He walked away. He walked back. He could not look at her. He could not look away. He began to say something. He could not say anything. What could he say? Whatever he said must appal Elenora, perhaps disgust her. Certainly discomfort and embarrass her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain or discomfort or embarrassment. Certainly it would embarrass him. Nothing he could say about his love for Elenora could possibly be appropriate. And, though he longed to say something of his love, he said nothing.

This was the first of what were the very few wise decisions he made from this fateful day forward.

He did not know what to do. He could not sleep. Every evening he went home delirious with desire and aching with yearning. Each night he dreamt of Elenora. Each day he woke early with anticipation and hope in his heart at the thought merely of seeing her again, even if only fleetingly.

Until this day, this butter-fingered Cupid’s tragically clumsy day, Hamgar had been upright and self-possessed, knowing and capable, confident with his students and even a little proud, for there were things, so people said, for him to take pride in. How had he deserved this terrible punishment?

Today, just a day after the failure of industrial negotiations between itself and the Unions, and with people still furious only three weeks after CEO Joyce gave the finger to its entire customer base, the Prime Minister and Australia generally, the Qantas social media uber-geniuses began a twitter campaign with the hashtag #qantasluxury, asking tweeple to tweet “creative” ideas about – um – Qantasluxury, in order to win, honestly, a pair of Qantas pyjamas, and a “luxury amenity kit”.

What happened next was salutory. Derisory tweets were flying within minutes and hours later as Sir Roger now dips his quill it is still the No. 2 trending topic in Australia.

According to the SMH:

Within an hour, the hashtag was trending across the country, but the tweets were not quite what management expected.
@GrogsGamut tweeted: “#QantasLuxury- when the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.

ABC radio’s PM presenter Mark Colvin, @Colvinius said: “Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #qantasluxury”.

And @the-aaron-smith said: “#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”.

Social media expert James Griffin from SR7 said that, by about 1pm, Australians were sending out 51 tweets a minute on the hashtag. Most of these were tweets making fun of the idea of #qantasluxury.

But Sir Roger’s favourite response is not on twitter:

In less than a heartbeat it was done. The Cupid’s, Bertrand’s, tiny arrow was buried deep in his heart.

Cold as deep blue ice. Hot as white hot gold.

From this moment there was no hope of Cupid’s cruelly-barbed steel ever being removed without tearing his heart out with it.

And Hamgar looked up.

And there was Elenora.

And he loved her.

Suddenly.

Unexpectedly.

Astonishingly.

Unforeseeably.

Unasked-for.

Unrequitably.

Unrequitably, for he knew Elenora. She was a good woman, a private woman, with a love and a home and family of her own.

From his grey hair to his brown sandals Hamgar was shocked, ashamed and confused.

Hamgar was ashamed because he knew his hair was grey. While Elenora’s hair was shiny and black. She was young. She could not love him, he knew. Indeed she hardly noticed him.

He could not love her. It was impossible.

And yet he did. Suddenly and shockingly he loved her with his entire being.

Hamgar did not know what to do, where to look, what to say. It made no sense. Why Elenora? She was nice; she was friendly enough in her way; he had always liked her. Indeed, from the moment he first met her on the day she joined the workshop he had had that feeling you get, don’t you, when you feel you have known someone all your life, in a pleasant, comfortable sort of way. He had always thought Elenora was pretty, it’s true. And she was clever, it’s also true, with a quick and sometimes wicked wit. Yet these things are not on their own enough to lead to Love.

But the Elenora he now saw was beautiful and wonderful and he longed and ached for her, with his body and his mind; with his heart and his soul; with the parts of himself that we will not mention here.

In his daze he forgot where he was; he did not care where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He cared not at all what his life had been, what his life had meant before this moment. There was nothing else but the wondrous Elenora, standing in front of him, blissfully unaware of what felt to him like the volcanic eruption of his heart.

Desire and Doom tore him between them on their torturers’ rack.

There was no way forward. There was no way back. What was he to do?

Today as Hamgar was admiring Elenora’s miniatures, Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.

His little wings began trembling with excitement.

His arrow slotted onto the string and with frowning concentration Bertrand began to draw it slowly back.

But his cute little pudgy fingers couldn’t hold the arrow and suddenly out twanged the arrow towards the ground. Through the nets and the draped hangings it flew. Straight into the breast of Hamgar, who looked up in astonishment to see before him the face of Elenora.

And so began the Tragedy that Hamgar’s life from that moment became.

Qantas Chief Leprechaun Alan Joyce says today that he “had” to ground Qantas to restore certainty to the schedule.

He’s certainly done that!

In other news:
the Qantas brand is shit, shit stinks, polished shit is still shit, chocolate-coated shit still tastes like shit and the Queen farts.

Also now known:

Without the Qantas brand (or what we call “Brand Australia”)

Thanks Alan.

– Aims at Unions’ Gooleys and Shoots Self In Heart

Alan Joyce, a person who appears not to properly grasp the iconic emotional attachment of Australians to the airline he “runs”, and fresh from his greedy, stupid, unearned ~70% pay increase to $5,000,000 a year, has lost no time in proving how little he deserves to be paid at all.

Anyone who has any true, properly developed people skills and understanding of ethical negotiation would have sorted this industrial dispute long ago. But he has apparently grown up with a belief in confrontation and win-lose styles and no ability to persuade, lead, inspire or any of the other qualities which many people on $50,000 a year have and that someone who is paid $5,000,000 a year should be required to have at the highest possible level.

Apparently he claims to be protecting the airline from having its brand trashed by the unions.

As Nick Xenophon says:

“Alan Joyce doesn’t need any help trashing Qantas’ brand.

“He’s done a pretty good job so far and this bizarre move appears to be the next phase in a plan to gut the flying kangaroo.”

As for his pay rise, Sir Roger heard a Qantas shareholder opining that Joyce had done a “pretty good job” and another saying he thought there was a chance Joyce would probably do all right in future.

Any senior executive of a public company will tell you that the CEO’s prime directive is to maximise the return to shareholders. And yet Joyce has been rewarded for presiding over:

a halving of the Qantas share price since he took the helm

a wholesale trashing of its brand value

and a massive loss of confidence in what was Qantas’s huge and statistically undefeatable advantage – its unrivalled reputation for safety.

Sir Roger recommends everyone try the Joyce Manoeuvre with their own boss.

Go to your boss and request a 70% pay rise on the basis that some people think you have done a “pretty good job” and that you think there’s a chance you will probably do all right in the future. Tell him/her that there’s a public precedent that’s been set by Alan Joyce.
And if it’s good enough for the Qantas board to reward him for that, it’s got to be good enough for your boss to reward you even better in advance for being at least competent.

In the aftermath of his very public News of the World disgrace¹, as Rupert displays the abject decency and compassion he so miraculously discovered, today he has gone even further.

Rupert Murdoch is determined to protect us from drivel, lies, bias, distortion and bullshit.

He has today selflessly erected a paywall around his “flagship” Australian newspaper’s online presence. The intention is to discourage ordinary, intelligent, clean-living Australians from subjection to the cesspool of The Australian‘s politically fanatical, right-wing-agenda-driven garbage of writers like Greg Sheridan.

If you want to be lied to online by Rupert’s nest of sycophantic fools, folks you’re going to have to pay for the privilege. And Rupert’s betting you won’t. That’s how he plans to save the planet from the horrors he unleashed on it and nurtured for so long. And it’s heartwarming – isn’t it? – to see some pretence of morality in the malignant old cunt?

And soon you’ll even have to pay to be lied to if you want to wallow online in the Murdoch sewage works – the Terror, the Fail and the Hun.

Who else wants to pay to eat Rupert’s warm vomit? He’s gambling that you will say, “NOTWorth any money”.

¹BREAKING NEWS:

News is just emerging of plans for a movie about Rupert’s harrowing ordeal in the News of the World fiasco. The movie, to be called The Great Disgrace, is slated to star Steve McQueen’s skeleton as Rupert, and with James Murdoch played by that Gestapo guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face melts like wax when confronted with the Holy Spirit.

Hamgar never really noticed the fat little Cherubs flying around, or sitting on the beams above him. For as long as he could remember, Cherubs had always been everywhere, so common that he no longer saw them, and if he had, well, they were nothing to do with him at this time in his life. The Cherubs, he would have thought, if he did think about them, which really he didn’t, were looking at the young ones, the pretty girls and the handsome boys, not interested in him at all.

And to tell you the truth, they weren’t.

Now Bertrand was a special kind of Cherub called a Cupid. And he was trying really hard to be a good Cupid and to remember all of the instructions he had been taught by his tutors and his mum. But the trouble was, you see, that being that special kind of Cherub called a Cupid he didn’t just have to remember how to fly around and sit in the rafters and on the top of columns. He had to manage a little bow and arrow as well. And he had to do that while he was flying.

You can imagine how difficult it would be for you, remembering to flap your little wings and watch where you were going all the while holding on to a tiny bow in one hand and your fistful of fiddly little arrows in the other. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone and it was all the more difficult because, being a Cupid, and very young, and very new to it all, and his fingers being a bit Cherub-cute and pudgy, holding his little bow and arrow with his fat little fingers was difficult. I mean, had the bow and the arrows been a little larger it might have been easier for a novice Cupid to manage them. But Bertrand wanted so much to get it right. Every chance he got, he’d sit and practise with his little bow and arrow. But it was so hard. He’d take an arrow out of his quiver and try to hold it in place on the bowstring. He’d even flutter his tiny wings as he tried to pull the arrow back a little. But almost always it just went “plop!” onto the floor.

So on this particular day, Bertrand was sitting in Hamgar’s workshop practising as usual and not getting very far as usual, his arrows plopping about into the nets and hangings that were suspended about the workshop. Down below him Hamgar was, as usual, working away, teaching his pupils and now and again chatting to his fellow artisans. It was just a normal day and Hamgar was quite unconscious of Bertrand’s presence above him. Had he looked down, Bertrand could not have seen very much of Hamgar but his grey hair and his shoulders.

Also in the workshop that day were many others as always. Among them Maria the seamstress was there this day, and Alad the painter, and Melina, his voluptuous artist’s model, and ElenoraTrulov, the sculptor of perfect Russian miniatures, and Kira the romantic poet, all busily pursuing their crafts.

When it happened, Hamgar was idly admiring the fine decorative brushstrokes of Elenora’s miniatures, as he often admiringly did. Above him, distracted and frustrated, Bertrand was struggling with his bow and arrow.

And today Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.

If only, for Hamgar’s sake, that he hadn’t only almost got it

Note to Libya:

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Abraham Lincoln

Also Syria and Bahrain please note.