Malcolm and Kevin, the Tinfoil Twins

The more I look at Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd these days, the more I think that ancient Greeks were right, at least for some: the afterlife is indeed a dreary realm of shadows, where the weak and witless souls of the dead wonder around aimlessly mourning their earthly lives. As the spirit of Achilles tells the visiting Odysseus, at least according to Homer, it’s better to be the lowliest slave in life than even the king of the dead.

What the Greeks did not think of their dearly departed was that they were malevolent and threatening. Perhaps it’s because they never had the chance to meet some of Australia’s former Prime Ministers. Here, we shift geographically and folkloristically north from Greece to the Balkans…