Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.

They’re calling it 9/11, but good.

I won’t bore you with what i’ve been up to in the last 10 years but the general highlights are: learning to rhyme on time, almost competing at the Sochi Winter Games, blockade running Cuba, mastering the correct mix of sugar and yeast in a brioche and so on. Otherwise this blawg was sadly placed into early retirement when I started consulting for the Attorney-General’s Department. I broke the golden rule of commercial practise – work with the govt but never for the govt.

I quite enjoyed the role, I was able to work on some pretty major litigation and I certainly learned a lot about how sausages are made, even if just from the point of view of the farmer but not necessarily the point of view of the pig.

Otherwise you dozy mares, let me take you back to the heady days of 2018, Australia wasn’t in any particular danger at the time, and nor have we really been since basically ever, but nonetheless Slowmo and his malcontents determined that criminal prosecution was appropriate for any government employee or contractor who negatively commented on government policy even if doing so anonymously – fucking crazy right! (It’s a little more nuanced but that’s the crux of it). I maintained a security clearance and would never talk about my govt work – but please don’t cancel me, it was normal commercial Cth stuff, not war crimes or tricking mentally ill people into committing terror crimes, I promise.

Nonetheless, this attack on speech had a major chilling effect on all public servants, including myself, especially when this was interpreted by the courts to include policy which an employee wasn’t even working on. As in, a federal employee working at the National Library as a book returns clerk could face criminal prosecution for posting on Insta that they thought our immigration policy was neither liberal nor neo.

You can imagine how this made me re-think my chosen hobby of discussing and critiquing judicial decisions, regulatory practices and the general decrepitude of the commercial legal industry. I even paused writing my toilet pulp “Fantastic Briefs and where to find them” focusing on the funnest cases Australia has ever seen. It was a dark time and I can only assume that the entire legal industry paused until I was ready to return.

Writing this blawg originally was like having an STI, I was motivated, I was on a roll, I was putting out twice a week, I was itchy, I was showing reckless abandon for spreading it, and then all of a sudden I found myself confined to a convent. Even though I was subsequently released from the convent, the damage had been done. I was chastised, I was rebuked, I was clean. I thought about revisiting the scene multiple times but I had learned the wrong lessons. Continuing with this awful analogy, I was now wearing condoms, learning about coils and dams, i was being more discriminatory about my choice of audience and i was otherwise showing a general reluctance to let anyone know what I had going on. I’ve never been active on any social networks and I’d previously viewed this as my primary and only outlet. That’s saying that I lost something when I lost this outlet and didn’t really have any alternative. This is all a very self-indulgent way of saying that I’ve left the desert and I’m ready to re-enter the land of milfs and honies. Let’s just say that when the Butlerian Jihad inevitably happens I’ll be dying on the frontlines of Team Human.

Once bitten, 8 years shy. Regardless, I’m back. I can’t promise twice weekly like the golden days but I do have about 10 half-written piles of slop in the bank to feed to you piggies and I’ll promise to aim for at least 1 per month going forward. If i don’t hit that, please assume I’ve been abducted and send money to cover my pitifully low ransom – also can someone please water my bonsai. (Further don’t actually ever send money, I’ll never ask for it and if someone does it’s not me)

DEATH TO AI, DEATH TO SPECULATIVE ASSETS, DEATH TO THE MARS COLONY.

Honi soit qui mal y pense