By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble
In a stunning turn of events this ANZAC Day, the two-up rings fell quiet.
Not gradually. Not respectfully. Just… stopped.
In their place came a chant.
Low at first. Then gathering weight. Then impossible to ignore.
One word. Over and over.
“Fookit… Fookit… Fookit…”
Earlier in the day, polite applause at Welcome to Country ceremonies had already been drowned out by the same rhythmic murmur. Most assumed it was just a few blokes who’d started early and peaked too soon.
They were wrong.
By mid-morning, the chant had spread from the two-up schools to the pubs, from barbecues, teddy bear picnics and to backyard fences, rolling across the country with all the subtlety of a rat plague in a grain shed.
By midday, it was national.
Political experts scrambled for meaning. Cultural commentators demanded panels. Anthropologists quietly applied for funding.
And somewhere in Dusty Gulch, Western Queensland, a man named Dusty "Cooker” McFookit cracked a tinnie, squinted into the sun, and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Dr Barbara “Barbie” Bellwether of the University of Dusty Gulch believes the phenomenon runs deeper than simple frustration.
“There’s a phonetic satisfaction to it,” she explained, adjusting her glasses as if that might help. “Short. Punchy. Slightly rebellious. It sits naturally in the Australian mouth. Like ‘mate’, ‘yeah-nah’, or ‘that’ll do’.”
According to Bellwether, the chant may represent a form of collective release.
“A population confronted with complexity will often default to simplicity. ‘Fookit’ is, in many ways, the purest distillation of modern civic engagement.”
Other academics were more ambitious.
One paper, already fast-tracked for publication, describes the chant as a “subconscious rejection of institutional verbosity in favour of monosyllabic clarity.” Another simply titled: Fookit: Towards a New National Lexicon.
Out in the real world, Australians required no such analysis.
“It just sort of came out,” said a bloke in thongs outside a servo in Hervey Bay. “Next thing you know, everyone’s saying it. Felt… right.”
At the footy, the chant replaced entire conversations.
At the supermarket, it covered everything from rising prices to missing sausages.
At home, it proved remarkably versatile.
Burnt dinner? Fookit.
Election coverage? Fookit.
Existential dread creeping in around 3am? …Fookit.
Then came the question no one had thought to ask.
Who or what exactly… was Fookit?
Because, for one brief and shining moment, an entire country stopped trying to make sense of things…
…and just said what it was already thinking.
McSleasy, when asked for an opinion stepped to the microphone, cleared his throat, and began:
“I’ll be honest...”
At which point his nose turned to wood and grew so long it fell off.
