Above The World

*

"We're in a bit of a pickle here, boy," Drew said. "Maybe you should stop drinking."
"Maybe you should start," Perry said. "I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I'm some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you're dropping bombs in America. You're in charge of fighting honest-to-God aliens. Ask me, that's a pretty good reason for a snort or three."
Perry held out the bottle. Drew looked at the nasty scar on Perry's left forearm. War scars, that's what Perry had.
Drew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Drew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull...

Scott Sigler, Contagion.

Apart from some vague notion of the universe as an infinite and amazing place, like most people, he had no real knowledge or even desire for knowledge of God or a higher power or anything else in that domain. The purpose of recovery is to come to know the face of God, he read, and dismissed it as cultish nonsense. Children, they were virtually children, young things in their 20s, whined endlessly about their pseudo-difficulties and their love of "the program". He shuddered. It had come to this. And then they were gone. And people he had meant to confront, or just to talk to, were swept away in the crush. He wanted to go back to a time of innocent glory, to a time of powerful clairvoyance and an infinite ease with his own spirituality, when each night he went foraging across the suburbs of his early childhood, the cold crash of the surf in the early hours of the morning, the lonely twinkle of the street lamps, the deep cold of the houses nestled into the sides of the hills overlooking the beach. The deep green of the trees which were everywhere.

Nothing matched his inner dialogue. And so it was that he abandoned everything he had once stood for. Once he could hear them, the thoughts of others, as he sat on the bus on the long ride into town. Once, if he stared at people long enough, they would do what he wanted. Instead, now, his head was full of half finished stories, scenes which went nowhere, plots which dissolved before they had even formed. The old Eastern Europeans sat in the outback baths, the hot, sulphurous water giving off steam into the infinite night, the stars in the startling sky starting to come out as dusk deepened. They were large people, both the men and the women, plagued by health problems which probably directly related to their rich diets. There was no
English spoken. This land which had transformed utterly, from the ancient culture of the aborigines, living here for thousands of years, to the bustling technological world of the West, its architecture encrusted on to the ancient land, coating the hills and bays of the coast, spreading inland through the townships.

Prior to becoming a general news reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1980s his knowledge of the outback and rural Australia was limited to drug fueled spiritual quests against startling backdrops - from Ernabella, the aboriginal Jerusalem, where the sky itself turned pastel above the pastel red hills and yellow desert melons lay on the gorgeous pink sands to the rich farming country of the Liverpool Plains or the Hunter Valley, where the large, white well maintained fences of the horse studs bespoke a wealth he could only imagine. What had happened to that eccentric, wealthy older man in a flash sports car he had assumed was his destiny. He could see him, why not become him. Fragment Me Quick, Blue Queen, had been the science fiction novella he had written with a cast of himself and his friends, particularly Bill Rough. They had all been "creatives", as they were now called, and could see absolutely no other reason for being.

Last night he had driven back from Waverley down Moore Park Road, past the house where John Bygate and the wild crew he had known so well, had once considered the heart of everything, now lived. John Bygate was the star recruit. By this stage John was already in decay, the fabulous terrace in Elizabeth Street, Paddington, his sugar daddy had bought for him long gone. He had met John in the late 60s when Harry Godolphin, also dead, took him up from the Cross, where they would sit around all day on the musty straw floor coverings playing music and smoking bongs. He was a street kid and these people always liked to pick up street kids, foster their potential, maybe maybe not sleep with them. I'm the only one in your life who doesn't want to sleep with you, that's why you like coming here, Harry said, and it was probably true. Harry was the man he had met in a detox just after he turned 16. He hadn't stayed in the detox long; and having nowhere to sleep and sick of the hands of ancient men crawling across his body just because he needed a bed for the night.

He went back to Harry's place, the squat overlooking Woolloomoolloo, with its spectacular views and unique, aerie like location on top of the cliffs. None of those houses are there anymore, replaced by the famous now multi million dollar apartments along Victoria Street with some of the best views of Sydney anywhere. It was to Harry he told his initial dreams of maybe being a writer one day; a fantasy which seemed so impossible it would have been laughable. But Harry listened and encouraged him, the first adult to do so. And so he started scribbling things again, as he had done throughout his childhood, which had been littered with large literary projects he had thrown away after his suicide attempt. Harry gave him a sliver of acid and took him to see Hair and his world, his consciousness, changed forever. As did the rationals for his own behaviour. Far off, but suddenly not so far off, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were playing giant arenas, and even here in this remote outpost of civilisation he could hear the drum beats of change. They were marked. They would always be defeated. But somehow, briefly, back there, before the impossibilities of life and love and success had destroyed him, he imagined a future full of hope and fun and achievement. How badly distorted things came to be.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/5900099/Muslim-woman-told-to-take-off-veil-by-bus-driver-in-Australia.html

Khadijah Ouararhni-Grech was wearing a pink, floral niqab, which covers her hair and lower face, when she tried to board a bus in Greystanes, an outer suburb of the Astralian city.

"As I was stepping onto the bus the driver said 'You can't get on the bus wearing your mask'," she told the Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper.

When she explained it was religious dress, the woman said the driver responded: "Sorry, it's the law."

"I told him it wasn't the law and he said 'You have to show me your face,'" she said.

"I said to him, 'There's no difference between me and that lady sitting there who chooses to not wear what I'm wearing'."

The bus company, Hillsbus, said the driver was being questioned over the claims.

"We are investigating it and doing that as quickly as we can," a spokesman said. "We need to get to the bottom of it, work out what happened and what went on, and what we need to do about it."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/23/2634738.htm

Two more people have died from swine flu in Queensland, taking to five the number of swine flu-related deaths in the state.

Authorities have confirmed a 13-year-old boy died on the Sunshine Coast on Monday and an 84-year-old man died yesterday.

Queensland Health says both were classed as vulnerable due to existing medical conditions.

A 70-year-old man with swine flu died in Townsville Hospital yesterday.

Earlier this week, a 19-year-old woman from Palm Island lost her unborn baby through complications from the virus, while a 38-year-old woman died in Brisbane last Wednesday.

Muslims make up about 1.7 per cent of Australia's heavily Christian population of almost 22 million, and religious tensions have run high in recent years.

Anti-Muslim sentiment flared on Sydney's southern Cronulla Beach in December 2005 when mobs of whites attacked Lebanese Australians there in a bid to "reclaim the beach".

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gS9Eg6gT_891qZQzJXIK49F6VEow

WASHINGTON — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki paid symbolic tribute to US soldiers killed in Iraq, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery.

As the Iraqi and American national anthems played, Maliki paid his respects Thursday during a military ceremony of the type reserved for heads of state, which was punctuated by the firing of canons.

Maliki was joined by his delegation and Brigadier General Karl Horst, the commander of Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region.

The Iraqi leader observed a minute of silence, watched by a crowd of about 200 American tourists who were visiting the site -- a national landmark.

He did not make remarks at the ceremony.

According to cemetery officials, Thursday was the third time Maliki has visited the site to pay his respects, but the previous two visits were not open to the public.

An Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the trip was "very important to stipulate a new relationship after the withdrawal of the troops."

US troops pulled out of Iraqi cities at the end of June, as part of a bilateral agreement signed between the two countries.

The transition is a major step in the Iraqi government's attempts to assert its authority throughout the country, but questions remain about relations between the still-troubled nation's ethnic and religious sects.

The future of relations between the country's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations was a topic in talks Maliki held in Washington on Wednesday with President Barack Obama.