Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Competition (max 300 words) - my shortlisted entry: A Tongue Lashing

A Tongue Lashing

You’re not going to enjoy this but it’s time for some home truths. Our life together must change, which means you must change. Bluntly put, you’re extremely boring to live with.

You like lists, so here’s the story of our tedious existence under four headings: words; food; drink; sex.   

Yes, I do know your friends are impressed with your vocabulary; precipitation rather than rain, axiomatic rather than bloody obvious. But your sentences are also stuffed with phrases such as, oh really?, but surely!, is that so?, no kidding! They’re an insult to your, and my, abilities.  

Look at what we eat, even at restaurants. I know vegetarianism is all the go. But tell me this, just how many brown rice and nut meat casseroles with a side order of tofu chips are you planning to eat in your lifetime? I want variety, and a good rump steak once a week.

At least you’re not teetotal, even if you do hide the bottle in the bedroom, well away from your mother’s prying eyes. But Marsala?! There’s a lot of fine wine around. A good red might just help us bond.    

As for sex, you ponder why it happens so rarely. Simple answer, oral hygiene. Sucking your teeth is not the same as cleaning them. It makes me want to puke. 

Now you’re getting stroppy, I can feel your blood pressure rising. How dare I berate you, you demand to know. Well, as your tongue, I have a right to express my opinions. Change your lifestyle … or else. 

Here are the options we face: the odorous; the ulcerous; the cancerous. Perhaps all three at once. Not pretty, I know, but desperate times breed desperate measures.  You’ve been warned.

Israel and Palestine: Dr Sigmund Freud interviews Warren Mundine on his recent Australian Financial Review article

SF: A lot of people seem to think your article, deriding the idea of a Palestinian state and expressing unqualified support for Israel, was ignorant and unbalanced. You were a bit selective, weren’t you now?

WM: Of course, I bloody was. I’m not going to put in stuff that undermines the point of view I’m expressing on behalf of those who wish it expressed, am I?

SF: Mmm … very interesting, are you confirming that the article in fact was written by someone else?

WM: Look here, my name was on it, and it was spelt correctly. What more do you want?

SF: Perhaps we might explore some of the elements in your article. You wrote that in 1917 Britain declared support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. That was, of course, the famous Balfour Declaration.

WM: Never heard of it.

SF: I’m not surprised. The Declaration said, and I quote, “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object—”

WM (interrupting): Yeah, ripper!

SF: Let me continue, please! I quote again: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

What do you make of that last comment, Mr Mundine?

WM: Bloody Brits were simply pandering to a tiny minority of those with no ties to the land whatsoever.

SF: At that time, Mr Mundine, there were less than 60,000 Jews in Palestine and an Arab population of about 600,000. So could you clarify who the tiny minority was?

WM: No, I could not! There’ll be no gotcha moment when I’m being interviewed.

SF: Did you know that in 1891 a well-known Jewish writer observed, and I quote again: “If a time comes when our people in Palestine push out the native inhabitants”, note the use of the word native, Mr Mundine, “they will not give up their place easily”.

WM: Now look here doctor Freud, or whatever you are, I’ve never claimed to be a student of history, it’s the feel of these things, the vibe. Facts are useful, but only when they suit the purpose.

SF: Perhaps we should touch on more contemporary issues.

WM: Now you’re talking, I’m a very contemporary man.

SF: Your article, I’m tempted to put your in inverted commas but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, commented that since 1967 Israel has been surrounded by countries who want to drive it off the face of the earth. Which surrounding countries exactly did you have in mind?

WM: Aw, well, um, give me a mo, Iran, Uruguay, Albania, Ethiopia, Jordan, and that’s just for starters.

SF: When’s your birthday?

WM: What’s that got to do with it?

SF: I want to buy you an atlas. By the way, Jordan has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1994.

WM: No-one told me that!

SF: Did anyone tell you that in 1993 the Palestinian Liberation Organisation formally recognised the state of Israel in an exchange of letters between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin?

WM: Can’t remember, and I have no idea who you’re talking about. What I do remember is being told that everything that goes wrong is entirely the fault of the Palestinians.

SF: There are quite a few people, including Israelis, who strongly disagree with that.

WM: Well, they’re nothing more than, there’s a phrase for it, got it here somewhere (reaches into coat pocket and extracts a small, tatty piece of paper), yeah, that’s right, self-hating Jews. Good phrase that one. Come to think of it, doctor Freud, you probably one of them.   

North Korea Celebrates Trumpism with a new Ten-point Plan: Dr Sigmund Freud's exclusive interview with Kim Jong-un

SF:       If I may, Beloved, Supreme, Leader, begin with a profound apology for missing your recent birthday celebrations. I was delayed in leaving what you described in your recent autobiography—volume 26 I believe—as the Great Neo-Fascistic Capitalist Enterprise. So many Americans were departing it was impossible to book a flight.

BSL:      Relax Doctor, these things happen. And note I have just offered you a beatific smile. It doesn’t happen very often. But I feel particularly relaxed and comfortable even though I’ve never owned a cardigan. Good times are upon us, Doctor, as we, I that is, have just finalised our new Ten Point Plan. Here is your autographed copy. Let me summarise:

(Reads)

1.      Build wall to keep out South Koreans

2.      Test Nuclear Device

3.      Build islands in Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to increase living space for gallant North Korean people, to expand territorial waters and to promote cultural exchanges

4.      Test Nuclear Device

5.      Make triumphant State Visit to Great Neo-Fascistic Capitalist Enterprise

6.      Test Nuclear Device

7.      Execute a few uncles and hordes of other reprobates

8.      Test Nuclear Device

9.      Dye hair of Beloved, Supreme Leader a new colour to symbolise dynamism of new way forward

10.  Test Nuclear Device

11.  Update torture training manuals.

SF:       Excuse me for interrupting Beloved, Supreme, Leader but that’s eleven points.

BSL       (Silently reads the summary while counting on fingers. His brow furrows but, remarkably, he smiles.): What does it matter? We’ll be even more successful. And for future reference Doctor please note there is no comma between Supreme and Leader. I’ve overlooked it on this occasion because of my magnanimous frame of mind but others have learnt that it’s an unhealthful mistake to make.

SF:       It’s certainly an ambitious plan, Beloved, Supreme Leader, but some might question the priorities and surely the nation cannot afford it.

BSL       (Smiles again, setting a personal best for displays of good humour in a 24-hour period.): Ah that’s the genius of my plan, Dr Freud. I will admit we are not in the best of economic times. But from now on all those wishing to meet our desperate need for the essentials of life will have to pay a tariff on whatever they give us. We’ll collect millions, billions. (Claps hands in delight.) It’s genius, Dr Freud, pure genius. We can build walls and islands and nuclear devices and torture chambers and we won’t spend a cent of our own, even if we had one. I am most surprised no-one else has devised this economic model before.

SF:       I am sorry to dampen the occasion, Beloved, Supreme Leader, but I think they have.

Dr Sigmund Freud's gallant effort to analyse Donald Trump's inauguration

Among the spectators at Donald Trump’s inauguration was a well-dressed, bespectacled man, wearing a carefully trimmed beard and a severe look. He had been tasked by the International Association of Psychopathology to make sense of the occasion. 

SF: Excuse me madam, but I am enquiring as to the reasons people are in such an exuberant mood today. 

Woman (Looking warily at Freud): Because we all feel great again.

SF: May I ask the factors that have produced this sense of elation?

Woman (Shaking her head in disbelief): We feel great because with President Trump we know exactly where we stand. You could never tell with those horrible Democrats. With Mr Trump, there’s never a doubt. He’s put honesty back into lying, truly a new era for our nation and the world.

SF (Turning to a middle-aged man): And you sir, what brought you here today?

Man (In strong Southern drawl): I just loved The Apprentice. What a show! Couldn’t wait for those words, “You’re fired!” (Chuckles.) That’s exactly what Trump’ll do with world leaders. If they don’t play their part in makin’ America great again then, wait for it … “you’re fired!” Boy-oh-boy.

SF: I am not so sure it will quite work that way. (Speaks to elegantly dressed woman carrying a poodle wearing a Trump cap): And you madam, why are you here today?

Woman: Why that’s easy, I’m so worried about my husband’s hearing.

SF: Could you elaborate?

Woman: Oh my Chuck just loves to go shooting with his buddies—only wild animals of course, isn't that right darling. (She smooches the poodle.) They all come home their ears ringing, they can barely understand a word anyone says.

SF: I’m sorry, I am not quite following you.  

Woman: Oh, you must be a foreigner! But not from Mexico, thank God, your beard’s too neat. It’s just so hard these days for honest, hard-working Americans to buy silencers. It’s alright for Socialists to wear ear-muffs when they go shooting, but no red-blooded American wants to look like Elmer Fudd do they now? Never mind ISIS and Obamacare. It’s a fundamental right for all Americans to carry guns with silencers. And Trump will make that happen.

Freud, looking a little shaken by these encounters, now approaches a thickset man standing by himself, an expensive camera hanging from his neck.

SF: I hope I am not disturbing you, sir, but may I ask what brought you out today?

Man (Speaking in heavily accented English): It’s a wonderful day for our great people. Finally, we have our man in the Whitehouse.

SF: And which part of America are you from?

Man: I am not permitted to say anything more. Please contact my office if you need to discuss further with my superiors. (He hands Freud a name card.) Please note the opening hours of the Russian Embassy are 9am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday. Goodbye.

Australia’s campaign against the death penalty – real or phony?

On 10 October 2016, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, commemorated World Day Against the Death Penalty with a media release.

Her eyes fixed on Australia’s candidacy for the United Nations Human Rights Council – in which abolition of the death penalty is purportedly a national priority – Minister Bishop said the right things. The penalty constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment regardless of how it was carried out. Given the lack of any ‘credible evidence that it is an effective crime deterrent’ the penalty was senseless. It was ‘regularly associated with miscarriages of justice, the inadvertent execution of innocents, and the disproportionate execution of poor, ethnic and religious minorities’.

All true, and welcome comment for those of us who believe that the death penalty has no place in a world with pretences of civilisation.

Fast forward to 12 December 2016 when Ms Bishop delivered a ‘Human Rights Speech’ to the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. In forum after forum, the Minister declared, ‘whether in bilateral meetings or in multilateral settings like the United Nations, Australia has argued the case for abolition - with calm, with patience and with determination’.

And, regrettably it seems, with a distinct lack of success.

If 2015 figures are anything to go by, between Ms Bishop’s media release in October 2016 and her Lowy Institute speech two months later some 250 people were executed by governments world-wide. And that figure excludes China, the world’s leading official killer, which treats death penalty data as a state secret.

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect a major diplomatic offensive every time someone is executed. But what levers, if any, is the Australian Government pulling to pressure the world’s top five executing states: China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States?

Less than a week before Ms Bishop’s Lowy Institute speech, William Sallie was killed by lethal injection in the US state of Georgia. He had been on death row for 25 years. What did the Australian Government say to US governments about Sallie’s execution, or the 18 other executions in the US that preceded it in 2016? Very little it seems, if material I received in response to an earlier FOI request is any guide.

A cable from the Australian Embassy in Washington dated 18 September 2015 advised the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra: ‘Since January 2014 we have not made any representations to the US federal government on the death penalty.’

An email from DFAT to the embassy on 10 March 2016 asked: ‘We are responding to a piece of mincor [ministerial correspondence] on the death penalty … just wondering whether there are bilateral representations we could refer to?’ The reply: ‘Nothing at the federal level but a bit at the state level.’

This email exchange hardly suggests an energised, determined effort. The 'bit at state level' in fact was 'in support of foreign nationals, at the request of their governments'. No independent initiative there. Yet six months earlier, in announcing Australia’s candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council, Minister Bishop asserted that Australia would be ‘a strong advocate for global abolition of the death penalty, one of Australia’s core human rights objectives.’

Ben Quilty, Archibald Prize winner and mentor and confidant of Myuran Sukumaran, is currently co-curating an exhibition of Sukumaran's art which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia. Quilty wrote recently that 2017 was a year for ‘all Australian to stand up … against the death penalty’. Internationally, he claimed, ‘in 2017 we will have the moral high ground, the soapbox, and it should be used’.

Yet if Australia is truly to occupy the moral high ground, if its campaign against the death penalty is to have meaning, its advocacy needs to be more open and consistent. It must be genuinely universal, not mostly reserved for the occasions when Australians are facing the hangman or the swordsman, the bullet or the needle. 

On that, we have a long way to go.   

Breaking News – Kevin Rudd to Run in US Presidential Race

USA Tomorrow, 31 October 2016

Washington is abuzz with the revelation that Kevin Rudd has offered himself as a compromise candidate in next week’s US presidential contest. 

One administration insider described the news as the breakthrough moment American voters had prayed for.

''With Kevin in the race, with the full backing of Botswana and the FBI, voters will feel so much better choosing between Clinton or Trump, knowing there’s now an even worse alternative."

Asked whether it was possible for a someone with Rudd’s background – failed national leader (x2), failed UN Secretary General candidate (x1), non-US citizen (ongoing), megalomaniac (ongoing), our source dismissed these as trifles.

"The point is that Kevin combines all the characteristics we loathe in Hillary and Donald. It’s no mean feat to make them look good but by God he’s done it.''

Mr Rudd was unavailable for interview. His spokeswoman said, ''I am authorised to say that Kev, a humble man of the people, is delighted to step up to the plate, put his shoulder to the wheel as the rubber hits the road and offer to serve the American electors in any capacity as their President with a fresh load of programmatic specificity''.    

The past is a different country – they washed up then

Every day, tens of thousands of people dump on America without saying a word. They open their mouths, it’s true.  But that is for the food consumed off polystyrene plates, often in bilious amounts, using plastic knives and forks, or for the cold or hot drinks guzzled from polystyrene cups.

There’s no more alarming way to see this than to drive across America, which we did a little while ago. In grand hotels and pit-stop motels polystyrene is king. And even though some forms of this ubiquitous, environmentally iniquitous, product are recyclable it mostly goes into the trash, destined for landfill.

The hotel and motel owners (and restaurateurs) of America need only take a peek at Trip Advisor or elsewhere on the Internet to sense the cry for change:

o   ‘Are you serious – polystyrene plates and plastic cutlery at breakfast?!’

o   ‘Polystyrene and plastic cutlery set the standard.’

o   ‘Everything in the dining room was disposable … Nothing cheapens a meal quite so much as using disposable plates and cutlery.’

Billy Connolly joined in the lament against ‘polystyrene plates and plastic cutlery’ writing of his road trip along the famous Route 66.

So what or who’s to blame? Is the food so bad it doesn’t matter what it’s served on? Have the dishwashers of America, threatened with deportation by Donald Trump, gone to ground? Does the fault lie more with Saudi Arabia? Battling Russia and Iran it’s pushed oil prices to record lows. Cheap oil equals cheaper plastic. Why clean up when you can throw away?

No matter how blame is apportioned it's a phenomenon that’s rubbishing America.