Category: Uncategorized

Malcolm today pointed me at the existence, on YouTube, of something I hadn’t known existed:
David Lynch retelling the entire story of Twin Peaks in three Japanese coffee commercials.
The first one:

Part Two
Part Three
See also here:

[This is a crossover! Like when Aliens met Predators, Godzilla met King Kong, and the beings from that Alien Nation movie turned up on the Planet of the Apes, so my LJ and my regular blog are crossing over today! The other part of the crossover is here.]
This is the flying scotsman I got on Sunday. It’s a Triang Hornby HO-scale model in very good nick. It’s one of the nicest pieces from my grandfather’s collection. It reminds me of him.

This clip has been doing the blog-rounds since someone posted it on YouTube:

It’s Denzel in ’98’s “The Siege“, arguing with Bruce Willis’s stubborn military commander that torturing a suspected terrorist undermines everything they’re fighting for. He loses the argument.
The Siege was an odd movie, even odder in hindsight. Denzel is from the FBI, and as he works to stop a series of terrorist attacks on New York martial law is declared, the military rolls in, everyone who looks like an Arab is rounded up and interrogated, and humanity swiftly goes out the window. Given what was coming, it seems prescient in the way it addressed the way things went out of control so fast. The clip resonates with images we’ve seen of Abu Ghraib and what we’ve heard about early Guantanamo and other outposts of CIA torture.
When I saw it back in Jan ’99 I wrote about it in my journal. I called it then disappointing, because it was obvious that there was an intensely political core to the film that had been watered down by the studio; in essence, Bruce Willis’ military commander was revealed as an aberration, a crazy man, and not representative. The whole movie somehow contrived to wave a figurative flag at the end. I remember being disappointed that the film hadn’t had the courage of its convictions and argued more forcefully that this kind of atrocity, power creating its own logic, was an inevitable outcome of the systems in place and not an exceptional moment of madness, easily corrected by Denzel’s true sight.
(The existence of Wikipedia now makes it trivial to find out more about the screenwriter. Lawrence Wright is, as I suspected then, far from a Hollywood hack – he’s a staff writer at the New Yorker, was the author of Pulitzer-winning Al-Qaeda history The Looming Tower, and earns cred from me for a positive role in the Paul Ingram false memory case.)

Wake showed her his study, the desk of half-finished ideas. The sun was bright in the window, low in the sky and getting close to the horizon. ‘It isn’t much.’
He waited in the doorway for her. She lingered in the room holding back conversation and he watched, she liked that he was watching her, she liked that he knew what was going on but not what to do about it.
Her fingers touched the wood of the desk, old and unvarnished, making contact. Wake’s voice from behind her: ‘Why did you turn me down?’
‘I had to.’ She wouldn’t face him. The wood was hard beneath her fingertips. ‘I couldn’t see another way.’
‘You weren’t interested?’
‘I couldn’t see it going well.’
‘How hard did you look?’
‘How hard did you?’
‘I never look ahead.’
Hills clipped the edge of the sun. Her fingers lifted. ‘Someone has to.’
She heard him walking away from the door, leaving her there. The little sadness was back. She smiled and closed her eyes to the sun.
[Found this random snippet of fiction in my files. A few months old I think. Don’t remember writing it but it’s clearly mine.]

While I think of it: I did get around to reading Pride & Prejudice. Finished it about a month ago and meant to blog on the subject but just didn’t remember. A few comments, then:

• Yes, I enjoyed it plenty this time out.
• Elizabeth, the reader identification character, is hugely entertaining to realise. She’s a total creature of wish-fulfillment; sprightly, unflappable, equal to every situation, and with her only real flaw her dislike of a guy who basically insulted her to her face the first time they met. I’ve heard it said that Mr Darcy is a fantasy type, and perhaps he is, but Elizabeth stretched my credulity further.
• Man, those Regency girls basically didn’t do anything with their time. They would have a sew, then go out for a walk, and then write a letter, and then retire, and that was about it apparently. I remember now one of my teenage responses: incredulity at the fact that no-one did anything the whole way through.
• The pompous Mr Collins is much funnier at 31 than he was at 17.

A lovely light read. I’m glad I went back to it.
Extra: over on LJ I gathered some information about that habit of the era’s writers to refer to “_____shire” and “Mr _____”.

So last Friday I went to my first proper hui. (For the non-Kiwis in the audience: a hui is a meeting conducted in accordance with Maori protocol. There’s more to it than that, but it’s enough to go on.)
It was held in a small marae in Rotorua, where people had gathered to discuss the possibility of a national body for traditional Maori healing practitioners. I was there as an observer and note-taker.
It was the first time I’ve ever been formally welcomed on to a marae. I’ve always considered this a significant gap in my experience, so it was nice to be part of this at last. And it was important to my understanding of New Zealand’s tangata whenua, its native people. As two different people told me during the day, the marae is the heart of Maori culture; everything comes out from the marae.
A formal welcome ceremony, or powhiri, took us visitors from outside the marae, through the gates and up to the meeting house. The women went first, with men at the back. All the women took off their shoes as they entered the meeting house, and I was surprised when the men didn’t follow suit. It turns out that this tribe is the only one in the country where men are allowed to wear shoes within the meeting house.
The two elders of the hosts and the visitors then spoke, and there were some songs, and then the welcome was complete and we headed over to the dining room for cups of tea. It was quite an intense experience for me. I didn’t understand much at all of what was said and sung – my understanding of the Maori language (te reo) is close to nil, with a small vocabulary and not much else. Nevertheless, I was engaged fully by the feeling accompanying the words. Several speakers emphasised this aspect in a different way, telling me that in te reo you can understand the full feeling of what was said, much more than can be translated into English.
Traditionally, everyone should introduce themselves formally, naming their mountain, their river and the canoe on which their ancestors came to Aotearoa. A less-formal introduction was used for this hui, which suited me just fine!
The hui went on and I took notes and listened. Much of it was in te reo, so I couldn’t follow that too closely, but there was enough English spoken that I picked up the flow of the day as the issue was discussed. Following Maori protocol, speakers often followed their words with a song, and the strum of the guitar was a big part of the day’s events.
I met a lot of interesting people, and had some neat conversations in the dining hall for lunch. It was important and a lot of fun. Though I am not Maori, Maori culture is a part of my identity as a New Zealander; in some sense, it’s mine too. I don’t own it or possess it, but I have a stake in its vibrancy and well-being.
Overall, a very memorable day.

(Picture and hosting stolen from NRT)
I saw this on No Right Turn a few days ago and thought it would be all over the place shortly after. It hasn’t been. So I’m doing my tiny bit to further distribute this little visual shock around the globe.
Here’s idiot on that NRT post:

In 2005, the arctic ice-cap shrank to its smallest extent in recorded history. This year, it’s smashed that record, shrinking to a mere 4.13 million square kilometres, compared with the previous low of 5.32 million square kilometres. Previously, climate scientists had been estimating that if climate change continued the arctic would be ice-free around 2080. Now they’re talking 2030. This isn’t about our children anymore – it will happen in our lifetime.

—
In related news, I’ve been watching student presentations for the last two days. Each small group describes how they tried to change their behaviour towards greater environmental sustainability, and whether they were successful. It’s been great, and inspiring, and exhausting. The students are demonstrating incredible insight into their behaviour, and along the way they’ve built an awareness of environmental sustainability in action (and sometimes a repertoire of successful environmental behaviours). That’s a win in my book. A big theme coming through is that initial motivation is really hard, but having a group microculture to sustain you once you’re underway is an enormous help. This fits nicely with what I’ve been thinking for a while, so it’s pleasing to hear in anecdotal form.
Soon it’ll be the hard data-crunching and theory-wrangling stuff. I love it.

JAFW recently pointed at a story that has slipped under the media net: the latest misdeeds of the Wallace Corporation. It has been found guilty of dumping carcinogenic toxic waste, after charges were brought by Environment Waikato.
JAFW points out that this is just the latest in a string of environmentally irresponsible offences that can be laid at James Wallace’s door. He considers a consumer-boycott reaction (which is to my mind a good response if and only if it is accompanied by a letter of explanation to the companies boycotted).
Digging into the company website reveals that Wallace Corp is mostly in the meat business, with sidelines in leather, dairying and rendering.
The most interesting fact: Wallace has close ties with several organic meat producers, such as the Harmony farm’s “Natural Choice” brand, certified organic meat. Here’s the website (it isn’t accessible from the Harmony frontpage but google has easily busted down that wall of security).
It is also linked with Outlands NZ, which supplies organic meats to the Californian branch of U.S. eco-chain Whole Foods.
It concerns me that NZ organic meat is being delivered to market by a serial toxic-waste dumper.
(Note: I’m not entirely sure of the nature of the links between the organic meat farms and Wallace Corp. Wallace’s website says that it processes the beef, so I’m not sure if it is purely a service provider or if there is some ownership as well. Wallace’s Website calls its Paeroa operation “Wallace Harmony Foods” (purchased in 2004), and the Natural Choice brand is marketed by Harmony, so that points to an ownership link of some kind.)
(Also, JAFW also mentions that the Wallace Arts Award, an important NZ art award, is funded directly by the James Wallace of Wallace Corporation. Worth noting.)

Saturday was world car-free day, so to honour the occasion Cal and I drove all over the place. We racked up a heck of a lot of kms, exhaled a great deal of carbon, and consumed much precious oil.
I feel no guilt. We’re both pretty good with the minimal car-usage thing by and large, and it just happened that car-free day lined up with a day when we were able to do a whole bunch of important missions. So we roamed from Wellytown to Porirua to the glorious Hutt valley and back again, fitting in some dog-at-beach along the way. It was pretty good, actually. Also fulfilled some duties and ate some salted liquorice. Yums.
You can survive quite happily in Dubtown without a car, but there’s so much you can only do with a car, even in a dense and well-connected environment like this. No regrets, as far as I’m concerned.
—
Still on the enviro-tip, this coming Saturday is eDay 2007 – the annual day when computer waste of all types can be dropped off, free of charge, at recycling spots in ten NZ cities. It’s the only day of the year when you can offload your old computer stuff to a place that will recycle the heck out of it. Computer waste is a particular nuisance, it’s extremely hard to dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way, so this is a great opportunity to audit your shelves and cupboards and sheds for old computer bits and pieces to take and drop off. Don’t just chuck that stuff in the rubbish pile – get it to eDay, where everything that can be re-used, will be re-used.

Before I run out of Friday, here is some quick linky.
A Connecticut high-school teacher resigns after parents of a 13-year-old girl complain that he gave her a pornographic comic. “It’s not even like a gray area,” the father said. “It’s clearly over the line… I personally don’t ever want him teaching again.” The comic in question? Eightball #22 by Dan Clowes. Say what? Simon Jones gets sarcastic: “You know, for once I’d like to see a supposed controversy over porno comics to actually involve porno comics.” Much more info at Journalista (where I saw the Simon Jones quote) and This Modern World. (Eightball #22, later collected as “Ice Haven”, is fantastic by the way.)
Rules to live by: James McM gives outlines his principles of Jamesism (see the comments).
On Wednesday in Wellington I ran into Anita who gave me a postcard to send calling for the removal of disgraced police commissioner Clint Rickards; today she has guest-blogged in detail on the subject at No Right Turn.
Making Light’s sublime Jim MacDonald retraces the 1961 route of Betty and Barney Hill, fisking the account as he goes. (This was the journey in which the Hills were supposedly abducted by aliens, the first such claim ever recorded. The fictional events of Close Encounters of the Third Kind were directly influenced by the story of the Hills.)
Andrew Rilstone has the final word on Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And last but not least, Rumpus photos.