Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Instead of leaping to the defense of your glorious leader every time perhaps you’d like to follow your own advice.
Bart: The only response that deserves is all the way off-list.
ETA: Nah, don't bother. That allegation is so self-evidently absurd it's no more worth rebutting privately than de-railing this thread.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Rob Stowell,
yeah. ‘we know- but we’re not gonna tell you’ is pure ass-holery. JK- still giving prats a bad name.
Oh, fuck off. Could he have done or said anything that would have satisfied you? Perhaps he should have just refused to answer a pretty direct question at all, but let’s not pretend it wouldn’t have been greeted with “Well, there goes Mr. Rich Prick Smile-And-Wave who doesn’t give a shit about anything other than election year photo ops.”
Maybe – just maybe – and whatever you think of the incumbent government – it would be even more epic ass-hollery if Key and Brownlee had pulled a list of suburbs to be abandoned out of their arses. There are going to be a lot of people who have no good options ahead of them; but it’s much easier to make good decisions when you have good information from people who are looking a little further (and deeper) than the next news cycle.
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Muse: V.S. Naipaul and the Gentle Art of…, in reply to Steve Parks,
Combine that with his myopic views on women writers, and it’s clear Naipaul has serious issues with women.
If you want to read A Writer’s People, I think it’s pretty clear that Naipaul has serious issues with men too – well, male writers who get attention that belongs to him. His lengthy slash on Anthony Powell’s corpse, the careful inflation of trivial fifty year old slights into something tantamount to hate crimes, and the kind of half-baked gossip that should get no further than a long liquid lunch, is embarrasing to behold.
I can understand people who don’t share my fondness for Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence and there is a case to be made for the prosecution. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that in Vidia’s estimation the real test for being a “serious” writer is being Vidia or knowing your place.
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Muse: V.S. Naipaul and the Gentle Art of…, in reply to bmk,
And now I have just insulted, albeit by proxy, his favourite author.
Meh... if Austen's reputation can survive waxing and waning for two centuries, I can deal with others not sharing my perfect literary taste. :)
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Muse: V.S. Naipaul and the Gentle Art of…, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
I’ll let Mark Twain rip then:
OK. Personally, I can never quite tell how much of Twain's writing prove anything more than he would have made a damn good talkback radio host or blog-farmed comment troll if he'd been born in 1985 instead of 1835. Emily Auerbach has a fascinating essay which asks "Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen?" I'm inclined to think not as much as he liked to pretend, but playing the straight-talking Yankee taking that snooty old maid back East - and her effete beaux - down a peg or two dozen was too tempting (and easy) to resist.
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Muse: V.S. Naipaul and the Gentle Art of…, in reply to Danielle,
Up to a point. I've known one or two teenagers flouncing around I've been sorely tempted to smack around the head with a copy of Sense and Sensibility. (Though a hardcover of Middlemarch would probably make a more satisfying crack.) Nowadays, though, I suspect Leonard Cohen CDs are more likely to be the offensively sensitive weapon of choice than slim volumes of Crabbe and Shakespeare's sonnets.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And somehow there’s not much coincidence between the rise of the PR industry during that period, and the rise of Big Finance, Big Media, and Big Defence, among other beneficiaries of the Washington Consensus.
Meh... while I'll do all the pro forma hissing at the PR industry you like, I find it rather hard to piss on journalists who fail to see the nobility of getting their pay and conditions screwed down, their newsrooms starved of resources and staff and generally being treated like a tiresome impediment to the next round of executive bonuses. If APN and Fairfax don't actually value their talent, it's rich to whinge because others do.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to andrew gunn,
I’ve just made the mistake of reading the Herald’s “Your Views”.
Next time, smack in the face with nearest piece of cast iron kitchenware. Hurts less. Faster healing. Better odds of avoiding permanent brain damage and existential despair.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Dave Patrick,
Yeah, there seem to be increased opinions being voiced of “Why are you still living in Christchurch, it’s be better to bowl the whole place and start again, it’s going to be too expensive to fix”
And every time I hear that from people, my opinion is that until we figure out how to move New Zealand away from the circum-Pacific seismic belt a round of STFU-a-chinos might be in order. My whanau/friends in Christchurch know the spare room will always be there if they need it, but "get out" is about as useful as a dick in a dyke bar on date night.
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Russell Brown,
The poor bastard so wanted to say it would get better now, and he just couldn’t say that.
That's true - but on a gut level, you're got to respect a scientist being a scientist who's going to tell the truth rather than a comforting lie.
As above, it’s hard to know what to say other than be strong and lots of love
Although when I checked my two sisters I did say “get the f*** out of there, come and live with me”Totally get that, Raymond. But I can also understand the rellie who's sent out a "I'm OK, and it's nice you're concerned but you've got to respect how deeply unhelpful it is being told to pack up and walk away" e-mail to everyone. I get her too -- because it's as (unintentionally) cruel as the rather angry-making press about people "running away". Folks are going to do what they need to do -- and make the best of the bad options they've got.
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