Hard News: Off the back of the deck
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Speaking of Tui song, did you catch that piece on 3 News last night? The 'Pizza Hut jingle' angle was arse, but there was lovely footage of a captive talking Tui from Northland. Apparently it's wings were damaged somehow, so it will always remain in captivity.
I'd read accounts of Tui mimicking humans before (apparently it was common in the early settler's times to have pet Tuii that would learn to talk), but now that they're protected and most captive Tui are rehabilitated for release, they're not taught the trick any more.
Quite remarkable.
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The tui's song has evolved. It began with a two-note honk: kree-kraw, but every few days he seemed to add a note to the front, so kree-kraw became coo-kree-kraw, then kor-koo-kree-kraw. I'd pull into the driveway, step out of the car and be greeted with kor-koo-kree-kraw!
It's playing Simon! You're probably supposed to try and sing back!
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I was going to say: Russell we should catch up. But then I happen to have caught up with Steven earlier in the week, so I'm going to say: do take him up on his offer! Far more interesting. And his coffee machine is a beaut.
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A few months after Ferrit launched, a PR person asked if I could have a look at the site and perhaps write something. So I had a look, and it was a weirdly desolate experience. I couldn't work out why I'd use this website and what I wrote wasn't positive.
Wot no linkage?
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yes well tis the holidays ... fast fading , but speaking of BDO , anyone at Spiritualized the other night at the power station ? gee it was really pretty great , one of the best . We were almost shot into
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Apparently the Ferrit staff were redeployed elsewhere in Telecom, but I imagine there were some contract workers who weren't. I went there once, didn't understand the point, and never went back. It'll certainly leave some holes in the TV stations advertising budgets.
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I don't care much for the name,
Ah, so I'm not the only person who noted the (purely coincidental, I'm sure) similarity to a certain American site that was (at least for me) one of the few pleasant on-line discoveries of the US primary/election season.
Tsk...
As for tree news. At least you're happy with the tree at the bottom of your garden. Just over our fence line in our densely built up corner of the world is a ruddy behemoth, that would be lovely if it wasn't dying. And along with others in the neighbourhood, we're having a inexplicably difficult time convincing the owners that it would be in everyone's best interests to cut it down before it makes the transition from arse-ugly visual polution to unwanted visitor on a dark and stormy night.
On the other hand, I did have the pleasure of ringing The Herald and explaining in great detail why the subscription renewal notice will not be replied to with a cheque.
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Despite her bell our kitty has started finding tiny birds in the bit of native bush we have at the bottom of the garden, I despair that one day she'll drag in a kereru bigger than herself so yesterday she got another noisier bell - anymore of that and we're buying on of those things morris dancers wear
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When did summer in New Zealand get so busy? Over four pages of diversions and excursions in today's Time Out--makes you feel a little guilty about lounging around on a beach, doing nothing.
Missing BDO tomorrow and 90 minutes of Neil Young, but it came to a toss-up between Mt. Smart and Leonard C. next week.
Have I been missing anything by largely ignoring National Radio this summer? It all seemed a bit tired and limp, with a forced jollity, times I tuned in.
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no - it was funny once but playing bad music all summer is so the year before last - I find myself hoping for the return of Jim Mora, which is a scary thought all by itself
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no - it was funny once but playing bad music all summer is so the year before last -
You don't ever listen to National Radio between the hours of midnight and six? Wayne Mowatt not ring any bells?
Who would have guessed that part of Radio New Zealand's public service mandate was to provide a home for more awesomely crapulous music that you could shake a colostomy bag at...
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well in the winter I start work at 5am, I guess I'm never that awake - I just assumed I was more listening to my grandmother's national radio ....
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I once said something critical about Wayne to a Herald journalist and received unsolicited, vehement letters from Aggrieved of Ashburton and Outraged of Oamaru.
Can't say I am too charmed by the emergence of Noelle McCarthy. She may sound like a crate of Guiness but really hasn't much of substance to contribute.
And then there was the string of listener texts I heard yesterday, along the lines of "I haven't had a TV set for 35 years and my life is so much richer than yours" . I guess they were seeking a pat on the back; I wanted to kick them in the shins!
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Wikileaks has published a large cache of confidential United Nations reports and investigations, including those relating to sexual abuse by serving UN personnel in Africa. Shit to hit fan?
There's a really interesting article in the January 5 New Yorker on the UNHCR mission to Chad, which provides relief for refugees from Darfur. There are some vivid snapshots of UN life, and a couple of cynical observations that stuck with me. Long-term staffers claim the agency in Africa consists of three classes of people -- missionaries, misfits, and mercenaries ...
You don't ever listen to National Radio between the hours of midnight and six? Wayne Mowatt not ring any bells?
Who would have guessed that part of Radio New Zealand's public service mandate was to provide a home for more awesomely crapulous music that you could shake a colostomy bag at...
When I was a kid, I had chronic insomnia and would tune into the Nat Rad all-night show to stave off night terrors. This is back when Philip Liner hosted it. I think it did long-term psychic damage. 'Those Were the Days, My Friend', 'Windmills of Your Mind', 'Sealed with a Kiss', and the terrifying 'One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round' will be burned into my brain forever. I don't think anyone could select a more sinister and melancholy handful of songs than the all-night show played, night after night. I'm getting sweaty palms just thinking about it.
Maybe it was some kind of psychological warfare project.
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Friends let friends copy bits, and I've really enjoyed watching Niall Ferguson's Channel 4 doco The Ascent of Money , which provides a sophisticated but highly accessible perspective on how we came to have money, what it is, and how we got in the current mess.
You can watch it on Google video and there's also a BBC Briefings lecture about the book and the series by Ferguson out there on the wires, which I've downloaded but have yet to watch.
I'd quite like to see some of Ferguson's work. Picked up a copy of his book Empire from Borders for six bucks and change late last year. I suspect, as the book of the TV series, it will make for a better view than read.
The War of the World has gotten an R4 dvd release in Australia through Siren Visual, but unfortunately it, unlike a number of their other releases, hasn't made it as far as NZ. Nothing yet on the horizon for any of his other work, either. No sign of Empire or Colussus , or The Ascent of Money . Maybe I'll just have to re-watch The Ascent of Man instead :-)
Come on people, I'll easliy pay $40 apiece ... don't make watch them on the Internet!
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Windmills of Your Mind
That song is like Dr Demento for middle-class intellectuals, or something. It really is quite evocatively creepy.
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I suspect, as the book of the TV series, it will make for a better view than read.
This shouldn't be read as to imply that it's not a good read. I meant to add that I've yet to read it [in part because I think it may be a better view than read].
Controversial, though (which, perhaps, all good history is...).
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This shouldn't be read as to imply that it's not a good read. I meant to add that I've yet to read it [in part because I think it may be a better view than read].
That seems to be the view of people who've both read and viewed The Ascent of Money.
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Windmills of Your Mind
That song is like Dr Demento for middle-class intellectuals, or something. It really is quite evocatively creepy.
Oh, absolutely. What gets me is that Michel Legrand could write that, and then produce the pathologically chirpy soundtrack to Les Demoiselles de Rochefort . Which is also a hell of a thing to have stuck in your head at 3 AM ...
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Controversial, though (which, perhaps, all good history is...).
Well, I don't know if I was entirely convinced by the thesis of Colossus -- the problem with the Pax Americana isn't it's very existence, but that Americans are in such denial about the reality of it all they're not doing it properly. But it was pleasant watching talking heads on all sides of the political spectrum implode. He's also a useful irritant to some very lazy, and ahistorical, thinking about the British Empire.
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the pathologically chirpy soundtrack to Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. Which is also a hell of a thing to have stuck in your head at 3 AM
Heh. The 'Chanson des jumelles' song just about ruined my life for a week after seeing that film. In case anyone else wants to have an earworm for the ages:
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I got asked to do a phone survey about Ferrit a couple of years ago. I think the guy was kind of surprised that yes, I had heard about the site, yes, I had looked around it and, yes, I actually had bought quite a bit of stuff online (this was around 2005, when online purchases were a bit more of a novelty).
I made a few suggestions about how they could improve the site but the guy didn't really want to know (I guess his survey script didn't have an area for suggestions).
Really, it was quite a shit site. Yes, by the end it did have a comprehensive database of stuff you could buy - but they were let down by the lack of product description. If I buy something online I miss out on being able to see the product in person and I can't just chat to a sales rep about it. To make up for this, I need heaps of info in the product blurb, so I know exactly what I'm getting. In most cases the Ferrit prduct pages had only one or two lines: This is a TV...by Panasonic...the end.
The really silly thing is that Ferrit linked to the Ascent website, which is one of the most thorough and easily accessible shopping websites I've ever come across (for electronic stuff anyway).
Sigh /endrant
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Come on people, I'll easliy pay $40 apiece ... don't make watch them on the Internet!
Ironic (having just come from the copyright thread), how DVD regions, designed to protect the company making the DVD and make money for them, stops a lot of people buying DVDs.
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Yeah, I'm not really convinced by Fergusson. My impression is that he's basically a military historian who's out of his depth, but due to the popular nature of his audience and his self-conscious contrarianism, he never really gets called on it. It's like he's taking simplified versions of ideas expressed earlier by much subtler historians (J. C. D. Clark and J. G. A. Pocock, for instance) and applying them to an explicitly right-wing agenda. That he got snapped up by NYU and Harvard says more, I think, about the rather unhealthy academic star system in the US than it does about the quality of Fergusson's work.
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Heh. The 'Chanson des jumelles' song just about ruined my life for a week after seeing that film. In case anyone else wants to have an earworm for the ages.
All together now:
Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles
Nées sous le signe des gémeaux
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do
Toutes deux demoiselles
Ayant eu des amants très tôt
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré doGAH!
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