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What chicks really dig | Sep 08, 2006 12:41
While certain persons at Sir Humphreys eagerly declare that "most women will readily admit" that what they really want is to be physically dominated, I have my doubts. What chicks really dig is, like, guys treating them like fellow humans, listening to them and talking to them. Talking about feelings, dammit. (It can help to come across a bit interesting and mysterious - the not-like-other-guys thing - but obviously, if you ain't got that, you ain't got it.)
And if an hour of two of the opening of hearts, the sharing of souls, should lead to something of a robustly carnal nature, then everyone's happy, right?
It worked pretty well for me in my pre-monogamous days (and, indeed when my darling took the floor at my 40th birthday party to pay tribute to our long and continuing conversation I was moved to tears). It certainly seems a safer way of relating to women than assuming that every one you meet wants to be dominated. That could get you into some real trouble. Or at least leave you feeling angry and lonely.
And surely, that was what Simon Dallow was doing when he unburdened himself of his feelings to his demographically female radio Viva audience yesterday. I'm not suggesting he was angling for a shag - he does, after all, have some serious thinking man's crumpet to go home to - but did he have the ladies' attention? You bet he did.
Anyway, it's been a wearying and sometimes worrying week round here, so I've scrapped plans for serious comment, leaving my last learned sentence hanging like a schoolbus on a precipice, to be continued next week.
Instead, I suggest that you waste a few precious minutes with the Jackson Pollock simulator.
And then buy your kids some Armor of God PJs so they don't go to Hell. Christening doesn't cut it any more, you know.
There's a clip of Steve Irwin on South Park. And one from our own Pulp Sport.
And if that doesn't do it for you, go read Harry Hutton. He's even funnier than Matthew Hooton. In a good way.
iTunes, yes | Sep 07, 2006 11:58
PA reader the Rev. Margaret Mayman emailed to ask me whether I knew anything about the prospects of a New Zealand iTunes Store appearing. Which reminded me that, in fact, I do. The local music industry is seeing signs of movement. The reason for the endless delay of the launch isn't clear, but the person I spoke to had a theory: tax.
The NZ store would be run from Australia (where work was done on it nearly a year ago), but trans-Tasman tax arrangements made it unattractive for Apple. Another theory for the delay involves differences in rights payments. I don't know if either theory is accurate, or what might have been done to ease the problem, but it does seem that there will be, finally, a New Zealand iTunes Store, perhaps by the end of the year.
It's nice to be read in high places. David Lewis from the Prime Minister's office gave me a call yesterday to point out that Labour's view, as outlined in this release from Michael Cullen, is that the minor rule changes with respect to Parliamentary Services funding after 2002 actually strengthen the party's case, rather than weaken it.
Lewis agreed that Labour was warned last September by the chief electoral officer David Henry that the pledge card would be considered electoral spending.
"And we continued to contest that, saying we know this is normal spending that we'd done in 2002, 1990 and 1996. It wasn't seeking votes as such, it was putting out information."
So why would David Henry think the situation had changed?
"I don't know - you'd have to ask David Henry that."
Cullen's statement allowed that the auditor general's final report might well propound a different view of the rules than Labour's. Would the party take that as the final word?
"Labour will wait and see what the final report says before making decisions on what happens after that … It's not for us to accept or reject it, we just have to deal with whatever findings he puts out."
And the status of Labour's complaint to the auditor general about National's 2002 pledge pamphlet, also publicly funded?
"We can see no material difference between what National put out in 2002 and what Labour put out in 2005. In our view the supposed rule changes National talks about didn't in any way affect the eligibility of these things, and even in fact strengthened the eligibility of Labour's pledge card for Parliamentary Services funding."
And, finally, the Herald's story claiming that Labour is preparing a plan to return the money by underspending its Parliamentary Services funding over the next two year. Was it accurate?
"No. As far as I know there are no plans and we're not considering that. It's not an option."
Craig Ranapia was in touch with some comment on my observation that I didn't know anyone who cast their vote on the basis of the pledge card, and that Labour's election advertising was so lousy it would be hard to claim that it turned the vote anyway:
First, I'd probably be told to piss off if I tried to turn my social circle into a focus group - and deservedly so. But while I take you point, I still think it's a bit of a red herring. Electoral law doesn't make any distinction between attributable 'effective' spending, and 'what were they smoking?' non-attributable spending. Who ever came up with Labour's campaign - and I would like to know what they were on, so I could avoid it - thought the pledge card was going to influence at least a couple of votes, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered issuing the damn thing.
And, perhaps counterintuitively, I think National should be rather keen to see what Winston's got. Considering his track record of smear campaigns that stand up to scrutiny the same way vampires like sunlight, this would be a perfect opportunity to remind the Press Gallery - and folks 'outside the Beltway' - of Peters' own dysfunctional relationship with reality, and the good old days when Helen Clark and Labour treated Peters with contempt.
Well, it 'aint nice - but you can't say it's dull. :)
And you can't say it doesn't have its lighter moments either. The Kiwi Herald exclusively revealed Don Brash's plans to form a government in exile.
And, even funnier, Matthew Hooton appears to have moved on from his public appeals for Brash to step down for the good of his party. Indeed, the casual reader of Hooton's consistently amusing Sunday Star Times column would never have known from Sunday's effort that the author had ever done anything but stand in solidarity behind the Dear Leader:
Don Brash has secured his leadership of the National Party through to the next election.
Brash's decision to confront the leadership issue at National's annual conference was derided by his political opponents as weak. It was anything but. Just as Helen Clark went public when Michael Cullen tried to roll her in 1996, Brash's strategy was absolutely right - raise the stakes, confront the issue and demonstrate strength with no hint of backing down.
And definitely no hint of gracefully resigning for the good of his party, presumably. I guess we can take it as read that Comrade Hooton no longer believes that John Key "is able to articulate a fresh, inclusive, ambitious and bold agenda like no one else in contemporary New Zealand politics."
And that was just the opening lines. He concludes by proposing that the governor general (only "technically" obliged to follow the prime minister's advice) could be approached by Brash to dissolve the government and demanding "UN observers" be brought in to oversee the next election. If this rolls on too much longer I expect he'll be calling on US forces to pre-emptively invade.
There's been some interesting debate about the government's proposed Ambush Marketing Bill. No Right Turn objects on the basis that it's not the government's role to legislate to secure a commercial arrangement.
There's quite a bit more informed (and sceptical) comment on the issue from livewire marketing expert Michael Carney, who has finally gone and got himself a blog. It's called G2 and I warmly advise a visit.
Counterspin | Sep 06, 2006 11:12
Labour's return of fire on National - with the promise of, literally, a book of embarrassing emails to and from Don Brash in advance of last year's election - is, of course, spin: a classic effort to change the subject from something Labour doesn't want to talk about to something National doesn't want to talk about.
Specifically, Labour is promising that new light will be shed on discussions between National and the Exclusive Brethren over the $1.2 million the Brethren spent - amid some ham-fisted attempts at secrecy - during last year's campaign. The emails apparently come from the trove held by Winston Peters, which would explain why they weren't revealed in advance of the election. Winston wouldn't want to be going too hard against a potential coalition partner. But now he's up off his sickbed and we'll see what he's got.
Even if what he's got is pretty good, it hardly alters Labour's position. Yes, National used public money to produce and distribute a pledge list before the 2002 election (and I'm pretty sure Jenny Shipley did the same thing with a letter to women voters in 1999). The difference is that after 2002, the rules on the use of Parliamentary Services were clarified and strengthened. What passed muster then didn't pass muster last year; to the chagrin of Labour and, to a lesser extent, every other party but National.
According to the Herald, Labour is in fact making plans to repay as much as $800,000. Good. I guess it's fair enough to wait for the Auditor-General's final report, but after that, please, no mucking about.
In the meantime, I could do without any more "stolen election" hysteria from Brash, let alone demands for fresh elections. No one can demonstrate that the result would have been different had Labour handled its finances differently. Did you cast your vote on the basis of the pledge card? Do you know anyone who did? Can you actually recall what was on the damn thing? Indeed, Labour's above-the-line campaign advertising was so lousy it's difficult to say it had much positive impact at all.
What won the election for Labour, and it may have turned quite late in the piece, were (a) spooked urban voters who didn't want to go back to the 1950s with National (Labour "won" all four main centres), (b) The student loan sweetie, (c) The consistent public perception that Clark was and is a more capable leader than Brash, and (d) good old-fashioned getting-out of the vote in South Auckland.
The three supermarkets closest to our house - a Woolworths, a Foodtown and a Countdown - are all owned by one company, Progressive Enterprises. I'm withholding my not-inconsiderable weekly supermarket spend from all of them until Progressive gets things right with its distribution workers, who want a national collective contract and have been locked out by their employer in the course of a fairly rugged dispute.
For all the Progressive PR, it seems that satisfaction for the distribution workers would add very, very little to grocery prices (and if prices are your concern, you'd probably be better off fretting about the lack of competition in the local market, as evidenced by Progressive's comprehensive hold on supermarket shopping hereabouts). I'm less certain about the radiographers' case, in part because it involves a fairly significant challenge to DHB budgets, and because they don't appear to have the wholehearted support of their medical colleagues.
Both disputes come down at least partially to something that nobody seems to be mentioning: the Auckland Premium. It just costs more to live here, especially when it comes to transport and housing costs. The same salary on which you'd get by alright in Christchurch will have your family struggling in Auckland. However both of them wash up, I think that premium will have to be paid in some way.
Anyway, Jim Kunstler, who was here for the Digital Earth Summit, has an entertaining blog post about New Zealand.
AppleInsider claims to have the inside word on Apple's movie plans, which seem set to be unveiled next week. Unsurprisingly, it's not just about iPods, and may include a device designed to deliver movies from your home server to your TV - an Airport Express for video.
Greg Palast has some interesting stuff on Innovative Emergency Management, the company that took millions of public dollars to write an evacuation plan for New Orleans, which is now - bizarrely - lost. IEM's founder is, unsurprisingly, a Republican Party donor, which would explain why, in light of comprehensive failure, the same firm seems set to receive millions more to write a new plan. For broader background, read Rolling Stone's incredible story of pork and political favour - at the expense of public safety - /Looting Homeland Security.
And finally, Tracey Nelson analyses those sorry All Black lineouts.
Bullshit and wankers | Sep 04, 2006 10:56
I'm not sure I get Bill Ralston's moment of shame, as breathlessly reported by two Sunday newspapers. During the week, a Herald on Sunday reporter was pursuing a "news" story on an itinerant Auckland man, whose only conventional news value appears to be that he's Ralston's cousin.
Ralston, initially cordial, subsequently detected some offence, and offered up some rude language in an unhappy phone conversation with the reporter. Well, so what? Did he issue any threat? Even if we chose other language, would any of us have felt much different than he did? And is this what journalism has become? Squealing because someone bit back? You wouldn't catch Jock Anderson doing that, would you?
Under orders from the boss, Ralston has apologised, is "deeply remorseful" and will face disciplinary action for his "very serious" and "quite unacceptable" behaviour. WTF? If Ralston had bollocked a reporter calling about his day job, that would have been extremely unprofessional, but this doesn't seem to have anything to do with work, and if Ralston wants to turn the air blue as a private citizen in a private conversation, that's surely his business. It really seems like bullshit to me.
Moving on from bullshit to wankers, the judges of New Zealand Idol seem to have further hurried their descent in flames by slagging off leading local music artists for declining to play the game. Among those to have declined invitations to appear on the show are Dave Dobbyn, Boh Runga and Neil Finn.
It needs noting that these people haven't come out and campaigned against Idol; they just privately declined offers to appear on it. And now for their trouble they've been declared "musical snobs", which basically forecloses any possibility of anyone with any stature ever appearing on the show.
It's not that these people are against talent shows: Boh's sister Bic is one of a string of artists who first came to prominence through the annual Smokefree Rockquest, which has a significant track record in developing talent. Even Split Enz got their first break on a TV talent show, New Faces, in which they played their own songs and did their own thing to the bemusement of Phil Warren.
It would be fair to say that the local music industry has always been diffident about Idol, and with good reason. The first two seasons showed that in New Zealand the format doesn't deliver enduring talent (even if you generously suppose "enduring" to mean, oh, at least three months after the series ends), and isn't even a commercial proposition for record companies. The evidence of the current season suggests that the talent feels the same way and is avoiding the show. It's light-ent karaoke, and if people want to watch and enjoy it, that's just fine. But no one has a "responsibility" to lend it their credibility.
The worst of all the pissy little rants was that from Iain Stables, who delivered a tirade against Graham Brazier that's too fatuous to bother reproducing here (you can read it at the link above if you like).
Mate, if I can call you that, a little word in your ear regarding yourself and Graham Brazier: The Braz shits out more rock 'n' roll when he takes a dump in the morning than you have ever mustered in the entire history of your cheesy commercial radio show. That is the harsh truth.
PS: Sorry about the strong language - I know some readers shudder a bit when I swear in the blog. Think of it as an act of solidarity with Bill.
Home | Sep 01, 2006 10:00
Damn, the coffee was good this morning. Some things, you want them done right, you do them yourself. It's nice to be home, and I didn't even mind being selected for a bag search at SFO and LAX, and being sent through the air-puffer machine at SFO (it blows jets of air at you to dislodge any remnant chemical dust from the explosives you packed) was actually kind of fun, although I did briefly wonder what I might have picked up from the grubby streets of San Francisco.
It's a good thing I stowed my Chumby in my checked baggage. Lord knows what the men with the latex gloves would have made of that. The younger boy and I are going to sit down and configure New Zealand's first and only Chumby this afternoon.
On Tuesday night, in my hotel room, I watched parts III and IV of Spike Lee's Hurricane Katrina documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts on HBO. It's superb: measured, intelligent and very moving (I cried a couple of times). Lee lets people express their sorrow, anger and frustration.
And these people have a lot to be sad, angry and frustrated about. They were have been failed at all levels of government (and most notably the federal level) and they have been scandalously abandoned by the insurance industry. One old man who paid insurance premiums on his house for 50 years was paid out about $700, and most of that was for the shed in the back yard. That there are $30 billion dollars in uninsured losses in New Orleans - and developer sharks looking to move in where people have no money to rebuild - should be a first-order national scandal in the US. Unfortunately there's not much sign of that. It's impossible not to feel that middle-class white folks wouldn't have been treated this way.
In the first half of the documentary, I gather that Lee allows a couple of people to air their claim that they heard explosions before the levees broke; the implication being that they were bombed with the intention of flooding the ninth ward. This doesn't mean, as some people think, that Lee himself gives that theory any weight, just that he lets people say what they want. The documentary's conclusion is actually that the levees were simply badly engineered and inadequate for their purpose. A comparison towards the end with the engineering that keeps most of the Netherlands from flooding is particularly instructive.
I'm busy obtaining the first two parts by the usual means for viewing tonight. Parts III and IV are there too.
So anyway, home to a more boutique-sized scandal. Memo to the Parliamentary Labour Party: cut to the chase, find some money and pay back the pledge-card funding. As I've noted before, the leaders' fund system is a shambles and National's tub-thumping on this is a bit rich given the way it spent our money outside the campaign period, and the money spent on its behalf by the Exclusive Brethren and others, which didn't count towards its spending limit, but it's over. Just do it.
I've thought for a while that Labour's inner-circle might not be too sorry to see Taito Philip Field investigated by the police. It's not like they liked the guy, even before the various allegations against him started streaming out. The problem has always been that this is a government with a one-seat majority, and one that could be seriously hampered if Field were to stay - or be re-elected - as an independent. Field is a social conservative who could very well vote with National on some issues (and yes, that would be ironic). If the government had a couple more votes in the bag, he'd have been toast before now.
And one more thing before I set about relaxing. The people at Eventfinder, who seem to have a pretty good business model, say they were bumped out of a deal with Tourism New Zealand by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, which has its own, taxpayer-funded online listings service, NZLive. Perhaps there's another side to the story, but this really doesn't seem appropriate. I'll follow this up now I'm back in town.
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