Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Marx and I

Yes well, I just completed 5 months' work producing a glossy 11,156 word assessment of the research going on in the Sheep Industry of this proud brown land, Australia, and you may be interested to know my immediate thought when the 5 millionth and last edit was done and word count said 11,156 was, 'That’s almost exactly the same amount words as the Communist Manifesto', a little ditty widely regarded as the most influential book in modern history since the Bible and the Koran.

So this does raise some interesting points, the beginnings of which are, Marx and Engles wrote their document for a Communist meeting in Munich in 1848, it took them 6 weeks and they produced a measly 11,928 words, 11,928 words that at one time had over a third of the world’s population under its direct influence and is also attributed for providing the impetus for many governments to set up universal education and health systems that still survive to this day.

Whereas I (identity hidden for political reasons) laboriously produced this document for a government based committee meeting in Coffs Harbour August 2004, taking 4 months compiling 11,156 words using all the modern technologies available to me, this will eventually be handed out to 150 or so people of which a third may look at it and if more than 3 people read the whole thing, I will fall off this seat, even as I sit here writing about it.

Now I ask you, what is it all about… What is that all about!!

Well I don’t bloody well know, but what I will tell you is that my brilliant document cost about $100,000 to compile. (That’s what it cost you if you’re an Australian taxpayer.) The Communist Manifesto, taking into account different times and whatnot cost less than $10,000 to produce (yes I did an economic backdating analysis of everyday living in 1848 and come up with comparison for 6 square meals a day for both Marx and Engles, a room, 3 beers, and a cigar a day. Karl baby did love em!)

Some of my costs (including my bosses' time) included 40 or so nights accommodation ($4000), and accompanying food and beers in 40 or so pubs and restaurants ($3200) in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Armidale, Fremantle, Wagga, Cowra, Nimbin, Albany, Geelong, Yamba, Barwon Heads, Narrogin, Margaret River, Apollo Bay and Wollongong, say $10,000 in flights, about $1500 in car hire and petrol and another thousand for a little accident that I had on the Great Ocean Road, and the 24 hours I spent in the forest up to my elbows in mud, without food or water and missing meetings, flights and again connecting flights, but we wont talk about that right now.

The rest of the costs was in little incidental things like wages and allowances for moi and again, 'some' of my bosses time!!

The price I have personally paid has been about 600 hours of somewhat tedious meetings and interviews, listening to people talk amazingly about a particular sheep DNA that will make sheep shit smell slightly better so worms can't grow in it, etc ETC. I’ve literally had to read 3 or 4 very unbelievably uninteresting encyclopaedias, learn about 8 new software programs, and deck myself out in boots, leathers, and farm hat, update my vernacular so I say 'bloody' at least once a sentence, and being able to talk about the lack of rain animatedly every day, with every person with a genuine interest in the conversation. I also got the very tip of my willy caught in my fly the other week in Wagga, but again that’s another story, but mightily and surprisingly painful I must say.

So by now you're asking, why, why does he do it, why does the government pay him, why oh why am I reading this? Well the easiest way to justify is my most used mantra when taking the researchers away from their work: my job is to make sure that the government keeps investing in research, in particular sheep research, say $5 mil a year, keeping 100s of excellent researchers in Australia, keeping the 100 million sheep in Australia the best flock in the world, and to keep the export dollars rolling in, about 60% of Australia’s agricultural export dollars is from sheep. (Agriculture makes up about a third of Australia’s foreign earnings, but Ill leave you to do the sums.)

It puts clothes on, they reckon, 200,000 Chinese and Italians' backs, and puts Halal lamb chops on 2 million Arabs' tables every year, not to mention a few Aussie bbqs, washed down with a fine earthy Aussie red of course. Sometimes I even believe it myself!

But still it brings it back to my original point: will this influence a third of the world’s people, let alone a third of a government committee.... me arse it will! I’ve come up with some amazing econometrical analysis (even if I do say so myself) basically proving what I’ve just said in 97 words, using cutting edge assumptions and models (my boss greatly helped here) and basically if you haven’t done at least 4 years of economics and mathematics at Uni you're not going to know half the logic or terms used.

It definitely doesn’t mean you’re not up to it, it simply means you chosen something more interesting to do with a good 6 or so years of your life. And I know for a fact none of the committee members are trained economists thus re reinforcing the hopeless futility of it all!

Marx put the showdown between the bourgeois and proletarians into the common consciousness, but will (me the mystery man) put nematophagous fungi and anthelmintic use in faecal samples on the front page of every western paper? That I will leave you to ponder. I suppose a better way to put it is: would you want to read 12,000 words written by a 30 year old dodgy Economist written 156 years ago or a 12,000 word document written by a 30 year old very dodgy economist today, soon to be released into the ether of the internet.

(I'll attach both to allow you an unbiased opinion… jokes of course.)

Marx worked for no money, lived in a shitty London hovel banished from his own country, working by candlelight and died a lonely pauper living on little bits of money from a friend (Engels). I on the other hand am writing this to keep my sanity intact and survive the day so I can go for a relaxing swim and then sit on my veranda in the sun and eat lamb chops and mash with a great tomato chilly pickle I made last night from the produce of the vegetable patch (I am ever eager to give it a whirl) washed down with a beer and perhaps a red, who knows, it’s not the point.

(This is where you get to choose your own ending….. (a) You can give existential angst a crack or (b) Continue the piss take rollercoaster.)

(a)The point is what is the point of modern existence? Is this unbelievably comfortable existence we live in an anathema to the lives and sacrifices of so many before us that allowed for this situation, or just enjoying this society and accepting that a comfortable life is the reward that we deserve for a little tedious work, other than back-breaking serfdom type labour. The real question is, is a comfortable life, a life worth living at all. I don’t know, I'll just leave you with a little ditty you might like.

Like a bird who lost her mother's nest I cry
What am I doing here?
Where on earth am I?

Are we the Angels without wings
Fallen from the Sky?

Or maybe Children of Lucifer
We chose to experience the Dark within
Out of some mere curiosity or whim?

Is this strange land a big experiment?
A part of the galactic continent
Are we the aliens of our no man's land?

Just one big mass of energy
transmuted into matter
We see all separately
Forgetting All are One and One is All

Or have the gods played some old trick on us?
And cast us like a spell
Encased in our own hour-glass
Entrapped we can not even tell
That we are the very prisoners
that make up our own Living Cell

Though if the Cosmos lives in us
and Illusion is simple mockery
Are we the gods at play?
Who sent our selves into this playing field
to play this funny game?

(b) The real point is: why are you reading this? It’s because you thought there would be a point to this whole thing didn’t you, go on admit it, but really the only point I can come up with is that I tried to make this pointless scribble the same amount of words as the Communist manifesto and my laborious document, and do it all in one sitting. You could have spent all this time reading either those two very important documents instead of reading this, but unfortunately I’ve been staring at the computer for about 10 straight hours now and I’ve failed miserably short of the 11928, about 10,328 short to be precise, getting all that other crap finalised gave me a short burst of inspiration and creative energy, but it also took a lot out and basically I’ve had enough, but think, this is just over 13.4% of the size of the manifesto.

Now doesn’t that sound like an economist talking, similar to when Marx said:

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

They have a world to win.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

VERY SIMILAR INDEED!!

Good day, good evening and good night.