What bad career choices have you made?
Recently, I had a surprise argument with a good
friend over the sensitivity, or not, of celebrating
Christmas. The friend, who was planning the December window display
of his store, remarked, in such an off-hand manner that it chilled
me to the bone, that he was having difficulty finding a “Happy
Holidays” sign in Sydney.
Christmas, he said, causes terrible offence to our non-Christian
brothers and sisters and therefore all references to the birth of
Jesus must be evaporated.
I pitched camp on the side that once you remove all vestiges of
the host culture a vacuum is created, which is henceforth filled,
by another that doesn’t cringe at its own traditions.
We back and forthed, both making up facts and including
anecdotes that didn’t happen, until I stormed off (briefly).
I ain’t one for believing in omnipotent gods, but Christmas, in
my experience, is a rewarding time of the year, even if television
programming suffers. To cast it aside is the first step in the
crumbling of what is, mostly, a kind and just society, and least in
comparison to many others around the world.
But young men know only lions get respect. If I was twenty, I
might’ve heard the call to become a hero of the caliphate too.
Therefore, it doesn’t surprise me when I hear of young men
taking up, with romantic zeal, the cudgel for ISIS, that dynamic
offshoot of Al-Qaeda.
Let’s catalogue the benefits of an ISIS membership: you
get to shoot machine guns with real bullets at real people. You’re
encouraged to take multiple wives. You may take a battery of sex
slaves, by force if necessary, if you’re the sort whose cock could
drill holes in concrete. Every thought, meanwhile, is taken care of
via an ultra-orthodox interpretation of the Koran.
Two years ago, the Australian doctor Tareq Kamleh, who trades
under the Jihad name Abu Youssef al-Australi, whistled into Syria
to join ISIS.
“It was a decision I was very, very happy I made,” he said at
the time. Tareq also said any muslim who didn’t take up arms had
“no self-respect.”
Yesterday, it was reported that the former surfer’s diary had
been found by a former currency trader, who uses the pseudonym
Macer Gifford, and who’d fought for the Kurds against ISIS.
As reported by Fairfax
newspapers,
“(Kamleh) had an ‘obsession with vitamin pills’ and had many
bottles for various purposes. Mr Gifford concluded the doctor
was ‘an American Psycho-type man’, referring to the preening,
charismatic but psychopathic book and film character.
“Former colleagues and acquaintances of Dr Kamleh’s have
previously described him as charming but manipulative and sexually
predatory.
“There was a meticulousness, an obsession with his health …
He had a workout schedule of how many press-ups he was going to do.
Just a neat, intelligent but slightly psychopathic character is
what came across in his possessions.”
‘I don’t think he was a particularly happy character … He
didn’t seem to be getting on with people there very much,’ Mr
Gifford said.
Odd, but not surprising, story, yes?
Mystical worship and deep, fathomless submission only gets you
so far.
Reality bites.
Now: what bad career choices have you made?
Let me start. I once spent two hundred thousand dollars on a
water taxi business.
When that sank, not literally, but close when a ferry belted
into the side, I poured fifty into an online surfing website.
You?
