Days Volume Two

* Shellharbour, NSW, Australia. An impalpable censorship is eliminating all intellectual and artistic vitality in Western society with a vengeance; persistent recourse to euphemism and circumlocution is corrupting and debasing language; and the coercive atmosphere of guilt, fear and intimidation surrounding this censorship is inhibiting the easy give-and-take of human discourse, the life-blood of democratic institutions, and ultimately of man's own social and spiritual life. Thoreau warned us to 'beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.' What would he have said about enterprises that require new vocabulary? It is axiomatic that those least alarmed by the erosion of society's moral and intellectual life have none themselves. It is easy to understand the crude appeal of political correctness to liberal yahoos of the New Left (closet fascists posing as 60's liberals): it provides them with a ready store of social causes that require no thought and confers in

"He followed the long, S-curved sidwalk through the maze of trees. A rush of wind stirred the waxy ficus leaves overhead. He reached up for hiscar keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he'd heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a strand of larger trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this particular segement of the walkway were blocked by low-hanging limbs. Again he heard footsteps." James Grippando, Beyond Suspicion. Here's a rave that was never published: CHRISTMAS DAY. A POLICE STATION CAR PARK. Malcolm has not seen his nine year old son and six year old daughter for more than a month. The children don't get out of the car. Their father pushes presents at them through the car window, tries to talk to them. After five minutes, the children are driven off. Malcolm has only seen his son in

* Stop, Christian passer-by: Stop, child of God, And read, with gentle breast. Beneath this sod A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he-- O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.-- That he who many a year with toil of breath Found death in life, may here find life in death: Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame-- He ask'd, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Stay, Ahhh, Just a little bit longer. Please, please, please, please, please tell me that you're gonna. Now, Your Daddy don't mind, And your Mommy don't mind If we have another dance here: Just one more, One, more time, Oh, won't you stay just a little bit longer, Please let me stay here, please say that you will. Stay Strange the odd consequences and echoes that spill down through the years; here in this time when we are returning to the dark ages, when the left is triumphant across the country and genuine debate and a genuine diversity of views has been totally st

* Inner Sydney at Dawn "For the past few decades, the progressive fad of minority rights, fuelled by multiculturalism, has flourished. Once a hard form of multiculturalism took root, one that treated all cultures as equal, the values of the host country were effectively under attack. Cultural relativism morphed into a violent strand of Western self-loathing where tolerance was reinterpreted to mean tolerating those intolerant of Western culture and values." Janet Albrechtsen This is a story I wrote some years ago I found while cleaning up. It was at a time when the seedy 70s gay bar Costello's was in the news; and I was one of the few people around who actually remembered the place as it was daily demonised in the press. I was trying to point out the moral ambiguities of a place where street kids found food, money, alcohol and even, but certainly not always, the occasional kindness; in a time, too, before contemporary hysteria, or contemporary values, had turned multiple

* Sydney Harbour. "One day, people will look back at this moment in history and say: 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come. I hope their families know that citizens pray for their comfort and strength, whether they were the first one who lost their life in Iraq or recently lost their lives in Iraq. I've vowed in the past, and I will vow so long as I'm president, to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain." President George Bush, as toll of US soldiers passes 4,000. "It is a sober moment. The president feels each and every one of the deaths very strongly, and he grieves for their families." General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. The whole of life in single moment, a gesture, freeze framed and played time and time again. What's wrong with that woman, my daughter asks as one of the local denizens dashes about desperately one morning. Mental

* "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven." William Shakespeare. "I believe it is harder still to be just toward ourself than towards others." Andre Gide. These were the reasons why he had adopted obvserver status as his sole rationale, a shambling, shambolic figure ridiculed from the managerial offices to the boardroom, connecting poorly to the physical world. Affable, but affable didn't cut it in this world, certainly not anymore. He would be glad to walk away from the role so haphazardly cast upon him. Cruelty lay in the shallow clash of surfaces. He was willing to do almost anything to be a different person. Did he fall on his knees like other beaten people? Did he abandon all intellect and join some cult? He was glued to the old ways, a stagger that only he could imagine was sophisticasted, a wooden path that only he could find. What are we talking about here? Is it life and death, or more likely transformation? Dance Before The De