I watched, as I suspect a lot of people in NZ did, When A City Falls last night about the Canterbury earthquake(s). It was hard viewing, particularly the first half set before, and just after, the first September quake where buildings were damaged, and nobody died, and people pluckily talked about picking themselves back up again. I suspect it's rather crass to yell "Spoiler Alert!" at the tv, so I took a deep breath, changed the channel for an emotional breather and watched a woman explain to a SPCA officer that she loved the dog, that she'd allowed to go untreated for two weeks with a severely broken leg, like it was "one of her own children". If only they'd had a shot of the kids in the background looking terrified and holding up 'Help' signs.
Then back to the earthquake and re-watching the February quake strike all over again. The death, the destruction, the tales of survival, courage, sacrifice and human beings reaching out to one another time and time again. It wasn't just the people of Canterbury that were moved, I can tell you that.
That was a terrible sentence that should be struck from history.
If you haven't seen the documentary, and I recommend it, it can be purchased here.
Poor Australia, about to have Paul Henry foisted on them. Can I apologise in advance? Can we also save on people space and take Paul's Henry and Holmes, Michael Laws, Jeremy Clarkson and Gordon Ramsey and just roll them into one person. I'm not even entirely convinced that they're not already, created in a factory in outermost Albania with different hairpieces slapped on to tell them apart. Eh, think of it this way, we throw large sums of money at them and give them space in order to vent their outdated ramblings as a type of living museum of what the bad old days were like and as a lesson on how far we have yet to come.
...like retro-ads such as DB Breweries and Ryanair which would be really revolutionary except it's the same old same old. Lets face it, women have been denied equal rights for pretty much the entirety of human existence, in pretty much all civilisations, but during the last blip of time we've slowly been fighting and gathering rights such as being able to vote, receive a proper education (though when girls don't do well it's because they don't have the aptitude for it, now that girls are doing better and boys are trailing it's because of female teachers), and the right to not be constantly objectified. Half a second later we turn around and it's back on the table because it's quaint and you're meant to laugh and if you don't you must be some fat, frumpy dour fema-nazi. That's how it works, right?
The vintage sexist ads that we used to laugh at for being so offensively ridiculous, well, they're baaack and they're calling from inside the house!
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