don't ask; don't tell

According to an article in the Australian Journal of Popular Culture, there existed a homosexual sub-culture among Australian servicemen, particularly in Newcastle, during World War Two. And – this is now seared in my mind – one of the markers, one of the little signs they gave one another - to say “psst, Barry, I’m one of the under-the-streetlight-brigade too” - was wearing certain articles of clothing subtly different from what was then the norm. Yes, my friends, the love that dare not speak its name dared to wear argyle socks! Now, I read this in an article published c. late 1990s. The author failed to outline his/her methodology (or I conveniently skipped over that bit) but source information on such matters would be hard to find; there would be no contemporary newspaper articles, memoirs etc. And I suspect that given the timing of publication of said article the original source material may well have been army documents declassified under the 50 year rule. With a nod to Python/Blackadder, and anyone else I may have ripped off, I suspect these documents read something like:

TOP SECRET: FOR COLONEL AND ABOVE EYES ONLY

MEMO: MEETING, 16th JULY 1943

PRESENT: Colonels Barnaby, Carruthers, Smyth-Forbes, Captain Larkins

Larkins: “Sirs, I have finished the report into the men’s off-duty activities that you requested.”
Carruthers: “Jolly good, Larkins. What’s the gist of it, man?”
Larkins: “Well, sir, I’ll come right out with it. One very disturbing fact came to light. There appears to be a spot of un-Army like behaviour going on among some of the men in the 4th Light.”
Smyth-Forbes: “Un-Army like behaviour? Whatever do you mean, man?”
Larkins: “Uh, yes, sir, some of the men are doing things….”
Barnaby: “Yes, yes, doing things?”
Larkins: “Yes, sir, that is, they’re indulging in, shall we say, certain, uh, French activities.”
Smyth-Forbes: “Ah, well, that’s not so bad. Good soldier the Froggy. Just the officers give them a bad name. Gunga Din’d on cheap plonk by lunch time, most of ‘em.”
Larkins: “Quite, sir. But what I mean is, some of our men are, um, doing things in the French way.”
Barnaby: “Well, yes, can’t have that, I suppose. Very disorganised, is old Pierre. So tell the men to sharpen up.”
Larkins: “Yes, but sir, that is to say, that this is an after dark sort of French thing.”
Carruthers: “Damn it man, stop with the French. Fought alongside some of ‘em at Breton Woods. Not bad in a stoush, Jean-Paul. Like to stick it right up the old Bosch.”
Larkins: “Yes, sir, that’s exactly it.”
Smyth-Forbes: “I still don’t see what your concern is Larkins.”
Larkins: “Sirs, it’s just that, well, some of the diggers are doing things that are a little less than manly. Not wholesome, if you see what I mean.”
Carruthers: “Well, damn it Larkins, what are you implying? Less that manly? Not wholesome? You know I lost my leg at Villeneuve. Stepped on one of Jerry’s exploding tin cans. I suppose I’m less than less than manly, am I?”
Larkins: “No sir, that’s not it. Let me explain…”

&c.

*******

Gentle readers, I did not want to turn this into one of them conspiracy sites, but I’d like to draw your attention to a news item I espied today:

Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt of Florida is marrying Kelly Carl Hildebrandt of Texas.

Here’s the happy couple:





They met after she googled her own name, found Kelly Carl and began corresponding. Cupid took it from there.

“I totally think that it's all God’s timing,” says Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt said. “He planned it out just perfect.”

FUCK!!!

I totally don’t know about this. Can it be right? God’s plans for his flock include us marrying people with the same name? Where does it say this in the Bible? Did Thomas Aquinas know this shit? And how can I be expected to find – let alone marry – someone called a very competent historian?

Is Kelly Katrina some kinda holy mystic 33rd level Kabala priestess? Maybe she knows the secret names of Ya HoWa? Maybe she knows a whole lotta stuff and she aint tellin.’

Kellys [is that the plural?], give it up for the people.

Totally.

Cheers, Doctor King

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

Inspirational words from the great civil rights leader the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.

Dr King was a giant of the twentieth century - a selfless, brilliant figure whose legacy brightens the world even today.

It is just as well, however, that he didn't run a catering firm. Look, though i've been through parts of Georgia i don't recall the red hills, but i would think that being hills, they're kind of, well, slopey. Setting tables in such a place for anyone, let alone distrustful sons of former slaves and suchlike, just would not have worked. Obviously, the hillside thing would unbalance the tables and we'd have a serious race relations set-back. The hors d'oeuvre would be dropping onto the ground, the apples rolling off the end and the soup tureen - well, it doesn't bear thinking about. And if Dr King overlooked this simple fact, what chance is there that he would remember to put those clever little weights on the edges of the table cloths so that they didn't whip up in those ever-present hillside zephyrs and flick into the ice cream?

All in all, a logistics disaster.

clothing throughout history, part the first

1472AD



2009AD



yee haw

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.

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.

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.