Dentist dreamer. Minor rock asteroid. Reticent politician. Experiment. Born: September 11, 1974, in a petri dish in an undisclosed lab in Sydney. Put Down: November 11, 2013, in Kookaburra, of acute Beckettian reticulosis, age 39.
Somewhere in the Australian outback
Did live a most astonishing creature
(We mean out back of the local Arthur Treacher’s
For those readers, a sense of geography, lack).
He never dined on a bagel:
Anderson Fluffnagle.
Anderson wanted to live a dull life
Free from all emotional harassment, or worse;
But when you are a half man, the other half horse,
It is hard to avoid interpersonal strife.
Life is never fair, a-
Las (and alack, even) to your friendly neighbourhood chimera.
Ozzie scientists were concerned about the quick decline
Of a noble species
Whose numbers were in the feces –
The wild equine.
What can you do for an animal pwned?
Send in the clones.
Sadly, even the cloned horses seemed doomed.
Like something out of Timothy Findley,
Their hearts were weak, their legs spindly;
For them, extinction surely loomed.
Desperate times called out for desperate measures:
Should they give the clones the DNA of a species with feathers?
The Gesundheit Institute, in order to make the cloned horses more hale,
Decided to mix in genes that were more robust.
After lots of experimentation, their choice was just
Between a man and a sperm whale.
The Institute did not have a big enough vat,
So that was that.
Anderson Fluffnagle was the first off the operating table.
A being that could run in the Preakness
That was also painfully aware of its own freakness
(But with health that was stable).
It was thought, for the common good,
He should lead a…sheltered childhood.
Young Anderson wanted to become a dentist.
And, although his medical board guardians did approve,
It’s hard to hold a drill with hooves,
So, he never even made it to apprentice.
For a promising career you could lay a wreath,
But, honestly, what’s with the obsession with teeth?
Because he sang with a delightful baritone,
Anderson was, for a short time, a vocalist for Midnight Oil.
An addiction to the demon hay his career did spoil,
And he was out before the band earned fame hard won.
All he had from this time were memories
Of strange, star-struck groupies.
Due to the strength of his pupick,
He thought he might play centaur ice.
But, because he was thumbily challenged, came unsolicited advice,
He could not hold a hockey stick
Under other circumstances, it may have been the beginning of an era,
Although, to be perfectly honest, he couldn’t compete with Swedish hockey playing chimeras.
The country’s Prime Minister John Howard
Became Anderson’s close mentor,
Putting him up for a seat in Holbrooke Centaur
Even though he was not very forward.
Ever canny, Howard did realize
That on the horse-man’s growing notoriety he could capitalize.
“Anderson is a strong candidate,” Howard insisted.
“How many of us can plow our own field?
The voters, I believe, will yield,
To our law and order agenda, two-fisted!”
It was a time when politicians promised a Utopia,
Even if they could only deliver a threadbare cornucopia.
Anderson, frankly, expected a rout.
Though he did not like to mention
It, he hated being the dead centaur of attention
(Due to childhood teasing, no doubt).
Apparently voters liked his demeanour, shy,
And put him in office in an election, by-.
Anderson managed to sit out four terms,
Mostly quietly on the back benches.
He did not have the stomach for getting down and dirty in the political trenches,
And was finally undone when scientists came for samples of his sperm.
His enemies smelled blood
When he was asked to be put out to stud.
His supporters said this showed that he was virile.
But, he could not avoid
Bad press, tabloid.
And, the joke was on everybody – Anderson Fluffnagle turned out to be sterile!
His career spent,
To home in the outback for the rest of his life he went.
Somewhere high upon a molehill,
If you listen, if you work hard and strain,
It is said you can hear the sad refrain
Of Anderson Fluffnagle whinnying about Sartre still.
All we are left with is memories in an empty stall –
Perhaps they should have gone with the whale after all!
Andy Hystameen
Excerpted from the Duh paperback original Candid Chimera: The Saga of Anderson Fluffnagle. “Some people’s lives are a haiku,” science fiction journalist Andy Hystameen wrote in his introduction to the book, “other people’s lives are an epic poem destined to be handed down through the generations in oral form until a revolution in communications technology makes it possible for a broken telephone version to be set down for posterity. Anderson Fluffnagle’s story lies somewhere between those two extremes…”