Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Idiots

Warning: This post contains cheap shots

I came across this article from September 1904. It really needs no explanation, but that won’t stop me:

Professor Von Wagner, of Vienna, who has been experimenting in the treatment of idiots with thyroid gland, has reported to the Austrian Home Office…

Austria/Australia; who can tell the difference? But I would like to know whether idiocy was a particular problem within the Austrian Home Office. I know it is in the Australian equivalent.

…that in time idiocy will belong to the category of curable diseases…

Now, one hundred and five years later, it may be time to assess the results of Prof. Von Wagner’s work. Let’s see: Far from being rid of idiots they have multiplied exponentially. And back in the prof’s day they didn’t give idiots drivers’ licences and orange Monaros(1). They do now.

He has treated 52 idiots ranging in age from two to twenty-three years during periods varying between 12 and 35 months with tablets of thyroid gland, and writes that already, after three month’ treatment, a growth in height was observable…

Oh yea! Bigger idiots!

…accompanied by an improvement in the quality of the blood and in increase of strength…

Oh crap! Stronger idiots!

Children very soon became lively, showed much more interest in the outside world, began to chatter and even to sing, and some were fit to attend school

Now this suggests the rigorous scientific testing of the good prof has failed him, if he is suggesting that children don’t chatter and sing if they’re still in the idiot stage. In fact, a lot of idiots sing; just ask Liam Gallagher. Also – moving out of the idiot stage isn’t a prerequisite for attending school.

(1) For yer foreign brains, this is an Australian muscle car, the equivalent say of a U.S., um, muscle car.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Security in the modern world

Now, there are people out there who seem to think there’s too much invasion of privacy and ‘do-you-have-your-identification-papers-on-you-sir’ going on. Nonsense, I sez. Bring it on. In fact, I propose further checking of true identity. But you can forget your fingerprints, DNA samples, eye scans and the like. I’m almost certain that the one truly individual characteristic of every one of the seven billion very pleasant human beings on this planet is to be found in the intricate patterns of the brown eye; the puckered lips; the bull's eye; the brown rose bud; the arsehole. I say ‘almost certain’ because, despite my well-known reputation as a strict empiricist, I have, in this case, worked from a rather small sample base; that is, zero, on account of I refuse to look at anyone else’s back door and I cannot see my own.

Gentle readers, this is no impediment: I know a lot of medical doctors and international pharmaceutical company execs read this blog, and no doubt they are arranging the necessary research programs even now.

So the next time you step into a bank, or go through customs at an airport (places of enormous import), you can expect to be asked to drop trousers (or, indeed, up skirts) and sit down to prove you are who you say you are. To you, sirs and mesdames, I say, “Ink the sphinc.”

A propos of this important security and medical breakthrough, I should add a couple of further details. Firstly, I have trademarked the idea as ‘Botty ID.’ Secondly, for the Gen Y among you – the texting crowd – I propose the asterix * as the appropriate character for expressing Botty ID. For example: “Hey, Chad, I cldn’t gt int th nghtclb lst nght bc th bncrs *ed me.”

For the older readers, think of the obverse of the now defunct Australian 2¢ coin.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

rumours reach Burke

Matters of the bowel, as you are no doubt aware, are omnipresent in my mind since the Excursion. Picnic be damned - it cost me half my right leg and the use of three fingers. Blasted wildlife accounted for the former; sheer boredom, the latter. Gumnuts Murphy claimed he heard rumours of de Breton's presence in the upper reaches of Cooper’s Creek: says a blackfeller – they’re Wilyakali out there, if memory serves – came in to Burke swearing he’d been told by one of the wild tribes from further out of a stranger, naked but for a pith helmet, sitting cross-legged on a stump in front of a fold-out table (no doubt the oak dresser the Earl left him, the old rogue – damn thing must weight four hundred pounds. Confoundit it, I admire him for lugging it that far. But good taste will always out, eh?) drinking his infernal home-distilled whiskey, reading half a novel (Murphy tells me the blackfellers picked up the other half near Bedourie) and taking the occasional shot at the more foolhardy of the crows out there (for this reason alone, Murphy reckons it took the blackfellers some days to approach de Breton close enough to where they could ascertain the manner of man he be.) “He made it,” I ejaculated immediately ‘pon hearing the description.

Needless to say, useful though he’s been, Murphy has since had his membership of the Club revoked. Damn fool, relying on hearsay instead of saddling up and going out to check the story personally. (I would have gone myself, of course, were it not for this problem with the gut). Ah, but I must admire the man’s moxie. He left the Club with three hundred guineas worth of stolen silverware stuffed up his arse, and it altered his gait not a whit.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Historical wanking (the only kind)

I note this article from the Mount Leonora Miner (a paper i much admire; a four page broadsheet that would give any Murdoch rag a run for its money) dated 12 October 1901:

“At the local Police Court on Thursday last, before Messrs Cale and Barker, Js. P., a young man, who admitted in court he was a victim of mastabation [sic], was, on medical testimony being given by Doctor Healey as to his inability to take care of himself, committed to the Fremantle Asylum.”

Heelllloooooo?

It seems to me the lad was well-versed in "taking care of himself," so I can’t see why the fuss. Also, can one really be a ‘victim’ of auto-stimulation? I guess they did things differently in them days.

Yrs in historical wonderment &c.