Ernesto – disappointing

Last week I made a pilgrimage to Ernesto’s, the brand new successor-cafe to the iconic (if not always wonderful) Krazy Lounge in Wellington. Ernesto’s is now run by Havana, who also run the nifty Havana Bar and maybe-the-best-cafe-in-Welly Fidel’s, and distribute the wonderful Havana coffee far and wide.
Bad news. The vibe in there sucks.
They removed all the booths, replacing them with a single bench seat running the length of the left-hand wall (as you enter). They removed all the large tables and replaced them with lots of little ones, which are modular but not at all welcoming. Worst of all, they’ve left a gigantic unpopulated river of space flowing from the entrance, past the counter, right to the back wall. The left and right sides of the cafe might as well be different addresses, they’re so far apart.
It is, to be honest, a disaster. How could they screw it up so bad? The vibe is nothing like Fidel’s, nothing like the Havana Bar, nothing like the old Krazy. I don’t know what it is like. There’s no appreciation whatsoever for space and the way people inhabit it. Man. I was crushed, absolutely crushed. I so wanted this to rock, and it was the complete opposite.
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I had just beforehand gone a bit mad and spent some money on comics for the first time in an age. Picked up Local issue 6, which was a very cool tale about two roommates in Park Slope, Brooklyn who don’t quite get along; Pictozine issue 1, a new NZ comix zine with a grab-bag of stuff, including Dylan Horrocks outlining the contents of his personal Lighthouse library; and Snake Woman issue 1 and 2, a very pretty (Michael Gaydos art, the guy who did Alias with Bendis) conspiracy/horror story steeped in Indian mythology. This was ‘created by’ Shekhar Kapur, Indian film director best known outside India for the harrowing Bandit Queen and, of course, Elizabeth. It didn’t disappoint and I’ll probably pick up #3.
Almost bought God the Dyslexic Dog just because its title is cool. But didn’t.
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Watched Clerks 2 last night, for some reason. Not really recommended unless you have affection for the Kevin Smith oeuvre and accept that the funny isn’t much there. I thought it was nice.

Superconductor

Have been super productive in the last couple weeks, such that yesterday I hit the afternoon and found myself at a loss for what to do next. Always stuff to do, mind, but nothing urgent and nothing howling for my attention either – except Ron the Body draft 3, which I think has just (finally) hit the top of the pile. Hurrah.
Just had a long messenger chat with a Parisian friend who I met in Mexico last year and who was sitting in an internet cafe in Peru. And sent a letter to Cain in Mexico yesterday, with some long-promised bits and pieces in. (Other letters are on the to-do list as well. Shoulda written more yesterday.)
It was great to reconnect with someone from travel days. Friendships on the road are often brief but intense, and I had promised that we would still be friends when our paths crossed again – and sure enough, we were chatting away without missing a beat despite nearly a year incommunicado.
In other other news, the Alligator has deployed from Seattle and is expected on NZ soil in a few weeks. Another travel buddy succumbs to the lure of NZ… yes, come here, come all of you, come here…

Apparently not Uberer Than You after all

If you want to see what happens when I make a complete hash of communication, refer yesterday’s post.
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In the mail today, a great flyer that I’ve seen before but never hung on to. It’s the ‘Alternative Living’ flyer of Master Ching Hai’s God’s Direct Contact spiritual guidance centre. It’s essentially a nice promo about the benefits of vegetarianism, with a list of protein by weight from vege foods and on the flipside a list of vegetarian Nobel Laureates and Scientists.
(You can see a version of the promo here – be patient, the server is slow. If you’re really keen you can download the .pdf and print out your own copy.)
The reason why I love it is the kyoot cartoons of animals speaking to me! There is a chicken with chicks, and it says, We Pray for You! There is a pig and it says, Save our Lives! We Love You. There is a photo of a cow and it says, Thank You. And there is a dolphin too, it says Long Life to You.
Also the line: To stop the continuing gruesome sacrifice of billions of our sweet domestic animals, marine life and feathered friends daily, it’s wise to change to a vegetarian diet for good.
I heart this pamphlet. Although the pig that says it loves me kinda creeps me out.
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Reading Fisk’s Great War For Civilization still. Ploughing through the big chapter on Algeria. This is the first chapter I haven’t found myself eager to get back into, and I think it’s because I know absolutely nothing about Algeria – I have no frame of reference at all. (Which is kind of the point of the chapter.) Feeling not at all Fisked out, I should add. Over the half-way mark too!

Spare Thoughts

(I remember where I was when I heard.)
There is no economy of tragedy. My brain rebels when I try and compare this disaster with that, one horrible event with another. 9/11 seems entirely of a piece with countless other terrible atrocities that have been visited upon innocents.
In terms of its impact, however, the felling of the WTC towers was a singular event. This was our cultural world despoiled. Nothing else in my lifetime comes remotely close. Perhaps the Blitz of London is the nearest referent I can imagine.
It casts a long shadow.
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Here in NZ, TVNZ screened last night ‘Path to 9/11’ part one and will follow tonight with part two. David McPhail, in his newspaper column last weekend, said we should all record it and keep it forever. If you’re watching it, be aware of the massive controversy over its content; at the very least, it is not as factual as it claims, and at most, it’s an outright distortion of history justifying a very right-wing mythology.
Wikipedia has a good overview.

Uberer Than You

This week has been mad busy, but positive-direction mad busy, not negative-direction. Achieved several key goals, wrote thousands and thousands of words, generally happy with life and work and life.
Finally got around to adding two new names to the blogroll. It would be three but I just checked the third and it looks like it doesn’t exist any more – hmm. In any case, at the bottom of the bloglist you’ll find Ado’s chap-in-London blog Suitable for Veges and Andrew’s chap-in-Auckland blog J.A.F.W. Good buggers the both of them.
Also, I’ve started an RPG game-design journal, because I’m doing a bunch of game-design stuff right now and doing some of it out in the open strikes me as both fun and worthwhile. It has generated 80-something comments inside of a week. Blimey. You can check that out over here:
http://gametime-nz.livejournal.com/
I invite you to check in if you’re into RPGs, or if you just want to see what a whole stack of really intense esoteric discussion looks like.

Macaroni Tron

Been mad productive this week. Hating being away from the keyboard. It’s good to get on a roll like this.
Average time of going to bed these last three nights: 4am
Supplies have been dwindling here at Miss Marple Manor due to me being too disorganised to go shopping, but two things I did have in abundance last night were elbow pasta and cheese. So, I decided to whack out a big pile of that old faithful, macaroni cheese, to sustain me in my creative endeavours.
In a fit of sudden madness, I decided to google for a proper recipe (instead of just making the primitive race-memory macaroni cheese we Davies have been preparing since the time of Henry VIII). So I ended up on the BBC food pages, being instructed by the River Cottage guy to use oven gloves when I put things in the oven.
I didn’t follow the recipe with any great degree of precision, but I did learn a wee trick or two. And the macaroni cheese at the end was delicious. Definitely better than race-memory macaroni cheese. Better enough that it was worth the extra effort? Well, not really. Mac cheese is mac cheese. But it was fun to cook like a proper homo sapiens! (And: boys cook best.)
So it made me think of South Park. The one where the kids go off to Jew Camp and Moses appears to them in the form of the bad guy from Tron and tells them all in booming god-voice that he wants macaroni pictures.
Whatever happened to South Park? I used to love that show. Somewhere it just slipped off my caring radar completely. I understand new episodes are still being made. I think I’ve missed about five seasons. I dunno. Weird to go from *heart* to *huh* so quick.
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If you read through the loooong post on the Iran article, but missed Johnnie’s comment, go and read it. It does explain a few things.

[mediawatch] The Nuclear Fanatic

A feature article appeared in the Sunday Times (of London) back on August 20. It was syndicated out to NZ’s Dominion Post, appearing on August 22, and I’ve hung on to it because I wanted to write about it. It is entitled “The Nuclear Fanatic”. You can find the online version here. No byline was given in the NZ reprint but it is attributed in the original to Sarah Baxter.
This article continues the theme of demonising Iran. This is something that has been going on for a long time, and I’ve written about it before. The propaganda line perpetuated by this article is that
Iran isn’t just an enemy state (itself a claim worthy of investigation) that may be on the road to nuclear capability, but that it is a clear and present danger to the world’s peace and security due to the irrational villainy of its leaders.
This kind of propaganda stands in the way of clear understanding; it most certainly stands in the way of any potential for peace.
It’s worth picking bits of it apart. You can see how the system operates – the premises underlying this piece aren’t examined, they’re taken as read, and these premises are what is truly communicated in the piece.
The article opens with:

If some Iran-watchers in America are to be believed, we could be 48 hours away from the day of judgment.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran�s president, has promised to deliver on Tuesday his response to international demands that Iran stop enriching uranium for nuclear use.
By the Islamic calendar, Tuesday is also a holy date: the night when Muhammad rose to heaven from the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on a �buraq�, a fabulous winged beast with the body of a horse and the face of a woman, and reappeared in Mecca. Will Ahmadinejad seize the moment to unveil the possession of some new fissile material or weapons system � perhaps a nuclear-tipped one?
Bernard Lewis, the West�s foremost scholar of Islam, has even warned that on such a symbolic date it would be wise to bear in mind the possibility of a �cataclysmic� event such as a strike on Israel.

Why open with this? Well, obviously, it’s big and dramatic and exciting and gets you reading.
Unfortunately it’s also nonsense built on horrific prejudices. Nuclear armageddon did not descend on the Middle East on Tuesday 22 August. A bunch of premises of this article are revealed by this opening, however:

  • Iran’s President has an “obsession with theology and numerology” (note that word, “obsession” – in other words, they’re irrational and superstitious)
  • Iran’s leadership is ready and eager to begin a nuclear war, they’re only waiting until the time is right (there’s no suggestion that they might have any other agenda for the first third of the article, and even then it’s framed as ‘how immediate is the Iranian threat’)
  • Iran is capable of responding to diplomacy with aggressive nuclear war (so, of course, diplomatic efforts and ‘inspections’ are a waste of time)
  • Most experts believe Iran might launch a nuclear attack (after all, no other experts are mentioned in the first third of the article, so there can’t be another opinion worth mentioning)
  • This is about Islam, not international politics (the only expert mentioned is an expert on Islam)

Continue reading [mediawatch] The Nuclear Fanatic

“Opinion”

Page B4 of the Dominion Post for Saturday September 2 2006 is entitled “Opinion”.
Opinions expressed include:
On Liam Ashley, the teenage offender beaten to death in a prison van by another prisoner:

  • …one important point is being overlooked. If he had not stolen his mother’s car to go joyriding, none of the subsequent events would have happened
  • Though it might seem to many that Liam Ashley died in vain, I beg to differ. Many young people today have no idea when they have stepped over the line… This is perhaps a timely lesson to young people – t’s a big bad world out there.

On Olaf Wiig, freed hostage in Gaza, who “converted to Islam” while in captivity:

  • Congratulations to [Wiig’s wife]… when her husband Olaf – as a freshly converted Muslim – takes another three wives, she will be muchly relieved of her various home duties
  • Olaf Wiig: death or Islam. You choose.

On the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties ridiculing a proposed ban on hoodies by suggesting it would mean hats, sunglasses and burqas should also be banned:

  • In this age of increasing lawlessness and with potential terrorists being apprehended by our closest neighbour, perhaps we would be right to suspect anyone who seeks to conceal their identity from security cameras.
  • I keep seeing various pronouncements by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties… I cannot help but wonder whether it is a front for a terrorist organisation.

In response to a letter from the Iranian ambassador:

  • The leaders and representatives of Arab nations continually blame everyone else for their problems except when they’re fighting among themselves, promoting worldwide terrorism or trying to unsuccessfully wipe Israel off the map…
  • The Iranian ambassador’s response exhibits fully his diplomatic skills at avoiding facts and laying blame other than where it belongs. Israel wishes to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force… (this from Israel’s Honorary Consul; a better pot/kettle juxtaposition I’ve not seen in an age)

(And in the Dom Post’s “Last Word” section that runs on the page, apart from a frankly ridiculous attack on a silly cartoon, there is this piece of mind-numbing idiocy. The Human Rights Commission used the word “cheerios” in a newsletter and was contacted by lawyers protecting the trademark; the Last Word, perhaps in a desperate attempt to Ho Ho the fact that it is the HRC, chooses to lead the item with: “It seems that even cocktail sausages can have rights in these politically correct days…”)

Spring Has Sproinged!

Remember remember/the first of September/lambs and butterflies hurray!
It has been pleasant and sunny and even warm all week. Hurrah!
Last night I played in the third session of our four-part Mountain Witch game, and it kicked the ass something incredible. I am reminded almost every time I sit down to play why I so believe in this roleplaying business as a vector of serious fun, but man, this session put through one heavy payload of wild entertainment. Awesome, awesome, awesome. (Any Wellingtonians who are unconvinced of the funnitude of roleplaying games are invited to contact me and I shall show you one hell of a good time…)
Stuff I have enjoyed reading this week:
off-black has posted a list of conspiracies he believes in, conspiracies he doesn’t believe in, and conspiracies he’s undecided about
not-kate has posted what being a woman is all about, based on a visit to a ‘woman’s lifestyle expo’ over the weekend
the extremely positive reaction to Gregor’s Best Friends and Malc’s Cold City at Gen Con
Look out! He’s got a knife! continues to be your best source of Daily Goddamn madness – an essential start, middle, end and appendix to your day
and a journo on MSNBC delivered an *incredible* condemnation of Donald Rumsfeld – the transcript and video are both at the link
I have also enjoyed spying on my boss.
(I am going to see Snakes on a Plane tonight. 9.15, Embassy. You?)