FROM THE ARCHIVEs: The Time of the Preacher – Cosmic Pricks, Needle Drops, Nerds and Neophytes (2016) / October 18, 2023 by Garth Jones

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27

In the universe of AMC’s Preacher, that Old Testament passage, already loaded with metaphorical portent, is given bonus ironic heft when it’s revealed that God is an abject cosmic prick.

This actual literal revelation comes at the midpoint of “Call and Response”, the premiere season’s finale, but the viewer has long since come to suspect that the kinky, cynical world that Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy and the people of scabrous Texan shithole Annville inhabit is one in which the creator has forsaken his ugly handiwork.

Annville is the petri dish in which the series’ take on human (and divine) nature is initially put under the microscope, a seedy cauldron of guns, patriotism and bad faith marinating in violence, bigotry, and despair situated on a subterranean river of cow shit.

Backing up the truck, momentarily: a quick plot sidebar for the uninitiated, quoting myself, reviewing the debut episode:

“… Preacher Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) is imbued with the Genesis force (the heavenly offspring of some molten angel-demon how’s-yer-father) and hits the road with ex-girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Irish vampire Cassidy (Joe Gilgun) to hunt down an absentee Heavenly Father for an overdue explanation as to why he’s abandoned creation…”

After spending Preacher’s debut season navigating the darker urges of his flock (not to mention his own hubris and violent tendencies), the Rev Custer finds himself at a crucial juncture in his own faith struggle.

With his congregants continually reminding him of their sense of God’s absence, and only recently disavowed of the notion the Genesis force was God Himself, the maverick clergyman is looking for answers, specifically some indication of His investment in Creation, direct from the source Himself.

Jesse has also wagered his church on the success of his attempted summoning- unhinged local tycoon Odin Quincannon is looking to expand his meat and power empire, and has a vested interest in the Preacher denouncing the Heavenly Father’s existence, to boot.

“Down in a crap game I’ve been losing at roulette
Cards are bound to break me but I ain’t busted yet
’Cause I’ve been called a natural lover by that lady over there
Honey, I’m just a natural gambler but I try to do my share”
Blood, Sweat and Tears — Go Down Gamblin’

Preacher is a show soundtracked by immaculately curated country, roots, southern rock and soul deep cuts*. It’s also more than happy to lean hard on American Recordings era Johnny Cash and left field covers, like the final episode’s climactic Dave Lichens cover of Blind Melon’s ‘No Rain’.

No musical cue in the series thus far, however, is at once more emblematic of the shaggy outlaw heart of the Ennis/ Dillon original, their characters’ journeys, and the project’s road to the screen itself, than the masterfully deployed Blood, Sweat and Tears nugget ‘Go Down Gamblin’’.

Employed at the series’ narrative tipping point, Jesse’s imminent conversation with The Man Upstairs, this brassy, swaggering slice of early ’70s funk rock tips its meta hat as the Reverend nervously prepares to enact his fraught end game.

Sure, the tune’s a nod to the dubious nature of Jesse’s plan (the Quincannon bet; his use of the angels Deblanc and Fiore’s heavenly hotline, plus a convenient angel hand, to conference call with Yahweh) but you’d be just as valid in assuming it’s a direct reference to Executive Producers Seth Rogen (Superbad), Evan Goldberg (This Is The End) and showrunner Sam Catlin’s (Breaking Bad) long gestating campaign to bring the book to the screen**.

At any rate, Jesse succeeds at getting a white-haired, Gilliam-esque vision of Our Father Who Art up on the celestial blower for some real talk.

Opening the pews to questions from the packed church, the deity is besieged with a few thimble deep interrogations on the nature of existence — “Why do good things happen to bad people?”, “What’d you do with the dinosaurs?”, “Is my little girl with you in Heaven?” — before the town hall forum quickly devolves into a squabbling, juvenile morass.

Growing increasingly wary, it’s not long before Jesse’s rumbled the geezer on the throne as nothing more than a heavenly flunky desperately attempting to pull the faithful back into line, petrified of the consequences of them discovering the Lord’s gone AWOL, done legged it.

And well might the white-suited bureaucratic stiffs behind the Pearly Gates have fretted: no sooner is the heavenly throne confirmed vacant than the nihilistic denizens of Annville fall upon one another in an apocalyptic set-to, divested of any final pretence of feigned humanity or goodwill, embracing their demons with savage gusto as Quincannon’s methane reactor reaches critical mass.

Disgusted with the craven spectacle of it all, Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy split, our anti-heroes’ quest to bring The Alpha and The Omega back into line getting properly rolling as Annville is wiped off the map by a lethal concentration of cow farts, perhaps EPs Rogen and Goldberg’s most triumphant flatulence related wheeze to date.

Tulip: I’m sorry. We’re just gonna, like, drive around shooting people, getting wasted and looking for God?
Cassidy: [laughs] Oh, I’m so in.
Tulip: And what are you gonna do when you find him?
Jesse: Well, if God wants our help, we’ll help him. If he doesn’t, we’re gonna kick his ass.

With that spirited nod to the opening scenes of 1995’s Preacher, issue one, the first season of AMC’s Preacher drew to a close this week, many of the book’s classic elements falling into place.

Indeed, considering the tediously predictable gnashing of teeth from the literalist fanboy massive, this first season performed the impressive task of introducing newcomers to Ennis and Dillon’s blackly comic, supernaturally charged Southern Gothic universe, whilst simultaneously foreshadowing major plotlines from the book.

Sure, the show doesn’t drop the clutch and peel out in a cloud of dust and exhaust like the book, but this is a property that needed some carefully laid foundations to introduce the characters’ surreal, heightened reality to an audience that doesn’t give a shit about Jesse’s lack of white jeans and certainly wouldn’t be able to tell a Seraphim from an Adephi from a Genesis force at the outset.

With all of that mythology in place, with the benefit of additional backstory and some cheeky twists on the original text (winking at Genesis’ parents, for example), neophyte Preacher fans (of which there are hundreds of thousands more than original readers, True Believer) now at least have the basics in place before we’re thrown head long into the lunacy of the Herr Starr and The Grail, the horrors of Angelville and whatever else the Rogen/ Catlin/ Goldberg team jam into their sophomore arc.

Having been on board for the book from early in the run as it was being released, it’s pretty enervating to be keyed into some of the grander sweep of the narrative, but also be absolutely fucking clueless as to how things might play out episode to episode.

Preacher is also an aesthetic marvel. Cinematographer Bill Pope (just check those credits) pays homage to the Western vistas of Ford and Leone, revels in moments of Raimi-esque bloodshed, whilst also keeping a foot firmly in the absurdist desert noir of the Coen brothers circa Raising Arizona. Pope’s endless bleached blue Texan skies and ochre desert vistas contrast with painterly compositions and stunning, chiaroscuro-like church interiors, warm golden hues and jarring, lurid neon illustrating the sacred and the profane.

The spiritual successor to your Wild At Hearts, your True Romances, your Bonnie & Clydes, Preacher’s (the comic) very ’90s meditations on America have been carefully transplanted into Preacher (the show) via the surprisingly safe, nuanced hands of two Executive Producers previously best known for scatological juvenilia and bong rips.

Preacher (the story) is a satire about faith, community, morality, sexuality, violence, gender, blasphemy, Patriotism, love, friendship, belonging, perversion… Thinking about it, perhaps it’s best to just leave it at ‘the full shit show that is the human experience… with grievous bodily harm for added comic effect’ and be done with it, eh?

Suffice to say, I could bang on about this show indefinitely — I absolutely cannot wait to see where Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy and that raunchy Chevrolet Nova pull in next.

Roll on season two.

If you’re still not convinced, or gave up early in the season owing to expectations of something more slavishly straightforward, I’ll leave you with a few reassuring words from showrunner Sam Catlin in an attempt to bring you back into the Preacher fold.

“In the first season we really wanted to establish Jesse’s relationship to God and lack thereof. He is disillusioned and losing his congregation from the beginning. We needed to put Jesse’s journey into context, and his mission for next season.” Sam Catlin, Deadline

When did I know Preacher truly loved me? Probably when they dropped a ’98 hair metal oddity from Rough Cutt (me neither) offshoot Jailhouse in episode two.

* Dip into the esoteric delights of the full season’s soundtrack here. Some saintly Youtuber has compiled a playlist of most of the music featured on the show here, too. Fun fact: former ring-in Poison axeman Blues Saraceno contributes a couple of iconic tracks to proceedings, upping the ‘weird' quotient considerably.

** Bullets dodged along the project’s long path from page to screen include cinematic versions potentially helmed by Kevin Smith (no), Rachel Talalay (Tank Girl), Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider) and Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition), before rumours of a long form HBO series began gathering steam early in the decade.

Home Brewed: read it in ye olde national archives / October 4, 2023 by Garth Jones

Home Brewed has been preserved for whatever’s left of humanity after late stage Capitalism’s finished fisting what remains of the planet.

Borrow it here.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: judas priest 'nostradamus' tour (2008) / September 5, 2023 by Garth Jones

NB: I was pumped to see the Priest, resurgent, finally get into the Hall of Fame, 23 years after they were eligible, yesterday.

With that in mind (and noting I was pegged to the gills with primo gay bar coke on the night)… 2008 was a less than stellar gig-going experience.

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Read on:

If ‘evvy metal had a stench, it’d definitely be the nauseating sting of Blue Stratos permeating chronic BO, stale weed and WASP shirts soaked in nine buck bourbon and Coke that hung, thick and oppressive, over the ten thousand or so dyed in the denim relics from Heavy Metal Parking Lot (Southern Hemisphere Chapter) herded into Hisense Arena.

(We quickly realise that a carefully timed air strike would, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, devastate the ranks of Melbourne’s service station attendants.)

Yes, it’s Saturday night in olde Melbourne town and the Priest are back in Oz for the first time ever (well, with Rob, anyway. They rocked up earlier this decade with their version of Blaze Bayley, one Timothy ‘Ripper’ Owens. See Rock Star for a fairly ropey approximation of how all that turned out…)

Taking the stage* like a quintet of Brummie metal grannies, it’s quickly clear that age will indeed weary even the most defiantly camp of Metal Gods. Cresting sixty to a man, (barring fraudulently billed ‘original drummer’ Scott Travis; he’s only in his mid ’40s), tonight’s show is less about ‘delivering the goods’ and more along the lines of ‘diamonds and rust’.

Perhaps fresh from The Laird, our man Halford shambled aimlessly about the stage like a homeless metal Liberace, resplendent in some sort of disco ball inspired Rasputin get up.

To his credit, though, the trademark doppler effect wail was mostly intact, and his subtext laden stock ramblings about solidarity and standing up and shouting and being true to yourself and all that were all rather endearing in a ‘loony distant uncle’ sort of way.

Dynamic guitar duo Glenn and KK are still nimble of finger, and kudos to them both for bravely busting out their kit from the ’86 Turbo tour. Mr Tipton is resplendent in ladies’ red pleather trousers, whilst Mr Downing has bravely cracked out the leather vest, no shirt combo reviled so eloquently by Patton Oswalt.

Together, though, they deploy an admirably histrionic payload of relentless dual axe oriented strafing runs.

Meanwhile, bass torturer Ian Hill continues to essay the role of a gene splicing of Derek Smalls and Geezer Butler, patrolling his allotted couple of square metres of stage with all the dignity that description suggests. His partner in rumbling heavy artillery thunder, the similarly unassuming and late to the party Scott Travis, does his job serviceably- he may even give Tommy Lee a run for his dosh in terms of overall ‘sticks tossed distractingly skywards’ per song.

There was definitely something amiss, though.

The general mood is lethargic- half of Halford’s act is based around varying excuses for a nice sit down- one of the more longwinded (I mean ‘epic’, clearly) numbers from the new album calls for the frontman to be unceremoniously shoved onstage astride a Repertory Theatre’s prop throne by a dude in an executioner’s hood, and even fetish club anthem/ set closer ‘Hell Bent for Leather’ is delivered in its entirety by our man slumped atop that trademark Harley, sapping the song of its inherent energy.

Still- the tunes and musicianship (see the aforementioned ‘diamonds’; ah, foreshadowing) held it all together when showmanship and overall energy lagged (that would be the ‘rust’ then): Painkiller, Breakin’ The Law, Metal Gods, Eat Me Alive, Another Thing Comin’, Green Manalishi and the mighty Sinner (no Deliverin’ The Goods, though, for shame!).

Nearly forty years of footy chants, subtextually suspect anthems and scorching widdly diddly proto-speed metal whip the crowd into a mildly agitated state of early middle-aged bonhomie. Yes, this crowd was so Luddite it still utilised butane…

It’s a strangely underwhelming experience, tempered with the delayed jubilation of seeing your (questionable) heroes from half a lifetime ago in the flesh.

Then it was all over, and like some cosmic sociologist’s joke, two mighty tribes, more alike in their zealotry than either would dare admit, squared off as they awayed into the brisk Melbourne night, witching hour ascendant: elated metal dudes and dudettes defiantly stared down the buzzing, beanie’d footy throng emerging from the MCG, and they stared back, and then we all decided to just get along.

Somewhere Rob Halford was smiling.

*And what a stage it is! Our heroes have clearly made the budgetarily shrewd decision to cart the ‘B-stage’ over; a couple of flags, the de rigeur backdrop with the spooky glowing eyes, another one incorporating the logo plus Union Jack and an elevator (!), as if all the sitting down wasn’t enough already, which Halford routinely employed to pop out of the top of the set like a cheeky leather-clad jack in the box, and that’s your lot. No wheezing Metal Mickey style transforming robo-stages or giant, fireworks spewing Nostradamus golems for you, Australia!

from the archives: One One One Two One Red Black GO (2016) / September 5, 2023 by Garth Jones

visceral: adjective vis•cer•al \ˈvi-sə-rəl, ˈvis-rəl\

1 : felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body
2 : dealing with crude or elemental emotions
3 : of, relating to, or located on or among the viscera

Yeah, I’m the arsehole bringing the Webster’s to a Fury Road review.

In the interests of complete transparency: Mad Max: Fury Road stomps on your neck, hard, and punches a thoroughbred’s load of adrenaline straight into your pathetically unprepared human aorta for two dizzying, manic, nitro-drunk hours (I’d hate to bury the lede on you).

Visceral: you feel the miraculous, long in gestation Mad Max: Fury Road in your guts, it vibrates your bones,trafficking in raw, elemental truths and revelling in inspired, bombastic mythos, a feral, totemic out-of-body experience, unparalleled.

Image credit: Roadshow Films

There’s a lazy tendency, in critical circles, to apply some abstract algebra to the act of pinning a film’s essence to a set of familiar precedents: Z = X +Y (on speed!).

I promise you that you have never seen anything like Fury Road.

By now, you know the beats.

Image credit: Roadshow Films

Hugh Keays-Byrne‘s (Toecutter in another life) despotic revhead Immortan Joe is double crossed by his stoic cyborg lieutenant, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, bringing the noise), who hits the Fury Road with the bastard’s baby-factory Wives (Abbey Lee, Zoe Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Riley Keough). Joe and his gibbering, chroming army of War Boys are quickly in hot pursuit.

Tom Hardy’s skittish, manic Max (stepping in for ‘our’ Mel, of course, who is an anti-Semite and serial abuser of women, if you’d conveniently forgotten), again an unwilling participant in someone else’s stoush, spends ample time as a blood bag and hood ornament for War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), before forging an uneasy truce with Furiosa and The Wives.

Image credit: Roadshow Films

By now you’ve no doubt clocked the pre-emptive, squealing man baby, Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) fall out from Fury Road. (If you have no idea what I’m on about, very well played. Revel in the ignorance- some things are better left un-known).

I’m here to reassure you: Fury Road is inhabited by a coterie of magnificent, arse-kicking femmes, women taking control and sticking it to their patriarchal oppressors with ingenious gusto.

Sure, Hardy’s Max, once more cast as an unwilling saviour, is nominally the lead. He is a pragmatic Man With No Name hell-bent on moving forward, surviving. But it is Theron’s Furiosa who anchors the film and propels it forward, a woman with a tragic past on a quest to escape the traumas visited upon her and her charges in Joe’s hellish Citadel.

If you’re an inhabitant of the barren universe of the MRA, Fury Road would, in an ideal world, rewire your sad masculinist fantasia and defuse the pitiful tantrums directed at a world quickly rendering you utterly redundant.

The Fury Road itself is a blasted, hyper-saturated canvas, a logical apocalyptic evolution from the desolate outback wastelands of The Road Warrior and Thunderdome.

Maestro George Miller orchestrates his practical vehicular operatics with a maverick sense of lunatic abandon and sheer visual poetry, his break neck destruction derby an over-cranked automotive parable of survival, resourcefulness and perhaps even hope against devastating odds.

Ever been punched so hard your jaw dislocated, but the adrenaline carried you several hours before you noticed?

… that’s Fury Road.

Why are you still sitting there?

See it.

from the archives: Unexpected rainbow in outback australia (2016) / September 2, 2023 by Garth Jones

Originally published in Crosslight, October 2016.

Director Stephan Elliott’s cult Australian film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was partially filmed in the regional New South Wales mining town Broken Hill in 1993.

Released in 1994, Priscilla tells the story of two drag queens (female impersonators) and a transgender person travelling through outback Australia to an Alice Springs gig in a converted bus christened ‘Priscilla’.

The scenes taking place in Broken Hill pub Mario’s Palace depict the ‘locals’ and their initially shocked, prejudiced reactions to the three fabulous strangers in their midst, who they regard with almost otherworldly horror and awe.

Interior, Mario’s Palace Hotel, Broken Hill:

Bernadette: [to the Bartender] Could I please have a Stoli…
Shirley: No! Ya can’t have! Ya can’t have nothing! We’ve got nothing here for people like you! Nothin’!

The scene ends with Bernadette (Terence Stamp), delivering a withering, unprintable put down to the belligerent Shirley, thus winning over the rough and tumble local drinkers, quickly segueing into an impromptu burlesque performance on the hotel’s world famous staircase.

In 1996 I was 18 years old. I voted in my first federal election, and Liberal John Howard was swept to power, defeating sitting Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating with a 5 per cent swing to the Coalition. The concept of marriage equality had yet to enter the public consciousness in any profound way…

Read the full article here.

bonus wip: the sexual witches of wriggler's bend / August 16, 2023 by Garth Jones

One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

from the archives: Double-oh-uh: Spectre (2016) / August 10, 2023 by Garth Jones

On 24 November 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked, revealing the bitchy machinations of the blockbuster film-making process to the general public.

Via our *top secret* connections, we have secured this exclusive look at the creative process behind the newest Bond blockbuster, Spectre.

_______________________________________________________
From: Crumpet-Thighsalot
To: REDACTED
CC: REDACTED BCC: REDACTED
RE: Minutes: SPECTRE screenwriters retreat — 27 November, 2012
_______________________________________________________

Present: “JL”, “NP”,” RW”, ”JB” (not that one), “SM”, “DC”. Stenographer: Ms Crumpet-Thighsalot

SM: Well, chaps, based on these weekend box office reports, looks like we’ll need to heave another one of these limp loads of cobblers out toot-bleeding-sweet. Be a good girl and fetch us a round of double brandies, would you, Ms Crumpet-Thighsalot?

JL: Good meeting’s a quick meeting gents, let’s get cracking. Who wants to kick this off?

NP: Thanks, JL. I think he needs to meet some women in varying states of grief and emotional distress…and give them a jolly good seeing to.

JL: Yes, I suppose that’s a given, NP. But a good place to start, nonetheless. Who are these birds he rogers? And why? Psychologically. We should really ratchet up the pathos. The darkness.

RW: How about we get someone age appropriate, say, oh, I don’t know…that Italian, Monica…Bellucci is it? Put that tired old cliché of Bond not getting his end away with ‘women of a certain age’ to bed…as it were? (tee hee)

DC: (enthused) I’m liking where this is going, lads. Let’s really show the audience he’s a 21st century bloke — a chauvinist, not a misogynist. Cracking!

(Several glasses clink)

RW: And then, once we’ve gotten all those internet bores off our collective backs, he’ll ditch her immediately and fall for a Frenchie young enough to be his daughter. We’ll need to do some press where she bangs on about her undeniable sexual chemistry with DC in the lead up to release, of course.

DC: (unintelligible)

SM: (sticking a post-it note to a whiteboard) Well, that’s that sorted then. What’s next? I suppose we should get the bloody credits sequence out of the way — they’re always a right headache.

JB: Tentacles.

SM: What’s that, JB?

JB: Tentacles. Thick, onyx tentacles slithering all over a nude Bond…and his Walther PPK. Like, really going at it, constricting, choking…

(Awkward silence)

…and of course there’re all these confused models sort of just standing about, swaying a bit, like a Robert Palmer video. But mainly Bond. Nude. And big black tentacles.

JL: We could get that Sam Smith to do the theme — a guaranteed ‘unit shifter’, as they said in my day — he’d really help the fans appreciate how good Chris Cornell’s theme song actually was, too.

SM: Alright, yes. Tentacles. Thanks for that, JB…I s’pose we can come back to that one if we’re really desperate for something. I’ll look the Smith bloke up later. Moving right along, let’s get down to brass tacks — what’s this one all about? What’s the meat of Bond 24…? After all, this is the film that’ll lead us into the historic twenty fiftieth chapter of 007 on the big screen!

NP: Best of Blighty! Top Gear! British engineering! Traditional British knee tremblers! British gadg —

SM: We’ve already secured the Heineken endorsement. Apple’s on board, too. Ms Crumpet-Thighsalot can email you the full list, if you’d like?

NP: Can we at least have an aerial night shot of the Thames with a bloody great ‘LONDON’ caption on it? Those frightful heathens in the Antipodes need all the help they can get.

SM: Consider it done.

JL: We’re really making cracking progress here, gents — at this rate, we’ll be down the Bladder & Bread-basket for kick off.

DC: Now, speaking of phones, I’ve been thinking. What’s in all the headlines, lately? Snowden. Surveillance. Privacy. Let’s inject some realpolitik into this one. What’s Bond if not relevant, ey? What’s it like when an old fashioned state-sanctioned murderer’s threatened with obsolescence by bloody nerds with drones and GPSes and what not?

NP: Bloody good point, DC — when’s a drone ever porked a supermodel on a space station? Never, that’s when!

SM: Quite.

DC: I say we crank a bit of the old Cold War nostalgia, really ask some big questions, challenge those popcorn gumming plebs…

NP: Like in The Dark Knight?

DC: (terse) I’ve not seen it.

SM: I’m liking where this is going, DC — let’s put a pin in this and flesh it out on set like usual, eh? Time’s money, eh wot? I suppose the big question we’re all dodging, here, gents, is: who’s the villain?

JL: We’ve been doing a bang up job on this front. Three camp Europeans in a row- very progressive, very challenging… To be honest, I’m stumped, lads.

JB: It’s a head scratcher, agreed.

RW: Here’s an idea…what if the last three films are all interconnected by a shadowy, heretofore unseen conspiracy masterminded by…someone related to Bond? Perhaps a secret foster brother who’s mad his dad loved 007 more?

JL: Good god, man. Genius! We can even jam a few pompous thematic references to ‘duality’ in there — lots of mirrors, f’rinstance. Psychological and what-not. The duality of man. Freud.

RW: Jolly good idea. Let’s say this vast master plan, going to ridiculous lengths to specifically target Bond, has been in place since Casino Royale. After all, those bloody Gen Ys do enjoy having everything explained to them in agonising, tedious detail.

NP: I’m feeling like Bond needs a Joker. Can this guy have a distinctive scar?

DC: …

JL: I’m thinking we see the origin of the scar, my good man.

(More glasses clinking)

SM: Well, chaps, the hour groweth late, as Steve King said — sterling bloody work, the lot of you! Let’s adjourn to the boozer — we can iron out any minor details we’ve missed — henchmen, vehicles to be exploded, locations for the how’s yer father, an actual villain — with a viewing of my Fiftieth Anniversary box set after a pint or twelve.

I must say, I do feel like this one needs an ejector seat…

[Meeting adjourned]

short: the prospect of unchecked violence / July 20, 2023 by Garth Jones

“How do you reconcile being a blunt instrument of The Establishment with oppressing your own class interests?”
It was Officer Chock Fistwell’s first day.
Chock was of average IQ for a cop, and the final question on the entry exam had confused him to the point of violence.
The squat, coiled pink knot of rage in the all-black boiler suit had wrenched a leg off his chair and assailed his test paper, reducing the desk beneath to splinters.
The department’s personality tests indicated he fit the required profile perfectly.
Psychopath.
Chock passed on the spot and was inducted immediately.
Officer Fistwell was assigned crowd control out at the Urtabarkkenoo orgone reserves.
A rabble of filthy art students and ferals had blockaded the train line to the port.
Chock was kinky for power. He tugged his shirtsleeve down over his thorny ARBEIT MACHT FREI tatt and rasped a callused palm over his freshly shaved skull.
Officer Fistwell strapped on his beetle-like peacekeeping carapace:
How good was this opportunity to stomp on dissent, to bring the mighty boot of The State down on the skulls of the rabble?
Of course, Chock was incapable of framing a sentence that complex – he’d passed the force language test by failing spectacularly – he just got off on the prospect of unchecked violence.
Chock strained to buckle his tactical codpiece.
He’d drawn water cannon detail.
That wasn’t as good as being up in this coven of perverts’ grills, getting fisty and spunking hot raw capsicum spray down their throats... but it was good enough.
The force’s arrival in Urtabarkkenoo was announced by a column of police armaments rolling in behind the mounted division, all bulletproof and bristling. The rank and file, the blokes who got to mix it up mano-a-hippy, blood and broken teeth style, thudded in lock step up back.
Chock envied them.
His mood brightened, though, when he discovered that the Water Cartels’ H20 monopoly meant the cannons now pumped raw effluent.
He’d topped up at the sewage station – this was going to be fucking great.
The battalion of cops scuttled, a tide of lethal roaches.
The sun set, ugly and clotted.
Tension, begat by imminent, inevitable violence, settled.
A few hundred yards up the road was the blockaded rail junction, just past a sign that read

CRUSADER-EXCALIBUR HOLDINGS PTY LTD | TRESPASSERS WILL BE EXECUTED

The hippies were dancing, for fuck’s sake, around a glowing pile of orgone crystals stacked a storey high at the nexus of the junction. A snaking diesel freight train was stopped further north, its headlights punching dimly into the twilight.
Commanding Officer Drongo “Shovelhead” Dutton was in the vanguard of the advancing columns of cops.
Every officer under Dutton’s command had been cloned from his curdled DNA.
As such, they all shared his propensity for undiluted Fascism.
Chock sized up the battalion from his vantage atop the cannon.
They were Legion, and they were all him.
It was a fleeting consideration.
Chock was rigid as he trained his cannon on a green haired dirt-farmer and adjusted the pressure to “grievous bodily harm”.
The prospect of caving in some hippy skulls pulled him into sharp focus.
The raggedy crew of malnourished protesters locked in a circle around the junction were begging for 100% legal and justifiable obliteration under the laws of the state, he reckoned.Dutton unhooked his squealing loud hailer and held it up to his congenital sneer.
Feedback scraped the scene.
Chock’s trigger finger twitched, chipped teeth gritted.
Sweat stung the nicks in his zero-bladed skull.
Dutton’s monotone rumbled across the expanse.
“Crush them.”
There were 36 protesters in total – all good and very numerological. The coven had been firing up a particularly juicy Working for the approaching fash.
Orgone crystals, a spicy natural resource unique to Arcadia, weren’t just a next-gen fuel source set to power the economy into the next millennium; they also had wild supernatural properties.
The CRUSADER-EXCALIBUR mine site was, in fact, a turbocharged locus for hefty loads of mind-bending etheric energies.
An oil slick of pigs surged, thirsty for a reckoning.
Jade orgone power wreathed the coven, locked together elbow to elbow in a containment circle around the crystal haul. They chanted wordlessly and the red rock beneath them growled.
Chock Fistwell’s trigger finger seized. He felt the surge of the cannon’s pumps as toxic sludge was fed into the cannon –
The ground in front of the coven – the green-haired one muttered “This is going to be fucking great” through a malicious slash of a grin – split apart, spraying an umbra of orgone jizz skyward.
The gouge in the earth’s mantle raced at the looming regiment.
A screaming infant could be heard from below, volume escalating rapidly.
The first line of filth seized, bewildered.
Chock’s trigger finger choked. His receding jaw slackened at the unfolding spectacle.
His inert cannon leaked a thick trickle of effluent.
Look, we don’t do subtlety around here.
The racing void in the desert floor gaped and swallowed the middle of the frontline. Cops on the fringe tumbled in, wailing.
The shrieking intensified along with the coven’s alien chanting, almost subsuming the rending of earth.
Dutton’s panicked order to retreat was lost in the cacophony.
The void swelled, making way for the screeching thing.
Dutton’s Legion advanced, genetic programming overwhelming their urge to flee.
They continued to tumble into the widening earthen maw, which looked precisely like a giant vulva to the police helicopter humming uselessly overhead.
We don’t do subtlety around here.
The thing beneath the earth crowned, erupted onto the surface in a shower of red dirt and chunks of cloned fascist.
It was bipedal, fifteen feet tall.
A scorpion’s tail whipped.
Six arms with hooked pincers snapped.
Blessed black wings folded across its armored back.
Its screeching, six eyed head, a toddler’s, was wreathed in fire.
This, then, was the first recorded earth-dimensional appearance of the BA‎BALÖN force in fifty years.
It ended satisfyingly badly for the cops.