Posts by Kracklite
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Fucked off with the whole thing is my reaction.
There is no increase in funds for the Arts bodies - but Nats/Nacts have never been interested in those except if it has been/is a throroughly capitalist structure.Deeply sympathetic to the union cause, but deeply disturbed too by the polarisation. Too many demons invoked. Solidarity is a virtue, but to see it used as an obligation gives me the willies. I feel a Godwin coming on when I think of Trotter and T' Standard.
I also have friends and former students in Weta, and didn't care one fucking little bit for those bastards deciding that their livelihoods were dispensible in the name of their chickenhawk fantasies of class war. Did Irish Bill or Trotter really have anything personally at stake in this? No.
The personal hatred directed at PJ is ... disturbing, or amusing if one is prone to cynicism. The implied belief that he is some kind of Dark Lord, manipulating affairs smacks of a fundamental naivete about the nature of global finance and the film industry nowadays, something amenable to exploitation by some demagogue. And to think that the old left like to pride themselves on their analysis of economics...
I felt that a strategic withdrawal was only the least worst thing in the short term, and I'm depressed too in terms of the medium term for labour conditions. In the longer term... Well, I think that that's become a bit longer term. It's a tragedy that the real concerns of the unions have been lost in all this, but frankly, incompetence may be as much of a crime as malice... and so might one colossal miscalculation and bad luck. Hopefully, to get rather pompous (can you tell the difference?) this might be more a Dunkirk (as it was for the Allies) than a Waterloo ( as it was for the French)
I did actually meet Helen Kelley a few years back when I was involved in a dispute with an employer of mine when she was head of what was then the AUS, I and I have to say that I was impressed by her determination and integrity. It's been a tragic mess, exploited all too well by the worst of both the Guelphs and Ghibellines. I hope she can keep building on the momentum that is behind this dispute.
I notice some Standardistas are saying "I won't go and see it anyway, 'cos Jackson's a class traitor scumbag and so pthbttt!" reminds me of the Trekkies who were deeply, deeply, fundamentally, utterly, outraged at the design of the Enterprise in the recent Star Trek reboot. To misquote Comic Book Guy ('cos I don't have the time to check) "Worst. Episode. Ever. I'm only going to see it X more times. Today."
I'm glad people have work. I hope that things get better from here, but it's going to take a lot longer and a lot more intelligence than has been shown so far (ooh, I love hindsight, it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling. It's like a deep. hot bath with lots and lots of bubbles).
(Well, back to First Life for a while - it's not going away so quickly)
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that intellectual trainwreck
good, not just me thenCan't resist - old Soviet joke, as told by real Soviets:
Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are on a train.
The train breaks down.
Stalin has the engineers shot as enemies of the people. The train does not move.
Khrushchev has them rehabilitated. The train does not move.
Brezhnev, observing this, thinks for a moment. Then he pulls the blinds down, stares ahead, bobs up and down rhythmically and says, "Ka-chunk... ka-chunk... ka-chunk..."
(Relevance? None)
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The Standard's timeline of comprehension
My impression too. Between facepalms, or morbidly peeking through my fingers at that intellectual trainwreck, I'm already thinking of potential marketing slogans. "Got cognitive dissonance? Try Conspiracy Theory (TM)! Now with more Fluorine! Yes, once the world seemed like a chaotic place, with cockups exploited by half-competent opportunists, but clinical tests have shown that when you realise that absolutely everything is a scripted charade enacted for your detriment by an incredibly competent opportunists, your sense of aggrieved self-righteousness can increase by as much as three hundred and forty-two percent, completely eliminating any nagging feelings of self-doubt!
"We can tailor your very own Conspiracy Theory(TM) so that you can be comforted by the thought that you're the only one who knows. Or, for a limited time only, you can get a special deal for our group - sorry, I mean class package..."
And so on.
The old joke about conspiracy theorists is that a real paranoid declares that because there is an insidious conspiracy, it will rain tomorrow... and when it doesn't rain, it's because the conspiracy is not only insidious, it's ingenious too.
Sorry, I'm being mean, but certainly what was a site that once had something to say has become a parallel sewer to Kiwibog.
Oh look - my coat!
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Speaking of matters financial, here's a tip: judging by what's being posted over at The Standard now, I think that the stocks of tinfoil manufacturers are looking very bullish. Apparently it's all a complicated jackup between "Jackson/Warners/Key/Brownlee" .
(Those slashes do not bring a pretty picture to mind...)
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Mwah!
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Various random tangents, observations and general wank of no particular pertinence...
Likewise, without the intent, the insult can even be a term of endearment. Calling people cunts is very often done that way.
I'm reminded of (A) Gene Hunt's "You're surrounded by armed bastards!" which clearly denotes no (additional) denigration of said bastards and (B), the common ... meta... para? TXT-inspired insult, which in spoken English is "See you next tuesday". You can certainly declare affection by swearing and malice through politeness.
The search for a an inoffensive expletive insult does seem to me to be paradoxical at best, because when one starts using terms like "fucking hell", one's getting into the realms of phatic communication where the various combinations of words serve only as sequential intensifiers and not as modifiers within a coherent and consistent grammatical structure. I cannot "fuck Hell" any more than I can take Boullee's design for a monument to Sir Isaac Newton out to see a provocative motion picture followed by an amusing meal and stimulating conversation at a quaintly idiosyncratic restaurant leading to a delightful session of passionate lovemaking in my charmingly-appointed home in a discrete cul-de-sac.
Swearing is technically interesting because it abandons true linguistic structures.
"Twatcock" is amusing because it creatively plays with the apparent conventions of swearing, but carries, as yet, no pejorative connotations in itself... it also strikes me as ineffective for that reason because it is obviously a contrivance and is not invested with the vitriol genuine swearing depends on... it is, I think, by it's obvious contrivance, functioning to diminish the sense of hurt in a community that shares the word.
Um, so the non-offensive insult may be more than the PC foam-rubber safety hammer of conversation in a sort of postmodern self-deconstructing way...
Discuss at next week's tutorial... there may be a pop quiz.
Be that as it may, at the risk of others saying, "No shit, Sherlock", swearing and insult may overlap but are not the same thing. Henry's "real New Zealander" "quip" contained no swear words but just as much malice as "dick-in-shit".
Dante might relegate the perpetrators of crimes of passion and of malice to different circles of Hell, but all I can think is that the place must be an traffic engineer's nightmare with all the commuting, time-share residency and part-time shift work (which might be the point, actually... I always thought those arsewiping bloody kneecaps deserved to intercoursing go there for trying to (as Chaucer might spell it) phuqynge build the [literally] goddamned place on [figuratively] coitusing earth...). Hmm, Hell might not be a small room with three people in it, but a bus stop with an unreadable schedule and map...
freedom of expression and freedom to criticise that expression are just two sides of the same coin
Heartily (sanguinely) agree. I am mildly amused/rather more than mildly depressed by people who deliberately set out to cause offence and start complaining about the "PC brigade" oppressing them with words of complaint and comparing them to the Gestapo! Why, they might poke them with soft cushions and even put them in the comfy chair next! Hyperbole though, is another topic.. but an allied one, perhaps.
That'll be the week-after's tutorial topic. Oh hang on, the teaching year's ended and you're not my students. Bugger.
The one good thing about all of this is that we as a species have turned violence into semiotics. Where once we would have just been pounding away at each other with sticks and stones, we sublimate violent behaviour into words. Pray that the process remains one-way.
I think my glass is half full today.
If you'll excuse me, I'll get my coat.
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Fuck assimilation, here's The Plan (tm):
Since I'm not into piercings, the Cylons are certainly cooler to me than the Borg. They even know Yeats - did you catch the Hybrid's all-too-appropriate inversion of "The Second Coming"?
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vituperative attacks against anyone Trotter dimly percieves to be Goff's enemy
Actually, he's been making attacks of this nature since well before Goff became leader. There was quite a vicious attack on The Hand Mirror and its "faux feminists" (he, of course is a real one) a year or so back when they showed insufficient "solidarity", and it was hardly unique.
Still, one has to cut him some slack. As we all know, women, maori, LGBT, prawns and so on all arrived on a spaceship only a few years ago and have not yet properly integrated themselves into human civilisation. They need a few pointers on how to behave and he is generously helping in the process of assimilation.
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Unfortunately that's our real history. David Lange wasn't driving a lot of the time.