Archive Listing
February 21, 2007 - February 14, 2007

Friday, February 17, 2006

THE LIGHTHOUSE ON THE BEACH. Sometimes the news is just too full of obvious absurdity to dignify it with comment. How is it possible to highlight the lunkheaded narcissism of a David Gregory more starkly than he does himself every time he opens his baboon mouth? How is it possible to further underscore the screamingly self-evident hypocrisy of mainstream media that are too "sensitive" to print mildly satirical cartoons about Muhammed but too committed to the public's "right to know" not to publish quasi-pornographic photos from the years-old Abu Ghraib scandal? Even repeating the facts for the purpose of laughing is a tautology. The people whose job it is to collect and report the facts about today are insane. How can we escape their manufactured loony bin of jackass headlines and feckless talking heads?

The only recourse on such occasions is to look beyond the headlines for a topic of interest or intrigue, a doorway into more fertile realms. It so happens that if you ask, the universe will provide. Today, it turns out, is the birth date of the man credited with writing the mysterious Australian national anthem/drinking song/mystical hymn Waltzing Matilda, whose baffling lyrics are, once decoded, a paean to the universal desire to escape the insanity of those who insist their will upon you.

The story of the song's composition reads like a series of haphazard circumstances that somehow combined to produce a permanent cultural icon.


Thus, it all begins with a remembered tune played by ear and overheard by a writer of lyrics. According to legend the original tune was a Scottish air called Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea, which you can listen to here in midi format. You'll note right away that it doesn't sound very much like the world famous melody of Waltzing Matilda (there's a fuller version, plus lyrics, of Thou Bonnie Wood here; be advised, though, that the midi file at this site plays automatically), but that's part of the wonder of the process. In fact, an additional artist, Marie Cowen, is credited with revising Paterson's original into the song's current form in 1906. Reading the history, it's as if the song itself is somehow determined to be and so guides its own seemingly random journey of creation to achieve its full incarnation.

Which brings us to the puzzle of the key phrase, the title. What exactly is "waltzing Matilda"? Here's your answer:



So, what appears to be a highly parochial Australian folk song is revealed as a blending of Scottish, German, and English cultural artifacts that began by accident and subsequently wandered its way into worldwide consciousness. It has escaped its original historical context, and it has even escaped Australia. The sound file accessed by button above is the opening title of the Hollywood movie On the Beach, which was set in Australia but peopled by characters from around the globe. The song was used to dramatize their plight as the last survivors of nuclear war, awaiting the inevitable death by radiation that would eventually descend from the sky. For them there could be no escape, no more waltzing away from insanity. And while Waltzing Matilda possesses the extraordinary property of being effective as a military march, a joyous bar singalong, and as an endearing folk tune, in this movie the emotional climax is provided by a choral rendition that approximates a funeral lamentation. Wherever it goes, Waltzing Matilda seems to carry all shades of life within it.

The pilgrimage of this special piece of music is likely to continue on and on, but we'll close today with a nod to the most powerful current interpretation, Tom Wait's Tom Traubert's Blues. This sound file is only a sample, but you can buy the album here, and if you do, I think you'll find that just like the original, it has a way of growing stronger and more deeply moving on each hearing.

When the news gets to be like it has been in recent days, here's your way out. Turn off the TV, log off the Internet, and turn up the volume on Tom Traubert's Blues. You'll eventually come waltzing though the worst of the madness, chastened and stirred, but still very much alive.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

A SCOOP FROM THE XOFF REPORT. For generations now, the psychology profession has used inkblots to tap the subconscious minds of human beings. It only took 50 years or so of data collection and tabulation to discover that whenever you show someone an inkblot, he always associates it with sex. To Dr. Gerhard Carschach, this phenomenon suggested that it's time -- for doctors and patients both -- to stop pretending that inkblots are houses or insects or cats on the mantlepiece. This just wastes time and muddies the waters. That's why he has developed a new set of eight blots that he regards as complete and sufficient for all psyches.

"Now that we know we're all of us always looking for sex in abstract images," Dr. Carschach explained in a recent interview, "we can ask a question much simpler than 'What does this make you think of?' We can ask, rather, which one of these blots turns you on the most? Sexually, I mean."

InstaPunk readers can experience the absolute insights of the new inkblots for themselves. The procedure is simple. Study all the blots on this page, including the one above, and after careful review and comparison, select the ONE that seems to you the most sexually suggestive and appealing. Then click on THAT inkblot for a detailed analysis of your sexual persona. But please don't be hasty. The results are correct 99.9 percent of the time, and the psychological damage can be immense and permanent if you inadvertently become one of the 0.01 percent of those who choose too quickly.

That small warning given, have at it and enjoy your voyage of personal discovery.

Monday, February 13, 2006

REWORK THE CARTOON. On Groundhog Day, we started the ball rolling:


It's taken us longer than anticipated to collate and consider what turned out to be a big pile of entries. Our apologies for that, but not for anything that follows. Yes, we know that some of you were offended by the mere fact of the contest; for example, here are the thoughts of commenter "Sean":


Several of the contest entrants also identified the original blank version we created as the only variation from the original they could stomach submitting. We understand their sensibilities, but there is value in carrying out a live attempt to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. While many of the entries are clever, none succeeds in rising above the repugnant image to become truly funny. In short, the collected entries prove that regardless of Toles's attempt to depict the original as a harmless conceptual construct, his drawing  is truly offensive. His error is very much like that of writers and filmmakers who insist on using the F-Word in their work to achieve verisimilitude. The effect of that word in print and on film far outweighs its effect in casual conversation. Toles conceived an idea that was abstract in its imagined form, but far too real and resonant in its emotional impact. His cartoon and all the reworkings of it we received are in bad taste.

Focusing on one exceptionally clumsy example reminded us that Toles and other political cartoonists are especially susceptible to this kind of misstep. There is a wide gulf between political cartoons and New Yorker cartoons -- i.e., cartoons that are honestly meant to be funny. Political cartoons are self-conscious allegories rather than slices of life, and their images are almost exclusively symbolic. They do not refer to authentic human experience except by (usually unfortunate) accident. They are at best witty, and at worst a deadly expose of the artist's own pretensions. We are forced to the conclusion that political cartoonists make up the bush league of both the art and humor worlds.

Most of our entrants understood this and acknowledged, explicitly or implicitly, the impossibility of extracting real humor from the Toles drawing . A few did not. Despite our admonitions, quite a few lefties offered submissions that retained the identity of the patient as the U.S. Army or a soldier in that army. A couple of thoughtless righties did the same. We were surprised by all instances of this.

We are getting to the winners, but just a few more observations first. We offered entrants the opportunity to submit text rather than filled-in cartoons, but this resulted in almost nothing usable. Particularly with regard to lefties, the text versions turned into sentences and even paragraphs of lecturing rhetoric. These are never funny, and they are almost always directly counter-productive to their authors' purpose. You can see many examples of such leaden non-starters in the Comments section of the Contest announcement page, where it should be obvious that as a group the lefties have no emotional connection of any kind to the troops they affect to save through surrender and appeasement. They don't see the soldier in the bed as anything but a chess piece in their attack on Bush. Are you listening, Tom Toles and WAPO editors? Of course not.

Now for our (dis)honorees. We selected this one because the submitter went to the trouble of revising the drawing on his own, and it does succeed in tapping into a culturally shared image that's less real and repellent than the original.



You can also see a larger percentage of the total entries, broken out by category, on a separate page here. If you choose to go there and look, don't bother telling us how offended you are. You looked.

There. We did what we promised, and also as promised, we have no prizes to give other than continuing anonymity for our contributors and a stubborn refusal to apologize for this object lesson. Thanks to all who participated.

Back to Archive Index