Fat Chance

It’s a private joke to myself: the obese person coming down the aisle is going to sit beside me. And it’s usually a reliable prediction. Knowing the ratio of obese people around the world, especially in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, the odds are pretty good that Mr or Mrs Arbuckle will be sitting beside, or over and above, you, invading your personal space, and forcing you into contorted positions for the entire journey as you try politely to give them personal space, a favour they are unable, sometimes due to no fault of their own, to return. Apparently, and this might seem like a somewhat random statistic for airlines to be keeping, United Airlines received 700 complaints in 2009 from passengers who endured uncomfortable flights because the person next to them or adjacent took up too much room.

As a child I remember the cinema seats designed for the obese including at the Century in Dunedin. These double seats were the object of fascination, and I always wondered why there was only one.

Now, of course, a number of airlines including Ireland’s Irish Ryanair and the US of A’s United, have announced a fat tax. (See: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/ryanair-mulls-fat-tax-for-obese-passengers-20090417-a9ck.html). This does not mean that if you are double you pay double, but that you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to business.

My mental note to myself now is that buying seats in the tail might not be such a bad idea after all.

Postscript: Fattism is alive and well and living in New Zealand. Despite the nation’s desperate need for skilled nursing staff, a British nurse who weighed 134kg has been refused New Zealand residency because of her morbid obesity. Her body mass index of 55.2 was considered unacceptable by the immigration service. I’ve never had to fill in a form stating my body mass index, have you?

U R dmb

Human behaviour does not change much from the primary school playground to the political round table. Bullying, name-calling and sending messages are behaviours common to both spheres. Some guys just do not grow up.

The day’s Auckland story about battling mayors jostling for position during the current supercity debate is tear-inducing. The fact that their text messages to each other, complete with spelling errors and name-calling, have been published shows that the sticks-and-stones of the playground are still there in these primal egos even as they battle it out in the political slayground.

The difference is that nowadays we can judge people from their communications. There are no secrets. Secret communications, those you make when you think no-one is looking or cares, become public data.

It seems right-wing Auckland mayor John Banks, who smiled at the gullible people of Auckland and got voted back in despite having been deposed some years before, pressed the wrong button and sent a text to his much-loathed rival, North Shore mayor Andrew Williams. The text referred to “this lunitic”. I imagine Banks in an angry shaking fit pressing buttons furiously, not heeding the spelling and groping through his list of contacts looking for his co-rightist pal Aaron Bhatnagar. File under ‘A’. By christian name. Very primary school.

Meanwhile texts from others in the debate, including would-be peacemaking Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey and soon-to-be-redundant ARC Chairman Mike Lee make them all look like a bunch of kids. Lee speaks of a group of powerful business men (who have overtones, vague non-altruistic ones, of philanthropy) invited (for politically expedient reasons known to Harvey) to a summit as “amateurs” and their thinking as “hair-brained”, although many of them are balding. Lee is erstwhile a sensible fellow, but texting, the lowest medium of them all, reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator.

We have netiquette online and there are pragmatic rules of politeness governing every other medium of personal communication. Many people have suffered from hastiness in sending an angry off-the-cuff email, including most politicos. It seems that the power of Telecoms has seen to it that there are no such rules for txting. It seems they, or someone whistleblower, are also willing to release txts to the media. The basic primal schoolkid instinct that characterises all people with a gadget in their hand emerges.

The media can now use emails, twit-twitterings, youtubings and facebook scribings as data in journalism. Now they have access to private txts from people in the public eye. We might at last be able to make political judgments based on these guys’ real behaviours and not the false rhetoric of public politics.

See this story here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10566362&pnum=2, and below is what they want us to see and who they really are.

Auckland Bridge is falling down, my fair lady

I love the fact that Aucklanders are currently dancing all night to a revival of My Fair Lady with an Ocker Aussie Henry Higgins (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10561531), especially after their disaparagement of bad Kiwi accents by Aussie actors in TV’s Melbournian underworld drama Underbelly.

I do not love the fact that it has finally admitted what we have known for years: the half-century-old, iconic Auckland Harbour Bridge is falling down. (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10562900).

After years of $45 million worth of nippon-clip on girder upgrades, annual resurfacing of lanes numerous nips-and-tucks to the meccano infrastructure and the banning of trucks from the outermost lanes, the truth is out: Auckland Harbour Bridge is rusting away at “structurally significant points”, forcing engineers to carry out emergency maintenance work. A recent report by independent engineers revealed the rust was starting to “detrimentally affect the structure”.

Urban legend has it that every other bridge in the world made with the same design as Auckland’s Harbour Bridge has already fallen down.

Does an under-harbour tunnel seem a good idea? According to The Herald, “uncertainty surrounds plans for another harbour crossing, a road-and-rail tunnel, after the Government announced it was cancelling the planned regional fuel tax”. Oh yes, they are bailing out the rugby world cup and providing $190 million towards the stadium upgrade.

Spending a Penny is Expensive

Only in Ireland? Is it Blarney? Cheapskate Irish airline Ryanair is apparently serious about installing aeroplane toilets that can only be accessed with your Visa Card. Will these credit-flush dunnies also accept American Express?

Head Michael O’Leary has asked engineers at Boeing to design toilets with doors that open only if you swipe a valid credit card through the locking mechanism. The cost: a mere pound. Next there will be loos that scream, ‘That was number twos, that will be another pound’.

Key question: How much for Ralph Fiennes?

They estimate this could add US$20 million to the annual coffers. All of the jokes about taking the piss, being bogged down in detail and being flush with cash have already been tediously made. I suspect sales of water on the airline will long-drop too.

It’s in The Age twice and The Daily Mail once so it must be true:

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/ryanair-considers-charging-passengers-to-use-toilet-20090228-8

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/ryanair-serious-about-charging-for-toilet-use-oleary-20090306-8qdq.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1156984/Need-loo-That-soon-1-spend-penny-youre-flying-Ryanair.html

Send entries to the caption contest direct to Michael O’Leary.

Whatever Happened to Michael Jackson?

The revelation that Michael Jackson, in his new spiritually elevated state with his embracing of Islam, expunged of his worldly belongings from Never Never Land in the recent auctions of his bejewelled gloves and various payhouses, is to make a comeback fills me with apprehension. (See http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/music/jacko-plans-comeback/2009/03/04/1235842453106.html). The concerts would be Jackson’s first since he was acquitted on child molestation charges three years ago.

Apparently they will also be his last. Is that a promise?

What I wonder more is not that he might sound now like Cat Stevens, but that he might look like, well, not a cat, but your mind ought to be boggling.

I have found a really, really mean website (http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Jackson.html) that might put speculation to rest. Here are two highlights showing Michael at 41 and 42, and the icon he was, perhaps, aspiring to.

Bottoming Out

We all know that these are hard times. Some people call it Recession; others call it a Depression in the making. We all have to make sacrifices.

In New Zealand, it seems, ‘cheap vices’ like chocolate, ciggies, KFC and alcohol are not part of the austerity drive. Uplifting movies – today’s Slumdog is yesterday’s Golddiggers – belong in the same trend.

Sociologists have studied New Zealand: “According to the Wall Street Journal, virtually the only United States companies to fare consistently well on Wall St during the Great Depression were the purveyors of “cheap vices” like tobacco and sweets.” (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10558490). Kiwis are showing depression-era behaviours.

And cigarette and alcohol sales have actually gone up – the only things to buck the trend – since the recession/depression hit. It seems you can’t take it with you.

1. Figures released last Friday revealed alcohol available for consumption rose 3.4 per cent, showing that retailers were stocking up.
2. They also show that the number of available cigarettes increased 4.3 per cent, to 2.5 billion in 2008.

Great news for all the wrong people, as usual.

In the United States, the sacrifice has a somewhat different nature, as word comes through that no matter what they can’t afford in the recession/depression, Americans will not give up soft toilet paper (See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america).

Writes The Observer: “The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom … Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.”

It seems that no matter how many jobs are lost, those who make and clean excrement will be guaranteed jobs.

"The one without a politician's face on it"

Why do we have politicians?

We all know that politicians are a necessary evil and that some are more or less necessary and/or evil than others, but from time to time all of us reflect on that magical question: why do we need them? We know for sure that they can’t all be as uplifting as Roosevelt, as demagogic as Churchill, as matinee-idol charismatic as Obama or as brainwashingly charismatic as Hitler. They can’t all use a one-liner like David Lange (NZ) had done, or even Aussie’s DPM Julia Gillard.  The negatives outweigh the positives: after all, they eat up big salaries, get tons of expensive perks involving planes and hotels and free drinks, and they hardly ever do anything that we wanted. In the light of overwhelming negative evidence, let me present some reasons why we need politicians.

1. Human psychology needs a scapegoat. We all need someone to blame, to take the ultimate blame. This is the main reason for politicians. They hold the can. This is obvious in the fact that people use terms like ‘Rudd’ or ‘Bush’ or ‘Obama’ or ‘Key’ or ‘Clark’ synecdochally, as in ‘Key better do something about unemployment now or the country will go to the dogs’. This means the Pres or PM comes to stand for a bigger concept, such as the party, the whole government, or even the country, in people’s utterances. It does not matter which of these you wish to blame, the name of the top dog politician can be inserted and you feel better. The pressure on ‘Obama’, as on the man, his party and his country, is unequalled. But Obama’s the man, right?

2. Human beings need a laugh. The inanities of politicians the world round – and the things that say in some interviews or in the house – make wonderful press. George Bush is well known for his Bushisms and other Malapropisms (They are even in the comedy movie whose title only Texans can pronounce, “W”). John Key’s stand up comedy act is well known in New Zealand. We love to see the foot-in-mouth syndrome, and when it is balanced by the media quoting politicians out of context, it becomes wonderful. Perhaps this is what is happening in today’s article on politicians in The Age, ‘The comedy club that is our parliament in full cry’ (See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-comedy-club-that-is-our-parliament-in-full-cry-20090228-8l2e.html). When they are not funny, they are manipulated by the media in ways to make them seem funny, as in the idea of Helen Clark as an old Commie in Helengrad.

3. Different nations like to mock other nations’ politicians in order to feel that theirs aren’t so bad after all. Whenever we think of Kim Jung-Il or Robert Mugabe, or any one of the many despots in underprivileged and politically imprisoned nations on the world, we count ourselves lucky that the worst we can say about ours is that he is a stand-up comedian tryhard. In 2008, Bush was such a world focus for ‘loathe the other country’s politician’ that he nearly took all America with him, with anti-Americanism reaching epidemic proportions in popular and media discourse and many Americans, especially Sean Penn, saying that it’s understandable why people have turned on Uncle Sam (who is another synecdoche). His Dad had a similar ability to embarrass his entire nation – and there are many politicians throughout history who have performed this international function well.

4. Following the death of Princess Di, we are short of celebrities, unwilling to let Paris Hilton hog the category, and allow politicians occasionally into The Women’s Weekly. Politicians as celebrities? It seems oxymoronic. Helen Clark, the photoshopped version, made it to the cover of The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, as have other politicians in celebrity-starved Kiwiland. I’m not sure so much that we read about them and their families and tragedies with sare as much as guilty pleasure. And if they are involved in a scandallous, especially something involving semen like Clinton’s, they are likely to make it even further down the pecking order of the press and end up in The Sun on page 3. Our desire for celebrity, especially in recession times, is stronger than ever. We are internuts, even YOU. See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10558729

New Zealand's Best Stand-Up comedian, second from right

5. They make us feel we could do better. How often, in your anger at inane politicos, do you find yourself declaring that either you yourself, or sometimes a performing monkey, could do a better job than such-and-such a politician. well, this is one of the reasons why we need them. They help us to imagine ourselves in their situation, doing better, helping people and saving the world. We might not have as full an understanding of the budget at first, but our hearts will be in the right place. They may not be inspirational, but in this example, they could be aspirational.

6. We can joy in the downfall. Ultimately, even popular politicians lose their shine and become risible. There’s usually a moment when you can’t wait for them to be voted out, and participating in the process of getting rid of that politico gives you displaced joy and that feeling of Schadenfreude. I can remember the wave of relief in New Zealand when Piggy Muldoon was voted out after an eternity of economy- sapping ‘thinking big’ and again when turncoat Roger Douglas was ejected from the Big Brother House of Parliament. England’s relief when Margaret Thatcher, and again Tony Blair, left, both depopularised, was tangible. Never, never outstay your welcome. The canny politicians go gracefully at moments of the year when there are other things to occupy the Zeitgeist. They just slip away quietly, as Michael Cullen in NZ has announced he will do and as Helen Clark seems to have done. Just slip away, fire your speech writer, spin doctor and image consultant, and don’t answer media calls any more. Cullen and Clark deprive people of that gloat which is a vital psychological process for people in dealing with change, even change we pushed for, no matter how ill-advised we were. Yes, politicians help us feel better by providing us with the chance for smug gloating.

7. To help us with our insomnia. In The Age, Aussie politicians are accused of a cardinal crime: being boring. “Asked by journalists soon after whether he was indeed a “toxic bore”, Rudd seemed to revel in the title, launching into an exquisitely dull lecture on the restoration of private credit markets”. The article, which you should read for a laugh, asks whether being boring in question time might be a political strength. I say this: listening to these guys on the radio works better as a cure for insomnia thanreading wither The Bible or The Faerie Queen.

8. We can watch them reform into human being again. I have heard, and it may be true, that former NZ Prime Minister Jenny Shipley (‘The Ship’, ‘Big Jen’ or any other of the misogynistic, but still funny,  appellations suggesting to be overweight and female are bad things for public figureheads) has become a better person after reflecting of her years in the Hate Seat as Prime Minister of New Zealand. She once famously prosecuted  fellow for picking a daffodil from her property (but he did do it knowing it was her daffodil) and this story cemented her wicked witch status in the public psyche. On the flipside of the witch is usually a feminist, and some of her quips made it onto the internet: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jenny_shipley.html.

Now, low and behold, she has lost a lot of weight (thanks to Jenny Craig, with whom she was often confused anyway), spoken about her diabetic scare, been seen on the street collecting for the Heart Foundation, travelled to Namibia for a TV reality/ travel programme – and started wearing red, Labour colours – which actually suit her while the traditional conservative blue made her look priggish and self-satisfied. Can politicians actually evolve beyond the caricatures the media creates for them?

I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt until I heard that this week she was heard gloating on National Radio that for her recent 57th birthday “Burt”, as she calls her husband Burton, had bought her two electric toilets for their yacht.

• With thanks to http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/spy-rachel-glucina/2009/2/27/jenny-shipleys-life-change-and-pics-dean-spanley-premier/?c_id=1501135&objectid=10559052  and  http://3.bp.blogspot.com/

The Truth about Technology

It’s a global village. Communication brings us closer. We are all part of a community joined by technology. The world is getting smaller. We can all have many friends. There are even social networking sites for your dog (http://www.theage.com.au/national/how-social-networking-has-gone-to-the-dogs-20090207-80gc.html).

We communicate more. Yeah, right.

Since I’ve been in Melbourne, despite every technological device available to me, I feel less out of touch than ever, and received fewer communications, including fewer emails, the obvious mode of distance communication. The obvious conclusion is: yes, there is a psychological factor called distance. This is mostly because most immediate communications are made in an effort to set up a dinner or a lunch or a face-to-face tete-a-tete: not going to happen when the seas are wide, so you cannot get o’er. There are, indeed, still people who think a call from NZ to Aussie is going to cost megabucks: a generation still suffers from Telecom’s over-inflation. Currently, I have the following media in my arsenal apart from this blog:

• Three email addresses (home, work, back up with gmail)
• A facebook page (I’ve got, like, 6 friends, so I can’t use it like Obama can)
• A work webpage
• A Skype account and msn and yahoo messengers
• Home lines
• A mobile with an Aussie SIM card
• A Mont Blanc fountain pen
• Oh, and a home address. I did actually receive a letter in 2008. Thanks, Diana.

Where is the art of writing? Is it all gone to blog? It’s unlikely to go into emails, as most are short and to-the-point: just keeping in touch; here are my snaps. All lovely.  (To be true, I appreciate my several lovely stay-in-touch by e-mail friends. It is a bit lonely, so your detail is wonderful). Blogs are fine for detailing to one and all, my dear friends, those anecdotal and generalisable events and armchair philosophisings that take up a lot of normal converation space, but the feeling is that they are impersonal. So are emails that seem like newsletters. Even when I wrote detailed emails to friends they assumed they were newsletters. Sure, we may cut and paste a paragraph of general interest, but you are always the target audience. YOU.

There are some who txt me from nz. It seems a bit short-changing and perfunctory, to be sure, but it’s just staying in touch in a convenient idiom and medium. Sometimes even grave messages are communicated by text: “Am in hosptl …” In movies and even in reality (the girl in Taupo New Zealand) people try to txt for help before they are about to be _____(ed)(fill in nasty thing according to your imagination), but I think I’d be shaking too much and cursing the stupid stupid stupid inventor who makes ’s’ four pushes. Sometimes I think even txts may be copied or ’sent to many’. That’s fine too. We are busy. Nice to be remembered. But again, it is the feeling of the personal; that counts. But I’m sure that before now I’ve received a text intended for someone else. I’m sure that is another teen-slasher-movie plot! Maybe based on the Stephen King novel shown here.

Auckland and Melbourne are so close. Maximum 4 hours by air*. The two-hour time difference impacts on people’s psyche when it comes to phoning. That little calculation you do, ‘if it’s 7 pm here, it’s 5 there, they won’t be home from work yet’ means you’ve thought of it and it goes out of your mind. I do it too. The conclusion is usually ‘oh, it’ll be too late to ring politely now’. My Mum has a pact with me: 8pm Thursdays or Sundays, NZ time.

Mobiles are the biggest disappointment in the history of all media. Not only do they ring at all the wrong times and all the wrong places, but people actually now expect you be omni-available. Businesses, utilities, banks, hairdressers, friends. Hello, I work. I work with people. I’m in meetings. I’m in interviews. Hence, another medium of conversation is the phone message, which you respond to with another phone message because everyone’s in the same boat and all honest workers have them switched off during work time to avoid stealing company time. I mean, there’s such a lot in the news about people googling and facebooking on work computers in work time, but it’s the mobiling that eats so much more time that ought to be used for productive work. (I guess it’s just too controversial, given the Telecos are the real deputy rulers of the nations after the oil-corps). And when people do get through, they tend to drivel. This article in The Age is both amusing and mildly offensive in its satirical tone about what to do when someone invades your space with mobile drivel: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/turn-off-that-phone-the-real-scourge-of-public-transport-20090205-7yx3.html

*That dishonest way of advertising airfares (I thought Air NZ had been fined for doing it, but maybe they need more Pavovian conditioning than that) is definitely a disincentive to people who would visit, or fly. They click expecting the advertised seat for $199 one way, then after surrendering lots of data over an unstable Xtra connection (what other sort is there with Xtra?), find that airport taxes and random pay-outs total an extra $_ _ _ (enter three figures of choice; I know it’s happened to you). They end up not booking at all. Hello, morons in Marketing. Aren’t people being made redundant in your area? Come in, flight control!

Read me, and say something!

The Human Circus

I recently watched the almost music-free Ginger Rogers film of Weill's Lady in The Dark, 1944.

There are so many contexts where I would rather watch the operations of human behaviour than discreetly stick my nose in a book. Human beings offer such an infinity of possibility, many of them hilarious. On long train journeys or inside sardine-packed trams, it’s often unavoidable to let the eyes stray or the ears prick up to the sounds of human frailty. I can easily be amused by the shallow and lengthy content of people’s cell phone calls. Of course the entertainment is not the content, but their behaviour. I can get 5 minutes of a smile from this. People argue and diss others in public too: two minutes. They bitch about their boss: one.

Occasionally real life occurs within earshot. I’ve overheard long monologues about drug deals, suicides, plans to mug people. People often tell their life story, oblivious. You can watch them, singly and in packs, and imagine their stories. In Australia everyone has a story. Stories are Aussie culture, and every dream is a story to be told. We are all products of our own stories, and there’s a book in everyone. Creative writing is given more kudos here, and every week the local newspapers report the latest teenager who has won a short story prize. Young people get inspired. And those who don’t listen to goings-on in the train often read real books, not just pulp, but literature and biography. Those that do listen are likely to gain the human knowledge useful for future writerly pursuits. The human circus provides the best input in the university of life for aspiring writers.

Back on the train

The St Kilda pier is such a civilised place to go and look back at the baking young bodies on the beach and back towards the city skyline with the twin towers of the Footscray Bridge in the background. They still make leaf tea in pots, although the young women who make it are showing their belly buttons. Down the way, young bodies jump off the pier in youthful vigour, their designer underwear bands emergent beneath their designer bandless shorts. The modesty of two layers is lost on a child of the bikini age.

Today the beaches were lined with browning bodies, baking unashamedly without the Kiwi ‘slip slop slap’. The ozone doesn’t burn here and when you’re an overcautious Kiwi you stay white white white if you behave as normal and smother on the SPF 30. I’m the whitest I’ve ever been despite being in the sunniest bakiest summer I’ve ever had. Kiwi habits die hard. I’ve not lain unclad on he beach this year. There’s so much more to do clad. Along the esplanade, parachutes or paraglides colourfully fill the horizon and yachts drift by without a thought of sharks. Only I am gruesome enough to imagine that. And then after taking the light rail from Port Melbourne, where the vulgar cruise ships are lined up – the something-Dam beside the some-gem-Princess, back to Southern Cross Station to take the train home is always a pleasure. This station always amuses me because the announcer always has his adenoids in his nose. ‘The train about to leave platform 10’, he, intones. ‘clank clank claink’. He talks like knucklebones being shaken in a tea-tin. I’m sure no-one understand, or expects to. It only takes 7 minutes by train to get home.