Boy, will there be a few hangovers in the ‘Ville! But it looks like he isn’t the only Astonisher staffer who could be moving on – or already has.
Dumbo Jones seeks The Magpie’s help, Bentley offers one of his finest thrusts of the year, the advent of the ‘unstealable’ bicycle (it’s fair dinkum) and The Magpie goes back to the future.
Bentley almost bent double when he heard that Qld Premier Campbell Newman, not satisfied with the donkey vote, went after the monkey vote during the week. The movie producers who are making the latest Pirates of the Caribbean in Queensland (what better backdrop for pirates?) want to import 10 monkeys for the making of the swashbuckler comedy. PM Abbott wants to put them through quarantine in the normal way, but Newman wants to cut corners and made it public that he will do so, despite monkeys being classified as Class I Pests. Bentley thinks there’s been massive mix-up.
Now, Simpo’s departure. Not much to say, really, except … whew! Again, his Twitter announcement is proof of the truth in the saying that everyone brings joy into the lives of others – some by arriving others by leaving.
Anthony Simpo Templeton
Whether that applies to other significant developments of how the times they are a’changin’ for the Townsville Bulletin is yet to be seen. Because there’s another uh-oh for another staff member – if he’s still around, and hasn’t been locked up for (some of his self-confessed) sexual harassment.
We speak of course of our old mate .Matt ‘Dunno’ Dun It would seem that there is a big cloud over ‘Dunno’ s immediate future, if this News in-house job ad in any indication. (With thanks to Fat Tony for spot-on spotting).
In all this, the problem comes down to the old conundrum of talent v money. There ain’t that many folk with those required attributes in the metro areas, let alone asking them to up sticks and head for the Deep North. The perceived playgrounds of Cairns or Airlie Beach maybe, but Townsville is regarded down south in the same light as, say, that place where the postman always rings twice – like at the Norman Bates motel.
Of course, this is nothing new in publishing management. In the middle of last century, a newspaper editor in provincial England with a sense of humour placed an ad in his rag which read: WANTED: ONE GENIUS, 10 shillings per week, MUST HAVE OWN BICYCLE CLIPS. Tended to get the message out about the required work attitude.
But whoever the new switched on person may be, one would hope that they will be ‘switched on ‘ to the embarrassing idiocy of this caption during the last week.
Super helpful caption writing.
Don’t even ask why this was considered an appropriate illustration even without the helpful ‘well, duh!’ caption – the Astonisher is forever on about light poles and the such, and has a whole library full of much more – shall we say? – illuminating pix. And it’s a bit rough when you print a finger-wagging deadline announcement in your own paper … nine weeks late. (Wed Dec 10)
Maybe they’re starting a year early.
Nitpicking? Didn’t used to happen, or at least not with the current frequency. Just another clear indication they don’t bloody care.
There is never any guarantee that the Townsville Bulletin won’t continue to cut editorial corners in the quest for the almighty dollar (and bugger the facts). Indeed, The ‘Pie hears there are new work stations being installed down on Flinders Street West to increase productivity.
And no matter where Simpo Templeton ends up, he’s in for some bad news from Google. The Big G is said to be about to ban, or at least greatly discourage, drunken selfie’s on Facebook. This, being unidentified and is just some bum ….
… will probably be ok. But this?
Anthony templeton relaxing.
Moving on.
A surprised ‘Pie received a plea for help in the mail from Dumbo Jumbo Jones during the week. Our man said he was seeking The ‘Pie’s feedback ’regarding problems with television reception in North Ward’.
Well, admittedly, he asked all residents in the area, but The ‘Pie was nevertheless touched. So the least one could do is reply.
So, Ewen, yes, there seems to be a strange disconnect between vision and sound. Why, just the other week, you were on TV at a CBD rally about the ADF pay cuts. But while the vision of you was suitably chubby and chinny, your words appeared not to be linked to the issue, when you were heard to be saying that the rally was ‘all a political stunt and an ALP plot’. Best you attend to this immediately, because these sorts of glitches could reflect on you personally, and may lead people to believe you are confused as to who you actually represent. Glad to be able to bring this to your attention.
Our national leadership continues to change feet on a regular basis. PM Wingnut inexplicably heaped smoldering coals on his own dopey head by playing the gender card he so roundly chastised Labor for while in opposition. The failed seminarian said his Chief of Staff was under attack only because she was a woman. In fact, the only gender attack on his chief of staff Peta (not PETER, quoth the PM) Credlin was the low animal act by Clive Palmer, who suggested it was she who was pushing for the Paid Parental scheme in her own interest.
The hapless Wingnut’s performance during the year has invited many a comparison, so why should The ‘Pie differ. Here is the difference between eloquence and ignorance.
Mario Cuomo, three-term govenor of New York State, was once asked about why politicians sometimes failed to live up to all their campaign promises. He replied’ You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose’.
One suspects if Tony Abbott was asked the same question , it would be (minus the errs, ahhs and repetition) ‘We campaigned in fiction, but we govern in fuck-ups’.
This seems how the cabinet will spend the summer break.
Quite so.
Observed in passing (and this is not a leg-pull). One of the major criminal activities by the sweet youth of our fair city is bicycle theft. Hundreds nicked every year. An obvious ideal answer would be to invent a bicycle that can’t be stolen, and while that seems a tall order, IT’S ACTUALLY BEEN DONE!!!
The Unstealable Bike has been invented, and deserves some sort of world wide acclaim. This article gives the background and here’s a video of how it works.
Now how about the unnickable car.
Finally, here’s something new, from something old.
Being the silly season, matters worthy of comment become as rare as rocking horse poo, so rather than stretch the friendship too far, The ‘Pie will be delving into his archives for columns from the past 23 years for the pure fun of them. Back then, when they started in 1993, The Magpie columns were non-political and about the things that have most fascinated the old bird … language, sayings, trivia and the law. More relaxing over the festive season, he hope you enjoy a return to older more innocent days.
This column first printed in the old broadsheet Bulletin circa 1994-ish.
TAKING THE MICKEY OUT OF LAWYERS CAN RUFFLE FEATHERS.
Slice the solicitor looked most hurt, his generally craggy features taking on an even more pronounced air of an injured but innocent party.
“Why has the world suddenly become so abusive, so rude , so … so … so, well unfriendly?”
This was presumably a rhetorical question, for like all experienced legal men, Reggie Slice knew never to ask a question to which he did not already know the answer. (Reginald Slice, senior say-so in the legal gang of Slice, Hook, Hound and Hassle, which – along with Mongrel the Barrister’s favored outfit of Knee, Crutch, Armpit and Elbow, formed the basis of many an innocent (and often guilty) party’s overdraft with the local banks. One such aggrieved former client who had won a damages suit after an accident had taken it upon himself to print a bogus business card for the firm which he distributed far and wide … all the details were absolutely correct, address, phone, name etc, except he had added the line ‘We make sure we get what is coming to you’. There are those who would argue that despite the extra line, the card was still in fact absolutely correct. But Reggie had taken that badly, too.
The current bit of verbal blubbing had come about by his own making, and was innocent enough, anyway. Coming off the end of a brief luncheon at about 4.30pm, Reggie hied himself off to the pub , where he decided to have a little sport with The Magpie, who was minding his own business and dodgy liver with his mates in Poseurs Bar.
Pretending to be addressing a court hearing, Slice the Solicitor, hands thrust deep in pockets, strode along the bar proclaiming ”Doesn’t it strike anyone as quite unusual that our sodden and bleary-eyed friend here can get together some sort of occasionally amusing newspaper piece each week?’
There was the odd coughing cackle at this, and I thought I caught a murmured ‘bloody miracle, actually’, but I think that may have been me.
Never one to rise to the bait, The Magpie contented himself by merely asking in reply “Doesn’t it strike anyone as quite unusual that a lawyer should be seen with his hands in his own pockets?”
The comment was like a starting gun for a joke-topping contest, with Reggie suddenly assailed from all sides. ‘Hey, Slice, what’s the difference between a sea slug and a solicitor?” boomed big Sherman before supplying his own answer “ One is a slimy, bottom-dwelling form of primitive life; the other one lives in the sea hur hur hur.”
Deidre McFondle suggested that legal people could swim with perfect safety in shark infested waters, the sharks left them alone through professional courtesy.
And even Derek ’The Claw’ Clutch, the bookmaking journalist who knew all the odds had to have his grubby albeit biologically informed say ”Hey, Reggie, know the difference between a lawyer and a spermatozoon? At least the sperm has a one I 10 million chance of becoming a fully developed human being.”
It was a rout, and Slice went into his aforementioned sulk. But it started The Magpie reflecting … just what is it about those in the law which results in the profession being more maligned than doctors or even politicians? The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs lists a score of maxims, not one of them complimentary to those instructing or at the bar (try ‘a good lawyer, a evil neighbour’; ‘the better the lawyer, the worse Christian’; ‘a good lawyer must be a good liar’; and even the age-old ‘a client between two lawyers is like a goose between two foxes’.) Not forgetting Will Shakespeare’s advice that ‘first we kill all the lawyers’. So it’s nothing new.
Ulysses S. Grant
As may be expected, the home of litigation, the United States, has a long tradition of handing it out to lawyers. Ulysses S Grant18th President of the United States and hard drinking through brilliant Civil War General wasn’t backward in voicing his opinion. Grant was somewhat shabby in appearance before he reached the White House, and he once entered an inn at Galena, Illinois, on a stormy winter night. A number of lawyers, in town for a court session, were clustered around the fire. One looked up when Grant appeared and said,’ Here’s a stranger, gentlemen, and by the looks of him, he’s travelled through hell itself to get here.’
‘That’s right,’ said Grant cheerfully.
‘And how did you find things down there?’ one asked.
‘Just like here,’ said Grant. ‘Lawyers all closest to the fire.’
Perhaps one of the reasons legal eagles get their feathers ruffled so much is because they themselves always seem to be having a go at each other, and it must be admitted that much legal wit down the ages has had a delightful acid edge to it.
US Justice Hugo Black
US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was attending the funeral of a colleague whom he had heartily disliked and whose funeral he would not have attended had it not been expected of him. Another judge, arriving late just as the eulogy had begun, tiptoed to his place next to Black and whispered ‘How far has the service got?’ Black whispered back, ’They’ve just opened for the defence.’
Early in the 1800s, Lord Norbury, the often disliked and distrusted Chief Justice of Ireland, was riding with another legal man, John Parsons, in Parson’s carriage. Their journey took them past a gibbet with a corpse still hanging from it. The melancholy sight prompted Lord Norbury to remark, ’Ah, Parsons, if we all got our just desserts, were would you be?’
‘Alone in my carriage,’ was the response.
