And that's all we have to say about that...

Here we go again! - Wellard For Gillard!

If you're reading this you may-or-may-not be familiar with my band for many years, which was Project Mayhem. Back in 2009, when hot ranga Julia Gillard was simply the Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy head honcho of the Labor Party, Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Social Inclusion and the federal division of Lalor - all simultaneously - we wrote this song...



Later there was a leadership spill and she replaced local walnut Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. She was of the centre-left, politically, so the Murdoch press relentlessly harassed her during her entire tenure.

The thinking, in the mind of the leather-skinned reptile, was that Australians were fucking stupid; that the inherent insecurity of the Australian male could be harnessed and manifested by the use of some good old-fashion sexism - and that the Australian female, not wanting to rock the boat too much, would probably allow the shit to stick.

That's what happened, plus Kevin Rudd was a cunt, so in June 2013 he caused a leadership spill and got his old job back. Then Australia went to the polls, and fulfilled Rupert Murdoch's wish of voting an absolute fucking lunatic into power who would do what was in everybody's worst interests socially while allowing big business to dig up the ground and sell it to China basically un-taxed.

And they all lived happily ever after. Especially us, because we can say we predicted the whole Julia-becoming-PM thing.

Check us on Facebook here.

Instead, I wrote "Mother Nature will have Her Revenge on Old Fatty"

I was actually pretty glad that the culmination of my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard coincided with the 2013 Western Australian State Election, because it meant I was able to volunteer to wear the Green shirt again, even if just for a few hours.

Over the past couple of years I've invested a lot of my time and mind into slamming this incumbent government, so it was good to be back for the fall-out--and besides, one of my buddies was running.

Anyway, the result was, from my perspective, a monstrous disaster. I make no qualms about that being my position. I was really bummed out when the news started coming through. I guess I still am.

As a student of postmodern thought, it straightaway struck me that perhaps in kicking against the pricks so hard, we've created another monster. We've made him stronger.

Another Howard, Nixon, Reagan, Menzies, Thatcher etc - come to life like those Simpsons billboards in that Halloween episode where Paul Anka saves the town from destruction.

Well... if it'll end horror...

At the end of it all, instead of retiring to my Batcave to pour thousands of words of scorn and analysis onto this awful situation, I just wrote a song instead.

Here it is. It's slower than you might expect, I'll admit. But it's a savage response to a terrible result. The whole thing sucks. So I'm gonna walk away...

...but Mother Nature Will Have Her Revenge On Old Fatty.

Well, if that's what we get for focussing on The Monster
You'll excuse me while I put that Abbott out of my mind
It's not I don't care or I'm not petrified
Re: our country's Great Slide - our moral decline
But Barnett & Howard have proven that people are dumb

Watching TV they get filled with ideas that aren't real
Like the pastors of old laid down fire and brimstone with great zeal
And the Christians believe that their one Jewish god is just chock full of love
But he's a vengeful old sod - when it comes to the crunch
They're the ones that'll drown in the flood

And life will go on
Just as it always has before
And the tides will roll in
Just as they always have before

So, ga'arn, treat my country the way that she's never deserved
You can rape, you can pillage people and the natural world
In the face of Earth's doom, you can Wittenoom Broome
In the hope that you'll go to some afterlife soon
But you'll get the same hell wealthy Mayans would have faced as they fell…

You'll watch the jungle close in
Just as it always has before
And the waters will rise
Just as they always have before

Even if you succeed in replacing the forests with weeds
When the rivers are dead and your ego's been fed
Begging, poisoned, on your knees
When the Earth finally dies with no tears in her eyes
Just a hollowed-out hide - hey, but at least we tried!
Somewhere far off in space in a temperate place
Comets rain from the sky

And life will go on
Just as it always has before
And the rains will come down
Just as they always have
And you will be forgotten
That's for sure.

Music & lyrics ©2013 Benny Mayhem. All Rights Reserved.

On the matter of Abbott and the Big Business agenda.

In response to a NineMSN article entitled Abbott To Cut Australia In Half**

(image source)

This is what they mean by dog-whistle politics, I think.

Dress it up as a "development plan" - whole reports, thousands of meaningless words in length - make it seem reasonable and always deny what is really going on: a well-orchestrated pillaging of the nation's resources by a lunatic big business minority (who consider themselves an aristocracy) at the expense of working people and the nation, not to mention the ongoing criminal theft from Aboriginal people of their lands and cultures.

Hunter Thompson talked about "...the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma" that allowed convicted felon Richard Nixon to "slither into" power and we would be fools par excellance to allow ourselves to ever fall into the same trap.

Never forget what's really going on: that Rinehart is a daughter following directly in the footsteps of a man who wanted to sterilise native peoples to extinguish their very existance, let alone native title.

That he - Lang Hancock - founded the asbestos mines at Whitenoom, in the Western Australian north.

That Julie Bishop defended the Whitenoom companies in court while mesothelioma victims literally died before justice could be brought.

And that Abbott - unscrupulous and drunk with power - is happily their mouthpiece. He is a dangerous lunatic and should never be allowed to creep his way into the Lodge on a protest vote.

No. Fracking. Way.

**since retitled Abbott backs away from 'move north' plan...

Feedback Provided to a Customer Service Team Plebeian of a Major Australian Supermarket by the Pioneering Philanthropist, Mr. E.B. Fuckwad III, Esq.

How the fuck may I help you today?

Q: You indicated that you were unhappy with the self-checkout experience. Please let us know exactly what the problem was.

A: Oh, look mate, what I am unhappy with is the very concept of self-checkouts.

Now, I'm sure you have some public relations line about my convenience and my comfort and my freedom, and my choices and my democracy and ALL THE SAVINGS PASSED ON TO YOU MATE!

So let's assume that you've already handed me that line, and I've nodded my head along already and gone "yes," and "yes," and "yes," and "oh, yeah, totally. I'm sorry. It's fine," and I've not been rude about it because you're just a person and you don't make the rules but you have a job to do hey.

Let's get past that. I understand. After all, my great uncle, the Twelfth Lord of Fuckwad, was just doing his job too when he sold all that specially-patented nerve gas to The Bosch!

You just could not say no to that 'stache!

Max lulz they were, back in '14, but times have changed, baby, and you're lucky I'm the Gen Y, Bransonesque Young Fuckwad of Fuckwad Hall.

For now though we are down at the pub where you're in the process of getting plastered and admitting to me that you hate your job, you hate the company and you hate the rut you're stuck in. 

And now that we're down to brass tacks, we both know that the real issue here is that you're working for one half of a corporate duopoly who are holding Australia's food supply to ransom - that is, when they're not shutting down our pubs and turning them into bulk liquor warehouses.

Never mind the customer, yo' company's sole moral imperative is the quarterly increase of sharemarket value, and blah blah blah as previously discussed on Australia's famous Boom Town Rocks blog.

WA Young Liberals' dickbag Theopolis Thornton's 2011 UWA thesis
Serfdom Revisited: The Importance of Fiscal Inequity in
Maintaining Dominance over the Lower Orders of Man
was a seminal inspiration.

In pursuit of this, some 20-year-old, paid-up-front, Curtin University commerce graduate joker has dedicated his honours year to the production of a verbose and Machiavellian cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates the net profit created through swift and immediate investment in the manufacture and implementation and maintenance of these newfangled machines...

These machines would now save shareholders precious coinage: The most important thing in the world.

Precious, precious coinage that would have otherwise been spent providing stable, full-time employment to the two dozen staff per store that you've just retrenched nationwide.

So in order to save yourselves some quid (you're the company now fella, patience running out) I HAVE TO DO THE FUCKING WORK INSTEAD - as if I didn't hate the shops enough already - meanwhile the right of local, slackjawed Year 10 Dropouts to go "How's ya father?" while old people fumble about with their pension money, has been severely curtailed.

This ain't in the community's interest at all mate.

FUCK OFF.

But I'm rich, I'm hip, and I'm a man of charity, so I tell you what I'm gonna do.

Thanks to the classic British scholarship of my dutifully loyal, well-paid assistant Clarice, I have here in my lemon-scented hands a carefully-maintained logbook detailing every minute of the previous two financial years that I have spent,  personally sorting my own shit out at your cash registers, because you want to save some fucking money on staff.

Well, I'll actually save you some money, because I'm not particularly efficient at grocery bag packing, so I'm happy to only invoice you for the minimum retail award rate for this labour which I have nonetheless dutifully performed on your behalf. I am happy to waive leave and other entitlements too, 'cause I'm your buddy, mate, how's your pint?

So, please see attached for my invoice, and be advised that I will be employing Egyptian mercenaries to follow up personally with your Chief Executive Officer if the bill is not sorted within 14 days.

Remember, kid, shit flows downhill, and these men have a fondness for crippling call centre operators. Just putting that out there. But I do apologise for the urgency fella. Business is business, you know?

Sorrrrry about that !

Oh… and, back to the pub. ... that nervousness you feel? Probably exacerbated by the liquid LSD in your beer. Yep, just before. Did you not taste it? Lol, no, it wasn't me. I don't do that sort of thing. But I did see it - yes! - and I might have even arranged it - and how! But if you look at your phone there, fella, I've just dialled your boss, actually. It's on speakerphone. Shit's about to get real.

And so I really must dash, but have a wonderful day. And don't worry about the tipple. I'll pick up the tab - lol

Yours sincerely,

Eric Bloomfield Fuckwad III, Esq.

of the Moral Order of the Wedding Night Garter;

Dated this 15th day of January 2013;
Fuckwad Hall at Ecgzford, Herefordshire, Berks.

Kodos '08: Democratic Self-Flagellation and the Strange Mentality of Conscientious Abstention

Three times in the last couple o' days I have read people say "this is why I don't vote" in reference to some douchebag or other who is running for political office.

They're all players in some grand, supernatural Jewish conspiracy anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I understand where peeps are coming from with this, and - unlike the Australian Electoral Commission - I am actually cool with people not voting if they don't want to. Whatever you wanna do, man. I do hear ya: the lesser of two evils is still evil... that is true.

Given the choice though - and you are actually given a choice - what are you gonna do?

Option 1: Evil. The massive right-wing bigot with an irrepressible lust for power, no scruples and access to incomprehensibly large political coffers, unlimited PR and ubiquitous support from influential media barons, old money, royalty, clergymen, finance industry sociopaths and almost every trusted corporate brand known to mankind since Keating first floated the dollar.

Option 2: Lesser Evil. Back when they were young and idealistic, the former student unionist joined a party that used to be left-wing. They now keep their ideals a closely-guarded secret, publicly hovering somewhere around the middle of the political spectrum, at least when the press is looking. They are under the advice and very-watchful eyes of hack staffers who are always on the phone to the Gallop Poll crew, endlessly trying to suss out which particular bigoted contradiction the public expects them to uphold in any given week.

Option 3: Third Party. Choose between paranoid lunatics, religious zealots, and activists whose records you used to buy in the 80s but you're not so sure about them anymore because Option 1 and Option 2 have told you they're bad for the economy so many times that you're starting to actually believe it - but it's not like anybody votes for them anyway. Besides, the notion that politicians might stand on principle seems utterly preposterous. They are definitely either lying to you or to themselves, and sharing their blog posts on social media will result in your immediate ostracism from your work colleagues, brother-in-law, your former school chums and anybody else who still watches A Current Affair.

Option 4: Do Nothing. Sleep in on election day, have a really long shower, fire up the Xbox and make nachos. Drink heaps of liquor. Adopt a sense of smug superiority. If anyone brings up the vote count throughout the remainder of the election period, or if they mention the result in any way, make them feel as uncomfortable and self-conscious about the whole thing as you possibly can. When Option 1 gets voted in and outlaws the consumption of nachos and enforces mandatory church attendance on both days of every weekend - under penalty of corporeal punishment - remind everyone that you didn't vote anyway and that the situation is therefore not your fault.

To my mind, Option 4 is the shittest option, and if you read on now I'll tell ya why.

...and here's why I can't go for that.

Surely it's better to prevent the Biggest Jerk from having their Finger On The Button, even if it means voting for a career politician who in your opinion is not one hundred percent perfect.

In other words, surely you'd want to go for Options 2 or 3 as they are the most likely to keep Option 1 the fuck out of power - thereby increasing your chances of not being arrested for pursuing Option 4.

In the long run, this is very fucking important. When someone is allowed to take office, society allows them access to fucking guns, and funds, and manpower - entire armies of soldiers and cops - all out to prove themselves, all contractually obliged to follow the orders of politicians. Think about that. It's terrifying.

As a white male member of the pacified majority, it might be technically possible to drop out of the whole pantomime at the moment... but how often do you wake up one morning to find that yet another fucking thing that you used to be able to do is now illegal? In Australia it happens all the time.

Think about what you're tacitly endorsing here.

Ten or twenty or a hundred or four hundred or fifteen thousand good people who are just over it abstaining from voting cause they're all crooks m8 - or because the Lesser of Two Evils doesn't offer an absolutely flawless solution, or whatever - could easily be the difference between...

Damn straight! Al Gore vs. George W. Bush

Sure, one of those guys was an arsehat politician with very questionable family members who were the active enemy of free speech and artistic expression throughout most of the 1980s. He was a journalist - they can't be trusted - and he once scored a scholarship from the Rockerfellers. I'm referring of course to Al Gore. Sound the alarm.

He seems nice enough but frankly I don't know enough about Gore to call whether he would have been a very good president or not. And, especially given Tipper's record, he could have been a jerk even despite his apparent best intentions re: global warming and social justice and the fact that he, unlike his opponent, actually rocked up to work during the whole Vietnam thing.

Still, I doubt he would have made his way into the All-Time Top Ten Presidents list. It is possible to argue that he would not have been perfect...

"...and those who harbor them."

But the other guy? You have got to be fucking kidding!

George W. Bush was the most dangerously apathetic, incompetent boob in the 223 year history of the US executive office. He was a third generation drunken jerk - the Idiot Son of an Arsehole Son of a Nazi Sympathiser - a foolish elitist, a one-time deserter, a warmonger, suddenly in control of the most powerful empire the world has ever known.

Gore, for all I know, might also have been vulnerable to top level corruption. I don't know. Everyone has their price and he was, after all, a politician. However, Bush actively facilitated what happened next. His election by such a preposterous minority was one of the worst things that has ever happened.

America's going to be suffering the consequences of Not Voting For Al Gore for decades to come.

Bush did irreparable damage to East/West relations.

Worldwide we've all had our freedoms curtailed by simpering Allied governments.

It was the corporatocracy's finest hour.

Now, this analogy may not be watertight. I don't know whether Gore would have gone the same way in the aftermath of That Event (You Know The One)... but I doubt it - not the same as Bush did. The Powers That Be went to considerable effort to rig that 2000 election and it worked out very well indeed for them.

But I'm pretty confident that if every disillusioned left-leaning liberal who said fuck it, I'm not voting for either goon had actually turned out instead and voted for the Lesser Dickhead, then the Republicans simply wouldn't have had the numbers to pull off their swindle.

(Unless said liberals accidentally voted for Ralph Nader, but that's a whole other thing.)

So there you go!

Have a think about that whole thing, I guess.

You don't have to vote, but if you're saying this is why I don't vote because of douchebags playing the same old power games, well that's understandable - but be aware that sometimes democracy is simply about kicking the biggest jerk out on their hole before they get a chance to ruin things for everybody.

So, I suppose I am more NOFX than Propagandhi on this one... and that's the reason why I'll grit my teeth and go with Option 2 if there's no suitable Option 3, every time.

The Ravings of a Dangerous Lunatic

This should really surprise nobody.

It's no accident that she's dressed up like a princess.

(source: ABC screen shot)

We have the ability to raise the Third World up to join us as prosperous benefactors of the combined work of the world but no - Miss Piggy wants us to sink down to living as impoverished serfs.

Talk about the House of Hancock.

There's only one class war going on here, and it's the rich trying to compress ordinary people - the working and middle classes - back down into a trench of servitude.

Fuck Gina Rinheart.

She can talk about wanting to create wealth in Australia all she likes, but the truth is she is a noxious traitor.