Posts by Sam F
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I can't watch the first video without thinking of EML's tribute to New Zealand violence a while back.
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It's a great show, that one. Although it's been in the shops for a while... not complaining as I certainly got my $25 of laughs out of it.
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I see Whaleoil has published his own amended version.
"3. I'll write whatever I want without any regard to whether I'll say it in person or even back it up if questioned."
You can't accuse the man of acting inconsistently with his professed morals.
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As much as I feel for your situation - which is obviously all kinds of screwed up - your posts are about as coherent as Time Cube. If you're sore at being called names on Kiwiblog, then why not take the cigar and Speights and have an evening off from the Internet?
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Damn it for no post editing, but Merc, I've just read a pretty good book on NZers in Bomber Command by Max Hastings, called Night after Night. Just came out in paperback.
Some hair-raising stuff in there. One pilot was pinned in his seat by G-forces in a crashing, spiralling bomber with only one wing left. Eventually the remaining wing fell off, the plane stopped whirling as it fell, and he was able to get up, jump out the side window and parachute down to safety.
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I bought Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle at Hard to Find Books in Onehunga yesterday. Which by the way is entirely worth the drive from the city: it's the kind of glorious rabbit warren I could spend a day in just browsing.
Boing Boing has a festival of Vonnegut linkage up, but all you techy people will know that by now...
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Garth no longer vets the letters? Great. I sent one in to the paper just now, reproduced below for what it is (barely) worth:
"I see that Garth George has decided to write about global warming again in the wake of the IPCC report. However, I can remember another of his columns from November 2nd last year, also on climate change. Much of the same spirit is still there: Mr George will keep on driving his 4-litre Falcon, burning wood in winter, and telling future generations 'I told you so'.
However, the latest column relies on 'expert' academic deniers of climate change. These academics are not the ivory-tower pointy-heads Mr George hates, because here they happen to agree with him. But in November, Mr George had a different ally: he knew climate change was a non-issue because 'every time I see a rainbow I have it confirmed for me. It tells me that God is keeping the promise he made to Noah after the world-drowning flood thousands of years ago recorded in Genesis.' And this same man now compares climate change science to flat-earth beliefs?
I don't know why Mr George bothered changing to modern 'evidence' for his latest column. Clearly his lifestyle is not going to change, and he’ll stick with an uncritical belief in anything that doesn’t challenge his own selfish behaviour."
On the Your Views topic, did anyone else notice that when you go to comment on Garth's story the subject line is "Climate change not all doom and gloom" - thus presuming you agree with the senile old fool?
Somehow I doubt my comments will make the 'selection of your latest views' if Mr George has anything to do with it.
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In terms of favourite authors right now Banks, Nigel Cox, and Terry Pratchett would be right up near the top. But in terms of those special moments:
- Footrot Flats. Read these constantly as a little kid. Cue endless Murray Ball-ripoff title pages in primary school exercise books.
- Goosebumps series. Appalling crap that everyone at primary read and passed around, and hence you had to own at least one. Oddly compelling when you're eight, actually...
- Sven Hassel. I don't know how this ultraviolent, Nazi-narrated series of action novels made it into our Catholic high school library, but I read them with a kind of appalled fascination until they all got thrown out.
- Iain Banks (again). First ran into one of these books in Form 5 and it was a revelation. Science fiction with actual wit! And swears! Violence that makes sense! Post-scarcity societies! Well. My appreciation got a bit deeper over time. Like Scott I'd put Player of Games at the top of the list, followed closely by Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward.
- How to Keep your Volkswagen Alive by John Muir. Read it at the end of school - an unofficial car manual written by a confirmed hippy, dotted with bad advice and neat illustrations that still grace my walls at home. Didn't buy the car to go with it though.
- Hells Angels by Hunter S. A nice wild tome for a first year at university. Still my favourite book by him as well.
- The Penguin Book of American Verse. Talk about a permanent eye-opener - my first encounter with Ginsberg, Edward Dorn, Frank O'Hara, Ai, and so on.
I really could bang on and on here.
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That seems a nicely relaxed ending to the thread from hell.
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I think the organisers of Divine Performing Arts ought to have been a bit more honest about what they were presenting. When the main organisational push behind your show is the Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty TV and the show itself depicts government-sanctioned murder of Falun Gong members, claiming that the troupe contains Falun Gong dancers but the whole shebang isn't a FG production is disingenuous at least.
That said, whatever the (mis)representation of the show to the public, the Chinese consulate needs to be sent a clear message about how New Zealanders feel when foreign pressure is placed upon elected officials.