I've heard them talking I’ve cough, the whispers
My sk in is th ic k . but the barbs penetrate
"That Professor Lindsey Humph' A shameless word
monger I"
Verbose *
"A lite r or y dilettante'"
He tra ffics in unusual phrases, you km«» And those
obscure words he uses W ell' He certainly has his
a irs '"
Are you sure he s Amer icon9 Sounds foreign to me
Suspicious B ritis h A word p e rve rt'
How can I defend m yself7 lm g u ilty I love words,
the way they ro ll around in one s mouth, their
histories, their stories I cache them away in my
lexicon like a squirrel hoar ding nuts, a miser amassing
coins I hopelessly love the little dears Ah . the stolen
moments »pen, cuddling them in mv mind
This month you can tastes few exotic, stolen fru its
Join me inside the closet for a gi impse at some soucy
little foreign number s The Professor . a well-known
A uslrahophile. smuggled these bad from the Antipodes
in a plain brown Manila envelope Down Under in that
gr oat gray-green land, the English language spews
from Australian mouths in the most wonderful fashion
Witness this street corner exchange
"Hey. Mugsy. saw you chiak ing w ith the Torquay Mob
Friday woe* '
Yaeh. bloody drongoes Go, me pissed a, the Ashes
Nearly chundered me lunch on some bloke Bit of a
punch-up w ith two whingmg Pommie bastards in Bay
13 Old dag called the coppers "
"Fair dink urn 9 W ell, she'll be rig h t, mate No
w orries "
What the deuce is going on here9 , you may well
inquire Per haps the Professor s glossary of
Australian English ( ‘Stnne as it is called there) can be
of some help My translation follows
Heh, Mugsy, vrw you goofing-off ( skylarking) with
the guys from Torquay a week ago Friday "
"Yeah, bloody ' a favorite epithet) low life rs Oot me
drunk at the cr icket match Near ly vomited my lunch
Bit of a fight w ith two Englishmen in the dr ink mg
section ( Bay 13) at the Melbourne Cricket Orounds An
old guy called the police "
" T ru ly fo r re a lty ')9 Everything w ill beokoy.
friend "
This translation lose, essential flavor in the telling
One ought to know that for many "True Blue" Ausstes
a lj English are "whingmg bahstads Animosity toward
the pompous English harks back to those days when the
continent of Australia became the world's largest
prison Many Australians trace their genealogical
history to those same prisoners transported from
B rita in in the 1780's Aussies tend to view the English
as soft and spoilt, whingprs" in short Thew ordisan
amalgam of whining and cringing, two loathsome tra its
to Australians An Australian takes his lumps, and
brushes adversity asidp. "No w orries mate' You II be
r ig h t!‘ The notorious "Bay 13" at the Melbourne
Cricket Orounds houses the 'hoons and goons" or yobbo
ockors' (beer guzzlers and rouqhnecks) Cricket
matches ar e extremely civilized affairs, but the rabble
in Bey 13 lace themselves with gallons of beer and roar
like lions in a feeding frenzy An "old dag ' is a senior
gentleman who loiters, dawdles, and socializes, a gent
one might typically find hanging around a new
construction site bother ing people "Dag also refers to
the ding that dangles from (he fleece on a sheep's bum
Crotosor Lindsey s Australian Glossary
1 crook - out of sorts, sick Ex He felt a bit crook
Tuesday
2 dronqo an ignor ant, low life character
3 lair gp you made a decent lob of it Not bad
4 A lu rk - o scheme, plan, short cut
5 Shonkip- broken, fa llin g apart
6 qroQ- beer
7 RfiUteJ- * 'n e
B plonk - cheap wine
9 Wanker 's Doom- An awful fate befall ¡ng constant
masturbators
*0 YObbo ocker - a red neck worker type,
loudmouth -chauvinistic, with a beer gut Wears blue
"Stubbie' shorts, a haseball-stylecap and a sleeveless
white “T" s h ir, constantly
11 OoindBush going walkabout Going off into the
wilderness, or outback
12 Beyond the Bkt k Stump way off in the p rim itiv e
country, the middle of nowhere
13 Barbie- a barbecue party Mainstay o, country
social life Lots of steaks, lamb chops, and beer
Madas aQqlah- flolahs are raucous, screechy
parrots Very unsettled b ii ds Descr ibes a person who
tsa b it off center
15 la r r ik in - a grxxJ natured bloke, but something of a
hooligan
16 swaQ man hobo, carries hts pack of belongings in a
bundle, his swaq", or "Matilda ’
17 <JaCQIZ££L a typ e ofb re a d An enormous dough ball ,$
lossad d ire ctly into an open fire The char red exterior
must be pered away after bak mg to reveel the cooked
bread
6 UPPER LEfT EDGE ¡M il llVf
IB bom bora- an enormous reel wave building oul si >
the beach surfline
19 tuc*er - 'ood. provisions providing s u s te n « «
20 take a >n»e'shi$3- urinate
2 1 "old b o i l e r an elder ly woman
22 Seppos or sePt'CS- a derogatory term for
Americans Australians w ill pair two w o rd , ha,
rhyme, in Cockney fashion, with another w nrdor term
For example Dad and Dave- shave, Septic Tank- Ywik
Captain Cook« a look
23 Nantes, btowies. bluet«, March ies- fly species a
wave across une s lace with an extpryiwi arm to swa,
away flies has been termed the Australian wave" or
the "Australian National Salute Clouds of flies
scourge the countryside d ir mg warm season-? I have
r anked them fiere or di ra lly relative to ferocity
"Marchie, can bubble blood on the sk m s surface .nd
fiave a biting proboscis like the rose on a Concorde ,e,
24 White Anting- The term refers to a term ite who
chews on a building's wood foundation, eventually
causing the building Io collapse When a relationship
between two people become-, strained, an outsider who
infer feres for his own selfish ends is white w iling
To commemorate the second brave new birthday of tho Upper
Left Edge (Our Motto A ll the news we want to p rin t), our
founder the near ly Reverend B illy Hubs ( His mo,to Nobody
h its , everybody eats we get to love who we wan,), suggested
( sweetly. bu, in no uncertain terms) bow lovely it would be
were this wr i, er t o * ' down his jumbled and unr el table
mem or ies of the E dge s br ave new beginning
Because of our love and respect for Reverend B illy , and
because he pay- us (b its o, b r t^ i, coloured yarn carrots from
the garden sometime a fresh fis h ), we decided to humor him
F or a man of the r loth ( woo, and canvas most by ). he can ge,
cranky when his word ser fs don', hop to But that s another
story
Before we ge, into the n ob ility of our mission ( , he tru th w ill
set us free, and all that), decency demands a reminder of why
people star' '«ewspapers quite sim ply, tor the giddy sense of
power
provides The power of the press rests in the hands of
'hose who own one One needn ' be the New York T imes to have
dnrx/r ous and addictive amounts of fun and, Spencer Tracy
movies aside, the reel joy of newspaper ing ( as distinct from
wallpaper mg, which pays w e ll) lies in cock ling a, the chance to
$*ew*f whoever and whatever you want This said, on to the
noble bits
If anything ran be said to have a beginning the Edge was
pulled shr >ek ing and thrashing, from the womb of the Gulf
War A loose km, uaba I of aging revolutionaries (see. Old I eft.
Nm* l eft and Hew Improved le ft ) assembled Ihe morning after
the nigh, Bagdad w ill never for get, to. urn, take matter s into
our own hands fo r the record, our subversive cell consisted
(e n tire ly ) of Reverend B illy , B ill Wick land ( now Ihe Edge s
close to distinguished foreign correspondent), and myself As I
recall, at leas, three of us had hangovers
U ir '■>« and one we quick ,y launched was the Peace Paper
Gather inQ together the 'alents of other agmQ malcontents
' port’ journalists, and activists v i l e and var ious ). we
purloined aoomputef (you don , wan, to know whose) and
published what might be the plane, s larges, anti war
broadside to date - one large sheet of newsprint that jus, kep,
on unfolding A shotgun mar r läge of pamphleteer ¡ng and
origami that managed to be both political and charming
Our , b , p was sealed Ink was in our blood, not to mention
several hundred Bubaytonics We dreamed dreams, vowed
brotherhood and aimed for the top 'Wow, we said
simultaneously "We could do a national Peace Paper
One of
us. I think w ick land, said. Yery far out
We yvould be the new
RollmgStone We would be the voice of the New Old Left Or
maybe the Old New t eft Whatever We could empower the
disenfranchised, rig h t injustice, free the chickens We could
be somebody Then we could 9ell the gig to T ime W arnerand
re tire
Bu, the sleazeballs pulled ou, before we got our business plan
together ( Yes, V irginia, ttiey can bomb the oldes, c ity on the
plane,, strafe and rocke, the Oar den of Eden, and be home before
the resistance hits the streets No, there won't be another
Vietnam ) Through the disappointment and hear, break , i, was
Reverend B illy s strength that held us together (okay, maybe a
lew drugs, but nothing heavy ; Poking through the ashes of our
Australian place names sound like notes cascading
down a xylophone Waggn Wigga i place of many
cruws). Ballar at, Bendigo,k uber Peady, k ur mgai.
Nullarbor Jan Juc. Murrumbidgee, Nockatonga.
Thargnmmdah. U b ir r . ,)ahiru. M tllm gim b i,
k a lg o r lie andMaroubra The words infuse the p la rr,
with a sperial force Aboriginal mystery from the
arx ten! Dr earn time
"Once a jo lly swagman camped by a billabong, under
the >tk*l of acoohbah tree. And he sang as he watched
and he waited wfule his b illy boiled Who II come
a-waltzing M a tild i w ith me >"
A B "Banjo" Paterson
Ah, w o rd , b e a u tifu l w o r d
IA R IH DAY
A p ril 22 is Earth Day Everyone l>as at least fifty
things you can do to save the earth on a list
somewhere We suggest only two I ) Don, make
more human bemgs There are so many, so many
hungry, suffering children lei ustakecareof those
alreoch here before we create new ones 2)C>on,
buy any more fossil fuels The burning of fossil fuels
15 quite frank ly k illm g this plane,
And you though, recycling was tough" • Okay , wan,
it a It,tle easier 9 Do no, conceive a chi Id or buy gas
on Apr il 22, and you w ill receive absolution from fhe
Rastifitsd C,lurch of the Cowboy Buddah Which w ill
las, ttl next year when I, w ill get tougher'
Tax Day
Here is an interesting little memo sent to us by a
friend,
Infer nal Revenue Service
Department of the Treasury
TOA1 L DISTRICT DIRECTORS
dreams B illy s a id ,' Today, Cannon Beach Tomorrow the
wor Id "
5o here we are, two years later Or is it three9 Memory
goes fas, when you re into arts and letters
And social responsibility Did I mention , ha,9
APRIL 4, ,9 8 5
On March 5 , 19 85 , a char ge of tax evasion was
filed in the U S D istrict Court in Indianapolis.
Indiana, by U $ Attorney Oeorge Duncan The charges
were dismissed' The defense attorney Lowell
Beer a,, of Huntsville. Alabama, presented
ir refutable evidence, ha, the 16th Amendment to the
U S Constitution was never proper ly ra tifie d The
amendment which established the "income tax", was
signed into low despite ser ious defects In re a lity
only two States r atdied the amendment, ra tifica tion
requires 36 states to be valid The effect of this is
such the, every tax paid into the Treasury since
1913 is due and refundable to every citizen and
business
The o fficial position o, the service is. as i, has
always been, to aid and assist the citizens of the
United States We w ill not publish or advertise this
finding as a total and immediate refund would cause a
serious drain on the resources of the Treasury For
those citizens who become aware of this finding and
apply for a total refund, expedite their refund
documents as quickly and as quietly as possible A
simple 1040X form w ill suffice u ntil a new lorm is
designed and printed Advise each of your managers
tho, they are no, to discuss this situation w ith
anyone There w ill be no w ritte n communications
and you are to destroy this memorandum
The Secretary of the Treasury assures me that
there w ill be no reduction in the workforce as this
refunding a ctivity w ill take a minimum of 5 years to
complete Further directions w ill be forwarded as
the need arises
(signed)
Roscoe L Egger , J r
Commissioner of Internal Revenue
TAX TALK
Check this Tax
Break
American Indian
Í
Association of Portland
1827 NE 44th Suite 226
Portland, OR 97213
Wbvn you >cll your horn*
the difT»rvnc» between the
■ttjueted eelee prwe and your
coal baau la treated ae a
capita, (a m and ae eulyert
to ta i You maa be able to
deter the tax for a tim e
but it usually benunea due
eventually
H ow e.er anoa you reach
&A. you may exclude
V oro t a i up to tia i.lX M ) of
(fain on a home eale You
must have irwrwd and lived
in Ihe house at least three
a i the Cive year« before the
sale
Ytxi may use the electiun
only once I f a m arried oou
yir sells their botne and uaaa
the exclusion neither one
can tabs advantage at it
again Keep that in mind if
you sell your home because
of a m arriage or divorce
Chauee the right tune to
use thia big tax break
FTB. TV»
h * w MlMi a
Bruce E. Nims, PC.
Certifltd Public
Accoumani
C oast R ange
A s s o c ia t e d
329 (M<M
P.O BOX l-pi
We called the IRS and a very patient soft-spoken
Public A ffatrs O fficer. M r Dale Potts, assured us
that the above memo is bogus" and absurd" Which
ruined our day We are beginning to have doubts
about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny ton So we
advise our readers to pay I heir taxes by A p ril 15th
and tell the IRS that we were the ones who told you to
-ed
NEVVWRT, OK
THE
OCA
7JM-0247