Posts by Rex Widerstrom
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Apropos of nothing to do with the topic, if only Steve Braunias had thought to send an e-card instead of an e-mail. (NSFW, or those offended by colourful language)
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Hey ladies, we hear you is likin' the unicornios so we's put on our special outfits jus' for you.
Meanwhile, evidence our feline overlords will be benign. If we have enough balls of string, presumably.
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There are those, of course, who perceive feline intelligence as a threat, and believe that if we let them, the cats will one day move against us.
I for one welcome our new feline overlords.
A GANG of feral cats "the size of dogs" have been systematically terrorising residents of a Brisbane neighbourhood for more than a year, with one resident and her dog reportedly mauled last week. Moorooka residents say the cats reign of terror began more than a year ago
I vote we send Micael Lhaws over to impose an anti-gang law. Right after we roll him in catnip.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to Sacha,
Just wouldn't want to see it treated as a substitute for using the existing complaints processes
Much as I'd like to see it happen, "being an obnoxious little twat" is yet to be a criminal offence... presumably to protect the liberty of many of our Parliamentarians, for a start :-D
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to Sacha,
Which is why Rex's complaint, even if it doesn't succeed, is important. I'm all for boycotting, but I'd also like to the legal issues to be explored.
But there are already established grounds (and channels) for complaint without testing a new one which might take some time to work through.
There's a great deal of difference between "you caused your child's Aspergers", "Marris are the feral underclass" and "let's grab our baseball bats and attack a group of people". The first two are opinions, however repugnant and reprehensible, and the established channels (publisher / advertisers / Press Council) are appropriate.
But would you suggest that was the way to go if he (or I, or anyone) stood on a pile of rubble in Christchurch waving a bat and yelling "I'm gonna git me some looters! Who's with me?!"
That's what we have here, but to a wider audience and with the imprimateur of "but an important person said it was okay". It's the kind of thing that triggers the Jared Loughners of this world, with sometimes tragic results. In marketing terms, it's a "direct call to action".
I've had the experience of making some reasoned, unemotive statements about immigration and seeing them used by some bonehead as part of his justification for throwing bricks through the windows of Somalis in Porirua. If that can beget that, then it's well within the bounds of possibility that an overt call for violence will trigger something much worse.
And that is, without doubt, a police matter.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to dyan campbell,
you'll see his personality is literally a text book case of an abrasive psychopath .
It's weird but when he first published The Demon Profession (remaindered at any not-so-good bookshop near you and attracting no bids whatsoever online) I was hired by NBR to review it.
He refers to me in it as (inter alia) "a rotund oleaginous perspirant" so I thought it searingly clever (at about 3am, when I'd finished reading and started writing to meet NBR's deadline) to apply the antonyms to him and came up with "reedy abrasive aspirant".
It was only when the commissioning editor started raving about my "psychological insights" that I realised:
a) Strewth, I was right; and
b) no wonder we loathe one another (DPF's account of a Lhaws outburst in the Koru Club at the mere mention of my name really needs to be published) - we appear to be polar opposites.Or in his case, perhaps, bipolar opposites.
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Unicorns? They waz delishush.
Okay, okay, a unicorn and a fluffy kitten. That's my best offer.
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Losers. Go ahead, cuddle your kittens. Over here, we're busy doing battle against one of the true enemies of Man.
Errr, make that men.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to Kumara Republic,
In other words, a gated community minus the actual gates
Yep. I was amazed to find things like "residents only' swimming pools, hidden away in parks behind the house. From the street you're driving past rows of look-alike homes, not realising that the space between them is actually larger than you expect and behind them is a little enclosed enclave.
And the truly freaky thing is that this isn;t just a recent phenomenon. I shared a house that was clearly around 20+ years old, and it turned out to be part of an "estate", just not as obviously as the recent ones, which usually have one road in and out and a large brick feature wall with the name of the community on it.
I always think "that's where the gate will go when it all hits the fan". And these are the rule now, not the exception. If I wanted not to live on an estate I'd need to buy or rent in an older suburb, very close to the city (and thus very expensive).
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to Sacha,
Who gets to decide what colour you paint your house?
When I built a home over here in Oz I was astounded to be given a list of "approved" brick colours, told I could only have a tile roof, told I was only allowed to have the fences at the side of my property as far forward as the front wall of the house, and even handed a list of approved plants and trees I could put in the front lawn.
Generously, I could plant what I liked in my own back yard and could extend the range in the front yard after three years.
It's all about "estates" now, you see. The developers pay for the roading, drains etc and in return get to place all sorts of caveats on what you can do so as to create "little boxes on the hillside" which apparently sell better to Australians, who must have a fetish for homogenity, or something.