The Dead Horses

By Les Mohr

This collection is a fine balance of attitude and anecdote in the best essay writing tradition. The author muses on topics as diverse as God's gold swing and a triathalon involving horses, women and champagne.

On Modern Medicine:

Once a visit to a doctor involved examining you and prescribing treatment. Nowadays he will not touch you, and he assumes the guise of a simpleton. Present yourself with an axe in your skull and he will not hazard a guess as to the source of your discomfort until you have had X-rays, blood tests, cat scans, ultrasounds and exhausted the possibilities of every diagnostic machine within a hundred mile radius.

On Language:

Language came into being when the female arrived back earlier than expected from the berry picking expedition and found her partner with his head under the bear skin of the lady from the cave next door. Necessity is the mother of invention. He now has a need for language, without it he is dead meat. He has no hope. But if he can blurt out, "I was looking for your lost flintstone," or "It's an old folk remedy for migraine," or even "She made me do it." Then he has a chance, albeit a slim one. We didn't get where we are today without optimism.

On the selling of women:

Surely no one would argue that a man's house should come cheaper than his wife. When was the last time you saw a man walk away from a piece of real estate? Yet they abandon their wives all the time. The difference being the latter have no re-sale value.

This delightful collection, beautifully written, will provoke thought and laughter at the same time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2004
• ISBN: 9781412228039

Les Mohr

The author started out as a teacher in Australia, but needing a larger canvas he went to Papua New Guinea as a Patrol Officer. He served there for fifteen years before returnign to Australia. He grew oysters and taught part time until taking up writing. He lives with his wife Pat at Nambucca Heads and when not writing he can be found on the golf course.

Book preview

© Copyright 2004 Les Mohr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written priorpermission of the author.

Cover designer: Jackie Mohr

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Decimal Classification and US Library of Congress numbers is available fromthe Library and Archives of Canada. The complete cataloguing record can beobtained from their online database at:

www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN 1-4120-3783-2

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Contents

THE STUPIDITY BUSINESS

THE NEW TRIATHLON

DEAD HORSES

THE COMPUTER AS ALBATROSS

TO WEEP OR NOT TO WEEP

FESTERING

DEAD CERTAINTIES

VIOLENCE

ASKING FOR ABUSE

THE BARBER SHOP

GIVING AN ASS A BAD NAME

DEPRESSION

THE CASE FOR SELLING WOMEN

TIME TO RECTIFY SOME POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

HONESTY BE BUGGERED

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF…

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

PRIVATISING SPORT

THE AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY

HAND TO HAND SELLING

NOSTALGIA

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

HOLD THE BUS

A CREATION THEORY

ON LOVING ONES FELLOW MAN

GOD?

LEST WE FORGET

WORDS AND LANGUAGE

HYPOCRISY

THE FAMILY TREE

CUSTOMARY LAW

ATOLLS

THE STUPIDITY BUSINESS

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Seeing how popular they were in bookshops, I decided to write a Self Help book. But after I had written; Get off your arse and do something, I could not think of anything further to say. While the publishers agreed that a really short book might be a novelty, they thought a seven word one was pushing the concept a little far, and advised me to see the manufacturers of greeting cards.

I think they were wrong. Anyone stupid enough to hire a life coach would not blink an eyelid at paying twenty dollars for a seven word book.

There is a vast and ballooning business out there, that I am keen to tap into. It has not been categorised yet, so we will call it the Stupidity business. It is huge and growing all the time.

People who eat too much and become fat are part of the Stupidity market. The fat apparently clogs the brain to the extent that they don’t know why they are fat or what to do about it. They must pay someone to tell them these things. Now this is money for old rope. They would be better off physically and financially to fork out the twenty bucks for my book. But this type of activity is too simple and sensible for the Stupidity market. They may be stupid but they still feel a need to get their moneys worth. It has to be complicated.

If they are feeling stressed, rather than go for a walk on the beach or have a beer, they need to go to Byron Bay. There they will hand over sufficient funds to feed half of Ethiopia for a fortnight in order to be advised by a robe clad ex car salesman. He will put them on a diet of organic water and grated goat scrotum for a week and have them hum for six hours a day. He apparently can do this without laughing in front of them and they go home content.

Selling bottled water was a pioneering venture into this market. Somebody has convinced the Stupid that unless they walk round in the constant company of a bottle of expensive water that death by dehydration is unavoidable. To get water from a tap is rapidly becoming a forgotten skill, maintained only, I suspect, by the purveyors of bottled water.

Gymnasiums abound. An expert is required to tell the Stupid how to move. Old fashioned things like walking or running cannot be contemplated on grass or sand, they have to be done on a conveyor belt, with a muscle bound homosexual in attendance in case they forget which foot to put forward next.

The medical profession being for the most part made up of clever chaps is well into the Stupidity business. Once a visit to a doctor involved him examining you and prescribing some treatment. Now he will not touch you, he assumes the guise of a simpleton. Present yourself with an axe lodged in your skull and he will not hazard a guess as to the source of your discomfort until you have had X-rays, blood tests, cat scans, ultrasounds and exhausted the possibilities of every diagnostic machine within a hundred mile radius. Then equipped with sufficient evidence to convince himself that it is beyond his expertise he will send you to a specialist. Where with any luck you will get to do the tests again.

All these blokes are standing under a money waterfall jostling with their buckets.

Of course the really clever thing about the about the self help industry is that it extracts money from the Stupid while allowing them to think they are helping themselves. The irony is that they are actually helping someone else.The whole industry is an oxymoron.

Men who work for forty years and successfully amass a small fortune feel they have to go to a twenty three year old investment advisor with no assets himself, to find out what to do with their money.

To drag in large fees for doing very little is fine but the real beneficiaries of the Stupid market are those that can drag in the money without providing anything at all in return. It has become practically impossible in my town to buy a newspaper. The counter is always clogged three deep with the Stupid waving handfuls of money and clamouring to buy tickets in various games of chance. There is an infinite number of these lotteries, lottos, scratchies and so forth, and the Stupid cannot get enough of them. They are buying thin air and loving it.

How does one get in on this lurk?

For a while I considered operating one of these phone in scams. The Stupid ring a number at five dollars a minute to hear a prayer, have their fortune told, engage in sexual obscenity, get investment advice, their dreams interpreted, tips on horses, you name it. It would be an interesting occupation, great variety, the telephone company collects the fees and I would not feel left out of the industry. The wife however disapproved so it was a no go.

As in most things the USA leads the way in the Stupidity business. But I think they have a large class of people so gullible, so out of touch with reality, seemingly more vegetable than human, that they fall below the category generally recognised as stupid. I watched a TV evangelist the other day, he was pitching to this below stupid group, you could see him struggling to come up with deeper and more sublime stupidity. He told his audience that Jesus rode with him on the back of his motor bike. He related actual conversations shouted between him and Jesus as they hooned about on his Harley Davidson. I thought someone has to stand up and say, bullshit. But no one did. And this rooster sells videos by the millions. He is my hero.

So I have placed adds in several trashy magazines, simply saying; If you are stupid and want God to love you send ten dollars to the above address. If you doubt the sincerity of this offer or think you are not stupid it will cost you one hundred dollars.

I expect to make a fortune.

THE NEW TRIATHLON

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Someone has told me that in Napoleonic times, officers graduating from the French Military Academy, had to complete a final exam in order to win their spurs. This examination involved each cadet being equipped with three horses, three whores, three bottles of champagne, a thirty kilometre course and three hours. It was a test of self knowledge, the candidates had to organise this array of tasks, so as to complete them in the given time.

I have not bothered to check the authenticity of these facts because it would disappoint me too much to find them to be untrue. That such a task should be set by so august a body as the French army is wonderful. How did the stuffy British ever beat them?

There are those who may think this test would not translate well to modern times. Exploitive sex, horse flogging and binge drinking all have their critics nowadays. Every ratbag group from the women libbers to the animal rights brigade would be up in arms. And since it involves freedom of choice, the anti smokers would lobby our nancy politicians to restrict it to areas a prohibitive distance from population centres.

Be that as it may, it would have been an excellent test. The young officer needing to take good stock of his capacities before deciding his course layout. There could be no hollow bravado, the job had to be done, and done under supervision.

I invite you dear reader to pause and have a little think ( if you have not already done so ) about how you would address the problem. A diagram will be helpful. Might I also suggest you begin with a large quantity of paper and a ready alibi, should a family member happen to peer over your shoulder.

You will immediately be thrilled by the challenge. This is proper mens business. No man with a