The Book of Bloke

by Ben Pobjie

  Veterans have been a constant presence throughout history, and have contributed almost nothing, although there are records of Veterans and their ancestors stamping their own distinctive mark on the world: for example, the Elderly Crusade of 1136, when thousands of proto-Veterans banded together and wrote to the Saracens to ask why ‘the young people today don’t know proper English’. Such collective action is rare in the Veteran of today, who doesn’t have time for such nonsense, what with the azaleas and all.

  Veterans came to Australia in 1788, in a ship sailing slowly in front of the First Fleet and swerving whenever the fleet tried to overtake. Since then, many notable Veterans have helped define the spirit of Australian Blokehood, such as Billy Hughes, the first Veteran Prime Minister, who attempted to introduce conscription because the young people were getting too soft and thought they could get away with murder. Hughes, the Veteran’s Veteran, proved just how committed he was to his Veteranhood by staying on in parliament even after losing the prime ministership, and continuing his baffling interjections and rambling, directionless anecdotes in the House of Representatives until his retirement, at what historians estimate was the age of 248. His legacy has been carried on by many other political Veterans, including Wilson Tuckey, Bob Katter, and Christopher Pyne, the latter making history by being verified as Australia’s youngest living Veteran. Veterans have also stood out in other fields such as sport: Donald Bradman was a famous cricketing Veteran who spent most of his life telling younger players they were doing it wrong – although one school of thought claims Bradman was not a genuine Veteran as he actually was as good as he thought he was. Bradman’s love of tea and bad music would seem to qualify him, however. Another well-known sporting Veteran is Greg Norman, who is a fine example of the Denialist Veteran, or Delusionarus Veterani – a Veteran who refuses to accept he is a Veteran. Also there is Kevin Sheedy, who is the most dangerous kind of Veteran – a Veteran who thinks he’s funny.

  In the world of entertainment, Veterans have made a major and occasionally interesting contribution. Legendary Veteran actors such as Bill Hunter and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell spent many years making Australian movies seem slightly better than they actually were, and, on television, Logie-winning Veteran Ray Meagher has been delighting audiences for decades, not even letting his death in 1961 prevent him from advancing his craft. In the world of music, the most famous Veteran is John Farnham, who only became a Veteran recently, but wisely has been preparing for it for over forty years by only making music that old people like. Likewise, the entire Australian country music industry is a Veteran.

  There is not a massive amount of variation within the Veteran population, and most of the behaviours which define the different breeds of Veteran can also be found in other breeds from time to time. Nevertheless, the strength of a Veteran’s commitment to one area of endeavour will clearly mark him as a particular strain. These include:

  The Road Warrior. This Veteran has a love of travel and movement, and will spend more time than other Veterans exploring the highways and byways of this great country. The Road Warrior’s natural habitat is the Volvo, and he is recognisable by his unattractive hat and fixed, straight-ahead stare. When behind the wheel, the Road Warrior enters a trance-like state, similar to hibernation, in which his heart rate will slow, his breathing will become shallow, and he will become completely oblivious to everything around him. It is thought that this state of ‘living death’ is the reason for what appears to be an evolutionary hiccup in the Road Warrior’s basic make-up – the inability to correctly recognise numbers. Although the Road Warrior has the ability to read speed-limit signs, an anomaly in the connection between optic nerve and brain causes him, without fail, to subtract 40km from every one. This phenomenon has been exhaustively studied under controlled conditions and appears to be indisputable, but it is uncertain exactly why it occurs. One theory is that primitive Veterans’ main predator was an animal with a strong sense of guilt, meaning it would avoid preying on the slowest members of the herd for fear of feeling it was being a bully. Whatever the truth is, it is a fact that Road Warriors will always drive 40km/hr slower than they need to. If the speed limit is 40km/hr or less, the Road Warrior will stop altogether and sit in his car muttering to himself until he falls asleep and can be safely pushed out of the way.

  The Road Warrior is a generally harmless Veteran, except for the odd occasion when an impatient driver will try to overtake him, and the enraged Road Warrior will suddenly veer sideways in an attempt to defend his territory.

  A less mobile, but nevertheless extremely active Veteran is the Correspondent, or Mailhawk. This Veteran is notable for his uncanny ability to sniff out and accurately identify any and all social problems besetting the country, and to correctly recognise that they all have the same solution: letters.

  The Correspondent’s letter-writing ability is unparalleled among the known Bloke kingdom. Some Correspondents have been timed at a speed of thirty letters per hour over short distances, and there are records of Correspondents writing up to three thousand letters in a single month. What makes this prolificacy even more remarkable is that Correspondents, like all Veterans, eschew computers due to their associations with the occult, and write exclusively with paper and ink. Some Correspondents have been known to use typewriters, but these are becoming less common nowadays.

  Most of the Correspondent’s output is directed towards newspapers, and can cover a wide range of subject matter, from young men’s visible underpants, to the lack of decent, wholesome shows like The Good Life on our TV screens, to the Americanization of the language, to young women’s visible underpants. Homosexuals are frequently referenced, with Correspondent opinion divided as to whether they are irredeemably sinful perverts, or socially destructive radical communists. Women are also a popular topic due to their habits of dressing wrongly, having too much sex, complaining too much, not being ‘enough like women back in my day’, being unable to take a compliment, not smiling enough, refusing to accept that they’re different from men, and carrying around an excessive amount of bottled water. Most Correspondents’ letters will conclude with a polite request for someone to inform the Correspondent as to where it will all end, or a demand that everybody be forced to join the army. In their mellower moments, the Correspondent will write letters that whimsically recall their youth or the brand of hair cream people used on their street in 1937, or else they will compose limericks about current events. This is the point at which most public health experts recommend euthanasia.

  When not writing to newspapers, Correspondents like to write to government departments to deny they owe, or to demand more, money; to major corporations complaining about the quality of their product in the hope of getting something for free; and to their relatives to pass judgment on their lifestyles and tell long, dull stories about the Correspondent’s day-to-day life that won’t end until the writing becomes illegible.

  Correspondents’ physical appearance is the subject of much conjecture, as it can’t be ascertained with absolute certainty that a Veteran is a Correspondent without observing his domestic habits and stationery drawer.

  A more publicly visible Veteran is the Anzac and Bitters, a gnarled and bad-tempered Bloke whose natural habitat is the pub, and whose diet consists entirely of alcohol and cigarettes. This species is known for its short fuse and pungent odour: a mixture of tobacco, mothballs, and regret.

  The regret stems from the fact that the Anzac and Bitters is a Veteran in two ways: both in the scientific, taxonomical sense that we use in this book; and in the sense that he has served in his country’s military, or at the very least has seen a lot of war movies. Now that his military service (or the military service of some Blokes he knows) is over, the Anzac and Bitters regrets ever serving, since his country has all gone to hell anyway. Many people who live in Anzac-and-Bitters-infested regions are quite familiar with the plaintive cry of the breed, ringing out clear across the suburbs: ‘What the bloody hell were we fighting for?�
� Some consider this a beautiful, almost musical accompaniment to daily life in Australia, although God knows who they are.

  The Anzac and Bitters draws his sour outlook on life from the observations he sees around him: a country increasingly defined by violent street crime, foul language, promiscuity, disrespectful youngsters, and, most of all, foreigners. It is the last which perhaps sticks in his wrinkly craw the most intolerably. ‘Why did we fight the war if we were just going to let all these bloody foreigners in anyway?’ the Anzac and Bitters will enquire of his bartender, who will, if he is a wise and experienced professional, not answer – engaging an Anzac and Bitters in conversation is the surest way to subject yourself to a full-frontal attack, dooming you to a very tedious evening. The lack of a response will not necessarily deter the Veteran, though – the Anzac and Bitters is a hardy and persevering breed, and he will continue asking the question of anyone who will listen, and anyone who won’t, often asking the same question of the same person up to fifteen times in one hour. ‘Why did we fight the war?’ he will demand of the man sitting next to him. ‘Why did we fight the war?’ he will beg of the patrons huddled over their cigarettes outside. ‘Why?’ he will bark hoarsely at the fellow standing beside him at the urinal. Which war he is referring to is rarely specified, but it is assumed it is the war Australia fought against the foreigners to prevent them coming here and stealing our jobs, gaining unemployment benefits and forming gangs. These foreigners mostly came from Asia, Africa and Arabia, but also sometimes from southern Europe, and, occasionally, from New Zealand. A particular irritant for the Anzac and Bitters is the fact that, despite losing this unidentified war, Muslims still think they have a right to come here and tell our women they need to cover up, which is traditionally the job of Veterans.

  Less overtly toxic, but just as dangerous in his own way, is that Veteran known as the Bus-Stop Chatter. This cheerful old Bloke is the friendliest and least whiny of the Veteran family, and has been described by many researchers as ‘reminding me of my granddad’. The Chatter’s gregarious nature and eagerness to make friends has given him a reputation as ‘a nice old man, really’, and ‘harmless’. This is unfortunate because, far from being harmless, the Bus-Stop Chatter is among the deadliest and most predatory of Blokes. In fact, this Veteran species resembles nothing so much as the Branch Python of northern Peru, which for most of the time is identical to an ordinary tree branch, until somebody picks it up, at which point it wraps itself around the unfortunate individual and eats their head. Another good example is Scandinavia’s venomous Four-Leaf Clover Spider.

  The Chatter, though presenting as a gentle and kindly old man, in fact has only one aim in mind: to draw you in to a seemingly innocuous and pleasant conversation, and then squeeze, so that you, the unhappy victim, realise all too late that you have walked into a trap, and that your only option is to stay there until you are suffocated by meaningless stories or driven insane by baffling non sequiturs.

  The Chatter’s life cycle is defined by the fact that he has no friends, but really wants some. It is an unfortunate genetic quirk that the Chatter’s desperate desire for human companionship goes hand in hand with his absolute insufferableness. It’s much like the Greater Indian Earthworm, which possesses a powerful urge to dance, but has no legs. Some have speculated that Bus-Stop Chatters were once ordinary Blokes who led lives full of deep disappointment and strong emotional trauma that rendered them socially damaged and unable to form normal relationships. The prevailing theory, however, is that Chatters are born fully-formed at the age of eighty-three, hatching from cocoons formed in milk bars when the chip fryer isn’t cleaned often enough. Whatever the truth, the indisputable fact is that the Chatter seeks to compensate for his failure to make friends the conventional way by lurking at bus stops – or, in the case of more exotic subspecies, train platforms – and preying on strangers who seem suitably weak-willed.

  This is a fairly uniform process that usually begins with the Chatter sitting down near his victim and gauging their vulnerability by asking if they know when the next bus is. With any luck, the victim will know when the next bus is, and will tell the Chatter, thereby stymieing the attack. However, if the unfortunate soul does not know, and is foolish enough to say so, or is less than definite in their answer, the Chatter will smell the weakness and spring into action with a jocular comment about how you can never rely on buses really, can you? At this point, the wise person will commence pretending that the old man does not exist, whereas the unwise person will force a small laugh and agree. The really idiotic person will attempt to relate one of their own experiences with unreliable buses: this is the Bloke-kingdom equivalent of a zebra kneecapping itself and lying down in the middle of a lions’ den.

  In the next stage of the attack, the Chatter will relate a story about something that happened to him in his life. This may be related to the issue of buses – it could, for example, be a story about how, when he was a boy, he missed a bus and his mother was furious, but it turned out that he was lucky because that bus drove off a cliff – or if the Chatter is feeling cocky, it may have no relation to the topic at all. It can be very disconcerting to the listener to hear a complete stranger lurch directly from ‘Buses – you just can’t trust ’em, can you?’ to ‘A spider laid eggs in my scrotum once, you know.’

  This is often the point at which the victim realises what’s going on, and tries to escape by saying something like ‘I wonder when the bus will be here’ or ‘Mmmm, yes.’ It’s far too late, though: the only effective escape is to simply stand up and wordlessly run away – anything else will just cause the Chatter to pick up more steam. The victim will now be subjected to a barrage of anecdotes, reflections, and observations on life, ranging from how people on TV don’t talk properly anymore, to how all a man really needs in life is a cold beer and a faithful dog, to the time he came home from work and found his mother lying dead in her bed and she’d been there for hours but his brother was just in the kitchen making eggs as if nothing was wrong because his brother was always a bit funny in the head he probably got that way at boarding school when we always used to get the strap if we stepped out of line and it was a harsh life but I think it taught me discipline not that I’d treat me own kids like that these days because I think a child needs love and we never really had love not even from our mum but I was sorry that she died and it was a hell of job carrying her out to the backyard to bury her it reminds me a lot of my first gay experience it was with a soldier in the administration office of the Christmas tree farm where I used to work after I decided that being a kosher butcher wasn’t for me because I kept spewing on the chickens.

  After about half an hour of this, the victim will come to two realisations:

  The only way out is suicide.

  The bus is never ever coming.

  It is a curious fact that over 90% of those who report encounters with Bus-Stop Chatters also report that the bus never came, and that they only extricated themselves by hitting the Chatter with a piece of wood or faking their own death. This has led to the popular idea that Chatters carry bus-stop signs and benches around with them and plant them in suitable places to lure their prey, like a spider spinning its web. Fanciful as it sounds, this also seems like the only possible explanation.

  Bus-Stop Chatters are normally recognisable by their ragged beards, toothless smiles, and the distinctive rattle which they make as they approach, caused by the numerous bottles of psychiatric medications secreted about their person.

  As we have seen, Veterans can be among the most dangerous and frightening of Blokes, but it is important that we overcome our fears and study them carefully to gain a greater understanding of how best to cope with and/or eradicate them. Although perhaps less productive in broader society than other Blokes, and slightly worse-smelling, the Veteran deserves our respect, for it is he that fought the wars, suffered the hardships, and made the sacrifices in the past that allows us today to hear all about it.

  BLOKEFACTS!

>   Did you know … the tallest recorded Bloke was Eric Sturt, who was 350 centimetres tall, according to what he told a fellow in a pub once. The shortest Bloke was Stan ‘Long John’ Eszterhas, who was invisible to the naked eye.

  Leftites

  Often derided as a Fauxke, the Leftite comes in for a lot of undeserved criticism. In fact, true Leftites are serious-minded individuals with a deep commitment to their political ideals, and should instead be derided for that. Dwelling in the inner cities, but often undertaking short migrations to the country to join anti-logging protests, Leftites are characterised mainly by their deep concern for the state of the world, and their strong desire that it become a kinder, gentler place to live in, where man can love his brother and women find political activism sexually attractive. What the Leftite craves most of all is respect; his hunger for respect will drive him to endure extreme tests of his physical and mental strength – sit-ins, hunger strikes, John Butler concerts. So intense is this craving, the Leftite is liable to binge and sometimes overdose when he actually gets some respect, which can lead to social dislocations such as wildcat strikes, anti-war marches, and protracted Senate negotiations on tax bills. It is also responsible for the permanent air of wistful sadness the average Leftite carries with him – sadness for a world that just doesn’t understand.

  When encountering Leftites in the wild, it is best to be cautious: do not approach a Leftite unless you’re quite certain there has been no recent adverse ruling in the industrial court. To be safe, you can begin by placating the Leftite with a donation to Greenpeace, or by accepting one of his pamphlets. In such ways the Leftite can certainly be rendered docile – in fact, many people successfully keep Leftites as pets. It is very much a case of buyer beware, however, since each year between five and ten people are still mauled by Leftites who revert to a wild state while in captivity.