Spindly Stalks

*

Where I come from, no one knows
Where I'm going I can't disclose
but I'll wear no labels upon my clothes
on the day of my ascension

I deal the pack by remote control
I pluck straight aces from a garbage hole
but I won't take with me what I can't hold
on the day of my ascension

Chorus
From this moment on, all laws are reversed
Truth will be revealed to the creatures of this earth
on the day of my ascension

There's always someone I have to lose
I've got 4 freeways from which to choose
I'll have 8 exits that I can use
on the day of my ascension

People love me, well, people try
I have to leave them all by end by
Some day I'll leave them high and dry
on the day of my ascension

Where I come from no-one knows
Where I'm going I can't disclose
The angels will shriek when the engine blows
on the day of my ascension

The Triffids

"I heard 'hotel room' and I was there," the young man, a friend of his son, babbled excitedly; and they all laughed. They had all been at a dance, Uni Fest, in a club in Kings Cross. How different it was living with teenagers, in contrast to the cute little blond things which used to cling to him so determinedly. Even now, sometimes, if he happened to be walking down the street with his son and daughter, he would notice how they would walk so close to him on either side, as if they couldn't get any closer. After everything that had happened, everything they had been through, it was understandable, the clinging. "It wasn't easy," he said, often, and they stood in circles at yet another farewell, this time for the old News photographer Bob Finlayson, who has been made redundant at the age of 70. Join the queue. What was going on?

"Dad, will you drive us down to pick up Todd, they won't let him into the hotel room, he's down at Darling Harbour," my son said. It was four a.m. He had just got up. They had just got home. How funny they were. "Alright," he said, pretending he, too, might have once been young. "You don't have to get out of your pyjamas," Sam said. He shrugged. "No worries." As if anything mattered anymore. In these dark times. At least someone could laugh. Suzy gave him a peck on the cheek and wished him happy birthday; for his 57th. "How much can the passage of time solve," Bernard said at the farewell, when he retold the story. Their conflict, his fight for his children, had been legendary around the office, and even now the first question many people asked was, how's your kids?

"The boy's in university," he would say and they would express astonishment, for they all remembered him and his sister as little blond knee high kids running around the office while he desperately tried to file. All was lost. All harked back to the eighties. The photographers were settling in for one of their tribal gatherings, at the Aurora, the once seedy pub near Central which had now been renovated and was filled to the rafters with office workers on a Friday night. Many hadn't bothered to go home. Someone had put $500 on the bar. It was going to be a wild night. All else, all out, he could feel the cold fires burning in another place, he could see the night descended on the scrappy, depressed, over controlled city, where sniffer dogs hunted the citizenry and parking cops tyrannised the public. Where totalitarianism was only one step away.

We are certain, we really are, that in the pyramidic forces, in the shallows and even in the deeper waters, with the flash of silver fish and bright brick colours of the water and the sun drenched, colour drenched hills behind, of finding our fate. God has chosen you for a higher purpose, the voice intoned. Not just witness. Not just celebrant. To expose the human condition, to make sense of the unfathomable. To understand why, at Hawke's Nest, a little girl was deliberately starved to death by her parents, why the most evil of things could so easily happen. "Dead Evil" the father had tattooed on his knuckles. It was so cruel, beyond cruel, the staggering indifference these people displayed, the horror, the horror, hidden behind suburban doors, a little girl locked in a room, peering out.

It was perhaps the worst case of child neglect Australia had ever seen; and as the government continued to pour ever more greater sums into ever more dysfunctional departments, and the increasing swathes of welfare dependent under-class grew and grew and grew, and Labor politicians bleated about the country's most vulnerable, and did more harm than good with their bleeding heart rhetoric. A weak man needs someone weaker to make him feel strong; the ideology of the left ensured a public discourse ripe with victimhood, and the toiling masses, those who lived decent, simple, humble lives, just got up and went to work while bureaucrats built ever expanding empires and politicians, the pimples on the pie, spouted nonsense with all the profundity of a genuine believer. But they didn't really believe, he knew that. Their sole motivation, like every other life form, was survival.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26331380

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday his hopes for a direct dialogue with Iran had been affected by what he described as the brutality of Tehran's "outrageous" crackdown on protesters in the aftermath of its disputed election.

"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks and we don't yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran," Obama told a joint White House news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"There are going to be discussions that continue on the international stage around Iran's nuclear program. I think the direct dialogue between the United States and Iran and how that proceeds, I think we're going to have to see how that plays itself out in the days and weeks ahead," he said.

Obama rejected a demand for an apology from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said Obama was interfering in the Iranian election.

"I don't take Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran," he said.

The U.S. leader praised Iranian protesters, saying: "Their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice. The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous."

He said Ahmadinejad's chief rival, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, had "captured the imagination" of Iranians who want to open up to the West.

Obama reiterated U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which Washington fears is to develop atomic weapons but Tehran says is for generating nuclear energy.

"Iran's possession of nuclear weapons will trigger an arms race in the Middle East that would be bad ... for the security of the entire region," Obama said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8578947

The cause of Michael Jackson's death may not be known for weeks, investigators have said.

Los Angeles County Coroner Jerry McKibben said an autopsy (post-mortem examination) was being held on Friday but results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, which could take several days and maybe weeks.

However, if a cause of death can be determined by the autopsy, the results will be announced, Mr McKibben said.

Police said they were investigating the death, standard procedure in high-profile cases.

Officers are searching for a doctor who they hope will help in the investigation.

A Los Angeles police spokeswoman said they towed from Jackson's house a BMW owned by one of the superstar's doctors.

"We have not been able to interview the doctor yet. His car was impounded because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death," she said.

Celebrity gossip web site TMZ.com reported that the doctor lived at the home. The spokeswoman said she could not confirm that and did not know the doctor's identity. She stressed that the doctor was not under criminal investigation but coroner's investigators wanted to contact him.

Jackson's brother Jermaine earlier said: "It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known."

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/turnbull-was-as-shocked-as-everybody-else-20090626-czv2.html

LIBERALS are fretting over what Godwin Grech may tell the police after the Treasury official was coughed up as the Coalition's Treasury mole.

Mr Grech, who has been in hospital for the past week, is understood to have started helping police with their inquiries into the fake email which has embarrassed the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull.

The investigation has also been widened to cover other leaks to the Coalition from Treasury over the past 18 months concerning Fuel Watch and the bank deposit guarantee.

Liberal sources have outed Mr Grech as the Coalition's mole in the Treasury, ostensibly to back Mr Turnbull.

If previous information was solid, Mr Turnbull could not be criticised for believing the email to be real, one source reasoned.

Mr Turnbull's leadership was damaged by the fake email affair, with Liberals agreeing that it was only the lack of an alternative that was preventing widespread destabilisation.

Mr Grech was the Treasury official who told a Senate hearing on June 19 of an email purportedly linking Kevin Rudd to efforts to assist car dealer John Grant. Mr Grant had given Mr Rudd a ute.

If the email were true, Mr Rudd would have misled the Parliament. The email turned out to be a hoax and it subsequently transpired that Mr Turnbull and his chief inquisitor, Eric Abetz, had had a secret meeting with Mr Grech in the lead-up to his Senate inquiry appearance.

Mr Turnbull and Senator Abetz have refused to confirm or deny the meeting, saying the whole fake email is subject to a police investigation.