Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Incidentally, all of the roads around there sound like they were named by someone's mother-in-law....
As a general rule, don't street names get dished out by a dull-but-worthy sub-committee of the relevant local authority? So I guess the mother-in-law analogy is fundamentally accurate. :)
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Oh yes, dale, yes. And those toilets that are only big enough for the loo, so that when you sit down, your knees almost touch the walls? I don't think so.
OMG, yes! The morning bowel movement should be a moment for peaceful contemplation and unity with the great cycle of nature, not a panic attack because the light bulb's blown and you're in a fricking coffin with your knickers around your ankles. :(
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Forget all the weeds and tacky architecture, didn’t anyone notice from the Herald on Sunday story that Key's bach is on a road called 'Success Court'? Isn’t that an example of 'nuff said'?
Yes, just not in the sense you think. FFS, I live in a suburb that bears the insufferably twee moniker 'Sunnynook' (or Mairangi Bay, if you want to fool casual correspondents into thinking you live closer to the water than you actually do) - and to add insult to injury, we live on Sunset Road. What great insights are to be drawn from that?
Really, Connor, I've got to side with Ben and Don on this. Stick a fork in this property snob crap, 'cause its done.
And just to give everyone a mental health break, here's a poem by my favourite 'Naki Girl, Elizabeth Smither:
**Visiting Juliet Street**
All the streets are named after Shakespeare.
Hamlet and Juliet are separated by an intersection
down which floats Ophelia Street, very sleepy.
They are all such demanding people
Which lends the town an air of tragedy
As though Mecutio coming home after a party
Failed to dip his lights and ran over
Polonius Street right up onto the sidewalk.
Even Shakespeare thought it best to keep them separated.
At the end of long girlish Juliet Street
With limbs like Twiggy the air grows
Sleepier and sleepier as though
Juliet had anorexia nervosa and could hardly bear
A morsel of blossoms or any sap. -
And I must say, this all reminds me not to engage with these people at all.
If its any comfort Russell, you're much better at staying off the crazy-go-round than I am. (And I'm not talking about PAS - which is more like energetic fencing with the occasion trivial duelling scar, rather than a fairground ride in Dante's Inferno.) Despite my New Year's Irresolution not to do it, I wasted far too much time this avo trying to rebut one of DPF's more... peculiar lefty trolls. (I just hit the scroll wheel whenever D4J's name comes into view. Masochism only goes so far.)
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Craig, many of us, along with our parents and grandparents were and are inspired by Hilary's example. That is a fact.
Never doubted that, Don. As I said, I've an enormous admiration for the man myself and while scaling Everest is what put him in the history books, its the least of his achievements in a sense.
You might want to grab your smelling salts here, but you've sidewise made another fair point. Whatever issues I have with the media coverage (and I don't resile from finding much of it outright distasteful) its an unfair stretch to extend that out to your average person. If your average Kiwi was as cretinous as your average news bulletin, we'd be in very deep shit indeed.
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craig, for the life of me i can't see how that first sentence relates to a political figure making downright incorrect assertions about crab fishing.
Well, che, perhaps you could enlighten me how we ended up at John Key's one man class war at Omaha Beach. It's perfectly obvious to Tom, so I must be missing something. I must also admit to lacking expertise on the dietary habits of sharks (don't think Jaws is the most reliable source of information) but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone else.
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(This is in the 'gentle joshing' end of the spectrum, Craig, in case my tone isn't clear. I find you very entertaining.)
Josh away, Danielle. Don't want Snowy adding misogynistic disdain for uppity women to my 'pathological' traits. :) And I do like 'cant', because it drawm a useful distinction from hypocrisy that William Hazlitt put rather nicely:
If any one really despised what he affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this would be cant. … There is a cant about Shakespear [sic]. There is a cant about Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be a cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of attention and interest, and that people would be thought to know and care rather more about them than they actually do. Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.
I don't think there's been much, if any hypocrisy on display. But a hell of a lot of "voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment" -- as well as media coverage that confirmed Shaw's view that a newspaper can't tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization? Yes, I really do.
I think that's what really pissed me off about Snowy's little essay in telepathic psychoanalysis - because being curmudgeonly for its own sake is another form of cant and intellectual/moral dishonesty. Sometimes the wisdom of crowds is the real deal, but just as often it isn't.
And Sir Ed deserves better; everyone does. If anyone's life was remarkable enough it didn't need hyperbole like the Sunday Star Times' hyperbolic full-page MAN! GOD! ICON! effort, it was Edmund Hillary. And Lady June certainly doesn't need some scummy tabloid patting her on the head for being 'staunch'. How impudent and patronising that how she grieves for her bloody husband is turned into a matter of public comment, as if she's a circus animal who's just done a neat trick.
Would it really be so terrible if a whole nation wasn't mourning? Somehow, I don't think Sir Ed would feel in any way disrespected if most of us didn't bunk off work to watch his funeral on Tuesday, but would rather see people going about their lives and making it just another ordinary miracle. And if I can get the garden looking a little less like a tip, that's miracle enough for me.
I'm glad to be entertaining, Danielle. But I do hope it comes across that I'm trying to make a serious point, and making it in good faith.
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The political subtext of all this - especially given Key's careful cultivation of his supposed rags to riches life and his views on state housing in his Helensville electorate - should be obvious.
Gee, Tom, I thought the entirely apolitical text is that John Key (like everyone else, I hope) would like to see any and all reasonable precautions taken against anyone being mutilated or killed by a shark. Even dirty Labour-voting peasants who, as far as I'm aware, still have access to Omaha Beach.
And I do hope you lefties are as supportive of the unfettered rights of humble fisherfolks to make a living when they get busted for poaching or exceeding quotas designed to preserve populations from extinction. Won't hold my breath waiting though.
Still, Tom, I've got to admire you for being perfectly balanced - chip on both shoulders.
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Cameron:
If you'll stop hyperventilating for a moment, I'll actually take you at your word. But take some fucking responsibility for what you publish --exactly the same kind of accountability I'd expect Ruusell to man up and accept as the owner/publisher of Public Address. Hell, I'm also legally and ethically responsible for every word I say on PA Radio or blog over on High Windows. And so I should be.
You want some straight talk: That post was lame to begin with, and publishing that photo was fucking stupid.. So what if it was 'publically available'?. If I started digging, you might be unpleasantly surprised how much personal information I can obtain on you perfectly legally from legitimately accessible sources. Just because something is legal (or at least exists in a grey area) doesn't make it ethical or even decent to publish it. Or to put it in more general terms: Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
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If so, I would like to pose beneath them in my choice of beach attire - Speedos. I don't care who thinks they look like undies
Damn right too. If you've got a body that doesn't turn a pair of budgie smugglers into a breech of multiple UN Conventions you can work those speedos wherever, whenever. :)
Do you pass these words of wisdom on to strangers coming out of funerals as well? Would get an even better reception there.
I don't hang around funeral homes or even attend funerals I've not been invited to attend, and I certainly don't plan to be harassing Lady Hillary or anyone else outside Saint Mary's, Parnell, on Tuesday morning. Don't be so bleeding precious, Kyle. And if I've been trying to repress anyone else's expression -- or coerce anyone to pay the slightest heed to anything I write or say on any subject whatsoever -- , I've done a seriously suck job of it. Bugger.
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