Murder on the block

One of the reasons for leaving New Zealand last year was the massive increase in violence on the roads in the form of aggressive driving, tailgating, abusive drivers, extremely loud boom-boom driving and violence against pedestrian and cyclist traffic. This is the nation where the problem is so severe that they are seriously taking about introducing car-crushing boy racer legislation (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565577). Today we learn that there was an effective murder by road-rage on my old block outside my old places of work.

It transpires that a 78-year-old Te Atatu grandfather was violently beaten following a minor crash on Carrington Rd, the artery of the former Rt Hon. Helen Clark’s Mt Albert, at about 7.50 am on April 6. He subsequently died. “Police have now launched a homicide inquiry.”

Crossing this road was always like running the gauntlet due to violent driving; so much so that a 40 kmh school zone was installed in 2008. Mothers in armoured SUV dropping off kids at school hours and Unitec students late for lectures contributed to the war zone feel of the strip. The fact that children walk along this street on their way to school made little difference to driver behaviour, except at rush hour when it was so bumper to bumper, it was to be avoided. Forget stranger danger; the danger is black and on wheels.

A 27-year-old student from the Pacific Islands in a black BMW responded aggressively after a minor altercation with the other drivers’ Nissan van. And kids from the local primary school were witnesses. “There was just a lot of blood. His eyes were closed, he was just breathing heavily.” See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565868.

The equivalent of this in Melbourne today was a case of train rage. A passenger who abused a train driver at Flinders Street Station, probably after yet another delayed train, was left with a broken nose and fractured jaw (http://www.theage.com.au/national/train-driver-in-brawl-with-passenger-20090408-a0pl.html). Train delays/ cancellations occur increasingly often these days, though in general the delays are still minor compared to those I experienced in Auckland. Yesterday even an Auckland Regional Council chief was delayed on a train for 2 hours in one such delay (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565613).

Easter roads remain obsessive on both sides of the Tasman. In Victoria, a heavy police presence on the roads over Easter will focus on driver fatigue during the heavy traffic long weekend: “the clear killers are speed, alcohol, fatigue, mobile phones and safety belts, so they’ll be our focus.” (http://www.theage.com.au/national/police-urge-drivers-to-rest-refresh-over-easter-20090407-9zmj.html). Well, strictly speaking safety belts are the opposite of killers, but then these guys are Aussies.

In Auckland, meanwhile, the regular Easter heavy traffic warning was issued (q.v. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565893) – despite the costly Puhoi toll road which was supposed to obviate such warnings but has only resulted in massive queues. Will these people never, never learn? Ho hum. I still get riled though I’m far. Close to home, but far.

Talk and Die

We all know the teacher’s evil eye. It fixes the over-verbal malefactor or miscreant with a cruel sternness that says ‘talk and die’.

This week google has gone mad with people fascinated by the cause of Natasha Richardson’s death. In traumatology, it is “a clinical presentation in acceleration-deceleration brain injury, which may cause massive cerebral edema, that may have a latency period–eg, 48-72 hrs, until death. Cf subarachnoid hemorrhage” (medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com).

People suffering from “Talk and Die Syndrome” may appear fine at first, talking and acting normally as Richardson was, only to slip slowly into unconsciousness, coma and even death as blood floods the brain.

As we know from the many reports, Natasha Richardson was reported to be “fine at first” after she hit her head in a skiing accident, but the 45-year-old actress’ health began to deteriorate within an hour. The press reported her dead before she actually was, spread a fascination with talk and die syndrome, and have now elevated the actress to Heather Ledgerian ‘too young to die’ posthumous immortality. The media covered her accident, not death, death, tributes, funeral, organ donation – the full grief process of her family – in full view despite the family’s and Neeson’s desire for ‘privacy’. There is a new term for this: ‘grief porn’ (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10564063). Natasha Richardson (Redgrave Neeson) died on March 18, 2009.

She was lovely, intelligent, a Tony-award winner (“Cabaret”, 1998), a Redgrave and so a Royal, Liam Neeson’s beloved partner and, like Princess Diana, a mother of two fine boys. She was wonderful in The Handmaiden’s Tale (1990) and The White Countess (2005), a Li-lo and a J-Lo costar and now she is elevated beyond what she achieved in her career. All tragic, and now we all know what talk and die is.

It is not the wish that occurs in your brain when someone talks and talks ad infinitum without letting another person get a word in edgewise.

With my crossbow, I shot the albatross

A Woman's Weekly Story 2009

In Glen Eden, West Auckland, Adele Curran, 42, was watering pot plants on the deck in January. Suddenly, a crossbow arrow fired by her neighbour whizzed through the air and embedded itself 3cm into her skull. As Women’s Weekly readers so graphically see, it wedged between her right eye socket and nose. At first Adele thought a bird had flown into her, an albatross perhaps? Then it hit her and she saw the bolt’s shaft sticking out of her head. “I could feel the blood going down my face and in my nose and throat”. Said her father John, evoking something nautical rather than botanical, “There was a lot of blood on the deck and she was screaming and screaming.”

It was indeed all hands on deck. Her heroic son and the wonderful St. John’s Ambulance people saved the day and the amazing surgeons saved her eye after weeks of operations.

And good on her, like Jade Goody the Patron Saint of Exploiting Ill Fortune, for getting money for this. Goody died today. RIP.

As for the neighbour, he was only playing with his new toy, a Christmas gift from his wife, readily available in New Zealand from your local hardware shop, when it suddenly went off. A fool and his bolt are soon shot, as the saying goes.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10562885

Animals and Real Estate Agents

I’ve commented several times on the recurrence of stories about nature’s revenge in the mass media, and usually we can contextualise these tragedies within an ecological discourse so that they have an educational purpose. But today’s headless story was just gruesome for the sake of a semi-voyeuristic, gratuitous story, fodder for people who loved Saw 5. See it at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10561356 and rank it as a tragedy disguised as horror story.

Atrocities against children are common in the media too, as part of the ways in which our emotions are contorted and manipulated by the monstrousness/ monstrosity of crime leveled against the very young and the defenseless. Today we learn that Aaron Deng kidnapped little Xin Xin Ma. This was a media-grabbing 2008 story that seemed all the more relevant in the wake of the ‘little Pumpkin’ abandonment and tragedy that the media reported with soap opera-like glee. Little Chinese girl victims make good sympathetic media fodder in New Zealand. Read the story of the little girl found in a cupboard wrapped up in a blanket and hungry here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10561282.

For me the atrocity was not merely about opportunistically kidnapping a member of your own community for pecuniary gain, but the fact that the perpetrator was a real estate agent! This solidified my belief that real estate agents, unreformed and unreconstructed ones, are the lowest form on life, almost as low as the crocodile. My week’s experience (let’s not go there) certainly testifies to it, and made me which that this related story – and it’s an ‘animal bites man’ humdinger – (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10561468) was about him.

But real estate agents are not the only opportunistic vermin in New Zealand this week, although these other criminals criminalise in victimless contexts. Other pillars of the community – bank managers and doctors – are also exposed as only being in it for the dough.

The embezzling National bank manager features here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1056125. I always thought that my bank fees were way too high when I was with that bank.

An extortionist and fraudulent doctor, one Dr Hongsheng Kong, is the star of the next story, and read it here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10561224. The latter received $1.3 million of Government funding by falsifying data about patients, even claiming that people who had died had visited him.

Let’s not even mention the Nathan directors’ trial in New Zealand this week. What happens to investors’ funds when companies fail? Truth will out. They will be hoist with their own petards. In literature, this is known as ‘the biter bit’.

‘Crocodile bites off girl’s head’ is tragedy masquerading as sensationalism. ‘Crocodile bites off real estate agent’s head’ could be comedy.

Not for the Faint Hearted

The Age is not for the faint-hearted. As a fan of Jacobean revenge tragedy and not adverse to the odd bit of classic blood horror, I still found the following story far more hideous than Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal even with its man-eating pigs. It’s the one about the Chinese immigrant in Canada, and only read it if really curious about why I put it in the same paragraph as Jacobean tragedy – http://www.theage.com.au/world/beheader-not-criminally-responsible-for-murder-20090306-8qok.html

Somehow, somewhere, I wanted to make a connection between the media and horrorporn; anime and those Japanese horror media stories, and games like Carmageddon and cartoons like Scooby Doo and increased violence among children. For that story, and again it is for real, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1159766/Cartoon-violence-makes-children-aggressive.html. A researcher into the latter link, Jennifer Linder, said: ‘There is ample evidence that physical aggression on TV is associated with increases in aggressive behaviour, but there was little until this study that has shown a link between televised aggression and resulting aggression among children.’

Anyway, back to the hideousness, the media and horrorporn – and let’s add in gastroporn too (and I don’t mean Nigella). Then the day after The Age went all Peter Greenaway, fusing food, gore and grossness with the following offal story beginning “Snouts, tongues, lips, ears, livers, kidneys, brains and blood, heaps of it”: http://www.theage.com.au/national/diners-rediscover-blood-and-guts-20090307-8ryo.html. The cover picture shows once and for all that brains are better than brawn

I was vowing to return to my vegetarian roots when I came across something even more obscene: the recipe for Scooby Doo Aubergine Burgers, with or without white chocolate sauce: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/you/article-1032877/Scooby-Doo-aubergine-burgers.html

What DID you give up for Lent, by the way?

Symbol of Hope

We know that some members of the protea family and related species originating from the African continent need fire to activate the seeds. The news today uses the following image as one of hope and regeneration after the bushfires. It’s an attempt to move on, along with the celebration of the fire-fighting ‘heroes’ that the culture and the media are creating, all out of nation-pain and absolute deserving. Finally, these people have a chance to rest. Those firefighters who have died receive their eulogies and pass into lore.

This image is of a grass tree, with its wondrous ability to regenerate after wildfire. Its bottom leaves have burned away, and now there are black trunks with long, green leaves, reed-like and life-affirming, growing from their tops. The tree was brought to our attention by Geoff, who returned to his ashen, silent property hills of Strathewen, the town where 42 people died. People universally can read the sign as Geoff does: life will return here.

See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/tree-of-hope-in-a-forest-of-skeletons-20090218-8bhm.html

There will be similarly hopeful images for the rain-sodden side of Australia. The irony of living on a landmass at once beseiged by fire and water is lost on noone.

The Greatest Loser

… is Brendan (sorry, small ‘b’) Sokaluk, scrap metal merchant, misogynist arsonist and arsehole of the year. He writes, “I’d like to meet my sole mate not some old hag”.

Sole is right, as in solitary confinement.

Source: http://www.inquisitr.com/18139/bushfire-arsonist-brendan-sokaluk-worships-mother-earth-on-spooky-myspace-page/

Although he is not from New Zealand, he is a Kev’s Mate (see below) and he is into shearing. His myYearbook or Faceook page states he is  “looken for a young wife to shear my wealf with her.”

He enjoys life to ‘the fallest’ (as in Adam and Eve and the fall?), loves the country ‘chanel’ (classy!) and ‘don,t read books’ but likes ‘musice’ (Italian pronunciation, perhaps?) ‘that sounds good’. At least he did not write ‘what’.

He deserves what’s coming to him for crimes against the apostrophe ALONE.

What the blazes can Kevin Rudd do now, poor fellow? Brendan is for the John Hinckley, Jr, hall of infamy and Alexandra is his Jodie Foster. Sokaluk affiliates himself with the US religious group, “The Truth of God,” which, naturally, holds extreme views against women clergy, gay people and all of the other usual suspects. Burning for God seems to be a common terroristic trait.

One wonders what serial killers are connected to Obama’s facebook.

Day of Mourning

Sunday is decreed as a Day of Mourning for Australia.

Who will they mourn for more? Will it be the 189-and-counting bushfire victims or will it be Heath Ledger on the day his family accept his Oscar?

Kleenex are on special this week. Three boxes for $5.00. Unheard of opportunism!

Let’s Think about the Animals

Enough about mere people and their petty personal tragedies. It is the imagery of animals that the world remembers as icons and symbols. Take Sam the Koala. He might have been filmed a week or so before the bushfires proper, so fortuitously ready for opportunistic YouTubing in plenty of time, but he has struck the world’s interest far more than the images of screaming people yowling into the ashen ruins. And during the heatwaves of the week before, another koala, the one who saught a little bath and some water, received a lot of media basking. Yes, let’s think about the animals.

Every day I arrive at Lilydale and see the Healesville Sanctuary bus and wonder if this is the bus for ghoulish tourists or if there are still people who dare to go to sadly-fire-threatened Healesville to see the lovely koalas and other animals safe in Healesville’s sanctuary.

Meanwhile, a story is in of an animal lover who had to transport her menagerie to a neighbour’s yard. She evacuated and as the fires threatened “she grabbed cages of birds and marsupials, filling her trailer with goats”. Read this life-affirming story here: http://www.theage.com.au/national/wildlife-shelter-wiped-out-20090214-87pl.html

Here is another: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25038828-5006785,00.html

These stories have a way with place names. The heroine in this heartwarming story lived in Chum Creek.

We’re Going to Cut the Cable

The Iron Man and the Iron Giant were pylons sporting overhead cables in my childhood nightmares. Massive thighs of meccano-metal strode over beautiful landscapes marringly. The fiery danger in the cables was clear every time a worker got electrocuted. We knew that if they fell, and they did seem so vulnerable as they swayed in gales, then we were all a little more vulnerable.

Who would have thought that both New Zealand and Australia should be part of this same Zeitgeist this week?

The terrifying Marysville fire in Victoria may have been due to negligence on the part of The Electric Company according to the latest in the news (See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/huge-fire-class-action-launched-20090214-87pg.html). A two-metre stretch of powercable snapped. The location was – would you believe it? – Kilmore. We are reminded that it is not an Aussie Electricity Company. It is Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet. It’s a message about bloody foreign owenwership too, it seems, deeply encoded inside the story.

Meanwhile, Kiwi Prime Minister John Key has lambasted as “totally unacceptable” a failure that sent a huge power cable crashing on to houses in (please believe it, I did not make up this name either!!!) Flat Bush, Manukau. Reports The Herald, “Some residents fled when they got the chance and ran across the street, but others had to stay indoors as the live wire sent out sparks” (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10556727). This time the power company is called (ahem, in the light of my last Key post) Transpower.

We may have a sensation that Kiwis do like to copy Aussie disasters, even in small scale. After all, the news is just out that a notoriety-seeking copycat firebug has turned chalets and barns and lots of bush on Mt Ruapehu’s summered skifield into burnt rubble (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10556814). That person should be reminded that the 39-year old local man arrested for arson yesterday has the wrath of locals upon him. They want to lynch the bastard.

What are these guys thinking? This article provides insights into empty minds: http://www.theage.com.au/national/inside-the-mind-of-a-serial-firebug-20090214-87po.html