Both blogging and reading blogs depends upon my mood for the day. It sometimes takes, I’m sure you will agree, a degree of fortitude to bear the tidal wave of crap that spews forth onto the blogpages of cyberspace.
However, no matter what sort of mood I’m in, I usually take the time to pass by the Billabong to see what sort of deritrus has snagged the scum surrounding the hideous professors habitat.
Seldom am I disappointed, but rarely do I see eloquence as descriptive as that shown in his piece on the SMH.
There are times when you pick up the Silly and think not of the wide and wonderful world its reporters, columnists and editors have drawn together to be laid beside your morning crumpet, but of epidemiology and those “disease clusters” — unusual incidences of rare cancers, cataracts, bearded dwarf women, or whatever — for which no obvious explanation is available. Bad things happen and sometimes, for no obvious reason, they happen in randomly close proximity, that’s what the experts say. The Silly, you are forced to conclude while groping for an explanation, must be one of those mysterious magnets for malignancy, as so many noxious talents couldn’t possibly have been assembled under the one roof by the mere hand of man, not even Ham-Fisted Freddie’s. …….. It must be some wicked gravity that draws those atoms of intelligence together, and therefore it may be only a matter of time until all the foolishness and self-righteous spite in the universe collects in a gross, congealing clot in that one, single newspaper.
Yes Professor, we’ll wait with bated breath to see if your prediction about Hanchette is correct. But, may I say that you demean your ability with words when you write,
“that Ted Rall is the sort of person who really, genuinely deserves to get cancer, and if the Great Bunyip wasn’t preoccupied with other matters, he would arrange for some slow, painful and implacable variant of the disease to rot the cartoonist from testicles to top knot.”
Nobody deserves to get cancer, nobody ! And you should be careful about what you wish for. The Great Bunyip may just make a mistake (even supreme beings are not perfect you see) and perhaps somebody close to you will be afflicted. I’m sure you can think of another more suitable way of showing your contempt.
N.B. I’d normally put this on his blog but he still doesn’t have a comments facility.
My God, that is quite possibly the vilest and most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen in the blogosphere (and the blogosphere is full of vileness and idiocy). What an unspeakably senseless cunt.
I can take a bit of dyspetic wit, but sometimes it just becomes bile, bile, bile. Noone I know deserves cancer, although must admit to having limited sympathy around the time of Idi Amin’s demise.
That should be dyspeptic (the second p just went and peed-off)
Cancer is a horrible, brutal disease, and Bunyip has stepped over the line and proven what a venal, nasty little twerp he really is.
If Bunyip has any sense of decency about him, and feels in anyway guilty about his stupid thoughtless comment, he might like to donate $100.00 or more to an institution like this one and display the receipt as a jpeg on his blog.
Goodonya woodsy … about time you blogged something besides finance (with apologies to those who ..). So when are ya gonna get into the rugby ya bludger?
I just object to him on aesthatic grounds anyway.
That “From The Pulpit” stuff was tired even when Auberon Waugh did it. Even Boris J. swings it better nowadays.
Irme, yer always be an arriviste to us really louche upper- middle segments of the Anglosphere.
There are people who waste their time reading Bunyip??
There are times when I too feel that my morning Fairfax paper has turned into a petri dish full of mutating cultures.
Names like Henderson, Pearson, Saluzenski…
Not that I wish them dead, but I wish I could eat my crumpets in peace.
Have a look again at the object of Bunyip’s displeasure, Ted Rall, including comments from two Billabong visitors. Rall’s a piece of putrescent slime, a liar and a serial defamer.
Perhaps that’s not enough to justify the retribution for which the Professor prays, but when I looked at Rall’s cartoon I had a change of heart, for it is a truly disgusting portrayal of the life and recent death in Afghanistan of Pat Tilman, the American football star who turned down a fortune to serve his country as an ordinary soldier.
This cartoon drips with evil; it’s saturated with treachery. It mocks Tilman’s life and it mocks his death. When I first looked at it, I found myself almost speechless with rage. So my reactions are similar to those of the Professor. Stuff the rest of you!
Yes, Antony, Rall’s cartoon is stupid and offensive. It’s also irrelevant. All it proves is that Rall is as much a disgusting and slimy character as Professor Bunyip himself.
You do not wish cancer upon people. Even if they happen to draw a cartoon we don’t like!
Wehave all us who have lived long enough have had dealings with that horrid disease, statistics would suggest Bunyip would not have been immune. Woodsy’s personal story as referred to on this site in regard to this makes his comments apropos and in context.
There is another context at work in the comments here and that is you are a mob repaying the Bunyip for exposing you the ridicule that some of us think you could benefit from. Bunyip made a faux pas, make your point and enjoy your little victory but shove your faux outrage.
Mark,
Rall’s cartoon is not irrelevant. It’s part of the evidence that led to Bunyip’s fury. Rall’s cartoon is more than stupid, it is more than offensive, it is vile. The bastard rejoices in Tilman’s death. That’s why I support Bunyip on this. I’ve read Bunyip at length and would assert that he has more integrity in his little finger than Rall has in his entire life.
I’m fed up with people like Rall who take every opportunity to defame and denigrate all those with whom they disagree, who never hesitate to accuse others of moral turpitude and intellectual vacuity, but who invent, lie and spin whenever it suits this purpose. Just as a pornographer can only pretend to campaign against pornography, Rall is in no position to denigrate a patriotic soldier and his grieving family and friends.
but shove your faux outrage
James I find your cynicism quite offensive. You have no idea as to how any of us have been affected by cancer.
Which is better, Antony? “I hope you get cancer so I can dance on your grave!”, or “hooray, you’re dead!”? I would submit that neither is better than the other, and that Bunyip and Rall are each equally despicable.
‘Course, y’could argue that, since I agree with neither bastard under discussion here, it’s easy for me to express disgust with both. And since you (and an uncharacteristically obtuse and offensive James H) clearly agree with Bunyip, we cannot expect you to take a similarly “neutral” approach. But how the hell can you support (and advance) the argument “Rall’s a scumbag, therefore he should get cancer”? There aren’t enough people dying of cancer every year as it is, we should wish the terrible disease upon yet more people? Why?
shove your faux outrage
Fuck you Hamilton. I’ve lost family members and friends to this disease. I have a goddamn fucking right to be angry. There is nothing false about my anger at Bunyip and I can assure you there is even less false about my anger at you.
And Antony, if you can endorse Bunyip’s sentiments, then you’re as big a maggot as him. His comment is every bit as vile as Rall’s and there is absolutely nothing morally superior about it. So fuck you too.
Yes Bunyip’s comment about cancer was unfortunate. Yes, I acknowledge that the probablility of Woodsy and I being the only people participating here touched by the disease would be zero and yes I am sorry for being obtuse.
This whole sorry thread is a particularly unsubtle metaphor. Remove “cancer”, “Bunyip”, “Rall” and insert “prisoners” “US Marines” and “Baathists” and the same comments will come from the same people. How is it that we can have a discussion on cancer along party lines?
Rall is far far worse than Bunyip, Iraqi Baathists are far far worse than Bush/Howardites I scoff at those who say otherwise not to offend but to expunge a severe case of the irrits.
OK Mr Russell consider me fucked. But I still think youve missed the point.
I’m tired of all this moral equivalence bullshit. With all his faults, Bunyip is not morally equivalent to Rall any more than Churchill was morally equivalent to Hitler.
With all his faults, Bunyip is not morally equivalent to Rall any more than Churchill was morally equivalent to Hitler.
He was still WRONG. He was NOT RIGHT to wish cancer upon a man. YOU DO NOT WISH CANCER UPON ANYONE FOR ANY REASON. If you’re incapable of understanding why this is so, if you believe it’s acceptable to seriously wish someone should suffer from a lingering excruciating illness, you’ve got some fucking severe problems and you need to take a long hard look at yourself. I’m leaving this post alone now before I explode.
James, you are far too smug with your “Only-I-Know-what-cancer-is-like”. Ted Rall is a nasty little cunt, he is not your dying relatives.
I suppose Mr Russell has surveyed the full extent of Mr Rall’s ouvre and thus has a more nuanced appreciation for the inate qualities of his genius. For the rest of us, the discussion would be akin to differenciating by taste the natural waste-products of a bull versus a gelding. Mr Rall’s recent output leads me to conclude that he is more gelding than bull, however his ouvre remains sh$t.
And Mr Russell’s tirade on cancer within some family (his,I presume) indicates a personal problem that one should generally internalise, rather than spewing over others. Your problem, handle it.
The Professor was too kind to Mr Rall.
Cheers
JMH
A good dose of cancer of the rectum would do you good, you piece of crap! You would be much improved by non-existence.
Rall is a cancer that’s eating us from within. If Bunyip`s comments gives you ‘outrage’ try this MAY POX INFECT YOU but apparently it already has.
Um… you all do know that simply wishing someone would get a disease doesn’t mean that person will actually get that disease, right? And by the way, that dolly you’re sticking pins into isn’t making Donald Rumsfeld get pain in his tummy. You’ve been had. Also, there’s no Santa Claus, and it’s your dad who left those quarters under the pillow in exchange for your milkteeth. Sorry to destroy your illusions…
Both my parents died of cancer, and both grandmothers and my aunt as well. But all that makes me think is “gee, that seems unfair, that Red Tall is still alive and uneaten buy out-of-control tumors while my family is six feet under.” But such is life. Anyway, Tud’s not going to die of cancer; I predict death by liver failure ten years from now when his half-decayed body is found, surrounded by empty whiskey bottles and old issues of Blue Boy, in a rooming house on the seedy side of Cairo, Illinois. Someone will wonder why the name found on the old expired drivers’ license stirred a memory, and then they’ll remember: “Hey, that’s Ted Rall, the guy who did all those cartoons that looked like they were drawn with boogers!” “What cartoons?” “Oh — never mind, they weren’t any good anyway.” Being forgotten — to some, it’s worse than any disease.
YOU DO NOT WISH CANCER UPON ANYONE FOR ANY REASON cries James Russell in a moment of high dudgeon.
We are certainly living in a post-Christian era, for under this reasoning, hell cannot possibly exist, for no amount of sin could ever justify everlasting torment. Better that people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin retire to the Cote D’Azur and die peacefully in their beds than anything happen to them that would disturb James’ tender susceptibilities. Under this new dispensation, severe punishment would be but a relic of our barbarous past. Whoopee!
I am clearly not able to make my point unambiguously. I don’t have a problem with the professor wishing Rall dead. Personally I don’t think the subject is of as much interest as the comments here indicate, after all, it’s simply making a snotrag famous.. I tried to expose the professors laziness by juxtaposing eloquence (the SMH bit) with a crude attempt to wish ill on someone hardly worth mentioning.
To professors credit (s)he has apologised and written more in his/her inimitable style;
the need is to find an appropriately gruesome substitute for the Big C, one that gives offence to none. It’s a chore because the world is a Gray’s Anatomy of pestilence and decay, and the mention of any promising candidate is bound to offend someone somewhere.
Eureka! What about the mysterious disease that carried off Herod the Great? Here’s how Flavius Josephus described the symptoms in The War of the Jews: Book 1:
that will ensure that I’ll continue to visit the billabong.
OOPS! Shouldn’t have put in a quote mentioning Jews. The whole comment box will now be filled with pro/anti semite arguements. Eh. Eh, neat way of ensuring my posts get lots of comments ay Ken ?
Hey Russell,
Where were you when Rall scoffed at Tillman’s death? Nowhere.
I’ve had relatives die from cancer and I don’t mind what the Prof said. Pull your fucking head in you stupid wanker.
Can we still wish the Pox upon our enemies? Nobody here will have had that or had family members who had it, I am sure. 8|
The vilest, most idiotic thing ever said in the blogosphere?
Given the amount of vileness and idiocy there is out there, that’s possibly a big statement, but I suspect you may agree when you read the statement reported here by Wayne Wood. (I will not link directly to the source)….
The vilest, most idiotic thing ever said in the blogosphere?
Given the amount of vileness and idiocy there is out there, that’s possibly a big statement, but I suspect you may agree when you read the statement reported here by Wayne Wood. (I will not link directly to the source)….