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Some of the editorials from Wilson's Almanac

Fourth Quarter (October, November, December), 2002

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Oct 14, 2002

Overcome: I wish to express my condolences to the victims, and their loved ones, of the atrocity carried out by persons unknown at Kuta Beach, Bali, the Indonesian tourist resort.

Whether the bombing of the famous hangout of young Aussie backpackers and tourists was a terrorist attack is still unclear, though Australian and US authorities – including President Bush – have called it such. It is possible that Australians were selected as victims, but only time will tell.

For Australia, as for Bali and Indonesia, this is our 9-11.

Bush's War to Provoke Terrorism seems to be having the effect that some of us predicted. A year ago I published the poem that tells of how Bush's crazy foreign policies were like hitting a dandelion with a baseball bat. Of course, you can kill the dandelion, but what to do about all the seeds you stir up?

     Well all them seeds did fly around
     like parachutes, without a sound,
     an' some of them they come to ground,
     an' they all took root next mornin.

So, here we are, a year after saying that soon the frustration and anger about, among other things, the oil mania that many agree is behind Bush's policies, would flare up in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, just north of Australia.

However, the lunatic fringe of Christian fundamentalism, such as Bush and Co, are not the only ones to blame for provoking the lunatic fringe of Islam into what might become World War Three. People like John Howard must be bear some responsibility.
  
This man, Prime Minister Howard of Australia, has brought the notion of terrorism to Australia's doorstep, as we warned. Kuta Beach represents Australia more than any other nation, with its throngs of Aussie kids who go there for two weeks to get drunk, get stoned, get laid and get back home in one piece ... not in body bags.

Certainly, the terrorist action was wicked in the extreme. Just as the foreign policy of John Howard, is a folly of immense consequences.

Australia is 12,000 miles from the machinations of the Cabal of Washington, and just as far from Iraq. We have no cause to send our young people to die in the Middle East to satiate the oil lust of billionaires in New York, Berlin, London, Tokyo or Paris – wherever they click their mouses for profit. And we have no need to see our kids spread over Kuta Beach by fanatics angered by an ignorant and aggressive oilman in DC.

Australia enjoys the privileged position of having been the continent least ravaged by history's wars and violence – leastwise if you don't count Antarctica. The only pleasing news to report is that across the globe, there is a snowballing resistance to George W Bush's "crusade" – his word for the phoney "war on terrorism" before his spin doctors taped his mouth.

The peace movement is growing in a way that the businessmen and power brokers will not be able to withstand, and I believe that over time, we shall overcome.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Read a letter responding to this editorial, by Billy, a young man from the USA, and Pip's reply to him

 

 

Oct 18, 2002

Lies: Sunday has been declared a national day of mourning for the hundreds of victims of the terrorist bombing in Bali. More than 180 people are believed dead, with hundreds more injured; many remain in a critical condition. Some have lost limbs and sustained severe permanent damage such as blindness and loss of hearing.

Although the majority of victims were Australians, people from many places have suffered. Not the least of these is the entire population of Bali, 70 per cent of whom derive their income from tourism. Our thoughts and condolences go to them today.

At the same time as we mourn the victims of terrorism in Bali, we also mourn that other casualty of all wars, the truth. At the United Nations now in New York, the debate is intense around the subject of whether the UN should give its imprimatur to a US-led invasion of Iraq.

It is well to remember, despite the flurry of disinformation, that the crux of the current proceedings, is as follows. Less than three weeks ago, Iraq agreed to unconditionally allow UN weapons inspectors into its borders. This was US President Bush's condition that ostensibly would, if met by Iraq,  prevent an invasion.

We now see that Mr Bush's condition was nothing but window dressing for a long-planned invasion: Iraq met the condition, Bush refused to call off the invasion. For a few days Bush looked like he was caught with his pants down, but nifty negotiating with Western powers sees his agenda back on the table in the UN.

Meanwhile, the media and many politicians continue to feed us on the lie that Iraq expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998. 

"This mistake has been made not only by hawks such as President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address ("the axis of evil" speech), Dick Cheney (before he became vice-president), Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times. It has also been repeated by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually superb Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker."   Source

The truth? On December 15, 1998, Richard Butler, the Australian head of UNSCOM, recommended the unilateral withdrawal of the weapons inspection mission from Iraq. The following day,

"... (on) the basis of Butler's report, the United States and Great Britain (began) a massive air campaign against Iraq. They act(ed) before the Security Council (had) a chance to examine the report."   Source

As long-term Almaniacs will know, I have always liked the songs of John Lennon. Today, sadly, I am reminded of his song, Give Me Some Truth:

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

Abundance and gratitude,

Pip Wilson

Oct 21, 2002

Ten: My friend was leaving to go home overseas, and I would be taking her to the airport. She was not looking forward at all to the flight. These days, who does?

I leaned towards my 10-year-old son and quietly said, "Say goodbye to our friend, then."

"Bye," he said shyly.

I whispered to him, "Wish her a bon voyage."
"Huh?"

"Just say you hope she has a good journey."

My son smiled innocently at our friend as only a ten-year-old can smile. "I hope the planejacker guys don't getcha."

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Oct 22, 2002

Listen: I could feel Mr Le Plage's politeness simmering as Sally Loane asked him for the third or fourth time, "Are you sure it's not that boys have selective hearing".

This was this morning, on Ms Loane's breakfast program on ABC (Australia) 2BL Sydney radio. Mr Le Plage (I trust I am spelling his name correctly), from an organisation called Australian Hearing, was being interviewed about research that indicates that boys do not hear as well as girls, an obvious cause of disadvantage.

As this morning's Sydney Morning Herald reports, 

"Dr Narelle Murray, of Australian Hearing, told the parliamentary committee [Standing Committee on Education and Training – PW] that tests on 3000 people showed that, after age four, males "have measurably less acute hearing than females".

"The overwhelming fact ... is that from about the first decade of life, the ears of boys are effectively older than the ears of girls," she said.

"They process sounds more slowly, they provide less information to the brain to be analysed.""

However, Ms Loane would have none of it. Over and over she suggested to the forbearing gentleman from Australian Hearing that, basically, boys don't listen, it's not that they have a hearing disadvantage. As befits the feminist doctrine, that no matter what is wrong, it's the fault of males, perhaps. (This is a similar doctrine to the one that claims Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi were imitating men when they deployed their military forces.)

One wonders if Ms Loane, author of Who Cares? Guilt, Hope and the Child-Care Debate, found the research findings a little confronting, flying as they do in the face of the received wisdom that females are the disadvantaged gender in Australian education.

The fact that abundant research shows that the received wisdom is wrong seems slow to trickle down to some members of the intellectual elites that are so influential in Australia. Meanwhile, no thanks to feminists, males are considerably disadvantaged many ways in Australia's educational system, as revealed by many statistics.

Poor Mr Le Plage, he tried so hard as he repeated over and over, "No ... that's not what the research shows. It is a hearing problem, not a listening problem."

Someone else had a listening problem, but he was too polite to mention it.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Oct 26, 2002

Disarmament Week (UN) (Oct 24-30)

Disarmament: Tasmania is known internationally for just a couple of things. The southernmost State of the Commonwealth of Australia, of course, is home to the Tasmanian devil, a tough little marsupial popularised by Warner Brothers cartoons.

Then there's Martin Bryant, the world's best spree killer. On April 28, 1996, Bryant, with his trusty gun, roamed through the tourist village of Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 innocent people and wounding another 18. It's a world record we Australians don't want to own.

Like the British and Japanese, as well as citizens of many other nations, we Ozzies pride ourselves on not having a deranged gun culture like our poor cousins across the Big Pond, who it seems cannot even make a movie without having a shooter in it somewhere. Yet we shouldn't be so self-congratulatory; we're almost as bad. There are something like two million firearms in Australia, out of a population of 20 million people. We should have so many computers.

Last week in Melbourne, a student allegedly opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding others.

Let's put on our thinking caps for a moment. Apart from madness, or badness, what do these two events have in common?

I grew up on the very edge of the sprawling metropolis of Sydney, where it was not quite bush, and not quite outer suburb. There was bush all around us, and a farm across the road, but it was only a mile to a railway station and there were plenty of houses even if it was a half-hour walk to a shop. It was a blessing to have a childhood in a semi-rural area. I ate blackberries on the hoof and sat by Holy waterfall and drank from its stream – until about 1966 when housing encroached on Paradise and my mates got a bad dose of the back-door trots from drinking the water.

In many ways my parents gave me great freedom and, like many of my mates, I rambled the streets and the bush most days, when we weren't watching Superman at 4.30. Much of the time that I rambled, I was carrying a .22 Gecado air rifle. We all did, all the boys, from about the age of 11.

No one thought anything of it. Dad taught me very well how to handle a gun safely, something that some of my friends obviously didn't know how to do. Mother certainly wouldn't look up from shelling the peas and ask, "Pip, why are you leaving the house carrying a ... a weapon?" Why should she? I didn't ask her why she was shelling peas. I always had a weapon in my hand, except when eating Coco-Pops in front of Superman at 4.30.

Neighbours would say "g'day, Pip" or smile and wave at the kid walking past their suburban houses, rifle in hand. Then they would go back to shelling peas or digging onion-weed out of the petunia beds. That's how it was.

Naturally, having started to shoot at an early age, I was, and probably still am, a good shot, and I loved every moment of shooting. No, not every moment. A few times I would shoot a bird, and I felt awful and it wasn't something I did too often. Today, of course, the thought of shooting a Crimson rosella or a Rainbow lorikeet disgusts and appals me even more than it did way back when. But I was a kid, and that's what kids did in the 1960s, where I lived.

As I say, I loved shooting, and I could easily love it today, because it's in my blood. As a youth I could always get top scores at the shooting galleries at Luna Park and the Royal Easter Show. Unless, of course, they had prizes on offer, in which case the barrels were bent like pretzels. As I grew, I sometimes shot with a real twenty-two, with real bullets, the killing kind. Man, I loved it!

I love the look of a gun – the blue sheen of gunmetal, the pride in my skill as the projectile cuts neatly through the tiny target I have set up at great distance. The smell of the discharged bullet or lead slug is as sweet to me as freshly shelled peas, or Sunday lamb roasts with mint sauce.

So, what about today, you might ask. Do I like shooting?

No. I love shooting!

Do I own a gun today, or ever go shooting?

What, are you nuts??!! I'm a man, not a boy!!

Abolish the bastards!!! Eradicate them from the face of the longsuffering earth!!!

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Oct 27, 2002

Shop: You will notice from today that in your daily Almanac there will quite frequently be cryptic little messages such as Shop Springsteen, Shop Python and Shop Dylan Thomas.
 
These are inserted in the Almanac for one reason only. They're just to try to sell you stuff like books, DVDs, videos and CDs, and I will pocket a (very) small percentage of money when you do. I like money, and I find it really useful, but I have hardly any of it and I want some more.
 
Apparently I'm supposed to say I put these product links in for your convenience, but that was the last thing on my mind. Truly, I was only thinking of myself and how to pay the rent and the Internet bills, run a car, things like that. 
 
I hasten to add that I do have a deep admiration for the majority of Internet purveyors of goods, who kindly let us know that they have the interests of the consumer foremost in their minds. However, I'm made of weaker stuff, and all I want to do is make a few dollars. My friends tell me I should study business and marketing if I'm to run a successful ezine, and it's quite obvious they're right. Maybe I'm just too selfish to be in sales.
 
At any rate, if you're thinking of buying something anyway, such as a treat for yourself or a gift for a friend, these new links will probably help you. But really, that was the last thing on my mind. I just want some of your money because I don't have enough. May I have some please? Thank you.
 
Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Nov 1, 2002

Collusion: Broadly speaking, Western societies are used to having the agendas of their political discourses set by two main antagonists: the Right, and the Left.
 
This is a familiar dynamic. The issues and debates in the West generally take the form of the conservatives versus the progressives. Again, I hasten to add that I am using a broad brush here. However, it seems to me that the template for politics is more or less that way. In Britain, it's Tories versus Whigs. The USA has Republicans versus Democrats. Australia has the misnamed Liberal Party versus the misspelled Labor Party.
 
The Right, basically representing established norms, and capital, and the Left, representing new ideas and the unpropertied classes, battle it out for influence and power. We know the scene; it dominates the media, democratic processes and dinner party conversations.
 
It must be acknowledged that in recent years both sides have come closer in ideology and today act more or less like each other. In Australia, the Libs and Labor are so much like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum that a relatively new political force, the Greens, last month amazed the nation by stealing the progressive vote away from Labor and winning their first seat in the Federal House of Representatives. 
 
However, Left and Right can be counted on almost always to push their respective predictable barrows. When an issue gets hot enough, rank and file of both sides line up behind political and intellectual leaders on each side, after donning blindfolds. Then it's shooting in the dark at 20 paces. 
 
One recalls the notorious 1951 Rosenbergs case in the USA. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were Communist Party members who were involved in the sale of state atomic warfare secrets to the USSR. They were executed for their treason. At the time, the protests in favour of the couple were extensive, and gathered support from the broader Left, not just Marxist-Leninists or Party members.
 
For several decades, much of the Left argued most vehemently that the Rosenbergs were innocent. Of course, this was what was handed down from the Central Committee of the CP of the USSR, under 'democratic centralism'. It is no surprise that American Communists worked hard with propaganda; the marvel is how many in the wider Left generally took up the Communists' cause. 
 
Naturally, thanks to liberated Russian archives, today we know what everyone except most leftists knew all along: the Rosenbergs were guilty as charged. David Horowitz (editor of Front Page Magazine), the former enfant terrible of the American New Left and editor of Ramparts (and now a GOP after-dinner speaker!) tells a good story in his captivating autobiography, Radical Son : A Generational Odyssey. 
 
As a grown-up 'red diaper' baby (his parents were very active members of the Communist Party) he recalls the Rosenberg protests from his childhood. To paraphrase Horowitz: "Mom and Dad were friends with Ethel and Julius, and we all knew they passed US atomic secrets to the Russians". The Left, however, kept this case as their cause celebre for nearly half a century. It's much like the way conservatives fall into line over trying to discredit environmentalism. If it looks like a duck and quacks, just maybe it's a duck.
 
My point is that Left and Right keep society's issues burning, sometimes regardless of veracity. But what happens when Left and Right agree? That's when it gets scary.
 
In the 1980s, the Australian Left and Right happened to agree that mental health care institutions should be closed down. The conservatives wanted to sell the old sandstone buildings and bring economic rationalism into hospitals (and capital into government coffers, but they are ideologically opposed to that so they didn't mention it). The progressives, in turn, had been influenced by RD Laing and his anti-psychiatry cohort. (And they wanted money in the coffers.)
 
So the asylums were closed without a whimper, except from the mentally ill, who now constitute the street population of our larger urban centres. And that's why every second person sitting next to you on a Sydney bus is talking to himself, or your shoe.
 
A similar case in point is Sydney's sex industry, which is still semi-underground by force of law. That's because both Left and Right want it so - the Right because it's naughty, and the Left because those women must be oppressed by Partirarchy and making all that moolah under pain of death.
 
This week, several Australian Muslim families have been raided by ASIO agents (ASIO is Australia's equivalent of the CIA), wearing riot gear, and balaclavas concealing their faces, and wielding sub-machine guns.
 
Such events will continue to happen, because Left and Right agree they should. One aspect of this agreement is that the Right hates Muslims because they are not WASPs, and the Left hates them because they are not PC. Several Islamist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah have already been proscribed by Australian law: membership thereof constitutes a legal offence.
 
My, oh my! When one considers that this nation was split in two just four decades ago when conservative Prime Minister Menzies tried to outlaw the Communist Party. Oh, the demonstrations! Oh, the defence of democratic rights (for an ideology that had killed about 100 million people more than Jemaah Islamiah and Al Qaeda  combined). When one recalls how the Left kept this indignity alive most stridently for generations, and still do, one must wonder who was pulling the strings of their outrage. 
 
Australian citizens are being persecuted on the basis of their beliefs, rather than their actions. True progressives, where are you?
 
Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

David Horowitz is founder of Center for the Study of Popular Culture

Nov 7, 2002

Lazarus: I'm sorry we missed a few almanacs.

The Wilson's Almanac International Cyber Conglomerate and Media Transnational Corporation engine room is a dear old Gateway computer named Esmeralda. On Sunday night, just as I was about to make the new ticker for those participating websites (see http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/ticker.html), poor old Esme became very ill and wouldn't open for me. (At ease! This is no time for salacious comments.)

Esmeralda's grave state of ill-health required a 1,200-kilometre (700-mile) round-trip mercy dash to the north of New South Wales, where Esme's version of Dr Frankenstein – he who originally breathed life into her – fortunately was able to partition off the blip on her hard disk that had caused her near demise. His diagnosis: either gamma ray infiltration, or else the salt air of Narrabeen. Thank you again, Baz le Tuff.

Having returned to the Scriptorium HQ in Sydney, with a significant amount of data lost (yeah, sure, you back up every day ... right!) I bring you today, with Esmeralda's kind graces, a limping Almanac. However, I think it's better read than dead, so I hope you enjoy what Esme and I are able to arrange for November 7.

By the way, I've discovered the key to subscriptions growth: send no ishoos of Wilson's Almanac. The subs keep coming in, but no one unsubscribes. Growth has been phenomenal this week! We might be onto something here, Almaniacs! This reminds me of the stock market – let's make a living out of idleness and meaningless production. We could earn substantial fortunes by mouse-clicking unproductive electrons around the stratosphere, just like our rulers do in the futures market. It works for the elites of the West; there's no reason it shouldn't work for us! Venceremos!

If I owe you a reply, now you know why – please resend any emails that I should have answered before November 3. Bright blessings to all, and welcome to the many new members of our idle, unproductive elite.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Nov 14, 2002

Nov 15, 2002

Demo: A little over an hour before I sat down to write this, I was at Olympic Park, Sydney, where about 800 demonstrators and perhaps 400 police are 'attending' the meeting of ministers organised by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Five helicopters hovered overhead, and a phalanx of about 50 specialist riot police in dark boilersuits stood at attention in a column five men wide, waiting for the signal, which came about an hour into the demo. It was not pretty, though fascinating.

Despite the protestations of both protesters and police before the event, it was clear that many on both sides had come for a biff-up. I can't recall seeing so many cops at a rally, nor such obviously confrontational intentions on the part of demonstrators. My long-held suspicion, that the worthy anti-globalization movement has been largely hijacked by pro-violence leftists, was pretty much confirmed. Yes, some demonstrators were blowing bubbles, but many were masked, ready for war. One was allegedly arrested while carrying a knife. Of course, one must take police allegations with a grain of salt. Thirty-five people were arrested, but from what I observed, this is understandable.

The greens and anti-WTO faithful would do well to question the manipulation of the movement against globalization by Trotskyists, other Leninists, and the pro-violence tendencies with Anarchism. It's more than clear that the tail is wagging the dog. Unfortunately, very few in the movement have enough knowledge of the methods and purposes of those factions and ideologies. I'm sure that many demonstrators, particularly the younger ones, are hazy in their minds about distinctions between, say, Gandhian resistance and Leninist resistance. It is a great shame.

Just as there are many ways to promote peace and justice in the world, violence and mischief have many guises. One does not have to walk up to a police officer and punch him in the nose in order to provoke and promote yet more discord in the world. Just a confrontational stance can do that, and such attitudes were prominent today.

The usual spokespersons are now on air blaming the cops and claiming that all the violence was State-inspired for political purposes vis a vis an election in March. My observations today leave me skeptical.

It's very hard to gauge numbers of people at demonstrations, even if you're there, and harder yet if you rely on 'official statistics' and the media.

There is a large number of vested interests in exaggerating the figures. These interests are, of course, self-interests. As a f'rinstance:

Journalists who attend have an interest in inflating the numbers because it impresses their readers, their friends, their chief of staff, their editor and those who in the future will read their resume.

Chiefs of staff do as well, because it impresses their editor, who might grumble at them sending staff out on the job.

Editors, too, are in on the numbers racket, knowing that more newspapers sell with bigger headlines.

Police will tend towards larger numbers because it helps with union demands for increased staffing and better equipment.

Those being demonstrated against go for bigger numbers rather than smaller for many reasons, including the guarantee of increased police protection, not to mention self-importance.

Politicians, especially those in government, tend to have vested interests in larger numbers, as they help bolster their calls for that old chestnut of the State, "lauranorder".

Then there are the demonstrators, of course. And even when one is on their side, it's advisable not to believe a word they say about their numbers.

Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras march is a case in point. Most years, we hear that 700,000 or even one million Sydneysiders watch the parade in March. Having measured the route of the event myself, and calculated the number of people standing ten-deep, even in a crushing crowd, I'm confident that the numbers are somewhat less than 200,000. Yet all agree on the larger number, and it has become received doctrine.

Try it yourself next time there's something happening in your town. Get out a tape measure and calculator and see. It's fun! 

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Nov 23, 2002

Relocation: I'm moving the Scriptorium to another beach!

Immediately after I post this edition, I'm getting in my car and driving north 600 kilometres (about 350 miles) where I will pick up a van and trailer, courtesy of my generous daughter and son-in-law.

From there I will drive back to Narrabeen Beach, Sydney on Sunday, hastily throw my junk in the vehicles, and on Monday relocate to Sandy Beach, near Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, Planet Earth.

As soon as I can, I will connect Esmeralda (my trusty computer) to the Internet, and return to send you your daily almanac. In the meantime, Jeannine will carry on in her great style sending Almost Prophetic Quotes, to which 271 people have subscribed in its first week, mostly thanks to J-9's indefatigable inviting of folks.

Thank you, friends, for bearing with me through these changes. I wish you all a good weekend, and bright blessings. I'll be back as soon as I can get all the wires connected.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Nov 30, 2002

Abode: I've moved house 600 kilometres (approximately 350 miles) north of where I was living. Unfortunately I have too many books and files and I had to make an extra load. So I drove the 600 km each day for five days, amid packing, unpacking and housecleaning. That's where I've been this week! Don't you hate moving?!

It was hotter than hot the whole time. Some days it was 41 degrees Celsius, which is way over 100 Fahrenheit, and the Pacific Highway was flanked by bushfires in some places. It has not been a boring week. I took some photos of the fires (through my windscreen at 70 miles per hour), such as a helicopter water-bombing just in front of me, but now I'll have to save up for a while until I can get them printed. All that petrol and highway take-away food is expensive LOL

It's great to be back with you in this, our last month of the Almanac in this format. My access to the Net will be rather more limited than before, until I can get some kind of work up here. My new landlord is kindly allowing me to use his line when his family doesn't need the phone or Net. So bear with me if I can't almy you every day. I'll certainly do my best.

Sandy Beach, my new home, is a great place to live. Someday I hope to find time to walk across the road outside my home and straight onto the golden sand. I've just been too busy so far, and looks like another day or two of opening boxes of books and filing my junk. Oh, joy!

Anyway, 'tis truly a wonderful feeling to be almanacking with you again and it makes up for the strained muscles and fatigue. I drove 2,200 miles in 5 days loaded right up to the windscreen, and worked hard at my destinations, so I'm still catching up on sleep. I have an idea that such a distance would take one from Scotland to Turkey, but perhaps a reader could advise.

Make a great weekend, and I hope I can see you tomorrow.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 1, 2002

Rabbits: If you should happen to go to the SiteMap at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com, you will see that there are several ways to search (and navigate) the 253 pages at my site, plus the more than 700 almanacs that I've posted since our foundation on January 1, 2001 (first day of the Millennium).

One of our search engines provides me with the keywords that visitors to the site have been seeking – but don't worry, it doesn't tell me anything about the seeker.

Yesterday, that engine informed me that recently a visitor had been trying to find something on 'white rabbits on the first day of the month'.

I regret that the inquirer would not have found anything on my site, but as it's an interesting topic, and since today is the first of the month, I'll make a quick response. Hence it will be searchable from the SiteMap, given a couple of days for the web spider to do its biz.

In the 1920s, there was a custom in the UK to say the word 'rabbit' three times when going to bed on the last day of the month. The superstition did not end there: on rising, the person was to say 'hare' three times. However, sources differ on this point, with one saying that the words 'rabbit, rabbit, rabbit', and not 'hare' should be said on the morning of the month's first day.

A 1953 source puts a different 'complexion' on the custom yet again:

"On the first day of the month when you wake up in the morning shout ‘White Rabbit’ and when you go to bed at night shout ‘Black Rabbit’ and you will have good luck."

and by 1982 we have plurality suggested:

"The first words you say for a lucky month are ‘White Rabbits.’"

Of all the animals that are to be found in Europe, I can think of none more prevalent in folklore than the rabbit, and its cousin the hare. The bunny has long been associated with good luck; consider the lucky rabbit's foot, and the Easter Bunny.

So, 'white rabbits' to all on this first day of December, and may your month be full of happiness and good fortune. And to the unsuccessful searcher at my site: the search engine will be able to locate your keywords (in this editorial) in just a couple of days, like everything else in Wilson's Almanac ezine and website.

As I write I am feeling quite under attack from the sub-tropical livestock that I had forgotten exists in northern New South Wales, where I now live. What dos one say on the eve of the first day of the month when squadrons of Christmas beetles (some as pretty as iridescent Yule tree baubles, but most just plain brown) are strafing one's head, and a giant slug the size of a sugar banana suddenly appears on one's kitchen wall?

Suddenly? Not possible! It's a damn slug, not one of the red-bellied black snakes I'll be expecting as the weather warms up! Maybe I imagined the slug. Could it be that after just two days I'm already 'going troppo'! What are those things flying around my light? They look like ...

... white ants, white ants, white ants!!

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 2, 2002

Unctuous: Although the media this past week have generally been filled with their usual weapons of mass distraction, the sinking of the oil tanker, Prestige, did manage to get some headlines. 
 
Trouble is, all the stories that I saw missed the big point. They concentrated on the oil that is leaking out of Prestige into the North Atlantic Ocean. Granted, the spill is about 9 million litres. Given that just one litre of oil can cover about a hectare of ocean, that is spooky stuff indeed. But wait ... there's more! In a sense, it's great news that another tanker has bitten the dust (okay, sand). Or, like most editors, should we forget the pollution that spews forth each and every day from the funnels of oil tankers that do not sink?
 
I was speaking to a former ship's engineer from Britain's Royal Navy the other day. Until a week ago I used to occasionally pull out his weeds, lop his treeferns and prune his Bougainvillea.
 
This retired gentleman was eager to tell me that a ship the size of Prestige probably burns about 200 tonnes of liquid fuel per day. Disgusted by the whole international oil pollution business, he said that a big liner burns about 450 tonnes a day. Naturally, all that fuel enters the atmosphere in the form of smoke and gases. He went on to tell me that such is the enormity of this trade, 100 of these vessels pass through the Straits of Dover each day. "Imagine," he impressed on me, "how many there are in the whole world!" He added, "People must hear this! Tell your readers, please!" I have now, Brian.
 
Meanwhile, on a lighter note, Australia's unctuous Prime Minister John 'Mini-Me' Howard has once again proved his visionary status by begging international terrorists to bring explosives to these gentle shores and blow up large numbers of Australians. 
 
Apparently unsatisfied with his Bali achievements, he hopes to leave a big mark in history. (As is well known, political 'leaders' have history-book envy and feel incomplete and insignificant until they have a good war.) And we thought he was just a pair of statesmanlike eyebrows who you wouldn't vote for even if he promised to cut his own throat if elected.
 
We can rest assured that like his Big Brother in the Whiteman House, Little Johnny Howard will continue to develop clever new strategies to enrage Muslims and poor folks worldwide, while simultaneously asking, "Why do these evil people hate us so?" Not bad going for a man who till very recently couldn't invade trading-partner nations and fart at the same time.
 
I guess we can all thank our lucky stars that the Big Plan (just as it has been for decades) is to get US oil companies' hands on Iraqi oil (as argued recently by the head of British Petroleum, in a fit of jealous pique). We gotta keep them big wheels turning, and Proud Mary burning. 
 
Oil. It's all about oil, you know. Johnny thinks it makes nice rainbows when it floats on the waves.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 4, 2002

Work:

Blessed is he who has found his work;
let him ask no other blessedness.

So wrote the great man, Thomas Carlyle. And how true it is (although he left off the bit about getting an income from the work).

Having moved a few hundred miles north to the sub-tropics, I've had to do a few things lately with a view to getting some of that income stuff. One of these jobbies involved an interview conducted by an earnest and friendly young lady whom I shall call Bernice.

Bernice's job, in part, was to get several forms filled in by this incorrigible formoclast. The forms are sold to this government mob by some go-getting psychology grads, no doubt, out to make an easy buck from bored bureaucrats now that the government has decided to privatise everything from prisons to the Department of Social Security (am I being tautological?).

Yeah yeah, I admit it, Bernice is an agent for the rock 'n' roll, Aussie rhyming slang for the dole, known in the USA as 'welfare'. It's a small government grant awarded for injuries caused by government itself and its captains of industry, government being, as Mr Zappa remarked, the showbiz of industry. It's also awarded to those suffering from several ills that the State wishes to eradicate fully, including unemployment, physical disability, mental incapacity, and imagination.

Anyway, that's by the by. The gist of this story is that of the hundreds of multiple-choice questions Bernice had me fill in, I could not find a single one I didn't argue with. I really am a cranky old man. However, just a few of my queries and objections did I raise to the comely Bernice.

"What do I answer here, Bernice? The question asks me if I hate people who are rude. I don't hate anybody, but I bet if I answer 'No' you'll all think I like rudeness. I detest rudeness, Bernice. Detest it. I don't want someone to make me work in a rude place. Would they?"

I fired questions like this at Bernice for three-quarters of an hour, and apparently broke the slow record for filling out those particular forms. So instead of feeling heroic like Arlo Guthrie after the Thanksgiving Day Massacree, I feel dumb like some other hippie. I can't think which hippie. I'm too dumb.

As the morning turned inexorably to afternoon, Bernice politely excused herself for twenty minutes in order to attend the farewell party of a colleague, obviously someone with superior intelligence and get up and go, because they'd got up and went. So did Bernice, leaving me with another form – booklet sized – which she said she would collect from me after the morning tea for aforementioned escapee bureaucrat .

On her return, Bernice kindly asked me how I'd gone with the latest form.

"Not too good," I replied, trying not to look sheepish because the more like a sheep you are, the sooner they will find you work – exactly the sort of job Bernice's colleague was jumping the wall from.

Bernice peered over the table. "You've written something across the top of the page. But none of the boxes have been ticked," she said sweetly, for Bernice is not long out of university and unfamiliar with the ways of bureaucracy speak, nor yet ready to upturn the Group W bench, jump the wall like her colleague, become a beachcomber and set her chickens free.

"Yes," I replied. "I couldn't answer a single question. They all asked me if I like doing this, or like doing that. They should be more specific about what circumstances I might do those activities in, and for what period of time. For example, one asks me if I'd like to fly a plane. What sort of question is that? Fly a plane for a day, or for a living? It doesn't say. Anyway, I don't even know how to fly a plane, so I'm stymied on all aspects of this question. Who writes these, other bums like me?"

My nice interviewer leaned across the table and took the form, and read my words aloud:

"Would I like to have sex with Halle Berry? You bet I would. But would I like to do it for a living for the rest of my life? I don't really think so. Please be specific."

Bernice let me go home, as nice bureaucrats invariably do with your almanackist. Me, I had lovely day and returned to the Scriptorium with a very satisfied feeling, primarily because I'd written 'Halle Berry' and not 'Hally Berre'. I always get that one confused, particularly when under stress. One thing I hadn't been confused about, however, was that it certainly would be nice to have sex with that particular actress. But I still haven't made my mind up about doing it forever – and I think about it a lot. For one thing, I have my public, and I mustn't let them down. You can imagine how many Almanacs you'd be getting if I got a job like that. It wouldn't really be fair on Ms Berre, either, I suppose.

You can save me from Bernice's forms, a career as a sheep, and perhaps even a lifetime of bonking movie stars, all vocations for which I am entirely unqualified and too old to start now, by ensuring that you continue to get the best little ezine on the Net in its full form. This is easily done by visiting http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/almynews.html [this page since discontinued - PW] and not leaving that page until all thoughts of abandonment of your almanackist dissolve into a blancmange of ovine obedience. Then, say these words to yourself, out loud just like Berenice: "I want to be a patron of Wilson's Almanac. Hally Berre, or whatever her name is, just isn't good enough for this man." Say it three times, follow the links to the page where you send money, and you will have good fortune. Leonard Milburn of Milwaukee, WI, USA broke the chain, and sprained his navel the following day as he dived to catch his father's funerary urn that fell from the shelf in a major earthquake that demolished his neighbour's shed.

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 9, 2002

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Lord Macaulay, English statesman, born October 25, 1800, History of England, I. 2  

Santa: Australian newspapers last week reported that many local child care centres have banned the presence of Santa Claus. 

In my view, Lord Macaulay hit the nail on the head when it comes to the anti-Santa brigade. Drowning in their own alterity and existential nausea, and surrounded by a hugely nauseous society, they fail to recognise health and detest seeing anyone else un-nauseous. 

Sure, the whole Christmas deal is over-commercialised, and much of its best meaning from its pre-Christian and Christian background has been lost. Much of Christmas is just a big cringe, and a big rip-off; but a little magic and make believe are not a bad thing. 

Who are those who are most against the notion of children believing in Santa Claus? They are generally the most intolerant types of people, people who for reasons of religious exclusivity, or political correctness, do not want to see others having fun. 

It's entirely natural for children to delight in the fantasy world on offer at Christmas time. I was once rather opposed to much of the Christmas celebration myself, but now, with three children and four grandchildren, I have come to a different view. Let the children dream and play, for very soon they will be men and women. And you know how two-dimensional most of those are. 

What is missing from the world more than any one human characteristic, in my view, is ... imagination. 

It is lack of imagination that renders immensely powerful people like Saddam Hussein and George W Bush utterly incapable of thinking of alternatives to ancient methods of conflict resolution. 

It is not the dullard warmongers of the world who give us our freedom and the promise of a grand future for this planet. It is the dreamers, the men and women who can imagine. Today, not for one minute would I wrench from a small child any precious fantasy, whether it's the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or an imaginary friend. Children move through from fantasy to 'reality' by themselves, and soon enough. Let them dream; it helps their brains develop. 

As Albert Einstein put it so nicely: 

If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. 
If you want them to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales. 

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 15, 2002

Waltopia: Walt Disney’s signed picture hangs on my wall, since I wrote to him in my boyhood and asked for it. I think that nothing could make me disown that gift: not Disney’s politics nor his industrial relations, nor even if I were to find out for sure and certain that one of his employees signed it. He’s been gone for nearly 40 years, but few people since Disney have shown what a forceful recipe can be made from imagination and effort. Few have such a good record for philanthropy and inspiration.

Walt Disney wasn’t put on ice, but, still, the idea of Walt planning his own freezing is not out of character with the man. Right till his death, Disney was planning big things. Now one of them is in progress. Celebration, Florida, USA is a middle-class ‘new urbanist’ community on the southern edge of the Walt Disney Company's property in Osceola County.

Celebration, the Town, stems from Disney’s ‘waltopian’ urges that led him to imagineer EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), a proposed modernist technurb that is sort of like Metropolis (the film) meets Utopia – and drawn by Mussolini’s architects. As Disney’s own website candidly puts it, “Live by the rules, and you are living in paradise. Break the rules, and you are
living in a totalitarian state.” 

Celebration, USA is the epitome of the commodification of community, the more insidious because so palatable. As a Punjabi proverb says, "What is sweet is bitter".

The town is intended to have 20,000 inmates. There are possibly at least that many people to be found who would like the whole world to be one big gated community, especially now that billions of people are trying to get in. Who could possibly deny that anyone who wants Celebration as their address deserves to live there and be dispensed all the drugs they so profoundly require?

Walt Disney’s body is not frozen, nor was his heart in the wrong place. A product of his times, a youth of the Depression, Disney had his gargantuan imagination forged by modernist notions of corporate enterprise mingled with Main Street nostalgia and a small-town consciousness – the latter two being fantasies not entirely to be despised. However, no human-oriented community can be built with ersatz timber paneling nor mountains of money, and power that rests in the hands of elites will always bring undone the common folk that Disney, I think genuinely, loved and was part of. 

Someone once told me that you have first a man, then a movement, then a machine, a monument, and a memory. We can thank the Disney machine – as it still is – for careering steadily into the monument phase, as we can for its helping to round up 20,000 ostrich-folk, and keeping them off our streets. There are some people for whom life is a Disney-Truman Show, drenched in nostalgia, both for a past that existed only with blinkers against the whole planet, and for a brave new gated future that never, ever must be. 

Abundance and gratitude, 
Pip Wilson

Dec 24, 2002

Liberty: From New York comes the very disturbing news that the guy who publishes the progressive website http://www.voxnyc.com/ has been raided by the FBI – and not just by two or three agents. 

Vox has been campaigning hard – and yes, rather idiosyncratically (I don't agree with everything written there) – against President George W Bush's assaults on liberty under the guise of his deplorable 'war to ensure terrorism'. 

So it looks like the US administration is doing just what Vox warns about – the phoney baloney Homeland Security Act, and other state instruments designed to protect a small coterie of wealthy men. Forty – count 'em!! – 40 agents and cops raided the webmaster's apartment, and he's now spending unnecessary money on lawyers, and lord knows what other problems will befall this brave bloke. 

I cannot predict the future, but it's my educated guess that we're going to hear much more of this sort of tactic against critics of the US President. In much the same manner that the infamous Dow chemical conglomerate is muscling out online critics and parodists, as J9 reported here in Daily Planet News (Sunday Dec 22 edition), the powers that be are definitely gearing up to repress dissent in the land of the free. Likewise in Australia. 

There has probably not been a more dishonest or aggressive US administration, perhaps ever. Aided by America's currently comlicit media, it is stifling criticism of itself and using all sorts of illegal methods to ensure that the oil beneath the Iraqi people's feet will flow to drive the wheels of the TNCs (transnational corporations). A little guy like Vox is just a pebble in their shoes, and easily stomped. 

As the Voxmaster says, he expects that they will happen to  'find' cocaine or an Al Qaeda training manual in his home before long. This, unbelievably, is in the land of Jefferson, he who wrote, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism". Can't we now hear the grave-rolling sounds of Jefferson, Franklin, Tom Paine and Washington? 

I, too, think it quite likely that the Almanac's determined pro-peace, anti-fascism stance might result in similar action by the malevolent forces in Australia that mirror those in the USA and Great Britain. Just for the record: I don't have an Al Qaeda training manual, and I don't take drugs. Hell, I don't even drink alcohol! Of course, that will not matter; Australian 'spoks' are now able to arrest and hold citizens without even a lawyer, as now in the USA. 

However, regardless of consequences, we shall definitely continue to discuss matters such as the impending incineration of hundreds of thousands of innocent folks in Iraq. (Let's add North Korea to that ... the Good Guys are now rattling sabres in that direction.) 

Meanwhile, in news from California, much as in Australia, hundreds of Muslims have been rounded up like cattle and jailed. Daily the situation grows more intolerable, so I look forward to continuing the freedom and peace campaign through 2003. I hope you will stick with us – every time I write anything against Bush I lose 20, 30, maybe 50 subscribers, and numbers are way down. If you're leaving now, merry Christmas, by the way. But I hope you will stay, and tell me when I'm wrong. 

And to all who stay, and who have enjoyed the daily Almanac, have a safe day and night before Christmas, remember not to drink and drive, and I will see you all tomorrow. Bright blessings from hot and humid Sandy Beach, Australia (and please send a free Almanac e-card for Christmas or Yule to everyone in your address book!). 

Abundance and gratitude,
Pip Wilson

Dec 31, 2002

2002: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent sapien. Etiam wisi mauris, dapibus ac, iaculis eu, pellentesque quis, metus.

In other words, the clock on the clubhouse wall says it's time to reflect on 2002, lick our wounds, count our blessings, get over it and move on. Life's only constant is change. Let's keep changing each day, for the better.

Your Almanac comes today in the format that I've put together for the Aiders & Abetters Almanac http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/aaa.html, the premium edition [NB: The AAA premium edition became defunct on June 30, 2003 – PW] I've been spruiking about lately.

Uh-oh, there I go again with Australianisms. To spruik is to stand in the street, usually outside a shop or stall, and tout for business. I see there is no spruik in what I consider to be the best online dictionary, the HyperDictionary. They'll learn, I guess. I presume (perhaps a reader can inform me) that 'spruik' has Yiddish origins, like numerous other Australianisms: nosh (food), shemozzle (mess), shickered (drunk).

How did we get such words, when Australia's Jewish population is but a small minority? The answer is cute. London cockney sailors, traders, convicts and immigrants gave these colourful terms to our colourful lingo. East-enders, Londoners working down around the Thames docks, mixed with Jewish merchants and their workers, and picked up many purely Yiddish terms. And on they came to the land Down Under, where I'm sure many Aussies believe them to be uniquely Ozzie words.

Where the hell was I? You know how I rave sometimes.

Oh yeah. This edition is presented à la the new AAA edition. Just giving it a test run around the block, I hope no one minds. I'm still learning to drive it, with all its many labyrinthine tables.It's New Year's Eve! As I look back on the year, I consider an incredible number of blessings, and a few bummers. The latter are not looming large in my life, fortunately, and most of them are things that I am responsible myself for correcting in 2003.

I've worked pretty hard on several projects, especially your daily Almanac. I've sent more than 350 of them, missing a few due to moving house and occasional misadventure. My intention has always been to publish the Almy every day of the year, and so it remains.By a rough guesstimate, I've received about 100,000 emails and written about 20,000 during 2002. The Scriptorium, the website for this shebang (American slang, probably no Yiddish roots but short for 'shell bang') has increased by about one page every three days, and now there are 261 for your enjoyment and mine.

It's been a wonderful year. I've made new friends, through the Almy and elsewhere. No one in my immediate family has suffered much illness, and a sinus operation I had in January delivered a year of great freedom fom the headaches that plagued my life for two decades. I moved from a great suburban beach to a great rural beach. I got a good Internet connection in my cybershack. Someone wants me to design them a website early next year. I ain't got too many complaints, mate. I hope you feel good too.

To the many readers who are staying with the almanac, regardless of the changes, let me just say that it will be small but I hope a darn good read. It will come in under 50kb, not 25 as I said before, but it's still a quick download.Life is good. Despite the problems out there, most of us on the Net live like kings and queens compared to 90% of the world's population. Let's not squander our privilege; let's commit to using it wisley and vigorously in the coming year.

Wisley? Wisley???

I'm a two-finger typist LOL. One of my New Year's resolutions is not to learn to type properly! I have too many others to fulfil. (That's one of four reasons I have so many typos in the Almy, the others being rush, rush and rush. My sincere apologies ... I'm working on it.)

My two favourite quick jokes in 2002:

What's brown and sticky? A stick.

And the English nymphomaniac: she simply had to have a man every six months.

You guys are the best. Thank you so much for your warm support this year. You have no idea how that's buoyed my spirits. And in closing, some words of wisdom from http://www.lipsum.com/.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Mauris tempor mauris eu turpis. Cras a arcu. Morbi nulla enim, posuere ut, mollis nec, facil.

Ooh yeah! Dig!

Abundance and gratitude,
Pip Ipsum

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