Posts by Andre Alessi
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So very late to the party, but I feel impelled to make my mark anyway.
I have been, from a very early age, self-contained. "Loner" is the wrong word because I like people, I just prefer my own company, my own rhythyms, and I am acutely self-conscious of my occasional social awkwardness. I prefer a quiet night in to a night on the town, lost in a book or a game, things which are inherently solitary activities.
You could draw lines from my childhood to this state of affairs-a father dying young, a mother too grief-stricken and too laden with work to shape me in the ways most would. Whether or not there's any truth to this, that's how I turned out.
Even so, I had (and have) the same longings anyone else has growing up. I fell hopelessly in love with a succession of girls who wanted little or nothing to do with me, fading rapidly out of sight or turning into idealised images of unrequited desire with little connection to the real person they were based on. I gradually grew used to the longing and the occasional casually friendly sex, and settled into a routine that I felt right for me. I was almost never lonely, even so-it was a calm life.
Then, equally casually, I started talking to a girl, and through Myspace of all things! We agreed to go to a Ruby Suns gig on K Road, purely as something we both wanted to do. (I found out later she hated the Ruby Suns, but whatever, women be sneaky.) She was a decade younger than me, tattooed, smart, funny, and remarkably, on the same wavelength as my introversion. I knew we'd get on fabulously when she made a horribly offensive joke referencing Oedipus with herself cast as Jocasta...
We didn't ever sit down and have a "We're going to be boyfriend and girlfriend" talk, we just sort of flowed into each other's lives. Suddenly she was spending her weekends with me while we played Oblivion or Lord of the Rings Online together, while I learned how to cook various vegetarian dishes. It's been three years, and now I can't clearly remember a time when we weren't together, nor can I imagine life without her. We like the same things, dream the same dreams, are at precisely the same point in our lives, and our families love each other too-they're like some strange mirror image of each other, almost. Neither of us wants children, though we have a cat who fulfills that role so, so well.
I spent the first twenty-nine years of my life thinking love had to be tortured, or demonstrative, or overcome massive obstacles, to be "serious", but then I got lucky and found out otherwise.
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Never going to be that easy Craig, though we can dream. After all, most journos of that persuasion are generally pretty OK with their off-duty reputations being well known. Call it a badge of pride, even.
Then again, it's important to remember that gossip journalism is a business. It's there because people will pay other people salaries to write it. There's nothing inherently villainous about these people, they're just conveniently overlooking human sensitivities to get the job done.
I remember volunteering on the counter of Trade Aid on K Road with Bridget Saunders on Saturday mornings for a year or so when I was at uni. She's actually a lovely person: smart, funny and ethically aware. Somehow that doesn't translate into a concern for the privacy of (semi-)celebrities though.
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I actually felt a little creeped out by the recent article about Hollie Smith in the Dom Post a few weeks ago for the same TMI reasons.
I don't know how much of the real time in the interview was actually in regards to her problems with her former label, but titling a piece "Soul star Hollie Smith broke" when she's obviously in the process of promoting a forthcoming album seems...off.
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It kind of depends, though. Like any political label, ideological purity tends to lose out when people start identifying with what they think a given term stands for. I've no doubt there are people in New Zealand who identify as "neo-conservatives" because they interpret the thrust of the ideology as "endless war against Arabs and socialists makes everybody happy".
Of course, it's a bit different when you don't have an army capable of invading your opponents, but it's the thought that counts.
But no, Douglas and Prebble were very much in a different vein to neo-con though. Their primary focus was economic liberalism. I can't even imagine Roger insisting that Carthage must be destroyed.
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I'm pretty sure we'll see an opinion piece about how important privacy and "innocent until proven guilty" are from Lhaws next week, and condemning domestic violence.
Then the week after he'll be back to calling for the forced sterilisation of people who wear hoodies, or something.
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A salesperson in the organisation I work for won the contract for a local hobbyist pilot's club. Unfortunately, he struggled with "l" sounds (hearing and pronouncing) and part of the sale was for us to arrange the company's directory listing, so for the next year the customer had to put up with confused phonecalls from people wanting to join the Horowhenua* Fight Club.
And yes, he was evil enough to claim a handy little commission for that sale.
*-town changed to protect the innocent.
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Anyone else just a little bit confused by now?
I admit, I'm struggling with it.
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I took a stage one geology course at the UoA a few years ago, which was directed by Ian "Reliable Source Of Volcano-Related Quotes For Journalists" Smith. Great guy, and very enthusiastic about painting a picture for us of just how powerful and dangerous and likely a volcanic eruption under Auckland would be.
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The alternative is living in Palmerston North.
That's a bit like saying suicide is an alternative to growing old. Do not want.
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Still, you've got to love the cheerful obliviousness with with human beings build cities on flood plains, malarial swamps, fault lines and the flanks of active volcanoes.
I spent much of the weekend out of range of phone, TV, radio and internet on a beach on the east coast. On coming back into reception on Sunday afternoon, my first three texts were, "Wait, what tsunami? I didn't hear about this!"