Posts by Joe Wylie
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Very nice, but why no prosthetic for pooch?
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Do not act as if not talking alot is a virtue, because it is not.
It's something of an NZ tradition, particularly with blokes. I think it was Peter Wells who once said that in certain quarters it's seen as something of a triumph to get a sentence out without appearing to open your mouth. During the making of Footrot Flats, the Movie, Murray Ball sent a directive to the (mostly Australian) animators telling them that the standard cartoon lip-synch employed for the Wal character wasn't working - an NZ cocky would think it "uncool" to ever open his mouth that wide.
Adolescent girls are different. By stretching vowels, along with rising and falling tones, they're able to squeeze at least four syllables into a word like gross.
On a visit to NZ during the Muldoon era, former Whitlam Minister Jim Cairns saw similarities between NZ and Queensland attitudes. Being repressed people who were afraid to say what they really felt, they elected grotesque politicians who'd give voice to their twisted resentments.
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Presence and persistent plausibility will always surpass articulate academic argument. . . . First one to swear out of frustration loses.
;-)Never funny to swear in anger, but highly effective in dealing with certain forms of overinstitutionalised BS. For example, "He's not an artist, he's just one of those little cunts that draws skulls."
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Having occasionally worked for various governments I know something of that feeling. Nevertheless, I still believe a low threshold for sheer bureaucratic intransigence to be a gift of nature.
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Truth is, I'm far too chicken to do my balls in cold blood. The aggro was spontaneous and short-lived. If I'd kept it up no doubt I'd have been escorted down the stairwell in a headlock by the security bouncer-bureaucrat, but being suddenly contrite - and, I have to admit, articulately apologetic - clinched it for me.
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In any disagreement with a public agency, you will be better served if you are articulate, literate and persuasive.
More than once, I've felt privileged in this respect.I don't doubt it. Howevah, when being stonewalled by the Australian Commonwealth bureaucracy a few years back, all my attempts at articulacy and quoting of the rules (I'd done my homework) got me nowhere. Breaking my cheap umbrella over the back of a chair got instant results - the Stalinist facade evaporated, every bureaucrat on the floor looked up from their monitor, and a woman who gave the impression of having attended a seminar in dealing with this sort of thing offered sympathy and a cup of coffee, while the security guard twitched in the background.
Embarrassing as hell, but suddenly I was upstairs in the carpeted office for special cases, where everyone was so polite and understanding, and I got what I'd come for. Sometimes giving the appearance of being a loose cannon trumps articulacy.
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And cocoa. Because it's allowed for the LDS, cocoa is to Salt Lake City as coffee is to Seattle.
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FYI I managed to slip in a brief mention of Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves in today's thermo lecture. I'll leave readers to figure out the connection between entropy generation in large-scale refrigeration plants and these poets.
Very Thomas Pynchon. If you haven't already, will you be touching on Maxwell's Demon?
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Bruno Bozetto's ghost kitty:
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So, a genuine question: What do people think you should realistically expect to pay per night in a state of the art youth hostel right in the centre of a huge city? I'd be curious to know.
Back in the 90s there seemed to be rather a lot of people in Sydney who gave the impression that the most pressing problem in their lives was that they couldn't get takeaway in the kind of containers that they saw on Seinfeld. I suspect that such people would be happy to consider your question in some depth.