Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Luke Williamson,
to go biffo with Johnkey
Framing politics as macho dick-measuring "biffo" goes a long way to explaining why more and more people are disengaged and cynical from a process they see as entirely divorced from their needs and values. That doesn't mean I expect, or even want, politics to be group hugs and sing-alongs. But oddly enough, I respond much better to people who don't treat me like a dribbling idiot.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Northshoreguynz,
If anyone currently in the party has an issue with that, then they can fuck off. Mahuta, while being worthy is unknown, Parker too dry, and Robertson a political self serving rat.
Wow, Northshoreguynz, perhaps you can see a problem with demanding unquestioning fealty from people you're quite happy to call "self-serving rats". If you think that kind of mindset is good for anyone, I'd like to introduce you to the incoming Republican majority of the next Congress. This is what political parties look like when they treat even the mildest criticism as heresy.
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and he’s vowing to dump all the intellectual capital built up by David Parker.
To be fair, unless Parker is flat out lying he's been saying that he made it perfectly clear to caucus that he wasn't interested in continuing as finance spokesman no matter how it all panned out. And honestly, I don't blame the guy considering Little's public statements on the CGT he played a major role in designing and has defended have been... tepid at best.
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As I shuttled around yesterday, I had to keep saying to myself, “excess baggage”, because there is simply so much that takes my fancy.
I feel your pain -- I may be unable to walk past a halfway decent bookstore (even if it's in mainland Europe and I can't read anything in the place) but I got told in no uncertain terms on a daily basis that the budget didn't extend to paying excess luggage charges in London AND Vancouver.
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Hard News: The Boom Crash, in reply to Russell Brown,
Oh, I love where I live. It’s just that it might make sense eventually to sell up and buy a much cheaper dwelling somewhere else and make use of our huge capital gain. But we’re not exactly your property investor types.
Looks like what we’re almost certainly going to be doing – around Waikanae isn’t exactly hipster heaven, but a manageable place with good bones would leave us with enough that you could afford to redo a “tired” bathroom and/or kitchen and splash some paint around without taking out a second mortgage on the immortal soul of our improbable first-born. (Though one does have to draw the line somewhere - mine is Levin.)
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Hard News: LATE: The Age of Slacktivism, in reply to Stephen Judd,
As far as I’m concerned his place in public discussion is mouthing soundlessly and unheeded in a Hooton sized terrarium – nothing too inhumane, the Koru lounge would do.
Well, that's nice. I'm not sure you'd find either pleasure or instruction in any discussion on any subject made up only of people whose views I happen to find congenial.
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One slight bright spot in the Ghomeshi case is that one of his victims, Lucy Decoutere, went public and said her interactions with the Toronto Police Service were “warm and sympathetic” and “validating":
"I am making this statement because I know how scary it can be to come forward,” she wrote in the statement. “Those considering coming forward should know that it was a safe place."
Which is a grand turn around from the titanic shitweaselry that incited a global round of SlutWalks.
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It’s more possible, given all of you are less into BDSM and Canada than I am, that you’ve not heard about Jian Ghomeshi. He initially claimed that he was being discriminated against by his employer because of stories of his consensual BDSM encounters being maliciously spread by a spurned ex-lover. And this would be concerning, because people do suffer real and terrible consequences from being outed as BDSM practitioners, particularly male Doms
True, but it's also been really depressing (but not at all surprising) seeing the fifty shades of Ghomeshi apologist shaming being laid on women BDSM practitioners by people who really don't want to get the obvious difference between consensual BDSM with full consent and clearly negotiated boundaries and sexual assault, or that engaging in the former doesn't mean you ever "ask for" the latter.
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Busytown: Beware of the Leopard, in reply to Jolisa,
I was gratified to see that he, like the Tree Council representative and Patricia, was warmly thanked for his contribution and for his patience.
It is gratifying, but it still kind of pisses me off because we shouldn't have to break out the oven fresh cookie jar for civil servants showing baseline civility to their employers. Especially when so many of them turn around and plaint about low participation. Well, lobbyists at least have the satisfaction of getting paid for being treated like something nasty on the bottom of a shoe but nobody else does.
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What she wrote on her Tumblr was all about this, the video for ‘Yellow Flickr Beat’ (”i wasn’t thinking too hard about story or a specific narrative, more a mood; a harsh, crackling heat”)
Oh, stop being so bloody smart youngling. :) Seriously, you can do a lot of really interesting things with the form if you're a bit more lateral when thinking about the images you attach to the music.
Here's Uncle Len (not that one) to show you kids how it's done -
Norman McLaren's 'Spheres' (that's Glenn Gould humming away in the background):
Roger Mainwood's delightfully trippy video for Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'
And the shorter, sharper, really minimalist one for The Replacements' 'Bastards of Young' --