Slimejam

Penguins claimed that the wreck of the Gratitude in 1911 — and the resulting toxic oil spill — was “the best thing that ever happened to Antarctica”. (‘Wreck of the Gratitude, Macquarie Island, 1911’, held at the State Library of New South Wales)

When social and political historians come to write the definitive history of the climate change debate, a chapter will surely have to be set aside to document the rise of one of the most cunning and media-savvy interest groups this country has ever seen. That chapter — assuming the authors strive for transparency of meaning and don’t adopt a naming scheme that is wilfully obnubilatory — will surely have to be entitled “The Penguins”.

Scientists have suggested that for the species Eudyptula minor (the so-called ‘little’ or ‘fairy’ penguin) inhabiting northern Tasmania, Victoria and the Bass Strait islands, rising sea temperatures may in fact prove to be procreatively advantageous. The theory is that warmer seas will encourage penguins to breed earlier, and breed better.

Before we consider the science (and we will*), a few items of historical record. Penguins, you will recall, were one of the the first major lobby groups to spread misinformation about the damage being done to the environment. In the eighties, penguins ran a cynical, pro-cholorofluorocarbon campaign in a desperate attempt to forestall the collapse of the aerosol industry in which, as a species, they had massively over-invested. The penguins later changed tack, claiming that a hole in the ozone layer was in the best interests of human- and animal-kind in general. The ozone layer, according to the penguins, was simply an artificial, psychological barrier preventing the creatures of Earth from claiming their destiny among the stars — or, as the penguin-funded billboards proclaimed, a “no-go-zone layer”.

In these enlightened days, of course, we know that the ozone layer and its accompanying hole is in fact an elaborate costume devised for Lady Gaga’s 2010 southern hemisphere tour. In any case, the focus of the environmental cause has shifted. And when it comes to climate change, penguins have been gallingly obstinate. First, they denied the very existence of global warming. Now, embarrassed at having to acknowledge that the climate really is changing, the penguin lobby is trying to tell us that an increase in ocean temperature is actually a positive development because it allow them to reproduce quicker, and more often.

But is this something we want to encourage? Just what are the evil forces that lurk behind behind this heedless rush to breed? Every cloaca is precious, and no penguin should have to sacrifice its urogenital integrity at the altar of fluctuating global temperatures. Sadly, penguins already have enough excuses for indulging in hasty, ill-planned sex. How many times have we seen grainy images of penguins huddled in their shelters, caught in the act, filmed in that tell-tale “sex-o-chrome” night vision that speaks of a thousand Sphenisciforme sins? Some females even submit themselves to performing flipper-jobs and other profoundly humiliating acts simply to obtain a few nice pebbles with which to decorate their homes. Do we really need to be engineering those very circumstances which will propel these lascivious creatures to ever more depraved sexual activities?

Penguins already find it difficult to contain their sexual urges until mating season. Here, two adelie penguins treat each other to mutual cloacal frottage. (From Antarctic penguins: a study of their social habits by Dr G. Murray Levick, McBride, Nast & Company, New York, 1914)

Another question we might ask is whether we really need more penguins. A quick survey reveals that penguins are in major positions of power in nearly 0.0000001% of the companies currently listed in the Dow 30. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that this works out to a total of 0.0000003 penguins. In fact, all you need to be is a person who has a general functional intelligence, a calculator, and fingers.

Of course, it’s extremely difficult to argue with a penguin. And it’s not just the language barrier. Once could almost go as far as to call these creatures recalcitrant — if one was reasonably confident that they knew what that word meant, and was not concerned about exposing one’s ignorance and misunderstanding on that most far-reaching of media, aka. the world wide ethernet.

But it’s true that penguins are known for their immovable opinions and fierce politicking. An example picked at random: the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty during the 1950s, when the penguin plenipotentiary insisted that 80% of the continent be set aside for ‘cultural festivities’ — or, as it turned, a decade-long rock-and-roll concert headlined by The Grateful Dead. We are still seeing the lamentable results of those ‘negotiations’ today.

Now, most climate change deniers are as laughable as an author of an article on climate change stooping to a pun about the environmental debate “heating up”. But as the environmental debate heats up, the penguins have adopted sophisticated tactics, twisting science to their own ends and fashioning themselves into several 40cm tall forces to be reckoned with. “Stressing the positives of climate change is a clever move,” says one public relations expert, who can’t be named due to having only just been invented by me for the purposes of this blog post, and whose ten word contribution to this piece scarcely warrants direct quotation in any case.

One wonders what is to be the next line of attack against the environmental movement — and from which quarter such an attack might arise. A number of leading giraffes, pointing (though not literally) to the growing obesity epidemic among long-necked ruminants, have already come out in favour of deforestation because it encourages young giraffes to consider a more varied and balanced diet.

There is only one place all this can end. By which, I mean this article. And, because this article has in fact ended, that place is here.

* Actually, no, it looks like we won’t. (↑)

A scene from the British House of Lords. Women were not admitted as peers until 1958, when it was finally decided that someone needed to be employed to pick up all the paper. (From The rise of the democracy by Joseph Clayton, Cassell & Company Ltd., London, 1911.)

Britain may soon hold a referendum to move from a “first-past-the-post” voting system to the kind of preferential system currently used in Australia and other democracies throughout the Commonwealth.

The Australian colonies adopted Britain’s Westminster system of parliamentary democracy when they achieved responsible government in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the system was tweaked somewhat when, in 1901, the colonies federated and Australia became a nation in its own right. It’s tempting to consider that this youthful willingness to experiment has now, in turn, inspired Britain to consider alternative methods of electing its political representatives. Indeed, it could even be seen as just the latest example in a relatively short but immensely rich history of mutual exchange between the British Isles and the Australian continent.

Take, for example, the arrival in Australia of the first fleet of convicts, marines and officers from Britain in 1788. It was immediately apparent to the British that what the indigenous inhabitants of the continent coveted more than anything else was blankets. They seemed, noted Captain John Hunter, “to go frigging mental for the things”. Striped woollen blankets, though they had not hitherto existed on the continent of Australia, were correctly judged by the new settlers to form the entire basis for the Aboriginal systems of kinship, thought and spirituality. In order to placate the Aborigines and satisfy their incredible appetite for perfectly rectangular sections of Dorset wool, the British grudgingly handed over all the blankets they could retrieve from their ships, and in exchange were granted the opportunity, over the next three-quarters of a century or so, to indulge their tendency toward wholesale extermination. We can see here the germ of that generous spirit of give and take which aptly characterises the relationship between our two nations to this day.

Likewise, while Britain may have based its entire imperial enterprise on slavery, it took Australian ingenuity to informally resurrect the practice three-quarters of a century after Britain had abolished it — and not just to resurrect it, but to finesse it. It’s true to say that the colony of Queensland was merely aping the tactics of the mother country when it began kidnapping Pacific Islanders to work as cheap labourers in its sugar fields toward the end of the nineteenth century — but what set Australia apart was enacting legislation, a year after the formation of the national parliament, to deport the kidnapped islanders back to the societies from which they had, by now, become entirely estranged. It is doubtful that this new and invigorating form of cruelty could have arisen naturally in the British Isles without the additional spark of brilliance that fired in the brain of the Australian body politic.

It could be argued that Australia has rescued cricket from its modest and overly effeminate beginnings. (From Cricket by Horace G. Hutchinson, Country Life, London, 1903.)

But politics is not the only sphere in which the Australian people have applied their unique style to improve upon the achievements of their Anglo-Saxon ancestors. For instance, it took a distinctively colonial genius to add a dash of anarchy to the English boarding school game of rugby, thus forming the bedrock for institutional violence, both on and off the field, that is proudly the preserve of the modern Australian football codes. Likewise, it was an arguably Australian impetus that transformed the cricketer — the emblem of British grace and sportsmanship — from a somewhat staid figure into the boozing, rutting and entirely admirable specimen that adorns the cricket pitches of the world today.

While the earliest British settlers in Australia may have arrived somewhat under duress, by the middle of the twentieth century there was a marked increase in British emigration to Australia. These so-called ‘ten pound poms’ were encouraged by an assisted passage scheme, whereby the Australian government subsidised the cost of their fare from Britain. The accepted view is that the scheme was attractive to the Australian government as a means of rapidly populating the continent with white people. While this wholly creditable motive was indeed a factor, it was not the primary one. Recently uncovered Cabinet papers from the 1940s reveal that the scheme was principally designed to ensure that Australia, having accepted large numbers of migrants from Britain and elsewhere, could, in exchange, export its unwanted supplies of Rolf Harrises, Peter Andres and Pauline Hansons.

But getting back to where we began — politics — we might now turn our attention to some of Australia’s more recent parliamentary innovations, which Britain, in her wisdom, may choose to adopt in any forthcoming review of its political processes. One example is the appropriately egalitarian practice, pioneered by the Honourable Charles Wilson ‘Ironbar’ Tuckey and embraced in recent months by Senator Bill Heffernan, of providing comments to the media in the form of a ‘doorstop’ interview. The political observer will be quick to point out that this is nothing new. What distinguishes the approach adopted by Messrs Tuckey and Heffernan is that they offer their contributions in the background of doorstop interviews convened by other ministers of parliament entirely.

It is only by advances such as these that democracy can remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.

Lucrezia Borgia, who is said to have killed at least fifty of her contemporaries with a very large ham and arsenic and pineapple pizza. (Illustration from Poison mysteries in history, romance and crime by C.J.S. Thompson, The Scientific Press Ltd, London, 1923.)

I’m the first to admit that murder is no laughing matter, but the normal standards of propriety seem a little inadequate when the murder weapon turns out to be a curry.

A number of news sites have reported this week that a London woman has been jailed for 23 years for fatally poisoning an ex-boyfriend via the medium of that most ubiquitous of spicy Indian dishes. Her motive: jealousy at her former lover becoming engaged to another woman. The poison: aconite, also known as wolfsbane. The curry: vegetable.

Details are vague as to how the poisoned curry was administered. I’m choosing to picture an elaborate plan involving a cunning disguise and a fabricated story about a misplaced takeaway order. I’m choosing to picture it this way, because if historical precedent is anything to go by, the alternative methods of application are fairly grim. I need hardly remind the learned reader that there are a number of theories as to how Agrippina, prime suspect in the poisoning of Claudius, was supposed to have delivered the fatal agent of that weak-kneed, runny-nosed emperor’s doom. One theory is that she pushed a poison-dipped feather down his throat. Another is that she delivered the poison by means of an enema. (There is even a controversial and little spoken-about theory which suggests a combination of the two.)

And on the topic of bottom-related ingress and egress, my research into the matter has revealed that one of the symptoms of aconite poisoning is diarrhoea. Which is rather clever on the part of the murderer, since it’s often also one of the symptoms of eating a bad curry. Almost inconceivably, this doesn’t seem to have formed part of the defence team’s weaponry in their attempt to acquit their client — nor has the fact that aconite, when prepared correctly, has traditionally been used in Asian countries as a medicine. Rather than being a premeditated killing, it’s entirely possible that this was an extremely poorly-executed attempt to restore the groom-to-be’s virility in time for the wedding.

One film studio, recognising the double-whammy appeal of a subcontinentally-spiced story of true crime, is apparently already hard at work on a script entitled The Bollywood Borgia. It’s a brave move, though, considering the surprisingly poor box office takings of There’s A Slug Pellet In My Saag Paneer and Sonobe Sayonara.

I mentioned Agrippina above, and it’s worth pointing out that some recent historians believe she may have been judged too harshly by history. It’s probable that the dim light in which she is viewed is due to chauvinism on the part of historians past. Perhaps the London curry poisoner will enjoy a similar attempt at rehabilitation in the not too distant future.

In the final analysis, however, I’m most concerned about history’s ultimate verdict vis-à-viz the vegetable curry, which is clearly the loser in all this.

“Of course I’d love to dance the quadrille, Miss Dorothy. Unfortunately, my scrotum is stuck to the inside of my thighs.” (Illustration from Summer of 1889: routes, rates, hotels, game laws and other valuable information, published by the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company, 1889.)

The seasons have provided inspiration for countless singers and songwriters. As we here in Australia approach the tail end of another soul-melting summer, it occurs to me that none of the popular music artistes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have really captured my own feelings on that very season which terrorises me like no other.

A quick survey of summer-related songs reveals that Ace of Base once recorded a version of an old Bananarama number called ‘Cruel Summer’. At first glance, this seemed germane. Unfortunately, much of the Ace of Base version is in French — a language I don’t speak, and one which seems poorly suited to enumerating the ills of summer. (If the French were cursed with the sorts of summers we endure this far down in the southern hemisphere, they wouldn’t have had the inclination to invent a language as attractive as French, for a start.) Add to that the fact that Ace of Base are Swedish, and that the Bananarama version featured on the soundtrack to the movie The Karate Kid (a film which seriously expects us to believe that a teenager would go to a costume party dressed as a shower), and it starts to look like we’re taking an excursion deep into Total Bullshitsville.

Or take Daryl Braithwaite’s ‘One Summer’, whose chorus exhorts us to “Remember the way-ay”, while conveniently failing to provide further specifics. I can only assume he means “remember the way in which your naked arse flesh got stuck to the vinyl of your desk chair while you mindlessly surfed the internet late into night”.

And you can stop smirking, Sir Cliff Richard, with your “fun and laughter” and “no more worries for a week or two”. Which is it, one week or two? Irrelevant, since the skin is still peeling from my knees a fortnight since the conclusion of my own summer holiday. Where’s the fun and laughter in that, I ask. (And while you’re puzzling over that one, think how screwed you would have been if you’d been knighted during the Crusades. I’m just saying.)

No survey of wildly disingenuous summer-themed songs could ignore ‘Summer Lovin” from the movie Grease. Consider this tragically flawed poetic image, if you will: “Summer days drifting away / To, uh oh, those summer nights”. In other words, “isn’t it nice how in summer the temperature usually drops once the sun has gone down, because then we can engage in pleasant activities such as under-age sex and/or sleep” . Sure, except when the temperature remains at 34°C for most of the freaking night.

‘Uh oh’ indeed, Ms Olivia Hyphenated-Surname.

The nearest a song about summer has come to expressing my own feelings is ‘Summer in the City’ by one of my favourite musical acts of yesteryear, The Lovin’ Spoonful. Its verses speak of “people looking half dead” (check), the city being “hotter than a matchhead” (hmm, the ignition temperature of sulphur is roughly 230 degrees Celsius, but let’s call it artistic licence — I’m willing to let gross negative hyperbole slip by where summer is concerned), and the back of one’s neck getting “dirty and gritty” (not sure why they’ve specifically mentioned the back of the neck there — the creases in the belly flesh, groin and arse areas would have been my go-to points of anatomy for that one, but anyway). Where songwriter John Sebastian comes undone, like Sir Cliff, is his promise, in the chorus, that “despite the heat it’ll be alright”.

No it won’t, John. No it arsing well won’t. Not until it’s the middle of June, and I’m wearing slippers.