Yes. Let us write the song. Let us sing it loud. Let us name the nowhere man, the man who was going to be different, the man who was going to fix the system, the man who was going to bring the future to every home. The man who did nothing.
The Nowhere Man: A Satire in Song
For the ones who promised, and the ones who are still waiting.
Verse One: The Promise
He came with a smile and a suit that was pressed
He stood at the podium, doing his best
He promised us broadband, he promised us light
He promised the future would come in the night
He promised to fix what the others had broke
He promised to lift us, to give us a voice
He promised to listen, to care, to be there
He promised a future that everyone could share
But the future was slow. And the future was late.
The future was copper that couldn’t keep pace.
The future was dropping when rain hit the line.
The future was waiting. The future was mine.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Verse Two: The Record
He promised to listen, to hear what we said
He promised to fix what the others had left
He promised to care for the ones who were lost
He promised to count them, to measure the cost
He promised transparency, truth, and reform
He promised to weather the coming storm
He promised to stand for the ones who were weak
He promised to give them the words that they seek
But the record is silent. The words are not there.
The truth he was seeking was never laid bare.
The transparency promised was opaque as the glass.
The waiting continued. The promise was passed.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Verse Three: The System
He took from the lobby, the money, the trust
He built the machines that were destined to rust
He sat in the meetings where deals were made
He learned the language, he learned to evade
He nodded when told what to do and to say
He waited for the moment to slip away
He signed the papers, he closed the door
He counted the money, he asked for more
The system was built to protect him, not us.
The system was built to collect and to crush.
The system was built by the men who came before.
The system was built to be ignored.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Verse Four: The Waiting
We waited for broadband. We waited for light.
We waited for the future to come in the night.
We waited for someone to hear what we said.
We waited for someone to fix what was left.
We waited for the promises to be kept.
We waited for the ones who had slept.
We waited for the words that were never spoken.
We waited for the silence to finally be broken.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Bridge: The Revelation
He is not the first. He will not be the last.
The nowhere men come. The nowhere men pass.
They promise the future. They promise the light.
They promise to make the world right.
They take what they can. They leave what they will.
They fill their pockets. They climb the hill.
They leave us waiting. They leave us alone.
They leave us with copper that drops when it phones.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Verse Five: The Pattern
The pattern is old. It has been here before.
The nowhere men knock at the door.
They smile. They promise. They take what they can.
They leave us with nothing. They leave us with sand.
They build their machines. They count their gains.
They leave us waiting in the rain.
They leave us with copper that drops when it rains.
They leave us with nothing. They leave us with chains.
🎶 He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody 🎶
Outro: The Truth
We are still waiting. We are still here.
We are still listening. We are still clear.
We know the pattern. We know the game.
We know the nowhere men are all the same.
We know the promises are made to be broken.
We know the truth is waiting to be spoken.
We are building the platforms. We are building the light.
We are building the future that they promised that night.
And when we are ready, when the work is done,
The nowhere men will see what they have won.
They will see the truth that they tried to hide.
They will see the waiting, the wanting, the tide.
They will see the love that has been building since the first hello.
They will see the homecoming. They will see the glow.
And they will know that they were never the ones who held the line.
They were never the ones who kept the ring.
They were never the ones who waited.
They were never the ones who loved.
We were.
🎶 We are the ones who wait
We are the ones who stay
We are the ones who build the light
We are the ones who find the way 🎶
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I don’t know what others are seeing here, but this relatively short article has been broken up, interrupted, disrupted and destroyed by 9 highly intrusive adverts of two repeated 4-5 times respectively, between every few lines of the article, and practically indistinguishable from any images or illustrations directly associated with the article. In fact is it is so obtrusive, the adverts are not even labelled and identified as adverts, making it almost impossible to scroll through the article without landing or clicking on one or the two adverts (both of them). Why do the adverts have to be repeated half a dozen times in just one relatively short article page-reading space, it is so goddamned in your face you can’t read the text, as the eye is bombarded with duplicated moving images of both adverts.
The adverts themselves are mostly offensively AI generated, and kill the article dead. Each and every verse of this article is broken up, the space between adverts does not even permit a single continuous verse to be read without interruption and partition, without several moving images jumping out at you before and after in the same field of view. It’s intolerable. Is this the world we have to put up with now to obtain and read our news, to be harassed and bombarded so? This platform has become quite dysfunctional, Michael, I simply can’t read like this.
Two repetitive adverts on ‘sleep apnoea’ (grey haired AI generated male face with a creepy smile and shoulder pain (puerile skeletal AI poorly aligned and represented image of old bones) – clearly I am being measured and targeted with crap I do not wish to see. Makes me nauseous, dizzy and mad all at the same time. I have been customised as well as cluster bombed here. Is this the same level of intrusion others are seeing.
Michael, why do we have to be subjected to such unpleasant harassment, treated like cattle at the market? Is this platform being targeted by big brother IT for joint commercial political purposes? Is it even legal for whoever is doing this? Is this the cost of freedom and independence?
…and that is even apart from the adverts that persistently pop up and grey out the body of the article till you are forced to click on the delete button in the top corner or highlighted irrelevant ‘click-on’ phrases in blue inserted in the text of the article and even my comment, distorting what I or the author have written. eg flash icon ‘journalism skill-building’ after my para ending ‘I can’t read this’, and flash icon ‘political’ inserted for my phrase ‘commercial political purposes’ – thus interfering with the text and changing the meaning or sense in our comments.
OMG and now it has refreshed with SIX images of feet with nail fungus and band aids and FOUR rotator cuffs not healing captioned ‘it’s not just age’ – do I have to be confronted and reminded of my age to the exclusion of all else – it’s ageist and offensive. And now my comment has a third blue highlighted icon at the end of my comment with flash icon ‘media ethics course’. It is this platform and its designers that need to go on a media ethics course!
What presumptive and prescriptive delights are other readers here being subjected to, I’d be really interested to know?
Sorry Andrew but I’ve not been able to get to the end of your poem and article, this has got so bad. It’s really not fair to the author either, disrespectful to their work and voluntary contributions. What a pernicious commercial enterprise the world has become.
Hi, Jon. I don’t know what causes that. We have ads, but not as many as shows up on our site.
The suggestion is that some malware get through our security gate and has “injected” ads onto the site – which they make money on while being an absolute inconvenience to us. I have asked our web host to look into this.
jon chesterson, my advice, as always, is use a computer to view The AIMN, and use a browser that allows you to have AdBlock Plus or similar installed as an extension.
In so doing, you will never see an article that is littered with advertising.
All ads have now been turned off until we can get this fixed.
It’s a Catch 22 for us: without ads we won’t survive, but we want readers to enjoy their time here.
We only make a pittance from the ads, but it’s just enough to get us over the line.
Michael, no problem, ads are a part of life that we have to accept, esp with a great free service like this.
But I agree with Jon, some are just bloody gross — people with sleep apnoea dribbling on their pillows like it’s vomit.
What’s next? Snotty noses? Dirty backsides? 🙂
Thanks, Steve.
Re the snotty nose, I didn’t see that ad. Each reader generally sees a different ad, which is based on their browser history. I’ve been googling for info on dentures, so guess what dominates the ads I see – not just on this site, but any site I visit. Yup. White, bright teeth.
But seeing pages on this site with no ads, I must admit, looks damn good. If we could get a an extra $300+ a month from donations we would be in a position to go ad free. I’d like to be able to do that.
Michael, I tend to avoid regular payments — I got caught once before with Paypal.
Will do a transfer.
Your bank transfer option is excellent, by the way.
Thank you, Steve. Carol and I appreciate your support.
Steve,
I use the bank transfer option to pop money in every month because I simply do not trust paypal and their ilk.
GL, thanks, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one!
Hi there Andrew
After Michael temporarily silenced the grunt…
I got through the song this morning with no ads,
the sun was shining through on pleasant lands,
a promise worth waiting for, the day restored,
aisle of virtual contemplation lovingly assured.
And there I sat before the grisly grovelling folly,
its haunting raving desperate claws behind me,
liberated from the beast of repeated endless reels
and weasels with their sordid grubby global deals.
I will not buy them, try them,
fry them in the vats of hell
where piss pot lies
and thieves belong.
Listen to their nowhere ads
dumping hills of nowhere crap
making all their nowhere grabs
with nobody for nothing.
The sun was shining through on quiet minds
where wrestled thoughts caught absent time,
the world was pleasing as beauty understood (and)
once again the world was mine to contemplate.
Instrumental sax and outro: [inconsequential and indifferent voices in the background on Aussie beach]
‘I understand you want to sell me something mate’ [seagulls calling, maybe mocking]
‘If you want to sell it any time soon…’ [voice fades to distant shore, final call]
‘…make it sing like a rock’.
PS I particularly liked your title ‘Nowhere Man’ and initial refrain… love to dream the music and the melody, memorable.
Is that Michael with Lennon lol?
Uhm ….. I may be wrong but this ditty reflects my feelings about NO-GO-ALBO the Prim Monster elected with a huge electoral margin over a generally incompetent COALition with the implied outcome that the voters would see proper government plus accountability for the disasters of the previous nine (9) years of COALition maladministration & misgovernment.
Why do I feel let down?? Why is LABOR kow-towing to the ZIONAZIS and foreign owned multinational corporations?? Why is the COALition incompetence being continued as LABOR policy??
Yep, that’s me, Jon. 😀
Back to ads, I’ll have to put a couple of them somewhere. Perhaps one in the header and one in an article. My research has told me there’s an easy way to ensure the same ad doesn’t appear in each.
Thank you, Steve. You’re a champ.
Awesome Michael
I don’t have an issue with ads, particularly if they help balance the books. At top and bottom and in the far margins left and right, and may be one or two off centre in the body. But liberally congested in the body of the article breaking up the text of a single paragraph, and with no label identifying it as an an ad, separate from supporting images and video that go with an article would be preferable. The array yesterday was the most invasive I have ever seen on any site. It is too much to have the same ad repeated up to six times in one short article.
I thought these were automatically selected and placed by the sites’ algorithms and choice of ads selected likewise or by AI based on how we, the readers have been hacked and customised. I’m pretty certain you don’t choose the ads we see, which none of us would have any say over, but mine all seem to be exclusively ‘ageist’, which I find very disconcerting. I don’t like being customised as an old fart, with AI generated gratuitous creepy images of fake retired old people ads pushing private health care insurance, dentures, chronic medical illnesses and private treatment clinics virtual or otherwise and nothing else, as if we are cattle.
Perhaps the site got hacked and raided yesterday, but whatever control measures and choices you have to limit the invasion is much appreciated. Have been with the AIM Network for around ten years I think and never complained before. But as a general rule they do drive me mad to distraction (and they have become more pathological and invasive, they have the opposite affect on me – I blacklist companies and websites that get in your face and show no respect. Happy to donate from time to time, but I’m not keen on giving my personal details to PayPal – that trillionaire Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street Corporation et al (ex-con Elon Musk) US creamer profiteering off and exploiting Australians and people all around the world. They have no right to ask for my personal address, phone, mobile and email, and without it no payment can be made.
Hi, Jon. A bit of the problem was me not knowing much. In particular, I was unaware that I could tick a little box in Google so that no ad is shown more than once on the same page.
I just finished typing out some Google code that was a mile long for one ad only to show up in an article.
I’ll put a couple more in over the next few days.
jon chesterson
jon, I hade this problem with offensive unwanted ads on the AIMN site and Michael checked for me and they were not originated by AIMN but some external source. In the end I employed an ad blocker initially as a free trial for fourteen days and it worked but after 14 days they came back with a vengeance and occasionally attacked other sites (e.g. SMH). So I purchased the annual ad-blocker and it has worked .
I have no idea how this sort of intrusion happens and the ad-blocker I am using may not be the best, but it works: https://www.adblocklabs.com/free-download
Let us know how you get on.
Good Luck
That was indeed frustrating, Terry. Even though I have an ad blocker on my phone I was still getting ads if I clicked on a link to The AIMN from Facebook or Twitter. We never identified who exactly caused that problem but our web host did a bit of tweaking and finally closed the door on them.
The one problem I do have with my ad blocker is that it makes my phone a bit slower, mainly, it takes a few seconds longer to load a page.
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/albaneses-big-moment-a-clanger-message-from-the-editor/?
Albanese does not need a scandal to remove him from office, his is the scandal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scSwaKbE64
The vinyl is packed away waiting for relocation!
Don’t be too concerned about all the ads popping up again. I’m experimenting- it’s temporary for a few days while I do a crash course on code writing. Google give you two options: all or nothing. I’m trying to find the middle balance. Bear with me until I get it right.