A Note From The Fish as an Unlikely Sympathy Candidate Desk

My mother feels sorry for fish. Carnivore though she is, she has a unique perspective on fish. The logic is simply that fish are the only animal mass harvested from their home for the sustenance of humans. The paddock is certainly home to it's sheep and cows, the sty to it's pigs, the coup to it's chickens. But in all of these cases the home is owned by the farmer and leased with the life of the tennant, for shitting and eating purposes. Though the ocean largely has no owners, nor are the fish there for the purpose of catching.

I will admit farm fishing and wild hunting exists, which would seem to undercut the argument.But as the demand for grain fed beef exists, so too does a demand exist for 'wild' fish, 'wild' could be readily exchanged for 'free' without too much consequence. And despite other protests of the fish and it's limited memory the point remains. Cows are bred to be steak and coats; pigs are three kinds of meat, sheep are lamb, jumpers and mutton. Logically fish shouldn't be any of these, they shouldn't have an automatic category for human enjoyment. Yet they do, fillets, sushi and canned.

I enjoy fish, as does my mother. I enjoy most kinds of meat I have sampled, so please don't take this as another plant-thumper carrying on about the virtues of all animals and how those who eat them are irrecoverable dead-shits. I am no militant, no radical. I understand humanity does things a certain way and for the most I enjoy the way it is done. Though there is some disparity with how animals are considered.

This, too, isn't intended to start any dialogue or argument or even so much as change a single persons mundane behavior. It is merely a thought, my mother had and I translated. It certainly hasn't changed the way I devestate marine life with my face hole. Perhaps it made me feel a little worse for it though.

My mother also feels bad for the caged bird.

“How'd you be? Having wings and not being able to fly?'

A Note From The Goodness In People Desk

In many ways the world today is a reiteration of those tentative decades from 1960 to 1990. Children and young people of that era had the cold war, ever threatening its heat, we have the age of terror. The age when people seem positively heinous, indiscriminate in their acts of power and brutality on both sides. This propagates and is amplified through the media and the tried and true campaign of fear is under way, to breed and build on itself, as is it's natural course.

But this post is not another piece to be added to the already overwhelming canon of literature of how they hate us and our freedom. Nor is it intended to add to the collection of 'media as a necessary evil' take down pieces. It is, quite simply, intended to contrast with those sentiments. It is a piece on the goodness in your fellow humans.

Last night directly in front of our place, a car hit a motorcycle knocking the un-helmeted passenger to the asphalt. It was a moment of sheer chaos. Immediately on emerging from the door I suspected, or feared, the man was dead. His leg was clearly broken, that much was certain. I told my brother to phone for an ambulance, but one was already phoned for. A woman (whom I later found out was a nurse, but I suspect not a very good one) audibly called for his removal from the road, which anyone who understands the spine will know is the worst thing you can do. He wasn't moved and slowly things became organised; an old man waved cars by as two or three people attended to him as people stopped to indulge the human compulsion toward catastrophe. Eventually paramedics arrived and I could hear the man scream. Periodically I looked on, partly to satisfy my own compulsion toward catastrophe, but also with the conscious objective of ensuring the man would walk again some day.

But the fact is this; between hearing the tyres squeal and emerging on the scene 20 seconds later, aid had arrived, an ambulance was on its way and traffic had been diverted. This is a supreme testament to the goodness of humans. Though it might be said that no-one would leave a man to die in the street, the urban mentality breeds a certain disregard for others.

Nevermind, there are less dramatic examples of this concept in practice. Earlier this year I fell down a flight of stairs. Not in any kind of significant way, just tripped on the first one and slid across the following seven. I was not much worse for the wear at the bottom, though certainly a little embarrassed. At the spot of my landing were three hands to help me to my feet and behind me a woman asking if I was OK. When it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to pass by with their headphones in, eyes on mobile screens, concerns a million miles away. Yet their hands reached out in a literal, and to me, profound sense.

It is becoming easier to discredit most of the people you run around with as shitty to the core. In the age of king-hits, terrorism and hacking a picture of human ugliness is painted. No-one is without shittiness, for all I know a hand reaching out to help me out of my fall might well have been that of a violent drunk or a terrorist sympathiser or a violating hacker, but those hands had a basic goodness. A care for their fellow human, that was devoid of outer perception. With the news the way it is, it is nice to see.

NP.

A Note From The Glory Glory to South Sydney Desk

Last week, for the first time in 43 years The South Sydney Rabbitohs made the Grand Final. That is to me, and many like me, roughly the equivalent to whatever the opposite of heartbreak is. Jubilation maybe, something so profound and meaningful in something so seemingly silly. But sport is that way, a logical fallacy, but to the fan; meaningful beyond belief. In the case of South Sydney that is all the more pronounced.

It is the old Freudian theory of symptom formation, specifically projection. Your club is you and you them, when they win you win. And be you a rabid sports fan, or a functioning member of society; everyone could use a win. A fleeting moment to say; we were the best, we achieved our goal, we reimbursed you for years of blind faith, we made it happen and, by proxy, so did you.

This is the stick falling after decades of ribs being jabbed and in that sense it is just as much a relief as a triumph. In my mind, and the minds of the Bunnies everywhere, this is something right; no matter what is wrong. No matter the horrors or hardships in our individual lives, this is a positive to all of us.

So the anxieties that bind to living, that make life supreme misery for most of those living it; can fade, even if for an eighty minute football match, while you draw focus and muster hope. Your team can provide that for you, the forest blatant for the trees.

We are a South Sydney family, on both sides. There are outliers as there always are, but for the most we abide by that strictest tradition of sports loyalty, the pass down. It is not a masculine exclusive tradition, but in our case we've a mother with not much care for the realm of competition and so we followed our father into Red and Green fandom and a love of the underdog.

For the last 43 years, the two have been one in the same and this year it has culminated in a real shot. I have been saying for the last four years that this one is 'ours' on the hope that it would be, this one is.

So this Sunday night I will tune in, in the heart of Aussie Rules dominated Melbourne, to watch the mighty Bunnies march on to Glory once again and will raise a well deserved toast to the team so many have written off, but so many more have poured unwavering faith in.

Glory Glory to South Sydney.

NP.