No Great Shining Light

I was reading Kristopher's post on the deportation of John Demjanjuk, and it put me in mind of another article I read some weeks ago on Guantanamo Bay. It seems there have been a lot of things coming out of America which all seem to be pointing to the same conclusion.

It's over, now, you know? America, I mean.

It's no longer the "great shining light" it tried to be for so long. For four centuries the American people stood up and swore black and blue (or, at least, red-white-and-blue) that they were the greatest, best and most noble nation in the world.

They were never right about that, but they were trying - and that meant they were close. The dream of America was the dream of a group of people who were always striving to be the greatest good.

When they fought for independence against the British Empire, they set themselves up as the great champions of freedom. Even their own Civil War (although having many non-freedom related factors and causes) became linked to the fight for freedom - the freedom of slaves.

Every big and great movement that has happened in America over the years as been a step closer to a better, freer, nobler, more enlightened society. Every victory in their history has been a victory for the "better man"...

Or, at least, that's what the "press kit" they've been issuing in their popular culture has been trying to say for the last few centuries.

Like many people who aren't American, but have had the American culture ladled into their lives in great doses thanks to films, television, books and other sources, I've always had the opinion that Americans "think more highly of themselves than they ought".

I've always thought they weren't quite as magnificent and shiny as they like to think they are, even though I've always liked the fact that they tried.

But... I'm not sure the people who count were ever really trying.

When you look at what the government actually agrees to do to people (through it's various agencies and policies), you realise they aren't quite so shiny when it comes to the crunch.

Truth be told, they're no better than the Germans/Russians/insert-country-with-unsavory-period-here, and they're just as likely to do something incredibly unjust.

You look at what they are actually doing - how poorly it fits with the image of the "great good", and you realise the Americans could easily become the things they claim to hate most - and they probably wouldn't even notice they were doing it. In fact, they'd probably still think they were acting as the "great shining light".

After all, the Germans/Russians/insert-country-with-unsavory-period-here-s thought rather well of themselves during the first years of their worst periods. Heck, the Russians still think rather well of themselves.

I hate to say it, but I think at some point the big "rogue state" is going to be the United States - they aren't as far away from Germany just before the Nazis or Russia just before the Soviets as they think.

I only hope it doesn't get as messy as I think it probably will.

A'Mhara is a poo-poo head

I told A'Mhara I was going to write a post with that title.

Mind you, I told her I was going to write it on her official work blog, after she foolishly gave me permission to post to it.

I guess there's some comfort in knowing that even I'm not reckless enough to put up such a post on the Special Collections blog for the university library.

We had a short, but interesting conversation about the term "poo-poo head". I thought it was interesting that every child seems to naturally produce this insult in some form or another. It's like there is something in human nature that produces an insult which juxtaposes poop and heads - either poop being on the head/brain/face, or the head/brain/face being made of or resembling poop.

A'Mhara told me they use "ka-ka head" in the Northern Territory - which means exactly the same thing, only in pidgin.

I think the final word on the subject goes to Andrew however, who responded thus to my question on how one would spell "poo-poo head":

I try not to spell "poo-poo head". I try not to say "poo-poo head". In fact, we shall never say "poo-poo head" in this office again.

Banjo

There are many things about the future we cannot possibly predict, but I would like to make the following prediction about mine:

There shall be banjos.

Well, at least one banjo. Irish tenor (4 string) to be precise.

Possibly by next weekend.

Or the weekend after...

Woody

It's hard to explain the Woody thing.

He could have been the right guy, except it was the wrong time and I wasn't in the right place.

He wasn't the one that got away so much as the one I didn't try to catch, but always wondered if I should have - if that makes sense?

Although I can't say I was ever in love with him, there was a time when I probably would have fallen for him if he had ever asked me to. He never asked.

And yet...

It's strangely hard to get over something that never happened, probably shouldn't have happened anyway, and will - in all likelihood - never have the chance to happen again.

Life does strange things, doesn't it?

Further to the Last (Google maps)

Actually, I've had a thought.

I have noticed on more than one occasion that Google has "ghost" streets and blocks of land - marks which clearly do not show existing streets or land divisions (they are in shades of grey, rather than the more definite markings), but at the same time clearly show where streets and land divisions... are? But, aren't...?

I'm wondering if they are working off town plans that have been registered with some official body somewhere which show where future developments will/may occur. Perhaps they are predicting the future after all?

Wulguru Station

This amuses me:

Every time I look up a map of my town on Google maps, I find these "stations" all over the place. Little train station logos, with official sounding names like "Wulguru Station" and "Currajong Station", implying that you could go to that point on the map and find a train station, from which you would be able to catch a train.

Perhaps this was true, once, many long decades before I was born. I can't say for sure. All I know is that there hasn't been a train station in the vast majority of these locations for as long as I've been alive - and most of these areas don't even show signs of form work to suggest that there might have been train stations there once... in the long distant past.

I wrote an article on the vanishing train lines of North West Tasmania a few years back for Australian Coast and Country magazine, so I'm reasonably good at picking up the signs that a train line or a platform once existed in a location. It has to be gone for a number of decades before you loose all sign of it.

This means that one of three things is happening here:

Google is completely and utterly wrong about these stations having ever existed

Google is running off information so far out of date it doesn't even belong in the last three decades of the last century

Google is somehow predicting the future, and projecting to a time when the population of Townsville will demand train stations to be present at these locations.

If any one of these things are happening (and surely one of them must), it indicates that Google cannot be trusted to provide accurate landmarks. Given the fact that they haven't actually listed the one train station that is in existence in Townsville, and they show a number of train lines that definitely don't exist, I think this might be a fairly safe assumption.

Oh, something else I noticed the other day that I thought was particularly amusing was the fact that the Dalrymple Gap Road turns up on Google maps. That "road" has been abandoned for well over 60 years and has long since returned to the wild. It's now a popular half-day-walk amongst bush walkers in the area.

Where is Google getting it's information from?

And why do I still look at Google maps if I want to get directions?

The Caretaker

Well, I've finally gotten around to putting something new on my Siege Works blog. It's a short story I started writing ages ago, but was distracted before finishing the last few paragraphs.

It's now finished and up for all the world to see.

The Caretaker is a ghost story. It's not a particularly scary ghost story, but it's a story about ghosts, and that makes it a ghost story.

Well, technically, it's a story about people living with ghosts.

Ah, I can't be bothered trying to explain it, just go over to the blog and read the darn thing.