I’ve got to do my part of my performance review tomorrow. Been trying to make it work tonight and it just eludes me. I have my KEY RESULT AREAS filled in and my KEY COMPETENCIES marked out but trying to relate everything I’ve done and learned and assembled in the last year in a little box is defeating me.
I actually don’t even know what type of thing I’m meant to write in the little boxes, it’s been so long since I’ve done one of these things. I sort of just want to write the same thing everywhere:
Done all this stuff, more or less.
It’s the more or less that makes it work. Because it’s ultimately entirely arbitrary isn’t it to try and capture the complexity of these relationships between me and other people, between my system inputs and the responses of the system, between my shaking of the spider’s web and the spider’s jerky approach, to try and capture them in a little box and rate it with a letter grade… Except it’s not really about capturing these relationships, is it? It’s about enabling a certain vector of communication. The performance review isn’t about reviewing performance – that happens all the time, in an ongoing way, the manager is always reviewing the employee’s performance, the employee is always interpreting their own performance. Maybe the process is really about manager and employee being able to send some important messages to each other.
So what kinda message do I want to send, I wonder?
No-one puts baby in the corner
In space no one can hear you scream
Send more paramedics
Hmm. Much to think about.
Month: September 2009
Ian Curtis Wall
Every day I walk past the Ian Curtis wall, the graffiti memorial to the Joy Division singer that has marked up Wallace Street’s concrete expanses for nearly three decades. (Mentioned on his Wikipedia page.)
Recently, it was removed by the local graffiti clean-up crew.
This is a genuine international attraction, and it’s been scrubbed off the map. (That link goes to Meredith Yayanos, international lady of mystery and recent emigre to Wellington; I have been bemused to watch her discuss Wellington’s many positive attributes in Twitter conversations with William Gibson and Warren Ellis, among others.) I’d be frustrated except its only a matter of time before the graff reappears; it’s already been chalked back up, bigger and brighter than ever.
But – it’s yet another blemish in the council’s record of understanding and dealing with street art. (See also the Drypnz fiasco.) Not that this is an easy task, graffiti slips right through the cracks of our social mechanics, but they can do a damn sight better than they’ve been doing. If we’re trying to a be a city of culture, then a bit of sorting out is past due.
Michael Laws, Prizefighter
Man, been busy these past couple days. But, bonus: have successfully convinced the scanner function on my printer/scanner to work with my laptop (previous frustrations). The software I used to use is still refusing to function, and it does other weird stuff (e.g. I can scan to my laptop from the laptop, but I can’t scan to my laptop from the scanner), but it goes. Hurrah!
So anyway, instead of a long blog, I’m just going to do what all us Kiwi bloggers do when we’re just phoning it in: quote the supremely self-satisfied Mayor of W(h)anganui, Michael Laws.
it was obvious, even in 1981, a liberated South Africa would exchange one form of madness for another. Apartheid was evil. So too is the African disease that has enveloped that nation, and from which it is condemned to never recover. (Sunday Star Times column, yesterday)
Evil of Apartheid = Evil of “the African disease”
I have no words.
Which is fine, because I need to do more work. Hurrah! Thank you Michael Laws!
Cheeky Seabird Linky
You get the feeling this isn’t the first time. Click through to watch:
Abandoned Theatres, latest in the web subgenre of “cool photos of weird abandoned places”
Andrew Rilstone (he of the fanboy linkage on my blogroll) delivers an amazing downloadable response-to-and-discussion-of Watchmen.
Michael Quinn Patton talks about how Maori creation stories illustrate his conception of social media (via email from Liz H)
Chris Sims delivers the only review you’ll ever need of Bring It On: Fight To The Finish, the fifth entry in the Bring It On cheersploitation saga!
This is how Broadway oughta be done: new song from “Legally Blonde: The Musical”, via feminist writer and coincidental Bring It On enthusiast Karen Healey
The UK’s first road map
The Economist delves into the quest for artificial stupidity (via BKD)
And finally… aaaaaaaaaaargh no i am seriously going to have nightmares over the existence of this creature (via Allen Varney, just like the cheeky seabird)
Freaks and Geeks: What happened next
morgue: Everyone reading this loves Freaks & Geeks, right? Right?
Readers: OF COURSE YES WE DO WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTION.
morgue: Well did you know that the story of these characters didn’t actually end at the end of episode 18, Discos and Dragons, with Nick dancing, Daniel dwarfing and Lindsay deading?
Readers: NO NO I DID NOT I SUSPECT YOU ARE ABOUT TO TELL ME ABOUT THIS
morgue: Yes I am. You see, the ultra-neat Yearbook DVD set features on its inside covers a bunch of signatures and messages from the show’s characters to Sam (front) and Lindsay (back). And a few plot developments are revealed!
Readers: DYING OF SUSPENSE NOW SPILL PLZ
morgue: So, from Sam’s pages, we find out that Cindy wants to be friends even though she still thinks Sam’s a jerk, while Todd reckons Cindy is crazy! Alan can’t bring himself to be friendly and writes insults all over Sam’s book! Nick Andopolis thinks Disco sucks! And most importantly, Maureen still wants to hang out with Sam!
Readers: BUT NICK LOVES DISCO NOW
morgue: Don’t be foolish Nick was just into disco because Sarah was and he was just with Sarah because he couldn’t be with Lindsay! Over on Lindsay’s pages we find out that Nick and Sarah broke up (surprise!) and he’s obviously still in love with Lindsay. The secret trip Lindsay took with Kim Kelly was apparently a success, because the mathletes think she went to the academic decathlon, and Kim’s talking about a second mission – presumably her mom and dad found out but kept quiet about it. And! Daniel actually has a coherent explanation for being such a s.o.b all season! Although it’s all spin obviously.
Readers: AND THAT’S IT
morgue: Um, yeah. It’s not exactly a lost episode I guess.
Readers: OH
morgue: No wait – the other thing you need to know. That episode where there’s a viking mascot?
Readers: VIKING MASCOT = TERRIFYING YES I DO
morgue: Well did you know that the dude playing the mascot is… THE BEEF.
Readers: LOL
morgue: (to himself) This was more interesting in my head than it is now in the cold, harsh pixels of reality.
Readers: THE BEEF FALLS OFF THE TABLE IN A VIKING HEAD LOL
See me, angsty
In October last year, Urban Driftwood was published. It’s a collection of poetry and prose by four young Wellington writers. I’m one of them, so is Dan of Freshly Ground foodblog infamy, and we get away with applying the word “young” because the writing is a decade or more old.*
And now you can download it free.
I wrote in the blog post linkied above, “The collection is a nice blend of voices, which was always Dan’s intent – he, Jane and Stephen all bring distinctive rhythms and styles and they balance each other well. Jane’s meditative simplicity, Stephen’s shaggy-dog shrugs of tone, Dan’s thoughtful density and my whatever. I am pleased to say that it lives up to Dan’s initial hope that we four writers together would be more than the sum of our parts.”
Its up for sale in hardcopy on Lulu, and we’ve added a free .pdf download. Go get it. Read my angst. I dare you.
* Yep, this project was in Dan’s to-do list for a looong time. Much respect for people who keep things on their to-do list for a decade and then actually do them.
Testing MMP
Seems like there’s gonna be another referendum, this time on whether or not our wee nation should stick with its present electoral system. We currently use MMP, mixed-member proportional representation (a.k.a the Additional Member System (AMS) in the UK, says wiki). Basically, you vote for parties, not people. The seats in Parliament are divided up among the parties to match the percentage of vote they receive. There’s more to ie (e.g. you vote for people as well) but that’s the important bit.
So this referendum will ask whether we want a change. Idiot at NRT is not at all impressed with the process, BK Drinkwater is open to advice, and I’m sure all the other poli blogs will start in on it soon enough.
I have a lot of love for MMP. Under the proportional system we’ve seen the diversity of our representatives grow massively, and the rise of a tier of smaller parties to a status where they can genuinely influence policy and gain wins for their constituencies. It ain’t perfect; but it’s a darn sight better than the winner-takes-all system we used to have.
Naturally, there were entrenched interests that fought hard for the old system, when we debated the change to MMP back in the 90s. Lots of money was spent to argue that MMP would destroy democracy. Lots of carefully spun lines were added into the discourse. One of them that bothered me when I was a teenager and still bothers me now is how under MMP, MPs have no direct electoral responsibility. They weren’t elected by the people, and that means that they can do what they like because the voters can’t chuck them out at election time!
It’s an inane criticism, but that hasn’t stopped it from turning up in letters to the editor at least once a week for the last ten years. (This is probably not an exaggeration.) It’s inane because it misunderstands the very nature of representative democracy and that this ideal is better met by a proportional system than a electorate-based winner-takes-all one. Of course each MP still has a constituency – it’s the proportion of the entire nation who voted for that party! When I tick the Green box on my ballot paper it means that I want that slate of MPs in Parliament. Maybe I don’t agree with or even like all of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that my vote puts my weight behind them.
(Now, there is actually something important hiding inside this criticism. Under MMP, members are accountable not to an electorate directly, but to the party. It is the party that gets the vote; it is the party that determines the order in which people are added to the list. The party says who gets in and who gets out. There is some issue with accountability there, at least potentially. But when you look a little harder, it’s much less prevalent in practice. AFAIK the Greens, the Maori party and even Labour all have strong channels through which party membership can influence the representation they assemble. Even National has avenues through which this can play out. So accountability to the party can mean, and should mean in a healthy democracy, accountability to the party members. I can find little to get upset about there.)
This criticism is a piece of spin generated back in 1992 that has been circulating through the NZ political conversation ever since. It is based on a complete misunderstanding of democracy, as the doctors behind the spin were no doubt well aware. It has stuck around because it speaks directly to the paranoia of the reactionary – when new faces appear in politics and say things I don’t like, I want to get rid of them! The old way let me do this.The new way doesn’t!
New faces saying things I don’t like may not be representing my interests, but they’re representing someone, probably someone whose voice has not been heard in politics prior to that point. This is an improvement. It means that MMP is working.
And I don’t think that’s anything to complain about.
Goin’ to Phuket
Cal and I are going to have a holiday on a beach in Phuket. (According to google, the picture above shows the specific beach we’re at.)
It’s all sorted – over a week of chilling out and doing nothing much at all. I’ve never spent more than a couple days chilling out and doing nothing much at all, I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope.
I guess this is our honeymoon. Choice.
We fly out October 10th. Looking forward to some good monsoon action!
Retirement Linky
My dad retires today. It’s quite a big deal. I identify him so strongly with that dedicated commute to work each day. It’s really exciting – he gets to define a whole new way of being, now. Nice one dad. See you at the function later today!
I dedicate this assortment of dubious internet jammery to my dad. (Sorry, dad.)
Chess on rollercoasters (via the Gator)
Nate Page’s artwork outa carved-up magazines. It’s like the reverse of collage. Amazing.
Another site dedicated to how people are sometimes venal, sometimes cruel, but mostly just dumb: Item not as described
This short account of the spiders-on-drugs research includes some crazy new findings I’d never heard before (via my Cal).
Hunter S Thompson motivational posters (From everyone, but the other moose had ’em first I think)
Wrestle-heads out there: a first column on the latest WWE happenings by regular commenter and good buddy Scott Anderson, at NZPWI
Via Svend: Bauchklang – band consisting entirely of beatboxers. WOW. (Which reminds me – if you didn’t get around to watching the choir doing Toto’s Africa a month ago, you missed the best thing I’ve linked to in ages. Go see.)
The UN Unconventional Culture Commission.
Free online poetry/short fiction journal, just released: Blackmail issue 25, the Rebel issue. Includes work from Helen Rickerby of this parish’s blogroll.
And finally… inglourious wizerds
Writing Update: July/August
Still working on tne twelve short stories target for the year.
Either finished or in a late-stage draft:
– “The Tape”
– “Buckets”
– “Babel”
– “The Twelve Times I Drank Too Much”
– “Lift Story”
– “The Apotheosis of Melvin Rameka”
Notes ‘n’ scratchings ‘n’ failed drafts:
– “Walking story”
– “Confession”
– “The Big Drive”
In other words, got a long ways to go yet. But I’m learning a lot about short stories, so that’s good.
“The Beast” comic keeps on keeping on, looking handsome. Re-writing dialogue to best fit a drawn page is a whole new writing skill. Awesome though.
“Affair of the Diamond Necklace” was performed and went well. Sweet.
I’m going to be recording some decade-old short fiction soon, for Dan’s podcast version of “Urban Driftwood“. Some of it will be tricky…
A couple other small Sekret Projects too but nothing particularly dramatic. No movement on Ron the Body.
[Last writing update]