[Another favourite press release of mine, but I'm fucked if I know the date or which album this accompanied.]
"... I, a prisoner chained, scarcely freely draw
The air imprisoned also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught."
Milton, Samson Agonistes
My name is Rod - R. O. D.; Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrhhhhhhhh OOOOOOOhhhhhhhh Dddddddeeeeeeeee - and for that, people make fun of me. Rod. Big stiff Rod. Big stiff poker Rod, Abdul the Tent Builder in your pyjamas on a cold morning, bigger than the Rod Patrick White would've woken up with if he'd slept with Rock Hudson.
Rod.
My full name is Rodney Bradley Darren Wayne Brown. I have three brothers: Bradley Rodney Darren Wayne Brown; Darren Rodney Bradley Wayne Brown; and Wayne Rodney Bradley Darren Brown. My parents didn't go for names like all the kids in private schools, with all your Cordelias and Regans and Gonerills and Earls of Kent and Gloucester and York and all that crap, and you've got to put on a tuxedo to go to school in. But of all my brothers, I got the worst name, because it's Rod Brown, which often is "Brown; Rod", which means my mates make poofta jokes about me. My sister's name is Kirsty.
Kirsty Rodney Bradley Darren Wayne Brown.
My parents were great, they were always there for us. Well, my Dad was always there for us until he went to live in Wangarratta with another woman; and then Barry, Mum's next husband, was always there for us 'till he left with Mum's sister Aunty Janice; and then Bob was always there for us, but he left not long after Barry decided he wasn't always there for us; and then Dad was always there for us again for a little while, until he found out Barry had always been there for us, so he left, and after that a few different guys have always been there for us, but not enough for me to mention in detail.
Having so many people there for you is good, because at school you could fuck around as much as you liked, then when you got sent to the co-ordinator you told him how many people have been there for you, and look a bit sad, and the co-ordinator would always ask you if you wanted to talk about it, and let you off. But the bad thing is that I know that it was all bullshit: everyone I fucking met at school had had more fathers and mothers than hot dinners, and some of them were arseholes like me that fucked around the whole time, and some of them were Eugenes who got A's for everything, but didn't have a life. So that means that the plain and glaring fact that my family is absolutely fucked wasn't the reason why I'm an arsehole - I just am. But the bad thing is that I also know that all those kids who were brains at school and didn't have a life actually did have a life - a fucking life that's better than my fucking life, anyway; and that me and my mates are selfish pig ignorant turds that just put shit on anyone who shows any sense of dedication or intelligence or broad mindedness or compassion; and it was the very fact that we were such complete arseholes that convinced the co-ordinator that our fucked families were to blame, not us. This meant we could keep being complete arseholes. A not-complete arsehole from a fucked family would've got all sorts of shit from the co-ordinator if they did what we did , because they weren't complete arseholes. So you had to be a complete arsehole not to be a complete arsehole at my school. But the bad thing is that I know that the co-ordinator didn't even really think that stuff about being sympathetic and understanding. The co-ordinator really thought, "This kid is a complete arsehole. But I can't say that, because the whole gig nowadays is to let complete arseholes from fucked families go to counselling and be allowed to work through their feelings and all that; so that's how I'll act - but it won't stop me thinking that basically Rod Brown is a complete arsehole." But the bad thing is that I'll be fucked that when I was 14 the government wouldn't let me get into "R" movies. They made it compulsory to go to school, but.
This may come as a surprise, but my mates don't understand the past imperfect tense. When they want to talk about, say, the time they sat in a bar and had a beer, they'll say this: "I've gone and sat at the bar, and the barman's come up to me and he's gone and said, `What'll it be?', and I've gone, I've gone, I've gone and said, `A pot of light for the woman, and a pot of heavy for meself.'" One day I'm gonna go to them, "NO, fuckwit. You could do the following:
Past tense: I sat at the bar ... Past imperfect: I was sitting at the bar ... Past perfect: I have sat at the bar ... Pluperfect: I had sat at the bar ...
but your choice of the word "gone" as a modal auxiliary to influence the tense of your verb [i.e. to sit] is an indication that you're a born fuckstick." But I haven't gone and done it yet.
Now I want to tell you about Mr. Bean, and how I think he shows why Karl Marx and a lot of other social theorists are wrong.
The thing about Mr. Bean is that he is so self-satisfied by what he achieves, even when he knows the rest of the world around him thinks it's pathetic. So if Mr. Bean is sitting eating lunch in a park, and he makes a cup of tea with the water out of the hot water bottle he keeps in his jacket, he thinks he is really clever, although he can see that the straight businessman sitting next to him finds it disgusting. In fact, Mr. Bean is arrogantly dismissive of the man in the business suit; like as not, he's liable to think that the straight man is jealous of his idea, rather than disgusted by it. Mr. Bean will never change being Mr. Bean, because he doesn't know what we all know - that he is a total turd. No one is forcing Mr. Bean to be Mr. Bean: he chooses it, and proudly. I think me and my mates and all of the lower middle class are Mr. Bean. Man, why the fuck do we live in shit holes like we do, and dress like deadshits like we do, and go for girls like we do? No one is forcing us to, man: if you gave me and the boys free choice of all the places to live and people to marry and jobs to do; if, by some magical hand the wand of social class was waved again, and I was me as I am now, but free to be anyone anywhere - fuck me if I wouldn't choose my life all over again. I mean, I'd say, "Yeah, let's have a great new big Commodore and live in Toorak and have holidays in Hawaii", but I'd still be a complete deadshit, just a complete deadshit in different places. I'd still marry a stiff homely type, and I'd still think the same as I do about all the social and political and artistic issues of the day - that is, I couldn't give a shit about them. You give a yob turd money, and all he is is a yob turd with money. Look at Alan Bond. Why the fuck don't we give a fuck in school, and complete some ratshit crappy TAFE course and become butchers and sign writers and boat salesmen? Because we are all Mr. Bean. We don't know there's another way of living; and when we sense it, we think it's bullshit; and when we meet anyone not living like we do, we think they're turds. We are not the oppressed; jesus, give us art or literature or science or anything that shows that humans aren't just beasts of prey red in tooth and claw, and we'll like as not take it out the back of the pub for a bit of biff and bash and meet you later in the spinal ward and we'll have a drink together through a straw. We don't want to change - and so fuck all you social theorists who analyse the myth of the egalitarian society: who the fuck cares about social equality anyway? What that means to you is that I'll read your deadshit books and sit around in coffee shops with a copy of The Weekend Australian and patronise my friends and have a name like Oswald or Oscar or Oberon or something: that's your image of the perfect egalitarian dream world: where everyone is a fucking wanker, not just the rich people. Jesus fuck me. Why isn't anyone fighting for my version of the perfectly egalitarian social system: where everyone hates everything different in an equal and undiscriminating manner? So that means that the first person that says something cultured, we reach for their lungs. So too with all this new homeboy deadshit stuff. It doesn't only have to be the person that says "Goodness, wasn't the performance of Prokofiev's Symphonie Classique last Tuesday magnificent?" who gets the total suitcase beaten out of them; it's also the turd who walks into the bar and says "Totally bo - dacious, dude. Game on! Good call! Wicked threads, Rod. Awesome." He gets equally and impartially taken out the back and knuckled so hard and so often that even Tiger's got to stop laughing and stare in shaken awe at the quivering mass of bloodied misshapen flesh that is slumped grotesquely on the wall of the drive-in bottle shop entrance ramp. That's what the Australian Dream's all about. That's why I'll always agree with Peter Allen, and still call Australia homo.
I met Ron Hitler-Barassi from TISM once. It was before a gig at the Prince. A mate of mine who knows the brother of one of the guys in the band pointed him out.
"Go sick Ron," I've gone and said to him. "Go sick."
He sort of gave this piss weak nervous smile.
"You're a legend," I said. "You're an absolute legend mate."
"G'day. I'm Nathan. You must know someone." I could tell that he was trying to be nice and normal and all.
"My mate works with Justin Byrant," I've said.
"Gavin's brother. Right. D'ya get in on the door?"
"Nah. Justin reckons that it's always full. Are you gonna go sick tonight? You gonna go in? Mate, that's full on when you go in."
He was trying to be so nice and normal and everything, but fuck him - that's what I wanted him to be. Here the big streak of batshit was, making such a point of not being a rock star, asking me about my ratshit job and what school I went to and everything, thinking I'd be disappointed that he wasn't the Wild Man of Rock: but fuck you, Ron, it's better that you're a normal cowardly frightened pile of horseshit like the rest of us. You think that you're a legend because you're exceptional? Fuck no. You're a legend because your bullshit sheila's body and your un-co faggot dancing and your shouted fucked up lyrics all say, "Here I am, a complete loser arsehole like the rest of you." So fuck trying to disappoint me by being normal and boring, Ron, you dildo: the more disappointing you are with your mask off, the more I like it.
"So what are you on man?" I've gone and asked him. "You must be on something. You do speed? You get pissed? You can't be straight. What do you do? What are you into?"
And the fag said to me: "I'm into first person narration."
And he thought that was so fucking good, 'cos I'd want him to be spaced out and pissed and shit, and I'd be confused and disappointed by the reply, but fuck your pointy arse Ron: it was the best answer you could've given. Go sick, mate.
And last of all I want to talk about the Anzacs. The Anzacs are one of the marginalised social groups in our supposedly multicultural society. They have customs strange to the modern Australian's sensibilities, and they are being forced to change, both through the weight of social disapproval and because they are gradually, inevitably dieing out. They are the fat stupid blokes who sit in the front bar of pubs on a Saturday night, drinking pots and half looking at the trots on the T.V. Some of them might have fought in a war, but it's hard to tell. They've gone from V.C. to V.D. They've got red faces and they're a hopeless, stupid, conservative, reactionary bunch of lonely unhappy arseholes who deserve the pathetic unfulfilled lives they are so squalidly bringing to a close.
And I'll be there, boys. I'll be there with you as the last of the great tradition of Australian arseholes goes over the top and runs at the Johnny Turks. But they're not the Johnny Turks anymore. They're the Callums and the Sedgewicks and the Brunos and the Art Directors and the Hommies and the Eugenes and the Fags and the New Agers and the Rationalists and the fucking Social Demographers. I'll be there as we take one look up that murderous slope of earth in a country we don't belong in (our country once, pal), fighting under people who don't care for us, for a cause we don't understand; and I'll leap out for a few yards of earth before I'm shot down with the rest of you. There's a few of us left, you know, screaming "Yibbida Yibbida" and mock-bowing to fast bowlers at the one day cricket and wearing TISM T-shirts to the gigs, and we'll make a fucking noise at least before they throw us in a pit and piss on our corpses.
Put "Rod" on my gravestone, mate. Rod.
R. O. D.
And fuck you.
