Twenty years ago today, I hopped on a plane with my best bud Leon and we flew from Wellington to London. It was exciting. I’d never been overseas before.
I came back several years later, after exploring Europe and the Middle East and North America, and living long enough in Edinburgh that I still think of it as my other home.
I wanted to feel the size of the world. The more I travelled, the bigger it all felt, because every place I reached also revealed countless more places in between. But it also ended up feeling not quite so big as all that, because it turns out the world is made of people, and now I have friends scattered all over the globe, and the shape of my life was powerfully changed by these friendships.
The other important thing I learned is that the right place for me to be in that world is here, home again in Aotearoa New Zealand, on the banks of Te Awa Kairangi.
I hope to go see other places again, and visit all my friends out there. I am so glad I met all of you. You make the world feel just the right size.
(Asterisks included above for the sake of content filters on work computers. Is that still a thing? It used to be a thing.)
The sun is out, the buds are on the trees, and every main road is suddenly lined with signs showing unfamiliar faces saying VOTE FOR ME! You know what that means: it’s local election time!
Soon an envelope will arrive and you will put it on the stack of things you will definitely get to, and then SMASH CUT to like two months later and you find the envelope again and you never even opened it, and you have a little chuckle at yourself because, hey! It’s only local government, right?
Well I have something to say: NOT THIS YEAR, BUDDY-O! Heck no! This year you’re gonna open that envelope and vote! Because this year your local government elections are the front line of a crucial fight!
Your local elections vote has never had as much riding on it!
You will of course have noticed that things have gone a bit… weird in the last few years. Like, David Bowie died in January 2016 and it all kind of went wrong from there? Of course things were quietly going wrong a long time before that, but in 2016 the wrongness got hold of a vuvuzela and now it’s Blaring Loud Wrongness, Keeping You Up At Night.
And all that wrongness is going to smash right into your local government. Unless you stop it.
Here are two urgent, crucial problems that show why voting matters extra bigly this time.
Problem 1: The allies of fascism are infiltrating government
That description reads like hyperbole, the kind of overheated claims you’d find in the weird corners of Indymedia in 2001. It is honestly a bit hard to accept that this is where we are now.
But we are. If you haven’t already, take the time to review the Stuff Circuit investigation by Paula Penfold & colleagues, Fire and Fury: Disinformation in New Zealand. The hourlong documentary is an intense and sobering watch.
Image from Fire & Fury (Stuff)
A very active set of agitators are busy every day spreading disinformation, fomenting hatred, putting violence on the table. They are chewing on the table legs of our society.
Standing for local election was an idea that circulated widely through these networks, with the explicit aim of making the country ungovernable. As a result, many candidates aligned with conspiratorial views, or worse, have entered local election races. Most of these have kept their affiliations secret.
If elected, they will haul water for this country’s rising ring of fascist agitators. They will disrupt government and provide a platform for fascist recruitment and organising.
We have to vote to keep them out.
(Again, I can hardly believe that I am typing this as a fair description of what is taking place in this country, but that’s where we are. The long 2016 is a deeply weird time to be alive.)
Problem 2: Climate change is local now
Climate change has been a challenge for a long time (I’ve been writing about it on this blog since it was an email newsletter, way back when email newsletters were a thing, oh hey they are a thing again) but we are in a new phase now. Unprecedented weather disasters are finally dragging top-level political actors to the table – heck, even the USA has successfully passed a major climate action bill!
The new urgency is this: dealing with climate change at street level. All those slips around the Hutt and Wellington are a portent of things to come, unexpected trouble all over. We need to build resilience! Our councils need people who are prepared to be prepared.
But that’s just a side issue compared to the real challenge ahead: massive community transformation!
We need to redesign our towns and cities into new forms. For example, we need a completely new approach to transport. Public transport and active transport have to become the easiest and best ways to get around our communities!
Local and regional government will be forced to make some very big calls, soon. (In fact they are already doing this!) Over the next five years, decisions made by your local body will decide the future shape of your community.
These will be some of the most consequential and far-reaching decisions ever made by local government! Your council needs people who are prepared to be brave.
We have to vote for them.
Heck yeah I’m gonna do the thing, except how??
You’re gonna do the thing! You’re going to vote! So… what now?
START ATEAM-UP! You probably have a few trusted friends who live in the same electoral area as you? Ask if they want to team up on figuring out who to vote for. Many hands make light the work, and more fun the work too. Small group action: this is the way.
IDENTIFY THE ROCKING GOOD CANDIDATES! You can’t downvote the infiltrators, so you have to help the super-sweet candidates to out-compete them! This election guide covering all candidates is essential: plug in your address and it tells you who is standing for what in your area.
TELL YOUR NETWORKS! Personal recommendations are THE most powerful thing in local body elections. People will generally pay attention to what they hear from friends and neighbours, much more than from any other source. So don’t do the hard work of figuring out who to vote for, only to keep it all to yourself! Instead, get the word out!
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF TELLING YOUR NETWORKS
Karen ‘Kaz’ Yung – photo from the election guide website
Here’s who I am backing in the Hutt City Council elections: Karen Yung, a.k.a. Kaz.
Kaz is standing for council in the city-wide field, not tied to any specific ward. So she’s going to be on the ballot paper for everyone here, all across Hutt City.
I’m going to give her a tick because I am impressed by her commitment to ground-level community engagement, and because I like her focus on addressing the challenges of climate change.
I voted for her last elections too. She almost got into council then and I am confident her reputation has only increased since. I have followed her on Facebook over the last few years, while she has continued to be very active in the community and has served on the Petone Community Board. She’s just a really good candidate and will be an exciting new voice on council.
The Kiwi sense of humour is like, you move to NZ and get a job and the boss sends you to the store to buy some striped paint, and you get there and the shop person nods and says “here you go” and the paint doesn’t say striped on it but you guess it must be right,
so you take it back and the boss says “now paint that house” and you do and it doesn’t come out striped so you ask the boss about it and he says “ah the stripes come out after a bit of sun”, then like a month of sun later you’re walking past the house and there are no stripes,
and you mention it to the boss and they say “I can’t believe someone painted over those beautiful stripes” and you go back and you knock on the door of the house and you ask the owner if she painted over the striped paint,
and she gives you a nod and says “yeah, when the stripes came out in the sun they looked different to how i imagined, tell your boss it wasn’t their fault” so you go back and tell the boss and they just raise their eyebrows,
and then you fall in love with a Kiwi and move back to London and have a kid and get married and get older and then one night you pause netflix and you tell them this story and you say “but there’s no such thing as striped paint, is there?”,
and they laugh and say “oh honey” and you think, at last, I’m not crazy, finally the truth, and then they say “oh honey, you painted the stripes vertical instead of horizontal and everyone was too polite to tell you”
That’s what the Kiwi sense of humour is like.
(Originally written on twitter; i’ve kept the tweet breaks in there because otherwise it would be an impenetrable wall of text.)
Overnight Friday to Saturday my sleep was troubled by sore throat and post-nasal drip. Oh no! I only just got over a bad cold a few weeks ago! Again?? Again.
I admit I hesitated before calling it in. (Am I really sick?) Because once you engage in it, everything else has to stop. Our family’s plans for the weekend were instantly stalled. Just ordinary life stuff, but it has momentum, and you feel it as you pull the cord.
So that’s the first thing I want to highlight. That friction where we delay and sigh about it and try and rationalise to ourselves. We all do it! It’s how our brains work! And as a behaviour guy, masters degree in social psychology, I watched myself doing the same stuff.
Here’s the workaround. Two of them, in fact. First, make a plan, now. The plan isn’t complicated: if I get sick, I’ll call the healthline. Visualise it, even! I’ll look up the phone number, I’ll sit on my bed, I’ll get a pen and paper… The more details the better. That gives your brain a script to follow. Our brains love scripts, especially in the face of stressful situations. And being faced with taking an action that will upend the momentum of ordinary life? That is stressful! (Let alone the possibility you might have COVID!)
Second, make the plan with the people in your life. The people who will be affected when you pull that cord. Unless they are dicks, they will be all for taking action! Say it to each other – if one of us gets sick, we do the thing, even though it will be a nuisance.
So that’s the workaround for the hesitation, and the bad feeling and unease around slamming on the brakes over a wee sniffle (as your brain will rationalise it for you). Plan now, it helps then.
I called Healthline instead of the local Dr because it was weekend. They were great, very helpful and clear. MAD respect for all the people working those phones, I feel like they are nailing it, obviously working off a good combo of clear scripts and freedom to ask questions. They gave me the contact details for the local testing station, so i called them up and made an appointment. Smooth! They asked what kind of car I’d be driving up in, and my mind completely blanked, all i could say was “blue”. I had to go and check to remind myself!
While waiting for the test, i began self-isolating, as advised by healthline. there are some logistics involved, obviously! We can cancelled all the stuff we were lined up to do on the weekend, and my lovely partner began to figure out the details.
(Worth mentioning that i was sick, my brain was fuzzy, and the aforementioned stressful context hurts thinking – so having someone else do this kind of problem-solving is incredibly handy.)
Hopped in the car, went to get the test. it was quick and easy and the staff were so kind and clear. It didn’t hurt at all, but it did hit my gag reflex, definitely a bit unpleasant but over very quickly. Definitely not bad enough to be afraid of having one!
Then back home with some extra info about self-isolation. And so the next two days were spent with me sectioned off from my family! Daughter was horrified that she couldn’t hug me but pleased to have her mum doing a sleepover in her room.
Because we only have one bathroom, complete isolation was impossible. Solution was a pack of antibacterial wipes + masking. I wore a mask most of the time, to stop breathing particles on to surfaces, and when i went to the toilet I’d take a wipe to sanitise handles etc.
This is another piece of advice: get a pack of wipes NOW so you don’t need to think about it if and when you end up in household isolation.
The other tricky thing, oddly enough, is washing dishes. You can be delivered your meals by your loving family/flat mates/whoever, but then those plates and cutlery need attention after. We left the dishwasher open for me to load my dishes in directly, and also just let some dishes pile up in the corner of the bedroom in expectation of me getting the all-clear today.
…and i did! Text came through 46 hours after the test, and now i am free to breathe on whatever i like and hug my daughter again. Lovely.
So to recap my advice: mentally rehearse what you’ll do if you get symptoms. Do it with your family/flat mates/whoever, to create a bit of confidence and shared accountability. Get some disinfectant wipes now and put them aside.
We all need to be diligent about testing! There are still common colds and so on circulating, so there’s a good chance someone in your household will end up needing to do this, especially as level 2 is sticking around. A bit of mental prep now will make it much easier to give in to the process if and when that day comes.
I’m grateful to be part of the big NZ team. Be excellent to each other!
Lockdown is over but I thought I’d do one last Friday Linky. It’s been fun bringing it back! I hope your Fridays have been suitably enriched, including this one, thanks to this collection of treats:
12. Legendary Canadian sketch show Kids in the Hall is free to watch in NZ via TVNZ online! Never seen it available in NZ before. Can’t work out how to link to it directly, so here’s the tweet from Sam Brooks that tipped me off: https://twitter.com/sbrookbrooks/status/1260796234459037701?s=21
13. The (free!) Essential Services zine contains new writing from some great people cut loose during the great media purges of the pandemic era. https://essentialserviceszine.com
With lockdown up for review on Monday, might this be the final Friday linky? Possibly! But you know what happened after the last Final Friday: Jason went to space. So we can’t be confident about anything.
3. Highly-regarded essay series on the myth of the “warrior race”, with a specific focus on Spartans in the real world and Dune’s Fremen in fiction. I’m linking a blog post that summarises, because it is looong. https://zompist.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/the-fremen-mirage/
6. Globetrotting investigator of oddities David Farrier (Tickled, Dark Tourist) has an email newsletter! It is great! Sign up! https://webworm.substack.com/about
8. My amazing friend Helen reads a very relevant poem from her Ockham-nominated collection: https://youtu.be/Sii5dokSagE
9. Some lovely behind-the-scenes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with Matthew Broderick interviewing his cast mates. https://youtu.be/tNzRSVmz0To
10. Tim & Guy lived in a NYC sewer for a week and watched the Michael Bay Ninja Turtles film three times a day and somehow this didn’t become a YouTube Red TV show but you can watch it: https://youtu.be/ebs0C1Wk0gE
12. The books of Anno Mitsumasa were mainstays of my childhood. Japan House in London has just launched a virtual exhibition of his works. https://www.japanhouselondon.uk/
13. And finally, via Katherine H (who also provided the Free Masks image from a few weeks back!) – the Twin Peaks theme delivered by cats https://youtu.be/8MnOtMP41k4
3. Brett Goldstein (the lovely Films to be Buried With podcast) is making a lockdown webseries like Love Island, only the love interest is a pot plant? Brilliant. https://youtu.be/nP793bQSHPY
9. The White Man Behind A Desk has graduated to a well-produced RNZ series about New Zealand’s history and present. A local civics education, plus funny! https://youtu.be/m1VrqxohA-A
12. Shut Up and Sit Down reveal some amazing board games you can print on your own printer at home and play by yourself. Genuinely inspirational! These look really fun! https://youtu.be/sNghPlwbYe8
13. And finally, watch this guy rap Dr Seuss’ tongue-twister Fox in Socks to the beats of Dr Dre: https://youtu.be/hqIbEHNqbPs
1. The most legendary episode of oddball late-nighter The Chris Gethard Show is free to view on YouTube and it is a WILD ride. Feat. Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas, who are tasked with guessing what is in a dumpster. If you know, don’t spoil it! https://youtu.be/Nwi_kE0gy94
3. Is the lockdown doing too much damage to the economy? It’s unpleasant to put a price on human life, but you have to answer this somehow. This fascinating piece talks about using acceptable risk instead. (Via Trond) http://timharford.com/2020/04/how-do-we-value-a-statistical-life/
5. The Michael Jordan documentary series on Netflix is amazing (I am just the right age for it too) but also FIBA, sensing a moment, has dropped an hourlong doc on the history of the Basketball World Cup https://youtu.be/I0hJ4QC5Fpc
6. There’s a lot of lockdown podcasts out there, but this one is special: Ken Jeong and Joel McHale talking Community, coronavirus, & moar! (Also on youtube!) https://linktr.ee/kenjeong
7. And if you’ve been binging Community, don’t forget the mini-episodes! The three eps that take place inside 90-second study breaks are absolutely masterful and very funny. Find ‘em all here: https://community-sitcom.fandom.com/wiki/Community_webisodes
8. Neil, Liam and Elroy Finn are playing together in lockdown. Here’s Better Be Home Soon. Sweet on the ear. https://youtu.be/0FS9vBf6i5g
9. If you miss gone-too-soon cruelly-taken more-than-just-a-sports-website Deadspin, you should definitely check out https://unnamedtemporarysportsblog.com featuring some very familiar writers. It’s funny.
10. Dylan Horrocks has been interviewing NZ cartoonists by video call, starting with Toby Morris, whose coronavirus guidance cartoons have gone global: https://youtu.be/vTlFHdtsK40 (Sarah Laing is next, so watch that too)
12. And finally, if you, like me, found Leah McFall’s columns were always a delicious treat, then you, like me, will be delighted to learn about her new saga imagining Harry & Meghan on lockdown in, er, Karori. https://karoriconfidential.com
1. Lovely friendo David Cormack has spent the last few years as a columnist for the Herald, representing “the entire left side of politics”. He, with many others, was shed by the paper as it tries to cope with events. Now Cormack has jumped on Patreon, and you can get his funny & smart reckons for spare change: https://www.patreon.com/davidcormack
3. The Comics Journal goes deep into Drucker’s art style, using his Invasion of the Body Snatchers parody as a starting point. I loved this. He was a huge part of my childhood. (Before home video, you’d relive films by reading the MAD parodies…) http://www.tcj.com/carnival-knowledge-on-mort-drucker/
4. Curt Smith of Tears for Fears plays Mad World with his daughter Diva. Gave me chills. https://youtu.be/NEpfvTdR5-U
6. Which is a good excuse to link to Rachel Bloom’s extremely horny and not works-safe song about lusting after Ray Bradbury. This 2010 clip was instrumental in getting Crazy Ex-Girlfriend made. Bradbury, then 90, liked it. https://youtu.be/ZG38VcjE770
12. This did the rounds just pre-pandemic, but if you missed it, this episode of podcast Reply All about a man who tries to reconstruct a song he remembers from his youth – a song no-one else can recall – is surely one of the best podcast episodes of all time. (Via Kirsty @eliterate) https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx
