The Rapture: Australia Undone

  One day they poured a bucket of scalding water over him, ripping off his skin while it was still burning. Flayed to death. That unimaginable cruelty. Who were these people who did these things? And then the edifice collapsed and beneath it was a tiny malformed screeching creature running around in desperate circles trying to evade the light. And then it, too, disappeared.  And in that magic realm of disembodied wings and floating voices, a creeping sense of everything, they tried to communicate a nobler, historic purpose, although he did not know what it was. He did not understand the nature of the project, yet to be announced.  And so he went about his day. The election was out of the starter's gate, but on the ground there was little, read zero, enthusiasm for either candidate. A choice between two bad, sad options. A choice between a pallid nothing and a less than bold conservative wedded, like his predecessors, to the Very Big End of Town. So the people they alleged...

  On the shore of the lake The old man sat and watched a woman bathing With its golden touch, the light was such That the moment was worth saving And he sang the song of the lake The song of the lake And all the king's horses and Oh, never mind, never mind And he knew that he would dissolve If he followed her into the lake But he also knew that if he remained upon the shore He would in time, evaporate He sang the song of the lake The song of the lake And all the king's horses Oh, never mind, never mind NIck Cave. Song of the Lake. Like so much of the animal kingdom, he had preferred to hide from predators rather than face them full on. Dangerous. Unformed. Did they know what happened when they crossed him. Just ask. When malignancy and senescence settled into the bones of their lives like old habits, and nothing was ever good again. Joy evaporated. Fun evaporated. A grimace, almost a death grimace, became their most common facial expression. And they never joined the dots.  Ne...

  The swarms of black birds swirled down to feast on the bodies of enemy soldiers.  All war is deception. He had been repeatedly publicly humiliated during his efforts to hide in the undergrowth, to avoid detection by the marauding algorithms, not to gift some of the most corrupt and capricious people on the planet the military gift they sought. If any of it mattered. The US, the new Roman Empire with a world, indeed worlds, to conquer had killed 53 Houthis in a tragic mistake. It blew up in their faces faster than even he could have predicted, with a journalist, The Atlantic wouldn't you know, being patched into a call between some of the most senior figures of the Trump administration, including Pete Hegseth and JD Vance.  Soldiers of God. Be careful who you destroy. In Australia the Labor government was up to its usual dirty tricks, appeals to morality while crude politics won the day. Student politics at that, disrupting the leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton at hi...