Life in the Avenger’s Barracks (2)

On March 7, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Not at all trueLeave a comment

Chapter 2: Cheeky talk

There was a whooping cheer from the assembled crew members as Emily Adams and Else Krause entered the ship’s living quarters. There was barely more than a dozen people gathered to celebrate the two rookies’ triumphant return home but in the cramped, angular, metallic space their voices echoed back as if a hundred were crammed into the small space. Adams blushed furiously. Krause grinned coyly and polished her glasses with a red and yellow rag, sending a discreet wink in the direction of Navneet Banerjee when she was sure he’d be the only one to catch it. His beard twitched upwards in a knowing smile.

The two women stood just inside the hatch for a second, hesitating in front of the unexpected welcoming party. Long enough for Li Ming Cheng to sidle up between the two and gently drape a bare, muscular arm over each of their shoulders.

“You’re blocking the door,” she said, wearing her usual lazy grin, “go let them shake your hands or something.”

She pushed them into the group less gently (Cheng was stronger than she looked, and she looked very strong) and they were quickly pounced upon. Degroot tussled Adams’ hair like a proud older sibling and John Tipene, an enormous Maori and one of the Avenger’s general technicians, slapped Krause’s back hard enough she almost flew two feet and made her wish she still had her armour on. She told Tipene that and he laughed his sweet chuckle. Someone pulled a bottle of what could be loosely described as gin that it was rumoured Louise Seo (Firestarter, the primary Skyranger pilot) created using a homemade still hidden somewhere in the hanger-slash-armoury. Someone said “To your first dead alien!” as the bottle was handed enthusiastically over to Adams, who hesitated a moment and unenthusiastically eyed it suspiciously, then took a long pull to the cheers of those around her. She cringed and made a sort of soft gurgle as the vile liquid went down, but came up smiling anyway. The toast was repeated and the bottle handed over to Krause, who didn’t hesitate to take two quick swallows before coughing the third up all over the front of her armour. Good natured laughter mixed with the applause.

Cheng used the liquid distraction to work her way around the crowd to her small bunk and foot locker. Thierry Leroy, who had led the mission, was reporting to the Commander and Central while everything was still fresh. They’d each need to write up an After-Action Report later, but Cheng was of the opinion that paperwork was best done while hungover. An opinion she’d likely hate herself for in the morning.

“How did they do?” Degroot had separated herself from the throng and come to lean against the bulkhead next to Cheng’s bunk, tattooed left arm and scarred right arm folded across her chest, “Really?”

“Fine, both of them,” Cheng muttered as she peeled off her sweaty tanktop and pulled a fresh t-shirt and hoody from her footlocker, and a less fresh washcloth. She didn’t head to the sink to “freshen up,” as Seo would say, but slumped onto her bed in her sports bra and fatigue trousers. There was no real modesty in the barracks.

“Neither of them panicked,” she continued once settled, “they didn’t miss either. Emily carved up one sectoid’s face beautifully. Very tight grouping from here,” Cheng touched her chin, “to here,” she tapped the centre of her forehead about two centimetres above her eyebrows, “Looked like someone had buried an axe in its head.”

“Lovely,” nodded Degroot completely sincerely, “What about Krause?”

“Else’s more ‘spray and pray.’ She relies on the fact that if you fire enough bullets in the right general direction chances are some of them will hit the target.”

“That is how most wars have been won. So, think the Commander will give one of them a long rifle and the other a machine gun?”

“That’s what Leroy is going to recommend,” Degroot gave her a funny look and she quickly added, “with my approval. I walked him to the bridge, we discussed it on the way. Anyway, are you coming to the party?”

“Not until later. I promised I’d help Shen with some repairs first. I’m on standby so I can’t party hard anyway,” the Dutchwoman’s nodded towards Banerjee, “Neither can he, for that matter.”

“Getting old ma’am?”

Degroot allowed herself a sardonic grin. She had a young face, round with only a few wrinkles around her eyes, and a high-pitched voice that (thanks in part to a middle class Londoner’s accent when she spoke English) wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a UK university campus. She was, however, the oldest current combat operative in the new X-Com. She’d been a young lieutenant when the first X-Com had fallen and twenty years had passed since then.

“The hangovers are worse than they used to be.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t drink anything. Of course,” Cheng watched Banerjee hovering close to Krause as she and Adams finally fought their way to their own footlockers, “I don’t think he’s got drinking on his mind.”

“As long as he can get his pants back on quickly. Cesar and O’Neill are on cadaver-duty. Cesar will probably join you at the bar afterwards. O’Neill will do whatever he feels like.”

“Probably head to the armoury and sharpen his machete.”

“Again.”

The two soldiers shared a chuckle. It was easy to relax around Cheng. She was calm, good at reading people’s moods and never took a joke too far. Yes, she might have a laugh at the quiet, determined Irishman’s habit of spending more time maintaining his equipment than with his squadmates but she was also the one who rose to his defence whenever a joke went from lighthearted banter to outright disrespect. If you made Cheng laugh you felt good. If Cheng didn’t laugh you felt like a bastard.

Degroot uncrossed her arms and pushed herself off bulkhead and scratched absently at one of the scars on her right bicep, “I need to get going, I’ll see you later.” Raising her voice to be heard above everyone else she yelled out to the two guest of honour, “Emily! Else! I need to go help Shen! I’ll join you all later!”

Krause waved vaguely, while Adams perked up visibly.

“Will Shen be coming to?” she said, half out of her shirt, brown hair falling across one half of her face.

“Most likely, depending on what time we finish. Don’t worry, I’ll drag her along if I can.” Degroot made her way out of the barracks and into the corridor beyond, “And hurry up! Louise will have already drunk all the good stuff at the rate you’re going!”

***

While The Avenger was small by the standards of some of the alien battleships that had made appearances over the Earth and even by the standards of many pre-war human warships, it was still pretty large. Degroot walked quickly through the collection of passages and corridors that wound their way from the top-back of the ship, where the living quarters were, to the lower front of the ship, where engineering was. Stern to bow, she thought idly, wondering if the old nautical terms counted on what was a flying aircraft carrier and troop transport converted from an alien spaceship. Central probably thought so (Bradford was like that), but he’d probably agree with whatever opinion the Commander had on the subject (Bradford was like that). If the Commander had an opinion on the subject, which he probably hadn’t (the Commander was like that).

There was a slight shift in the inertia of the ship, something felt in the inner ear and around the sinuses, indicating that they had changed direction. Degroot paused for a moment, waiting for a claxon to sound or orders for the team on standby about a possible mission. When none came she assumed that they were simply heading to look into some resistance tip-off about supplies or intelligence and continued towards engineering.

She reached the… room? Cabin? Hold? Again, should she be applying nautical terms and which ones if so? She reached engineering, knocked on the door and stepped inside.

“Sorry I’m late,” she muttered, scratching at the scars on her arm, “I needed to talk to Li Ming Cheng about-”

She stopped abruptly when she saw that Lily Shen wasn’t alone. There was the Commander, standing beside his chief engineer in front of a computer concentrating on a tablet as if it was the most important thing in the world (which it might have been). Without conscious thought Degroot snapped to attention and fired off a parade perfect salute, blurting out a “Sorry sir!” that sounded like it came from an untalented parrot. The Commander just waved absently at her and growled out an, “At ease.” Shen leant against her desk, a smirk on her face and amusement visible in her eyes. Wordlessly she pointed at a fabricator on the other side of the room from the Commander. Wordlessly Degroot nodded and wandered over to it.

The fabricator was a large box with a clear perspex top attached to a conveyer belt. Its insides were essentially, as Shen would describe it, a 3D printer with a few robotic arms, saws, drills and a laser for the finer details. Unit 3 had been acting up for a little while now. Nothing serious, but anything that delayed production or wasted resources could be lethal if left to get worse. Degroot had come in yesterday and worked her way through some fruitless software diagnostics, so today she planned on cracking it open and checking out the moving parts. Shen had already left a toolbox besides the miniature factory, so Degroot pulled off one of the maintenance panels and began examining its guts. In the background the Commander began asking questions to which Shen replied quickly enough to indicate she’d been anticipating most of his enquiries.

“So ammunition and explosives won’t be a problem?”

“No, but any advanced grenades or specialty equipment will require investment in supplies. I’ve listed what we’d need specifically on page five.”

“Good. I assume weapon parts won’t be a problem either?”

“For the most part. The heavy machine guns might be an issue if they aren’t maintained properly, since they have the most moving parts. I don’t think any of the troops are careless enough but if you’d make a point of reminding our grenadiers to brush their teeth and triggers regularly I’d appreciate it.”

“‘Teeth and triggers,’ heh, I like that. Might use it myself. Do you need anything else for the construction of the new facility?”

“More help. Aside from that we’re good Commander.”

“Alright I’ll see what I can do. What about- Lieutenant Degroot.”

Degroot paused for a second at her name, but didn’t look away from her work. That would have felt inappropriate. Shen seemed surprised as well, though she overcame it quickly enough.

“Eva is helpful, but I wouldn’t want to impose on her and her other duties. And honestly, skilled as she is she’s not qualified for some of the work we’re going to need-”

“No,” the Commander said, a slight hitch in his voice, “no, I just… I just remembered Lieutenant Degroot.”

Degroot looked up from her work, saw the Commander staring at her intently, felt ridiculously self-conscious. Then his face burst into a smile.

“Starburns!” he damn near shouted, victory in his voice.

Shit. Degroot’s face went bright red.

Shen looked confused (with good reason).

“Starburns Commander?” she asked (the bitch).

“Yeah,” the Commander began (the bastard), speaking fast and cheerful and obtuse, “the lieutenant was wounded while raiding a downed UFO during the first war. Shot by a sectoid with a plasma pistol right in the arse,” he pointed two fingers at her rear end and mimicked the action of shooting a bolt of plasma, “She couldn’t sit for two weeks. The doctors did all they could, but it left a star-shaped scar on both cheeks. One of her friends, a captain we called… Pharaoh? Pharaoh. He was a fan of this show about college with a character named Starburns, and the name stuck. Though he was the only one who ever called her that to her face.”

The Commander grinned like a schoolboy at the end of his story, then finally saw the resemblance of Degroot’s face to a ripe tomato, glanced at Shen who was holding back laughter, then back at Degroot.

“Shit, I’ve embarrassed you lieutenant. My apologies. I… really. I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t remember everything from then. It’s very… very fragmented. When I do remember things, I get excited. I trust Miss Shen will not share this outside this room?”

“Of course Commander,” Shen said not entirely seriously.

“She will not share this outside this room,” a harsher tone from the Commander.

“Of course Commander,” entirely seriously this time.

“Good. Again, apologies lieutenant.”

“Thank you sir.”

“I will say it is nice to see another familiar face in all of this.”

Degroot smiled, “Likewise, sir.”

“Well, I’ll take my leave then. Lieutenant. Miss Shen. I believe there’s a party going on above us. Do make sure you both head up there before it ends.”

With that he turned and left, leaving the engineer and the soldier alone. Degroot turned back to the fabricator and went back to searching through the machine’s equivalent of a small intestine. It was an embarrassing story, and she still had the embarrassing scars to remind her of it, but it was nice to know that someone remembered it. There were few enough people left who could. It was nice that the Commander remembered her from back then. There were few enough left from back then. She felt good. Red-faced but happy.

A feeling that disappeared when Shen walked over and, in a conspiratorial voice asked “Both cheeks?”

***

Emily was drunk. Very drunk if Gertrude Wilders was to be believed. The… fuck, she was Dutch right? Emily knew where Trudy was from most of the time. Dutch. She was Dutch like Eva. Who was Dutch. Of course. Anyway, Trudy would stumble up every so often and point at the empty bottle of what passed for gin that Emily couldn’t seem to get rid of and ask if she’d drunk the whole thing. Emily would say something like “most of it” and Trudy would laugh and tell Emily that she was really drunk. Trudy was pretty drunk as well though, so her opinion may have been off. She was on the other side of the bar now dancing with John Tipene and Martin Singh, both of whom were sobre because their shifts on the bridge started soon.

Thierry… Thee-ary? Tee-ary? Terry? This was why everyone just called him Leroy. Leroy had provided the music, coming down after briefing Central and checking on Navarro in the infirmary and plugging an old smartphone into the sound system. Mostly pre-war French electro-swing, to everyone’s great surprise. He was with Li now, singing along to the current mix of synthesised beats, wind instruments and sultry vocals. That Li seemed to know the words were more surprising. Was. Was more surprising. The two of them had been working their way through the bar’s supply of bottled beer, and at some point had produced a pair of fighting knives which they were now taking turns to hurl at the dartboard next to the bartop. Li had better aim, but couldn’t get the knife to strike the board point first so was just hitting the bullseye again and again with the handle (and laughing every time it did). Leroy’s throws sunk the knives into the board, but nowhere near the centre. Cesar Vargas, sobre as well since he was on standby like Eva, Gerry and Navneet, watched the two drunks handle knives with horror in his eyes, but couldn’t look away.

“Like watching a train wreck,” Emily said, then realised she’d slurred the words out loud.

“What?” yelled Louise over the music.

“Nothing,” Emily shook her head a little to hard, tried to take a swig from her bottle, realised it was empty, placed it on the bartop a little too loudly.

She sat with Louise and Simmons (she didn’t know his first name, no one seemed to), who acted as deck-chief and navigator for the Skyranger. Like Louise he was also a Canadian. Like Louise he had a half-empty bottle of rye whiskey in front of him, bartered from a resistance contact who seemed to know how to make the stuff without anyone going blind. Else sat with Navneet and Charlie Otembe (a short, slim Nigerian who handled most of the ship’s basic wiring), discussing something that both men obviously found very interesting. Or maybe they just found her boobs very interesting. Else had very nice boobs, and Emily wasn’t entirely sure she was wearing a bra under her standard issue t-shirt.

Shit, she was staring at Else’s boobs. She needed to stop staring at Else’s boobs. She wrenched her attention away from the two, and refocus on Louise and Simmons. They were talking about… electronics? Something about the Skyranger’s fuses? Emily had no fucking idea. She sighed and wished that Shen was here, that Eva would hurry up and bring her.

There was a cheer from the trio at the dartboard, even Cesar, and Emily saw Li pulling a knife out of the centre of the board. She cheered as well, and tried to take a celebratory pull from the gin bottle in front of, realised it was empty, put it back down and pushed it away in disgust. Emily was bored and staring at the wrong pair of boobs. Time to fix this. Be decisive.

“Right,” she said pushing herself out of her chair unsteadily, “I am going to go pee. I am going to go get Eva and Shen. Then I am going to get another bottle of something. In that order.” Decisive.

Louise and Simmons looked at her, gave her a nod, then went back to their chat. Emily turned and left the bar, holding tight to every bulkhead she passed and feeling the ship swaying around her.

There was a head just next to the bar, a small metal room with a large toilet and sink, both with rounded edges and corners so that if violently shaken a falling crew member might only end up with a concussion instead of cracking their head all the way open. She peed, stood, flushed, bent over and puked loudly into the toilet. Then puked again, a little less loudly. She groaned when it was done, spun around to the sink and washed her hands and face, rinsed out her mouth. There wasn’t a mirror handy, so she couldn’t be completely sure it was all gone, but a quick check seemed to show she’d missed her clothes. Thank God for small mercies.

“Right,” she said again and staggered towards engineering.

The bar was, effectively, right above engineering, but getting from one to the other required either going through the armoury hangar or winding your through a corridor, down a narrow staircase and past a pair of rooms yet to be cleaned up, cleaned out and generally patched up. Heading through the armoury was faster, but required going down a ladder, and Emily didn’t trust her… laddering… abilities at that exact moment. The stairs seemed safer. Even then, if they weren’t so narrow she might not have made it, one step at a time with her arms pressed against either wall to keep her steady. Shit, she made it though. Barely, but she still made it. Fucking most terrifying thing she’d done that day, and a few hours ago she’d shot an alien. An alien with no lips and a lot of teeth. She shuddered, and wished she hadn’t left her bottle of gin behind. Still, she was in the final stretch. One foot in front of the other, steadier than she’d been for some time, she made her way slowly towards Shen. And Eva, but mostly Shen.

Then stopped. She was in front of a sliding hatch left open a crack thanks to a bit of piping that had fallen between it and the frame. Probably one of the dozen rooms filled with alien junk that needed sorting out and rewiring into something useful. But Emily could hear voices, mumbling, grunting, groans, muffled words. Curious, she leant heavily on the frame and peered through the crack. Saw two bare, pale legs (socks still on) wrapped around a waist above a bare, brown ass thrusting fast and hard in time to the moans, groans and grunts of the intertwined couple.

Surprised, cheeks suddenly burning, Emily took a step back, but not far enough away that she couldn’t still see part of the furious fucking through the narrow opening, a shuddering leg crossed over a socked foot and a pulsing ass-cheek still very clear in her sight now that she knew what she was looking at. So she took another step back and felt herself run into something lean and muscled. A hand clamped over her mouth before she could make a sound, and if she’d been sober she might have fought back. Might have driven an elbow right into Eva Degroot’s gut. Thankfully her brain was running slow enough that by the time she thought to aim a pointed body part at her attacker, her eyes had found Eva’s smiling face. The older woman winked, raised her free hand to her lips to indicate silence, waited for Emily to nod back before releasing her. Lily Shen was just behind, grinning wickedly as the voices from just past the door began to get louder. Eva pointed towards the stairs that Emily had struggled so hard to get down. The two other women nodded and gave the lovers some privacy.

The trip back up was much easier with Eva and Shen behind her providing physical and moral support. They kept quiet until reaching the top, where Emily spun around on the other two (and almost kept spinning but luckily managed to grasp a bulkhead and catch herself before going down).

“Who was that?” she hissed in a slurred whisper.

“Well,” Eva shrugged, “I’m pretty sure I heard German, so probably Krause and Banerjee.”

“Else and Nav? What? Since when?”

Eva shrugged again, “A few weeks maybe? They started not long after they both joined the Avenger.”

“I thought everyone knew,” Shen said with a small, embarrassed smile that made her look very pretty in the artificial lighting, “They aren’t really good at being discreet about it.”

“I had no idea!”

“That is because you’re a sweet and innocent hardened killer,” Eva wrapped a strong arm around her (probably to help hold her up) and tousled her hair, “with little experience in these areas.”

“I am not innocent,” even drunk Emily regretted how childish she sounded, especially in front of Shen.

“Yes you are. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Eva began to walk again, arm still wrapped around Emily and dragging her along. Shen fell into step besides them.

“I suppose we’re not technically military,” the chief engineer said thoughtfully, “so there aren’t really any rules against fraternisation.”

Emily felt rather than saw Eva nod, “Yes, but I remember even during the first X-Com the Commander wasn’t too bothered about enforcing them. If you might die in a week you don’t want to do so with regrets. As long as it didn’t affect the job and you didn’t use his quarters.”

Emily looked sideways at Shen, smiling on the other side of Eva as they walked.

“Where are we going?” she asked Eva.

“Back to the bar of course. Miss Shen here owes you a drink.”

“She does?”

“You killed your first alien. Of course she does.”

“You did. I do.” Shen nodded faux-seriously, “May Tygen cut it up into tiny little pieces,” then she smiled again.

“Oh. Okay. Why are you being so nice Eva?”

Eva chuckled, “I’m in a good mood. Don’t get used to it.”

“Oh. Okay. What were they saying?”

“What was who saying?”

“You said you heard German.”

“Germa- Oh. It was just Krause who was speaking German. I don’t think Banerjee speaks it, though he’s probably learning it a little. I’m a little rusty, but I believe she was repeating the word ‘schwerer.'”

“What does that mean?”

“Harder.”

Emily’s cheeks went scarlet. Absently, she wondered if there was any gin still in that bottle she’d left behind.

The Stories We give Them: Life in the Avenger’s Barracks

On February 24, 2016February 25, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Not at all true2 Comments

There was a dull clang that reverberated through the hull of The Avenger as the Skyranger touched down, an ugly bird with surprising grace and a full belly swinging back onto its nest. There was a long moment as a half dozen of the big ship’s technical crew (mechanics some of the time, analysts the rest) and three of the five soldiers who’d remained behind for this mission simply stood in the long shadows hiding them from the very early morning sun, watching as the Skyranger’s powerful jet engines began to cycle down. Then the ramp fell, quick yet controlled, and they rushed forward.

The four troopers who’d made up Menace One were already on their way down the ramp. Gerry O’Neill looked grimly at the crew jogging towards him and grunted something lost over the whine that still came from the slowly stilling turbines and high winds that whipped across The Avenger‘s landing deck. Gabriela Navarro was strung between Li Ming Cheng and Thierry Leroy. There was blood leaking from a gash where her arm connected to her shoulder and a hole in her guts just above her left hip. She was barely walking, her head bowed lower than normal, a grimace on her face, inaudibly mouthing what were probably curses with every step. Given warning of the wounded before hand two of the techs had brought a stretcher to the deck and with a grunt Leroy and Cheng heaved the injured woman onto it as gently as they could.

“CHINGA TU MADRE!” She cried far more audibly, so it obviously wasn’t gently enough. Cheng laughed and Leroy squeezed her uninjured arm in apology.

“I’ll take her to Tygen,” Leroy said, eyes darting between her wounds and the lift down to the bowels of the ship, “I may be of some use.”

Cheng shrugged. O’Neill nodded. The techs were already starting to push her towards the lift.

“Make sure you report to the Commander when you know her condition. He’ll want to be updated on how long she’ll be out of the field for.” O’Neill spoke with a quiet, low brogue. He could be loud when he wanted to, and often had to, but when given the choice spoke like he was singing a lullaby.

Leroy dipped his head and chased after the techs and the stretcher. O’Neill smoothed back his blonde hair (unnecessarily since not a strand had come loose from his tightly bound ponytail) and stared at the activity around the deck. The techs were busy securing the Skyranger with magnetic locks, checking the hydraulics in the struts, examining the still powering down engines and a lot of other things that he wouldn’t have a clue about. The three troopers – Emily Adams, Eva Degroot and Cesar Vargas – were unrolling body bags on the deck in front of the ramp. To hold the loot from the mission. He gave Cheng a look somewhere halfway between a glance and a death-stare.

“We should report to Central and the Commander. They’ll want to debrief us properly.”

Cheng smiled back and sat down on the Skyranger’s ramp, one leg stretched out along its length and the other over its edge and resting on The Avenger‘s deck, her rifle propped beside her.

“You can. I’m going to stay here and supervise the unloading. If the Commander wants to debrief me I’m sure he’ll call.”

O’Neill gave her a look somewhere halfway between acceptance and resentment, grunted a whispered “Okay,” then turned on his heel toward the lift where Leroy, Navarro and the two techs had disappeared two minutes before. Cheng watched him disappear then stretched out and laid back, cradling her head in her hands.

“That, my friends, is a man who probably sleeps with a shotgun under his pillow because a knife didn’t make him feel safe enough.”

That got a laugh out of everyone, even Degroot who did her best to exorcise her sense of humour while on duty. Gertrude Wilders, one of the techs securing the Skyranger to The Avenger nodded as she pulled out a spanner and began making adjustments to the magnetic locks.

“Did you see how tight he held onto his rifle? His knuckles were so white I thought they were going to burst!”

“Too true!” shouted John Tipene, another tech and a big man with a bigger voice, “Anyway, thought you guys would be celebrating more! First successful mission and all that.”

That was true, and barely two days since the Commander had been recovered from the alien facility. He’d been awake just over three hours when he’d gathered the nine frontline combat personnel in the armoury to introduce himself and discuss the direction he planned to lead X-Com and the fledgling resistance towards. Throughout it all he’d been brimming with natural authority and confidence, but polite, courteous, formal and very careful about speaking in clear, plain language (most likely in acknowledgement of those in the group who didn’t speak English as a first language) right until he got to the end and the planned first step.

“Our immediate concern is to make a statement of intent, so that other resistance cells know we exist and the aliens know we are a threat. Thankfully Central was able to point us towards a big fucking statue in what was New York. Now, I don’t know about you but I reckon the best way to make a big statement is blow the shit out of one of theirs. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Fours hours later they were gunning down ADVENT Troopers and planting X4 charges on the base of a statue taller than the buildings surrounding it. The mood in the Skyranger had been good…

“Oh, they were celebrating dude,” Louise Seo, Firestarter, pilot of the Skyranger at the centre of everybody’s attention and proud Canuck, had finished her post flight checks and was striding around the aircraft with her helmet under one arm, “even Gerry was laughing at Li here’s jokes. Right up until Gabbie fell onto her face and was forced to admit that the blood loss was worse than she’d told us.”

Cheng nodded and looked at her gloved hands, covered in semi-dry blood til halfway up her forearms. There’d a been a few desperate minutes as Leroy had gone through the Skyranger’s first aid kit and Cheng had been putting pressure on Navarro’s wounds to staunch the bleeding while O’Neill kept her conscious. The desperation had passed when Leroy found what he was looking for, two red injectors that he’d stabbed into the unprotected side of her abdomen and a blue injector stabbed into her neck. She’d stabilised and the bleeding had stopped. The miracles of modern medicine. Cheng had grinned and leant back on her haunches. O’Neill said something nobody could hear but looked relieved nonetheless. Leroy continued to look after Navarro, putting to work the combat medicine he’d been learning around the time the aliens had first started landing and stealing people from Earth.

“Da bien,” Cheng said in Mandarin, “Shit,” she repeated in English.

“What?” Seo gave her a curious look.

“Nothing.”

A second ago she’d been resting her head in her hands. Her blood soaked hands. Dried blood, sure, but it was still in her hair now and the close-shaved sides of her head. She needed a shower anyway, but it probably still didn’t look great. That was fucking annoying.

“It’s fine,” she continued, looking at all the concerned faces.

“Will… will Gabriela be okay?” Degroot asked, cautiously. She had a high voice with an almost English accent when she spoke the language, and a habit of using people’s full names. She was probably the only person who called Cheng “Li Ming” instead of just “Li.”

“She’ll be fine. Leroy says it missed the kidneys and anything else important. She’ll probably still be out of it for a while though. Besides,” Cheng grinned and looked back into the Skyranger’s hold where six relatively fresh corpses bled onto the metallic deck, “she got the bastard who shot her.”

Reviewing the old school: Thank You for Smoking (2005)

On February 12, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Up for reviewLeave a comment

Do you remember this film? I didn’t remember this film until quite recently, and I can’t for the life of me think of why. Thinking back to when Thank You for Smoking was released all the way back in 2005, it was a pretty big deal. Not like in a blockbuster, Transformers or The Dark Knight kind of way, but, I mean, I was in fucking high school and I was hearing about what a brilliant film it was. That’s not normal, is it? I don’t think that’s normal. This film though, this film was special. This smart little indie film all about arguments and talking, without any explosions and only a little sex, had us teenage Aussie millennials talking or at least my circle of friends, and for good reason. Because my friends are weird. And it’s a great film. So why’s it so forgettable?

The film, fantastically written and directed by Jason Reitman, stars Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, the chief spokesman for what is essentially big tobacco. Nick is suave, charming, good at what he does and loves his job. Since his job is convincing as many people as possible to smoke cigarettes, in most other films he’d probably be the bad guy. And he sort of is. But he’s so rationally proud of it that you can’t help but cheer for him and his cohorts to win over that bastard senator from Vermont who’s only thinking of the children. The film follows Nick at his highest (getting the film industry involved in making cigarettes cool – cooler – again) and lowest (an article is released revealing all the secrets he’d told to the writer, who he’d been sleeping with… also kidnapping and attempted murder) points while clearly explaining how political argument and debate work, the art of lobbying and the importance of making informed decisions.

The acting is fantastic. Aaron Eckhart owns the role of Nick Naylor, and you never for a moment doubt his sincerity or self-awareness. Katie Holmes as the above mentioned reporter who really shouldn’t be trusted with sensitive information plays her role with a casual, professional glee. JK Simmons and William H Macy carry their roles with skill, as always, as Nick’s boss and sorta nemesis respectively and deliver some of the best lines in the movie, as do Maria Bello and David Koechner as Nick’s best friends Polly Bailey and Bobby Jay Bliss (alcohol and gun lobbies respectively). Smaller roles are perfectly cast, like Robert Duvall as The Captain and Rob Lowe as Hollywood fixer Jeff Megall. Even Cameron Bright, the (at the time) child actor playing Nick’s son Joey does a great job (though there was one or two moments that felt a little flat). Jason Reitman did a fantastic job with this. The dialogue is well written and the editing switches from long, drawn out moments to rabid flashes expertly. The music is excellent, and I loved the song playing over the opening credits.

What’s great about this film is the moral ambiguity of its theme: mainly, to make your own informed choices and come to your own conclusions. Nick Naylor may be working for the ostensible bad guys, a big corporation that cares more about profits than human lives, but he does so with surprising moral conviction and (I think mostly because of his frank narration) far more honesty than what we’d normally expect. He definitely seems more honest than the manipulative Senator Finistirre. But what I love about this film, what I really love about this excellent piece of satire, is that it is incredibly self-aware. The information it is providing is nothing new, and it knows that it’s nothing new. Admits to it cheerfully and wittily. At the end, at the climax of the movie when Nick sits in at a hearing about putting a skull and crossbones on all cigarette packs he acknowledges that he knows cigarettes are bad for you. In fact everybody knows cigarettes are bad for you. Similarly, the audience already knows about what the film is apparently revealing. We know that big corporate powers use films and celebrities to sell their products. We know that they use misleading scientific studies to continue lying to the consumer. We know that they have huge teams of lawyers to tie down opponents in legal red tape. We know that they lie, cheat and bribe. And the film knows we know. Thank You for Smoking is not about revealing the dangers of the world. It treats us more intelligently than that. The film is about the power of argument and persuasion, and whether you’re right or wrong depends on how convincing you are. Nick Naylor is the hero of this film because he is the best at arguing. That’s all. Mind you I’m a fan of arguing (love a good fight), so maybe I’m just reaching my own conclusions (see what I did there?)

So, you remembering this film now? Maybe saying I’d forgotten this film is going a bit too far. I don’t know what made me think of it the other day, but I remembered it immediately, and enough where I was able to start thinking about what I was gonna write down before the rewatch. But it still feels like it should be far better remembered than what it is, up there with other political satires like Wag the Dog or… shit… I can’t think of any similar enough examples at this exact moment. Point is, if you haven’t you should watch this film. If you have, watch it again. It’s an easy film to over-analyse and under-analyse, and it’s a great piece of smart cinema regardless. Funny too.

View from across the ocean: Australia Day 2016 special

On January 25, 2016January 24, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn In the News, Longer rantsLeave a comment

Well, it’s that time of year again. Big Day Out, The Hottest 100, beaches, barbecues, cricket when possible and copious amounts of beer and cider. I’ll be up in Whistler with the rest of my kind (it’s not called ‘Whistralia’ for nothing) listening to Triple J count through all the songs I’ve missed after being away from decent radio for soon-to-be-a-year (Christ, that came quickly) with some mates. ‘Cause that’s what being a 20-something Aussie abroad is all about. Meanwhile, the grown-ups are (as always) talking about serious issues, like whether or not the Australia should become a republic or the never-ending argument about whether or not we couldn’t find a more culturally sensitive date than January 26th to celebrate what passport we hand into customs. If it sounds like I’m making light of it, it’s only because Indigenous Australians have every right to feel a quite miffed about it and we should have fixed this years ago. That and, quite frankly, there are people who are far better at communicating exactly what the issues are and how they need to be addressed. I just take pot-shots and write about video games.

Then again, ignorant white racists have had a good year since the last Australia Day. Reclaim Australia is still going surprisingly strong despite the rest of us pointing out to the ignorant pensioners in the group that they’re marching with skinheads. What about that guy that became the face of Reclaim Australia getting all angry about us judging a book by its cover? How fuckin’ funny was that! I was laughing my arse off when he claimed that he wasn’t racist because he had a Bangladeshi mate, whose name he didn’t know so he just called the guy Bangladesh. I mean, mate, referring to a guy by his heritage group because you haven’t actually bothered to learn his name is not the best way to prove you aren’t a bigot. All it does is show how lacking in any sort of self-awareness you are. But, nah man, it’s because of your facial tattoos. Sure. Mind you I think we now understand the demographic that must keep voting for Senator Barnaby ‘is this champagne halal’ Joyce. He wasn’t the only polly to make a bit of an arse of himself bigotry-wise of course (Peter Dutton had a moment or two, for example), and even Pauline Hanson got a moment in the spotlight again with her “all terrorists are muslims” thing, completely ignoring (amongst many others) the Catholic IRA, Hindu Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (until quite recently), pre-Israel Jewish hotel bombers and by-this-point-mostly-just-lip-service communist FARC guerrillas only now having peace talks with the Colombian government. I could go on, but at some point it just starts being facetious. And I need time to mention those fuckwits who reckoned the 10th anniversary of the Cronulla Riots was worth celebrating, as if a bunch of drunken idiots wearing the Aussie flag beating up anything darker than Wonder White is something to be proud of.

But things have improved a little. The guy who this time last year was handing out knighthoods to bloody Prince Philip has been replaced by a centre-right republican (not the type any yanks reading this might immediately think of) who had too many centre-left tendencies for his own good last time he was running the Liberal Party. Thankfully a lot of those on the further right who gave Malcolm Turnbull the boot the first time round came to the conclusion that they weren’t going to have a job if Tony Abbott kept eating raw onions (I believe he kept a basket of them under his chair in parliament) and generally doing and saying things that made the population collectively mutter “for fuck’s sake!” under their breaths. So Mr Turnbull’s back in the top job. And there was much rejoicing. Hooray for self interest. Etcetera, etcetera. Except for Labor and Bill Shorten, who’s losing even more ground to Turnbull in the preferred PM polls. Wonder how long past the next election (due this year I believe) before Mr Shorten is replaced by someone who can actually win. Like Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese or (we can dream) Penny Wong, all of whom seem to have been putting up far more of a fight than Mr Shorten has in recent months (at least from my limited perspective across the Pacific). On the bright side for those of us who like taking pot shots, Mr Abbott had announced he’ll contest in the next election. I reckon it’ll be hilarious regardless of the results.

Lot to talk about, politics-wise from the past year. Been far too long since I wrote one of these as well. Even in just the past month or two we saw the Liberal ranks partly gutted after an attempt to jump ship to the Nationals was prevented and another member was removed from Cabinet after inappropriate behaviour towards a DFaT bureaucrat was reported. The Brits got a bit upset when the same-sex marriage of a couple was not recognised, after one of the husbands sadly died on their honeymoon. Even Christopher Pine called it a pretty heartless and unnecessary act (because it is, you heartless bastards), and as I understand it the South Australian government has since (quite rightly) apologised.

Could go on, but we’d be here for a while. Going back to Australia Day, you guys seen this Deadpool thing?

Fuckin’ funny. Nice to see that even the Merc with the Mouth can’t help but like Hugh Jackman (who really is just delightful). Reminded me of Ron Burgundy’s messages before the Melbourne Cup…

… and after our (I think it was) last election…

… joining our tradition of Australia Day messages that are funny despite being thinly veiled advertisements. You know what I’m talking about. And just in case you don’t, here’s Sam Kekovich:

Looking back at that, he says a few things that I can’t help but feel you wouldn’t get away completely with saying these days. Cringed at a few moments. But when I was 15 this was the funniest goddamn thing in the world. Mind you, it’s pretty easy to make a pubescent boy laugh, so yeah. Still not all that hard to make me laugh, if I’m being honest with myself.

Last thing I’ll mention is that the Republican movement does seem to be building up steam. All but one of the state heads have signed onto the call for an Aussie head of state, we have republicans on both sides of the federal leadership and we’re still not all that keen on Charlie taking the throne eventually. More importantly most people are probably pretty indifferent to shifts in a distant monarchy. Can’t get enough of those royal babies though, can we?

Anyway, I’ll be boarding a bus up to Whistler pretty soon. Stupidly excited about it all. Drinking and skiing and listening to the Triple J Hottest 100. That’s probably what I’m most excited about. Most likely be sitting there with the Shazam app running through the whole thing. Who’d you guys vote for?

Dying to discuss: Or why I loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens

On December 27, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Up for reviewLeave a comment

Did you know there’s a new Star Wars film in the cinemas right now? Of course you do. Aside from the massive multi-platform advertising campaign that can only be pulled of by a media super-power like Disney, it’s bloody Star Wars, arguably the biggest franchise ever with the kind of pop-culture influence that even a lot of actual wars could never compete with. I went and saw it last Monday. Highly recommend you go see it, even if for no other reason than so I can talk about it without spoiling something. Or everything. ‘Cause I really, really wanna. Talk about it that is, not spoil it. I’m not a bastard. Or am I? Maybe, sometimes.

It’s at this point that I’m gonna mention that I might be talking about events and characters in the film that probably count as spoilers. Nothing major but if you haven’t seen it yet and want to avoid all mention of the film before you do, well, you’ve been warned.

Yeah, so anyway, I get the feeling that this is gonna be one of those films we talk about for a while in a really good way. Y’see everyone who’s seen it agrees that this is a good film, but no one seems to agree on how good it is. A few people were disappointed, a few people were raving. I loved it, but Mad Max: Fury Road still stands as my favourite film of 2015. Thing is, there was a lot to talk about Mad Max as well.

What I mean is that there’s a lot to unpack with this film, a lot more going on than a shallow conversation would at first reveal. An example: one of the complaints I’ve heard is that The Force Awakens is essentially just A New Hope. Like it literally has all the same story beats. I’d argue though that this is a good thing. It keeps the film feeling familiar while the new characters and relationships (I’ve come to realise are actually the most important thing in a Star Wars story) means that it still feels fresh and new. It’s also a demonstration by the directors, writers and producers that they understand what made the original trilogy so great while setting the scene for their own (’cause I expect there will be parallels between Episode VIII and Empire Strikes Back, but I don’t think they’ll be as blatant as this one). Someone else had issue with villain Kylo Ren, that he was less ‘all powerful badarse’ and more ‘tantrum throwing bitch.’ Guy wasn’t a menacing character, especially following in the footsteps of Darth Vader. Meanwhile I think that’s the point. This guy wants to be Darth Vader so badly, but he isn’t and probably never will be. It seems to me that the film-makers themselves are pointing this out. After all, that’s a big fucking helmet to fill. But it’s also them saying that he’s a different villain. Yeah, he’s powerful, merciless, brutal and very, very dangerous, but he’s also morally conflicted and emotionally torn.

This isn’t even getting into theories about who and what are which. I’m of the belief that main character Rey, played fantastically by Daisy Ridley, is a descendant of Obi Wan Kenobi (the only other main character in either trilogy with an English accent, and with Ewan Mcgregor doing a quick bit of voiceover work telling her she’s taken the first few steps towards the Force).

Listen, she's new to the whole "Force" thing. It's a lot to take in all at once. — Listen, she’s new to the whole “Force” thing. It’s a lot to take in all at once.

Shit, there’s stuff to talk about with all the characters. John Boyega as Finn, the Stormtrooper turned hero who may or may not be force sensitive (I don’t reckon he is, but we’ll see in the next few movies) but clearly forges a unique bond with Rey and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron. Following that up, what do we think Poe’s role is going to be in the future? He didn’t have a huge amount to do in The Force Awakens, though he was established as a key character moving forward (guessing surrogate son for General Leia). To be clear, the whole thing is well acted (Adam Driver goes from calm to enraged excellently as Kylo Ren and even Harrison Ford seems to be enjoying himself) and I loved all the characters in different ways.

You get what I’m saying though, right? There’s a lot to talk about with this film. Love it or merely like it, I think we’ll be discussing the characters, the intricacies and the story mechanics for a while. And we’ll probably start doing so in about a week’s time.

Y’know, 2015 was actually a pretty good year for films worth talking about long after they’d finished their theatrical run. The above-mentioned Mad Max, for instance. Wonder what 2016’s gonna be like.

So, yeah, go see Star Wars. Be part of the conversation.

Reviewing the old school: Troy (2004)

On December 4, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of culture, Up for reviewLeave a comment

Mate, there is so much wrong with this film. I think the worst part is that it could have been so much better if they’d actually used the source material properly. Y’know, with all the gods and magic and not trying to make us sympathise with Paris of Troy. Seriously, you read the Iliad? You know what we’d call that guy in the modern parlance? A date-rapist. Doesn’t matter that he had help from the Goddess of Love instead of roofies, he still fucks Helen without her conscious consent. That ain’t right.

I don’t get why they cut all the supernatural stuff out of the story. It certainly wouldn’t have made the movie any worse, and it certainly could’ve made the story a whole lot more interesting (imagine Sean Bean’s Odysseus having a D and M with Athena, the Goddess of Just War and Wisdom herself, on the beach beside his ship, or perhaps Ares, the God of War, stalking the battlefield with a leering smile at all the carnage). Could’ve been epic. And it’s not like we’d have a problem with the whole ‘Gods and goddesses interfering with the lives of mortals’ thing. I mean, The Mummy and it’s sequel came out five and three years before, respectively, and they did pretty well with the whole weird foreign supernatural thing. Hell, bloody Disney went and covered the same sort of ground as Troy, but including the divine intervention, with its animated film Hercules (and the great spin-off series about his high school years).

Maybe they were worried that if there was too much Deus Ex Machina going on we wouldn’t be able to take Brad Pitt’s flowing golden hair or Eric Bana’s tinted curls seriously. Maybe they were worried that they’d have to make Orlando Bloom the bad guy who dooms his whole city because he just couldn’t keep it in his pants when he met a hot girl who wasn’t interested. Maybe I’m giving the rest of the film too much credit and it would still be shit anyway.

Probably that last one, but the point still stands.

The acting isn’t great. Brad Pitt and Eric Bana ham it up with that weird pseudo-English accent that non-English actors are expected to put on whenever they’re in a historical period earlier than the 1600s. While Brad Pitt never seems to take it seriously (understandably), Bana actually seemed to get better as the film went on and I think he was the right choice for Hector, noble and doomed and the only one with the common sense to say “let’s just give Helen back to the Greeks, Paris will get over it and even if he doesn’t it isn’t worth going to fucking war over.” There’s a lot of great actors in this film, and they do their damned best with the material. Special props to Brian Cox who plays the role of the villainous, prideful, megalomaniacal Agamemnon with a surprising amount of subtlety. Sean Bean’s Odysseus seems woefully underused. I mean, they don’t even kill him. How you can put Sean Bean in your movie and have him play the one character that everyone knows is gonna survive?

The direction and editing are an overlong mess. It’s a two and a half hour long film and not nearly enough of that is filled with the kind of character moments to actually make us care. Some of it just seems painfully unnecessary. Case in point, the film opens with a map of the Aegean. No voice over, no music, no intro credits. Just a fucking map on the screen for like thirty seconds to a minute. Maybe that minute could have been spent fleshing out Ajax a little more, so we actually give a shit when he dies. Patroclus’ character could’ve been fleshed out a little better as well. I think fantastically named director Wolfgang Petersen was trying to channel old classics, the grand Biblicals and biopics like Ben Hur, Spartacus and Julius Caesar but it just doesn’t work. It’s too slow and not nearly as epic as we’d come to expect by then.

For all its flaws, and it has a lot of flaws (a lot of flaws) I absolutely love this film. My mates and I can basically communicate in movie and television quotes. Simpsons make up the bulk of our source material, with the two Hot Shots! films, the two Airplane (Flying High!) films, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings trilogy filling out the rest of our situational conversations. Troy occupies a special place for us as being the soundtrack for some of our most (or, I suppose, least) memorable nights of drunken debauchery. Someone refusing another beer would be met with a bellow of “Drink you lazy whore! Poles are sobering!” (several of my friends being of Polish origin). Midway through the night you’d likely hear a cry that “The taxi waits for us, I say we make him wait a little longer!” Someone skoling back beer after beer would be cheered on with “The man wants to die!” There was more than one occasion where we’d take Achilles’ speech at the prow of his ship before hitting the beach of Troy and adjust the wording, to fit our school and desired outcome “…my brothers of the schooner… do you know what’s waiting on the other side of the bar? Immortality! Take it, it’s yours!” I watch this film and I’m not thinking about the acting or the plot or the story, the dramatic lines are triggering memories of long nights and close friends.

So yeah. It’s a bloody terrible movie, but I love it dearly. Still, don’t watch it. It’s not worth it and might sour you on a couple of great actors. Read the Iliad and Odyssey instead. They’re classics for a reason.

Reviewing the old school: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

On November 20, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Up for reviewLeave a comment

I’ve struggled a bit writing this. I hadn’t watched this film in a while, and it seemed like a decent choice for an old movie review. It’s bloody fantastic. Problem is, to be honest, just about everyone probably already knows that. It’s Hayao Miyazaki, often cited as the first of Studio Ghibli’s long run of amazing films (even if the company hadn’t technically started yet). Of course it’s good. Of course it’s been praised, dissected, critiqued and analysed by a million others before. What can I possibly add to the discussion? Fucked if I know, but maybe if I ramble on for a bit I’ll think of something.

So, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (or Kaze no Tani no Naushika). The story takes place on a post-apocalyptic world a thousand years after industrial human society had been destroyed in the “Seven Nights of Fire” (this being a Japanese film, titanic organically grown robots with surprisingly uncreative names were involved). Much of the planet has been claimed by the Toxic Jungle, that releases poisonous spores into the air within and around, and is gradually claiming human settlement after human settlement. Nausicaä is a princess of the kingdom known as The Valley of the Wind (hence the title of the film). Far and away one of the hardest bastards in the film (there is one other character who kicks as much arse and he needed to be voiced by Patrick Stewart to do it), she’s also a committed pacifist with a talent for calming, charming and redirecting the deadly insects that protect the Toxic Jungle rather than following the trend in other human kingdoms to kill everything remotely threatening with fire. Aside from a dying a father, everything’s going pretty sweet in the valley until an enormous airship from a neighbouring kingdom, Tolmekia, crashes into the valley and just ruins everyone’s day. Partly because it was carrying spores from the toxic jungle. Partly because it was carrying a foreign hostage who died after the crash. Partly because it was carrying the… embryo… of one of those giant robotic killing machines that I mentioned destroyed the world earlier, that the Tolmekians want back. Anyway, several hopeful anti-war and environmentalist lessons later, everything turns out relatively alright.

It is a beautiful film. The animation is smooth and hold up well for a thirty-one year old film. The art-style makes intimate moments seem grand and grand moments feel intimate, as well as finding the beauty in in what are honestly some fucking horrific-looking beasts. There’s this scene early in the film, when Nausicaä is searching a cave for resources and she discovers the shell of an enormous insect called an ohm. Like, really bloody enormous. It’s presented like a religious experience, a pilgrim entering a cathedral and seeing light fall upon an altar. A lot of blue and white in this moment. A few minutes later the beast that left the shell behind is a nasty, snarling monster chasing after that character voiced by Patrick Stewart (an unforgivable offense in my book, but Nausicaä’s a far better person than I am). Red eyes and a black shell, stark in the desert outside of the cave. Another minute later and the monster has been calmed and is heading home with a surprising grace. Red has been turned back to blue.

Given this focus on colour, the cinematography, the characters and the message that humanity’s best chance of not killing itself is strong anti-war and environmentalist leadership (not to mention the post-apocalyptic setting), I kept comparing Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to, of all things, Mad Max: Fury Road. No, seriously. There’s a tonne of parallels there that I don’t have the time to go through in order to get this up before a self-imposed deadline, but if I ever meet George Miller I’d be inclined to ask how much of an influence Hayao Miyazaki is on him. I might even write a much longer post on the subject sometime in the future. We’ll see. I’m not saying that if you enjoyed Fury Road you’d enjoy Valley of the Wind. Except I actually am. And vice versa.

So, have I added said something interesting in all of this? Maybe. That last bit sounded good, even if it was a bit short. Fuck it, that’s good enough. Point is, if you haven’t seen Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind before, you should definitely watch it. If you have seen it before, well, you should watch it again.

Leave a comment. Thoughts are always appreciated, ideas for future Old School Reviews will be politely considered.

Not just a face on our money

On November 14, 2015November 24, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

It started with a conversation about replacing Alexander Hamilton on the US ten dollar bill. It was a bit of a laugh, bit of a joke. I confused Alexander Hamilton, arguably one of the most intelligent and influential men in American history, with Andrew Jackson, the nutjob who occupies the twenty dollar bill, mistrusted paper currency and declared one of his great regrets was never shooting his Vice President. Yeah, not a hundred percent on my American history. Probably comes from not being from (or even living in) the land of the free, home of the brave. Or something. (This was also before Lin Manuel Miranda went and conquered a fair bit of social media with his Broadway hit). Where was I? Right, the ten dollar bill.

The yanks are currently in the midst of plans to put a woman on their tenner, replacing or sharing the spot with Hamilton. Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery then helped found the underground railway, seems the likely candidate with the most votes and public support in a Treasury survey. Seems like a good choice. It’d seem like a better choice if they ditched Jackson off the twenty and put Tubman, or a woman like her, on that. But it’s the ten that’s apparently due for change, so if that’s where she ends up that’s where she ends up. Not my choice. Not my problem.

Thing is it surprised me a bit that this was even an issue. I mean, it’s weird how scared yanks are of change, especially with regards to their currency. Seems like someone suggests getting rid of the penny, and they get accused of hating Lincoln or something. Fucked if I know why they’re still using paper while most proper nations have already made the switch to plastic notes (yeah, I know they technically use a cotton-composite or something, but it still won’t survive a trip through the washing machine, rain, or a particularly humid day). But, I mean, the USA has had at least a couple of great women in its history. You’d think they’d have put a few women on their money by now.

Maybe, though, I just can’t ever remember not having women on Aussie money. That was kinda where the above conversation ended for me, I began thinking of the people on our own colourful currency. Showing my own biases the names I thought of first were the old white men, but men worthy of respect for more than a few reasons. Banjo Patterson, obviously, on our ten. Sir John Monash, arguably Australia’s greatest general and also Jewish at a time when it was not good to be (though when has it ever?) on one side of the hundred. Reverend and Doctor John Flynn who established the Royal Flying Doctor service. I struggled a bit with the famous women on the notes. Dame Nellie Melba, the great soprano on the other side of the hundred, was easy enough to remember. Her name rolls out of the mind and off the tongue nicely. I have a lot more trouble remembering Mary Reibey’s name than her achievements, a convict turned extremely successful businesswoman with a role in establishing Aussie banking (making her an obvious choice to put on the twenty). I had to Google the others. Edith Cowan, philanthropist, Freemason and first woman in Parliament, her face now featured on the fifty. Mary Gilmore, a great far-left leaning poet and journalist, one who cared very much for her country.

I think I remember Flynn and Monash’s names first partly because they were amongst my heroes growing up. I wanted to join the RAAF for a long time and so great Australian pilots and military men occupied a lot of my attention. Mind you, given that I studied politics at Uni and worked in a bank for over four years I should probably have spent more time learning about Cowan and Reibey. And, hey, given my lousy attempts at writing I should have paid more attention to Patterson beyond the first verse of Waltzing Matilda and paid at least some attention to Gilmore. Fuckin’ hindsight, am I right?

Funny thing is the name that caught my attention the most as I read through the list of famous persons who have appeared on Aussie notes was none of the above notables. It was David Ngunaitponi, better known by the Anglicisation of his surname as David Unaipon. Now this guy, this guy, was one of my favourite people when I was a kid. I half remember making a poster and maybe giving a speech way back in the first half of primary school on his life and achievements. Intelligent and creative, he made a name for himself as a writer (the first Aboriginal to be published in English, including translating and writing down many indigenous stories and legends), a speaker and an inventor (most famous of which were his mechanical shears) at a time when he was often refused room and service because of his race. Shit, he made a name for himself as an intellectual at a time when the Australian Constitution considered him to be part of the native fauna. Unaipon was someone who believed in gradual assimilation into European-Australian society, but in balance with, rather than at the cost of, his own culture, people and heritage (at least that’s my reading of the guy, people who know him better please correct and educate me). The man drew designs for a helicopter (based on the flight of a boomerang) before World War One, back when aeroplanes were still made of sticks and paper held together with twine and hope, and spent much of his life trying to unlock the secrets of Perpetual Motion, Laws of Thermodynamics be damned. I fuckin’ love that. If he was born today I can imagine him trying to build faster-than-light propulsion, tinkering with an engine and muttering the highly articulate and classical-English equivalent of “Theory of Relativity my arse.”

It’s just, I dunno, good to be reading about his life. I mean, it’s like running into an old friend you haven’t seen in years and both having a spare half-hour to catch up over a coffee. As you talk you begin to wonder why the hell you stopped talking, grew apart. Forgot how much you liked this person, how close you were, how important they were to you once upon a time.

Why did I forget about Mr Unaipon for so long? Institutional and personal racism most likely. I probably drifted away in high school, when it was pretty in vogue for young white males like myself to complain about all the ‘Abbo shit’ we were required to learn in the history curriculum. I got over it by the time the HSC rolled around, and complained about the heavily sanitised version of Aboriginal history and culture that we were taught instead (something that we as a people and a community need to demand is fixed). This isn’t helped by the level of anti-intellectualism that haunts Aussie society, our politics and media. A dislike of learning our own achievements outside of sports we play and the wars we’ve fought in. And that’s a shame, because Australians like Mr Unaipon have done things that have, without a doubt, made the world a better place. Will continue to do so, whether we care or not. It comes from how we view ourselves.

A hundred years ago Charles Bean, an otherwise excellent and apolitical war correspondent, lobbied against Sir John Monash (the guy I mentioned on the hundred) being given command of the Australian Imperial Force fighting in the closing years of the Great War. Monash was an urban, Jewish civil engineer who brought a keen scientific mind to making war, completely at odds with Bean’s view of the ideal Australian soldier being the hardy Anglo bushman, surviving on instinct, intuition and determination born from surviving the perilous outback.

We still have these views of ourselves, of what a proper Aussie should be. But maybe we need to expand this image a bit. A proper Aussie should be inventive. A proper Aussie should be educated. A proper Aussie should know how to translate this to the real world without sacrificing the creative dreamer within.

There was this commercial, years ago (I think it might have been on around the Centenary of Federation) where a kid goes up his dad and asks who the first President of the USA was. No problem, it was George Washington. Then the kid asks who the first Prime Minister of Australia was. Oh shit, dad flounders and tells the lad to go ask mum. Most of the rest of the commercial is scenes of senior Australians answering the question easily, (Sir) Edmund Barton. The point of the commercial, if I recall correctly, was to get people thinking about how much they knew about Australian history (beyond Don Bradman’s test average and the date the first ANZACs rushed onto the beaches of Gallipoli). In that same vein I’d like to ask us all to ask a few more questions.

Who’s the lady on the ten?

The guy on the hundred?

The lady on the twenty?

The bloke on the fifty?

Remember some of our national heroes.

Reviewing the old school: Young Einstein (1988)

On November 5, 2015November 5, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of culture, Up for reviewLeave a comment

I like the odd bit of alternate-history fiction. Usually the more serious stuff, where you take a particular historical conflict and basically go “then the aliens attacked” or “but actually there were magicians there too” or “suddenly, time travel!” Serious stuff. Young Einstein (written, directed by and starring Yahoo Serious – probably not the name he was born with) takes a more comedic route by asking its own grand question: what if, instead of Germany, Albert Einstein was born in Tasmania to Aussie apple farmers?

Well, for one, he still develops the Theory of Relativity in this version of reality, but its first application is to split a beer atom in order to carbonate his dad’s pint. Having succeeded in creating bubbly beer (something apparently impossible to do without causing a small atomic blast) Albert packs his bags and heads to Sydney via Uluru (dammit Jim he’s a physicist not a map-reader!) in order to patent his idea. He runs into (and falls in love with) the lovely Marie Curie (played with some fantastic expression by Odile Le Clezio) who has gone to study physics at the University of Sydney (USYD represent!) for some reason, has his idea stolen by foppish villain Preston Preston of the Perth Prestons (played by John Howard – the actor not the Prime Minister – who is wonderfully pompous, cowardly and greedy), invents rock’n’roll music, then uses rock’n’roll music to diffuse an atomic bomb (saving the lives of thousands, including an apparently still kicking Charles Darwin).

Yeah, you shouldn’t think about it too hard. Or at all. Very little of it makes a whole lot of sense. The plot doesn’t. A fair bit of the physics related dialogue doesn’t. But I like it. And if you don’t think about it too much you might like it as well.

As bonkers as it is, Young Einstein does have a colloquial charm. John Howard hams it up fantastically as Preston Preston in what I’d be willing to call one of his best and funniest roles. The idea that everyone would give so much of a fuck about putting bubbles into beer that the scientific community would give out a Nobel Prize for the effort is so bloody Australian it was probably born in New Zealand. Once he gets out of Tasmania, Yahoo’s young Einstein manages to mix the traditional Aussie stereotype of the self-reliant bushman out of his depth in the big city with the broader stereotype of socially-oblivious genius more easily than you’d expect. The plot might not make any fucking sense, but the fact that everyone seems to rather like the kid does.

Thing is, I can’t bring myself to recommend this film to anyone. It took me a little bit to decide why, mind you, but I can’t. Not to an Aussie audience, not to a foreign audience. The problem is it hasn’t aged well.

So much of the humour is, essentially, a piss-take of what people from outside Australia thought the country was like. Weird puppet Tasmanian devils that can take bites out of metal shovels, wallabies hopping around the Sydney Uni campus and (as mentioned above) indicating that a trip from Tassie to Sydney would require hopping on a train in the red centre. Thing is this may have been how people viewed us nearly thirty years ago but other people have done a better job of having a go at these stereotypes since then, and (if nothing else) the number of Australians traveling around the world (yours truly included) and people who have travelled to Oz has dispelled a lot of the more ridiculous of the myths made fun of in Young Einstein. A fair few of the jokes are winks and nudges at the Australian audience going “how funny is it that dumb-arse foreigners think this is what we were like!” Now we’d just point out that the rest of the world just thinks we’re a bunch of drunken, sports-mad brawlers with a talent for killing spiders and sharks in between smashing back tinnies.

As a result a lot of the humour falls flat. This isn’t helped by the fact that some of the more noticeable cultural references aren’t all that recognisable (I might know that a shot of Einstein riding a horse down a steep slope is a reference to The Man from Snowy River but I doubt that any of my siblings would).

Honestly mate I watched this film for nostalgia purposes. I remember watching this film as a kid. There’s this point at the end where everything’s about to explode and everyone’s losing their shit. Einstein, calm as you like, takes a bite out of an apple and says “Just a moment Marie, I’m having an idea.” I love that calm thoughtfulness. The problem with the rest of the film might be that it’s too goofy. Everything from the high-pitched inflection of the narration to the costuming to the sound effects is played for the easiest kinds of laughs. But this one line, played perfectly straight, eating an apple, it embodies my own sense of humour and how I try and handle a stressful situation. Funny what sticks with you.

So yeah, I like this movie. Is it great? Not really. Should you watch it? Probably not. Hell, I wouldn’t even recommend a rewatch if you’ve seen it before. But if you do, remember to take it for what it is. It’s a relic of what we all thought you thought about us back in the day, true or not. And it’s a bit of clean, stupid fun.

Elections and policy, this side of the ocean.

On October 20, 2015 By longandshortofitallIn In the News, Longer rantsLeave a comment

A bear, a beaver and a moose walk into a bar. Each pulls up a stool and when they’re good and comfortable the bartender hops over and asks what they’re having. The bear asks what IPAs they have on tap, ignores the American import and the east coast beer, and instead asks for the one brewed within five kilometres of the bar by men with beards who have given it an aggressive name and an IBU count that’s so high it’s essentially meaningless (after all, how many people know what the fuck an IBU even is?) The beaver’s had a long day at the office and asks what the whiskey selection is like, is deeply disappointed to find out how shallow the list is and settles with some good old fashioned Tennessee rye on the rocks. The moose, asks for a cocktail that he knows is sweet and fruity and full of alcohol, worries a little that the other two will judge him for it, decides he doesn’t care and would rather get something that he knows he’ll like. The beaver isn’t the type to judge him over a drink. The bear is, but also won’t admit how jealous he is of the moose’s colourful choice.

The barman, a rather bored looking wallaby, begins pouring the drinks and – partly since he hasn’t got anything better to do – tries to engage them in conversation.

“You lads voted yet?”

“Not yet,” mumbles the bear as he swallows a mouthful of beer and barely (heh) suppresses a grimace.

“Already done,” grins the moose (at least it looks like a grin).

“Don’t know if I will. I don’t know who to vote for,” says the beaver with a surprisingly deep gravelly voice given his nice suit, stylish haircut and small size.

“You should vote. It’s your ‘civic duty,'” claims the moose with mock gravitas.

“He’s right,” agrees the wallaby as he mixes together the moose’s drink, “we’ve got compulsory voting back home, so you’d have to. But it’s the right thing, exercising your democratic rights and all that. None of the parties appeal to you?”

“Not really,” replies the Beaver.

“What about the NDP,” growls the bear accidently menacingly (he is a fucking bear after all), “They’re promising to cut small-business taxes.”

“So are the Liberals and the Conservatives,” pipes up the moose.

(“That’s also not always a good thing,” throws in the Wallaby but everyone ignores him on this.)

“Are they? Well Mulcair’s promising affordable childcare for a million people.”

“A million children or a million parents?” asks the wallaby.

“Does it matter?”

“It probably does.”

“Not to me,” points out the beaver, “I don’t have kids.”

“But you might have them in the future,” responds the bear, taking another slug from his draught.

“But I might not.”

“But don’t you care about other kids and parents?”

“Not really.”

“What does NDP stand for?” breaks in the Wallaby before the back and forth between the beaver and bear gets out of hand, “National Democratic Party?”

“New Democratic Party,” says the moose.

“Oh. That’s a stupid name.”

“Why?” splutters the bear.

“Just is. Trust me, I’m an Australian. We know stupid names. Use enough of them.”

That get’s a chuckle out of the beaver and moose at least, the latter of whom suggests the former consider the Liberals.

“They’re planning on investing in infrastructure.”

“By running a deficit for, like, the next five years,” huffs the bear.

“Just until 2019,” huffs the moose right back, “and we need the investment.”

“It’s still a deficit,” remarks the beaver, “do we really want to our government going into debt with the economy so fragile right now?”

The moose looks like he’s ready to dive into a long arduous debate about the benefits of government actually going into debt in order to invest in meaningful economic projects that will induce future growth, then thinks better of it. Takes a sip of his drink. The wallaby glances between the three patrons, expecting more but not getting anything out of them.

“That’s it?” he asks a little surprised, “Infrastructure investment or childcare?”

“No,” laughs the moose, “there’s more than that. I mean, yeah both of them have got some similar policies. Like they’re less concerned with terrorism.”

“They both say they’ll stop our air campaign against ISIS and let in more Syrian refugees. And both have said they’ll decriminalise weed if elected,” says the beaver.

“Yeah,” says the bear, “But the NDP are more opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership than the Liberals. And the Keystone pipeline.”

“And the Liberals might actually have experience governing the country,” adds the moose, “but Trudeau’s a career politician son of a career politician and people are pretty sick of career politicians. That’s helped the NDP and Mulcair a lot.”

“All right. So you voting NDP mate?” the wallaby asks the bear, glancing at the door a little surprised that no other customers have walked in yet.

“No, I’m voting Greens.”

The moose and beaver both make noises at that. The wallaby realises that at some point the beaver finished his rye, asks if he wants another, pours it while listening to the two of them tell the bear he’s throwing his vote away. The bear argues that he’d rather vote for who he wants to vote for than worry about strategy. Isn’t that was exercising your democratic right is all about?

“So, who you gonna vote for?” the wallaby eventually asks the beaver.

“Don’t know. I’m still not sure if I’m going to vote.”

“You should vote,” says the bear, “and it doesn’t really matter who for, as long as it’s not fucking Harper.” (That last part came out in a growl, the beaver and moose unconsciously shift another few inches away.)

“Yeah, fuck Harper,” agrees the beaver.

“And the horse he rode in on,” follows the moose.

“Too bloody right,” agrees the wallaby, not wanting to be left out.

The three of them talk for the next half-an-hour about why Harper is just the worst, how much damage he’s done to Canada, his attempts to prevent people from voting, his self-congratulating version of nationalism. Not being a Canadian voter, and not really being affected no matter who’s in charge as far as he can tell, the Wallaby doesn’t have a whole lot against Harper. He nods along as is required, and is reminded most of back in 2007, when Australians finally got tired of PM John Howard and seemed to widely decide he was the devil incarnate.

The bear and the beaver leave a little after the conversation turns to hockey (of fucking course) before the voting booths close. The moose orders another drink. The wallaby still looks a little confused about this whole election thing. Mentions it to the moose.

“Well,” the moose says patiently, “that’s because we’re a hypothetical anthropomorphic representation of the author’s experience of the election.”

“Sorry, what? Who?”

“The author, the guy typing this right now who’s in too deep to stop now. We’re a representation of what he’s seen and heard about the election. In other words, not a lot.”

“Huh.”

“Tell me honestly, you must have heard a few people talking about the election. Have you heard many of them talking about the NPD’s or Liberal’s platforms?”

“Not really. Mostly it’s just been ‘fuck Harper’ and ‘this is how fucked we are if Harper manages to hang on'” the wallaby said, barely needing to think about it.

“Exactly, I’ll bet even the few commercials you’ve seen have been less about different policies and more about telling people what arseholes the other guys are.”

“The ones I’ve understood, yeah. The French ones seem a lot more positive, but I might be mistaken. The whole ‘first past the post’ electoral system doesn’t help, does it?”

“No, I don’t think it does. Having a system where simply getting the more votes than everyone else rather than any sort of majority, especially one with three major parties and lots of small ones, is a messy system to begin with. Couple that with the fact that people are more concerned about getting the Conservatives kicked out than who actually wins, and you have a whole lot of negative strategic voting.”

“People voting for the local member most likely to beat the Conservative candidate for their area than the party whose policies they like or benefits them most.”

“That’s what the author seems to think.”

“Right. Reckons he’s got anything insightful to say about it? Being an outsider looking in and all that?” the wallaby said nonchalantly, looking around for a coffee that he’d forgotten about and was probably cold by now.

“Not really. Probably just that voting someone out is not the same as voting someone in, and people ought to realise that it might not end with the kind of results they want.”

“Fair ’nuff. Maybe we’ll have more to say about it after the election?”

“Maybe. Canadian elections aren’t the most exciting topic of conversation.”

“Aussie politics is feeling a lot more bloodthirsty after all this.”

“That’s a topic for another day. On the bright side, there’s probably a decent voter turn-out.”

“True enough.”

“Good for the bear voting for he wanted to.”

“Also true.”

The moose finishes his drink, pays and leaves.

The Long and Short of it

Category: Longer rants