Days of Melancholy: Nights of Terror

Filed in Other by on December 5, 2010

Sleep has been very hard to come by in recent times. The going has been what can best be surmised as rough. Days have been filled with severe bouts of paralytic sadness. Nights have been marked by fear and panic. Many will point at my chosen lifestyle as the reason behind this cruel emotional state. And to a certain extent, they would be right. But it is more than that. It is the residue of being in the thrust of elimination football and of being at the heart of an election campaign going awfully awry. It is living in a world where incompetent men with a whistle in their mouth determine your fate and where people have become so fat with prosperity that they are not only prepared to ungratefully vote against the men that filled their bellies and their wallets but send them out screaming and half-naked in a cacophony of taunts and meanness. These are terrible times for those who understand both football and politics. Richard Nixon would get it and so too does John Howard. But most don’t and that is why we are where we are.

These feelings of dread, depression and downright disgust were really magnified over the weekend. Fools, embarrassment’s to themselves and nuisances to others deemed it necessary to make life particularly difficult.

The pressure on Saturday night was already high enough due to the stupidity of the McIntyre System and the constant looming threat of death that saturates the entire weekend. Harsh pancreatic pains did not improve the situation. Neither did Paul Simpkins. In a manner akin to Tim Donaghy, Paul Simpkins buried the Bulldogs with a 12-4 penalty count, playing the hometown hero to perfection. Belle and Sebastian pretty much summed it up in Another Sunny Day: “The referee gives us fuck all.”

The vitriol was violent. The crowd of gamblers and degenerates assembled at the Officer’s Club sat is scared silence through much of the game. The ferocious discourse emanating from yours truly had created an atmosphere of overwhelming discomfort. Candid hopes of misfortune against Simpkins and his friends and family were flowing freely. An Onyx guitar may have been smashed. The Judge, a local magistrate and gambling addict, threatened to have me arrested and locked up. But he is a Cowboys fan and his opinion holds no weight in the OC, particularly when he has just won the lottery by having that clown Simpkins stitch up the Dogs.

The one thing to take from that horrifying evening was the public humiliation Simpkins had to endure in getting fired. He is out of the finals series and he has missed out to Tony Archer and Shayne Hayne (birth name: Kevin) and in refereeing circles, that is about as degrading as it gets. Simpkins could be caught naked in public with nothing but a Snickers bar and his passport and it wouldn’t bring nearly as much shame on his family as his refereeing performance on Saturday night and his subsequent demotion.

While nights have been filled with league related terror and will be until September draws to a close, the days have been a quagmire of depression and glumness and melancholy since my return. The state of politics in this country took a weird turn while I was away and I cannot help but feel I should not have left in The Hour of Need. Now the tide has turned and it has turned for the worse and it has a heavy rip that is sucking a lot of good men who have done this country proud into the political ocean where the stupid swim with the screwed and the screwed swim with the stupid.

In the middle of July, everything seemed to be on the up and up on the political scene. Howard was only marginally behind, which seemed perfect. We could get the price and Howard would fight back. He is a warrior of course and he has plenty of scalps lining the walls of The Lodge. Kevin Rudd was nothing more than an overambitious geek who looked like he really needed an open handed whack to the eardrum. It does not matter that Kevin and I may both have attended the same college and that one of us may not be welcome back because a cheap stripper with a penchant for outdoor work may have been hired to attend the end-of-year college dinner and partake in her profession on a packed dancefloor. Strippers and Old Boys are irrelevant when it comes to politics.

But now, well, let’s just say that this is looking like worse fun than being Peter Davis at APEC. Witnessing that kind of public emasculation is never pleasant and it tends to leave a permanent scar. All of a sudden the polls are horrifying for those with their money on Howard, the betting looks worse and now the Liberal Party are doing their best to cut out their own kidney. The streets are filled with awful arrogant left leaning twats these days. For the first time in a decade they have the hammer and they are bathing in their sense of righteousness before powering down. Mr. Brisbane, a known Laborite who still looks back on the three disastrous years of Whitlam with shining eyes, already has the champagne on ice and a modern day Don’s Party planned.

In the period of two months Australia has seemingly decided that unprecedented prosperity is not worth rewarding or maintaining. Australia has got fat and greedy. The same group of cats who begged for some stability in 1996 are now casting to the political wilderness the man who gave it to them. Polls and markets have Howard beaten and beaten like a red head. All the numbers seem calamitous and the situation grim.

Compounding the situation is the panic that is causing the Coalition to do very strange things and in essence, behave like the Labor Party. The ball-less Peter Costello camp have piped up once more, claiming Costello is the man who can save them yet his fear of blood-letting again became clearly evident. This time, however, Alexander Downer and Malcolm Turnbull, two old-money types who personify all that is wrong in the Liberal Party, were listening and leaking. Howard, of course, stood up to them all until they were cowering like scared children at night. But the damage was done. The message was sent out. The Coalition are petrified. They could taste something most unfamiliar in their nostrils. They can taste defeat.

It isn’t over yet . You have to keep the faith. John Howard is a fighter, a modern day Lazarus who has fought back from worse than this. But you wouldn’t bet on it and after all, that is all us gamblers have. If you have bet heavily, as your regretful author has, there are no options left but to ride it out and hope for the best. Betting on the ALP brings little comfort though anything above $1.50 on Labor sweeping Tasmania should provide some financial salvation come Election Day.

But it does look like we will all be losers. And it will be in every sense if Kevin Rudd becomes Prime Minister and Labor takes the keys to the Treasury.  And I will feel it more than most. I have staked a hefty portion of my reputation and self worth on understanding politics. I have made a habit of being right and it is very hard to accept the fact that personal failure is imminent once you have settled into such a habit.

These are weird and gloomy times in Australia. Those who have gotten fat on fish now want the fisherman’s head. Common sense has been left bleeding in the gutter from its mouth and greed now calls the shots. It will take a miracle to save Our Wallets and Our Country now. Fasting, meditation and prayer are what we will all need to resort to now.

It is a tough existence when you are constantly worried about refereeing incompetence and high-level political bets that are not looking healthy. We could get through September without further displays of incompetent refereeing and we may get through October with our beloved Prime Minister. But it would take a real sadist to bet on it. Swing low November so we can all get some sweet relief.

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