Sunday, November 22, 2009

Something different required
















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.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

too little too late

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.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Freedom of Speech

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.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Only in America

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.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Woe to you . . . Matthew 23

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.