Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Boot camps? Well, I guess we should thank the Gods that the headline wasn't 'Kiddie Gulags, Stale bread & Cold Showers For Scum - Key Sez'. (Though the usual suspects are working on it as we speak, I suspect.) :)
On a first reading, I'd give Key a solid 7/10 -- but there are some patches I'm going to have to mull over for a bit. Totally fair comment for Russell to say "this sort of thing is expensive and difficult to pull off"; but at the same time, even if we're talking about a small number of hardcore offenders, I don't want to see them thrown on the scrap heap without the effort being made. Let alone anyone else getting their lives ruined because politicians of all stripes put it all in the too hard basket.
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This guy deosn't appear to be the one to offer it, but some good clear criticism of NZ culture and its faults is not a bad thing.
That's what I really liked about Hamish Keith's The Big Picture. Didn't agree with all his conclusions, by any means, but it was refreshing to see someone who thinks New Zealand art is strong enough to require neither validation from 'real' cultural centers like London or New York, nor mindless 'national identity' boosterism which resembles Tourism NZ puffery rather than intelligent cultural discourse. In my last PA Radio piece, I called it an encouraging sign that we're culturally edging out of that awkward adolescence.
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why pointless......???
Um, I meant pointless in the sense that I was born twenty seven years to the day after Adolf Hitler committed suicide. If my mother is a realiable informant, I was more focused for the next couple of years on making sure that if I wasn't going to sleep nobody else within earshot was going to either.
And while I can fan-wank sci-fi with the best, the obstinate fact is that The Daleks and the genocidal (but way hawt) humano-Cylons of Battlestar Galactica aren't real. Adolf Hitler was.I find it a little more comfortable conducting thought experiments like "is genocide ever morally justifiable" within the frame of a fiction.
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Although I supposed it's a relief to Jordan Carter to have his longtime trolls go somewhere else for their jollies. I honestly think those clowns have no idea how their behaviour appears to relatively normal people.
I don't disagree with any of the above, but there's another part of that equation bloggers (particularly political ones) need to think about. Offal attracts vermin, and shit gets covered in flies and maggots in no time at all. Yes, I'm not arguing there isn't a really nasty level of trollism around. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for bloggers who go out to be provocative, then play the victim when they get an entirely predictable response. To be bluntly non-partisan about it, I think that's a charge that can on occasion be justly laid at the feet of Kiwiblog and The Standard. (Hope I'm not crushing anyone's dissent, Snowy.)
Sadly, I share Emma's "dark forboding feeling of oncoming nasties - from both sides." But its not inevitable unless bloggers decide that's how they want it to be, and politically active folks are willing to tolerate it, whether actively (with traffic and linky love) or passively (by staying silent when the trolls come out from under their bridges).
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(And lets not digress into debate over "what if you had the chance to kill Hitler?")
I prefer to frame it on less loaded ground (at least, if you're not a sci-fi geek): Did The Doctor make the right decision in __Genesis of the Daleks? :)
Equally pointless, but the fictional frame makes it a hell of a lot less fraught.
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Oh and if John Key utters the words "voucher" and "education" togetherin the same sentence today it will be mana from heaven for Labour supporters.
I'm sure it would, Tom, just as there are some folks out there who are going to be screaming 'Labour-lite' if Key stands up today and doesn't announce that the first priority of the next National-led government will be the urgent passage of the Down With The Dykeocracy (Omnibus Repeal of Every Law Passed Over The Last Nine Years) Bill.
Somehow, I don't think Key is really focused on warming the cockles of either hardcore Labour partisans or the more, shall we say, rabid right elements out there. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all.
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I got to thinking that the Lovely Bones will be the making or breaking of Jackson's reputation as a director of genius.
I agree - when I heard the man who brought us Meet the Feebles was 'doing' the Parker/Hume murder I had disturbing vision of a very tacky Z-grade exploitation movie -- Two Baby Dykes Go Mad in Christchurch or some such. The Lovely Bones is something else where there's going to have to be a very delicate tonal balance maintained (if that makes any sense) if the film's going to find the same audience as the book.
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Mr Beagle:
What's with all this wet commie 'presumption of innocence' bullshit! Its people like you that are sending this country to hell on a handbasket -- which is full of dogs. Or something. :)
Seriously, fair points and well made. Especially when I've been somewhat critical in the past of media outlets that get a bit fuzzy on the difference between 'an alleged criminal who has been charged with an offence, and a convicted one. Again, I don't want to sound like I'm trying to turn PAS into a lynch-blog.
A 'provocation' defense would turn my stomach, but if its one that's legally open to Bruce Emery you can hardly blame his counsel for throwing it at the wall and seeing if it sticks.
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a complete pretentious tosser I would say.
Meh... I actually agree with Fallowell on the LoTR trilogy. Hell, I thought King Kong was the world's longest show-reel for an FX house, but failed utterly on every other level.
Having said that, I may not have much of an opinion of his last four films (though IMO The Frighteners is under-rated, and Heavenly Creatures is just a great film full stop), but you've got to give PJ props for being a very astute businessman, bloody-minded and self-confident to a fault, and willing to risk everything on one hell of a crap shoot (and convince others to do the same). Like James Cameron and Titanic, it's all too easy to look back and forget that the massive commercial/critical success of the trilogy was in no sense a foregone conclusion.
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Feh... The problem with British travel writers playing the Grumpy Bulldog Abroad is that Evelyn Waugh set the gold standard back in the 30's. For us mere mortals, trying to out Waugh the Queen of Spleen is not only an exercise in futility, but a one way ticket to the stroke ward.
How the hell do you trump this pitch-perfect piss-take of PR-purple travel writing?
"I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountain almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and then repeating its shape, as though reflected, in a wisp of grey smoke with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting."
I rest my case.
And if you want to test my assertion, there's a collected edition of Waugh's travel writing in print, but the thrifty reader should find When The Going Was Good (Waugh's own anthology of "everything the author wishes to preserve from his pre-war travel books") easily in libraries or second-hand bookstores. All killer, no filler - as the kids used to say.
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