these steps is do-able without puncturing the teenager's delusional view of themself and the world. But imagine the teenager saying the following - 'Sorry I ruined everyone's dinner. I viewed my own petty needs as being more important than the harmony that existed here. I realise that all my life, things have been done for me and really the least I can do in return is to consider others and attempt to be pleasant.' It's an unlikely prospect isn't it? You can see how the word 'sorry' is almost superfluous now.

The reason one never hears such words is because it requires one to examine the nature of their delusion. Delusion defines the self - for everyone, that is, except Buddha (and Bodhisattvas, sure). But forget them - none of us is Buddha and delusion is who we are. A true discussion about a transgression against another is actually a discussion of who one is.

And that must be fought tooth and nail. Sure enough, here we are in Australia and everyone agrees that we should say 'sorry'. But instantly we're bogged down about what we're apologising for exactly. Should we include the phrase 'stolen generation'? What if we replace the word 'stolen' with 'taken'? How about 'mistaken'? How about 'accidentally misplaced'?


God spare us. Why don't we just tell those unappreciative, grog-soaked, bludging, black bastards to get off their arses and work. We made this country great and those fuckers think we owe them a living. And yeah, SORRY. Happy now?

Nobody says - self-impressed white people can go fuck themselves. People tell me I should be a teacher. Ha ha ha. No really. Okay then, cop this history -

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the continents of North America, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia had no concept of private ownership. They didn't travel great distances and steal other people's shit. How would that profit a man, said they. Until we killed them that is. And yes, they were humans and fought their neighbours. But us imagining their savagery was worse than ours is laughable. Never mind Mel Gibson's bullshit Apocalypto slaughter-fest, we made these people look like a bunch of saints. Their philosophies, their social arrangements, their music, art and poetry, and even their science were nothing in the face of our murderous certainty of our own greatness.



So, might a good starting point for us acknowledging our transgression (which, since we're saying sorry, obviously exists) be the fact that Aborigines' lack of a 'deed' showing ownership of this country was not a failure on their part. (Like we'd have paid any attention anyway). And us showing them how it's done was not a testament to our superiority. It was merely one state of mind meeting another. One acquisitive, one not. And acquisitive is not a compliment. In this spirit of acquisitiveness, we would teach the aborigines that: flora is to be cut down; fauna is to be shot; the earth is to be dug up; and the rivers emptied. We would render their way of life impossible. (And ours too soon enough). That they choose not to embrace our societal arrangements does not condemn them.

Me, I view their distaste for impossibly complicated arrangements of ownership, paper money, credit cards, shares, mortgages, bills, ID's and Bundy clocks to be perfectly understandable. What do these things have to do with humans and the astounding world in which they live? I'd happily argue that they're a denial of that. And yes, they have problems with alcohol. 40,000 years without alcohol, forced into a world-view that makes no sense to them and we expect them to just say no, to face this madness sober? Shit. Anglo-Saxons wagging their collective finger at others' misuse of alcohol is the height of hypocrisy. We're the drinking-est people that ever lived.
So. How about that for a foundation on which to build a discussion of our transgression? Let's now progress to how harmony might be achieved between people who must necessarily live with each other. Between a truthful discussion of who we are and an angry 'sorry' hissed through gritted teeth, there's a lot of middle ground. It's not an either/or choice. It's a continuum. How honest we want to be with ourselves is up to us.