Posts by B Jones
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I guess I quax since I live near a supermarket and regularly pick up stuff on the way home on foot, but I reckon we need a word for taking the trolley all the way home. You could name it after my neighbours, who currently have two in their yard.
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I'm not one for faith based sentimentality, being an atheist and all, but I can't help being struck by the contrast between what conventionally passes for the Christmas spirit, and what people are prepared at the moment to do and say in real life. We hear too much about children in poverty, didn't their parents know having kids is expensive, it's all because of drug abuse, blah blah. The same applies to American (and other) Islamophobia. Peace on earth, good will to all, anyone? The war on Christmas isn't in people saying "Happy Holidays", it's in people saying "screw you, I've got mine."
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“But I think they actually fight for values and principles – human rights, women’s rights and democracies.”
Can anyone think what war could have reasonably been described as relating to women's rights? I got nothing. France didn't have female suffrage until 1944.
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I think "vexillology" has something going for it, as a new word we've all discovered and debated in recent months in New Zealand. Alternatively, "Red Peak" as a breakout.
If we're going international, "massacre" seems sadly to be all too common these days.
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I'm having English lit thoughts now about crime fiction, women's prominence in it, and the genre as a vehicle to express a kind of feminism. It's often about male violence, usually about someone breaking society's rules, and always about the struggle of justice over greed or violence.
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I discovered Dorothy Sayers via Connie Willis. I never managed to get into Agatha Christie, but I like the way the adventures of Lord Peter et al illustrate the life and times of the interwar period. A pioneer of a long history of crime novels illustrating social issues.
I'm reading Luckiest Girl Alive at the moment, which is at least the third school massacre pop fiction I've read by accident, alongside We Need to Talk About Kevin and another one by Jodi Picoult. It's got a lot in common with Gone Girl too. In amongst the clever plotting and suspense there's some really sharp observations in all of them about femininity, what we do to fit in etc. I guess the school massacre novel is the 21st century's serial killer novel.
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Speaker: Marcus King: A cocktail of art…, in reply to Peter Alsop,
I should have also thought to mention that the Alexander Turnbull Library is a great source for ordering image prints.
Whoops, another rabbit hole to fall down. That has some cool stuff.
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I fell down the rabbit hole at Fine Prints a couple of weeks ago while trying to explain From Mickey to Tiki to my kids, who think it's awesome. I may not emerge with my mortgage balance intact.
I can't believe I had no idea who painted the signing of the Treaty - for some reason I assumed it was from the 19th rather than 20th century, despite the style. I think I might have pinched it for a slideshow once. Always nice to understand a bit more about these things, thank you for that.
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I recall there was some debate with the Hollow Men etc over whether Brash's mail was acquired via a leak or a hack. Hager's always said it was a leak. The outcome was broadly the same, but the law treats hacking and leaking differently.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to James Butler,
Whenever I go back to Wellington it seems a little less homeish (people there ride bicycles now! There are kereru!)
The birds in Wellington! I've always lived near the edge of the bush, and I remember as a kid seeing a tui was something special. Then a while back I was surprised to see one in central Wellington. Now the damn things constantly divebomb one another in my back garden and take baths in the neighbour's blocked gutter. They're ubiquitous, and kereru are common enough, but last week we had a kaka land on our deck. I'd never seen one before I visited Kapiti Island ten years ago, now you can hear them most days rarking in the skies above the western suburbs.