Piers Akerman, the Canberra press gallery, swine fever, Jeff Kennett as a Nazi cow and a light touch of bondage

(Above: Bondage on King street, Newtown, Sydney, Australia, centre of screen culture decadence).

Reading Piers Akerman today reminds me of nothing so much as a spider dipped in ink wandering across a page, or a blowfly trying to pen a few lines after reading cockroach Archy's poems about Mehitabel the cat, who was once Cleopatra in another life (and if you've never read the delightful Archy, as channelled by Don Marquis, why not check out the world according to archy).

Yet again the resolute, stout hearted, nay interminable fat owl's on about Rudd bashing, and he's basically so boring that you almost have to hope that the Rudd government is returned to office in the next election so that Akerman can explode in a splenetic frenzy in the sky like the rocket in Oscar Wilde's fable.

About the only thing we learn today that's new is that it was the Canberra press gallery that elected the Rudd government. Now having been in Canberra recently, there's a lot to blame it for, but really how did the sweet little Canberra Times manage that miraculous feat?

Not that the Canberra press gallery is pursuing the Rudd administration on any of these important issues with the enthusiastic venality it exercised in pursuit of the Howard government over many lesser matters.

It is still too early for Canberra’s collective cognoscenti to admit that it has replaced a government that, empirically, did a better than average job in providing for the nation, with a cast of singularly talentless amateurs.

Oh I see it was the press gallery that voted them in, and presumably the press gallery that's keeping Malcolm Turnbull's popularity figures so low. What a fiendish flock of simpletons the Canberra press gallery are, and don't quote me, that's one reptile calling out a bunch of reptiles.

Yet fiendishly clever in their own way too, to have overturned the electoral system in a way that nobody but Piers Akerman noticed. So poignant to be the one voice of sanity in a sea of insanity, in much the same way as Tony Perkins was the only cluey one in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

What  else has the fat owl got to say? Something exotic, something compelling, a new understanding of the world? 

Ah yes, the world is coming to an end, and the Rudd government is the cause of it all. Thanks, and that's enough of that. When a columnist is reduced to quoting a seventeen year old as the font of economic wisdom, simply because prejudices collide and rejoice together, it's time to move on to other things, but if you really must, you can find the fat owl's mad musings and ranting ramblings here at Children lament Rudd debt legacy.

So why not a bit of sex? A while ago, I was wandering along King street, and saw the work of some anonymous window dresser and wondered why it hadn't brought western civilization to its knees, since it seems in visual terms a rough equivalent to a Rudd government budget.

It's been a wee while since I deconstructed an image, so bear with me if the analysis lacks subtlety, and fails to capture all the nuances of an image which is fiendishly arousing and disturbing.

First of all, notice the implicit threat of the pistol tucked into the male's belt, and the erotic lift in the skirt, caused by a mix of hand and rope, thereby baring the knee, and even - lash me to the lamp post and punish me hard - some of the upper leg. 

Note the rope draped around the female figure in restrictive gestural loops, and the leash-like effect of the rope linking male hand to female neck. The scarf could be construed as a fashion item - it is the shop window of a fashion store - but in fact reflects a Taliban-like desire to repress female eroticism by imposing an oppressive reductionism to the hair, in the same way as the wide leather belt restricts the waist in the same way as a corset. 

This kind of ostentatious reduction of overt female sexuality is typical of fundamentalist religion and bondage devotees, and as we know from Mel Gibson's film about Christ's passion, both tribes of deviates are in the end one and the same.

The boots in the foreground imply a coarse kind of BDSM leather interest, while the male's black hat and draped scarf suggest a reflexive discourse with the female bondage.

You might say this is just dummy sex, and not as interesting as furry sex, but you'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

These dummies have been dressed under the vile influence of the intertubes. But, you protest, weren't westerns and tie 'em up games a happy part of many childhoods in days of yore?

You simple minded pervert, clearly you understand nothing. This image foreshadows the end of western civilization as we know it by Friday at 4.01 PM, unless Stephen Conroy, Miranda Devine and Susan Greenfield are immediately allowed to smash all screens, blow them up like stone Buddha portraits carved into rock to insult the Taliban. It's the only way to remove the hideous effects of screen culture from the world.

Simpletons, even this site must now be banned. It's evil. I can't say anymore, I'm so moved by the threat of young people seeing kinky sex in a shop window as they walk in a main street in Sydney, and all the fault of Al Gore and his fiendish invention of the intertubes. Now follow the biblical injunction, for if your eyes are offended pluck them out (or was that if thy eyes offend thee pluck them out. Whatever.)

Ah well it's Sunday and all quiet on loon pond, but if thinking about sex in a shop window (as opposed to your bedroom) gets you going, you might consider dropping in on Charlie Waterstreet, lovable colorful Sydney identity, and his musings in God warned us on swine, the bible and sex with beasts (Waterstreet sounds like an expert).

And then to round out a quiet Sunday, we thought we'd highlight Juan Davila's portrait of Jeff Kennett as a Nazi cow, currently being exhibited at the State Library of Victoria up to August 9, 2009. Lordy, it reminds me fondly of mad cow disease, back in the days when swine fever was just a jolly term for Akerman's scribbles.

Now you might think this an extreme response to Kennett's  preference for paying a fine of $5,000 rather than attend umpiring classes and learn the actual rules of the game (instead of mouthing off in grand half baked presidential Kennett style) but apparently it's really something to do with an argument over the acquisition of a Tom Roberts painting for the National Gallery (no, not the one in Canberra, the real one in Victoria) that happened way back when, and was purchased by the Library in 2000.

Ah those funny Victorians. Still on a quiet Sunday, a little bit of bondage, and the breaking of Godwin's Law yet again in relation to Kennett, and a quiet bit of pig fornication over at the Sydney Morning Herald, and all's well with loon pond - and the plaintive shrieking and moaning and foaming and frothing of Piers Akerman, the very noisy fat owl of the remove can be safely ignored until Piers one note comes up with at  least two. 

Hoping for three notes, or even a tune from the fat owl, is being terribly optimistic, but we can only hope. Now if only Juan Davila was feeling inspired to do a portrait ...

Or as Mehitabel might say, wotthehell, wotthehell, toujours gai, tourjours gai (though of course, without the punctuation because cockroaches find it hard to type. If only Akermans found it hard too).