I've been taking a lot of photos. Mostly they are clean-lined, minimal, well-structured things. Such as this. Or this.
I went out Friday to take some more pics . . . it seems to be relaxing . . . but couldn't get into it. None of the shots were working. The light was wrong. The angles didn't add up.
Then I realised, it was my mind that wasn't adding up. I was looking for clean, ordered structured lines, but my mind was totally on another plane. So I ended up at The Pump House and suddenly I felt comfortable again. What my mind was craving was clutter. Disorder. Chaos. So I ended up with this, and this, and, my favourite, this.
Who'd have thought, me, so ANTI-clutter, would crave it and feel comfortable with it? Psychology students . . please advise.
I just love all this MP spending scandal stuff. It keeps us distracted from how screwed we really are in this country. As if Hone's jaunt to Paris or Rodney's to Hawaii is even the tip of the iceberg on what's wrong in New Zealand. It's only the tip of the tip.
However, another thing in a long list of things that pisses me off is the faux humility in the apologies, and even worse the all-too-willing-ness of these troughers to pay back the money they've stolen from us and then carry on as business as usual. If we take a conservative approach to how things normally go, if he's paying back the cost of ONE trip he's taken, there are TEN others he's taken that we don't know about which he should be paying us back for. Too little too late Rodney!
Same with Hone.
If I walked into Harvey Norman and stole a $5000 video camera, and was caught with it a few months later, would I just be able to say "Ooh, sorry . . I didn't think I'd get caught. Here's $5000 to pay for it" and go about my business?
Yeah right.
It just highlights how STUPID politicians think we are. "Ooh, gee . . if I pay it back, they're so stoopid maybe they'll forget I stole it from them in the first place."
Take note Hone. And Bill. Sir Roger. And every single other MP, their troughing partners, and their thousands of hangers-on who eat crumbs from their tables. We may not be able to make you accountable, and we may never get any recompense for the millions of dollars every one of you has stolen from us, but please do not delude yourselves thinking that you have any integrity, any human decency at all, or that anybody with half a brain respects you. YOU are what's wrong with this country. YOU are the problem, not the solution. YOU are the stain. You're all mongrels.
Hone Harawira has the right to say (or write) what he likes about "white mo-fos".
We know he hates white people. We know he's a loose cannon. We know he's a racist idiot. That's not news. And it's certainly not anything that many many Maori in New Zealand think. If you want to say he's ignorant, then go ahead. His comments will surely not advance race relations in this country. But that's not his concern. He and his ilk have no interest in advancing race relations in New Zealand. Him and many of his bros would be out of a job if there were no animosity between Maoris and Pakehas. His comments are politically dangerous because an incresing number of people, Maori and Pakeha, are calling for his head. On a plate, preferably. So if he wants to keep troughing on the public tit, he needs to be a bit more careful.
But I totally think he has the right to say what he thinks.
I do wish a white person in this country could say the same thing about Maoris. But that's not going to happen, at least if they want to avoid jail. But the harsh reality in New Zealand is that Maori can say and do things that Pakeha cannot.
I don't think he should go. I like him. I totally disagree with every single thing he thinks and says about Maori. But I like him.
This is just screaming out for comment. Apart from the draconian moralistic outrage, what's the crime here? Poor horse? Is there evidence the horse has suffered? Given the thousand pound horse could have objected and squashed Mr. Vereen at any time, but didn't, could that be interpreted as consent? Unless Vereen slipped the horse some rohypnol over some nachos at the local pub first, but there's no suggestion of that.
Poor horse? It's okay to slam nails into its hooves, stick chunky heavy metal and leather gadgets into its mouth, strap an uncomfortable, heavy saddle on its back and sit on it, or imprison it in a smelly 6 by 6 cell, but it's not okay to show the horse a little man lovin' from time to time?
Have there been any complaints from the horse? Any evidence of trauma?
As Vereen has previously had sex with the same horse, clearly there is a special relationship here. In the human world they'd be practically married! Is this fatuous criminal charge, then, motivated by jealousy on the part of Ms. Kenley? Just who is she jealous of - the horse or Mr. Vereen? And has she uploaded the video to Youtube?
I thought the world had become more sexually tolerant lately. Of course, it is South Carolina where basically everyone is related, which, on that basis, I'd have thought a little horse play would be right up there in outrage value with finding a Playboy mag in your teenage son's drawer. A bit ho-hum really.
As I have not signed the covenant, I am still free to publically disagree with Bishop Brian Tamaki, even if I risk getting a visit from the Tamaki Protection Squad.
There is no self-respecting Christ-centred religious organisation that could possibly take Destiny Church's Protocols and Requirements Between Spiritual Father and His Spiritual Sons seriously. If there ever was a devil, it is entrenched in the details of this blashpemous covenant.
I should state that I think BBT has done some great things. He's turned around lives, and there's a hint in Scripture that it doesn't necessarily hurt how or by whom Christ is preached, it can still acheive good things. One can also argue, however, that Adolf Hitler took the down and out and turned many of them into clean living, excellent Stormtroopers. The residents of the People's Temple in Guyana were also clean living, seemingly happy people.
BBT has done something no other New Zealand religious leader has done. He has successfully modelled the glitzy, corrupt health and wealth preaching American televangelists so popular in the the 80s and 90s. And of whom only a handful remain who have not succumbed to the temptations of their success. Yet.
Many New Zealand men of God are deeply envious of the empire BBT is creating.
Nevertheless, BBT's empire is built, like so many of the 1980s US ones, on the backs of the low-incomed, poorly educated, easily manipulated. Nothing is more true than while many of Destiny's members struggle to feed their family, the Tamakis eat very well on the balcony of their 1.2 million dollar cliff-top house.
Jesus saved his harshest condemnation for two groups of people: those who abused the little guy, and those who sought to honour themselves above all else. BBT is both.
I don't know what BBT is like behind closed doors. He's probably a nice guy. All those charismatic church leaders are. At least to your face. You cannot get 7000, or even 700 loyal followers without being a likeable person.
But I don't have to know what BBT is like behind closed doors. I can make a judgement from what he's like outside closed doors. He's arrogant. He's profligate. He's condescending. He's rude. He's controlling. He's slick. He's sleazy. He's narcissistic. And he's not a very good public speaker.
If reports in the media are true, he is the antithesis of what a man of God should be. He is profoundly guilty of the two things Jesus criticised most harshly.
Of course, it's hard, if not impossible, to draw parallels with men of God from of old. If you use the New Testament as an authoritative guide (or even the Old Testament), BBT fails on all accounts. If you don't hold up the NT as authoritative, then anything goes. But there's no middle ground. Most people know hypocrisy when they see it.
BBT may have turned some lives around. Good for him, even if the long term cost may be his subjects' freedom, and their soul - and I don't mean that in a salvific way. I mean it in a humanistic, philoshical kind of way.
If I put my Christian minister's hat on for a moment, I applaud some of what BBT is doing. I always thought the church can never be a democracy. It cannot be a PC, wishy-washy body. Individual congregations should be ruled firmly by a spiritual man with Godly wisdom, and a counter-intuitive humility who genuinely has his spiritual children's best interests at heart.
And that's where BBT has crossed the line. Such a man as above, ministering in South Auckland, simply cannot live in a $1.2m house; drive a 150K car, and ride a Harley down to the marina on weekends to spend the day on his boat. No amount of justification - he wants to model success to his children - can overlook such wanton excess.
Such a man cannot command his spiritual children to stand when he walks into the room; to wait until he starts eating before they do; to even accept let alone demand a half million dollar "first fruits" offering, in addition to an as yet undisclosed annual salary, and special "gifts" on his birthday; or to excuse or hide his indescretions.
When Jesus said some church leaders make their converts twice as much the sons of hell as they, I'm pretty sure he was thinking of BBT.
I rarely . . . okay, never blow my own trumpet. Outside I'm pretty reticent; inside I'm the most self-deprecating person you could ever meet. True.
However, I think this is absolutely the best photograph I've ever seen. It's gorgeous. I love it. I can stare at it and analyse it for ages. It's absolutely the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I love the colour combinations (the black and white versions are okay in a different kind of way); I love the construction; I love the underlying tension (between the red and the black shakers) - there's even a hint of tension between two factions of the black shakers; I love the suggestion of something grand (the frame); I love the shadows hiding behind the vase; I love the Orchid reaching out to touch the red shaker; I love the ledge that separates the image at a third; I love the mystery (what is that shadow on the right? - I know, but do you? You would never guess!) I love the reflection in the shakers (I love "reflections" - they're often a metaphor); just what is that green object behind the orchid?; I love how the ledge perfectly, symmetrically dissects the top of the red shakers; Like the odds between the warring groups - the black's numbers versus the red's size; there's a chess metaphor somewhere here.
I love this photograph!
There was no staging here at all. I was in a little cafe on Sunday with some friends and thats exactly how it was set up. During our lunch a couple of the black shakers came and went. But I took the photograph without moving anything.
I had to apologise to my friends because for a while as we had our coffees and bagels I was utterly distracted by the potential of this scene, which was diagonally opposite us. So I moved the the table next to us, which, fortunately was empty, and took a few shots.
Did I say how much I love this photo?
From one trough to the next?
There is nothing left to chance in politics. When Sue Bradford announced she was leaving Parliament, it was obvious the last rat was leaving the sinking Green ship. Disillusioned? Yeah right. How could such a seasoned irritant, a thick-skinned trouble-maker with the tenacity of a rutting rhinoceros get “disillusioned” by a little thing like losing out on the co-leadership of a rag-tag band of misfits, militants, and vegans?
Not before it’s due, the Green Party is over. They’ve reached the outer fringe of society and unless they make Waiheke Island an electorate of its own I’ll be surprised if the Greens have any role at all in the next government.
So Bradford, unable to sustain feeding at the public trough for much longer, has hung up her stilettos and has her eye on a more local, and probably lucrative trough, the new Auckland Super-City (sounds too much like Stoopid-City to be taken seriously.)
Name me ONE thing, ONE organisation that has become more efficient, more cost-effective, and more effective by becoming LARGER, by being swallowed up by an even larger organisation. Name me one.
So even though Len Brown – and his new best friend and potential 2IC Sue Bradford – don’t have a hope in Hell of winning the Mayoralty of the new metropolis, they’re still going to give it a go.
So I think it’s a bit rich that only a few days after dumping her political toys out of the cot, suddenly the possibility of running for council in her own back yard pops up over herbal tea and vegan scones?
Yeah, right!
I think "fashion" is the most pretentious waste of time. Of course, I'm a middle aged chubby white guy, so what would I know.
The most interesting thing to come out of Fashion Weak so far has been the headline "When goody bags go bad . . ." If anything symbolises how pathetic New Zealand is on the world stage, it's the fact that the most exciting gift in the goody bags at Fashion Weak was tea bags!
No Chanel, no diamond jewellery, no airline tickets to exotic destinations, no iPods or Blackberrys, no 1 ounce gold bars, no cars. Tea bags. A tea towel. An apple.
And second hand books? What's that about. I'm guessing it wasn't an autographed copy of Catcher in the Rye. The mind boggles.
So, I'm turning out of my street, turning right. There's no give way so the bozo coming from my left and turning into my street has to give way, right? Yes! He's a young punk in a Subaru, and get this - with iPod headphones in his ears. He sails around the corner cutting me off without even hesitating or slowing down. And when I deliver him some appropriate chastisement, HE FLIPS ME!!! Can you believe that? He gives ME the finger, like I've done something wrong!
And speaking of dickheads on the road, just after that I heard on the news that a hundred and something drivers in Auckland had been caught driving drunk. And then follows the usual bleating about how the message isn't getting through. How many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars over the last 20 years?
Here's a simple public service ad that I guarantee will half the drink driving rate:
If you drink, drive and get caught, on the first offence you will be:
Disqualified from driving for two years (no exemptions);
Fined $10,000 (to be vigorously pursued by the IRD)
Sent to jail for three months.
First offence. No exceptions, no excuses. If you're caught, that's what will happen. Second offence? Twice the above. Third, throw away the key. Let the Bros in PRISON have you for their plaything.
And if our pussy pathetic justice system actually followed through with it, I have to think that would cut out a lot of drivers who are sober enough to think they can get away with it, and even if they are caught the penalties really aren't that harsh anyway. You have to have a dozen convictions before you do any jail time.
If you KILL someone while driving drunk you only get a couple years in the hole. What sort of deterrent/punishment is that?
We need to come down really hard on crime in this country.
Starting with that little toe-rag who cut me off!
Ghosts. I remember my sister telling a story about someone she knew who had had some kind of experience with a spectre on a lonely road at night, and somehow a possum or some possums featured. I’m not sure how, but I was only six or seven or eight. I remember being terrified. I had a kind of Blair Witch vision in my head, which has stuck with me.
Did that pre-dispose me to “believe” in ghosts?
Who knows. And I’m not sure “believe” is the right word. I’ve never seen a ghost. I know people who say they have. I tolerate Ghost Whisperer, only because my wife likes it. I thought Sixth Sense was a very good movie and I confess I never saw it coming!
For want of a better word, then, I will say I believe in ghosts. So when this story popped up on Stuff I thought how cool.
I was a bit frustrated at how shallow the story was, hence my comment requesting a follow-up. Any journalist with a bit of salt would do some research into this. Who might the Maori woman be? What’s her story? And the cat?
This story has made front page news (on the website at least). It’s either a hoax, or a concrete example of a paranormal phenomenon. Either way, it deserves a follow-up. I know you can’t trust the photo. It could be something hanging on the pole. It’s hard to tell it’s a woman. And wearing a t-shirt? Who is Janet Stansfield? Does she have a history similar to the Whoopie Goldberg character in Ghost, a history of deception?
Most would probably approach this with an element of scepticism, which is okay. But to approach it with a “scientific” method would be fruitless, and unfortunately the only method that gets any serious credibility nowadays is the scientific one. That’s sad.
I look forward to the follow-up.
