The only trickle-down economic benefit for workers in Australia is when the elite piss in your face.

Generally, you'd expect about 10% of Australians to be knuckle-dragging fuckwits terrified of Foreigners in general. That is to be expected in our First World Society. When economic times get hard, as they are, and will continue to be, then that percentage jumps to around 15%. It is remarkable to me that the Government of Australia is based upon the fear of 10-15% of its population. An advanced society will put into process mechanisms by which they have a moral dimension to ratify the beliefs of the majority, rather than a fickle borderline minority. Politicians, instead of doing the cheap easy Knee Jerk response of appeasing the 10-15% of knuckle dragging fuckwits really have to think hard and work out something better than what exists now, in terms of Immigration, and to work very very hard at it. We pay them a lot. We pay them a lot more than we ever get...and they get better conditions and salaries and perks than we will ever experience in our lives...and all we get is fat pigs who will spread the fear of Foreign Devil people rather than meet their job description requirements. Why do they do that? Because they are just fucking lazy. We deserve a lot better than the Government we have.

It appears that Peter Dutton's moral passion for keeping out illegal folk from Australia doesn't extend to nice looking French au pair girls sponsored by his mates. Obviously a man of some convictions...with more to come I expect. Rich white South African Farmers, nice looking French au pair girls...I guess it all comes under his authority in terms of Home Affairs. What a Government. What a dick.

I see the new Australian Prime Minister has emailed the Liberal NP Coalition asking for unification of interests and the resolution of divisions in pursuing the issues related to the Drought and helping Australian farmers. The email, with the Subject Line of "Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah! I'm the King of the Castle and You're the Dirty Rascals" was well received by a minority of members, including Peter Dutton who replied with an emoticon of a loyal smiley face.

On children. They come to me with their own light. I offer the protection of my light. We live as family and then they leave. They go to protect others with their light.

I was brought up as Catholic, Irish, in Australia, and I loved it. It took me til 20. Then, as young men with a heart and mind do do, I looked around, found Buddhism, was inculcated into the Mahayana Kalachakra Belief System formally by the Dalai Lama when 35, then realised that it was exactly the same in every way as the Catholic Church, so I went my own way. I love wearing my scapula, I love my small prayers for a better outcome for everyone. I don't give either the Catholics or the Buddhists any of my money because I know that money fucks them up, always has, always will. Just look at them. We must first examine the contradictions within ourselves. After examining them, we can love them. If we have no contradictions at our heart, in our core, then we are the robots the world desires us to be. We can still love all of that and all of them, but don't give them your money. That's for you.

When are you going to retire? I doubt I will. When I was 50, as an expert in pain control in terminal disease, having sat with a good 300 folk who died in my care and presence, with excellent pain control titration and hypnotic conversations, it dawned on me that all these people came to me when they were retired from work. So, I left that job, from 50 to 60 I basically travelled the world, had an amazing and unrepeatable time, spent huge amounts, gave away some, and I did everything I could, both right and wrong, ethical and unethical, that I never did do before, and I didn't die, and so I have come back to work now. I doubt I need to retire again. I've done that. There are still strange people in the world who still think that time and life is linear. I'm not one of them. To arrive in Heaven with all my earthly debts unpaid, and without funeral insurance, is not a bad outcome for a life well and deeply lived.

Melbourne, Day Off:1: Woken by points of light through the blinds at about 9am. Gradual consciousness. Wanyi noted that the drive to Apollo Bay to buy Scallop Pies would take 3.5 hours rather than the 2 hours I estimated. I thought everything in Victoria was 2 hours away. So we had to speed up into full consciousness. 2: Left home at 11am, across the city, then down the M1 West. Stopped and ate Hungry Jack emergency food at a petrol place. Took a left turn to the Otways Mountains somewhere and stopped for a cigarette and for daughter to be photoed doing a star jump in the middle of the road. 3: The Otways are tall and very beautiful mountains and forest and the narrow road along the high ridge was a perfect place for both terror and vomiting. 4: Exited the Otways down on Wild Dog Creek Road and joined the Great Ocean Road. 5: Found Apollo Bay and the Scallop Pie Shop. $12 each now, so bought 6. 6: Put on big coats and the 3 of us wandered along the massive empty beach looking with wonder at the Great Ocean. Beautiful. Sun comes through the mire of the sky and in the breaking blue pristine waves are shards of crystal whiteness lit by Mother Sun. 7: Watched with wonder as some girl went out to the near horizon on a surfboard. 8: Spent an hour in the freezing beachside wonder. 9: Drove back along the Great Ocean Road noting that it wasn't a Short Ocean Road nor a Wide Ocean Road but rather a Long and Winding Vomiting Type of Great Ocean Road. 10: Turned inland at Lorne to get just get away from the Fucking Great Ocean and its Road and got nauseous going up through the wonderful forests. 11: Emerged back on the M1 at Winchelsea and went flat out to Melbourne. 12: Mrs Fitz and Daughter having running arguments regarding navigation as I just drove along. 13: Arrived in Glen Waverley, which was wrong, and then tooled the car to Box Hill and arrived sitting down to dinner at 7.45pm. 14: Then came the Sichuan food. Daughter, sitting down first, possessed the menu and wrote down what we wanted, then Wanyi jotted down a few items. 15: then there came The Enlightenment as to why folk like Sichuan Food. We each had our own boiling soup, mine with pork bones and lotus root, and we sat bits of food, abalone, prawn, wagyu beef, pig stomach, and pig vocal chords, pig's blood, tofu skin, cabbage, coriander and whatever that was, into the soup then fished it out and put it in the bowl with the sesame seed oil, the chilli oil, the whatever it was...and we became fixed in passionate composition...3 great white sharks consuming everything in a blizzard of tastes and smells. 16: Then we drove 5 minutes home. 17: Best day Mrs Fitz has had for years, including the nausea. Tianshu was happy. I was happy, though tired of driving. 18: Fell asleep by points of lights through the blind. We don't go out much or often. Incidentally, the Scallop Pies, that used to cost $10 2 years ago now cost $12 each. At $10 2 years ago they were stuffed with fresh salty sea scallops and well worth $15. Now, in 2018, at $12 a pop, they were just as fresh and sea salted, but there were fewer of them in each pie, so worth around $10. 18: Will we go back? Will we venture along the Great Ocean Road again? Nope. Never. At the same time, we had a wondrous day and Wanyi had a great, magnificent and unforgettable birthday. We will look for somewhere else to go to next year, just 2 hours away. My favourite moments: Saying "Wow! Isn't that amazing!?" John exclaims. Looks around, Mrs Fitz and Daughter, studying their phones. 7 hours later...someone says "Wow!"

Another good afternoon shift at work. After 4 days on, a day off together now. Usually, tomorrow, I'd just collapse but instead we 3 are having a day off together and heading off at the crack of 11am to drive along the Great Ocean Road towards Adelaide, I guess, to look at the Great Ocean along the way there... but mostly to find that small pie shop somewhere, in some town we have completely forgotten the name of, that sells fresh sea scallop pies. Best eaten on a cold rainy winter day. $10 dollars each and, unlike everything else here, actually worth more than what they cost. A big mug of tea or coffee. Snacks as we drive along, and Chinese pop songs, then come home, have a rest, and go out at night to a good Sichuan Restaurant in Box Hill, just nearby here, to celebrate Mrs Fitz's birthday which was last month during our Moving House Ourselves Whilst Working Fulltime Phase. I could say it again, Melbourne, here in Victoria, the Deep South of Australia, is a very Hard Town. It hits you in the face with its ridiculous expense, unrelenting unfriendliness, its bizarre aristocracy, its half-arsed false opportunities, its machiavellian pin prick dick head screw your arse to the wall employers and its 'well, go fuck off then' mentality. The weather is atrocious, although, I am not a tropical person genetically, so I kind of like the horror climate. The work is much harder, twice as demanding, and a third less well paid than Queensland or NSW. Services are fewer and more expensive than anywhere I've lived in Australia, including Mareeba even, due to the abortion of all health and human services done by the evil Jeff Kennet years. No wonder the man has profound depression. He deserves it, the cunt. Long may he live and suffer from it. May he never exist beyond blue. But we are here for a good temporal reason and making a go of it, and loving each other, and so, tomorrow, we will enjoy Our rare day together...and They can all, for one day, 'well, go fuck off then'.

Van Morrison - CONEY ISLAND

We have next Tuesday off together, the 3 of us, so that's such a lovely rare thing, happens once or twice a year. The plan for next Tuesday sounds like a good Van Morrison song. 'We'll get up at ten and scratch about, eat something or not, and then climb into the truck and drive 2 hours past the cold city along the Great Ocean Road, and stop for awhile along the beaches and bluffs there where the sea wind comes in all the way from Antarctica, and look about on the shores for nothing in particular, but just to look, have a smoke, and tie our scarves a bit tighter to warm. I will enjoy the driving and the girls will enjoy the views from up high in the Navara. Then we'll find that pie shop in that lost but for memory seaside town and we'll have a small feast of scallop pies, then, with sighs, and some warm coffee, we'll slowly turn about and come driving towards home and go to the Sichuan Restaurant in Box Hill for tea. That's a good day off. Wouldn't it be great if life was like that all the time?'

Night Watch Poem 2018

Night Watch 2018.

He hung out the clothes on the front line, 

& went for a brief walk around the cold dark block.

Coming back, the only way to the front door 

was through the

​translucent ​

washing.

He could see, between the clothes, the simple lights inside the house.

Lights, colours, movement, in the soft palette of a breeze 

held together by

​small wooden ​

pegs.

How easily we are

​made so​

beautiful.

Of the less-cost after shaves I think Tabac is the best. Of the most-cost after shaves Givenchy Gentleman is my favourite. Like Tabac it has that soft background hue of cigar smoke and full ashtrays, and sweat, and in addition, up front is the smell of dirty socks, burnt carpet, kapok rotted by red wine, and the faint redolence of stale semen. Much like an old man's hostel. It amazes me how those French folk got it so right. Olfactory Artistes of the Highest Order.

notes from palliative care book, regarding the narcotics... in the absence of heroin, morphine remains the gold standard for pain relief in terminal illness. Codeine is useless and is a bad drug. Oxycodone is very problematic and far less than effective in pain control than morphine in the terminal phase. Hydromorphone is ok, but you should add some methadone to make it more comprehensive. Fentanyl is ok if you like to see happy hairless rabbits in your room...but as time goes by, the rabbits can change into really awful things. Stick with morphine. First choice. Add some midazolam, a tad of haloperidol, a concomitant subset load of methadone for the bones, and you'll be right as rain. If you need far more than 600mg morphine subcut a day, with the additions of methadone, midaz, and haloperidol, then you may need to flush the body IV for a day and start again as the morphine metabolites, in a dying body, tend to eat each other when the concentrations get too much. have a day off, flush the body IV, then come back next day with 300mg morphine, subcut, 5 haloperidol, 30 midaz, 40 methadone...and then titrate up to the need. You can still be sitting in bed doing your crosswords, but you just won't be in massive pain. the human condition...Its not rocket science. if you haven't got good pain control within 3 days, then the people caring for you really don't care, or don't know what they are doing. You could need up to a gram of morphine a day, plus the other stuff, but usually only if you have let the oncologists and surgeons have done too much harm to your receptors by pointless, heroic (for you) and simply cruel interventions.

No one has ever not died, so it is best to be practical about euthanasia...which simply means having a trump card in the pack dealt...and playing it when you choose to. I don't see it as a right or as a moral thing. It's just a human thing. A day or two afterwards, no one cares anyway. Its up to you. No one has never not died. It is as natural as taking a breath, or not taking a breath for 3 minutes.

girls

Once I was infatuated with this beautiful lady who had a bit of OCD in that she had the cereal boxes in the cupboard lined up in alphabetical order and knew the weight of each box so, when her son came by, she could tell by how he replaced the cereal container which one he had used and by lifting the box could tell how much he ate on a gram level.
I thought, wow, baby, if you and I get together, we could destroy the world.

Doing laundry and just watched a show on TV about young men needing to improve their etiquette to "Maximise Their Personal Brand" in social and interpersonal situations. What? Yes. "Hi, my name is John and I'm a good guy, terms and conditions apply, past performance is not an indicator of future performance; and can I get a drink?.. & you are advised to seek professional advice regarding the overall cost of this exchange..and, as a product, I may contain traces of nuts."

Imagine Christ feeding the minions now in Melbourne, Australia... "Well, I started with a compote of beetroot relish and marjoram jam, topping fresh Tasmanian scallops on a thin slice of locally made sourdough, with a tad of french butter, then some italian seasoned breadsticks and a nice light white wine. I followed this up with some tuna steaks in a redolent sauce of slightly salted saffron and blackcurrant jus, and home made wood oven baked crisps...complemented by a Chateau Tahbilk Marsanne with vanilla after tones and a depth of upper palate sweet and infatuating light peppery resonance...and I left the dessert up to my disciples...and then, when they received the bill, my followers, my true believers, my people, the Jew cunts, with their hipster beards, crucified me, as was to be expected."

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - "Grandpa Was A Carpenter"

As I've noted before, after a few decades of working in palliative care terminal pain control, when in my fifties, I received 2 poor prognoses regarding my life expectancy, one cardiac, one cancer, and so, instead of accepting this, and being a patient, I took off around the world. I ran away. I've never liked hospitals. I spent a lot of money on having fun and not facing up to my own physical reality. I lived in places and did things and met people, none of which I ever would have done without the impetus of life being, for me, quite short. I lived a life far outside and beyond my expectations from being a working class Australian boy of my generation. I came home a decade later to find that I was still alive, as I am today. When working in palliative care as nurse, consultant, adviser and hospice creator I never met one patient in all those decades who ever, ever, didn't die of their illness based upon the usual disease trajectories... except me. I recall I was a nurse consultant in palliative care for awhile looking after folk with a higher cancer count than I had. I expect my continuing survival isn't due to any miracle but rather to the atrocious diagnostic skills of many cardiac and cancer specialists, and to the fact that I have always refused all treatments and still do. One aspirin a day is good. Anyway, this week, at 64 years old, I worked 5 shifts as a clinical nurse in the Ice Addiction Unit, and now have 3 days off. What am I going to do with the days? I think I will take one aspirin and sleep through the first 2 of them, because, wow, I do get tired these days.

If someone doesn't lose 3 or 4 front teeth in an Australian Football game, then, really, what is the point of the game?

True Story. An elderly couple with some dementia lived in a residential estate for folk of their ilk in Townsville, Queensland. They had their old car in their garage and lived a usual life. One day, they were gone. 3 days later they turned up in a small North Queensland town, 300 miles away, had driven up there, and stopped outside a small house in that town. The husband and wife got out and went up to the front door and just walked in, much to the surprise of the young family who lived there. The couple demanded that the family get out of their house. Various services were called in, and it was explained to the couple that, at the moment, the family had no other abode...so the couple let them stay for a few days. Then an aged care nurse and driver were flown up to the town and told the couple that they had a doctor's appointment 'down the road' so, the couple went with them, they drove all the way back to Townsville in the couple's old car, and were put back in their home, and the car was put back in the garage.

Tale from the Holy Land:A man and woman were on a tour of the Holy Land and set off on a walking trek, with guides, and donkeys carrying provisions, up Mt Ararat. All the way the woman was complaining about her sore feet. They got to the summit and the woman was still complaining about her sore feet and so the man went and talked to the guides about what could be done to ease his partner's pain for the journey back down the mountain. He discussed and worked out a good solution. He returned to his partner who was still complaining about her sore feet and was dreading the descent. on and on she went about her complaint and sore feet. He said to her, "Hey, instead of complaining, why don't you just go down on a donkey?" She never spoke to him again.

The wise astronomer/philosopher said to me "I believe we are all, in our own way, stars, all constellations, all galaxies, in the greater reality of the Real Universe." I said "You can't be Sirius!"

One of my old neighbours died last night. He used to play the piano. His funeral service will be low key. I worked for many years on the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was riveting. My pal just back from a trip on the famous train journey, the Orient Express. He said it was murder.

I've opted out of the australian national health database mostly because I don't like or believe half of the doctors I've seen and only follow about a third of any advice, if that. I still check my blood pressure once a year, unless I'm really profoundly stressed, and weigh myself once a year, unless I've eaten a lot during the previous 12 months. So far so good. The Ute is going well. Gosh that's a good truck, that Nissan D22. Three years old and still pretty well new...or as new as a kind of Jurassic type vehicle can be.It even has a big garage now to swan around in here. The tray is still full of flattened boxes from the house move and I get rid of a few a week here and there. The townhouse we are inhabiting is better, to me, than the house we lived in, just because the townhouse isnt on the 'convenient' main city tram tracks ...so, it is much quieter, especially at 5am. Also there must be a massive amount of insulation in the roof and even walls because we hear nothing from the neighbours, no screams, no murders etc and usually have to wait for the police to turn up to know that someone has been slain or mutilated in one of the adjoining residences. Melbourne remains a remarkably unfriendly place without any redeeming social value at all, but we are here, so this makes it a better place.