RATTLER’S TALE #3 – inc Commonsense By Diktat

Including Sunday Scribblings, Friday 5 and Matinee Muse.
Have you had a go yet?

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my Friday Magazine post.
I thought I’d give it the look of a magazine. Hence, I’ve placed this header on it. But what, exactly, is Rattler’s Tale?
Well, it was the name of a UK small press magazine I published and edited in the 1990s. It never got big, but it kept me out of trouble for quite a while.
I’ve tried bringing it back several times since I started Beyond the Blog, but it never seemed to be right. Hence, it is now issue three. Hopefully it will stay this time.

Anthony North

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The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is Observations, and I think this is a perfect opportunity to introduce a new Friday feature. I was blogging long before I found the prompt sites, and many of those posts were hardly seen. So I’m going to resurrect one of them every Friday for the first piece. Hope you enjoy.

COMMONSENSE BY DIKTAT

You’ve all heard about the research. It can come in many forms. Beefburgers can make you fat. That’s a classic. As if we didn’t know already. But to science, we don’t. If it isn’t proved, it may not be right.
We all know it’s right, because we’ve employed commonsense. But we’re not supposed to use that any more. Don’t you realize that? We cannot be trusted to be correct in our commonsense judgements.

This is a problem that is becoming dangerous.

What happens in science usually passes down to society. So hey presto! Welcome to political correctness. The vast majority know it is wrong to discriminate, but we can’t know this through commonsense. We’ve got to be told.
In the UK, health and safety is gathering ground, too. This is the real social stinker. Anything that can be dangerous if commonsense is not used must be banned. Because we’re not allowed to use commonsense.

Commonsense, you see, has been politicized.

It has been taken away from us mere incompetent people, and placed in the hands of authority. And only their pronouncements can be classed as commonsense.
But of course, it isn’t commonsense they impose on us, but diktat. Governments have realised a new way to control – to politicize our value judgements themselves. And here, good reader, is the real irony. In the age of the individual, government is now guaranteeing that individuality is no more.

© Anthony North, January 2008

OBSESSION

I love her, always, she’s in my heart,
her face so lovely; why are we apart?
I’ll win her over, make her mine,
attempt to heal my fevered mind;
An obsession I have, I cannot fight,
I dream I’m going to propose tonight;
I know I’m unworthy of her love,
I’m poor; I’ll pickpocket to rise above;
I’ll refurbish my home to make it nice,
then maybe she’ll make the sacrifice,
and come to me so that I can enthrall,
and she’ll be more than a poster on my wall

(c) Anthony North, August 2008

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SPIRIT OF THE UNDERBABY – Fiction

To say Johnny was confused when his son was born is an understatement. After all, he was only eighteen, and not ready for fatherhood. And he always had the suspicion that she got pregnant on purpose, anyway. He had been warned that there were women who just had to have kids, no matter what.
Of course, he tried his best to be a good father, but no matter how hard he tried, it just didn’t seem to be for him. Baby seemed to sense it all, too. He just never seemed to relax in his father’s arms, and Johnny soon became convinced his son just didn’t like him.
Hence, it was inevitable that Johnny would take flight. And I mean literally. After all, he had always wanted to go backpacking around the east.
It was in the fourth month of his travels that he found himself in the middle of nowhere, a chilling sound coming from behind the bushes. Oh, no, Johnny thought as he heard the cries of a baby.
He soon found it, and decided it must have been abandoned. With no one else around, his first thought was to leave it, too, but there was some humanity deep down, and it seemed to stop crying straight away when he picked it up …
Well, to cut a long story short, Johnny looked after the baby for two weeks, using all manner of initiative to feed it, change it, love it. And he managed to take it out of the wilderness and to civilization.
It was a totally new Johnny who arrived back with mother and son, ready and willing for fatherhood. Of course, it would take her some time to accept her partner back, he knew. Indeed, he supposed he had to prove himself. And for nearly a month he tried to work out how to change the nappy before baby did poo all over him; how to pick him up without baby screaming; and how to move him aside before projectile vomit covered him. But somehow he never managed to perfect it.
Maybe that’s why Johnny took flight once more. And as mother cuddled her contented son the night he left, and vowed she would not have him back, you could almost see the sense of triumph in baby’s eyes.

© Anthony North, August 2008