Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Opportunity lost

A couple of years ago, when I was toying with the idea that I might actually try to be a writer, I had a brilliant idea. In my day job I encountered a constant stream on potentially interesting people.

I thought it would be a good idea to interview people with interesting jobs, and turn it into a regular column for one of the mainstream publications. A kind of "this is who I am and this is what I do" piece, a fly on the wall thing about whatever their job entailed on any given day, including the mundane details, which might actually be quite interesting. For example, while talking to an international commercial pilot one day, he was complaining about how much paperwork had to be done during the flight. And I thought: paperwork? What paperwork? Why would you need to do any paperwork? Don't you just turn up, fly the plane to Los Angeles, land it, and hit the bars downtown? Paperwork? Who knew?

So I thought, if I didn't know what a pilot actually does all day, maybe others don't. And perhaps those same people might actually like to know.

I also wondered about an escort/prostitute. We all "know" what they do, but do we really know what they do? What occupies their average day? I thought that would be interesting to find out about, and write a piece on.

As I do with so many things, I promptly dismissed the idea as untenable. Who would pay for such a thing? Who would publish it? It probably wouldn't be as interesting as it sounded. Maybe I was the only person in the whole world who wondered what a pilot or a hooker actually did in an average work day.

Well, apparently not. Because now, two years later, there's a new regular column in one of the leading weekly publications. Guess what the column is about. Go on. Guess.

Yep. Interesting people with interesting jobs and what those interesting jobs entail.

ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Crime watch

It's bad enough when serious crime takes place in your home town (see previous post), but when it happens practically on your doorstep, it becomes even more relevant.

At least this cop seems to be taking it a little more seriously than Senior Sergeant John Robinson of the stupid comments brigade.

We drive through the white trash neighbourhood of Addington a lot, and to be fair I wouldn't walk there during the day let alone walking through it at 2am on a Saturday.

Two of the little miscreants have been charged. Excuse me? Two? There were about ten of them. The cops are seeking witnesses and, presumably, the other eight?

Well, hello! I'm willing to bet the two mongrels they have in custody already know who the other eight are. Why not hang them upside down, naked, and stick little pins in their privates until they give up the names of the others? Jeez it's not rocket science.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Thought crime

". . . it's just a bunch of hooded up young people doing something dumb."

That's how Senior Sergeant John Robinson describes (Christchurch Star) how six hooded punks terrorised a young couple driving home form a party at 2am one morning. First they threw a brick at the car, narrowly missing the driver's window. When the car stopped, six of the mongrels surrounded the car, intimidating the young couple. They were armed with wooden garden stakes and wine bottles. The young woman in the car feared they were "going to be beaten up."

I suspect she feared worse than that. Who wouldn't in such a situation?

The thing that gets me here is the cop's reaction. Just kids doing dumb stuff.

Can you believe that? That's the reaction of the agency charged with the protection of society. That's what the cops really think about youth crime. Kids doing something dumb. WAY to minimise it, copper!

My son and some friends were parked at Burger King in town late one night, and their car was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of about twenty skinheads who started thumping the car. They broke off a mirror and a wiper blade and made a few dents in the panelling.

Senior Sergeant John Robinson would probably snicker and say "Ahh . . boys will be boys, eh?" LOL

Is it any wonder Christchurch was recently labelled the city residents MOST feel unsafe in?

Apparently, according to Robinson, "youth crime has reduced slightly in the last five years."

It's HEAD IN THE SAND IGNORANCE like this idiot has that enables him to stupidly regurgitate politicians' wishful thinking that youth crime is down.

NEWSFLASH: it's not down, it's just not being reported!

It's not being reported because society now realises THE POLICE ARE USELESS! There's no POINT reporting most criminal behaviour because even if the cops show up, which isn't a guarantee, there's nothing they can do. And if the perpetrators walk into the police station and hand themselves in for being naughty - which is the only way they'll ever be apprehended - the limp wristed pathetic court system can't do anything with them either.

It's not down, it's in the too hard basket.

The young man in the car tried to reverse but the mongrels behind him didn't flinch, and he didn't want to hit them with the car.

Well, I have to disagree there. I think he should have floored it and taken out as many of the little shits as he possibly could. Then gunned it forward to take out a few more. Oops, maybe I'm committing a crime by saying that. Or even thinking it.

The cops can't find the six punks who terrorised the couple, but they'll track me down and prosecute me for espousing an anti-social attitude. Thought-crime.

I can't even really begin to explain how angry and cynical I am about this sort of stuff. But I think so are a lot of people. Which simply feeds a sense of powerlessness, which in turns feeds the egos of idiots like Robinson and those morons further up the chain, right to the Minister. They want us to be terrified. They need us to be powerless. God forbid the "powerless" masses decide NO MORE and start taking matters into their own hands.

Dealing with youth crime and boy racers? Easy when you step outside the stifling boundaries of laws designed to protect criminals. A bit of money and organisation, I can see youth gangs and boy racers gone from Christchurch streets.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

HOW. DARE. HE.

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? - Ivan Karamazov


I was reading the story of little Hana. It was Child Cancer collection day and I donated ten bucks for the cute little bracelet with two colourful beads on it.

Little Hana is unfortunately, cruelly, representative of many many New Zealand children whose wee bodies and families are wracked by the cancer that is cancer. Her story, like the others, was truly heartbreaking, so much so that I couldn't’t finish reading it, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Not a good look for one trying to maintain such a staunch macho image.

I got to thinking later on about how I was once called upon to defend the indefensible. As part of an oral exam, my professor, playing Devil’s advocate, demanded I explain to him why God ordered the wholesale slaughter of the Midianites. Not just the men, but the women and children. The women. The children! Why?

What could I say? God has a purpose? A greater purpose, plan, than anyone can begin to understand?

That’s the standard line. That and the whole free-will thing. God made us with free will and because we chose to exercise it, the consequences are the horrific sufferings we see around us each day.

The consequence is that little Hana has to suffer and die from a debilitating destructive disease.

There are always two sides to every argument. One side, for example, is absolutely convinced Princess Diana was killed in an MI5 assassination plot. The other side thinks it was a terrible accident. And there is inevitably a lost and ambivalent minority who don’t know or don’t care. But by and large there are two camps.

As to little Hana, there is a camp that fully believes in the standard line, that any amount of suffering here and now is but a headache compared to the eternity of comfort coming (if you toe the party line, but that’s another debate).

The other camp, angry, bitter, narrow-minded infidels, cannot possibly understand why an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God could do such a thing.

HOW. DARE. HE.

I must confess to never having set up tent in the former camp, despite my conservative raisings. Even before I understood it fully, my unexplored theodicy baulked at the naïveté of such a weak argument.

This is the best he could do? The creator of the Universe, who spoke galaxies into existence, who breathed life into every animated thing in the cosmos, who transcends time and space and knowledge – this is the best he could do? This is the best of all possible worlds?

I don’t think so.

I can imagine a better world. I can imagine a couple, actually. Am I therefore smarter than God? Apparently.

If I were responsible for creating a fabric of human destiny – ifyou were – could I found that edifice on the unavenged tears of little Hana? Could you?

If the only possible world to create was predicated on the necessity of making little Hana’s five short years a living, incontrovertibly painful nightmare of vomiting convulsions, energy-sapping blood transfusions, tears and screams of anguish and a better than average chance of an intolerably lingering death leaving behind a wake of misfortune and tragedy for generations, would I do it? Would you?

Of course not. Of course you wouldn’t. Why would you?

Look into little Hana’s teary eyes and claim God is good. Watch her family disintegrate with grief and say that God is all powerful. Stand at her grave and praise God for his all seeing eyes. I dare you.

The logic is sound. God cannot have all those attributes. If he lacks one he ceases to be.

The common sense is even more sound. It is, as Dostovsky wrote, “beyond all comprehension why they (the children) should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony.”