This week, the Townsville Bulletin asked ‘Where’s Wally’? On its performance last Tuesday, the answer is ‘In the editor’s office.’

Also, Wingnut Abbott goes from dynfunctional to disgraceful, as he flounders around seeking the electorate’s love. Fat chance.

(Bentley’s having a couple of weeks break, but he’ll be back soon.)

But Let’s start with an exclusive, and a local one at that.

The ever-reliable media gal from the TCC with a name that is reminiscent of a delightful coffee-flavored Italian ice, Kiah Granata tells us that there’s only a week left to enter the NQ Arts Awards.

Well, getting in well ahead of all opposition, The ‘Pie can reveal a late entry that has just lobbed. Almost all community leaders yearn to be immortalized in sculpture, and The Member for Canberra, based here in Townsville, Ewen Dumbo Jumbo Jones, was so greatly chuffed with coverage of his Dance-a-cise effort on the streets of Canberra earlier this month, …

… he has commissioned a sculpture of himself for the art awards. It’s a piece he hopes will grace The Strand even after he is long gone (which many think will be in about 18 months). Getting under the Astonisher’s guard, The Magpie has an exclusive preview of this stellar artwork.

Still in the realm of remembrance, but in the area of real achievement, The Magpie sincerely hopes that in the coming collections of memorabilia and journals commemorating North Queensland’s contribution to the Anzac centenary that this man will be well to the forefront.

Lately, there has been much talk – much of it chest thumping trash talk – about the deployment and effectiveness of snipers in war zones. Many may find the concept distasteful, but snipers are said to save 20 or more lives for every ‘kill’ they make … it is not as though they are assassins walking the mean streets or brain-fried dingbats with a blood lust disguised as religion.

When the film American Sniper was released, the Poms wanted to compare swinging appendages, and claimed one of their own had more ‘kills’ than the American Chris Kyle.

But there is little doubt that the man with the most ‘kills’ as a sniper was the Chinese/Australian digger William Edward ‘Billy’ Sing, a hero of Gallipoli. Billy is credited officially with 150 ‘kills’, but at Gallipoli alone his unofficial count was more than 200. Billy had a famous running cat-and-mouse game with a Turkish counterpart, which makes fascinating reading in itself. He was deployed to both the Middle East and the Western Front after Gallipoli, and no records exist of his apparently clandestine performance there, but there are persistant estimates of more than 300 kills during the whole war.

Billy Sing was born to a Chinese father and an English mother in Clermont in 1886, and was schooled and worked in outback Queensland, including for a time in the Proserpine area. He suffered racial discrimination throughout his life, which would’ve been kinda dangerous for his antagonists, because from an early age, he was a renowned shooter, dropping kangaroos with head shots from incredible distances. He was also a rifle range champion.

His war duties over, Billy Sing came home to become a rural itinerant, timber worker, cane cutter and drover, and his ignominious end in poverty in a Brisbane boarding house in 1943 has echoes of current arguments about how we treat our returning troops.

He most certainly should be remembered and honoured. Those interested to know more, there is a book.

Moving on to things less noble.

On the Canberra scene, Wingnut Abbott has again been infuriatingly like the curate’s egg, good in parts, as he flounders around trying to get back into voters good books.

One of the few good bits was his refusal to accept that that thought-disordered twerp David Hicks had turned out to be a goody-two shoes. The PM reminded people that this was a man who called Osmma bin liner ‘brother’ on the alleged 20 times he met him, and wrote letters to his mum full of extremists jihad ranting and fairy tales. The ‘Pie had this to say in comments during the week.

 February 20, 2015 at 9:09 pm  (Edit)

Just to cut through some weasle words by his lawyer, David Hicks is not ‘innocent’ … he is ‘not guilty’.

That is not guilty of the charges as laid against him by the United States. He should not have been subjected to the harsh treatment he received in Gitmo, possibly shouldn’t have been there at all, but his training with terrorists in Afghanistan and reputedly meeting with Osama bin Laden several times, calling him ‘brother’, puts him well outside the sanitisation of ‘innocent’.

In many cases in this country, a jury verdict of not guilty means ‘not proven beyond a reasonable doubt’, it does not mean ‘innocent’.

Worth noting that his activities, if they happened now, would make him a criminal in Australian law. He’s a thought-disordered grub.

So Wingnut gets a tick for that, but then there was that brain seizure, which threw the mother of all spanners into the smoothly progressing diplomatic efforts to have Indonesia spare the Australian drug smugglers. Indulging in ‘shirt-front diplomacy’ (and we know how he went to water on that one last time) the jug-headed twit decides to use barely veiled threats againstg Indonesia, which almost for sure has sealed the fate of the condemned pair. Talk about the mouse that roared. But was Abbott simply dog whistling to Australians showing he was a ‘tough leader’, but in fact willing to assuredly seal the fate of the condemned duo simply for electoral gain? It sure looks like it. What’s that old and famous saying about ‘blood on your hands’?

But that’s not all. Squeaky clean government? Check this out from the Junkee.com website, it speaks for itself.

If theme songs were tailor made, Abbott’s would surely be ‘Somethings Gotta Give’. Soon, one hopes. Larry Pickering thinks the media is helping things along somewhat.

Moving on, and back here in the ‘Ville.

From our Make Up Your Bloody Mind, Dept Of:

The odd crocodile is known to be partial to a tasty bit of chicken now and then, so one is entitled to think that Wandering Wally, one of the most chronicled crocs ever in these parts, had managed to nip the head off the Astonisher iditor, such was the hilarious headless chook flapping in the paper on Tuesday. There were four separate pages involving the saltie and his mates which have been spotted around the place, and in each instance, it was a classic head-scratcher.

First, we had this front page …

… with a totally meaningless and confusing headline. What was it saying?

The headless chook flapping failure number one is ignoring the established rule that a headline must give a sense of the story – this did anything but, with its sniggering undergraduate good-idea-at-the-time tone, which conveyed absolutely nothing. Should one assume that it was play on ‘For Christ’s Sake’, and to what purpose? Headlines are meant to sell papers, but when they’re written in this in-joke style, they just baffle but do not pique curiosity enough to make a sale.

Another turn-off that obviously did not occur to any of the Flinders Street West Mensa Club was the use of the word ‘croc’, which 99 times out 100 in the paper refers to our hapless and hopeless basketball dribblers. The general populace has long given up on this lot, which has an interest rating of minus zero, so again, no cigar and no sale … especially when the headline sounds like it is plea for public money to prop up the beanpoles.

Flapping failure 2 comes on page 5 … with a classic example of the paper’s Chicken Little The Sky Is Falling overstatement …

… which was no doubt news to the local denizens if they were among the minority of those who still read the paper. One wonders in light of this ‘cry wolf’ iditorial policy, what words will be left when a REAL emergency happens, like a terrorist attack on Dan Murphys, or Mayor Mullet decides to appear in a see-through blouse. Or the unthinkable, Ewen Jones gets re-elected. But even if we take the paper at face value (which should be about 10 cents) and start hyperventilating through our jocks, the Astonisher gives the lie to its own alarmist overstatement by using a ‘Where’s Wally?’ cartoon character to decorate very same story. Err, chaps, bit of a mixed message, no? Do we take you seriously, or is this just a light-hearted game?

If this is to be the editorial policy, perhaps next time those murderous ratbags in the Middle East behead someone, perhaps you could lighten it all up a bit with, say, this …

But offering better prospects than a dead horse, the Astonisher was determined to flog this live croc for all it was worth.

So to page 18, where the Iditorial displayed all the the traditional hallmarks – finger-wagging ‘more should be done’, stating the bleedin’ obvious – ‘crocodiles are a fact of life in the North (sic) but when they encroach on populated areas, they pose a risk to the community.’ Really, no shit, Sherlock? Then the calm voice of reason pops up with ‘Is it going to take crocodiles roaming The Strand before anything is done?’ Nothing like a high note of hyperbole to put things in perspective, especially if it includes the insulting suggestion that the Parks and Wildlife people trying to get up close and personal with a man killer are not ‘doing’ something. No doubt the iditor penned these stirring words while tucked up in nervous safety in his high set as the missus brought his usual nightcap.

But what’s this, back on Paged 15? Why, it’s John Ando, who’s been around these here parts since before Pinocchio Heywood was but a piece of wood awaiting the whittling knife, and he seems to take a more measured, traditionally laconic view of the matter.

So in the space of just 10 pages, we’ve gone from being in the grip of terror to holding our usual ‘blasé’ she’ll-be-right-mate attitude. Somewhat conflicting points of view, but The ‘Pie will back Ando any day against the overblown alarmist tripe from southern blow-ins.

Moving on but with apologies that we must stay with the Astonisher for a visit to Codswallop Corner.

Last week, newbie reporter/columnist Christopher McMahon promised a ‘good read’ this week, no matter what.

Something obviously went wrong.

From comments during the week.

The Magpie February 17, 2015 at 11:36 am  (Edit)

Memo Chris McMahon: 
PLEASE … STOP EMBARRASSING YOURSELF

The ‘Pie has two questions for you.
1. What on earth makes you think your latest column is funny/relevant/interesting/well written and/or worth the time it takes to read? Seriously, step back and honestly answer whether this effort is even mildly amusing. It is not. Is in instructive? It is not, except in defining the self-indulgence the Bulletin allows space-filling columnists. 
Really, can you see the reader chortling away before passing the paper on to one of the five people who read (apparently) EVERY copy, telling them to ‘ read McMahon, he’s hilarious/amusing/good read.’ A certain amount of self-delusion in a writer is a necessary weapon in your armory but there are limits. You’ve passed yours.

If you want funny, read Thurber’s The Night The Bed Fell In, or anything else he wrote. A pale imitation would be better than this continuing glop.

Question 2: Have you attempted to write your latest effort in free verse? Or did the subs have a night off  (no doubt sampling the forbidden delights of The Valley in Brisbane or the bordellos of Mumbai)? You’re disdain for punctuation and several other basic rules of English would shame a Year Sevener.

Iditor Lachlan Heywood should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for allowing you to make such a public ninny of yourself, which will not only reflect on your general work as a reporter (and the paper), but in this electronic age, will stick with you down the years and forever,

Think about it.

Other stuff. The best from Cyberspace Junk this week.

Since everyone else seems to be indulging in though bubbles, have a look at this. Just a nice, eye-opening piece of stage wonder.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar, to hear Mongrel the Barrister’s latest thoughts on the week’s politics. Last Saturday night, he suggested that just because of the 8-6 numbers ‘in favour of the shielas’ in Premier Anna Alphabet’s new Queensland cabinet, there was still real gender equality in George Street. ‘Well, it’s a well hung parliament, ain’t it?’ yuk yuk chortle. Sigh.