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Sunday Sports Report | Oct 29, 2006 13:01
1.43 .....My slowest time yet.
And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
who's chokin' on the splintersSoy un perdedor etc.
The Sunday Star Times Columnist of the Year always has helpful words of consolation for me in dark moments. He told me it was probably just as well I hadn't achieved the time I coveted. It might well have made me into a conceited – (Moi?) - big-headed insufferable C-word.
That is how I conveyed it to my wife as we drove home, making due concession to our sweet-hearted little girl in the booster seat. A little while ago she confided in us that she never uses the F-word at school even though Ryan and Matthew take much pleasure in its deployment.
She also informed us that there is one word that's even worse, and that's the M word. "And it's not" she said solemnly "very kind to mothers."
In times of disappointment, we turn to the solace of the happy family. This afternoon will be family time.
But next year, oh, next year that time will be mine.
Your all loosers | Oct 27, 2006 06:59
Welcome one and all to the second edition of Discouraging Friday Revelations. I must confess it's hard work coming up with this little service week in, week out, every Friday, but because you care, well: so do I.
In a moment, fun with criminals, but first: what is this at the once bustling site of nzpundit? Are those real digital cobwebs? Has some unhappy fate befallen the House of King? Did I miss the official adieu? Or is it au revoir? Not that they'd say it in that language. I know the news is not encouraging from Washington, but Wellington has hardly being treating them unkindly in recent weeks.
Now, about those crooks. I was invited to a breakfast meeting at the beginning of the week. Dismal though those things can be, the topic was interesting. Vaguely - and I must be vague because I was there as a customer, and not a roughly-affiliated member of the fourth estate - the topic was in the area of credit card malfeasance.
You buggers who take pleasure in helping yourselves to other people's money might want to look to your work. That's all I'm saying, except for this: an intelligent chap from police intelligence had some very interesting information to share, and I'm sure he couldn't object to my mentioning one broad observation he made at the end of a fascinating story about one particular criminal.
In the past few months, this guy has pulled off some breathtakingly audacious stunts, but more recently he has been mostly helping police with their inquiries. The unexpected interview room discovery has been that he is actually quite stoopid. More Van West than Jethro. (Or maybe a little like this guy.)
"You may be wondering", the man from Police HQ said, "how a dumb guy could get away with so much." Well, the answer to that question - and here we arrive at today's discouraging revelation - is that we, the targets of the crime, can be spectacularly clueless ourselves.
He proceeded - using anecdotes about the hapless manner in which we go about protecting our credit card data and personal identity information from the prying eyes of Van, Jethro and Al Qaeda - to demonstrate the undeniable truth of his assertion.
What he didn't say, but which was clear from the picture he painted, is that crime evolves in much the same way as enterprise does on the other side of the tracks: through trial, error, inspiration, and thinking outside the much-derided - and irretrievably clichéd - square.
You may well be a dumbass, but if you're willing to have a go, and you're first in to the market, then you have the element of surprise and for that reason, no matter how low your wattage may be, you can't overstate how lucky you may get, and how abundant the low-hanging fruit may be.
Where crime is concerned, the unexpected and the novel are the very things that present the most alluring prospects. People can't make preparations for something they've never heard of. They're much less likely to deal capably with something they've never seen before.
The 9/11 movie, United 93, makes that plain. Everywhere - in the aircraft cabins, in the control towers, at command centres, right across the military - people were caught flatfooted. The President was too, of course, but to be fair, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of the more challenging works of the canon.
There you go, then: discouraging enough? The most enterprising of the bad guys like to do what you weren't expecting in a million years, and they always will. Take it as a useful word of warning. As the happy hours of conviviality come crowding in later today, just be careful what you do with that credit card.
The promise of sex | Oct 26, 2006 08:13
How's this for motivation? At mile 6 of the New York Marathon you round the corner and see a 'bookish but attractive woman' holding a big sign. Its message is as unambiguous as it is enticing.
MARK!
[photo of Mark, a bookish but attractive man]
4 hrs = SEX!
Watch Mike go! To translate: if he can get home in 4 hours or less, those little town blues will be melting away, no doubt about it.
In a few days my brother - who has been my training partner of the past few weeks - will pack his running shoes and singlet and make the long flight to New York to join the 37,000 other people who will be pouring through the streets of the five boroughs.
I envy him.
The official web site says you'll run through 'dozens of culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhoods', pass over bridges, dodge a few potholes, and two, three, four, or nine hours later find yourself coming across the line at Tavern on the Green in Central Park, urged on by two million spectators.
It's quite the day out.
That makes our Auckland marathon sound tame by comparison, but you couldn't keep me away from it if Annette Presley herself was in it.
Loyal readers will know that I have tackled previous half marathons with the various encumbrances of a broken rib, shin splints and strained hamstrings. Four days out from this one, I am unscathed and well exercised. The clock is taunting me. Three minutes stand between the 1 hour 30 mark and my best effort so far. I am motivated. I have incentives.
The world record of one minute short of an hour would be nice too, but it would need to be a tailwind of the sort that lifts pleasure craft out of the water.
The thing about a time of 1.30 is that, at my age, that's fast enough to get you guaranteed entry into the New York marathon. I would rather like to do it.
There are risks to consider. There may be hazards on the course. Should I win it, for instance, I might meet the same misfortune as the winner of this week's Chicago marathon. Look at this Reuters clip. He scorches through the course, comes striding powerfully home, and then in his final stride hits something slippery underfoot, and takes a mighty dive.
The fall is spectacular. He has the title, but now he also has bleeding beneath the skull.
And what brought him down? Advertising! Someone's freaking logo, set out like a welcome mat; arranged, no doubt, for optimum televisual effect.
It would take a big man to step up to the podium and "thank the sponsors" after they'd done that to him. And that's assuming he has retained the faculty of speech.
But the piper must be paid. Look again at the description that accompanies the Reuters clip. They're so busy getting the sponsor's name in, they don't have room to mention the cause of the accident.
Robert Cheruiyot, the winner of the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, struck his head after slipping as he reached the finish line.
Sponsors and marketers. Can't shoot them, can't have a marathon without them.
The real stars of the show are the people, though. Magnum Photo has the proof here in a marvellous photo exhibition.
It's a wonderful occasion, and that's not even counting the promise of sex.
Take a seat, Bryan | Oct 24, 2006 19:57
40,000 outraged New Zealanders, including "Hilda Ogden", "Susan Peacock", "Pete Sinclair" and "the very reverend Jesus Mohammed MacIrishman" have already vented their online spleen at last week's light-speed legislation, and the fury is clearly not yet spent.
Where did the Government go so wrong? Could they have handled this better?
Well, yes, frankly. They just had to share the spoils around a little more evenly.
One more clause could have made all the difference; just a bit of red meat for those baying Tories and then we could have all got some sleep. Something like this, for instance:
8 Sundry historical corrections
The following is a true reflection of the historical record, and any assertion to the contrary will be prohibited, a corrupt practice, a bridge too far and - if you can't be arsed looking up any other legislation - a seditious act,-
(a) Gerry was just tapping the guy on the shoulder.
(b) She didn't see anything. One minute they were in Waimate, the next, they were in Christchurch.
(c) Bryan Sinclair can arrange chairs like a sonofabitch.
(d) Bob's always head-butting other people's stationery.
(e) "Slosh those funds around and buy your way to the Treasury benches" is chair-arranger-speak for "those napkins don't look right with that tablecloth."
(f) It wasn't for the baubles.
(g) Everything the last Auditor General ran up on the credit-card is now valid too, except for the inappropriate hotel-room movies.
(h) Rodney was the best dancer.
(i) It was all lafo.
(j) There is one law for all New Zealanders, and this is it.
Tonight I spend my bread | Oct 20, 2006 07:44
There's a first time for everything, and there's nothing new under the sun. It can get ugly when clichés collide.
How many times in your life have you picked up a 'Volume One' or 'Issue Number 1' of some chirpy little publication or other, blathering about, oh I don't know, your local gym or the franchise bakery in your mall? Most likely it will have come to your hands unbidden, and will have been compiled by some expensive PR or marketing house.
After you've seen a few hundred examples of these sorry productions, you can't help feeling some sympathy for the deluded souls involved: maybe not so much for the marketing manager who commissioned it, or the shareholder in the company that paid for it - frankly, they should know better; but there will be some hard-pressed writer who sweated out the deathless, vapid prose and your heart aches for them because it is a cheerless, thankless task without honour.
It needs hardly saying that there is never a volume or issue number 2. Take that as a cautionary note; there may never be an issue 2 for what I am about to inaugurate. Good intentions can be swiftly mown down on the road to Ponsonby.
Fridays in the world of the blogs are customarily an occasion for 'fry-ups', funnies, or well-informed drinking advice. It's a party day.
This brings out the contrarian in me. I propose to offer, on Fridays, before I depart for lunch, disappointing revelations.
Let us start with one of my great idols, George Orwell; a man who is rightly lauded for his authenticity, who wrote under a pseudonym.
We read in this fine New Yorker piece of 2003 by Louis Menand
of Orwell's "sort of aesthetic distaste" for Gandhi - "just the sort of sandal-wearing, vegetarian mystic Orwell had always abhorred."
Hitler, however, he could accommodate.
"I have never been able to dislike Hitler," he admitted, in 1940. Hitler, it seems, "grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life," which Orwell called the attitude of "nearly all Western thought since the last war, certainly all 'progressive' thought."
You will find insightful analysis in the piece, and I unreservedly recommend you go and read every line of it, but we are here for the Dismal Friday Revelation, so let's press on.
His first wife, Eileen, with whom he adopted a son, died in 1945. He proposed to several women thereafter, sometimes suggesting, as an inducement, that he would probably die soon and leave his widow with a valuable estate; but he struck out. Then, in 1949, when he really was on his deathbed, he married Sonia Brownell, a woman whose sex appeal was widely appreciated. Brownell had slept with Orwell once, in 1945, apparently from the mixed motives of pity and the desire to sleep with famous writers, one of her hobbies. The marriage was performed in a hospital room; Orwell died three months later. He ended up selling more books than any other serious writer of the twentieth century-"Animal Farm" and "1984" were together translated into more than sixty languages; in 1973, English-language editions of "1984" were still selling at a rate of 1,340 copies a day-and he left all his royalties to Sonia. She squandered them and died more or less in poverty, in 1980. Today, Orwell's gravesite, in a churchyard in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, is tended by volunteers.
If this kind of verity about the fallibility of all human flesh appeals to you, then you are probably the sort of viewer that Monkey TV has in mind.
"Are you in the process of contesting a will?," they ask a worldwide Internet audience, for they are making a documentary on the subject for Britain's Channel 4.
I can think of nothing less worthy than scrapping over your rights to someone else's estate, but that doesn't deter a sizeable minority from piling in. An old man who lives nearby told me last week he's leaving everything he has to the SPCA. One or two of the more excessively venal types who have lately come to populate our neighbourhood might not be above cultivating a friendship with him on the strength of that knowledge. I am pleased to see that intelligence passing them by.
If you, or someone you know, has recently been involved in contesting a will or might be about to do so, Monkey TV would like to talk to you by November 4. I wonder if they will hear from anyone with the surname "Blair".
Yes, we have none today | Oct 18, 2006 20:32
With talk of a coup in the air, our Prime Minister is disinclined to visit Fiji next week. If they can't vouch for her personal safety, she says, she's staying home. Fair enough, too. There's nothing funny about a bunch of heavily armed soldiers bundling you into the Toyota Hilux and carting you into the compound.
The TV news tonight somewhat archly informed us that you and I, however, are free to come and go from Nadi at will. MFAT has no words of warning for us.
That could be because the putative provocateur and duly-appointed military commander of the nation, Commodore Voreque Bainimarama, or Frank to his friends, is not in country right now, as they say in the war movies.
MFAT probably don't want to spoil your holiday, but a little preparation goes a long way. If you should happen to notice Frank walking past the airport duty free store, you might want to think about getting back on the plane.
Names and faces are never easy to remember, of course, especially when the local language is not your own, so if you're soon bound for the Fiji sun, you may want to save this cut-out-and-keep Who's Who in the Coup chart. Pop it into your suitcase with your nail clippers and hair gel, and bula!
Dangerous
Frank Bainimarama
A Little Dangerous
Frank, a Brahman, and Ana
Not Even Vaguely Dangerous
Bananarama
Barney, Brahma, Bananas
UPDATES, related and not.
Fastidious Eighties chronicler Robyn Gallagher writes to clarify:
Bananarama may not be dangerous, but they are FIERCE.
Believe it, yo.
Meanwhile, washing up elsewhere on wilder and angrier shores of the blogosphere is this interesting flotsam: a Google AdSense ad for the Labour Party on the "No Royal Assent to Electoral Act Violations" online petition site. Two questions come to mind:
1. Does the Labour Party really want to underwrite Blair's democratic endeavours?
2. Would a Google AdSense invoice meet the new definition of funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes?
Fallout | Oct 17, 2006 17:08
This might be an appropriate time to quote a learned judge. Here is Chief Justice Sir Richard Wild in 1976.
It is a graphic illustration of our legal heritage and the strength of our constitutional law that a statute passed by the English parliament nearly three centuries ago to extirpate the abuses of the Stuart Kings should be available on the other side of the earth to a citizen of this country which was then virtually unknown in Europe and on which no Englishman was to set foot for almost another hundred years. And yet it is not disputed that the Bill of Rights is part of our law.
Chief Justice Wild proceeded to apply the full force of said Bill of Rights by declaring that the Prime Minister-elect, one R. D. Muldoon, was not permitted to rule the country by press release, no matter how convenient he might find that form of government.
Muldoon had announced that he was abolishing the compulsory superannuation scheme set up by the previous Labour government and ordered all the employee contributions to be refunded. He would be passing the necessary empowering legislation "in due course".
The Chief Justice recognised that the government had the numbers to do so, and so his judgment neatly straddled principle and pragmatism. He declared that the Prime Minister was not a rule unto himself, that the only place for this law to be changed was in Parliament, and that until Parliament had spoken, the law remained the same.
However he then tidily adjourned all other matters in the case for six months and thus avoided a giant administrative headache by not forcing the Superannuation Act briefly back into business.
So what did we get in Parliament today? Same dance, different form.
We saw the same haughty disregard for democratic niceties,
and we got the same reminder that the Parliament is paramount.
I am not so vexed by matters of administrative correctness - as Treasury sees them - as I am by the question of a pending day in court.
If you had been about to take on the Labour Party in the High Court on the question of unauthorised election expenditure, it might not have been fanciful for you to imagine that you might soon be taking your place in political and legal history alongside Fitzgerald v Muldoon.
But that would be underestimating the thermonuclear capability of the H-bomb that is created by the fusion of 1 and 2. Unlike Muldoon, they took their device to the Parliament.
Fitzgerald v Muldoon emphatically confirmed the constitutional position. Parliament trumps everyone. It trumps the Executive, it trumps the One News room, and even though our present Chief Justice has suggested some theoretical constraints to the rule, for the largest part it trumps the judges. If you can get the numbers in the house, then you can make the law.
And that includes a law that passes through all three readings without so much as a pause for a glass of water. Thus you get legislation which validates 'irregularities' in the spending of the parliamentary services vote, and as a consequence, you may see the case of Darnton v Clark blown out of the water.
Can they do it?
Yes.
Is it bad politics? Time will tell, and it will tell us when we come to the one force that trumps Parliament: the ballot box.
Notwithstanding the understandable outrage being expressed by Bernard Darnton and his supporters, I don't believe that this unlovely spectacle demonstrates that our rights to free speech stand in peril.
I have done business with people who live in countries where speech truly is imperilled, and they would trade the bad odour of this eau-de-banana-republic for the appalling tyrannies in their nations without a second thought.
But the high-handed nature of this is not at all edifying, and the H-people will now have plenty of time to ponder whether the voters will remember this as keenly as they still do the seven–minute wonder that was the passing of the legislation for the 'gold-plated' MPs superannuation scheme all of twenty years ago now.
I Heart You, Man | Oct 16, 2006 09:36
Have you ever dreamed of being paid for your blogging?
Dream no more; the tantalising details are just a click away. All you have to do is write what you admire about your favourite product or service, and the big corporations will pay you cash money for your time.
Johnson was right: only a fool writes but for money. Here are my first submissions.
I Love McDonalds
I still remember the first time our daughter visited McDonalds. She adores her big cousins. Her big cousins adore the Happy Meals. Imagine her excitement when one night they asked if she would like to go with them. Hamburgers! Fries! Strawberry thick shakes! Crappy plastic toys! It was almost more delight than a three year old could stand.
How she thrilled to the excitement of it all as they scarfed down the food. How she gurgled happily as the girls chatted. How she wailed as a dark cloud of nausea fell upon her. How sombre she looked as they arrived back home. With fresh tears pricking her eyes, she announced: "I throwed up, Daddy."
I Love Telecom
There is a popular saying among marketing executives that you should surprise and delight your customers. I am as surprised as I am delighted to learn that Telecom have an offer that can't be beat.
The generosity of it is remarkable. Here's how it works. If you have been so remiss as to overlook the couple of bucks per month that Telecom has been charging you for "phone rental" then you may have failed to grasp that you are paying about 25 dollars a year to rent a phone of inferior quality to the type you can buy outright from Dick Smith for 19.95.
What a loser you are! How foolish to go on paying! Well, once you get over the rueful reflection that you suck at book-keeping, the news is all good. You have but to ring Telecom and tell them that you now have your own phone.
And do you know what these remarkable people will tell you? Not only will they say: certainly sir or madam, we will cancel that rental charge right now, they will also tell you: we shall send you a courier bag to enable you to return the telephone to us.
Imagine that! They will spend as much on couriers to retrieve a crappy old telephone as it would cost to buy a new one from Dick Smith! Talk about surprised and delighted.
I'm just waiting to see how big the courier bag is. I want to reciprocate the surprise and delight by slipping in our microwave which died in a thin and acrid cloud of smoke last week. I might add a note saying:
I could get a dial tone, but when I punched in the numbers, no matter who I rang, all I got was a whirring sound. Your boffins might want to take a look at this.
I Love Labour Party Advertising
There has been a lot of nonsense talked recently about who spent what in the last election. I think it's time we all Moved On, and I am glad to see that people have finally realised that a whip-round was always going to be the thing to fix this, as I wrote online many months ago, even before David Farrar did.
One point has been overlooked, however, and I should mention it. Do you recall that weird advertising early in the campaign with a baby hanging by ribbons and things? That had to be worth at least $800,000 in billboards and photo shoots and Art Director's lunches, and one has to acknowledge that it would not have delivered a single vote to the Labour party. You do the maths as far as breaching caps is concerned etc.
Anyway, I just thought I should tell you that I have found a use for this very memorable advertising. I have had a speechwriting client for years now who is more trouble than he is worth. He holds public office in the USA. Well, last month I sent him a detailed description of this suspended-baby campaign and told him it would work a treat. He enthusiastically embraced the concept, lock stock and ribbon, and right now his mid-term congressional campaign is circling the drain. His ass is about to be totally pwned, as my leet-speaking friend Mr. Saarinen would say, and I expect to hear no more from him. I enthusiastically recommend this creative product.
I Love Death Ray Shields
I yield to no man in my respect and awe for electronic Death Rays, so I unreservedly recommend the Shield Me TM Electro-Magnetic Field 'earthing' card. It safeguards cell phone users from the electro-magnetic field of their cell phones.
You should not take any notice of anything this doubter has to say about it here, here, here or here.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? | Oct 11, 2006 09:53
A superhero in Parliament named Spider-Man? You don't know the half of it, unless you read Wikipedia or the funny pages. Read on, now, to learn about the Marvellous men and women guarding the corridors of power, and the evildoers who stand in their way.
Black Widow is a Soviet agent trained as a spy, martial artist and sniper, and outfitted with an arsenal of high-tech weaponry, including a pair of wrist-mounted energy weapons dubbed her "Widow's Bite."
Iron Man possesses powered armor that gives him superhuman strength, virtual invulnerability, flight, and an array of weapons. The armor was invented and, with occasional short-term exceptions, worn by Tony Stark, an American industrialist billionaire and military contractor known not only for his lifestyle, but also for his incredible ingenuity and inventive genius.
Kevin O'Brien found himself seized with sudden attraction for Stark's girlfriend Marianne Rogers, and became extremely jealous of Stark's power, looks and fortune. At the same time Simon Gilbert, then chairman of the board of Stark Industries' stockholders, grew alarmed that Stark was moving out of munitions production and mapped strategies with the board to seize controlling interest in the firm from its principal stockholder, Stark himself. O'Brien, clad in armor and calling himself The Guardsman, offered to aid the board in their plot against Stark.
Kro is the leader of the Deviant race, an evolutionary offshoot of the human race created by the Celestials. Besides being a shapeshifter, he is immortal. He hides this from his fellow Deviants by pretending to be a long line of fathers/sons. In the past, Kro has disguised himself as the Devil in order to try to influence or frighten humans.
The Moloids are the physically weakest of the Subterraneans, and consequently they almost always act in great numbers. Due to their physical and mental weakness, the Deviants rejected them, and attempted to exterminate them all. Today, they serve the Mole Man, and have frequently fought the Fantastic Four alongside their master and his monsters.
Maelstrom is a superhuman villain and the enemy of Quasar, the Deviants, the Inhumans, the Eternals, the Avengers, and the Great Lakes Avengers. He has vast energy manipulation powers and is extremely intelligent. He is not human, is at least 100 years old, and is mentally unstable.
The Red Skull, Johann Schmidt, was a former Nazi general officer and confidant of Adolf Hitler. He has been closely affiliated with HYDRA and is an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Avengers, and the interests of the United States of America and of the free world in general. He was physically augmented by having his mind put in the body of a clone of Captain America; giving him a body that is the pinnacle of human perfection. He has been seemingly killed in the past only to return to plague the world with schemes of world domination and genocide, time and time again.
Professor Charles Francis Xavier, also known as Professor X, is the founder of the X-Men in the Marvel Universe. Xavier is paraplegic, although his body houses one of the world's most powerful mutant minds. A high-level telepath, Xavier can read, control and influence human minds. A scientific genius, he is also a leading authority on genetics, mutation and psionic powers.
Jean Grey is a mutant born with vast telepathic and telekinetic powers. She is a caring, nurturing figure, but she also must deal with being an Omega-level mutant, as well as being the cosmic Phoenix Force and not merely its host as implied in the X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong limited series. She dies several times in the history of the series, first in the classic "Dark Phoenix Saga," but due to her connection with the Phoenix Force, she, as her namesake implies, rises from death.
A mutant, Wolverine possesses animal-keen senses and reflexes and a healing factor that allows him to recover from virtually any wound. This healing ability enables the supersoldier program Weapon X to bond the unbreakable metal alloy adamantium to his skeleton, giving him razor-sharp retractable claws. He is also a master of hand-to-hand combat.
Sinister is perhaps the greatest geneticist in the Marvel universe. He is capable of cloning, creating superhuman abilities and enhancing or controlling mutant abilities. His existence is unknown to the general public and he does his research in secret laboratories across the globe. He has employed the henchmen groups the Marauders and Nasty Boys.
The Green Goblin is considered one of Spider-Man's greatest foes and is the alter ego of industrialist Norman Osborn. A serum that granted Osborn superhuman strength also drove him insane. Osborn dresses in a garish green and purple goblin costume and uses an arsenal of high-tech weapons, notably grenade-like "pumpkin bombs" and a flying "goblin glider" to terrorize New York City. Ironically, his troubled son Harry was a close friend of Peter Parker, who is secretly Spider-Man.
But don't attach a file | Oct 09, 2006 19:48
Each Sunday afternoon, after the inmates have watched the old re-runs of the original Star Trek and had their game of Touch, Tim Selwyn opens up the library at Unit 8, Hawkes Bay Prison.
Convicted fraudster, political prisoner, librarian. Some of the best New Zealand blogging you'll read this year is coming from a prison cell.
He wrote recently that the library is a meagre collection, offering fewer than 100 books. There are more, locked in another room, but in the world he describes, most processes are glacial, even the unlocking of a door. Until they can get at the good stuff, they have Wilbur Smith, Readers Digest condensed novels, and 80s paperback fiction to keep them going.
Half of the Stephen Kings have had the last couple of pages torn out of them as well as parts of the covers cut into to provide rigid ends to rolly cigarettes, or "other cigarettes".
Understandably, he hopes readers might like to send him any old books and magazines they can spare. I'm happy to do my bit. I will be sending him copies of Bullshit Backlash and Bleeding Hearts, and - perhaps against my better judgment - I will also be sending copies of Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions to a man presently incarcerated by the State for sedition. I could inscribe these books with the admonition that they are intended for reading rather than for use as weapons of rioting or as tools for the smoking of prohibited substances, although Comrade Trotter would possibly not object to the notion of my 'intellectually indefensible' little book being dismantled a page at a time and slowly burned.
Knowledge has always had great value. The mediaeval libraries chained their books to the furniture. Affluence, the printing press and falling production costs changed things comprehensively, but not with quite as much as finality as one might hope. A couple of years ago Salinas, California almost became the first city in the United States to completely close down its entire library system. This, in the home of the John Steinbeck Library. Talk about your grapes of wrath growing heavy for the vintage.
Books are our friends, and a prisoner with a book in his hands is your friend too. Every post on Tumeke from prisoner number 60477981 brings a fresh volley of catcalls from 'anonymous" and his/her friends: stop your whining / you should have thought of that before you ripped off the taxpayer, as if the whole dismal experience can be salved by writing about it in a blog.
Amongst the bitter venom and Bomber Bradbury manfully fending it all off, there is the odd visiting voice of wisdom.
'1whoknows' wrote recently:
I'm an educated ex-con….
I got sent to prison for something I didn't do (the "complainant" later recanted entirely and I was booted out without so much as "sorry" from the system).Prison for those of us not stupid is incredibly boring. Unless you want to talk about drugs and your place in the gang hierarchy it's a total waste of time. I offered to teach other prisoners to read and write. "Regulations" prevented that - I was made to work in the laundry. Because protected prisoners worked in the laundry, other prisoners would deliberately shit their underwear and even their bedsheets to "get at" people.
Violence, or the threat thereof, was a constant companion. In maximum security (Tim is in minimum) I saw one person bashed unconscious and left almost dead a few feet from where I was eating dinner and countless others less seriously bashed.
I saw no one turn their life around after getting out. I saw plenty of people resigned to returning - not those who commit violent crimes, who certainly deserve to return to protect the rest of society (even though we also fail them in not offering rehabilitation) but ordinary people overwhelmed by extraordinary circumstances.
I come here regularly to marvel at the uninformed and contradictory nonsense from that element that see nothing amiss in an opinion that runs along the lines of "prison is a bloody picnic, a holiday home, a hotel... throw more of the bastards in there immediately".
And yes, the other forgotten group in this debate are the "screws". Most I found to be washed out, demoralised and past caring, but also fair and decent. A handful I found truly amazing - dedicated, decent people determined to help those who deserved it, doing a good job in bad circumstances, and as much at the mercy of inept, small-minded prison administrators as those they were meant to guard.
Please send your books and magazines to:
Tim Selwyn
Librarian/Unit 8
Hawkes Bay Prison
Private Bag 1600
Napier, NZ
Road food | Oct 06, 2006 11:10
One afternoon, high on a mountain in the South Island, I almost killed the man who now prosecutes the big murder trials in Wellington.
Writing that gets me as near as my mild-mannered life can take me to "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die".
I am not tortured by the memory, but it did come back to me this past week, firstly as I steered our trusty little rental car across Arthur's Pass, and again as I read the story of the hapless tourists who came off the road just out of Fox Glacier.
360 degree turns on ice near the top of the Mt Hutt road are full of possibility. One is: keep shoving the car into the bank, and hope it will stick. The other is: steel yourself as you and your fellow passengers look mutely out the windows of the car as it tumbles end over end, down, down, down the sheer drop into ice, rock and snow.
The fact that I am telling you this story and that Grant Burston is keeping evildoers off the streets of Wellington tells you that the car caught the bank.
I drive the South Island roads with respect. I also drive them with enormous pleasure. No tailgaters, no idiots, no crush; God, it's a treat. And of course, there is the view. As you get down towards glacier country, the landscape and its huge dark looming mountains takes on this sense of otherness. I had not been down there in three decades, and I was expecting to enjoy it, but that word doesn't come near describing how much we all liked our holiday there.
Rush hour in Blackball was a sight. At 5.00 pm, the proprietor of Blackball Salami climbed into his 4x4 ('salami' on the licence plate – the only personalised plate I noticed anywhere on the West Coast) and made the long journey down the factory driveway, out onto the street and into the driveway on the other side. Honey I'm home! You wouldn't believe the traffic today.
We ate like kings at Café Neve in Fox Glacier and you just know I had to have the whitebait. We walked through still air, stood at glacial lakes, climbed up to the conveyor belts of snow. We sat on the beach at Okarito under a perfect blue sky and Mary-Margaret and I skimmed stones over the breaking waves.
We went home each night to a splendid motel and read the Greymouth Evening Star, famous all these years later, at least in my eyes, for its war time editorials. "We have warned Mr Hitler before…"
In an age of bland standardisation, there is still a West Coast flavour to the news. For three weeks, the court in Greymouth had been hearing about a helicopter pilot who landed his vehicle perilously close to the chopper of some bloke who had been carrying on with his missus. Or something like that.
In glacier country, your taxi is a helicopter. This guy had landed his machine in a way that was comparable to bringing your car to a smoking stop alongside another, Dukes of Hazzard style.
The evidence was suffused in testosterone, except perhaps for the witness who Civil Aviation had brought all the way from North Carolina; a plastic surgeon by vocation, an innocent tourist caught in the crossfire. His testimony sounded to be good theatre. He was characterised as "flamboyant", and prompted "snickering" from the West Coast jurors of Greymouth.
Not guilty.
In Hokitika I walked out along the plank to this guy
and asked him about the little construction on the other side of the river. It was the first whitebaiter's hut I'd seen with a Sky dish.
Does it work, I asked him?
Oh, yeah. I think he runs it off a car battery.
I said I'd never seen anything like that before.
Yeah, well, it gets pretty fucking boring doing this all day long.
We had a fascinating chat. The season so far was shithouse. Three storms in September had ruined it.
I love them I said.
I don't like eating them, he said.
He fucking hates DoC. They all fucking hate DoC.
When I realised it could not be evaded any longer and I disclosed my place of residence, he was measured in his response. You'd pay a lot for them up there. He offered me his morning's catch at 60 dollars a kilo. A bargain.
Even though it's boring doing it all day long, and even though he doesn't like eating them and even though he fucking hates DoC, he told me he still likes to see a school come sweeping around the bend and into his net.
It's a lovely little pastime, he said.
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