Later That Afternoon

28 December 2015

I woke up from a late afternoon nap feeling mildly disoriented. I decided to go to the pub and get some dinner.

Looking around at all the ramshackle buildings and signs of family life in the town gives one the impression that Otira is falling apart and thriving at the same time.

To get to the pub you have to use the pedestrian subway running under the train tracks.

Above the entrance to one tunnel is the date 1922. During that time the town would have been thriving with its little school, tea rooms and tidy houses tenanted by the rail workers and their families.

On the tunnel walls is some half-hearted graffiti. I say half-hearted because there is really no pride of ownership in the tagging. There is one message of love, the words “kia kaha,” a rough sketch of two people and the word “bitch.”

There isn’t one single representation of a penis anywhere. This disappointed me somehow.

You can tell that those who felt compelled to leave their mark were in a small town state of mind. 

Why use a patina of rich colours or explore the true depths of profanity when your audience is less than 100 townsfolk and they aren’t really bothered in the first place?

I had my first whitebait patty at the pub. It was good but it took a bit of concentration on my part to not think about eating whole tiny fish.

I met Ian, a man who works at the pub, lives in a bus behind it and has a healthy respect for kea.

He was kind enough to show me where the town’s rubbish tip is so I can go there and look for kea at some point.

There is a mama kune kune and three piglets by the pub. There is also an extremely tall and very exotic looking goat which I’m told is Namibian. I will look this up later to confirm.

I managed to feed an apple to one of the Clydesdales earlier and I tried to make nice with the neighbour’s giant dog (named Turbo) but while I was petting him I hit a sore spot and he snapped at me-not in a close call sort of way but in a way that let me know he had been hurt. His owner apologized and I decided it was time to get on with my exploration of the area.

My other neighbour Philip told me there was a path to the river behind our houses. I had on my Muck Master boots and I walked toward the back paddock until I was confronted with some flimsy looking wire. I crawled over it (in my summer dress, flashing panty once again) and immediately came across a dead Weka. I thought it would be nice to have some of its feathers but when I tried to pull some out the whole bird came with them. I left it alone.

I walked through a small wooded area and a kereru flew overhead into a nearby tree. They are very large birds and very noisy flyers.

On the other side of the woods there was a rocky ledge which I climbed up to find a gravel and grass road. I climbed down another rocky bank and reached the stony bed of the Otira River.

To my delight I found a natural pool just out of the river’s current where I can go for a dip in the hot afternoon.  At least, I mean to try. The water is very cold and it would mean walking over there in my swim suit and risking becoming a meal for thousands of sand flies.

On the way back through the wooded area I thought I would take another look at the dead Weka. I bent over it to study its state of decay and then glanced up to see a couple of people watching me from their back porch.

That’s when I realized I had probably become Monday night’s entertainment and Otira’s official “weirdo in residence.”

I fumbled quickly over the paddock wires and made a B-line for the house.

I’m sitting in the living room now watching Turbo’s owner talk to his neighbour over the fence. A little while later a man with a long grey beard and two tea cups walks through his back yard and into Turbo’s back yard.

Tea and a chinwag seems like a nice way to spend the evening.

I hear the roar of KiwiRail engines across the street.

First Impressions

28 December 2015

I arrived at what I thought was the entrance to the village of Otira and did a confused loop in my car on the wrong side of the tracks. This was in full view of the locals who were enjoying some refreshment outside the Otira pub. I parked outside the pub and walked in with my head bowed slightly so I wouldn’t have to see anyone laughing at me.

The lady who owns the bar took one look at me and said, “I know you,” which made me feel a little better. We met about two months ago when I came through with Nick.

I explained that I was trying to find my way into the village and that I had also brought some broccoli for Scotty the Gullah. The lady pointed me to another woman named Donna who told me she would be looking after me but that my house needed a vacuuming first. I begged her to let me come along and help clean. I just wanted to get settled in and hide from the locals.

I found my way to the house through the only road in and met Donna at the front gate.

“How long you staying?” she asked.

“Until Sunday,” I said. “They didn’t tell you?”

They didn’t.

The end result was a caretaker with a vague notion that someone is coming to visit at some point.

While Donna borrowed a vacuum from the house next door I wandered to the paddock across the street to pet one of the Clydesdales grazing there. They belong to the Lester the publican and from time to time he harnesses them to a carriage and drives them around town. Otira was once a major stagecoach stop between Christchurch and the West Coast.

The house was everything I wanted.

Donna must have apologized for the state of it five or six times but it was perfect.

The paint was peeling off the exterior and there were layers of mismatched wallpaper and paint on the interior. The floor sagged in places and the windows operated by weights and pulleys built into their frames.

The toilet was off the back of the house in its own little room which was no doubt luxurious for its day (being much nicer than a long drop with a tin roof overhead).

Just off the tiny kitchen was a bath and a free-standing sink. There was a window that opened over the bathtub into what is now a closed in porch and sunroom.

Sitting in this sunroom I found a very nice specimen of mid-century chair-without stains or weird smells. I carried it into the living room and angled it and the coffee table so I could look out the window at the mountains.

There are high peaks on either side of Otira. They seem perfect for keeping most of the world out.

I’ve gleefully found my own little slice of Mordor to enjoy for the week.

I chose a room for myself, put my sheets on the bed and moved the furniture around to suit my taste. I opened all the windows so a nice breeze goes through the rooms.

There are a large number of house spiders who have eyed me suspiciously and become very anxious about their places in the home. I’ve tried to mess with them as little as possible with the exception of the outside bench built into the house’s front porch. There was a small apocalypse there because I needed a nice spot to reflect on life and this was the best one.

I put down a comforter that I folded over three times and double cased some pillows I found in the spare room. 

The first time I sat down to write the wind blew the front door shut and I was locked out of the house. I left my bedroom window open so I climbed up the wall in my flip flops, and struggled to get through the window frame in my short summer dress. I flashed the train station across the street but I don’t think anyone was around at the time. I lost my balance halfway through the window and fell face first onto my mattress. Goodbye dignity!

I grabbed the key to the front door and re situated myself on my porch bench.

I originally invited Nick to come down with me but he said he had to work so I left him, the NPR and Alex back at home. I’m enjoying being alone so far.

I plan on studying kea while I am here but I’m not putting too much pressure on myself.

My main goal is to familiarize myself with the trails and tracks around Arthur’s Pass and go to the usual kea haunts to do some observations.

I need to find out where the local dump is as this was a prime viewing spot for Diamond and Bond during their research on the social habits of kea.

I am interested in both wild and captive kea. I want to observe them with humans and without humans to see how they behave.

Most scientist would probably set up a hide and try to be inconspicuous but I don’t care if the kea spot me. I want to interact with them as much as possible and I am not worried about them “not behaving naturally” when I’m around. You could argue that a bird seeking out strangers in its environment and playing with them is not natural behavior but that’s just what kea do so the orthodox approach is pointless here.

I may give certain animals names as I become familiar with them. There is a huge tendency in the scientific community to pretend that researchers are above such things but the scientific community can suck it. I will be taking a leaf out of Jane Goodall’s book.

While I’m on the subject, I believe that animals are just as capable as humans of displaying feelings and complex communication-they just don’t always do it in a way that we can recognize. 

In the case of the kea I reckon this is especially true as they have shown advanced skills in problem solving and tool making both in the wild and in the Kea Lab at the University of Vienna. 

Seven Days in Otira

I just returned from a seven day research trip to study keas in Arthur' Pass National Park and I will be posting some research notes and stories from the stay.

For now, here's a picture:

The Limited Options Fairytales

I was recently given a bunch of children's books and among them were three short fairytales; The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and The Goose Girl.

Thanks to a childhood immersed in Disney Cartoons I knew that princesses were mostly white, had poor relationships with their stepmothers and were basically there to give up on their own ambitions when they met a prince.

There was some other weird business that I had forgotten about though.

In Thumbelina, a poor infertile woman goes to a "wise woman" for a child and ends up getting a tiny girl child out of a flower.

She devotes herself to making the little girl happy and all seems to go well until Thumbelina is carried away by a toad as a wife for her son.

Thumbelina isn't really fussed about losing her adopted mother she's more focused on not marrying the toad.

She gets put on a waterlily and whines to some passing fish to cut it loose so she can drift away.

After she makes it safely to the shore she realizes she has always been looked after and that she needs someone else to mooch off.

She finds a lady mouse and proceeds to eat all her food whilst not doing anything useful.

The mouse suggests she go and marry her neighbor the mole.

Thumbs isn't into the mole but she needs a place to crash so she puts up with him. In the meantime she finds an injured bird, nurses it to health and then flies away with it to the land of the flower people.

When she arrives they give her a new name to replace the one given to her by "the man."

She meets the prince and gets married to him right away at the ripe old age of 14 or something.

Hopefully her adopted mother discovered the joy of cat ownership.

In the Princess and the Pea there is an young prince who is obsessed with finding a "real princess" he goes around meeting nice royal ladies and judging the hell out of them.

He returns home despondent while a storm front blows in.

During the height of the storm there is a knock on the door and this dripping wet woman is there claiming to be a princess.

She's like, "y'all got any princes up in here? I'm in the market. I also need a nap."

They put her on this huge stack of mattresses with a pea stuffed under one of them and she doesn't even care that she has to climb the equivalent of three stories to go to bed and could possible break her neck if she rolls off one of the sides.

In the morning the queen asks her how she slept and she answers that it felt like there was a rock under the mattresses.

The queen decides, I kid you not, that only a true princess could detect a mushed pea under a stack of mattresses and that this weird girl who doesn't have the sense not to be out on a stormy night would be perfect for her son.

She meets the prince, he digs her super sensitive pea detecting skills and they get married a few minutes later.

And then there was The Goose Girl.

The queen in this story raises her daughter by herself and manages to rule the kingdom but still decides to fall back on the tired paternalistic bs and send her daughter off to be married to some dude she's never met.

There must have been some budget cuts in the kingdom because she sends her daughter off on a talking horse with two donkeys and an ill tempered woman servant.

I guess the next kingdom over is pretty close and there aren't any thieves about or whatever.

The queen also gives her daughter a cup and lock of hair which she manages to lose pretty early on in the journey.

The servant stages a mini uprising and forces the princess to change places with her. The princess does this without putting up a fight and they procede to meet the prince.

No one suspects that the bad mannered, illiterate servant isn't really the princess.

No one suspects that the washed and groomed maiden with her isn't really a servant.

The prince proceeds to court the servant while the princess works with geese and gets harrassed by a local farm boy.

She summons the wind and makes his hat blow away. Then she goes and talks to the severed head of her horse. As you do.

Finally, after the princess has basically spelled out the score to anyone with eyes, the king begins to suspect that something is up.

In the end, the princess marries the prince (who has a weak chin and beaked nose) and the people all love her because, "she was so beautiful and gentle" (read: non threatening.)

To sum up, if you are a princess you should be as helpless and meek as possible. The most important thing is to look pretty and get married before you hit 20.

It seems the indoctrination started early for me.

Between the Bible and Grimm's Fairy Tales it's a wonder I managed to escape a similar fate to these simpering wimp princesses.

It's good to be a commoner.

Song of the Week : Take That - Love Love

If ever wondered what an aging boy band and dancing gimps would look like in a video then have I got a treat for you...

Tyson Fury: Portrait of a Fragile Ego

This young buck with the jutting underbite is Tyson Fury.

I first saw him a few nights ago when he was signing a tone deaf rendition of an Aerosmith song to his wife after winning some sort of boxing match.

Today I read recent comments he made about women.

Here's one of those gems:

"I believe a woman's best place is in the kitchen and on her back, that's my personal belief. Making me a good cup of tea, that's what I believe."

People pay to watch Tyson punch and get punched, not offer up his retrograde views on women.

Maybe it was one punch too many that made him this thick.

He's already found a woman to put with him and his backward ideas so why does he feel the need to tell the rest of us how to live?

When I come across men like Fury my first feeling for them is pity.

It must be hard to have such a fragile sense of self. It must be rough to have your entire identity tied up in an idea of manhood that is threatened by a woman "getting out of her place" and doing well.

British heptathlon and Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill obviously makes him squirm.

To counter this he offers his unsolicited views on her appearance.

"I think she's good, she's won quite a few medals for Britain, she slaps up good as well, when she's got a dress on she looks quite fit."

He could have stopped at "medals for Britain" but he swings into full fuckwit mode instead.

Ennis-Hill's performance has nothing to do with her looks just as Fury's boxing skills are not impeded by him looking like something that fell off the neanderthal region of the evolutionary chart.

Further responses from Fury about his previous comments:

"I'm a little bit backward. I didn't really go to school. Which part of a woman looks good in a dress is sexist?"

"Or was it about the cooking and cleaning? I stand up for my beliefs. My wife's there (standing alongside Fury). Her job is cooking and cleaning and looking after these kids. That's it."

"She does get to make some decisions. What she's going to cook me for tea in a bit when I get home. That's the decisions what she gets to make. That's my beliefs, just like I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as my lord and saviour and if anyone wants to despute that let them do it."

"My belief is that my wife should be at home looking after my kids and cooking and cleaning. She's a very privileged woman to have a husband like me. Not everyone's in her position but the ones who are are very lucky. That's my opinion." 

So, if you are a woman your job is to put out, have kids, make dinner, clean the house and wait for a man to give you orders.

You are not allowed to have your own thoughts and goals. You are the property and possession of your man.

This sort of thinking drives domestic violence and is harmful coming from a person who has young fans who will want to emulate him.

Fury seems to be doubling down on his sexism and acting genuinely surprised that anyone who sees a women as actual persons would be offended by what he said.

And of course his wife stands by him. He has all the power in their relationship and she's accepted she has to adhere to his particular ideas of femininity if she wants to keep her life together. I wouldn't want that sort of life for anyone I care about.

It doesn't take a college degree to treat women like human beings in Fury's case however, it will take an epic battle against ignorance.

Saving The Girls

Nick and I watched a disturbing documentary on television last night.

Ex Australian Federal Police officer Denis Gray teams up with his mate Christopher Payne and another ex AFP officer named David Thompsett to go to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Their goal is to set up a sting operation to shut down a club where underage girls work as prostitutes.

The documentary was filmed by Luigi Acquisto and is called "Children of the Sex Trade."

At the same time these men are carrying out their investigation, an ABC television crew is also there investigating the American who owns the club and keeps an underage girl he calls "Princess" as his personal play object.

His name is Arthur Benjamin.

He grins creepily while being interviewed and tries unsuccessfully to pass himself off as a human being.

When speaking about Princess he says:

"She was hungry, she needed someone to take care of her. I'm in. You know what I want."

"But if she fucks up, does something I don't like, I kick her out, doesn't bother me. There is always another one."

It's as if someone re-wrote the character Humbert Humbert, stripping him of all intellect and charm and inflating his sense of male entitlement to the maximum-only this is no fictional creation, Benjamin is real.

And of course there are others like him. They come from America, Australia and the local area.

They rationalize what they are doing by saying that they are giving the girls money to feed their families.

One guy advises the undercover reporters not to try to wrap their minds around the issue too much.

If you stop to think of the girls as humans it takes the fun out of using them apparently.

Also, the last time I checked it was perfectly legal to help someone else out financially without demanding sexual favors in return.

The AFP group get in touch with an NGO called PREDA which was founded by Father Shay Cullen.

His organisation says their goal is to give girls rescued from the sex trade a better life.

Through Cullen, the AFP men are able to convince two sisters, Michelle and Marisol into helping them build a case against Benjamin and his business, "The Crow Bar."

I had a lot of issues with this documentary.

I'll start with the way the two sisters are treated.

It's obvious they are uncomfortable and fearful about ratting out the bar owner and the "mama san" or woman who runs the club and acts like a pimp.

There are reported "death squads" in the area who carry out extra judicial killings against people who speak out and the girls are obviously putting their lives in danger.

The men interview Michelle about how she was abused by an Australian man when she was 14 and how her mother basically sold her into that life.

While she cries and seems traumatized the men focus on pressuring her and Marisol into signing the statements that will ensure their success in bringing down Benjamin.

At one point Marisol disappears and all the men can think about is how that will affect their sting.

They don't seem concerned about the reasons that would cause Marisol to hide from them.

PREDA stresses the importance of giving the girls who are victimized a real childhood. They show images of children in a religious service led by Father Cullen.

It's obvious that their help comes with a healthy dose of Catholic dogma.

While this group seems like the girls' best chance of getting help, I hate to see that help have religious expectations attached to it.

Isn't it possible Catholic values that teach birth control is wrong, women are inherently inferior to men and that sex is only for procreation might be doing harm as well?

It seems like you can't afford to ask those questions because the way the girls would live without the organization would be so much worse.

The documentary shows this area of the Philippines as an economically depressed place where income and gender equality are in short supply.

I know Father Cullen wants to give the girls a normal childhood but what comes after that?

Let's say a girl finishes her basic education. What is there for her to do to afterwards earn money and have a better life?

Basically, there are a plethora of seedy bars filled with a host of Omega males waiting to live out their slimiest fantasies.

There are  corrupt authorities willing to protect these businesses due to the kickbacks they receive.

What else is there?

Spoiler alert: The Filipino authorities, AFP guys, ABC guys and one U.S. Department of Homeland Security officer named Eric McLoughlin successfully carry out a raid on The Crow Bar.

McLoughlin seems to mistake the raid for a bust on a heavily armed gang as he shouts at a couch full of young girls, "I want to see your hands! Sit down! No talking!"

I am infuriated as I see this American-flavored power trip.

I wish someone would tell McLoughlin to sit down and not talk. It's not his country or his raid.

Hell, Benjamin doesn't even get sent to the States to face charges. He's locked up in Manila.

The most disturbing part in the documentary comes in the end when the AFP men are saying goodbye to Michelle. She is weeping while Gray gives her a kiss on the cheek. He then boards a plane back to the safety and comfort of his old life in Australia.

The documentary ends by saying both Michelle and Marisol have received death threats and gone into hiding.

I wonder why these brave crusaders couldn't have set the girls up with their own business in Manila or tried to get them refugee status in the U.S. or Australia?

Instead it's, "thanks and good luck with your life." You've served your purpose. It's been real.

Meanwhile the men are hailed as brave heroes and get to pretend to be humble public servants.

I predict the Crow Bar will be replaced with something equally sleazy, like a mushroom springing from a pile of shit.

Even now the sex trade is thriving in Subic Bay.

Until the issue of child prostitution is dealt with from every aspect that allows it to exist and thrive, the cycle will repeat.