The Daily Carlo: The facts blow 'alcohol-fuelled violence' claims away so let me buy boooze post 10pm you bastards!

Day Four of my Daily Carlo plot to blog every day and here is my fourth one! I am on fire!

I never thought I'd make it so far! To be honest, when I launched this new Carlo-Internet initiative on Tuesday, I was far from convinced I'd still be alive by Friday, what with my "lifestyle choices" that have been described variously as "less than optimal for living a long, healthy life" and "how the fuck is he still breathing?"

But I think what has got me this far is definitely my new fitness regime. Yes, thanks to the NSW state-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops, I am now in better shape than ever! What with my constant sprinting the bottlo at five to 10 every fucking night!

 Reddit.com/drunkspiration captures the struggle.

But asides from possibly being the only thing stopping my body from total collapse, what possible good does this 10pm shut down do?

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself here. I have already pretty decisively exposed these lock-out/shut down laws in NSW for what they truly are: a plot to give James Packer even MORE billions via his "magically excluded from the lock-out laws" Star Casino, and now I am just waiting for the Walkley Award it shall inevitably earn me.

But still... there may been some of you out there, who just REFUSE TO LISTEN and STILL think maybe this shit is about "alcohol-fuelled violence"... which is an argument I have NEVER understood.

Like, obviously I get there is violence involving people who are drunk in our society. Christ, I know there is drunken violence. The fucking Daily Telegraph WON'T FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

But what the violence has to do with being drunk has never been clear to me.

Because, and really this is an area in which I feel I have some expertise, I have never noticed that getting drunk leads to any particular increase in violence. Or "king hits". Or "coward punches". Or whatever the fuck the Daily Tele, whose journalists are famous for their sobriety, are banging on about now.

Like, I have been very drunk many times in many pubs. God knows how many. Over many years. I mean, I like getting drunk. And I like pubs. 

And yet I have somehow manage to refrain from king hitting a single bastard (and fuck knows I've been in pubs with many people just begging for a decent king hit) . 

In fact, I had seen no real violence at all of any note in any pub until I went to Darwin in 2013 (for a comedy gig for a refugee rights group, so you know, thanks government for torturing innocent people, otherwise I'd have never gotten the chance to see the NT!) 

While there, I ended up in some dodgy bar on what they like to call a "main road" in Darwin, drinking with Robbo, who lives up there, and Conehead, who came up for a trip.

Suddenly, at the table right behind us, these off-duty soldiers launched, with no warning, into a brawl that sent beer and chairs flying and only my rapid action in securing our table's beers prevented them joining the sea of spilt booze spreading across the bar room as bouncers rushed over to try to separate two furiously wrestling soldiers, trying to kill each other over God knows what.

Whatever it was, it was clearly not an issue easily resolved, because an hour later, as we sat out on the tables on the footpath, we could see two sides on the road squaring off, headed by the protagonists of the brawl inside the pub.

They stared each other down and shouted abuse before finally fresh kicks and punches started flying in a kinda pathetic half fight in which each side displayed its incompetent failure to actually get a kick anywhere near the other while seemingly imagining they were just like Jean-Claude Fucking Van Damme... 

And you watch that and get a sense of just how horrific it must be to be a poor fucking peasant in Afghanistan or Iraq occupied by these numbskulls, whose only form superiority is their fucking heavy weaponry.

And you know, it was hard to draw the conclusion that the problem here was they had just drunk too much. I mean, they clearly had -- but so had I!

I had just performed a fucking stand up set in a city thousands of kilometres from Sydney to about 20 people as part of an ill-advised, failed and totally well-meant attempt by these activists to "reach out" to Darwin's redneck community to explain why "blow up the boats" -- a solution advocated to me beforehand by a local -- was perhaps a bit problematic, you know from a "let's not murder innocent people" sorta perspective.

So you had better fucking BELIEVE I was drinking. And yet somehow, I managed NOT to be involved in an all-in-brawl. Maybe I just have incredible self-restraint, or maybe, I dunno, the whole "drunkenness leads to violence" thing is utter bullshit.

Turns out there is some solid evidence behind the "it's utter bullshit" view.

Yes, ABC News ran an article headlined "Alcohol-fuelled' violence not caused by alcohol but by 'macho' culture, anthropologist Dr Anne Fox says", that states:

Amidst the introduction of one-punch laws and lock outs, the main concern has been the so-called alcohol-fuelled violence that goes with drunkenness. But one anthropologist believes it is not a result of the booze itself. 

Dr Anne Fox has specialised in the study of drinking cultures in countries around the world for the past 20 years and has been looking at Australia and New Zealand ... 

"Australians, like many other people worldwide, have a very pervasive belief that alcohol can transform your behaviour, that it's a transformative substance, that somehow there's this genie in the bottle that can make you behave a certain way," she told PM's Mark Colvin. 

"Alcohol - as all of the scientific literature shows, which we've reviewed very extensively in the report - cannot be considered a cause of violence. If it was, we'd see uniform levels of violence among all drinkers." 

Countries such as Iceland consume more alcohol than Australia but report less violence. 

"They have a stronger culture of preloading, they have 24-hour bar opening, they even have high rates of gun ownership, but in Iceland there is almost no recorded violence," she said. 

"It's simply not a violent society and they have no belief that alcohol causes violence, and therefore you really don't see any violence in Iceland."  Most of Southern Europe follows this pattern, according to Dr Fox .... 

According to Dr Fox, alcohol "cannot hijack someone's better nature and make them violent" and the term alcohol-fuelled violence is not accurate. She said the focus should be on the causes and triggers of violence itself ... 

"Your inhibitions are just social rules. Anthropologists for decades now have been finding through international cross-cultural studies that the way you behave when you're drunk is mostly the way that your culture teaches you to behave," she said. 

"You can see across the world that people behave very, very differently, despite being morphologically similar human beings and drinking the same amounts of alcohol." 

She said Australia has a macho culture. "We see that it's not so much the patterns of drinking or the levels or consumption that determine how people behave, but other features of culture that are magnified through drunkenness," she said.

YEAH!!! So fuck off with your "alcohol-fuelled violence" bullshit! And most of all... LET ME BUY SOME FUCKING TAKE-AWAY BOOZE AFTER 10PM!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!! 

Of course, no one could disagree that the violence used to justify these laws is terrible. There is clearly a problem in our society -- but it is cultural problem not a booze problem. the problem is the macho culture and its ever-present twin -- misogyny.

And not only is blaming alcohol for this missing the real culprit, it is way of avoiding even acknowledging the problem. And this isn't just alcohol, but drugs in general -- as the somewhat ridiculous scandal involving a whole lot of rugby league and rugby players apparently enjoying putting coke up their nostrils shows.

It really says something about the nature of our society and how fucked up our priorities are. Here we have charges and claims centred on the apparently shocking that a bunch of professional sports players enjoyed cocaine at such events as a players bucks night and a post-season booze cruise.

You might think that is something of a personal matter, at most unfortunately a legal matter due to draconian failed drug laws. But no. This threatens to tear apart an entire club, the Gold Coast Titans, and ruin the careers of more than a few players -- despite the fact that some of these players have already been involved in scandals involving far worse actions or allegations.

Rugby player and code-hopper Karmichael Hunt, at the centre of the coke scandal, faced sexual assault allegations in 2008. No dent in his career. Greg Bird, suspended by the Titans over cocaine charges, was found guilty of violently assaulting his girlfriend. His career continued.

You can rape and bash women seemingly without a worry in rugby league, but don't enjoy a recreational drug in your own spare time or you are done.

The irony is it is this kinda pathetic hypocrisy that makes drugs and alcohol so essential to fucking survive this goddamn world in the first place.

Alcohol and drugs can worsen existing problems, but I see no reason why those of us who manage to drink and not punch must be punished. We all relate to alcohol differently... the song below, by that glorious Texas country singer Hayes Carll, sums up my relationship with booze perfectly.... less violence, more pathetic failure at life.

I keep knockin over whiskeys
no ones laughin at my jokes
they got me spinnin round in circles
like a tin can in the spoke

When i left town this mornin
with a smile upon my face
ahh babe i swear i never knew
I'd end up in this place...

So. My fourth Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer. Via the Pay Pal button on the right of the blog. I promise that after drinking the beer, I won't hit anyone, unless you specifically request it.

It is nice when your efforts are appreciated

Hey, look, not a problem! Seriously dude, it's my pleasure! It is just nice when someone appreciates your efforts, you know?

(Heads up to Ben for pointing out the existence of a sign dedicated to my life's work.)

So what the fuck's been happening, world? 2013? What *was* that shit?

Yeah well, end of the year, and what a fucking year eh? There were some real horror stories, some real nightmarish "how can humanity DO this?" moments. And I am sure the absolute lowest moment for all of us was the truly stomach-churning news emerging from Nigeria in November:

Police enforcing strict Islamic law in Nigeria publicly destroyed more than 240,000 bottles of beer in an attempt to crack down on alcohol consumption and other "immoral" behavior in the area, an official said Thursday.

Graphic scenes of a beer holocaust emerged from Nigeria in November.

Christ... all that beer... 240,000 bottles... it is so hard to see the good in the world when you read things like this. Man's inhumanity to beer, eh? It gets to you. For God's sake, world, how could we have JUST SAT ON YOUR HANDS WHILE SUCH SLAUGHTER WENT ON?!?

But, amid the carnage, there was progress. For instance, Tilburg has become the latest Dutch city to embracy "drunk voting".

For the next municipal elections in March 2014 Tilburg, the sixth biggest city of Holland, opens a special voting booths at midnight in the city centre to attract more voters. In other big cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Groningen this was already the case four years ago. Several hundreds of people made a small stop to vote when they returned home from the bars.

Sure, this might seem a small thing, but symbolically this is an important win. I mean, just look around the world and see what happens when you force electorates to vote sober.

It can only improve the political situation.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un showed the world *just how it is fucking done* by ordering the execution of two advisors to uncle and counter-revolutionary traitor Jang Song-Thaek -- while said to be "very drunk".

Fuck, *that* is how you rule a country! In my opinion, this style of government should be extended globally. The Australian political situation would be a *fuck load* more interesting if you never knew which political figure or high-ranking bureaucrat had been bumped off when you checked the news in the morning.

Hell, I might even start watching Q & A just to see who had survived -- especially if they show footage of the executions from the past week. Among other things, you give Labor hacks machine guns, there goes the "workers' party" in a glorious burst of gunfire and blood splatters.

'I'm drunk! Kill him!' We need a ruler like this, if only to make current affairs programs more watchable.

And they say binge drinking is out of control among young people in this country! Exactly how many people do they execute on an average night out?

The sad truth is it is all a beat up. Kids don't drink *enough*. Seriously, whenever I hear the youth of today are out of control with their drinking, my response is *if only*. In my experience, this is the most sober-minded young generation I have ever had the misfortune to meet.

Sure the media and cops and governments beat up "drunken violence", but stats actually show a *21%* decline in non-domestic violent assaults since 2008.

It is just as an excuse to give the cops more powers. And more often than not, as this horror story of a savage unprovoked violent assault from Brisbane shows, it is the *cops* you gotta worry about if you're out at night having a drink.

But on the youth... I don't get their lack of commitment to drunkenness, I just don't. I mean, I get that the price of alcohol in licensed venues is outrageous... and all the decent pubs are being gentrified into stainless-steel hellholes, and the severe undermining of the social safety net has left a generation dependent on precarious casualised work just to survive, and the pressure of actually making sure the education you increasingly pay more and more for actually translates sooner rather than later into a badly needed job is really high and... well FUCK just typing that shit makes me want a drink.

Of course, shit aint easy all round. The Global Recession begun by the 2008 financial crisis is hitting millions of people really hard, but sometimes, it is the personal stories that really bring it home. Like the heartrending story of England's Princess Michael of Kent.

Princess Michael of Kent has explained how she and her husband have been hit by austerity; meaning they can no longer dine out as it's "too extravagant".

The Princess, who is an interior designer and author, told The Times in an interview to promote her debut novel: "I am in very austere economic times too, thank you very much! We’ve cut back dramatically ..."

The Princess, who lives with her husband at Kensington Palace, added: "We invite people here [Kensington Palace]. I cook. Well, if I’m giving a dinner party I get in help."

She also told the interviewer of her love for budget carrier easyJet saying: "it’s the only direct route to Biarritz [a luxurious seaside town in south-west France]."

But there are good news stories amid all the gloom! Why, here in Australia, we just recently heard the *great news* that 2900 Holden workers have been, in Prime Minister Tony Abbott's words, "liberated" from their jobs.

Yes, no more are these longs-suffering proletarians oppressed by a reliable, livable wage! Modern-day Che Guevaras are the liberation fighters known as General Motors executives, who took millions every year in taxpayer-funded subsidies only to shut down all production when profits weren't good enough.

Sure, liberation is never easy, as Comrade Abbott acknowledges: "Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives."

'All we have to see, is that I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me! Freedom!' Holden workers have learned to appreciate George Michael's wise words now they have been liberated from a regular, decent wage.

And of course, this year we actually got to see the End of the World, and I am not talking about some shit self-referential Hollywood film. I am talking about the End of the World that wasn't broadcast -- in the Philippines post-Super Typhoon Haiyan, possibly the strongest storm to hit land on record.

In the Philippines, you'd struggle to find a single person willing to accept, or even listen to, Australian environment minister Greg "But I read It On Wikipedia" Hunt's insistence that referring to the scientifically-accepted impact of global warming on extreme weather events is "playing politics". It is hard to do that when it is a matter of life or death.

Also, last year was Australia's hottest on record and globally, 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. But whatever. Nice planet we had, and all that. In more important news, what has happened in *my* life?

Well, thank you for asking, I thought we'd *never* get round to it! I've been writing my Carlo's Corner column for Green Left, coz the goddamn editor keeps insisting, no matter how hungover I try to point out I am when, a day or so after the deadline, I am pressed for copy.

And in the process of writing "Carlo's Corner", I got blogged by far right-wing climate denying crypto-fascist/Daily Telegraph comment editor Tim Blair -- after I dared to mock Australia's role in destroying the UN Warsaw climate talks -- and Blair's congratulatory celebration of this ugly fact.

I was then predictably attacked in the comment section by Blair's right-wing zombies, which is only to be expected... but one went too far and *dared* to criticise my poetry!!! MY POETRY!!! HE SPECIFICALLY LINKED TO THIS POEM WHICH IS MY ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE!!!

I then defended my poetry, and another of these bastards, called "Right Wing Demon", said: "Carlo, so I went to the link and read your poetry. Sorry, it is not much better than my poetry which is crap. I wouldn’t be so proud of that effort if I were you."

All I can say is I *really* wanna read Right Wing Demon's poetic efforts, if his poetic efforts (and we can say with 100% certainty we are dealing with a "he") are even worse than my totally serious and and not at all written as fast I could type them while drunk masterpieces.

Asides from that, well I did some stand-up stuff, particularly via the ever-wonderful Comedy on Edge at The Pub Formerly Known As The Shannon in Chippendale). I didn't do a huge amount, really, but when I think on it, I kinda got to do some incredible shit.

* I got to take part in Green Left's annual comedy debate down in Melbourne hosted by Rod Quantock. Performing with Quantock meant a lot to me, coz he is a legend of the comedy scene -- renown for his left-wing political bent and for starring for years in all those ads as Capt'n Snooze. He also said some nice shit about me, which you can read on the poster for my own show a bit below.

* I got flown to Darwin to do a gig for the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network in August. Rod Quantock was originally going to perform at the event, but had to pull out. After they almost secured a bunch of performers with actual *names* in comedy, my name got thrown into the mix.

Never having been to the Northern Territory, I was pretty keen... until, having agreed, it was revealed the gig was just outside Darwin in Palmerston at a Sports Club with the explicit aim of drawing in the redneck locals to seek to "educate" them away from hostility to asylum seekers via a free comedy and trivia event.

My mental image of having to make a Blues Brothers-esque escape from the venue as bottles rained down around me was not altered when, before it started, a local, not knowing I was there to perform, cheerfully told me his exact views on these dickheads who'd come to his local to talk about boat people, and his personal solution to the problem of all these boats coming: blow 'em all up.

As it turns out, I had no need to worry. The locals all happily shunned the well-meaning event and stayed in the front bar while I performed to the 20-odd refugee rights supporters who had turned out. Which was fine by me... And then afterwards, I got to see Darwin and other bits of the Top End with Robbo and Conehead, who had made the trip up.

We saw the best Darwin's nightlife had to offer, featuring a violent bar brawl involving off duty soldiers. Then we went to Adelaide River to see far more socially agreeable creatures.

Adelaide River. More agreeable company than off-duty soldiers in a bar. Photo by Conehead.

* I did my first show at a festival, going up to Brisbane for the Brisbane Fringe Comedy Festival to perform "The Yucky County: Just Make Clive Palmer PM". It went well, was quite a lot of fun, and, in passing, I got Rod Quantock to give me a nice quote for publicity.

'Carlo Sands is a sharp, well-informed political comedian who crafts laughter from the absurdities of Left and Right '-- Capt'n Snooze.

* And I performed, along Twiggy Palmer (who interrupted Abbott's victory night speech), Newcastle comic Hannah G, and Michael Hing who has been on TV and shit, at Green Left's enormously successful "Welcome to the Abbottoir" in November. You can see my clip below, and all four performances are here.

'So Adelaide's bus tickets, eh?' If there is one thing I have learned performing comedy across this wide brown land of ours, it is that people love to laugh at Adelaide.

But, of course, it would be totally remiss of me to not mention the most important, inspiring and just GODDAMN GLORIOUS event in the ENTIRE WORLD for 2013 ... the Western Sydney Wanderers winning the A-League premiership in their FIRST EVER SEASON!!!

This feat was achieved in the very final game of the regular season on March 29, when many thousands of Wanderers fans made the trip up the see the mighty red and black down Newcastle 3-0 to conclude one of the most remarkable feats in sporting history.

'Who do we sing for?' Wanderers players (above) celebrate winning the Premier's Plate in the club's first ever season with the fans (below).

Well... fuck, that was glorious. But anyway, here is Texas country singer Hayes Carll summing up what it is like trying to *live* in this godforsaken hellhole of a world.

'And I'm out here in the filth and the squalor... and all I wanna do is stomp and holler...'

Two songs: Sheryl Crow versus The Jesus and Mary Chain -- a case study in responses to late monoply capitalism

So I pretty much wrote this yesterday evening. It should be clear early on why I failed to complete it then. So today, fresh from another trip to the bottlo, I have tidied it up and I post this discussion on two responses to the horror of late monopoly capitalism for your consideration. *TRIGGER WARNING* Features Sheryl Crow.

* * *

For reasons I'm not sure I can explain rationally, I listened to the two songs discussed below one after the other. I *should* point out that I did leave my home in the mid-afternoon to go for a walk -- because anyone who knows me will tell you straight up how seriously I take exercise. And, strangely enough, I ended in the local pub where I drank a couple of beers with a whiskey chaser, all the while reading the new Rebus (YES! HE IS BACK! AND HE IS AS "DRINKING-TO-FORGET-HOW-HE-FUCKS-UP-ALL-HUMAN-RELATIONSHIPS" AS EVER!!!).

"Whiskey Make Crazy", so sung those Celtic punk legends The Tossers, which helps explain why, floating through a lovely whiskey-and-beer-haze, I ended up, while in the supermarket afterward shopping for dinner, seeing a cut-price pre-prepared-for-roasting chicken all tied up with string with some sort of horrible sauce/gravy type thing already so unkindly added, and concluded WHAT A GREAT IDEA!

And then I get the fucking thing home, more booze at hand, and think how fucking LONG does it ACTUALLY TAKE to roast a fucking chicken??? And the answer is TOO FUCKING LONG!

And then, after some more waiting-and-drinking, there was an "incident" with the oven during the attempt to cook the fucking chook, of which my lawyer has instructed me to make no further comment, and the fucking chicken ended up in the frying pan. So, I guess it was really no longer roasted exactly. Or two thirds roasted, one third fried, or something -- LET THE PHILOSOPHERS DEBATE IT, ALL I KNOW IS I JUST I *ATE* THAT GODDAMN "FROASTED" CHOOK! (you see what I did there?)

My point is, I was feeling a bit odd. By which I mean, pretty fucking happy, thanks to that beer-and-whiskey buzz. And yet... with this underlying sense that the word remains extremely messed up. I mean... we are racing towards a climate catastrophe of a scale it is hard to comprehend... and like, how do you DEAL WITH THAT SHIT, you know?

And I felt a strange compulsion to listen to the one song that I know of that perfectly captures the desire for hedonistic escape, just to lose yourself in the NOTHINGNESS of intoxication while the outside world goes about its pointless, ritualistic... well FUCKING RITUALS... YES you know what I am talking about... Sheryl Crow's 1994 hit "All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun"!!!



Yeah. See, Sheryl meets Billy in a bar and it is midday on a Tuesday and they decide to *just drink*, while sitting opposite a, and I quote, "giant car wash". I know right? (or, as the kids say, "IKR?" -- see, I am down with them).

It is actually, surprisingly, for a song with such a fucking irritating chorus and hook, quite ... poetic. Which it should be, seeing as the verse were taken, almost entirely wholesale,  from a 1987 poem called "Fun" by American poet Wyn Cooper. Here are the words to Sheryl's hit:

Hit it!
This ain't no disco
And it ain't no country club either,
This is L.A.

All I want to do is have a little fun before I die
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It's apropos of nothing he says his name is William
But I'm sure he's Bill or Billy or Mac or buddy

And he's plain ugly to me, and I wonder if he's ever
Had a day of fun in his whole life

We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In the bar that faces the giant car wash
And the good people of the world
Are washing their cars on their lunch breaks
Hosing and scrubbing as best they can
In skirts and suits

And they drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record stores, too
Well, they're nothing like Billy and me

'Cause

[Chorus]
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over
Santa Monica Boulevard

I like a good beer buzz, early in the morning
Billy likes to peal the labels from his bottles of bud
He shreds them on the bar then he lights up every match
In an over-sized pack letting each one burn
Down to his thick fingers before blowing and
Cursing them out, he's watching
The bottles of bud as they spin on the floor

And a happy couple enters the bar
Dangerously, close to one another
The bartender looks up from his want ads

But all I wanna do is have some fun etc etc etc

Otherwise the bar is ours, the day and the night
And the car wash, too, the matches and the
Buds, and the clean and dirty cars,
The sun and the moon ,

But, all I wanna do is have some fun etc etc etc


Yeah, IKR? Fucking poetry. The full poem, unabridged and without a chorus written to for radio with the sole purpose of INFECTING OUR BRAINS, is actually marked by its contradiction between an outsider wanting to sneer at the world around them, while also feeling below the  world around, drowning that tension with beer and hiding behind an aggressive declaration that the "city is ours" (ie the drunks)

Hell, if it wasn't for the fact that Sheryl Crow chose to weld those words to what surely must be a strong contender for the MOST ANNOYING CHORUS EVER in the history of popular music...then we would have ourselves a FUCKING GODDAMN *SONG*, yeah?

But no, Sheryl had to go and add a dull, repetitive and, worse, SMUG AND SELF-SATISFIED chorus, and add in a film clip where she does nothing but look SMUG AND SELF-SATISFIED ... and all despite the fact that runs DIRECTLY COUNTER to the goddamn WORDS she is singing from a poem she nicked!

Sometimes, a chorus or the general tone of a song is deliberately in contradiction to the bleak nature of the words. Say, of many examples, The Gin Blossom's Hey Jealousy, or famously Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. That is a possibility here, except for the seemingly straight-faced way she delivers lines about "the party has just begun."

If you ignore the chorus, the actual verses impart actual desperation, of a desire to use intoxication deliberately to block out the world, to pretend it doesn't exist, to "have a little fun before I die", a comment made poignant by the fact the character who utters it "out of nowhere" makes Sheryl "wonder if he has ever had a day's fun in his whole life".

Yeah. Profound. JUST IGNORE SHERYL'S STUPID GRIN. (Like seriously, does she EVEN LISTEN to the words she is singing?)

So that is one response to the horrors we face. In the face of society's horrors, a retreat to the bar, to the sweet lullaby that Sheryl describes as a "good beer buzz, early in the morning".

And WHY? Because "all I wanna do is have some fun" while the "good people of the world" are "washing their cars on their lunch breaks"... FLAUNTING THEIR MIDDLE-CLASS EMPTY LIVES JUST ACROSS THE ROAD FROM WHERE SHERYL AND BILLY ARE DRINKING!!!

The imagery could not be starker. Hedonism is counter-posed to the grinding life of the average pleb "in skirts and suits" under late monopoly capitalism, with its "giant car washes"!

NONE OF THAT FOR BILLY AND SHERYL!!! ALL THEY WANNA DO IS HAVE "SOME FUN"!!!

Sure, a "happy couple enters the bar" who are "dangerously close to one another", threatening the sanctuary of the bar with all their "happiness" and "closeness"... but fear not! For "Otherwise the bar is ours..."

Sheryl and Billy are alienated from that outside world of happy couples and suit and skirt wearing folk with their "shiny Datsuns and Buicks" who are "hosing and scrubbing as best they can", before the suckers go "back to the phone company..." (oh, OUCH! Probably one of those call centre jobs too... you know, where you not just deal with arseholes constantly the entire shift wanting to know how to plug in a fucking phone extension cord or blaming you personally for how the privatised company has cut every conceivable corner, including the corner that used to be marked "MAKE THINGS FUCKING WORK" in the pursuit of the greatest profit for the cheapest outlay imaginable, but all while the bastards monitor your fucking toilet breaks and sack anyone who even *mentions* the phrase "union" on company premises... )

FUCKING SUCKERS! Billy and Sheryl are right across the road, in that darkened dive bar, getting pissed and it is only 12pm on TUESDAY! What MOTHERFUCKING REBELS!

The song depicts a desire for a somewhat extreme binge that lasts from a "morning beer buzz" right through to when the "sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard". (Interesting side point here, until I had to google the fucking words for this blog post, I had no idea what Crow was singing there, like I thought it was something to do "sitting on a couple of bars", but that never made any sense.)

And yet the ultimate tragedy, of which the story's narrator (if not the actual singer) is all-too-aware, is that the only outlet they have found to express their rebellion is alcohol abuse.

And, what is more, the actual "fun" activities, despite the presumably constant drinking, that are mentioned involve peeling labels off bottles of beer and shredding them (admittedly, this is one of my favourite pastimes), then lighting matches from an "oversized pack", letting them burn right down to Billy's "thick fingers" before "blowing and cursing them out."

Then, when that gets boring, Billy watches the empty beer bottles as they spin on the floor. Wow! No wonder Sheryl notes in the chorus that she's "got a feeling the party has just begun".

Perhaps sensing the one-sided inadequacies of Sheryl Crow's 1994 chart-topper, YouTube offered in its right-hand side bar of suggested related songs, for no other explicable reason, Jesus and Mary Chain's "Darklands".



In this song, the miserable Scottish bastards that are the brothers Reid actually *embrace* wholesale the misery that surrounds them. Far from hiding in some dodgy pub for a whole day or two, they CALL FOR THE HORROR TO COME AND FUCKING MEET THEM!

I'm going to the darklands
To talk in rhyme
With my chaotic soul
As sure as life means nothing
And all things end in nothing
And heaven i think
Is too close to hell
I want to move i want to go
I want to go
Oh something won't let me
Go to the place
Where the darklands are
And i awake from dreams
To a scary world of screams
And heaven i think
Is too close to hell
I want to move i want to go
I want to go
Take me to the dark
Oh god I get down on my knees
And i feel like i could die
By the river of disease
And i feel that i'm dying
And i'm dying
I'm down on my knees
Oh i'm down
I want to go i want to stay
I want to stay

Yeah that is RIGHT motherfuckers! William Reid takes on vocal duties ahead of his brother Jim on this one to sing that life MEANS NOTHING! And all things END IN NOTHING!

Listen to that Glaswegian prick! You wanna escape? You wanna seek "refuge" in drink? Well, just you remember, good friend, that William Reid teaches us that "heaven, I think, is too close to hell"!

But even the path of embracing the horror is not easy. William pleads, over a melancholic but nonetheless enchantingly catchy tune: "Take me to the dark".

But "something won't let me go to the place where the darklands are". OH NO! What? What won't let you, William? It is never spelled out. But the poor bastard is "down on my knees, oh I'm down".

All he wants to do is "talk to my chaotic soul". But "I awake from dreams, to a scary world of screams". Oh the poetry of the chaotic soul!

That 1987 classic came from the album of the same name -- a follow up the much-lauded feedback-laden 1985 debut Psychocandy that largely (but not entirely) eschews the feedback noise for a greater focus on the melodies. Dark melodies, OF COURSE.

Now, if you don't believe me, you can listen to the entire 36.09 minute-long masterpiece on Youtube, but let me assure you, the defining characteristic of the album is pointed to in its title. It is dark. Really dark.

It is dark from start to finish. Like, listening to it right now, as I type I am hearing these lines: "As far as I can tell, I'm being dragged from here to hell. And all my time in hell is spent with YOU!"

And that could be any song.

At its absolute brightest, the album manages a kind of melancholic wistfulness. Its happiest point comes in the final song when young Jimmy Reid finally concedes that perhaps "there's something warm about the rain".

I mean, it also makes a point of noting that "people die in their living rooms, but they do not need this god almighty gloom", but, nonetheless, that is as cheery as the fucking thing gets.

And such lines are, as often-as-not, put to truly great pop tunes. I mean, take the sublime April Skies ("As I stand here don't you walk away, and the world comes tumbling down...") or the equally great pop tune and lyrically self-explanatory Happy When it Rains.

I still remember when I first bought that album. It was out at Curtin University in Perth back in say 1998 or early 1999. I was "studying" at Curtin, as in technically enrolled in some first year courses. As was my want when enrolled in first year courses, I did anything except turn up to any classes. In this case, I looked over a second-hand CD stall set up on campus and found Darklands for ten bucks.

I was hung over. I was hung over a lot in those days. Much like *these days* really. A year or so past my first real broken heart, I was a mess of heavy drinking and messed up nerves caused by working too many graveyard shift at McDonald's every week. Too much sleep-deprivation, caffeine and alcohol.

I was an angry, confused, emotional wreck. The album was perfect. I was instantly hooked. I listened to it obsessively for about a year.

And I get what YouTube was trying to tell me, yeah? "STOP RUNNING FROM THE HORROR! DON'T JUST HIDE IN A HAZE OF ANOTHER DRINKING BINGE! STARE THE HORROR IN THE FUCKING FACE! LOOK AT IT! AND MAYBE TRY AND PUT IT TO THREE CHORDS!"

Yeah, I get it. But, you know, I am not 19 any more. And I can’t play guitar. And black was never my colour, not with my complexion.

Yeah, I used to go the Goth clubs in Perth, the least Gothiest citizen of that city imaginable. But I'd go, coz in Perth in the 90s, you had a lot of places for rednecks, endless places for yuppies and maybe one or two for Goths. And that was it.

And the key thing was, of them all, the Goths were the least likely to punch you if you nicked their drink when their back was turned. They'd just glare at you, but they did that anyway. It was hard to tell what was a greater crime for a Goth -- nicking their beer when their back was turned or being the sort of pond scum who just didn't look very Gothy.

And, of course, you always got to dance to Love Will Tear Us Apart. But it was mainly the drink thing. And you could score cheap dexies. But that goes without saying.

And in other news....


'I put my shoes on backward on the way out to a dance. Then I had to go back home cause I forgot my pants'

The greatest drinking game ever invented -- or 'life', as I call it

The Overthinging Person's Drinking Game was a post by a friend on Facebook, that wonderful outlet that provides a window into so much that is culturally important, especially if we are talking about my incessant posting of Tom Waits clips.

Finally, a drinking game based on deep-seated angst, alienation and uncertainty. Or, as I like to call it, "life". Now I know what you are thinking: surely I drink purely for the endless joy heavy drinking brings to my life! What the fuck does *Carlo Sands* have to be uncertain about, what personal angst could possibly haunt the life of a man with such truly wondrous cheekbones, as shown in the profile pic thing on this very blog?

I know, I know. My cheekbones are truly amazing. But even the combination of my cheekbones and extensive collection of Tom Waits' albums, I too -- yes even Carlo Sands -- stare in panic into the empty pit of horror that is life in late monopoly capitalism sliding ceaselessly towards a eco-holocaust, wracked by war and Nickelback.

To prove my point, I provide a short list of just some of the terrors haunting me right now:

Facebook: It is fucking up. My account has been a nightmare for the past week or so, with comments not appearing or disappearing or being unable to access things and shit repeating and JESUS FUCK I have built my entire existence around that fucking thing. It is extremely disturbing -- like having things in your daily life just fucking disappear, like your bed at 3am, or a train that just never ... ah... actually, maybe the bastards who run CityRail have bought a controlling interest in Facebook's public float. That could explain it.

My latest Carlo's Corner YouTube rant: Like seriously, just not enough of you bastards have watched it. What, 178 views? For an angry rant about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? Who the fuck knew there wasn't mass market for that? Watch it, you useless pricks. Then go and give me a jubilee, it is long overdue.

Trying to do stand-up comedy: What kind of mentally deranged idiot would decide to try and do stand-up comedy, and embark on a series of open-mic gigs in Sydney's suburban pubs? Severely mentally deranged idiots who probably also have drinking problems that unhinge them further.

Based on my experience on Wednesday, here is a pretty accurate guide to how such a thing is likely to go: Call time will be 7.30pm, and when you show up, defying extreme weather warnings and pouring rain and cold, it will just be a group of comics sitting around a table "workshopping" jokes among themselves until well past the start time until someone finally makes the effort to cajole enough of the pub regulars to make the thing worthwhile and then the MC won't even bother telling you when, in the line up, you will be called to the stage to perform in front of 10 or so comics who have mostly seen your shit and the handful of pub regulars dragged in in a desperate bid to give the evening some kind of point as you stand in front of a microphone on a concrete floor in the semi-exposed coldest part of the fucking suburban pub and look out, blinding by two HUGE FUCKING SPOTLIGHTS they have set up just two metres in front of the mic stand that achieves nothing except to disorientate you and stop you from having any clue as to how your rant is being received beyond the few laughs you can hear come up every now and then, but not from the only audience member you can actually see... a bloke sitting right to the side so that he is out of the glare and he just spends the entire time looking up at you blankly, never once even smiling, or even frowning in disapproval just looking at you with a studied boredom AND NOT EVEN YOUR JOKE ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE OBVIOUSLY IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE ECONOMICS 101 STATES CLEARLY THAT WHEN IN A SEVERE ECONOMIC CRISIS THE FIRST THING TO DO IS BUILD A GIANT STAGE AND PUT ROBBIE FUCKING WILLIAMS ON IT WILL CAUSE HIS REACTION TO SHIFT EVEN ONE MILIMETRE!

Fucking madness. I am doing it again next Wednesday at the Laugh Garage.

Essendon Football Club and the "Curse of June": It is June, time for the Mighty Bombers to start losing in the Australian Football League. Their season structure has been quite well-developed over the past three or four seasons: runaway success in the early stages, stunning fans and observers alike with an exciting brand of footie that helps the Bombers win games against teams much more fancied and generate excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Bombers are back! Then the calendar ticks over to June and Essendon, with the same sense of dramatic panache with which they raced up the ladder, start to lose to teams no one should ever lose to. Like Melbourne. Which is exactly what happened last Saturday night.

Seriously, I think Essendon's forwards had some sort of sponsorship deal whereby they get a dollar every time I scream: "FOR FUCK'S SAKE KICK STRAIGHT YOU USELESS BASTARDS!" If they did, they'd at least have secured financial security in retirement out of that game alone.

And while we are on the topic, let me add the near impossibility of actually watching an AFL game in fucking Sydney. True, the Melbourne game was on digital TV, an advance over ever single other Essendon game this year bar the one against Richmond (which, it not yet being June, Essendon duly won), but I don't have a fucking set top box coz that shit costs money, I have none and what little have goes on my booze bill.

So, I trudged into some fucking dive of a place in Redfern with a TAB on the ground floor and a restaurant and bar upstairs and, after much cajoling, managed to convince them to turn one of the dozen or so TV screens all showing the fucking rugby league onto the Essendon game -- the smallest screen out the back in the semi-exposed cold bit (which seems to be where I spend *all* my evenings these days) with the sound down so the people playing pool could hear the rugby league.

And then, having been earnestly watching and drinking beer, just before three quarter time, with Essendon still just in front but Melbourne coming back and the tension level building to near breaking point, a Melbourne player takes a mark about 40 metres out and walks in to a bid to kick the most important goal in the game so far and I am on the edge of my seat willing with every inch for him to miss and just as he goes to kick the ball the GODDAMN RUGBY LEAGUE FINISHES SO EVERY SINGLE SCREEN IN THE ENTIRE PUB SWITCHES TO MUSIC CLIPS AND BEGINS PLAYING "THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMM".

It took me about 15 minutes of desperate, panicked pleading and looking like I was about to cry to convince the manager to change the thing centrally so all the screens changed from clips of shit music from 1991 that no one was watching to the Bombers-Demons game. So that I could, nearly having multiple heart attacks, watch Essendon lose by a goal. To Melbourne, a club in free fall who had not looked close to winning a single game all season up until that point.

So, as you can see. I have problems. I need to drink. Clearly. So, be as cool as Carlo Sands and try out the drinking game below that someone else has written but which I have copied and pasted to my own blog. No need to thank me, just buy me a beer. I am serious. GET ME A FUCKING BEER!

* * *

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game by Leigh Alexander

When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.

When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink.

Drink if you experience a sudden flood of shame at the realization that you haven’t done much to deserve really any of the things to which you aspire.

If you suddenly realize you actually felt militantly entitled to something while sabotaging yourself, drink twice.

If you spend a long time mulling the nature of ‘deserving’ and what it actually means, and if you can’t really resolve the question of whether anyone specifically ‘deserves’ anything and come to an impasse about chaos and the innate unfairness of life, drink.

When a person or situation isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and you can’t figure out whether this is your fault for projecting unfounded qualities onto the person or someone else’s fault for actually misleading you, mistreating you or letting you down, drink.

Drink when ambivalence haunts you.

If you notice that you unconsciously but consistently put yourself into situations that deprive you of your resources and move you further away from your goals, drink.

If you cannot work out whether your present situation, challenge, relationship et al is yet another state of unconscious self-sabotage despite the fact you feel deprived, drink.

If you can’t tell whether you’re actually in a negative situation or just an ungrateful person who blames everyone else for your problems, drink.

Drink if you aren’t sure whether you are assuming too much responsibility for your own current unhappiness or not enough.

If you find that after long hours of contemplative malaise you suddenly feel as if nothing in particular is actually wrong and you feel the desire to relax or celebrate, drink.

If you suddenly find yourself highly focused on gratitude and create for yourself a long list of all the things that you are doing successfully or correctly or that you are fortunate to have and want to feel unburdened or euphoric, drink.

If you can’t decide whether you are actually ‘celebrating’ or simply engaging in artificial gestures of relief, take two drinks.

If you can’t tell whether you are an overly-strict person with inappropriate guilt about normal human self-moderation behavior or an avoidant adult child making excuses for your poor coping, drink.

If you feel persistently like you are failing to grow up, drink.

If you can’t tell whether a certain youthfulness in others represents an admirable refusal to adhere to repressive social norms or an actual inability to deal with difficult adult challenges, drink.

If you aren’t sure what it is right to expect of yourself, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you are repeatedly failing to reach a personal set of behavioral goals or simply consistently feeling inadequate no matter how hard you work, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you need to ‘lighten up’ or employ more self-discipline, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you do or don’t want to talk to your friends about it because you aren’t sure whether you are a reasonable person experiencing occasional insecurity or a neurotic person who cannot be soothed, drink.

If you suspect you might not even have much reason to be unhappy and in fact just overthink everything and lack a stable internal compass, drink.

If you think you might just feel lost because you drink too often, but then you think too much when you aren’t drinking, cry.

If you’d rather not think about this kind of thing right now or maybe ever, take two drinks.




'I don't have a drinking problem, 'cept when I can't get a drink.' There you go, an *alternative* version of a Tom Waits classic. Seriously, get me a fucking beer right now! Use The Paypal function in the right column if you have to. I am fucking thirsty.

The Town: a story of one man's heroic struggle against tyranny and sobriety.

A lot of people have been asking me just how I got to be such a miserable and embittered bastard.

Well, there is a reason. See, once upon a time in a land far, far away, I used to live in this town. I shall refrain from naming the town, as I believe the authorities still have an arrest warrant out for me over a small misunderstanding involving a machete, a bottle of gin and a town council meeting on the question of pub closing times.

I have decided to render the story of what occurred in this town so many years ago, which shall go some way to explaining my demeanour, in the form of a short story as part of my bid for the Nobel Prize for Literature, so cruelly denied me up to this point despite my profound work in the field of poetry.


THE TOWN

By Carlo Sands

Then they locked me in the tower and I don’t know why. I mean, I used to walk the town streets in shorts despite not really having the legs for it, but still.

Or maybe it was the drinking. Staggering through the darkness and kicking poles for fun. Lucky I had some sturdy boots or I would have broken more toes than I did.

I did stab a man once, maybe that’s it. I stabbed him amid the stench of urine and vomit in the alley behind a pub. There was a fight over a game of pool and everyone knows if you sink the white while on the black you lose. In the alley, as we sought to resolve the dispute, it was kill or be killed.

I watched him lie there in a growing pool of dark red in the dim light from the pub kitchen, swigging gin. A dog ran past and, nerves on end, I threw the bottle after it. Fucking thing was two thirds full.

But how many unsolved murders are there in this godforsaken town? It can’t be that, I’d recall a trial, surely.

Or maybe it was my tilt for the office of the President of the United States. Such a lovely building, the White House. But I lost, only just but I lost.

Now, I have no problem with them locking up a past or even sitting US president, goddamn criminals the lot of them. But they can’t lock you up for trying, surely, not for the crimes you would have committed as Commander in Chief of the greatest army ever to slaughter for freedom.

Maybe it was my new wave haircut I used to have or the poetry I wrote when I was 21 and old enough to know better. Can they do that? I don’t mean should they, but can they?

All I knew is I was in the fucking tower. And it was fucking dark.

I had missed something somewhere.

* * *

What happened next I could never have guessed.

I was locked up for god knows how long. It felt like five lifetimes, or being forced to listen to entire album of folk protest songs.

Then one day light streamed into my cell as some bastard burst through the door in a dramatic flourish. “Come on!” he yelled, “let’s go!”

He was dressed head to toe in red and carried a card table.

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked. “What the hell is going on?”

“It’s the Forces of Evil”, he half-whispered, leaning towards me. I wasn’t sure if they were the ones who locked me up or wanted me free.

Before I could ask, he yelled “Let's go!” again and handed me the card table to carry.

We exited through the busted door and made our way through dark, damp and twisting corridors that never seemed to end.

My nerves weren’t helped by my liberator insisting on stopping every ten metres to set up the card table and put a badge board on top, offering small, cheap badges with a variety of political slogans.

“You never know when people might want a badge,” he said. “Hmmm”, he added with what I swear was a note of sadness, “I guess the ‘Free Carlo’ ones are out of date.”

“Not yet, let’s fucking move”, I said, before he thought too hard about the potential loss of revenue associated with my freedom and changed his mind.

Finally, we emerged from the tower and stumbled out into the bright streets of the town.

As I got my bearings I was stunned by what I saw. I left my red-clad liberator at a corner to hawk a petition and wandered in awe.

Things had changed in my absence and I didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on.

On the main street, bankers and beggars were dancing the waltz together, out of time with what seemed a plague of buskers playing “Stand by Me” and massacring Neil Young.

Literally on one corner. A gang of buskers had Neil Young tied to a chair and were trying to torture him to death with renditions of “Heart of Gold”.

Town treasury officials were walking the streets, with baseball caps in outstretched hands asking passerbuyers for money.

“Hey man”, one asked me, “could you spare a couple of bucks for the train?”

“What the fuck is with the bankers?” I asked, watching one dance the salsa with a dishevelled homeless man near a busker 13 minutes into a version of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

“Trying to trying to look like they’re poor”, the official said. “Seriously, man, can you help us out with two bucks?”

I shook my head and walked further. I stopped to watch journalists giving head to defence department officials on park benches, the journos stopping every now and then to type furiously on their iPads. I guessed they were taking down official statements, though I am not sure what value there was in “Oh, yeah just there!” and “Yes! With the tongue!”.

I assumed “Fuck! Watch the teeth!” was off the record.

The town was always a disturbing place, but this seemed insane. I found no obvious means of escape. The train was running 16 years late and all buses had disappeared after they were flogged off for two scratchie tickets.

There was some excitement, I was told by a bored looking old man in need of a shave behind the ticket counter at the train station, when one of the scatchies won a free scratchie. Unfortunately, the third scratchie won nothing.

Fuck, I thought, I need a drink.

My local, I discovered, had been renamed. It was now called the Four Standard Drinks Or More Is Binge Drinking Hotel.

When I tried to enter some lump of beef dressed in black with an earpiece stopped me and grabbed my hand. The bastard stamped a bar code onto my palm.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked calmly.

He stared at me. “You buy a drink and bar staff scan it. Once you have had four standard drinks it starts beeping to alert security.”

“Then what?”

He stared in greater wonder. “Then we come over and beat the shit out of you and throw you out on your alcohol-abusing arse!”

A loud repeated beeping broke out from just inside the door. The bouncer said “Excuse me” and went inside, followed in quick time with a sharp cry of pain and then a body flying out the door.

A young man dressed in a collared shirt, trousers and smart casual shoes picked himself up slowly and stumbled away.

The bouncer came out and resumed his stance, feet part, hands behind his back. His face appeared expressionless behind his sunglasses.

I glanced apprehensively as I walked past him into the pub. I regretted I didn’t have my machete, seized when they locked me up for reasons that remained a mystery.

Inside, I looked around with growing dismay.

It was no longer dingy, but brightly lit. The old, scarred wooden tables and chairs were gone, replaced with shining stainless steel surfaces for as far as I could see.

And the uncomfortable-looking shining white swivel seats were occupied by young men and women in smart casual dress engaged in what, as far as I could tell, was disturbingly polite and restrained conversation.

The jukebox was no longer in its dusty corner and the sound system was playing Nickelback.

With a growing sense of horror, I approached the bar. I asked a thoroughly bored young woman, who I picked for an English backpacker, for a schooner.

“Light or midstrength?” was the uninterested response in a Manchester accent.

I was staring at her in shock when my ears caught a sound I hadn’t noticed over the plaintive wailing from the Nickelback CD. Someone was beeping from the very far corner of the pub.

I looked over into the pub’s only dark corner and made out a shape throwing back the contents of a small glass. I looked around but saw no security rushing over to deal with the issue. The bartender kept looking blank.

I started to walk over and the figure noticed me.

“Carlo!” she cried amid the beeps. “Good to see you! Have a drink, you’ll need one!

She yelled at the bartender for two scotches, which the woman dutifully began to pour.

“Magda!”, I said in some surprise, pulling up a white swivel seat. “It has been a long time.”

“It sure fucking has”, she said, beeping. “You’re out of the tower? Some big fucking changes.”

She shook her head as the drinks arrived. The bartender walked away as quickly as she arrived, ignoring the mad siren going off on Magda’s right hand.

I took a big gulp of the scotch and it burned delightfully down my throat. Such a long time between drinks.

“So how come”, I asked as the English backpacker slotted back behind the bar, “they serve you proper booze and don’t toss you out?”

“Ha! They stopped trying after I decked two dozen bouncers and a squad of cops a couple of years back. Hang on.”

She shouted to the bartender and raised her hand. Dutifully, the bartender came over and ran a scan over Magda’s palm, silencing the beeping.

We were left with the sound of Chad Kroeger whining, with an affected growl, about having been down the bottom of every bottle. Why such an occurrence was cause for whining escaped me.

I looked at Magda and she appeared to have not changed in however many fucking years I was locked away. Of indeterminable age, she had beautiful, flowing auburn hair, bright green eyes and arms like knotted tree trunks.

Once, with the courage only a serious pear cider binge can bring, I had suggested perhaps we could make our way home together when the pub closed. She laughed hysterically for about 15 minutes and then said, in her sweet and tender way, “It’s your fucking turn at the bar, you useless prick!”

“So what the hell is going on?” I asked as I took another deep gulp of scotch.

Her face darkened. “It’s the Forces of Evil.”

There was a silence, broken when Magda looked at her empty glass and shouted across the room: “MORE FUCKING SCOTCH!”

Then she turned back to me. “They saw you as a potential threat to their evil plans, so they had you locked up. Since you’re gone, their control over the institutions of power in this town has grown. Their power is now complete.”

“It is hell, Carlo,” she added and for the first time ever I sensed fear in her voice.

“Well, drink up”, she said when fresh glasses arrived. “Place closes at 7.30.”

“7.30??!!?”

“Gotta make sure citizens are well rested for their compulsory 5.30am jog to to the gym.”

“WHAT THE FUCK???”

“It’s alright”, Magda assured me. “You can crash at my place. The fuckers learned the hard way not to try and wake me before midday.”

On our way out, Magda stopped at the bar and ordered the bartender to get her a full bottle from the top shelf, a well-aged single malt scotch.

She turned to leave when a thought struck her and she turned back. “Oh, and that bottle of cheap gin down there for Carlo.”

Back at Magda’s, we sat up all night drinking and discussing plans. Things had to change. We could not accept this tyranny. The rich had bought the entire place and the poor, denied the most basic public services, were sober and fit.

It was a living nightmare.

The only choice was to resist, the only question was how.

“That activist who freed you,” Magda said. “We need his help.”

I was less than convinced, but Magda, swallowing the last drop of her scotch, called him up and invited him over for what she described as “the formation of a united front committee”.

He arrived and explained earnestly that he was there to attend the meeting as the official representative of the United Alliance of Popular Democratic Resistance of the Workers and the People (UAPDRWP).

He enquired as to the proposed program for the committee. We had worked this one out during the night.

Our revolutionary program was three simple points:

1) Immediate implementation of a revolutionary law that under no circumstances shall any busker play a Neil Young song unless said busker is capable of proving, via appropriate documentation, that he or she is, in fact, Neil Young. In the absence of being Neil Young, said busker shall be required under pain of death to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

2) Immediate repeal of all laws relating to the false scientific principle that a mere four standard drinks (less than three schooners) is “binge drinking”. All enforced “fitness” laws shall be repealed in the interests of general happiness.

3) Tax the rich to pay for decent public services abandoned or privatised during the reign of the Forces of Evil and an end to exploitation, injustice, discrimination, unfairness, slavery etc etc etc etc. (We kinda got bored during this one and it was really there for the benefit of the UAPDRWP rep.)

The UAPDRWP rep listened with interest and nodded.

“I shall have to consult my organisation”, he said and walked into the next room to make a call on his phone.

We caught snippets of the conversation.

“That’s because it is a FUCKING UNITED FRONT! We agree with point three, that is grounds to unite in order to ... but we need to relate to the masses and ... it is NOT a violation of our program, we can agree with key parts … well that is JUST ABSENTIONIST BULLSHIT and ... Listen, you fucking Bogdanovist arsehole ... FUCK YOU you can’t split, you’re FUCKING EXPELLED!”

He returned and informed us: “The UAPDRWP has agreed to the formation of a united front around the three points set out for the draft provisional program of the committee. We shall throw our full forces behind the campaign against the Forces of Evil.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we have been weakened by a recent damaging split carried out by an irresponsible and fundamentally disloyal minority, but we have emerged stronger and more united.

“Of course, as a united front I feel obliged to point out that all forces involved retain full independence of propaganda and activity, including freedom for the fullest criticism where deemed necessary.”

That seemed fair to the two of us.

We decided the first course of action would be to stand myself in the approaching election for All Powerful Ruler of the Town on the agreed upon program. With that, the red-clad activist shook our hands and departed, saying something about an important stall to set up.

Magda went out and returned with fresh supplies of booze. I asked her what was the real value of involving the UAPDRWP, but she insisted I’d see.

And sure enough, by the following morning, a walk confirmed the entire town was covered with A3 posters in Impact font declaring the candidacy of Carlo Sands for All Powerful Ruler of the Town in the coming poll and spelling out the program.

So, the battle had been announced. The program proved wildly popular. T-shirts, bumper stickers and graffiti appeared as if out of nowhere with my name and a seemingly spontaneously adopted logo of a schooner of beer.

How would the Forces of Evil respond?

Come election day, polls suggested our campaign would score a run away victory. I cast my vote before the cameras, ballot in one hand, bottle of gin raised high in the other.

Surely, all there was to do was wait until the moment came for me to deliver my victory speech and accept the office of All Powerful Ruler of the Town.

I was enjoying a quiet pre-election victory drink at Magda’s when they came. It was a full-scale military operation. Heavily armed soldiers, tanks, fighter jets overhead, heavy artillery lined up and down the street and, we were told, the incumbent All Powerful Ruler of the Town was in his office with his finger on “the button”.

They stormed the house and a general covered with medals from the top collar of his military jacket to the bottom of his every-so-slightly flared khaki trousers informed me the election had been cancelled due to the discovery of a “threat to public security and basic human decency”.

Information had come to light, the general said, about a plot originating from this address and associated with my campaign. He refused to give details of the plot, insisting it was not appropriate for "mixed company".

I would have to go with them.

Magda jumped to her feet, empty scotch bottle in hand. She took out a platoon before eventually being subdued by a barrage of targetted cruise missile strikes.

I was dragged out and thrown into the back of an armoured vehicle. In a huge military convoy, we drove through the streets of the town. It was the aftermath of a one-sided war and dead bodies were strewn everywhere.

“We have restored order”, the general told me, his medals clanking noisily as he sat up straight.

“In fact,” he said with a small smile at the memory, “I have just come from an important media briefing on the matter.” This reminded him to do up his fly.

The Four Standard Drinks Or More Is Binge Drinking Hotel was burned out, which struck me as no great loss.

The buskers still played, “Summer of ‘69” seemingly a favourite, but the homeless danced alone.

They tossed me back into my cell in the tower and shut the repaired and reinforced door shut.

Here I was again, in the same dark fucking cell.

Only this time I wasn’t alone. Someone else’s voice broke the silence.

The UAPDRWP spokesperson said: “The problem was we made a strategic error, an electoralist deviation. We should have sought to rely on the self-organisation of the working class and based ourselves on the strength of their independent mass mobilisation.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I said and tried to get some sleep.



'No can do this, no can do that, what the hell can you do my friend, in this place that you call your town'.

Scientists take three decades to discover what one evening's session proves

Did you know it is 2012 already? I fucking noticed, to such an extent I even got three quarters of the way through a blog post on 2011 and the horrors awaiting to us in the new year ... until I procrastinated on finishing it long enough for laptop to fuck up, the cause of much whining on Facebook.

Now it is working again, I shall limit myself to merely noting this important news: Scientists have done it once more. Let no one ever call the fuckers useless again.

Yes... according to the Sydney Morning Herald, scientists, after a full 30 years of research, have provided conclusive evidence that drinking alcohol is fun.

A full 30 years of research, and they say: "Drinking alcohol makes people feel better because it produces the same chemicals in the brain as exercising and laughing, a study has proved for the first time."

In fact, we may say here that the therapeutic value of drinking, so important given the state of the world, is further heightened by the fact that I always find a drinking goes hand in hand with laughing. Quite possibly due to the fact that I always find that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, encourages me to dance.

And, on this topic, let me make it perfectly clear: I will "dance" while shouting "look at me, I'm dancing like Jarvis Cocker!" in return for booze. Same thing with my renowned turn as Axl Rose. (My rendition of Blaze of Glory is free. It is my gift to the world.)




If drunk, I will offer my rendition of this one for free, as my gift to the world.


And exercise... anyone who who has had a decent session in the company of the Conversation film series co-creator Ben knows that, at a certain time of the night, you are going to be sprinting from the cops ... or indeed Ben, carrying his tattoo gun bought for 30 bucks over the net from some obscure Chinese vetinary clinic, shouting "Do you trust me? Come on, just a small one!"

Apparently, these scientists studied the brains of drinkers and discovered the act of drinking releases happiness-inducing endorphins.

Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood here. Such a finding can only be welcomed in this age of relentless anti-booze propaganda and associated calls for laws to restrict our ability to consume it.

But... now, I do not wish to question the intelligence or efficiency of the scientific community. I would not dream of such a thing at a time when scientists can be killed with impunity by The Only Democracy In The Middle East (TM). (Seriously, why is it if I kill a scientist with a car bomb I am an "evil terrorist", but Israel does it and the world is all like, "whatevs"?)

And I mean it is not like there is anything more pressing for scientists to try and deal with.

But... I mean... 30 years??? What the fuck is wrong with these people? One decent fucking session at the Townie is more than enough evidence.

I mean, you work a fucking horrible job and you live in a fucking horrible world ... you want a fucking drink. Why? Because in a world run by goddamn arseholes you need *something* to make you feel good.

Oh but that is just alienation... OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS!!! If you are not alienated from a status quo as horrific as this one, you have some serious issues and are probably some sort of sociopath.

The only possible explanation I can think of for why it might take scientists 30 years to draw such a screamingly obvious conclusion is that they began their experiments back then and have only now sobered up enough to write up their findings. In which case, I can only say to them: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? Get back to pub you bastards, you are missing the very aptly-named happy hour.




Siobhan is having a whiskey, Siobhan is having a gin ... and she is happy and she’s warming, cause Siobhan is having fun! In one two-and-a-bit-minute song, The Tossers sum up what it seems to have taken scientists three fucking decades to figure out.

They are coming for our goon -- stand-up at The Shannon

Dedicated readers of this blog will know that i have had a love and hate relationship with The Shannon Hotel, on Abercrombie Street in the inner-Sydney suburb of Chippendale over the years.

But, give them their due, they let Carlo Sands test out some of the things I badly think need ranting about last Tuesday at their Comedy on the Edge. That's right, five minutes straight of Carlo Sands ranting.

Well, I say "let Carlo Sands". I wasn't actually there, on stage, in person. I got some hack to do it for me. I felt if I tried it in person, the sheer glory of my cheekbones (as can be seen by my profile pic for this blog) would just far too distracting.

So, naturally, I got a redhead to deliver my lines. People always laugh at redheads, either that or physically attack them. (Interestingly, there is some good news for humanity on this front, with an international network of sperm banks banning redheads from donating. Apparently, and understandably, simply no one wants the stuff (except Ireland where sperm of redheaded origin "sells like hotcakes").

You can watch the clips, expertly filmed by a renowned director, who may or may not be both redheaded and Irish, below.

I can't say, in all honesty, I am entirely happy with how it went. I mean, for fuck's sake, I was trying to sound the warning that the FUCKING GOVERNMENT is coming for OUR GODDAMN GOON and these bastards simply LAUGHED! Did they not believe me? I was hoping for small riot at least.

It just goes to show, if you want something done properly, NEVER get a redhead to do it for you.

Mark Steel tackles booze hysteria and saves me the trouble

You know, I was just about to write a new rant on drinking hysteria when British socialist, comedian and columnist Mark Steel did it for me.

In his weekly Independent column, Steel focuses on the hysteria, which we know more than enough about in Australia.

As we *also* know only too well, the hysteria (of the "four standard drinks is binge drinking" variety) is just ground work for horrific attacks -- such as the outrageous reintroduction of drunk-and-disorderly laws in New South Wales.

Really, it is hard not to take this personally. I would not be surprised to find out the bill was informally known as the "Carlo Sands Law".

So, I warn the Brits to expect legal trouble.

Steel focuses his piece on the situation in Britain. From this we may conclude the attacks on drinkers are international, and therefore so must be our resistance!!!

As Martin Luther King Jnr once said, a threat of sobriety anywhere is a threat to intoxication everywhere.





Remember: When we drink, we are not just drinking for ourselves, but for humanity.


Mark Steel: Alcohol can be a problem, as can doctors

Britain is getting drunker than ever, apparently, with a government "consultation" expected to reveal the shocking statistic that, compared with 20 years ago, there are 80 per cent more documentaries or news items showing a clip of a girl in a short skirt being sick on a bench while a lad with no shirt makes a noise like a werewolf as he's thrown into a police van.

But more worrying is the increase in pompous doctors who come on the radio or programmes like The One Show to give us guidelines, telling us, "Those of us who think we're drinking moderately may still be at risk. For example if you have one glass of wine and then later in life have another, you are technically an alcoholic."

Then they say, "Of course there's no harm in drinking safely. I often enjoy an Italian wine with my evening meal, by opening the bottle and pouring it all into a bush. That way there's only a small risk to my liver, as long as I do it once a month as a treat."

Websites offering advice on safe drinking are full of tips such as, "If you're thinking of having a lager please consult your doctor first." Or, "One way of cutting down consumption while still enjoying a wild girls' night out, is on alternate rounds instead of having a drink have a bowl of soup, or go canoeing."

On the Drinkaware site I looked at, I was told three pints of medium- strength beer, twice a week, can lead to "heart disease, liver disease, impotence and cancer." I didn't check but I expect it went on, "and a fourth pint will cause cat flu, plague, rust, feeling like a woman trapped inside a man's body, fascism and a tendency to suddenly turn inside-out in the morning."

It also told me, "If you consume alcohol to feel good, or avoid feeling bad, your drinking could become problematic." So it's only safe to drink if it's to make yourself feel worse.

Still, alcohol can cause havoc, so we shouldn't be flippant. You only have to look at the demise of poor Amy Winehouse, who presumably had three pints of bitter on a Sunday and then another three the following Friday.

But the campaign against drunkenness doesn't seem to have learned from the "Just say no" anti-drugs campaign, which connects with hardly anyone as it insists drugs lead rapidly to disaster and aren't fun.

But if they weren't fun there'd be no need to tell people not to take them, just as there's no need to tell people "Just say no" to sticking your bare arse into a nest of wasps because no one does it anyway because it's not fun.

Similarly any attempt to reduce drunkenness must depend on acknowledging that people do it because it seems fun. The alcohol industry appears to be aware of this, which is why it markets drinks for teenagers as bursting with fun, then denies they're doing so with comments such as, "The product 'Marshmallow-alco', in which a marshmallow is filled with a cocktail of vodka and Southern Comfort, is not in any way aimed primarily at a younger market range."

But the Government's "consultation" is being run in conjunction with the alcohol industry, to such an extent that the British Medical Association have withdrawn from it altogether as a pointless exercise, because if we were to be cynical, the drinks industry may not be the keenest people to find ways of cutting down the sale of alcohol.

So the complex job of getting young people away from drug addiction and alcoholism will still be done by charities, such as Mentor UK. But they have declared the recent cuts in rehab clinics have made that almost impossible, saying these cuts "could have devastating implications".

So we're left with doctors telling us not to drink sherry on two consecutive Christmases, and if Amy was still around she could have updated her song by singing, "They tried to make me go to rehab but they said, 'Piss off, we've shut'."