My Writing and Art lives here….
This has been updated & expanded from the version published yesterday! 800 words were added.
I do not usually post essays on this site (I post them on the essay site martinantonsmith.wordpress.com) – but I thought this time I would make a special edition post on the arts sight.
So this is the first final draft version & will contain all the main ideas.
By Martin Anton Smith
Forgive me for starting this essay so negatively – but trust me the sunshine hiding from behind the storm clouds is coming soon.
So many on the streets of life doesn’t see the connective tissue between their disapproval of success in others & his own inability to succeed. It is a garden variety type of soulless-ness. And the ‘success’ he sees might not be money, it might simply just be a ‘sense of contentment’ he feels emanating from that ‘poor’ someone in his cross-hairs. His ardent banality has so completely enveloped him, that he even envies those who are not actively as miserable as himself.
I could be accused of ‘projecting’ here – but don’t we all know petty jealousy is – we’ve all seen how easily it seems to blooms as do weeds in the height of summer.
[Of course, to rebutt myself I must say “Martin come on now, you fool! What you are talking about is the famed & cliched ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – this is a bad affliction in the antipodes, where you live – but don’t say that this happens everywhere! What about the USA? Don’t they admire success? What about that Texan saying “If you’re going to fail – fail big”. Yes I must agree – I am being a little harsh writing off most of the world carte blanch. Please remember this edit & use it as an asterisk for the remainder M.S Edited on Oct 2024]
This aforementioned reality – which I don’t really want to call ‘the tall poppy syndrome’ becasue I think it runs deeper than that – & is perhaps a decline that has been happening for an least 150 years in the West. However this drift downwards in our general behaviour & mood against genuine success. Note I put the term ‘genuine success’ in italics so as the reader knows I am talking of true success & not some typical 21st Century rampant speculator or online seminar scammer – I’m talking of those whose works clearly build up society to be better.
The hatred of those who have ‘genuine success’ or symbolise it via their some-kind-of, for lack of a better term – ‘leadership persona’. It equates to a ‘pandemic of the spirit’ & sadly it is not a rare thing at all – in fact it is the norm outside those oasis areas such as Texas & the parts of USA that aren’t heavily politically left leaning.
Why write about this? Is it depressing? – yes. Does it make for good philosophy? – Yes!. Is it a problem we need to solve? – Yes! And so now that I am sure I am holding the license of the ‘interesting philosophical topic’- let me delve further. Also I want to underline the ultimate aim is to shine a light on the phenomenon, so that we might be able to help ourselves embrace others who are genuine builders of a better situation here on Earth, so life isn’t so materially & psychologically hard on us all.
Quantitatively speaking, my rough guess is there has to be at least Six Billion people that have this acute pathological ailment where they bash the builders. This out of the Eight Billion in the world today. I assume the 75: 25 ratio has on the whole always been this way, at least on planet Earth (more on that later). Perhaps I am wrong on the ratio, but surely I am in the ballpark, plus or minus a handful of percentage points.
It’s worth noting here, that big technological progress has not made Earth’s population less difficult to deal with on a personal level – if anything it fuels discontent – especially when a jaguar late model passes someone driving a old bomb, which fights to stay on the roads legally & which the owner can barely afford to run. The rise of technology namely computers, has at best been a double sided sword. The most obvious case is the smartphone zombification, which has essentially bred apparently healthy people to become essentially autistic & unable to function socially & in line with the needs of the workplace.
So just to make sure we are oriented properly on what I’m talking about here let me again interject myself. The two main questions about why Human life here on Earth doesn’t really work very well, despite so many generations trying are: firstly how come it got like this?; Secondly, how do we fix it?
Usually, it’s the creatives out there that stumble on the questions and answers before the scientists ever do. This is why the liberal arts are useful to us. This is why they say science fiction becomes science fact. But it doesn’t have to be about science per se, many of the very good non-science fiction novels, & indeed storys in general, end up ringing true. The most persuasive of these storys become myths & legends. Of course this is the domain of the anthropologist examining human cultures from pre-antiquity to today.
Of course myths & legends are intertwined with prophesy – to attempt to see how the future plays out. Writing of ‘Prophesy’ is a risky thing for the serious writer simply because it’s the loaded term ‘Prophesy’, which carries flakey Nostradamus-like connotations as well as a ‘religious zealot’ connotation.
But there’s nothing wrong with ‘Prophesy’ if it was thought up with good philosophical & rational foundations – in fact it is called ‘forecasting’ in the often dry quantitative fields of economics, accounting & statistics. Much of the great fiction, namely but not exclusively the sci-fi genre, has ‘good prophesy’ as the reason in resonates with it’s consumers. Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ with the Machiavellian Hal is an example of this regarding early fears of artificial intelligence gone wrong.
Another film related example, is when Writer-Director George A. Romero got things pretty much correct when he wrote & directed ‘The Dawn of the Dead’ – but as is standard in those movies, unlike real life, he had to make the walking dead more visually obvious. Contrastingly & frustratingly in real life you never can be quite sure if someone’s an, shall we say, an ‘ first class officer of the undead zombie battalian – until you’ve mistakenly befriended them a day, a week, a month ago. Or, you might just have the next cubicle to them in your office. That, I think you’ll agree is un-mistakenly just how this kind of phenomena works itself out – sometimes the person you thought was nice turned out to want walk around the city at midnight murdering people & eating their brains.
One things certain here: You can’t avoid the real-life demons of this world all your life, even if you cloister yourself with aplomb. I have noticed that the upper middle classes & newly monied types are great at trying to avoid & deny & escape the bad things in this world – even to the point of even lobbying Governments to criminalise real reports from the real world. Until these types slap an AI to Govt mainframe interface on every baby’s eyes at the instance of birth – which they will surely try to do – this is a exercise in futility.
Regarding ‘how to deal with Zombies once they out themselves’ – from that point you only have three choices: Lance the boil quickly; Become a prisoner of your own life; Or pigheadedly pretend your new walking undead friend is actually ‘perfectly ok’ or a ‘rough diamond’. I’m guessing those that walk with an air of contentment about them are also the ones that somehow knew all these things intuitively or via what the long-term wealthy call ‘good breeding’. Unlike the perhaps Six Billion that are the ‘walking dead’, they actually know the game they’re playing. In short, they’re using a good anti-zombie repellant. They’re using a good Zombie deamplifier.
But the rephrased version of the first over-arching question of “how did people become so Zombified?” is ‘how did he light became so mixed in with the darkness in the first place’?
In theory it should be ‘awesome’ living here on Earth as a human. We are atop of the food chain & can now easily sculp our environments with massive powerful diggers, lasers, engines & mainframes. Why would such a potential feast be sullied by always serving it on such a dirty plate? If you figure it out conclusively, please let me know. In fact, I’ll even settle for haphazard conjecture or two on the matter.
Conjecture: One thing’s for sure: whatever got us to that starting point of general zombie-ism was surely punishment for something else that happened, of which we have no memory remaining. Our sister planet of Mars is involved
This is the part of the essay where I become more conjectorial. Let’s talk not only of Zombies, but lets now talk of Mars. Mars of course since the robotic landers & Elon Musk is becoming more of a conservative real-world topic, vs say the 1950s comic books or even Jack Nicholson’s “Mars Attacks!” from 1996.
I mean Occams Razor suggests such the long standing punishment here on Earth is a system, not at all just a random bit of bad luck. I’ll have a crack at an answer, you might of heard similar here & there as it’s been said before – I think it has some merit. It involves Mars.
Perhaps originally we came from Mars first, not Earth. Perhaps a highly technologically accomplished generation of ours destroyed our original home planet of Mars in a nuclear war. Then a tiny remnant of that Martian population escaped via a spaceship to the other habitable planet: Earth. We escaped to that was one step closer to the sun – that we could also survive on, perhaps with some simple genetic manipulation by hybridisation with Earth’s pre-existing apes.
This brings me to conjecture two.
Conjecture two: Perhaps that remnant Martian population, now on Earth as ‘Humans’ for perhaps at least half a million years, has never been able to shake off the PTSD of the whole matter running through its veins. The sudden Mars escape has fueled a multi-generational PTSD curse that we can’t shake no matter what we do. This is why Human’s are so unsettled: As original Martians – we are not properly configured for Earth & never can be.
Perhaps this ‘Mars Escape thesis’ is actually just what the ancient religious scholars have refered to the many legends told surrounding ‘a great flood’ that so many of the worlds religeons mention in their texts. (To consume some of these ideas easily online, Paul Wallis has showcased his & his guests various ideas around this talked of this his Youtube channel ‘The 5th kind’. But naturally, be sure take at the least few very large grains of salt with you when watching such popular content)
This ‘We Escaped Mars Thesis’ is just one conjecture & of course there are so many others good or at least entertaining conjectures. All this is great fun to discuss, but lets be honest – it’s the not knowing that in the end really gets to you as a thinker. Well, it gets to me anyway – and when I look at all the works of the liberal arts, I’m sure I am not alone.
It’s also worth mentioning in passing that those who are firmly religious, might take the ‘we came from Mars first’ as an affront. But it all depends on how you view sacred texts – for if you believe the religious sacred texts used fictionalised stories & parables to represent the truth to it’s followers rather than the less palatable & understandable actual truth – then there would be no need to be ‘religiously upset’ so to speak.
And what about the pragmatic big question of ‘how do we fix ourselves from our generalised Zombie-dom’? Well as a postscript I’d say this: If indeed it all started with Mars – perhaps this will also be how it all ends, or at the very least, transmogrifies. It’s a very simple idea – the long sought out solution of an intractable problem will lie close to the genesis of the problem.
An analogy of this would be the engine of a popular model of car has had a problem for many years – let’s say it misfires erratically. Lets say the ‘boffins’ decided it best to look at every part in isolation to see what the problem is. They do this & can’t find the problem. Then a someone suggests to go back to the particular original engineering shed where the first prototype was made – they go back & open an old drawer. They find that one on the men when designing the core engine fixings had accidentilly used an imperial measurement by mistake, & the erratic misfiring was simply that unwittingly the car was an attempt to marry two incompatible systems together.
The point is that the ‘misfiring car’ problem was only solved when one bright spark considered it worthwhile to go back to the start to look at the creation of the car, rather than at the immediate production line machines, as all the other problem solvers had, & failed to find the answer.
So similar to the car analogy, Humans going back to Mars could be the answer to our intractable unsettledness, in the same way as my car analogy. When we go back maybe we’ll see we too had been trying to marry two intractable systems together. The mist from our eyes may suddenly evaporate – perhaps along with our eon’s long PTSD.
In going back to Mars I am talking of a concept called transmogrification. And let me pause as It’s worth explicitly posting the dictionary definition of the word – here I have used the online merriam-webster dictionary. Transmogrification is the noun version of the root verb word Transmogrify
Transmogrify: to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque, bizzare or humorous effect
Yes going back to Mars certainly will be a transmogrification, and perhaps a more positive version from the dictionary definition. Perhaps it will be bizzarre, grotesque & humourous at first, but then settle into a a spiritual rebirth.
Of course I fear the propaganda world could ruin all this. Going back to Mars, our potential original home will not not a transition as the future marketers will probably paint it as. After obfuscatingly calling it it a transition, then they’ll call it a ‘holiday’. then they want to use it as Australia was for England not that long ago: a penal colony.
And you know as well as me that the travel agents of the future selling ‘affordable holidays to Mars won’t have our best interests at heart. In looking for our salvation in re-colonising Mars, we also need to guard against the corporate penal colony enslavers, looking to derail the quest & create another Van Dieman’s Land. This is somewhat analogous to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film ‘Total Recall’ where a Dictator rules Mars over an enslaved extractive mining based population. This fact is all covered up by the authorities via the front of ‘implanting holidays direct into the memory’.
I will leave you with this thought about what happens next once we can & indeed do go back to Mars, & allow the reader to think about it themselves. After all, a conjectorial, philosophy based essay like this shouldn’t drag on too much – it should be reasonable diggestable, if not fun.
If my ‘Lets go back to Mars on a mental & spiritual quest’ is indeed the right adventure & conjecture to get Humanity on the right track to solve our seemingly intractable problem of Human unsettledness, or Mars to Earth PTSD, then sure as Neil Finn of Crowded House once sung in his elegy infused song “Hole In The River”….there is no return.
In short in will indeed Transmogrify it ways we cannot predict…but perchance, just perchance – it will also cure our culture-wide PTSD.
The End
(This essay is subject to copywrite cannot be reproduced commercially without permission of the writer & Martin Smith Creations ltd (NZ). Educational & Non commercial reading is allowed freely. Please contact me the writer at martinantonsmith@gmail.com)
By Martin Anton Smith
And so on this wintery day in late September in New Zealand, I think of the artistic mind & it’s tempestuos temperaments. . .will this be the forever homeostasis? Or are the winds of change being encoded into our futures as we speak?
An artistic mind can never win in a conservative town, suburb or country. No matter how much they say “we promote the arts here” …. they’ll always look at the artistic temperament through squinted eyes.
Luckily the Art itself @ the artistic process won’t ever actively reject the artist. Of course, this doesn’t mean most art, be it painting or poetry isn’t bad to ordinary.
The main point is twofold: firstly, every bird wants to sing & on a personal level that’s a harmony. Secondly it has wider importance. Artistic temperament & its unfolding works is the thing that can question society in real time @ in a meaningful way. The “hold a mirror” cliche is terrible, but at least twice true.
And as History plays itself out & the fascists of the particular time in question don’t totally succeed in ‘burning all the books’ – at least a few people the future will truly appreciate its maker and its mark left in future-time.
I’d like to think that sometimes when I concentrate enough on the past artworks & what they say – I too am one of those people from the past’s future, who now understands it a little better…or hell! even gets the chance to know that those things were going on at all back then.
And one related thought is this: when a true thinker ages. & finally, wisens up, they realise that it’s art, fiction & imagination that holds the best truth on offer. Yes Sir @ Madam the “non-fiction reference books” tend soon show themselves up as dry propaganda. At the risk of sounding glib, I think It fair to say that ‘Good art really is like a fine wine for the mind’ – if in time you can find a bottle in some forgotten nook or cranny that is. If you do, @ you pop the cork & take a sip? Simply sublime.
P.s. One of these days I am sure all the unknown future readers of the world will finally unite, if only just for one day. For then perhaps the struggling artist who swims in a seemingly forever-ly conservative soupish milieu might just grab an infinitesimally small slice of warm-feel-goodian pleasure out of those modern day mainframe smokestacks that fill our skies. But if that happens the art would suffer for it and ipso facto so would the truth. Thus we must always be persecuted in order to be effective. So Marcus Aurelious & the stoics were probably correct – those crooked smiles on weathered faces are a real currency during monsoon seasons of (artistic) life.
P.P.S Some’s truth’s surely will never evaporate: Even if a very rich bloke or bloke-ess & their mates deem it false. Despite the chastisements we’re for the independent thinkers, perhaps not even born yet.
by Martin Anton Smith
For some people Life is like a *chisel*, they slice through life easily;
A large minority of others are like a *hammer* – they nail people down without a care;
Most Others are the *nail* – forever being hammered no matter what;
A mighty few are like the *level* – they know how to orient themselves perfectly at all times;
Some curmudgeonly types are like sandpaper – their personalities have become rather abrasive.
Even fewer wags are like the *pencil* 
, for they write about various *tools* in the world.
And in summary, I’d say it’s fair to say this:
The best engage in Carpentry – they are the builders, & the rest?
They do the reverse.
And please forgive me if I furtively suggest that we coin these people simply as…
“The Crapenters”.
A conversation between two friends might go like this.
“Hi Bob, I’m thinking of lending our mate Steve a Grand – is that wise?”
“Gidday Simon, no I wouldn’t do that – Steve’s a *Crapenter*.”
“Oh thankyou Bob!, say no more!”.
Of course, it will be only the grains of the hourglass will tell us all,
If this *Crapenters* idea gains a foothold in the general lexicon.
Call me a Woodrow Wilson-esque dreamy cloud-headed idealist,
But I reckon it’ll eventually catch on.
But not untill the year 2055.
For by then surely the AI-General-Intelligence-Robots will be a laugh-a-minute,
Much to the chagrin, of their pinkish & hairy subordinates wearing loincloth.
By Martin Anton Smith
They had gone to a lot of trouble.
They’d found the essence of their thoughts.
The essence was roughly an even split,
Between frontal lobe firings,
And the stuff that conjures up onto the page from seemingly nowhere.
Yes, this ‘conjuring up’ is an artistic cliche, but it’s still a true phenomenon.
So, they captured their truth – they wrote it down, whittled it some more or some less.
They read it out loud, their works showed that they had succeeded.
In knowing who they are,
& courageously showing you their fine wares.
How do you know this?
There’s a certain energy that pervades to the reading & artistic words.
It is a signature if you will.
You hear & feel the signature, & there is no question –
The artist made something from nothing –
It is an alchemy of warmth rooted in a private truth.
It’s a pity the un-listeners missed it all.
But I shouldn’t complain – this is the nature of the ‘audience’.
Some are there to learn from ye, some are there to burn-ye,
Some are there to dig-ye, some are there to shout at ye.
It is indeed a ‘two sides of the same coin’ apparition.
Alas alas & yes it be,
At an the open mic poetry night,
You cannot pick your audience,
And they cannot pick thee.
So the dissapointment is democritised.
It’s designed to be a masochist’s wet dream.
When something bad happens everyone loves it –
When something good happens – everyone hates it –
& on balance, everyone leaves satisfied.
by Martin Anton Smith
It had been a hard year for me & the other Hospo P.O.W’s. – just like all of us everywhere, and throughout time who know our gladiator’s game.
It was now almost all over, bar the work-day today, & then our staff party would go down. The coffees that day had flown out the door – some literally as was this particular cafe-restaurant’s tradition on its last day of the year.
And as always – what an uneventfully eventful year it had been. The wine glasses had been polished & repolished a million times. Sixty-five million crumbs had fallen off our seventeen swanky restaurant & thirty-one cafe dining tables. One thousand & fifteen raised voices had broken out. One hundred & eighty-five ‘Customer to Staff Chastisations’ or as the boss called them ‘CSC’s’ had appeared – this was when bad tempered customers went off at us verbally. That said, that was a relatively low number & due to our professionalism, only in 3 instances had things gone in the other direction – a staff verbally berating a customer. We low paid customer service oiks had on the whole expert emotional control.
Now let me continue with numbers. Ninety-three plates & two-hundred & three glasses had been destroyed. Nine-thousand mains had been served; sixteen-thousand snacks menu items & one-hundred & fifty-one-thousand alcoholic vessels served. The head chef Nicole had only ‘beaten up’ the sous chef Tim just once this year – though like all Chefs the bark was always worse than the bite, which she actually did once – at least so the legend went. There were two hundred & forty five hours of overtime issued.
Unofficially It was rumoured there were three instances of inter-staff bathroom coitus events. And for all the numbers, only two staffers had quit. Yes, there had been the usual staff competitiveness, but no more than you’re usual ‘hospo’ joint. In short, banter was good, banter was had, banter was enjoyed.
In the pressure cooker world of hospo, you had to be able to give shit, receive it & then throw it back out the window. We were all good at that. We had to be. The wages had of course been shit, but we modern day downtrodden P.O.W slash serfs can’t ask for more – after all – why would we waste our time? This kind of profession allows for only a meagre existence, & pay rises are as rare as hens teeth with an extra row of mini hen’s teeth sprouting on them.
These are the brute facts of our battle conditions. No – we don’t want sympathy, but we want people to know our plight. As they say – a little knowledge gos a long way.
Our serf’s profit comes not from cash but from experiences – from our exuberant social lives – & it’s been this way for millennia. Yes, sometimes it’s all too wild, namely the late nights, the substances & the hangovers – but we’ll all stop when we’re all thirty five & retired from the frontline battlegrounds anyway.
And so back to the story – the after party for us was set be as they say ‘a real cracker’.
We didn’t have much to look forward to in general, but we always looked forward to this kind of thing – our premier staff party night. We would use it to blow out the demons of the last year, & welcome the new ones coming, & usually these things became unofficial farewells too, given the nature of turnover in the industry. It was the same at every year end staff party everywhere in every cafe pub restarant or club in the world.
Our Owner-Manager boss Gavin allowed us limitless free alcohol & a day off the next day – I mean what could go wrong with that scenario? Our wealthy sometimes-a-gentleman owner at the very least made sure he treated us well on this day, once a year.
Yes, it was to be our day in the sun & no one had yet taken it away from us – if they did it would be true sacrilidge, & that’s no exaggeration.
The longest shift of the year was always the last shift, before the party. The anticipation of it was laced in the air as we plied our trade washing dishes, serving vacant looking over-tired customers, frothing cofees, flipping steaks and setting tables.
The clock finally struck ten pm, & we all finally finished for the day, having kicked the last of the dangling hanger on big drinker customers out. Yes siree! It was Party time for us serfs & P.O.W’s! We the modern downtrodden could rise up for a few glorious hours of merriment!
We filed in to the main restaurant tables filled with overflowing booze @ snacks. We chatted snacked & talked of the year & how fast it had evaporated before our eyes. The great thing about War and or crap jobs like ours – for aren’t they versions of each other? – is always the camaraderie. Every slogger or digger knows, you can’t get the same camaraderie outside shit jobs or War itself.
After only a couple of drinks each, Gavin soon piped up with his ‘yearly owner-manager speech’.
Gavin was about sixty, businessmen plump, bald with pug-like features, always immaculately dressed. As always, he coughed a few times to clear his throat. This made him seem like an old English lord so we called him Lord Gavin, behind his back of course. And so the Lord himself began began his words.
“Well staff, I’d like to thank you all for a great great, record breaking year –
I won’t tell you what our sales were –
For then you’d surely ask for a pay rise”
We all half laughed, but we were sighing on the inside – being low on the social totem pole, we all had very fraught financial lives. We were definitely what you might call hand to mouthers.
But we were all young, so our delusions of the future kept our minds afloat. Some of of still believed they’d get rich one day.
Gavin continued on, his chrome dome was as usual glistening with minor nerve sweat.
“We’ve had three new employees this year & oh how a delight they’re all been….
We’ve managed a small renovation in the Restaurant….
Yes, it looks great & thanks to tilly for mounting that beautiful ornamental lampshade….”
Tilly blushed a scarlet color, not that you’d know with the lighting so low.
Gavin continued, taking a hanky out to wipe his forehead.
“We sold ten percent more wine this year….
That was thanks to Greg our micro brewer, & his tasty new brew…
Ah Greg a great Ale – but why, I wonder did you called it Sucker Time Ale?…
Still – they buy it at fifteen ninety a Pint don’t they?!”
Greg one of the older ones at thirty seven, doubled over himself slapping his legs.
Greg our 5-foot, 55 kg micro brewer then piped up confidently:
“Well, I wanted a play on words of that favourite saying –
‘there’s a sucker born every minute’ so Sucker Time Ale seemed a great name”
All us workers laughed roaringly – because we knew how our alcohol prices were & partly because we knew we were suckers too.
Gavin kept it short & said his last words of the opening act.
“And so to all staff, I’d love to thank you – we couldn’t be here without you –
Beers don’t pour themselves…
Steaks don’t cook themselves…
Plates don’t wash themselves…
Tables don’t clean themselves…
Customers don’t serve themselves…
& until the Muskobite AI Hospo Robot 1000 that I pre-ordered arrives in 2032 – all that won’t change at all!”
Gavin said the last line quite theatrically but his timing was a little laboured, & his voice squeaked a little at the end. But all in all it wasn’t bad. We still all laughed heartilly – mostly at him, but partly with him. Despite his flaws, Lord Gavin could be funny at times. I’ll give him that.
The next five hours was a blur of alcohol & ratcheting upwards, drunken raucius conversations & frivolity. It was all pretty stock standard stuff:
At some point people started dancing on tables. At some point a female started crying over a relationship matter. Someone broke a tray of steamed glasses. There were a few pashings & gropes. . .& why not? After all, Pashing & Gropes make the best Gin & tonic – do they not?
Then midnight arrived with the swiftness of a hungry cheetah. Now would come the wild fun of our traditional years end party game – all the staff excluding top level managers played “Musical Chairs”. They those hoity toity’s, though they were few & far between would always stand by the walls staring at us like vampires. This year the only one other than Gavin was Leonard – Gavin’s long term, loyal, & very praying-mantis-looking blond youngish middle-aged accountant.
Gavin was about to push play on the music for musical chairs when he was interrupted. Leonard with giant loping strides had wandered over, out from his vampiric wallflower spot. Yes, he was looking grim – but then again, he always looked grim, so I & the others weren’t yet worried. We should have been.
Leonard, crane-like leaned over & whispered in Gavins Ear. This was when we all started to worry & mutter to each other that something was probably up. It now had that air to it. We didn’t know it, but Leonard & Gavin’s conversation had gone down like this, all done with mostly inaudible whispers:
“Sorry Gavin, I was to tell you this earlier – sorry but I got held up with the exact figures”.
“Figures Lenny, what figures – I thought we’d sorted the figures & all was great?”
“Well, Gavin I made an error – I forgot about an important expense – that bloody fancy lampshade”.
“What? The $1000 dollar lampshade – that imported thing – what about it?”
“Well, I accidentally bought the diamond lampshade instead of the faux diamond one – it’s worth $30,000 & that’s what was deducted from our account”.
Gavin’s face went from alcoholic red to pale that of a typical grey alien.
“So Leonard what the fuck exactly, are you telling me?”
“Well, we can’t get a refund as the Italian company’s gone under & we can’t resell that lampshade easily – but I’ve got a quick nasty solution…”
“Damn you Leonard…what is it then..come on, tell me!!”
“So…if we fire one staff member for a year, we’ll all be square”.
“But Leonard you moron – who will do the fired one’s work?”
“Easy just get the remaining ones to all work seven percent harder – y’know – ‘spread the load’ “.
Gavin’s mind ticked over. The pools of sweat continued to drip & hit the growing sweat puddle on the floor between his fancy shoes. He couldn’t fire Leonard – that would cost him ten times as much. Knowing that, he made a quick exec decision. He thanked Leonard shooed him away with his hand. He now stood bolt upright & addressed us now nervously waiting ashen faced plebs. Our drunkenness & smiles had worn off entirely. Despite his now military posture, he spoke gingerly. Sweat still pouring off his dome but now going down his chin to be absorbed by his crisp white shirt.
“Er…ahh..ok…sorry about that staff – nothing’s the matter really other that one small thing. We have an error in our sales bookkeeping from the last financial year….look I won’t bore you with details….and I hate to tell you this under these circumstances…but the long & short of it is one of you have to go”.
There were gasps all around, murmurs & a few cries. We couldn’t believe it. Even though we were all still all young to youngish, we were all well too life wounded already to fight against it. Also we all knew each of us had a less than 10% chance of being the unlucky one.
Gavin then cheerily said something even we young old timers were surprised at.
“Now let’s get back to our Musical chairs – only this time instead it has real stakes…the first one to not get a chair will lose their job immediately, and then get $500 severance pay”.
The stunned mullet-ness hang in the air for what seemed like forever. I looked over at Sally, she was overweight she was crying lightly – she knew she might not get a chair. I looked over at Craig – he had a gammy leg & now a deep frown – he knew he might not get a chair. I looked over at Tilly – she was tiny & easy bumped away – she was sobbing – she might not get a chair. Everyone else also looked nervous despite no obvious disability or impairments – they all knew they all had a chance to be the one fired.
Of course we could have mass protested. But no one piped up. We all had learnt to be helpless, like the twenty first century serfs we deep down knew we were. Then sometime welled up inside me. A feeling of courage. I had never had much of it – it was an intoxicating feeling.
Gavin pushed play on the music button – it was the music was Wagner. We all walked around the chairs, circling like buzzards, sobbing & wailing, shoulders drooped, barely lifting our feet above the ground. We were like POW’s on a long march.
Finally, the bombastic Wagnerian music used during ‘The Third Reich’ stopped. Gavin’s index finger had spoken, his wiggly fat faux sword of Damocles had come down on us. Everyone scrambled to the seats like mad men & mad women. But I didn’t go for a seat at all – I simply kept walking, cool as a cucumber straight towards the exit door about a full ten paces away.
While those long paces counted down, I felt good. The feeling of self-sacrifice for the betterhood of my community was like an elixir. I knew that now my mental & spiritual deadwood would be sliced off, removed, & then a gracious metamorphosis would begin. I would suddenly unlearn my learned helplessness. I knew in that heated emotional hurricane that I’d never see these people or this town again – I’d make sure of that. I told myself that while my heart was beating like a thudding bass drum.
As I was one pace from the door, there was only one more thing to do. I turned around & looked at Lord Gavin & said without pointing & with confidant, measured, & gravitas infused words:
“Fuck you Gavin you tinpot fake Hitler Fuckwit”
Then I turned my head toward the door to traverse the last step to exit – then I turned my head back towards them again – I’d forgitten to ear bash Leonard too.
“Fuck you too Leonard – I know your a snakey prick!”.
Leonard guiltily averted my eyes & stared at his shoes for all his status he was now a naught little schoolboy being told off by the rightfully mad teacher.
I was glad I hadn’t let Leonard off the hook – those sneaky political types love to hide in the shadows, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I took the last step opened the door & then slammed it with all my animalistic fury…it made a dirty great
BANG!!!
Sure, with my “big exit” I had sacrificed some decorum – but equally It’s always wise to add a little truth- laden-spices to the mix of work life. That slammed door was maybe the most loudly slammed door in History. Yes, dear reader – I went out with a bang, as every self-respecting POW should. I’ll hang my hat on a heavily slammed door any day of the week.
I’d like to say that after swearing & slamming that door my life changed immeasurably & I rose up the social ladder, became rich, flew out to a new town, got married to a catch & even had two point one kids. I’d like to report that.
I’d like to report that I finally threw of the shackles of all that learned helplessness & modern-day serfdom away – i’d like to report that too. Unfortunately this is the real world & not a crap hollwood movie. So that good stuff didn’t happen – I just found a new restaurant & a new ‘Gavin’, a new Leonard & a new ‘crew’ of fellow POW’s slash modern day serfs in a nearby town. I dug in like the seasoned profesional serf-soldier I was.
Of course, I knew that after a honeymoon period the same kind of crap stuff as before would happen again. It would be simply be a slightly rehashed version of what was. I had come to realise that ‘modern serfdom’ is for most a permanent affliction. it comes with deaths & rebirths akin to a life lived in a series of parallel universes.
So yes, I am at peace with my serfdom.
They do say a change is as good as a holiday – & at least us modern day serfs & hospo staff are still allowed to cut, run & restart. I think it’s fair – all we ask for is to die & be reborn & steal a few laughs & maybe a few drinks along the way. We are too battle-hardened & so realistic, to expect anything more.
Eventually, given enough years – we even grow to love the Lord Gavin’s & Leonard’s of our world. Yes, the Gavin’s & Leonard’s of the world will always take things away from us with one hand, but we also always knew they’d first give us something with the other first.
Life, you see – is all about having correct expectations & knowing when to walk & when to stay. Get that right & no one can touch you.
For ours is a modern-day serf’s story – a Hospo P.O.W’s lament.
Some of us are even smart enough to write about it all when we are finally out of the game. A much smaller slice some of you, are even more smart to actually read it.
And for that , we thank you – it’s nice to be heard.
The End.
by Martin Anton Smith
Once In a Corporate Office Job,
I once got a printed letter memo from HR,
Telling me of my “2% pay rise”,
& also, what the ‘new’ amount was.
I remember looking at the new amount.
Immediately something about the number didn’t quite feel right.
Then realised that it was actually a “pay cut”.
They had diddled me out of 1 Grand.
That letter summed up the workings of the madhouse I was in perfectly.
I didn’t even bother to follow it up.
I didn’t even feel annoyed angry or enraged.
I took the pay-cut-in-disguise-as-a-rise with depressed aplomb.
There was nothing else to do.
I told my next cubicle colleague about it –
They said the exact same thing happened to them.
They also didn’t do anything about it either.
Then I asked another – same story.
I guess deep down we all knew this brute fact:
There’s no profit in arguing with a madman.
.
Please see this new short story – it was half finished & now after a big session just now the first main draft is now completed. With all the madness going on in England & the Uk lately – I think many will enjoy this story. I wrote it as the ideas came into my head, basically on the fly over two sittings. With the main thrust of the idea about an overgrown kid going into No 10. Downing Street coming in the second sitting.
I hope at least one person reads this story at some point by the year 2099!
By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
The lonely young man didn’t rob the bank for a simple ‘get rich quick scheme’ – he robbed it for skewed & delusional romantic reasons. Namely his aim was to impress the bank teller, a young woman whom he’d had his eye on for quite some time. Of course, she was stratospherically out of his league.
Norman’s decision making never had resided much inside the realms of reality. In his mind this was a genius plan that couldn’t fail. He told himself that his creative & non-traditional method would melt her heart & he’d have her in his arms for life.
Norman got up from the park bench where he’d been hatching his plan & loped over towards the bank. His gait was the correct gait for a weird kid, he took extra-long strides & he bobbed down inordinately low & inordinately high just like a buoy bobbing up & down on rough seas.
The bank was close by, basically just across the road. He was there in no time flat. He pushed open the door & pulled out his real looking but very fake black plastic Uzi machine gun. Being a rural bank, there was only two customers inside it both old ladies with Zimmer frames.
The old ladies screamed first & both ‘zimmer framed’ slowly out the door, right past Norman who of course let them pass by unmolested. He saw Stacey, his crush. She was shivering with fear, but not as much as you’d expect. Norman strode up to her. Now was to moment of truth.
When he put the gun to the face of the teller he said “I’m robbing this bank because I love the shape of your face & I was far too shy to tell you under normal circumstances – so give me a cool mill & we’ll run away bonnie & clyde style! I mean you must hate this job anyway right?”
Of course, the object of his affection just screamed & pushed the panic button @ ran out the back. Norman hadn’t figured out what he was going to do for this scenario – he being a young buffoon had thought she’d say yes. With all the staff huddled in the back room he had three options.
Option A blast open the vaults with his shotgun. Option B jump the teller desk & get the up to $10,000 available in the tills, then make a run for it. or C play the pinball machine in the staff room @ pretend everything would turn out ok. Norman being a very stupid 23-year-old chose option C.
Norman was having a fantastic game of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Pinball machine, he was getting “extra balls” racking up a massive score & the Multiballs were flying all over the place with the sounds of the bumpers clanging away towards the huddled frightened staff.
The Armed Police – which was actually just a single officer, swooped in slowly at first but then they heard Norman & the pinball machine – Seargent Quackles figured he’d make a swift sniper shot. He aimed took a breath and BOOM fired off a shot. It was a successful hit. It went right through the CPU of the game which was hiding under the giant “Donnatello” Turtle head mounted on the head of Pinball machine.
Quackles had aimed to miss Norman, as he had a confidant-without-knowing-why feeling he was not anywhere a dangerous as the average ‘loose cannon’ type Bank Robber.
Quackles was proved right when he walked over & simply said to Norman “look sonny the funs over, your knicked – you’re coming with me & gimme that big plastic fake gun”. Norman response was typically immature. His face was full of overgrown teenager angst & he growled in a high-pitched squeal “Man I was about to get the highest score”.
The hidden staff simply took the rest of the day off & all went back to work the next day as if nothing had happened – they, just like Quackles had at heart realised that Norman wasn’t ever going to hurt them.
Quackles put Norman in the cooler for 3 days. As he threw him in the seven-foot cubed cell he said “sorry fella no Pinball machine in there for ya, but if ya play your cards right, I’ll throw you a tennis ball tomorrow”. All the Police staff cracked up & Norman’s face blushed from Pink to Red to Purple.
Quackles felt sorry for the lad & had talked to him about life over the last 3 days. the main advice dispensed were the following
“Son it’s easy to be against everything, but when you grow up you’ve got to decide what it is that you’re for as well”
“Your generation has been ruined by screens, you all spend so much time on those things that you’ve lost vital social development years – none of you have an ounce of confidence, you can’t look anyone in the eyes, you’re all afraid of face-to-face contact”
“The best thing for you to do sonny is to go get an old-fashioned job labouring, work on a farm, hang out with a Builder, pick some fruit for a year or something, you gotta start to break out of that social media programmed madhouse that you’ve grown up in all your life. Hell you can even hang out with me on the beat for a few weeks to start with”.
All this advice was good, but didn’t really land in Norman’s brain. Norman just mumbled indecipherable responses to all of officer Quackles sage advice.
The wheels of justice moved surprisingly quickly in this tiny town & the local magistrate would see him quickly on the 3rd day of lockup.
The presiding Judge – Judge Smallbore gave Norman an ultimatum……
He said “Norm, nice to see you again – I see you decision making has not improved since you knicked that bubble gum machine last month”. Norman simply shrugged & said “This I did it for love Judge, not just a sugar hit, can you be lenient?”.
Judge Smallbore half smiled & gave swift judgement. Judge Smallbore had big connections. He was the definition of a big fish in a small pond. He was friends with all the society people including Westminster’s political sneaks. His idea would be that he’d give Norman a fright but also an opportunity. “I must sentence you harshly this time Norman you will be Chief Advisor for a week to the man in Westminster who is well hated by the working classes…..new PM Sir Schneer Karmer!”.
Norman shrieked loudly & his bloodcurdling cries mixed with the gasps from the onlookers in the public gallery. Norman composed himself & retorted. “Judge this is unholy travesty! Give me life, give me death-hell! give me the electric chair! But don’t saddle me up with that lily livered buffoon, my online friends will laugh at me forever”.
Judge Smallbore replied steadfastly & with gravitas, making sure to ham it up. “Norman, it’s the only way you will learn – life in prison or even our misfiring electric chair would not deter you. I know I must give you the worst job in Britain. This sentence will ensure the blind will indeed lead the blind. …I am willing to risk the final fall of England in order to rehabilitate you, Norman! You start the day after Sir Schneer is sworn in as PM – next Tuesday!”.
Norman started sobbing like a baby. His mother Sue ran over from the public gallery & hugged the boy & dried his tears with her hanky. She said some words in her version of motherese “There there Norman, it’s only for a fookin’ week, it’ll be over fookin’ before you fookin’ know it – & besides maybe you will fookin’ enjoy it”.
Norman’s stopped crying & looked at his mother’s eyes & then just started crying again more loudly & more wildly than before – just like a two-year-old who had been refused a candy bar at the supermarket.
The Judge told the security staff to remove the mother from the dock so he could dismiss the child to the custody of his staff who would then take him in a squad car to No 10 where he would meet Sir Schneer & begin his sentence.
Before you go Norman…”Pray tell Norm, what will you first advice be to our beloved PM Sir Schneer?”
Norman sighed & said…”Well isn’t if smeggin’ obvious judge? I’ll be asking where his fookin’ video game consoles reside, I haven’t played Fortnight in a whole fortnight”.
Judge Smallbore sighed & muttered under his breath “These Gen Z’s are all the same – when war WW3 breaks out we’ll all be screwed” He made a gesture to his staff to take him away & on to Sir Schneer & No 10 Downing street.
The weird thing was that World War Three did break out only two weeks from that day. And Norman would feature massively in England’s outcomes. Little did Smallbore know but the Gen X Sir Schneer had grown up in the Golden era of arcade games & had a soft spot for Norman’s type.
Given that Parliament was on it Break the lifelong bachelor Sir Schneer spent basically the whole two weeks holed up in the No 10 video games room with Norman. They played mostly Fortnight & not only that but Sir Schneer also talked all the while about the fact England’s military servers were being attacked by some rogue foreign state.
Norman eventually said “let me look at it PM – what have we got to lose”. Sir Schneer normally wouldn’t let a Twenty-Three-year-old Gen Z kid hook up a laptop to England’s biggest military mainframe, but all his so called “experts” hadn’t been able to quell the rogue state’s hacks despite all their so-called knowledge & resources so what did he have to lose? He’d simply designate a temporary tech expert security clearance via MI5 & give him an hour maximum to see if he could work some magic.
Sir Schneer figured that no one needed to know about Norman’s handywork & he told himself nothing could go much wrong – I mean the worst he could do would be to trigger an automatic shutdown of the mainframe, which was a standard safety feature that kicked in – at least that’s what Sir Schneer thought at least.
Sir Schneer called the relevant Military staff to whisk them to away the mainframe. They waited by the Front reception room in No 10 for the text message to come. Sir Schneer’s phone pinged & he looked over to Norman who was sitting in teenage sloped halfway down the chair fashion like a ball of slime.
“We’re outa here, now get off that comfy chair put that blindfold on so you don’t know they way to the Military HQ”. Norman slithered onto the floor, like the overgrown teenage human slimeball he was & pulled the black blindfold from the standign Sir Schneer’s hands & put it on. The door swung open & both of them were sitting in the back of the car within seconds.
The ten minute of the drive no one said anything to each other – there was only awkward silence mixed with in trepidation. Unfortunately, this was when Norman felt his bowel twitch. Because of his nervousness he had a giant ball of gas swelling up & fighting its way downwards to be released. Norman squeezed it out silently. Sir Schneer’s nose twitch first….then his eye’s started to water. Then the driver coughed & spluttered. It was a bad one. Luckily Norman had ‘English avoid embarrassment at all costs culture’ on his side, & no one in the Car said a thing, not Norman Sir Schneer, not the driver & not the armed Military man in the front passenger seat. Of course, Sir Schneer knew who it was – the pimply purple face of the culprit was the firm incontrovertible evidence.
The car stopped. Norman got out last & felt two arms on each side grasp each of his arms. Sir Schneer walked behind them. Norman felt himself get into a lift & go downwards for seemingly about five minutes – they were deep underground in the figurative bowels of London somewhere. Again, no words were spoken. Finally, the lift doors opened.
Again, the two sets of arms grasped each of his arms. They walked through seventeen sets of security doors. Again, no words the only sounds Norman heard were footsteps on vinyl, the security passes hit the sensors & the swoosh of the airtight security doors as they opened & closed behind them. Then he felt carpet. He moved about ten paces & stopped. Then his blindfold was taken off.
He looked around, it looked nothing like what he was thinking of. This did not look like a rich country’s military controlled core mainframe room. It looked like a run-down office space from nineteen ninety-five. Instead of sleek humming tall stacks of modern supercomputers, there were rows & rows of what looked like old Microsoft computers stacked on top of each other.
Norman looked around some more – the ceiling was that cheap holey office ceiling squares & the who ceiling was off level. he looked around more. There were those fake wood grain veneer old desks strewn haphazardly around, most of them had old papers messily all over them & no computers on any of them at all.
Then Norman smelt the mildew – it was thick & as horrible as a heavily neglected university students flat. he couldn’t help himself & he blurted out “This place is a smeggin’ DUMP Sir Schneer – what gives?”. the hired help looked purposefully blank, trying hard but unsuccessfully to hide their smirks.
Sir Schneer then let out his trademark nervous laugh – a loud baritone beginning with a short budgie type squawk at the very end. Sir Schneer simply said “Well it’s been a long time since we were an Empire Norman – We’ve been well well well broke at least since 1918, in fact we’ve been bankrupt for decades – you don’t know it because we don’t let the media report this ghastly little truth. Sad but true Norman – but that’s beside the point – lets get to work – there’s the terminal – now do your amazing earth-shattering anti hacking stuff!”.
Norman understood, duly forgot the dilapidated nature of England & stepped forward to the wacky little twenty centimeter by ten-centimeter big buttoned terminal. The first thing letters were arranged in ABCD manner instead of the QWERTY standard. How weird he thought. Then he looked at the screen, a massive old TV tube type with what he though was a green pixelated login prompt. he looked over at Sir Schneer
“So what’s the login”
Sir Schneer went over to the man who was in the front passenger seat of the car on the way there. They whispered to each other. Sir Schneer went over to Norman’s ear and said
“It’s er ah admin a-d-m-i-n” he said sheepishly.
Norman laughed as quietly as he could & put the characters in. Then he was in. He could see each server port which was interfacing with the outside of the room – he saw that mainframe 77 was being attacked – all its source code was jumbling 7 blinking with changing characters. He first thought he’d try something silly but something he’d read on the internet hacking forums. It said that all of England’s military mainframes had a backdoor which controlled the nuclear missile silos.
Norman wanted to see this for himself – why not, Sir Sneer wouldn’t know what he was doing & the other two guys were looking the other way talking about the premier league standings, he even heard one of the say “up the arse! – the Arsenal’s favourite supporters’ slogan. Norman poked around here & there & then low & behold there it was the names 7 serial numbers of all England’s at the ready nukes! There they were in true comic book fashion Antler, Totem, Mosaic, Buffulo, Grapple, Charlie, & even some cool ones like DelBoy, Mainwaring, Le Mesurer, Boycott, Lennon. Then suddenly his screen froze.
Norman had now spent twenty minutes trying to unfreeze the screen to no avail. Sir Schneers legendary impatience had been rearing its head for the last seven of those. Sir Schneers was screaming at the top of his lungs, red faced & spitting right next to the side of Normans purple face. I’m trying Sir Schneer, but nothings working. The other two were still talking football without a care. “Look kid, I took a punt of you & your effing it up royally – let me have a go”.
Sir Schneer pushed Norman unceremoniously aside via walking into him. He randomly clacked at the keys…nothing changed. He lifted up the terminal & banged it…nothing changed. Then he furiously pushed the ‘escape button’ he wouldn’t stop he just kept pushing it like a madman, then he pushed the button for the last time.
America’s cable news of course naturally reported it all first.
“Shocking news out of England – and viewers remember this is all preliminary – we’re being told at KNAW-NN that all – that’s right all of England’s nuclear 175 nuclear warheads have seemingly self-destructed & is now an unpopulated giant smoking ball of sandy dust & debris from coast to coast”.
“We’ve contacted five-eyes spokesman & Pentagon top brass Monty Haig & he suggests that the ‘self destruct code was somehow activated from inside the Military’s own nuclear mainframe command centre.”….
……”At this stage Monty Haig believes it could be a coordinated multi-country foreign power attack, or maybe a terrorist hack, or sadly & unbelievably perhaps even worse, this all may just be a horrible ‘schoolboy error type mistake’ by a dim-witted government staffer.”………
.…….”Monty Haig told us that as he cannot at this stage confirm whether it’s an attack or simply – and we quote… ‘an accidental fuckup’, he cannot say if a retaliatory attack will be launched by allies on behalf of what is now the former country of England. More to come later”……
Eventually after the nuclear dust had settled, the pages of History all agreed that it was not at all a surprise that England would self-destruct at some time in the twenty first century. However the intelligentsia had all got it wrong in their general prediction, that it would go with a whimper rather than a big bang.
The End
Hello there Poem readers of great aplomb. Take me to your leaders. I want to see the cats. The cats are in charge – we all know that. The Cats have pulled of all the rights of life without the responsibilities. their only catch is they mostly rely on us for food.
I have (as usual) been trying to survive small town NZ life. This is not easy for someone who writes Poems. But then again NZ is quite open to these things, so what am I complaining about?
The day job is going ok – I work in the trades. If you mix things up enough you can keep your sanity. e.g. dig a hole here, bang a nail there, prune a tree here.
Since my last letter/update I have written a reasonable amount – the links are below & I have written a line to describe them.
Poems from latest to earliest:
This is a giant complain about how humans are (a typical theme of mine). I argue for example that Atomic Physicists are not necessarily ‘civilised”
It has been good to keep writing – unfortunately no one really reads them but then again all I do is this blog. Like most writers – I still need to “Bloom”. This means to be more business like. One day I better push harder. I fear that it is ‘fear of success’ rather than the more advertised ‘fear of failure’ that is the true reason. For that I guess I shoulf blame my childhood – why not? My theory is if I am screwing up ‘blooming’ – at least what I can do is keep writing & posting it here on my blog. At least that’s something – that’s at least like reading one page a day of a giant book – one day you will finish it.
Anyway nice chatting
till next time!
Anton Martin Smith Writer 