Coming To An End

Holidays are coming to an end. In Gunnedah looping back on the way to Sydney. It might be autumn and heading into winter, but it's hot here; jumpers off by 8am; all talk of the drought. This is a picture of Carmel Tebbit's election night party; where I went with Trevor. It seems, though it was only a month ago, like a cyclone and a life away; that night; dropping the kids and dropping Polly at the airport and the rain deluging down; as we ran in crisis when the taxi didn't come; Trevor showing up; Redfern and chaos and meaning; that was that night, as Labor romped it back in and the Labor faithful celebrated each minor triumph in what was always a preordained victory.

Labor might have left no stone unturned, but they were never going to lose, not with an opposition as hapless as the one they faced.

The words of the mass killer, with their Thus Spoke Zarathustra tones, the powerful Nitschke like ravings, and we all shuddered and took pleasure in our tiny uneventful lives. What more could anyone want? I said aloud, not even to a dog, surveying my dirt poor patch and the crumbling house and thinking: no one can get me hear, and in my life there's nothing more that I want than not to be got at. It's a strange point to reach, not of hiding, but of acceptances. All those crazy 3ams, when nothing was reached and nothing could comfort me and there was no protection from the fundamnetal truth: you were just not right. You were born not right. The observer role, adopted as your only defence, was in itself stripped away as an artiface, and there was, indeed, nothing but malformation and peculiarity. Just not right. And then he came back from the distant shore, the sun shone and things were, really, just not that bad. What more could a man want? I asked at the Melama or however you spell it roadway cafe I've been every morning, putting out the weetbix and mixing it with Nutrigrain. Like your weetbix, don't you love? the plain, kindly, no-nonsense, gossipy woman behind the counter said. What more could a man want? I repeated.

THE BIGGER STORY:

The gunman who killed 32 people at a U.S. university Monday, before killing himself, mailed a chilling video to a U.S. TV network during the massacre. The package was received by the NBC TV network from Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui. VOA's David Dyar reports the package contained a rambling video in which the gunman engaged in an angry tirade about hedonism and rich kids along with several pictures of him holding guns. NBC played excerpts from the video on its evening newscast. The gunman is seen talking angrily in the video in what the network described as an incoherent manifesto.

“Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can, just because you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats, your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs, your trust fund wasn’t enough ...
“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” according to excerpts aired on Wednesday night by NBC.
“But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now, you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”
“Jesus loved crucifying me,” he said at another point. “He loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorising my heart and ripping my soul all this time.”

Some of the pictures released by NBC showed Cho brandishing guns. One picture showed him holding two guns, one in each hand in a firing pose. In another picture, Cho points the barrel of the gun directly at the camera. NBC said it received the package Wednesday, but it contained a stamp indicating it was mailed about an hour and 45 minutes after he first opened fire on the university campus, killing two students. Many of Cho's comments were laced with profanity and were spoken in an angry monotone voice.

"I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled," he was heard saying. "But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you (expletive). I did it for them,"

“I didn’t have to do this,” he said. “I could have left. I could have fled. But no.”