Erection News, Part I

The News Week Ends Here:

Sacked for being too sexy, eh. Let's turn one page, to A3.


I see they've just reused the same picture. Speaking of which, the caption:

Managers told Debrahlee Lorenzana that her high heels drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting.

That's interesting, because in this photo Ms Lorenzana is wearing a halter top and a lei. Presumably not what she wore at work. Christ, why didn't you just photoshop her head onto a porn star?

Workplace discrimination is, of course, an important issue - even if these are just allegations at this stage. However, I suspect that the large majority of, say, women fighting gender discrimination aren't going to find themselves on the front page of the paper.

Even more interestingly, I suspect that the kinds of attitudes that have got Ms Lorenzana, and most of Ms Lorenzana's breasts, on the front page of the paper are the same attitudes that led to the alleged discrimination in the first place.

DOG NEWZ

During my most recent absence, I used my time on all sorts of esoteric creative adventures. One of them was the short-lived but legendary DOG NEWZ. A masterwork of ultra-concise satire, I skewered the liberal media with cutting wit, etc. etc.

Anyway, obviously the Herald would never do anything like run a front page report on a dog - certainly not after the savaging they would have got on DOG NEWZ...

Dum de dum.
Oh, a free glossy magazine, the Red Bulletin - aka a 100-page advertising supplement for Red Bull. John Key's nether regions. Something unimportant about Israel.

Oh, what's that on the bottom left?

Choice quotes:

"She's well kept, she's clean and she smells good," Mr Eagles said.

"Funnily enough, it's the second dog I've found at the top of the Harbour Bridge."

"I thought, 'How the hell would a penguin get up here and nobody see it until it's right at the top of the bridge?"'

Clutching at straws

Have a look at this picture:

Now have a look at this picture:

Now let's look at them together:

Bland and nondescript or strikingly like an image used to good effect in another election campaign?

A picture of Auckland Super City mayoral contender Len Brown in a campaign advertisement is being compared to posters of Barack Obama used during his successful bid for the White House.

Well let's do a comparison, shall we?

Differences:

• One is in a striking colour scheme, one is in black and white.
• Len Brown is smiling and looking at the 'camera', while Obama comtemplates the heavens.
• Obama is very stylised, while Brown goes for a more 'warts and all' depiction.
• Obama's picture features the word 'HOPE', while Brown's has nothing.

Similarities:

• They are both pictures of political candidates.
• Both wearing ties?

Ok, so not much there. So where did this story come from? Let's have a look at the text.

A picture of Auckland Super City mayoral contender Len Brown in a campaign advertisement is being compared to posters of Barack Obama used during his successful bid for the White House.

Right - the sort of Fox News-style weasel words that I really shouldn't have to expect. Who is doing the comparing? The only 'characters' in the story are the Brown campaign, the Banks campaign and the reporter herself. Let's imagine it as a CSI episode - you know, there are only about three characters in the episode and it has to have been one of them. It's probably not the 'victim', which means that it's either Banks's people or a lazy journalist.

Either way I'm bored and don't care.

Mr Brown's main rival for the super mayoralty, Auckland Mayor John Banks, did not want to comment. However, his campaign strategist, Auckland City councillor Aaron Bhatnagar, described the ad as "bland and nondescript".

"Our campaign's about talking about the issues of the people, not just showing off a big photo."

Quite.

Shock horror

Wow - it's great to be back! I hope you enjoy the fruits of the massive site redesign that's kept the blog out for a couple of months.

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In one of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide books - don't ask me which one - Arthur Dent finds himself living on a primitive planet where he becomes renowned as the inventor and finest practitioner of the sandwich. Also on this planet are birds - again, the name escapes me - that are stoic and unruffled in the face of stampeding wildebeest-creatures, but shocked by something as common as the sun rising, or a falling leaf.

The lead story in today's Herald reminded me of these birds:

Shock, you say? Did the building arise overnight? Were the plans for it a secret?

A $218 million prison development towering over the Southern Motorway and casting a shadow across Mt Eden has horrified residents, principals and community leaders.

They are appalled by the project at Mt Eden Prison, and one city councillor believes the new block has grown higher than initial plans indicated it would.

One councillor? Do the others agree? Did anyone actually look at the initial plans, which I assume are in the public domain, and check to see if it has grown higher? Can I write this whole post in rhetorical questions? Perhaps one of the two journalists assigned to this 'breaking' story could have had a look to confirm.

Many of the cells will be above the level of the adjacent motorway.

That is of concern to Mayor John Banks, who last night blasted the new-look jail as a "an architectural monstrosity".

"For people coming into the city, it says: 'Welcome to the aspirational capital of New Zealand, where you jail people ... and it's great'," he said.

"I can only hope that we are not going to see people with their noses pressed against the bars.

Article continues below

"It just should not have happened and I railed against it before it rose from the ground."

Of course, NIMBY-ism about prisons is nothing new. In fact, it's one of the classic mainstays of local politics. Unfortunately for Mayor Banks, the upcoming supercity means that he can't just claim anymore that we should bung a prison in Manukau or Henderson - or even Rodney. Where does he propose we should put them? Oh, I don't know. Maybe we could bury them underground - then we wouldn't have to be offended by seeing people's FACES through the BARS. Christ.
And God forbid that the Auckland Central Remand Prison be located in Auckland Central - you know, near the courts where remand prisoners will be attending. Remand prisoners who might be on their third strike. Under the legislation passed by the National Party two days ago. The National Party in which John Banks used to be a minister.

However, the Corrections Department said last night that windows would be frosted and inmates would not be able to see through them. There would also be "acoustic buffering" to dampen noise created by rowdy prisoners.

Oh good, because I'd hate to be driving in my car along the Southern Motorway and have to hear a rowdy prisoner.

Now here's the best part of the article:

Neighbouring Auckland Grammar is also worried by the development. In a letter to Corrections chief executive Barry Matthews, board of trustees chairman Jeff Blackburn raised three issues over the "scale of the redevelopment" on the site.

These were the security risks posed by a shared boundary fence, the prospect of shade ruining sports fields and the potential for prisoners to look onto the school's grounds and for sound to carry from the new tower.

"It will add a degree of shading which may make the provision of winter sports fields impossible," Mr Blackburn wrote.

[...Councillor Fryer said,] "It is a well-attended school and the fields are really important. And if it's being overshadowed, it means that grass isn't growing properly. They [the fields] become more muddy, and that isn't good for sport."

Disclaimer: I attended Auckland Grammar School, and to this day I receive (unsuccessful) pleas for donations for such worthy causes as a new sports pavilion for one of the most privileged schools in the country. So this part of the article made me chuckle. The shared boundary fence is nothing new, even if the article implies it is; kids would regularly kick or throw balls too hard, and they would end up in the prison. Sometimes they would be thrown back, and we liked to imagine some grizzled con taking pity on us, wry smile on his face as he returned our prized sports equipment.

The next 'issue' is even more cringeworthy: "the potential for prisoners to look onto the school's grounds". Christ on a bike! Prisoners (some of them probably poor too) looking at Auckland Grammar students! Surely they could have faced the windows towards St Peter's instead.

But it's the sports fields that really cap it off. For one thing, it's only one of the three large sports fields at the school. For another - it's sports! It's not as if the students can't learn maths (possibly because they're put off by the noise of rowdy prisoners?). I particularly like Cr Fryer's "well-attended school" euphemism. What do you mean exactly, councillor?

The principal of nearby St Peter's College, Kieran Fouhy, said the prison redevelopment was "a crazy waste of money".

"Philosophically, it seems crazy that you're paying $100,000 a year to fund one prisoner when you could fund 20 rugby teams across the road, you know, or two teachers."

Well now I'm confused. This seems like something of a non sequitur - less a critique of the development and more of our current penal system. Or is the principal just confused? It reminds me of a letter I chopped out of the Herald a while back:

In other news, I've decided that the Herald should only cost about 5c to knock together every day so I don't know why I'm paying more than that.

Speaking of non sequiturs:

Newmarket Business Association chief Cameron Brewer was a lone voice of support for the project. He said the $250 million-plus being spent on upgrading the site "is arguably going to improve the area aesthetically".

"What [the] block rising from the ashes does is clearly remind people travelling through Spaghetti Junction in particular that there is a prison in the neighbourhood."

Well, that's a truly bold 'voice of support', especially from a man whose professional responsibility it is to have a massive hard-on for anything happening in the vicinity of Newmarket. If there's one thing I'm sure potential Newmarket shoppers want, I imagine it's a reminder that there's a prison in the neighbourhood.

What a bizarre article. I don't know what angle I love the most: the 'shock' at a development that's been ongoing for months; the barely-concealed cap-doffing to local elites; the contradictions about the penal system; the confused trailing off at the end of the article, presumably once the two journalists realised the story was complete bollocks.

Oh Herald. How I've missed you.

Up to five percent - or more!

"Almost half of the 500 firms surveyed say they intend pushing up prices by up to 5 per cent or more..."

Has anyone ever written a less meaningful sentence?

Anyway, some people might think that 11 per cent (the businesses 'planning' to raise prices by 5%+) is "a small number" - but then we have no idea what the ratio of people putting up their prices by 5% and those lowering prices is, because the Herald hasn't bothered to tell us the latter percentage. Meanwhile, later on in the article - entitled, of course, "Shoppers face GST price-rise rort":

Westpac economist Dominick Stephens said small firms could struggle to get away with large price rises on the back of GST changes.

"I would suggest that sort of thing will be very short-lived. Exactly the same sort of competitive pressures and market conditions that have got prices and profit margins to where they are now will prevail after the GST increase," he said.

So nothing to see here then.

'Accident'

What on earth are they trying to imply?

"Police are looking for two 70-year-old retirees with a bone to pick."

Doncha think?

On the death of the motorcyclist in the Waikato:

A police officer who made a fatal u-turn in front of a motorcyclist was left so badly shaken by the man's death he could not key in an emergency call on his cellphone, says a witness.

In an ironic twist, the allegedly speeding motorist who the officer was about to pursue when he made the u-turn may have been the motorcyclist's best friend.

The Oxford English Dicitonary defines 'irony' thusly:

2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)

Let's ignore that fact that, even if this situation were ironic, pointing it out - an "ironic twist"? - in the second sentence of an article about a man's death, as if we were watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie, might be considered a wee bit too wry.

"A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected". Now we can probably accept that you wouldn't expect that, when a man is killed after a police car sideswipes him during a U-turn, the policeman happened to be about to pursue someone who may have been the victim's best friend. That much is certainly true, in the same way as it's true that one might find it unlikely to meet the man of one's dreams and then, in short order, meet his beautiful wife. But it's hardly the opposite of what was expected, is it?

It's not even "a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things". Now, if the policeman had been about to go and rescue the victim's friend from a burning car, that might have been ironic - he's ended up saving one, but harming the other. Unfortunately for the English language he was only about to give the man a speeding ticket.