Author:

Revival Linky

Abandoned places: a Russian nuclear-powered arctic lighthouse; a ruined amusement park about Jesus; the soundstage for The Wire.
Rediscovered – the wonderful Edward Gorey’s book of early-60s etiquette, The Recently Deflowered Girl, giving correct advice for the aftermath of that delicate moment.
Galactus’ Kirby-helmet conceals sekret funny face
Classic Far Side cartoons recreated as real photos
Designheads will love this, because I sure do: the Book Cover Archive. All those beautiful lookin’ books!
The ever-delightful Kate Beaton turns her attention away from historical folk to discuss the behaviour of young women today.
Lego as urban intervention
The Wire’s five seasons summarized in a 5 minute rap (er, spoilers):

And finally… Robocop really really likes chicken

Goodbye Silly Bushy

Silly Bushy leaves office shortly. He’s delivering a farewell speech in about 24 hours but his last press conference signalled what that will be like: arrogant, unrepentant, blinkered.
How unfit this man was for office; how naive and clueless he was. For example, this staggering foolishness of this claim, so ridiculous in its audacity that I clipped it from a newspaper and kept it: Jan 10, 2008: Bush Predicts Mideast Peace In A Year. How bitterly ironic that as that year ticks up, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is not merely unresolved, but as far from peaceful as it has been for many years.
Aside from his enormous ignorance, it is his lack of empathy that I will remember, and his complete subjugation to the monstrous Dick Cheney. I have been waiting so long for Bush to be gone, we all have, but it now seems like such an anticlimax; is he still on the stage? How long is he going to stand there? When’s the new guy coming on? I want to see the new guy! Bush has been prematurely forgotten, which is astonishing considering the massive harm he has presided over and, frequently, caused. But I suppose we’re just sick of thinking about him. He wore out our fury, in the end.
Which means that I find myself in the unsettling position of agreeing with Boris Johnson, who wrote a chiding mockery of Bush for the Telegraph, but concluded: “without wishing to defend G W Bush, I want to enter an important qualification. Yes, he did lead the coalition to topple Saddam, and was, therefore, implicated in the loss of tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. But at every stage he did so with the messianic support of Tony Blair, and the tacit approval of Gordon Brown; and when it came to persuading a reluctant public of the threat posed by Iraq, it should never be forgotten that the Labour Party and their spin doctors were far more ruthless and duplicitous than the White House.”
Quite. The venom I felt, and still feel, towards Tony Blair is undiminished but I have nothing like that degree of fury towards Bush. Bush was always a tool of those more clever and more wicked than he; this does not exonerate him in the least, but at least makes sense of the pity that I feel for him mixed in with the anger. I expect he will not find life easy outside of office. (At least until he is revisioned into a misunderstood hero in, say, twenty years, as Nixon was.)
Goodbye Silly Bushy, and your Cheney and your entire noxious ecosystem. The reality-based community delights in your departure.

Shorts

Have decided I need to focus on the short story form. Oddly, I now feel that I actually have an inkling of how to write for it, when for the last decade it has baffled me. So my goal is twelve short stories this year that I would be comfortable submitting for publication somewhere.
The first is now underway. It is amusing me, and riffing off an idea that’s been bouncing around in notebooks for the best part of that aforementioned decade. It’s reassuring to know that good ideas will wait patiently for me to catch up with them.

Priests Gone Wild!

Otago Daily Times, 6 Jan
About 1000 people were protesting against Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza…
Father Gerard Burns, the Parish Priest of Te Parisi o te Ngakau Tapu in Porirua, took part in the demonstration marching to the Yitzhak Rabin peace memorial in Wellington’s CBD. Father Burns smeared the memorial to Mr Rabin with a mixture of a drop of his blood and paint.

Kiwi Friends of Israel, 8 Jan
Pressure mounts on Priest gone wild
Pressure is mounting on Catholic Priest Fr Gerard Burns to apologise for desecrating a memorial to murdered Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, says Kiwi Friends of Israel…

NZ Herald editorial, 8 Jan
For Father Burns to desecrate the Rabin memorial is not only in breach of any civilised standard of protest but utterly wrongheaded in terms of his target. Rabin, a former Israeli general-turned-two-time-Prime-Minister, was perhaps the greatest hope for peace between Jews and Palestinians in a generation… The memorial in central Wellington marks that commitment to peace. The sins (as Father Burns might see them) of his successors in the Israeli Government cannot be visited upon Rabin… The organisers of the Wellington march… must know that their message against the killings of civilians, including children, is diverted and made hollow by a calculated insult to Jews everywhere….

NZ Herald, 9 Jan
The Archbishop of Wellington has apologised for the actions of a clergyman who attacked a memorial to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin… Auckland’s Catholic Bishop Patrick Dunn has also joined calls for Father Burns to apologise for desecrating the memorial to Mr Rabin.

I know Father Gerald (Gerry) Burns a little. He served in the church where I went as a child and supported my childhood school . He impressed me with his youth and energy, but I was quite frankly far too young to make any further comment about what he was like in those days, and when I was older I saw him too infrequently to know him as more than a friendly face. But while I can’t speak to his character, I can still speak to his impressive commitment to social justice issues and his concern for the suffering of innocents. Specifically, the way he spoke to me and others about his experiences in East Timor during the horrible fighting there. I’ve googled up this second-hand account from 1999:

In July, Father Gerry Burns returned to Wellington from East Timor with grave concerns as to the well-being of the people – he was part of an aid convoy attacked by militias, the third attack on UN convoys that week. He reported on a range of atrocities perpetrated by the pro-integration forces aimed at intimidating those in favour of independence – homes burned out, people tortured and killed, bodies mutilated. Food production was dropping all over East Timor as people were afraid to leave their homes and work the fields in case they were kidnapped or attacked.
The militias had a deliberate policy of targeting aid convoys to the displaced persons; and of mayhem and destruction to terrorise the people to prevent them registering to vote. Father Gerry described an atmosphere of total terror.

There was much more. Maybe East Timor radicalised Gerry; maybe he was already so inclined. Regardless, it is easy to imagine that his experiences in East Timor then would make him sensitive to the situation in Gaza today. So I have some sympathy for Burns, and I have to wonder that his side of the story is hardly anywhere to be found.
Burns and his fellow activists have claimed that the Rabin peace memorial is itself part of a manipulation of history that contributes to the situation in Gaza. It’s a rational (although complex) position to take* and makes instant sense of the chosen focus of the protest. However, this explanation has been thoroughly absent from media coverage. Partly this was because the explanation was only released Jan 10, several days after the narrative of the protest had been established; but that communicative ineptitude doesn’t excuse the news media from failing to ask whether there was, perhaps, a rationale behind the actions. Instead, the story stabilised around the image of an irrational rogue priest who had no idea of what he was doing and didn’t much care to find out.
Targeting the Rabin memorial for protest was, of course, foolish. The generally-accepted perception of the memorial is the precise opposite of the protester perception, and there’s hardly a clear link to the events in Gaza. That makes symbolic communication doomed to failure. (And spilling blood over a memorial stone? That’s just crass, no matter who the stone commemorates.)
So I don’t support the protest action, but nor can I find a reason to share in the outrage. I can see why Burns did what he did; I can see what he was getting at. And where is ignorance of his motives going to get anyone? Condemn the protest and disagree with the protester’s claims, by all means (and no-one has held back from that), but I would imagine a healthier society wouldn’t settle for “loony priest gone wild” as the sum total of explanation for his behaviour.
And let’s not forget, as the NZ Catholic hierarchy distance themselves from Fr Burns, that Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, just called Gaza a “big concentration camp.” Perhaps Gerry Burns isn’t as much a rogue as some would take comfort in believing.
* For the record, I think there is definitely something to the claim that the Rabin memorial is part of a process of hagiographical revisionism that serves the purposes of PR for the Israeli state; but I’d take some convincing, given the compelling fact that he was assassinated by someone on the far right of Israeli internal politics. Regardless, it would be a complex argument, covering a number of historical variables that are still very uncertain.

Reappraising CauseWired

A couple months back I reviewed CauseWired, a book I’d been comp’d. It was not a glowing review, but it wasn’t that negative either.

CauseWired is the name Watson gives to social causes that leverage online tools, particularly social networks… Watson is clearly a very switched-on guy and he’s explored social activism in great detail, but the book left me feeling underwhelmed and convinced that it will date rapidly…. I wanted Tom Watson to ask himself harder questions. Instead it feels to me like he’s played safe and contents himself with giving a tour and quoting extensively from others. To give credit where its due, it is a very good tour of the online cause state of play in early 2008, but I can’t see this book retaining much value beyond 2010 or so. In that sense, it isn’t really for me.

Next part of the story. Only a few weeks after reading CauseWired, there was a change in government here in NZ. The new govt. acted fast and suddenly climate change policy was up for review. I felt like a response was needed – something to give a steer to the new government away from indulging the hardcore climate sceptics of their partner party. It soon became apparent that no-one else was stepping up.
So I did. With some frenzied behind-the-scenes work from a team of helpful souls, the Don’t Be A Rodney campaign was born. And it was a success on its own terms, generating at least a couple dozen and maybe as many as a hundred hard-copy letters to the new Prime Minister urging him to put his foot down on climate change.
The campaign would not have happened if I hadn’t read CauseWired. It is that simple. I think I knew everything I needed before the book, but CauseWired gave me something that I hadn’t given it credit for in my earlier review: detailed, specific inspiration. The examples in that book gave me some confidence and momentum I would otherwise have lacked.
If its effect on my life is the measure of a book’s worth, then CauseWired ended up as the most valuable book I read in 2008. And that’s something I never would have believed when I wrote that first review.

Cracker (1993-1995)

Over the past few months Cal and I have been working our way through Cracker, the UK series in which Robbie Coltrane’s Fitz is a gambling, drinking, smoking psychologist helping the messed-up police solve crimes. I haven’t watched most of it since the NZ broadcast in the early 90s. It has been fascinating, and sometimes painful, to watch as the wheels come off and the show spins out of control. In its first episodes, it was as fierce and confident as Fitz himself, spinning out complex plots with apparent ease and drawing characters with clear centres but deliberately obscuring their boundaries. Jimmy McGovern, series creator and principal writer, was rightly hailed for this work. I remember a time when every interview with a TV creator would say “I wish we could write like Jimmy McGovern on Cracker”. (Heck, I remember someone working on endlessly barmy NZ soap Shortland Street saying that.)
But it was Jimmy McGovern’s celebrated writing that ruined Cracker.
As it went on, Cracker became a show so enamoured with its own premise that it wound in on itself to breaking point. McGovern forced the characters through misery after misery, each time delivering bigger and bigger hammer blows. More shamefully, he would not release any character from a spiral of self-destruction; each of them rushed into their own failings with such heedlessness that it went beyond human frailty and poor decisionmaking, and became a ludicrous act of contortion.
Like the careful emotional weighting, the deft pacing of the early episodes also disappeared: compare the economy of storytelling in the first episodes, where major plot developments are introduced and resolved in 5-second sequences and two short lines of dialogue, with the laboured pace that had set in by the end of the second season.
The best Cracker story is also the precise moment when the wheels first slipped the tracks. The second season’s opener, To Be A Somebody, was an excellent story with Robert Carlyle’s killer drawn so very plausibly and a clear role for Fitz’s psychological expertise (which, in later episodes, acquired the aura of magic). Most shockingly, it saw the murder of one of the core cast, Chris Eccleston’s DCI Bilborough.
But McGovern couldn’t resist the temptation to pile it on. Not only did Bilborough die, his 2IC Jimmy Beck (who hero-worshipped and, it was unsubtly hinted, loved his boss) had made a crucial mistake that led to the death. McGovern steered the unlikeable and hapless Beck down into such a pit that he raped the remaining core cast member, Jane Penhaligon. Penhaligon became hardened, casually vicious and vengeful; Beck eventually committed suicide, laying guilt back on Penhaligon’s shoulders. And all of this, of course, served to make Fitz’s life miserable in countless ways.
Then McGovern left the series. There wasn’t much left for anyone else to work with by this stage.
If the decision to make Beck responsible for Bilborough’s death was where things first went wrong, it was the decision to have Beck rape Penhaligon that was the point of no return. The story was massively controversial in its day, and it still doesn’t read easily in terms of politics – the name of the serial, Men Should Weep, is a clear indicator of who McGovern is trying to indict with the story but it is hardly sympathetic to a feminist reading. McGovern himself calls Cracker the “first post-feminist drama series” and a rejection of political correctness. There is one unforgivable moment, a moment that I cannot believe any woman would have written with a straight face, where Fitz’s wife tells Penhaligon (who had been sleeping with Fitz) that “there was a poetic justice to her rape”.
So. Cracker. I loved it to bits fifteen years ago, and there’s still a lot to like now, but the problems rise up and strangle it. Fitz the character is so good at uncovering the motives of the murderers he meets; I wonder what he would have made of McGovern’s urge to so completely destroy the characters he had created.

Some questions on Gaza

Coverage of Gaza has discussed the slide into violence since the ceasefire ended. Why is no-one asking why the ceasefire was allowed to lapse? Could Hamas’ decision to let the ceasefire end be because the citizens of Gaza were still living under a cruel blockade, with no signs of political progress in sight?
What does it even mean to be neutral in this conflict, to call for both sides to end the violence? Which decisions by which people would make this happen in Israel and in Gaza? What would be the relative political costs for these decisionmakers? Is there truly equivalence in this call for neutrality?
Does Hamas truly exercise military-style authority over all the rocket-firers in Gaza? What are the lines of control in the organisation? To what extent can either diplomacy with or attacks on Hamas affect the number of rockets fired into Israel? Clearly there is some relationship – but how close is it?
Coverage of Gaza, and the Israeli state, talks enthusiastically about Hamas. But what does that even mean? Is it the leaders of Hamas? The military leadership? The military wing? Everyone in a Hamas military uniform? Everyone who voted for Hamas? Everyone in Gaza?
Further to the above, a fundamental rationale for the Israeli offensive is that Hamas wants to exterminate Israel, to drive it into the sea, and is not rational in its desire for this goal. This claim is extremely common in the popular discourse, particularly in letters to the editor and comments to online news stories. If it is true, then it ultimately justifies any atrocity against Hamas. Why is this extremely common thread of argument absent from official comment, reporting and analysis? What does it mean to say that Hamas wants to exterminate Israel? If this is the rationale behind much international support for Israel, surely it is urgent that this claim is tested rather than left to stand unexamined?

On my 2008

(I still have a bunch of “wrapping up 2007” posts sitting in my to-be-written queue. Er. The world still needs to know the story of Losing My Heart To A Starship Trooper: The RPG!)
Bye bye 2008. You were a good year. A hard year, but good.
I handed in a thesis for a Master of Science, which dominated things somewhat; I spent most of the year shedding responsibilities and activities to create space in which to work. It was, in fact, bloody hard work, more than I had expected. But the good news is, it was tremendously educational. I learned more than expected in exact proportion to how much I worked harded than expected. It was a really good experience. And handing in ten years after I completed previous significant chunk of uni work was also a nice touch.
So that was the “hard” bit; for the “good” bit, I started last year by proposing to my Caroline. This happened in the first minutes after midnight on new year’s day but we kept the news under our hats for almost a week. It has been marvellous to be engaged, I highly recommend it. I understand that what comes next is also rather good. Anyway, we’re being civilly united in three weeks, so if you want to see me in a kilt and Cal in a dress, drop me an email soon.
Those were the two big forces in my year. There was much else of interest, but nothing on the scale of those two. In my online life, well, this blog reached its fifth anniversary, and I thoroughly enjoyed sharing abundant Friday linky to clear my bookmarks each week. More significantly, with much good help I started a campaign that got a lot of people writing letters and may possibly have had some impact on government decision-making. And I joined HoffSpace, the social networking system for David Hasslehoff. I have non-bot HoffFriends!
Finally: turns out this didn’t make it to the Dr Horrible video selection, but you can still catch my cameo in Jon’s excellent Evil League of Evil application, the Embezzler. See it, and also the sweet Baby Hurricane application, here.
Laters, 2008.