Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Now as Foley makes a final visit to his own ghost writers, I can't help wondering what the in-flight movie will be.  If he's reading the Clancy and watching the Polanski,while looking at the clouds out his window and pretending to be Superman, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Well, Fat and Rude has finally done it: MALCOLM BRUCE DUNCAN INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR WENTWORTH

From the Other Side, in that great kitty litter tray in the sky, Claude comments on the 2010 Federal Election. Read on ...

Peter Garrett: A copy of that episode of Futurama where therobots solve Climate Change by farting Earth into a new orbit.  Heneeds new ideas to amuse his disillusioned supporters.

"Till midnight tonight, in every bar in Australia, the drinks are on me!  Simply wander down to your "local" and tell the bartender "this is Kevin's Shout" and not only will my Government reimburse the pub for the booze, but you can even take the receipt home and use it as a tax deduction. "

Would this bloody breakfast never end? Then again, what ends are there? Howard’s End [available in all good bookshops, published by Penguin]? Will there be a Malcolm’s End and when might it be and for which one of us?

Damn if I didn’t have it here somewhere. A large, thank you James. Damn, not under the chair is it, m’dear? Last few Chapters of Prince Crispian. Damn. Oh here it is inside today’s Tele. Oh, that’s not it. Same typeface. What’s this then? Oh things do change so when you’re dead...

I put my mug of tea down on the table and picked up my pen to return to the Sudoku. She entered the room. Although She had fallen on hard times largely as a result of the depredations of those in my profession, I could never look at her, ageing although she now was, without my heart heaving into my mouth.

”Bugger the canaries,” I thought He said. Quietly looking up from my sudoku, I raised a half-quizzical, half-disinterested eyebrow which I had developed in the days when I started smoking Sobranies and said “You what?”

Following political turmoil in NSW political circles, Webdiarist Claude has announced his tilt at the job of NSW Premier.

Who is this Chico? Reckon he’s on a roll or something? Well, he’s on something. Says you get a new Pope by burning paper with powder that turns the smoke white. Coke Cat obviously. Here at the Cross, we’re either on insulin or eckkys.

From here I can see St Mary’s and there are tents all over Hyde Park – looks a little like the Peasants Crusade. Now you might think I don’t know much about the Crusades but they are in the habit of reading Runciman out loud in this household.

Somehow, the Rat Singer just knew it was going to be hell or some rhyming equivalent: mell, smell, something like that. Yet he had decided that there should be a kiddies’ day for all the little kiddies so that they could get in touch with their inner priest...

What happened to chapters 3 to 7, you ask. Well, I was discussing that with Jack the other day and I think it’s all getting away from him a bit. But just to get you back up to speed – oh yes, a little lower m’dear – I jotted down a few notes and passed them to the scribbler lad.

If you throw enough money at something, it will make money. With publicists you can create a mystique into which nature will introduce scandal. You can fill people's heads with information that they'd prefer not to possess. We could be doing so much more to turn more kinds of music into self-propagating entities, but we don't.

If you want the job done, get Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Bogle, Williamson, Schumann, Missy Higgins and Lior into a studio with a well stocked bar for the weekend, and they'll give you what a team of musicologists could never create in a million years.

Nelson's crusty salts, fresh from their Waterloo, would be better off hoisting John on his own petard than giving him a cushioned chair in the crows' nest. Certainly they don't need a figurehead that, politically speaking, has just killed the electoral albatross?

It’s about time we met her. We are in a field, a cloth of gold, sun-drenched ripened wheat stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. The field is in a small depression which limits visibility to about 5 metres. Jenny is listening.

It is often said that I am mad, or sometimes, more kindly, that I am just eccentric, but let me tell you a tale of a young schizophrenic who, for a short time, brought the important part of the known world to its knees until she was burned to a crisp as a result of a quiet political deal.

Well, as I reported earlier, the Yorick papers are more engrossing all the time. These are the replies to his despatch of October 1807. Rum stuff.

Webdiary's resident astrologer, Alphonse de Ponce, delivers his inimitable - some might even say quirky - predictions for 2008.

“I’m Julie. I’m a friend of Brendan’s and he’s sent me to save the world for the workers by giving them the same choice they deserve and sticking it right up that red-haired Welsh bint.” From Chapter 2 of the Chronicles of Nadir – Tale the Second – Prince Crispian, as told from the grave by Tom Lewis.

How time flies when one is having fun – almost a year since we thought we’d heard the last of Tale the First of The Chronicles of Nadir. Malcolm B Duncan, channelling the late lamented Tom Lewis, tells what really happened after the book finished.

Both of you readers will have to forgive me for being so long about getting back to the cornucopia of Dr Yorick’s chest but I have been occupied with other things of late and, after all, history is just another hobby (although don’t tell Geoffrey Blainey – well it wouldn’t matter really – you can’t tell him anything).   Now that I am at leisure again, I can return to that lascivious cleric, spymaster, and patron of seamstresses (if not their Saint), Jonathon Yorick DD.  

Malcolm is Webdiary's candidate in Wentworth. He writes: "Well, the Federal Election is shaping up to be as boring as batshit so webdiarist Malcolm B. Duncan decided to enlist some help to fulfill a promise he made me a while ago.   The family pet writes...

“Oh, my head. What day is it? What Country is it? Who was that woman? Was it a woman? Was it only one woman? I MUST stop drinking absinthe. Go for the Greens they said. Oh, my head.    Where’s the … oh sorry… bloody cat. " Alphonse de Ponce.

Malcolm's rewrite of CS Lewis moves on to a new adventure for Johnnie, Peter, Alexander, and Amanda ...

A pre-Christmas finale to this long-running saga ...

"Nick the Knife who was the Minister for Administrative Affairs and his sidekick, Andrews the Sleek, were still puzzled by the reaction of the working party they had tried to form to design and implement an immediate move to AWA’s throughout the public service which would reduce all salaries and entitlements by two thirds. The public servants said it couldn’t be done and the White Paper (which had been produced in record time – a true tribute to the efficiency, skill, and dedication of the public service) ran to 3,000 pages. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to the Ministers that asking a group of people to design a system which reduced their take-home pay and accrued entitlements by 66.6% might not be a task they would embrace with enthusiasm." From Chapter XI of the Chronicles of Nadir, as told from the grave by Tom Lewis.

"There is something heroic in my mind for a country that is suffering all that Iraq is suffering, yet it still strove to conduct the trial, to have an embrace of the rule of law which is so fundamental to the establishment of a democracy." - John Howard