I have something to say

So here’s the thing.

I tend not to post very often, and certainly never about anything that actually matters, but sometimes there’s just things you need to say. And apparently I’m angry enough to feel like I need to say this.

I first heard about the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo when checking Twitter that morning. In the flurry of tweets on the issue, I saw someone had retweeted an old article from The Onion, called “No One Murdered Because Of This Image”. The article features a rather explicit image of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Ganesha involved in a four-way. The article noted that, after the image was published, “... no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened... not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way.” The article also states that “Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.”

I’d seen the article before, back when it was first published in 2012. I was offended by the image then, and I still am now, for multiple reasons. One of those is just for taste reasons; I really did not need to see Ganesha forcing his fist into Buddha’s rear. But also, I am a sincere, Bible-believing, conservative Christian, and the image of my Lord and Saviour portrayed in that manner is offensive.

And yet, on Friday morning, I posted a link to that Onion article to my Facebook page. (Admittedly I did remove the preview of the actual image from my page; when your Facebook friends include multiple church pastors, you tend to avoid posting explicit sexual images straight onto your Facebook feed, even if they are just cartoons.) I posted that article on my Facebook page because, as much as I may be offended by that type of content, I also whole-heartedly believe that living in a free society means recognising that other people have different views to my own, that those views may occasionally be expressed in ways that I may find offensive, and that part of being a mature adult in a modern society means that we accept this risk of offence as a fact of life. And I thought The Onion article was a nicely humorous way of making that point. (Leaving the image itself aside, the supporting article is very funny, and the image has to be deeply offensive for the joke to work.)

This morning I was listening to Radio New Zealand, and heard a piece about a multi-faith prayer vigil that was held at the Wellington Islamic Centre. Leaving aside the interesting issue of holding the vigil at a centre representing the faith that the perpetrators purported to represent while committing the attack, I was particularly troubled by some of the reportedcomments from one of the vigil’s participants.

“The Kilbirnie mosque's imam, Sheikh Mohammed Zewada, condemned the terror attacks, but

STOP!

STOP RIGHT FUCKING THERE!

You do not get to condemn the terror attacks, and then follow up with a “but”. Let’s be precise about language here: the word “but” is used to introduce a phrase or clause contrasting with what has already been mentioned. In other words, using the word “but” lessens, diminishes, takes away from what you’ve already said. And when what you’ve already said is a condemnation of the murder of over a dozen people, you should not in any way be seeking to diminish that. And yes, I realise this particular sentence is the reporter’s summary of what you were saying, but the fact that you expressed anything that could be reasonably presented in this manner is a problem.

Anyway, back to the article:

“The Kilbirnie mosque's imam, Sheikh Mohammed Zewada, condemned the terror attacks, but called on people to show more respect for Islam.

“He said people should stop creating images of the prophet Muhammad, which is disrespectful.”

Read these two sentences together, and it’s pretty clear what is being said here. And it’s not something I think we want to be said in New Zealand. Sure, the killings were bad. But then, what the victims did that led to their deaths was also bad.

And here we come to the actual quote from the imam. “‘I totally disagree with what has happened in Paris. [But] freedom of expression does not mean I have the right to abuse other people or ridicule their faith,’ he said.”

See, here’s the thing. YES, IT FUCKING WELL DOES! It is inherent in “freedom of expression” that we do have the right to offend and to ridicule. Because if a person’s view is that someone else’s faith is ridiculous or offensive, and yet that person is constrained from expressing that view, their freedom of expression is absolutely constrained.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” And sure, this right is not unconstrained. You can’t use your freedom of expression to bring actual harm to another person, you can’t yell Fire in a crowded room, you can’t issue death threats, you can’t access harmful images (such as those of children being abused). But beyond these constraints which are deemed reasonable in a free and democratic society, the State has no right to impose limits on how we exercise our freedom of expression. But that is what is being called for – where there is a clash between freedom of expression and freedom of religion, freedom of religion should take precedence.

(In the piece aired on the radio, it’s even clearer what the imam is calling for: “...we need to agree to set up some kind of law to put an end, or put some kind of regulation if I can say this word, to the freedom of expression to guarantee that this world shall live in peace and harmony.” That is unambiguous. He is expressly calling for a law change to prevent people from exercising their freedom of expression if it would offend another’s (more specifically, his) religion.)

Here’s the thing: in our society, it doesn’t just stop with the person saying the offensive thing. The person who is offended also has freedom of expression. They have the right to complain, to express their views. They can even organise a protest to peacefully (I emphasise the word “peacefully” – and placards calling for death do not count as peaceful protest) express en masse how offended they are. That’s something that the Christian community has been very good at in the past (although admittedly, I do think that the Christian community has got it wrong at times; I genuinely believe we were wrong to be so offended by Monty Python’s Life of Brian or The Last Temptation of Christ, the former being one of the great film comedies, and the latter being a film that I found deeply moving and thought-provoking as an exploration of the person of Christ and His sacrifice).

And after the expression of offence, who knows? Perhaps the person causing offence will see the strength of the community view, will understand better what they have done and will think better of it. Or perhaps they’ll just be delighted by the extra attention brought to the offence. (Admittedly, that’s usually what happens in this situation; things that might have been ignored draw crowds keen to understand the controversy – after all, how many people have now seen the Charlie Hebdo cartoons because of the attack? or saw The Interview to understand why North Korea was so offended?) But really, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is. Because the important thing is that EVERYONE has freedom of expression, and was able to choose to exercise it or not.

If you’re not happy with the fact that we have freedom of expression in New Zealand, well, I’m sure there are places you can go where the prophet Muhammad is respected, and perhaps these are places that are more to your liking. But it is absolutely unacceptable for you to try to change our society and restrict our freedoms to suit your worldview.

Goodbye Aunty

So here's the thing.

When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly sociable. So, when I was about 14, my parents applied their parental pressure to force me to go to the church youth group. I didn't want to go - it was on Saturday nights, and I had things to do on Saturday nights (mostly TV watching). But they forced me to choose between a couple of choices, and the youth group seemed the best of my options. So, rather unwillingly, I started going. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that happened to me. I met a lot of great people; my best friends, people I will be close to for the rest of my life, come from that group. And over the next 3½ years, we grew to be such a strong group. And I met Daphne.

Daphne was the woman who ran the group, along with her husband. She would have been in her late-40s at the time, and she was wonderful. The family didn't have a lot, but what they had was always freely given. For all of us, she was less of a youth group leader, and more like a second mother. Many was the time when I would just go around to her place after school, unannounced, just because I felt like it, and I'd walk in to find a few other members of the group already there, having also decided to go around for a visit. And we'd just stay there for hours. If our parents were trying to find us, Daphne's was always the first place they would go to look. I'd even heard stories about how people would take the new person they're dating around to meet Daphne for her approval. Daphne was someone we all loved, so, so much, and she was one of the defining influences for all of us during our teenage years.

As I'm writing this, there's one moment that really comes to mind - something I haven't thought about in years. I was at church one night, and I had a thought come to mind; "Give Daphne some money." I won't say how much, but it was a specific amount of money, one that was very daunting as a high school student working just a few hours a week to have to give away. But I knew I needed to do it. So the next day I went to the cash machine and got the money out, then went to their place. Her husband was there, and said she wouldn't be available for quite a while. I said I'd wait. About 45 minutes later, Daphne emerged from her bedroom, looking grave, then surprised to see me. We went out, sat on the steps outside the house, and I handed her the envelope, saying that I felt I needed to give this to her. She looked in the envelope, was startled, and refused to take it. I pressed her, said that I was really certain that I had to give it. "Why?" she asked. "I don't know," I replied. Then she remembered a particular expense that had just come up, and the money was just enough to cover that. And then she started to talk in vague terms about another situation that she was going through. I don't know what the situation was - she never provided details and I didn't want them since it wasn't my business. But I know it was serious. She'd just spent the last hour in her bedroom praying for a resolution to that particular situation, and as she prayed she really felt that God was saying that He was in control and would provide a solution. And then she walked out of her bedroom, to find me with a gift that would help with a different problem. It didn't solve her big concern, but she told me how it restored her confidence that everything would be okay, whatever the situation. And her face at that moment, this mix of burden and relief, of discouragement and faith restored, was just wonderful. For all the encouragement, for all the support that she'd given me, it was a blessing to be able to encourage and support her when she needed it.

Long after she stopped actually working with the youth, she remained a central part of the church. Having a conversation with her after the service bordered on impossible. There were always people - her friends, people who were once part of her youth group, or as years passed even the children of those former youth group members - coming up for a hug or a talk. And she was inspirational - a number of the people who went to that group are now themselves involved in the youth ministry, either in after-hours work or in one case as his full-time occupation. And I know that they will all cite Daphne as a role model, and point to that group that we had as being the perfect example of what they want to see develop among their youth.

Sadly I lost a lot of that connection with Daphne when I left home. When I came home on holiday, I'd see her at church, and I'd say Hello, and she'd hug me, and I'd get embarrassed. I'd say "Certainly I'll come around to visit," and then often wouldn't, because I didn't get around to it, or I had other things on, or sometimes I'd just forget, or whatever excuse I had. But it didn't matter, because I knew that I'd be able to catch up with her next time. And that's how years would pass without my ever revisiting that house, years in which our relationship was made up solely of brief interrupted conversations after a church service.

About 18 months ago, I was back in my home town for a week, and was sitting next to Daphne during the Sunday morning service. During the sermon, Daphne just keeled forward and stayed there, her head resting on the back of the seat in front. She wasn't moving, just still. I was shocked, thinking "my gosh, is she dead?" But her husband didn't seem surprised or bothered by it - he just sat there, rubbed her back, and after a few minutes when she recovered, he got her a glass of water - so I figured whatever was happening, it must have happened before. But it was still significant enough that, during the following week, she went in for tests. When I saw her the following Sunday, she had the results: she had cancer, and it was serious.

There's nothing like the prospect of losing someone to realise just how much you actually care about them. Now, every time I went back home, I always made a point of visiting and spending time with Daphne. We'd catch up, she'd reflect on her life, tell me stories, and offer suggestions about how I should be living my life. It was wonderful to spend time with her, to see the way her face would light up with excitement whenever I'd appear and say Hello. But always there was that moment when I'd have to ask how things were going, and a cloud would come over. She'd talk about the treatments she was going through, and she'd ask that I remember her and her family in my prayers. She was always optimistic, never lost her faith, always believed that she would be healed. But she also knew that, even if she never recovered, she'd lived a good life, would be going to a better place, and her influence would live on after her in those of us that she worked with.

I was back home for a few weeks over Christmas, but just after I arrived, I became horribly sick. Even after I recovered enough to leave the house, I stayed away from Daphne. I was still sick, and figured it's not wise to go spreading bugs to someone who is already unwell. So, other than a quick "Hello, Sorry I Couldn't See You, Goodbye" at church on the day I left, I never saw her. And I was disappointed by that, but no matter. I'll see her at Easter.

And then I got a phone call this morning from a good friend of mine, someone who was also in the youth group. If the out-of-the-blue early morning phone call wasn't enough of a clue that something was wrong, you could hear the sadness in his voice as he greeted me. "My gosh," I thought, "what's happened?" And then he said it. "Aunty Daphne died earlier today."

Daphne - I love you. I miss you. I thank you so much for everything you ever did for me, for always being someone to talk to, for just being there. Thank you for your encouragement, for your constant joy. I hope you knew how much you really did mean to all of us. You've gone too soon, but I'll see you again, and I look forward to that day. Until then, I'll always remember you.
To her family - I know how hard things must be for you all. Just know that my prayers, and those of the many many people who knew and loved her, are with you right now.
And to all those who knew her - You'll agree with me that it has been the richest blessing to have her in our lives.

Goodbye Aunty.

Rarrrrrrrrrrrrggghhh!

So here's the thing.

I think I may be a monster. I'm worried that I may be a horrible, cruel, unsympathetic person.

Let me explain: this whole thing has arisen out of an episode of the This American Life radio show. I've written in the past about my love for the show, and two years on from writing that post, I remain utterly fascinated by it. I look forward to hearing each new episode, I'm still working my way through the 400-odd episode backlog of the show, and it still hasn't lost its hold on me. I love it, and if you've never heard it, I strongly encourage you to go to the website and just start listening. It's really great.

There's one story in particular that I would encourage you to listen to. It's from episode #363: Enforcers, and the story runs from 5:30 to 35:30 in the episode. So it's a long story (half an hour), but it's worth it. Feel free to go away, listen to it, and then come back.

Okay, so hopefully you've listened to it. If you haven't here's a quick summary. These three guys run this reverse-scam on someone running a Nigerian email scam. The three guys pose as a church, and then when the person running the scam (who incidentally really is Nigerian) asks for money, they tell him that if he travels to the neighbouring country of Chad, the representative from their church's mission will be able to meet him there to give him the money. Now, bear in mind, as far as the scammer knows, he's stealing from a church, taking money that is intended to help the people of the region. So the scammer travels across the border into Chad. But then the church's representative supposedly has difficulties getting to to where the scammer is, so the scammer has to go further to find the representative. And so slowly they draw the guy deeper and deeper into Chad, further and further away from home until finally he's 1400 miles away from home, in a city on the edge of Chad less than 100 miles from war-torn Darfur. In other words, this is a bad situation for the scammer. And then they left him there. For weeks, months even, constantly emailing him "it won't be long" to keep him around in this very dangerous situation. And he was apparently in real danger, but still he waited and waited for his money to come. Eventually the three guys got bored with him, so they emailed him and told him they had heard that his mother was dead. The scammer no doubt had a few moments of horror, but eventually got in contact with his family and discovered it was not true. And so the story ends, the scammer knows he's been played, goes home, and resumes scamming people.

Anyway, I loved that story, I genuinely think it's a fascinating story. In fact I told it to a few friends of mine, none of whom expressed any concerns about the story until I reached the part about the dead mother. Then people tended to speak up - "Oh, that's gone too far, that's not funny at all." Which I don't understand - I mean, I realise that hearing that your mother is dead is not good news, but it's not like she's really dead, and as soon as he gets in contact with his family (which you know became his first priority on receiving the news) he'll discover the lie. But the other thing I don't get is why it's the dead mother story that goes too far. I mean, why didn't my friends say anything when they abandoned the guy in a dangerous town right beside a war-torn country. Now, my friends all claimed that they had been concerned at that point, they just hadn't said anything. Maybe. But it was the dead mother story that prompted them to speak up, which would suggest that they thought that was worse than leaving the guy in Chad to begin with. And that I don't get. I don't see why telling an easily and quickly disproved lie, even one as personal and upsetting as "your mother is dead" is that much worse than putting someone in a life-threatening situation.

Anyway, there a reason why this has come up again, a couple of years after the episode aired. An interview that TAL host Ira Glass recently did has been posted on the show's website, and there's one point in the interview where they ask about instances where someone thinks they'll be the subject of a positive story, and it turns into a negative story. Ira's response?

It was a story we did about those guys who - you know those Nigerian e-mail scammers? There are guys who reverse-scammed those scammers, and a bunch of them got in contact with the radio show, saying "we're doing this really funny reverse-scam against those Nigerian scammers", and the reverse-scam basically involved - they tried to get one of those guys into a war zone in Sudan, and he nearly died, and it wasn't funny at all, and the guys seemed like monsters. But they didn't seem able to tell.

I remembered the show well, and I remember that at the time Ira wasn't entirely impressed with the guys - he clearly felt they had gone too far - but "monsters"? Really? Had the story been that unsympathetic to the reverse-scammers, had they really been presented that badly, and I completely missed it because I was on their side? So I listened to it again, and indeed the reverse-scammers really were presented very negatively, pretty much as monsters - laughing as they read his emails about his difficulties and troubles in Chad. And I missed that, because I had no problem with anything that they did.

Now, it's not like I'm entirely devoid of sympathy. Admittedly I don't have any sympathy for the scammer, nor to be honest do I have any sympathy for the scammer's victims (most of whom are, to be honest, fooled by their own greed). But listening to the story, I felt a lot of sympathy for a lot of people, chiefly the people who have to live in the town normally, whose lives are in this horrible dangerous town. I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to have to spend your life there, knowing that the prospect of a violent death is that close. So I do have sympathy, I just don't feel any sympathy for the scammer. This is a guy who came to the town, and then chose to stay there knowing it was dangerous, because of his own greed. The three guys baiting him didn't force him to stay, they just held out a choice, "our money or your life," and he wanted the money. He could have left at any time, but he chose to stay because he wanted to steal from a church money that was intended to help people. And he made it out alive - I would probably feel differently had he died in this situation, but since he didn't, so I don't need to worry about moral issues about responsibility and can just enjoy the story. So I can't understand why this guy gets any sympathy. Why are the three guys baiting him monsters, am I a monster to being on their side, and why is the thieving bastard trying to steal money intended for charitable purposes not a monster? I honestly can't understand it.

I mean, there's a little coda to the story where the scammer actually manages to do worse than try to steal charitable money from a church. Some time later, the guys are contacted again by the same scammer, and this time they pose as a father with a sick child. At one point, the guys tell the scammer "I need the money for an operation to save the life of my child," and the scammer says "give me your money, and the money you make will pay for the operation." The scammer was actively trying to steal money believing that without that money a child would die. And I don't see any ambiguity about that. That is evil. Pure evil. And from my point of view, someone as evil and hateful as that deserves everything that he went through. Every single moment of terror, of pain, of grief, all deserved. And I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that there is anyone else in the story that deserves the label of "monster". And yet the guy who makes the show that raised the whole issue thinks I'm viewing this story from the entirely wrong point of view.

So this is what I'm grappling with. Who are the monsters in this story, and if it's the three guys (which it seems is the position of both Ira and those friends that I told the story to), then what does it say about me that I am on their side? Does that make me a cruel and unfeeling and vindictive monster because I can't see how terrible they are? I like to think I'm a generally good nice person, and while I occasionally joke about hating all of humanity, I don't think I'm that bad. But who knows, perhaps my grumpy-old-man act isn't as much of an act as I thought it was. Perhaps it's hardened me to the point that I can easily dismiss the suffering of another person with a response of "he deserved it, the end." And the thought of actually being that person scares me.

Review in passion

So here's the thing.

I read an article the other night, one of the most impressive pieces of writing I've encountered in a while. It's called "The Letter I Would Love To Read To You In Person", and I strongly recommend you follow that link and read it. It's an article, apparently written last year, by a young Filipino film critic I'd previously never heard of named Alexis Tioseco, and it really is an extraordinary piece of writing. It's framed as a love letter, but like no other love letter I've encountered. He's not just writing about his love for a girl, a Slovenian film critic by the name of Nika Bohinc, he's also pondering his life growing up and moving as a teenager to the Philippines, he's writing a personal reflection on his connection with and passion for Filipino films, and he's writing a manifesto about what needs to change in that country's film industry. And if it seems strange that all these should be mixed in a love letter, well, as Tioseco comments, "The first impulse of any good film critic, and to this I think you would agree, must be of love. To be moved enough to want to share their affection for a particular work or to relate their experience so that others may be curious." There's a passion that pours out of the letter that's infectious - I've never heard of the films of Antoinette Jadaone, or the animations of Roxlee, but suddenly I feel like I need to learn about them, that I'm losing out by not seeing their work. Alexis's passion for Filipino cinema is so complete that it seems he feels you can't fully understand him without understanding how and why he feels about his country's film output. It's a beautiful piece of writing, and in my view an essential read.

But I'm not the only person to have been reading this piece this week. I visit a few film-related blogs, and in the past few days everyone has been writing about Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc, many of them pointing to this article. And in a number of cases, the writers freely acknowledge that they've never heard of these two until this past week, but now are moved to write about them.

In the article, Tioseco mentions discussions the two have had about where they will live, commenting that Bohinc had come to terms with the idea of moving to the Philippines, and it seems that she did. Because a few days ago, Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc died when they were shot by burglars in their home in Manila. It's a strange thing to read that letter, filled with youth and vitality and passion, and to imagine that voice having been silenced. Any death in such circumstances is a tragedy, but sadly when you hear about such events, it usually almost seems distant, an abstraction, sad in concept but almost irrelevant. But in this case we can read his words and understand what a passionate, eloquent, and thoughtful person has been lost, and as I read various posts about the couple from people that knew them, it becomes clear that Nika Bohinc was no less a forceful advocate for cinema. It all drives home just how awful this event was. Rest in peace, Alexis and Nika.

But reading the letter, I found myself contemplating another issue, something that's been bothering me for the past few days. In reading Alexis Tioseco's passionate defence of the Filipino film industry, my initial thought (if I'm honest) was, "there's a Filipino film industry?" Now, of course there is, pretty much everywhere has a film industry, but I was still surprised. I like to fool myself that I'm a cultured filmgoer whose cinematic taste go beyond the ordinary multiplex, but in truth I'm not that much better than the average viewer of Transformers 2. I might go to a larger number of foreign films than most people, especially during the film festival, but even then my foreign film experience is pretty much limited to French, German, Chinese, or Hong Kong films. I stay in my cinematic box just like most other people, even if my box is marginally larger than the average. (Not that much, though - I don't think watching Jackie Chan's films with subtitles count as broadening your cinematic horizons.) Taking away film society screenings (which occasionally offer more challenging foreign films from unexpected countries that I would otherwise have never sought to see), my film viewing is still extremely limited, and largely American-centric. Even when I do see a foreign film, it's more likely to have been appointed as "worthwhile" by the American film industry, say, through an Oscar nomination for Foreign Language Film. It's easy to argue this as a consequence of availability - not even the typical arthouse cinema shows that many Filipino films, let alone an average multiplex - but that's just an excuse. Even in the film festival, which really is an opportunity to view films from everywhere, I stayed very much within my comfort zone. I mean, I enjoyed Adventureland, but did I really need to see the new film from the director of Superbad at the film festival? Couldn't I have taken the spot in my festival schedule that was occupied by that film and used it instead to sample something a bit different, something I might never have a chance to see, something outside my limits, something from the Philippines or Kazakhstan or Belarus or some country I've never heard of but that could offer me a different perspective on cinema. I could have, I didn't, and I was wrong not to do so.

Now I know that, come next year's festival, I'll be back to normal, watching the same comfortable films, limiting my foreign film consumption to films that have either received the approval of the American film industry or that come from the standard filmmaking countries. I'm not going to be adventurous, I'm not going to try anything new. I'll forget I ever wrote this post. When I come to look through the festival programme and see a film from the Philippines, I'll probably even think "Wow, I didn't know they made films in the Philippines". But right now, right at this moment, I regret my limited horizons. I just wish I would seek to break out of them.

Counter-Clockwise

So here's the thing.

I don't do time very well. No matter how hard I try, I just can never actually get myself organised enough to ever be comfortably on time for anything. On the rare occasions that I actually arrive somewhere when I'm actually supposed to, it's because I had to speed or run, and I'm becoming surprisingly skilled as a parkour practitioner simply because I have to be.

But on Friday I was doing surprisingly well. In fact, I was rather proud of how well I had done. I had parked my car at the train station, put my car keys in my pocket on top of my phone, and was now walking unhurriedly on the overbridge that crossed the tracks. I could see the train leaving the earlier station, it would arrive in about 90 seconds, I was able to just amble along knowing I would arrive on the platform right as the train pulled up, in what was possibly the first example of perfect timing in my life.

As I'm walking, my cellphone goes off. And, since I wasn't running frantically at the time, I was able to reach into my pocket and pull the phone out. A second later, I heard a distictive sound prompting me to turn around. "That's odd," I thought. "I could have sworn I heard my keys falling out of my pocket, but there's nothing there." Check my pockets, no car keys. So where are they? There's definitely nothing that I can see. Then I had a horrible thought. So I glanced over the bridge railing, and there they were. They'd obviously hit the ground right on the edge of the bridge and fallen through the small gap at the bottom of the wall, coming to rest on one of the tracks. Now, fortunately this was not the track the oncoming train was on, but nevertheless the question remains, who drops their car keys onto the train tracks?

Now obviously my instinctive reaction was to break out the free-running, leaping off the overbridge, rolling as I hit the ground, scooping up the keys and dashing for the station, propelling myself in front of the oncoming train, and seamlessly landing on the platform. However, I remembered the $20,000 fine for crossing the tracks, so I thought it was probably not a good idea to do that right in front of an oncoming train and a full platform. That would just be inviting trouble.

So instead, I walked to the platform, watched as the train pulled up, and sat and waited as the train pulled away. The strange thing is, being the "live life on the edge" person that I am, and knowing the next train wouldn't come along the tracks for 25 minutes, I was surprisingly apprehensive going out onto the tracks. In fact it took me a couple of minutes to find my keys, simply because I was so busy looking down the tracks worrying about being run over to actually look at the ground to see the keys. And once I did find them, I had to face the fact that I had a close-to-half-an-hour wait for the next train.

But the main point of this story is that this experience has taught me that I should never be on time. Had I been running late and dashing for the train, as I normally would be, I would have just ignored my phone, thus would not have lost my keys, and would therefore have caught the train I was trying to catch. As it is, I was 25 minutes late precisely because I was on time for the first time in my life. So, lesson learned: if I want to avoid being late, I just have to ensure that I'm always late.

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ADDITIONAL: 8 June 2009

So here's the thing.

I've been thinking a lot about this post over the past few hours, and I'm tempted to just take the entire post down because I don't think it works, at all. But I've decided to leave it up, although I do apologise to you all for wasting your time with it.

Part of the reason why I've decided to leave it up is that I think it's interesting to look at why it doesn't work. I'm not a big fan of much of what I've written on this blog - occasionally there might be the odd piece that I'm actually proud of, but it mostly makes me cringe. But there's nothing else quite as monumentally disasterous as this one.

There are a lot of reasons why it doesn't work. Firstly, there's the fact that there's not a lot to the story. Ultimately it comes down to "I dropped my keys, so I was late for work". Which isn't that interesting a story. I only decided to write the post when I told the story to one person, as a "this is why I was late" explanation, and they made an "only you" comment. So I initially decided to do it as a self-depreciating post. You can still see traces of that in the comments about "who drops their keys on train tracks" or my terror at stepping onto the empty tracks (which was absolutely true). The problem was, it didn't really work. I couldn't make it substantial enough to sustain a post.

So I kept adding to it. The most problematic element I added was the whole parkour idea. That was largely because I've been playing parkour-based PS3 game Mirror's Edge the last few days (great game, by the way), and I was amused by the idea of imagining someone like myself, who is significantly out-of-shape, being a parkour expert. The problem is, it just feels like a not-that-amusing joke in its first reference, and the second reference, where I claimed to consider diving off the bridge to get my keys, just doesn't work. The other problem is that it actually acts against the post - wait, I'm this big fearless parkour expert but I'm nervous when crossing empty train tracks? - and while I did try to hang a lampshade on the problem, I should have abandoned it as a joke that just does not work.
Unfortunately I didn't.

In the meantime, I was having trouble finding an ending to the story, because there really is none - I picked up my keys and waited for the next train. The End. I did toy with explaining how being late was a good thing - it meant I arrived at work literally as the alarm was going off for a fire drill, so I avoided the hassle of having to walk down the stairs - but that was just an additional irrelevancy that didn't actually offer much improvement to the ending of the story. I nearly abandoned the post at that point, until I had the realisation that the whole thing only happened because I was on time that day. I decided that would make an interesting moral to the story, to comment on how being late would have allowed me to be on time, and I reworked the post a bit to incorporate it and make it feel like there was a bit more substance to the post.

The problem is that there were now at least three ideas underpinning the post (none of which would sustain a post by themselves), and so it feels like it's actually three different posts, depending on which sentence you're reading. And because the ideas are all very different and are all intertwined in the course of the post, it becomes uneven and ionconsistent. It's all just terribly messy.

And then there's the title. One of the things I love about writing this blog are the titles for my posts. There have been times when I've had posts written and sitting around for literally weeks while I think of the perfect title. And with this post, I found myself giving up and putting a half-hearted title, "Counter-Clockwise" on the post. It's not that it's a bad title, in some ways I quite like the idea of adding to my Monty Python references a reference to a John Cleese film. It's just that I can feel the whole "let's just get this post over with" element in the title. There are posts where I'm actually proud of the titles, posts like "Juju-flop, Swut, and Turlingdrome", or "Babette Ate Oatmeal", or "9906753", or my favourite, "Dustbustering at the Olympics". There's even a post I'm toying with writing that I probaby will write just because I love the title I've decided on, something along the lines of "Ashley, it's just that I love you so much, it scares me!" Compared to titles like these, "Counter-Clockwise" really is just an "I can't be bothered" name, especially when it really only relates to the one-third of the post where I discuss my habitual lateness.

So as you can see, this post was a complete mess. Still, since my explanation about why the post doesn't work is longer than the initial post was, I hope you found this insight into my severely insecure and indecisive thought process around blogging to be interesting.

Mirror, Mirror

So here's the thing.

For many years in geekdom, there was a well-known, authoritative rule that you could absolutely rely on. This was the "even-numbered Star Trek film" rule.

The basic principle of the rule was simple. The even-numbered Star Trek films are all excellent, or at least very good. If you're watching an odd-numbered Star Trek, it will be at best an average film, at worst it may make you lose your will to live.

Think about it:
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Terribly slow and tedious, with a pacing closer to 2001 than Trek (and I do love 2001, but it's an entirely different thing to Trek). Plus, the climax doesn't even involve the original characters at all.
- Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan - The standard by which all Trek films are judged. Just brilliant. And it has one hell of an ending.
- Star Trek III: The Search For Spock - Probably the best of the odd-numbered Trek films, in that it's pretty average rather than actually bad. It's not bad, it just is.
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - In my view it's the least of the even-numbered films (it's preachy, the fish-out-of-water comedy is frustratingly broad and obvious at times, and it is terribly dated these days), but despite that, it's a very enjoyable film.
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - No. Just no. ... No.
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - The end of the Cold War interpreted through Trek. Complete with a murder mystery, some great action, and some nice commentary. An all-round excellent film.
- Star Trek: Generations - Who cares about the rest of the film, we were only watching for Kirk to meet Picard. Instead, Kirk vanishes ten minutes into the film, and only reappears right at the climax, where Kirk and Picard make breakfast before Kirk dies in a bridge collapse. Major disappointment. And the rest of the film is pretty average as well.
- Star Trek: First Contact - The Borg. On the big screen. And time travel back into Trek's past but our future. And James Cromwell is in it. What is there not to like?
- Star Trek: Insurrection - Just bland, a film made solely for the purpose of making a Trek film. There's no cinematic scope to the film, nothing to distinguish it from dozens of Next Generation episodes.

And then they had to go and ruin such a perfect pattern by releasing Star Trek: Nemesis, a bad even-numbered film. I rewatched it recently, just to see if it was as bad as I remembered, and it really was. The film felt like an exercise in cynical filmmaking, as though throwing a bunch of explosions and space action was enough to fool us into believing we were watching a good film. The film itself is well-made, but the core of the film, the script, just felt underdeveloped and empty, with a collection of potentially interesting ideas that never go anywhere. In the end, the film just lacked a soul.

And, if that wasn't enough, early reports of the new Trek prequel film, Star Trek, sound like this could be a great odd-numbered film. And if that proves to be true, it puts a final end to the even-numbered-Trek rule.

But back in 1999 I noticed a much more interesting pattern developing in the Star Trek films, even though that pattern was, by its very nature, only half-developed at the time. The pattern was, to me, more interesting than a simple odd-number-bad-even-number-good rule, largely because it draws on the core plot elements and character motivations that underpin the different films. Over the last ten years, as another two Star Trek films were released, I've looked to see whether the pattern would survive. And it's a pattern that, with the release of the new Star Trek film, has reached its completion. To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only person to have ever noticed this pattern. I've certainly never seen it referred to anywhere else. Which is a shame, because I find it rather interesting.

Think of it as "The Mirror View of the Star Trek Films".

The basic idea is that every Star Trek film (with the exception of Star Trek VI, for a particular reason) reflects one of the other Star Trek films in some fairly fundamental aspects.

Let me explain. The reason why Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country doesn't reflect any other Trek film is because it is the mirror point. The pattern is revealed by moving backwards and forwards film-by-film from Star Trek VI. Make sense?

Here's what I mean. If we start at Star Trek VI, the film before that one was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. In that film, the villain was on a quest to find God. Now, at the same time, the film after Star Trek VI was Star Trek: Generations. In that film, the villain was on a quest to find the Nexus. Which means nothing, until you realise the Nexus was a place where people live forever, happy and content in a wonderful perfect paradise. Basically, the Nexus was a non-theistic heaven. So basically, in one film, the bad guy is trying to find God, in the other the bad guy is trying to find heaven. In my view, there's a pretty strong similarity to those central ideas.

Let's move along one step. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek: First Contact are the time travel films. In both films, the crew of the Enterprise deliberately travel back in time to prevent the destruction of Earth in the future. Given the fact that (with the exception of the new film, which reportedly uses time travel in a very different way) these are the only two time-travel films in the run, again, that seems like a strong similarity to me.

As I say, I first noticed this pattern in 1999 with the release of Star Trek: Insurrection. In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Enterprise crew deliberately defied a Starfleet order. (This was not a minor plot point - it actually led to them having to steal the Enterprise as a result.) Plus, the film revolves around the Genesis Planet, a planet that actually brought Spock back to life. In Star Trek: Insurrection, the crew of the Enterprise also deliberately defy Starfleet orders (not a minor plot point either - it's actually reflected in the film's title, Insurrection), while the film revolves around a planet that has life-rejuvenating, fountain-of-youth-type properties. Life-giving planets, open defiance of Starfleet orders? Yup.

Having noticed this pattern, I eagerly awaited Star Trek: Nemesis, to see if the pattern would hold out. And it did. The climactic point of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan had the most logical member of the crew, Spock, choosing to sacrifice himself to save his crewmates. But, before he dies, he implants part of himself in Bones' mind, which allowed him to come back in the later films. In Star Trek: Nemesis, the most logical member of the crew, Data the android, chooses to sacrifice himself in order to save his crewmates. But, earlier in the film, he downloaded all his memories into the Data-prototype android B-4, offering the obvious suggestion that Data could be recovered. (Indeed, in the recently-released Star Trek: Countdown comics that acts as an official prequel to the upcoming film, we discover that this has indeed happened.)

And so we come to the new film. And where Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the first film for the original crew of Kirk, Spock, and Bones (as played by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley), the new film, titled simply Star Trek is also the first film (indeed, the first adventure) for the original crew of Kirk, Spock, and Bones (albeit played now by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban).

Plus, here's the really great thing. I was always a little worried by this pattern because it breaks down after 11 films. After all, there's no film for the 12th film to reflect. But instead, based on reports of the new film (which I obviously haven't seen yet), the appearance of Leonard Nimoy as the older Spock acts as a perfect finish to the existing films, while the time travel element reportedly establishes this in a different timeline to the original series. In other words, the mirror pattern applies only to the films that relate to the original Trek timeline, and this film puts a fairly definitive end to the pattern. I don't need to worry about whether the 12th, 13th, 14th Trek films will reflect the other films, and how that will damage the pattern, because in my mind at least, there is a definite break between those films and any future Trek films.

Anyway, that's the mirror Trek pattern. I think it's quite cool, I'm rather proud of noticing it, and I hope you found it interesting.

And that is all that love's about, and we'll recall when time runs out

So here's the thing.

Given my current responsiblities at work, I probably should be a bit more conscientious about saving the planet, and ensuring that we preserve this world for the future. The problem is, I don't really care. It's not that I'm actively trying to destroy the world - it's a very pretty place, and I would be sad if it was rendered unlivable. Or at least, I would be sad if I weren't dead because of the unlivable state of the world.

It's just that I'm fundamentally lazy, cheap, and selfish. This is the reason why I work in a green sea of empty V bottles on my desk. I never used to accumulate empty V bottles, because I used to have a rubbish bin by my desk that I could throw things into. It was easy to keep my desk clear of rubbish, and I did so. (This meant the only things I accumulated on my desk were several days worth of used dishes that I couldn't be bothered taking to the dishwasher and couldn't throw away.) But then they took my bin away, instead expecting me to use the various recycling bins by the kitchen to dispose of my rubbish. That's a full 24 steps for me to take to reach the rubbish bin, and another 24 steps back to my desk. 48 steps! And that's an intolerable distance for a lazy person to go. So I only gather up my empty V bottles and make that trip once my manager has told me for the third time this week to get rid of the bottles. Now, once I'm there, yes, I dispose of my bottles in the glass recycling bin, because it's no more effort to throw the bottles in that bin than the general rubbish bin (well, you do have to wash the bottles, but I don't mind that because playing with water is fun), but in general, if they didn't force me to recycle, I probably wouldn't bother.

Honestly, yes, I should recycle, yes, I could care about the extinction of the whales, yes, I should eat free-range eggs and chickens. But recycling is a big effort, I'm actually a little curious what whale-meat tastes like, and while I'll admit free-range eggs and chicken do taste better, it's not the three-times improvement required by the price increase, and since I'm not the person being hunted to extinction or kept in a tiny cage, I'm not really bothered. It's so much effort to do the right thing, especially when it's so easy to do the wrong thing. I mean, why bother going to a rubbish bin when it's so simple to wind down my car window and drop things out as I drive along. Hell, with electric windows, I don't even need to go to all the effort of manually winding the windows down, I just press a button and whoosh, the rubbish is gone.

So, yes, I guess I am destroying the Earth. Oh well, it's not like I'm the only guilty party - there are lots of other people that are doing much worse than me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and watch Wall-E, because those Pixar films are very good. In the meantime, I found this week's Basic Instructions strip particularly funny.

In other, completely irrelevant, news, I seem to be having trouble sleeping lately ... I wish I could work out why

So here's the thing.

The experiment has been completed. And the answer to the great question of "how many empty V Sugar-Free Energy Drink bottles can I accumulate at my desk in the office before it is suggested to me that I might want to consider visiting the recycling bin" is...

21 bottles. And one can.

Which is rather a lot. In fact, it's a lot more than I would have thought I would be able to get away with. I was running out of room on my desk, I even had to start stacking my piles of paper on top of my piles of bottles, and that would be a serious health and safety issue.

(And incidentally, it takes a really long time to rinse out 21 bottles and one can. And the clinking of bottles as you drop the 17th bottle on top of 16 other bottles is really rather deafening.)

Financial weapons of mass destruction

So here's the thing.

This is just a quick post, just to make a recommendation.

As you'll all be aware, the financial world is all collapsing rather quickly. But the issues are rather complex and technical and who really understands what exactly is going on. So I think many people may just be going around knowing things are bad, but not quite knowing why. If you have wanted to understand exactly what was going on, I can think of no better place to go than a couple of episodes of This American Life.

Now, I've written previously about my enjoyment of the This American Life radio show - a really brilliant show that I do encourage you to listen to. A few months ago, they ran an episode called "The Giant Pool of Money" (which you can still listen to through streaming audio). That episode explained how the sub-prime mortgage crisis occurred - not just how the crisis itself occurred (if you lend money to people that can't afford to repay the loan, of course you're going to have trouble), but how the sub-prime mortgage market started in the first place, and why no-one said anything about how dumb it was to lend $500,000 without requiring proof of income or assets. It's an excellent episode, that explains everything really well - you don't need an economics degree to understand it - and it describes how it all happened by telling the stories of individuals involved, from the mortgage-broker buying $1000 bottles of champagne with Tara Reid, to the guy about to lose his house. So it's interesting to listen to - it's not some overly technical dry academic economic discussion, it presents real people discussing what they did.

Anyway, they've just dedicated another episode to examining the financial crisis, this time looking at what actually happened in the last couple of weeks, and just why it is that the bailout is needed. That episode, called "Another Frightening Show About the Economy", is available to download for the rest of this week, and afterwards will be available for streaming audio. As with the earlier episode, it's very accessible, very interesting and enjoyable (if a little scary) to listen to.

SO I just wanted to alert people to the episodes. If you're befuddled by what you see on the news, take a couple of hours, listen to these shows, and you'll feel better equipped to grasp the situation.

And then you'll really worry.

Apocalypse Now

So here's the thing.

It seems Paris Hilton has successfully turned on the Large Hadron Collider, and so right now, right at this very instant, there are large hadrons running around very fast and bumping into each other. And as they do so, they generate black holes that will grow to consume the Earth, then the solar system, the galaxy, and finally the universe. At which point the scientists responsible will feel very embarrassed.

In the meantime, if you are wondering what the progress has been on the annihilation of of all existance, there is a website dedicated to answering the question:
"Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the Earth yet?"
It's a very useful resource, and I plan to check the site regularly to determine whether I still exist. So should you.

At least it’s not National Baked Beans Week

So here’s the thing.

I get a press release in my email today from Heinz Wattie’s. The press release starts:

Mark 16 - 22 June for this year's Wattie's National Soup Week and take some time out for yourself to have some great-tasting bowls of soup. Enjoy the benefits of goodness in a bowl and make the most of this winter celebration.

Now, I’ve always wondered, whenever you hear that this week is National Whatever Week, or Month, or Year, who on earth actually makes this decision. And apparently there is no authority. Anyone can declare any time to be a National Week, not matter how self-serving and idiotic the cause is. I mean, is there a general lack of awareness about soup? Do people forget that soup exists? Still, it’s nice that Wattie’s want to do something nice for people.

Soup is all about warming comfort and this year Wattie's want people to do something very special for themselves as we enter mid-winter. To give people a reason to take time out, Wattie's Very Special® microwave soups will be featured in giveaways and sampling across the country.

So, basically, they’re giving away free samples of soup. Pretty much exactly the same as the free samples of shampoo, coffee, lozenges, that are given for purely promotional reasons. Except they’re justifying it by calling it National Soup Week.

Also, soup is “all about warming comfort”? Does anyone know what that even means?

And, in a very special opportunity, members of the Food in a Minute® website will be eligible to enter their own soup creation, one of which will be selected and promoted on-air, online and on thousands of recipe pads in spring 2008. If you haven't already, sign up to Food In A Minute to be notified of when entries open. Visit www.foodinaminute.co.nz to join.

Is that all that they’re doing for National Soup Week? Giving away a few free soup samples and holding a competition for soup recipes? Couldn’t they find a few more things to do to mark this all important week. Say, hold a debate to resolve the eternal question about whether soup is food or drink? Couldn’t they ... well, I have no other ideas, but surely their creative promotional people can think of something.

So I’m reading this press release, thinking how stupid all this is. And Wattie’s were clearly aware that this is all dumb, so they immediately try to make me feel guilty about dismissing all this.

In an effort to make sure even more people get to enjoy the goodness of soup, Wattie's is working with the City Mission to set up soup kitchens at the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch City Missions during National Soup Week.

Now, I don’t have a problem with generosity and giving to the needy, and I certainly don’t want to criticise people for not giving enough (since I definitely don’t give as much as I should). But really, why only give soup to the missions for National Soup Week? Why not at other weeks during the year? I especially love that they described this measure as being about ensuring “even more people get to enjoy the goodness of soup”. It’s not about feeding people so they don’t starve to death, its about reminding the unfortunate how much they enjoy soup, so that they can miss it all the more when it is cruelly taken away from them in the other 51 weeks of the year.

The other thing I found fascinating was when I came across this different press release. Apparently this is the sixth annual Wattie’s National Soup Week. Think about that. There have been six National Soup Weeks. I didn’t think we even needed one, let alone six.

In fact, that second press release is worth reading itself. In addition to the shocking revelations that soup is New Zealand’s favourite winter food (and is most popular with flatters), and that soup is easier to prepare than other popular winter foods like roasts and casseroles, there are some shocking revelations (11 percent of people say that “making soup” is their favourite winter activity!). The press release also has a completely random section of helpful tips about how to laugh in the winter months from clinical psychologist and “registered laugh doctor” Malcolm Robertson. Did you know that a good way to laugh during winter is to “Hang out with people who laugh”? Me neither.

Do you know, I haven’t had soup in quite a while. I miss soup. I might have some soup for dinner tonight.

I'm in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set

So here's the thing.

I'm waiting at the supermarket tonight, looking at the DVD stand they have standing by the checkouts. And I don't really understand their selection. Sure, they have a lot of new and newish releases - some films good, some not. But if they're going to sell DVDs, those are the titles they would have on sale. They have a number of classic films - some of the great Disney films, for instance, or copies of the new 2-disc version of 2001. I'm okay with those - especially the Disney films, since people take kids shopping, kids see 101 Dalmatians and want a copy, so I can see that the supermarket would sell those. (Plus, the more kids that grow up watching classic Disney films the better.) But they had a number of films that were old releases, films that had been available for years, films that aren't great (or even good films) just sitting there as part of their selection. And I can't ever see these stores selling these films. They're a waste of space. I mean, really, even if they are selling it for $12.95, is anyone going to see a copy of Men In Black 2 and pick it up it as an impulse buy? Let alone enough people to sell the multiple copies of Mrs Doubtfire they had in stock. Incomprehensible. With a limited amount of space for DVDs, why would you decide to fill the space selling titles like those?

And one other question. This is not a slam on Pink Floyd - I love Pink Floyd, and personally (as a person that never listened to rock music) found Dark Side Of The Moon to be completely revelatory regarding rock's potential as an art form. So I have no problem with supermarkets selling Dark Side Of The Moon, which is an incredible album. But why is it that every supermarket I go to is selling that album, and it's always a copy from Asia, with track titles listed in some Asian characters rather than English. None of the other albums they sell have any indication of being sourced from Asia (one time I actually checked every other CD they were selling), it's just this one album that seems to be being sold at every supermarket I go into. Strange.