Category: Uncategorized

Man, that week was crazy. Last Friday I was actually experiencing stress – I don’t get stressed very often – about the coming week and what I needed to get done by when. And it was, indeed, extremely demanding. And I’m not out of the woods yet, I have about twenty crucial emails waiting for replies, a major writing deadline to hit in the next couple days, another only-slightly-less major writing deadline to hit in the same time period, another key sekretproject deadline to hit the same time again, and a bunch of promises to deliver on too. Whew.
Mon thru Thurs I played tourist with visiting Gar and Jackie, which was quite marvellous, but actually very tiring. It was nice to wander through Te Papa yet again and realise that I still haven’t seen all of it, eight years after it opened. And experiencing the many delights of Foxton through foreign eyes was a treat.
I am in Karori now, housesitting again. Getting grumpy with the buses. They are not living up to their hype so far. I hate waiting for buses. It’s broken time, sacrificed waiting for something that might come in twenty seconds or maybe twenty minutes, impossible to relax. Really, really hate it. And there has been entirely too much of it lately. Nor am I excited to see that in a week, the price of the bus journey from where I’m staying to town more than doubles.
The train between Auckland and Wellington is being withdrawn on Sept 30. I am very upset about this. I have used it, and was planning on using it again. The rail system has been systematically run down across a decade of privatization, and now it’s in a serious financial hole. It’s a disaster for our national transport network. We can do better than this. My grandfather would be saddened, but probably not surprised, to see what has become of NZ rail.
NZ’s run in the basketball worlds is amply discussed by learned bodies in the previous post’s comments. Refer there for much insight. We didn’t, in the end, walk away humiliated, going out on our best game of the tourney, but it still wasn’t near our potential and to make it hurt more, Argentina’s performance made the game entirely winnable. Oh well. No point stressing about it. Will try and find time to watch more games, because it’s fun. The US look like they deserve to win, based on how they just played against Australia – which is a radical change from every major international event since the first Dream Team played waaaay back in the day.
I want to see Snakes on a Plane more than United 93.
I have lots of political stuff backing up that I want to blog about but I think it’ll all fade from my head before I get a chance to do so. Count yourselves lucky.

After the spooky Norman-Gregor-Malcolm convergence discussed on my LJ here, I’ve had a couple other spooky moments – both occasions where I was prompted by some random stimulus to think of someone I haven’t seen for many years, and wonder what happened to them, only to see them coming towards me moments later. Fun thing.
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Basketball world champs are on now! I am excited. The highlight of my sports-appreciation calendar, this. Four years ago the NZ team came in and shocked everyone, making its way to a fourth place finish. This year, that ain’t gonna happen, but judging by last night we’re not gonna disgrace ourselves either.
Minor grump for NZ player Mark Dickel being sidelined for three more games. He tested positive for cannabis after a match recently – apparently at a party five weeks prior to that (when he wasn’t under contract) he had a smoke. He ended up with a 2-game suspension and a serious warning from the NZ bball body, but then FIBA (bball’s international body) stepped in and imposed a further 3 games.
The grump has two sides – first, that using cannabis draws such penalties at all, it certainly isn’t performance enhancing (as the entirety of Wellington’s underperforming Saints side through the 90s could tell you, ahem) – and second, that FIBA felt the need to overrule the NZ body’s decision and slap on a further three games. Bah.
Still, as JB points out, it adds new meaning to the guy’s nickname, ‘Sparky’.
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Post of the week: d3vo explains how to cook rice. It begins:
Most instructions on how to make rice are crap. I am a computer programmer. I know how to write instructions.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbek who was turfed out for, among other things, standing up for human rights:
“I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.”
Key quote: “In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot.”
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Just saw on the telly Kiwi expat (now Beeb announcer) Anita McNaught being interviewed about the kidnap of her cameraman husband in Gaza. Anita was always the most professional TV newsreader-person we had, unflappable and very sharp and mostly wasted in NZ. No wonder the BBC snapped her up.
All of which made it horrible to watch as she was interviewed (on the receiving end for a change), cool and calm and professional as she answered questions about her husband’s likely situation and what was being done about it. All under control – except for her hands. At the bottom of the screen, her fingers were furiously at work, twisting a pen in her hands over and over and over. She knew she was doing it, and clasped her hands together tight to try and stop herself, but the fingers kept twitching. Anita smiled and made sensible comments about the difficulties of the situation, looked tired and calm and on top of things, but there was no way she could stop her hands from betraying her. All that anxiety and fear was leaking out.
It upset me. I think it’s going to be an image I’ll remember for a long time.

I chanced upon Ellen Degeneres on TV the other day. Her talk-show is doing great guns, apparently, thus putting the lie to a limerick I composed upon her coming out; I took great pleasure in rhyming ‘lesbian’ with ‘has-been’, but it didn’t play out like that at all.
Ellen’s a bit too nice-nice to appeal to me, but I will always have a soft spot for her after her round of appearances on talk shows explaining that yes, her character on her sitcom was about to undergo a major shake-up: she was going to come out as Lebanese. “The clues have been there all along,” she’d say, “she’s always liked hummus…”
(Of course, Ellen’s character coming out, which went hand-in-hand with Ellen herself coming out, was a milestone in the identity politics of Western popular culture – at least the big chunks of it that are US-driven. It was a commercial sacrificial lamb but it sure got them there gays on the small screen good and proper!)
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Meanwhile, it’s been clear for a long time the only real question in terms of understanding the world is not, is there a conspiracy, but rather, how big and powerful and sinister is it?
Case in point: this terror raid in the UK. I’ve been reserving comment on the whole affair, after the last time when the big story (“potential subway bomber heroically stopped at the last second”) turned out to be something quite different (“innocent Brazilian electrician pointlessly executed by over-excited policemen”). Better, I thought, to wait until something solid was in.
And it still isn’t. But I have heard more than a few suspicious noises on the left that the raid, and subsequent unprecedented pushing of the US terror alert level into the red, was really stage-managed by the US government to deal with growing domestic dissent.
I didn’t pay too much mind to this stuff. If you start looking for conspiracies you see them everywhere, after all.
Well, turns out the noises aren’t baseless. Far from it. Apparently the raid happened when it did not because an attack was imminent, but because the US leaned on the UK to make it happen then.
Why was the US so anxious? Well, that’s the question. Did the raid happen when it did because:

• the officers in charge of the investigation decided it was the best time to conduct a raid?
• (as the story suggests) the US was just too anxious to allow one suspect to conduct a dry run, and insisted on moving before this?
• the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and war with Hizbollah has been a complete disaster for Israel and a strategic and tactical victory for Hizbollah, and something was needed to crowd it out of the news cycle?
• anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont was selected in a massive-turnout primary against pro-war Democrat Joe Lieberman, and something was needed to crowd it out of the news cycle?
• the stars were right, ia ia c’thulhu fthagn?

You picks your conspiracy, you rolls your dices.

So there’s this new haka the All Blacks are doing before big rugby matches, with a gesture at the end that is interpreted as ‘throat-slitting’.
Parents are complaining about their kids copying the gesture in a threatening way.
I’ve been trying to find out what my opinion is on this important issue of the day. But I’m stuck! I can’t figure out which side are the silly Politically Correct wooly woofters!
Are they:

• the people who make a fuss about the haka? (Everyone knows that trying to mollycoddle our kids is the worst kind of PC liberal tree hugging nonsense!)

Or are they:

• the people who don’t make a fuss about the haka? (Everyone knows that favouring “Maori values” over proper New Zealand values is the worst kind of PC happy-clappy idiocy!)

I’ve consulted a range of right-wing blogs and columns but they don’t seem to agree! Gosh! What a fix! Someone explain it to me please, or I’m going to start thinking *everyone* is a Politically Correct nancy!

August 2 – Billy re-posts something from the Victoria University BBS of the 90s, in response to a request from ex-BBSer Crosby. A lament for the BBS emerges in the comments.
August 3 – a post appears on NZMusic.com seeking information about iconic BBS-associated band Skwish
August 4 – I mention the BBS on my blog as part a wider consideration of online community – a couple of old BBSers identify themselves in the comments.
August 4 – Mike suggests the old BBS crew take over the Bar on NZMusic.com
Something’s in the air…

I saw 6 films in this years International Film Festival.
Naked Childhood
French cinema verite from 1968, with a non-actor cast following the life of a boy in foster care and the difficulties of the various relationships. It was incredibly engaging, but sometimes painful. The film cycled through the boy doing something horrible, then finding some measure of peace and engagement with his family, then doing something horrible again to mess it all up. The message, of course, being that the problems are going on a long way under the surface. There was a very old grandmother, nearly bed-ridden, who formed a special bond with the boy, and who everyone in the theatre fell in love with – she was just an incredibly warm and genuine presence. When she died, a pall fell over the place and you knew the boy was going to get himself in real trouble.
Also of note: I flinched when the boy hurled a military knife at his foster brother, embedding it in the door by his head; I flinched even more a moment later when I realised they hadn’t used trick photography or special effects, they’d just hurled a bloody knife at the actor’s head. *shudder*
Thank You For Smoking
Fun satire on the lobby industry, through the lens of big tobacco – following a lobbyist through his work undermining truth and exploiting uncertainty and patriotism. It was a bit too ‘adapted from a novel’ for my taste, big and sprawling but thinly-spread, clearly leaving out lots of stuff from the novel but not balancing that with a solid focus. It made me laugh a bunch and I liked it, but I doubt I’ll remember much about it in six month’s time.
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Wonderful concert film, with lots of the very funny Dave Chappelle and a very genuine community-building underpinning to some great concert footage. The only problem I had with this film was, I wanted it to be a half-hour longer and have that half hour be concert footage. It was great. And I admit, seeing the Fugees reunite on stage was a pretty awesome moment for me – the Fugees live in ’98 was the best hiphop gig I’ve ever been to.
The Heart of the Game
This movie was a ridiculous and cheesy sports story, where a black girl comes to a white school and becomes the star of the basketball team, overcoming the prejudice of her friends towards her school and her school towards her, and under the mentoring of a wise and demanding coach she leads the team to success, until a massive personal crisis upsets everything, and the team has to unite around her in the face of legal and personal challenges, until finally everything is resolved in the final seconds of a championship match against their arch-rival team from the school across town…
…if it wasn’t a documentary I woulda walked out. Incredible. Very, very cool. And I’m underselling it here – there’s so much to this film, lots of very interesting stuff that is only briefly touched on due to time constraints. It’s no Hoop Dreams, but it’s amazing nonetheless.
The Host
Crazy Korean monster movie. Was sold to me as a horror movie, but when the giant creature comes stomping out of the river ten minutes in and goes on a rampage, its true nature becomes obvious. Lots and lots of fun, with one of the best reversals-of-expectation I’ve seen in any movie ever. Hurray!
Ten Canoes
Australian aboriginal folk tale. Wonderful, gently paced, full of wry humour and ravishing cinematography – Aussie swamps have never looked so good. This is one of those films that stay with you. The death dance sequence I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

I’ve had what feels like a very busy week. I think that means it actually was a very busy week, but I can’t quite be sure Huh.
One symptom: having lots of scattered thoughts which don’t coalesce into anything bloggable. (Not that I orient my internal mental life around blog-coherent thoughts, nosirree.) But I’m gonna blog a bunch of stuff anyway.
TETSUJIN28 AND ONLINE COMMUNITY
I used to spend a hell of a lot of time on RPG.net. It was my main online community, essentially taking over from the old Vic Uni BBS when that bit the dust. In recent years the blog-and-LJ community has become my focus, and time being short as it always is, RPGnet is just an occasional stop to lurk nowadays.
It was a shock to hear that one of the better-known members of the RPGnet community had died in a vehicle accident. Unlike the old Vic BBS and the new blog/LJ-crowd, the RPGnet people were only known to me online (with some exceptions, having met up with a fair number at different events down the years). So hearing that Britt Daniels, online handle tetsujin28, had died was deeply weird. He was a part of my community, but I find it hard to claim I knew him at all. He was a familiar presence with a familiar voice, but… hell, I dunno. All these questions of knowing and connecting through a text-only medium raise themselves again, the same ones that used to send my head spinning in ’94 on the BBS, the same ones that the world at large is wrestling with right now. We’re still in the earliest infancy of understanding what this new communications technology is doing to our understanding of community, of social relationships, of identity. It’s changing stuff, that’s for sure. Big things are afoot.
I like to point to the cellphone and say ‘this is the beginning of the new era’, and I’m deadly serious, even when I say it in a cheesy kinda way. The near-ubiquity of the cellphone *changes what it is to be human*. The digital revolution was huge, but that was the prologue; the cellphone is chapter one.
Anyway. Thoughts spinning out – I said this hasn’t remotely coalesced. I never much got on with Tet online, but he was a part of that community, and I’ll miss his presence every time I drop back in. I wish him peace.
WE SIT IN JUDGEMENT
At the film fest, I watched ‘The Heart of the Game’, a really rather good doco on a girls’ basketball team in Seattle. I might talk about it in a later post, as it provoked a lot of thought in different directions. One scene I want to mention now: a girl in the team ended up the centre of a regional controversy, and the documentary included some radio talkback where listeners called in to express their opinions on the girl and the decisions being made around her. It was a scene explicitly designed to get a rise out of the audience, and it worked: How could these people say these things? By what right can they pass judgement on this girl? Whatever happened to ‘judge not lest ye be judged’?
I was thinking about it later on, and it occurred to me that a feature of our current discourse is that we are constantly called to sit in judgement on others.
Media outlets, politicians and other public figures are constantly appealing to us, implicitly or explicitly, to pass judgement. This goes beyond just seeking our opinions – we are encouraged to act like the apocryphal audience in the Roman arena, marking with thumb up or down the fate of the defeated.
In fact, I’m beginning to think that’s a key part of the technology that structures current public discourse. We are encouraged to have an opinion, and because we buy into that, we walk right into the hands of the opinion-makers. The propagation of rhetoric would fall apart without an eagerness to pass judgement.
Where is the counter-value to this? Where are the voices in society asking that we not sit in judgement, that we seek better information, that we keep our minds open to different explanations for what we see? There are some, but they are meek voices, and they do not carry much weight. Is this inevitable? Is the eagerness to judge something fundamental to ‘human nature’ or a product of our current socialisation?
[I’m well aware that I’m here arguing the precise opposite of my argument in comments with Andrew a couple weeks back, where I said that holding back on passing judgement for more facts was a poor way of coping with the world. I still think that. I guess I’m containing multitudes again, or there’s some hypocrisy going on somewhere. Like I say, not yet coalesced.]
CLOTHES FOR THE TALL DUDE
Why is it so damn hard to find some casual trousers with long legs and a medium waist without going to a tailor? There’s a lot of us tall skinny guys around. What’s the story? I’ve had it with poor-fitting clothes, but I’m not seeing a lot of other options. (This is the true and actual reason why I wear jeans all the time. They come in a size that fits me.)

Friday night, I stayed at the auld family hoose, and in my old bed, the bed I slept in throughout the Todman St years.
Man…
…it was way less comfortable than I remember.
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Speaking of sleeping on furniture in Todman St, and it isn’t very often one gets to make that segue, old-skool Todman St visitors may be bemused to see my wonderful long couch appearing in an ad for alcohol moderation.
Which is sort of appropriate.
Looks like the end of the Pigphone party to me, 271KB pdf.
The couch is currently making a living in wee sister’s flat, performing much the same function there as it did in Todman St.
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I was in the Hutt for the jubilee for my old school, St Bernard’s College. Was good fun, actually, though it would have been nice if the SBC first XV had managed to beat arch-rivals St Pats in the banner rugby match Saturday afternoon.
Highlight was chatting with old teacher Elsabie Prasad and her husband, about all sorts of stuff. Was good, that.

Today, 29 July, is the traditional date on which members of the Church of Daffyd celebrate the birth of Daffyd.
This year I have chosen to mark the celebration with a fierce dance along the Terrace, howling Daffyd’s praises into the night sky. Also, alcohol.
I have sat at the right hand of Daffyd for over ten years now, and man, it kicks all kinds of ass at those inter-religious quiz nights to say that my deity can pwn the lot of them.
Happy birthday, my lord.
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[David is the originator and host of the additiverich blog collective as well as being a deity]