A Failure to Amuse

To rise each Friday morning at 6.00 is a pleasure and a privilege. Fryday is a labour of love and an essay of edification. It keeps me in touch vicariously with the dismaying and the dismal such as George Bush, Helen Clark and Hamilton. It allows me to acknowledge and highlight delights such as farm, friends and wife. Fryday lifts my spirits and vanquishes the hangover—or at least I hope and trust it does for I definitely have much of the latter this morning after indulging too much of the former last night.

But there comes a time, a Fryday, where I have nothing to write, nothing to contribute. A failure to amuse. I and you dear reader are left with drivel and dross. Such is the case this morning. I have risen at 6.00, the Muse has not. She remains like many women (though none within my close acquaintance) unresponsive and cold, with a permanent headache.

Is she teasing therefore when she offers up in a whisper her sole contribution that I should pay tribute and thank two other women? If I mention “yesterday” those women will know who they are and know why I cannot elaborate. They also know all about labours of love and are indeed much more adept at coping with one than I seemingly am today. They enrich my life—something which, sadly, you may feel Fryday has singularly failed to do for you today.

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Plonker2

I arrived home last night to find a house on my street; not next to it, not adjacent to it, not even in close proximity to it, but on it. Of course it was prudently parked so as not to impede traffic or create a safety hazard, and for that one is grateful. Nevertheless one still hopes it is not a permanent fixture because a house on a street tends over time to be an inconvenience and an eyesore, nor is house-parking a proper and durable function for the street itself, particularly one already traumatised by being called Gilbransen.

But one has to admire the people who put the house there and will I hope eventually remove it. I have long had a love affair (platonic entirely) with house removal experts, and my house on the street brought to mind a Fryday piece I write many years ago when I was living in Hatfields and still writing Ridin’ the Rainbow. I think it worth repeating. I called it plonkers and I have left in the bit about Bush because it gave the story purpose.

I woke Thursday morning to find that during the night someone had plonked a house on the section next door but one from mine. I heard not a thing. That it had been done and done successfully and silently I consider manifest miracles of a miraculous profession.

I am privileged to know a couple of house removal experts reasonably well. What they do never ceases to amaze me for the laid-back "not a problem" attitude they bring to even the most challenging task. I mean, have you ever seen a house, or even larger buildings such as churches and school rooms on the move at night? Do you ever wonder how confident the men, seen dimly only as silhouettes against a myriad of flashing lights, are that they will get their monolithic charges over that hill, under that bridge, around those bends and up that drive?

They are. They manage. Not a problem.

Truckies generally, and house removal experts specifically, are among the most laconic and likeable men and women I have come across. And whilst this may seem a pointless Fryday, I want to use it to pay tribute to them and their skills. They deserve it. And I spend enough Frydays slagging off at people.

And talking of George Bush...

Have you been reading of the furore surrounding Bush's use of a U.S. Navy S-3B Viking jet aircraft to get himself onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln? The cost of that landing, which is the criticism behind the furore, doesn't worry me. What worries me is the reasoning. Apparently Bush wanted to experience what it was like to be up front with the pilot (as apposed to upfront with the populace) when landing a jet on a carrier. He originally wanted to do it in a Hornet, "like they use in Iraq", but the Secret Service vetoed that in favour of the more sedate and safe Viking (they preferred a helicopter).

So, here we have a President, the Commander in Chief, who delves into the American military toy box--the most powerful and lethal in the world--to indulge his whims. I could say that the whole bloody war in Iraq was an indulgence of a whim. But let's stick to the carrier landing and a reminder of a Fryday I wrote on January 31 listing the reasons why George Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq. One of the reasons I highlighted was this:

"He (Bush) gets to fondle all those choice big guns and stuff."

There you go. Another, but entirely different, kind of...plonker.

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An Unfortunate Accident

Yesterday I heard the killing of Jhia Te Tua described as an unfortunate accident. Setting apart for the moment the fact that very few accidents are, to my knowledge, any less than unfortunate, let’s look at the phrase and how it was used and abused.

The killing of baby Jhia may have been unfortunate (though that is an obscene belittling if this tragedy) but accident it definitely was not. Whilst nobody, killers included, could possibly say there was intent to kill the two-year-old it is entirely wrong to say it was accidental. The drive-by shooting of that house in Wanganui was a deliberate and planned action—probably indefensible. Therefore the result of that action cannot by definition be termed an accident, but it was described as such.

To be frank, I didn’t think about that too much. But there was the other big and tragic event of the week—the killing of two girls in Christchurch by the actions of an enraged party goer. What I found here was a degree of similarity between the two events, yet a curiously different way in which they were perceived and described.

In the Christchurch tragedy, the intent was to create mayhem, there was deliberation and, deliberately or not, people died. In that, it is no different from the Wanganui killing. But I am yet to hear the killing of those two Christchurch girls described as an accident. What is the difference? I would hate to think it is race-based and that the apologists for all things Maori are again on the march. But I don’t think it is that. I think it is instead someone just getting caught up in the emotion of the moment and making a silly and platitudinous statement. Anybody who is questioned by the media is in danger of doing it. I have done it and will do so again.

That’s one point.

But then I wondered if in fact anybody had said it at all! All too often the media in this country, lacking imagination or energy, will simply make up a quote or a headline based impurely on what they THINK may be the case. Let me give you an example. Whether it occurred or not in the Wanganui case I don’t know. But I could point to a thousand examples of it definitely happening in similar cases. Imagine the opening of the television bulletin thus: “Wanganui is in shock tonight at the killing of Baby Jhia.” Is Wanganui? Really? Did a reporter actually go out and find some resident who said “I am in shock?” Unlikely. Even if they did find someone, does that person represent all of Wanganui?

I know that seems an insensitive argument, and I am wrestling here to state where I am coming from. So, I’ll use another example too often heard: “Maori are angry…” Excuse me? These days Maori is an all-embracing term. Chances are the “Maori” who are angry are actually a diminutive group of disaffected activists lacking recent attention. Yet (all) Maori are angry.

Do you get the point? It is too easy for lazy and unimaginative media to come up with these statements without any real foundation for them. Moreover, they seem to trot them out with abandon. Normally, it shouldn’t matter and maybe I am being too pedantic. But to report the shooting of a two-year-old as an unfortunate accident, whether actually said or not, is nothing short of a shameful disgrace.

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