There goes the neighbourhoodRemember that Federal election we had last year? Some of us loved the result, some of us hated it, but it's fair to say that we all hated the crazy amount of advertising involved. Between all the serious music and YouTube abuse, it seemed that the noble art of letter writing had been discarded as yesterday's media.
You can imagine my delight when I got one such letter (yes, a real paper letter, not an email or a John Howard voicemail message) from a very concerned resident. I had a bit of a laugh and scanned it, it's been sitting on my desktop ever since. I don't want to drag up the election from six months ago, but this letter was comedy gold that could not be wasted.
The red numbering is my own. The writing's a bit small, so click the image for a bigger version.
1. Labo(u)r, one of the many typos, duplicated words and omitted words strewn throughout. I put this down to an overzealous spellchecker, but it shows that at the very least he didn't read through what he wrote.
2. This fact, common to all new governments, was portrayed as a plus for Labor and a minus for the Liberals in the rest of Australia. Who says Canberra lives in its own rarefied atmosphere?
3. Well??? Is it??? Do you know where your job is right now???
4. Thankfully, this paragraph is as close as this guy gets to "would somebody please think of the children!?".
5. Gary Hump(hries). Liberal Senator for the ACT and surely well known enough around here for the people who vote for him to get his name right.
6. Another plus that this guy thinks is a minus. The Greens in the ACT ran their Senate campaign on a platform of "if you're going to vote for Labor, vote for us instead and it will still count for Labor". It worked well, the Greens candidate got more votes than the winning Labor and Liberal candidates combined. Of course, above-the-line voting is the real paydirt.
7. This is a fair point. The bus drivers call the route that goes past my place The Meth Express. Note, there is nothing express about it.
8. John Stanhope is the Chief Minister of the ACT Labor Government, akin to a Premier but not worthy of Chaser attention.
9. Hahaha, read holiday camp. Read faggot.
10. Probably the only honest part of the letter. I genuinely think that a real neighbour wrote this (it lacks the wit and sparkle of a underhanded partisan leaflet), and that he sincerely believes that it will influence someone's voting preference.
So who is he? I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's a he, if it were a woman writing there'd be less banging on about the local economy and more about a perceived threat to society and how the current (now former) government is doing a good job. He has to be 50+, I can't imagine Generation X/Y being passionate enough about anything to write a letter about it. I'm also pretty sure that he's a public servant, as only they have the shrill self-preservation response required to write such a letter.
I wonder if someday I'll have the right combination of arrogance, bias and bile to write my own letter.
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As usual, your natural intellect and incisive wit have revealed this jumbled diatribe for the illogical rant that it is (and it's writer as the self-serving fuckwit that he is). I look forward to your distinguished career in the noble art of dramatic lawyering (a la Alan Shore) or, perhaps, in the even nobler art of gay authoring (a la George Bernard Shaw). In any case, keep up the good work - I enjoy it immensely.
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