The Life Update

A few weeks ago I sold a painting of the female huia to a buyer in Auckland.

Last weekend I visited Auckland and discovered that it's really a beautiful place. I contacted a lady I knew there and she told me about a recycled fashion store named Encore. I found a Gucci purse among other treasures and bought it for myself. That will take care of my gift giving to me for the next three years or so.

I watched a fantastic Swedish crime series set in the 50s called Crimes of Passion. The color saturation, clothing and impeccable mid century furnishings made it a pleasure to watch in addition to the thrilling plots and three main characters. It was all just so fantastically Swedish.

Now here's the meaningful thing I've been working on. A month or so ago Nick made me watch a program called "I Am Innocent" and the story we watched was about a mother who was pressured into admitting to killing her baby when she didn't do it. Her abusive partner did it and later confessed to it, twice. Although he was convicted of the crime the conviction still remains on the woman's record as well. I was livid when I watched the episode and made up my mind to contact her and try to help her.

And I did.

I also consulted with law professors, barristers, solicitors, mentors and one New Zealand Supreme Court Justice to see what could be done to help her.

I found a man named Tim, an ex cop turned investigator who spent five years working to prove the innocence of a man who spent more than 20 years in prison. He agreed to help me and found a barrister to file to the court of appeal.

It's been an amazing experience so far and some of the most rewarding moments I've had in my pursuit of legal knowledge.

I'll update here as the case progresses.

Correspondence

Today I'm catching up on emails and other miscellaneous tasks.

Ziggy is lending support by sitting in my lap and licking my hands every time I go to type.

Such a good boy!

Oh Mother, What Art Thou?

This weekend the country will celebrate Mother's Day.

I probably wouldn't have noticed had it not been for the nauseating commercials reminding us all to "do something mum will love."

Apparently, moms love the color pink, chocolate, cheap jewelry, cookery books and flowers. You know, non threatening, "feminine" stuff.

When it's not their special day, television commercials tell me that moms enjoy cleaning up messes made by children while their husbands sit idly by and pretend not to know what's going on.

They also get orgasmic pleasure from getting stains out of clothing.

Sometimes they need to be reassured that their cleaning product is scientifically proven at which point a man in a lab coat will materialize and confirm this. He will never do the actual cleaning himself because this is clearly women's work. Sometimes he won't wear a lab coat at all, he'll just show up in a tight white t-shirt and nod his bald head approvingly while the woman toils away at a spot or stain.

The road to becoming a mother is interesting. A woman gets to swell, stretch, grow hair, lose hair, get heartburn, vomit, lose bladder control and cry for no apparent reason. She gets to have body aches, sleepless nights, constipation, dizziness  and sometimes gestational diabetes and a worsening of her eyesight. These are the experiences that are internal and known to her only.

The external experience includes being treated like an absolute idiot by the doctors and nurses who are tasked with caring for her. None of her thoughts or feelings will be valid to them because they are the medical professionals, not her.

If she has a job then she gets to hear people say "congratulations" before they begin acting like she's a great burden on everyone and inconveniencing them in some way. (This is why she didn't get paid as much as her male coworkers. She just couldn't be counted on not to breed.)

If she wishes to return to work after having the child she will get to battle society's judgment of her as being a "bad, self-centered woman" and she will battle with her own inner guilt that she's abandoning her child.

Other women who have become mothers before her will judge her for how she dresses, feeds, educates and plays with her children. Nothing she ever does will be good enough.

Her thoughtful and progressive partner/husband/boyfriend (if she's not left to raise the child alone) will swear he is going to be a hands-on dad before the baby is born.

After the baby is born he will conveniently be absent when the unpleasant hands-on tasks are required. He will tell her that he would love to get up four times in the night with the little one but, as he has to work at his job in the morning, he needs his sleep more than her.

No matter how many tasks she completes in the day, no matter how clean the house, how delicious the meals or how clean the laundry there will be no praise or appreciation. This is not real work. There is no income or potential for promotion. This is just what women do because of biology and stuff.

Her progressive male other will come home and tell her how exhausted he is from working all day. He will shake his head at her in disbelief when she claims to be exhausted too.

How could she be? Doesn't she know how lucky she is to look after a child all day. He wishes he could but unfortunately, he has to work.

If the mother expects any sympathy from greater society she's out of luck. Greater society has made it clear that women are expected to work at home and rear children. Children are a blessing. Always. No exceptions.

So ingrained is the idea of women as nurturing caregivers and keepers of the home that a curious phenomena occurs when a man makes the slightest effort in those arenas.

If he looks after the child while its mother goes out he is called a "baby sitter." If he occasionally cooks or picks up after himself a woman is told she is "so lucky." With the smallest of contributions he becomes an epic hero who is to be praised and lauded. So little is expected of him after ejaculation.

When I expressed the need to get out of the house and get some mental stimulation after my son was born I was asked why I had had a child if I didn't want to spend time with him. My takeaway there; women are basic, simple creatures. Wanting more than to be cooped up with a demanding, apple-cheeked tyrant all day is unnatural and needs to be discouraged at every turn.

There is another uncomfortable truth about mothers; some of them are shit at it.

Some leave or spend all their time ruining the lives of their children. (Has no one seen the film "Mommy Dearest?")

And what of the women who are unable to have children? What of the women who don't want children?

I guess they just have to sit by and watch those of us who have get "spoiled" with pink flowers, chocolates, cheap jewelry and cookery books.

These are our rewards for being good girls who did what was expected of us. It's our one day to be praised for not pushing too hard against society's expectations of who we are and what we should do.

Happy Mother's Day conformists!

A Visit With Some Old Friends

At the Library

I have been spending this first holiday week reading. I just finished The Scarlet Letter.

I found the Ghost in the Shell manga at the library in the young adult fiction section (I was a young adult when it came out so I count!) 

This Major is far less serious than the one in the anime. She pulls goofy faces and is drawn in a highly sexualised way.

This is often the downside of "strong" female characters being designed by men. 

They never quite get us right. We have to be broken somehow and follow their ideas of what or who we should be while striking stupid poses and being vulnerable in some supposedly feminine way.

The drawings and design of Major make it clear that, working vagina or not, she's there to please the male gaze. This means she will have a teeny tiny waist, over sized breasts and a tendency to stand in weird twisted poses that are meant to show off said breasts and tiny waist.

Reading this manga reminded me of one I had purchased in Italy in 1997 about a cyborg named Alita.

The text was in Italian except for the German phrase "panzer kunst" and I had trouble following the plot. 

The artwork however, was brilliant.

In my story Alita had to race in some futuristic deadly roller ball game and she had roller blades instead of regular feet. 

She made a bet with this guy over something (did I mention it was in Italian?) and ended up betting her heart (which was a mechanical but shaped like a human heart).

Here are some images I found of the character:

I doubt my Alita manga is still around as I made the mistake of leaving it at my mothers house and, like my drag queen t-shirt from New York and Royal typewriter, it has probably been permanently misplaced (sold or destroyed in the name of Christianity).

I had a strange feeling that in the wake of film Ghost in the Shell someone might have gotten hold of the "Battle Angel Alita" story and decided to make a film of it.

I was right. That someone was James Cameron. He has since the passed the script on to another male director and the film is due for release in 2018.

I'm sure it will have the same over sexualised male wank fantasy vibe that the male designed manga had and end up ruining a potentially fantastic female character.

Hey fellas, I'm on all fours and my rear is in tact and ready for action.

At first I was pleased to rediscover these old favorites from my youth but then I begin to realize how often their personalities, stories and depiction are made ridiculous by the men who created them.

I hope one day my daughter (who is studying animation) and women like her are able to develop female characters with better stories, body types and personalities. 

Ghost in the Shell

Back in 1995 I rented this movie and was impressed by the quality of the animation. I must have missed all the deeper philosophical undertones because I had to go back and re-watch the film to remember what it was about.

I watched it dubbed in Spanish on Youtube and then I read the Wikipedia page to make sure I had understood the finer points. I'm afraid my ear for rapid Spanish dialogue is fading but I got most of the good stuff.

The animation is still stunning and the story is intriguing, exploring the issues and consequences of putting a human brain (the ghost) into a mechanical body (the shell).

Unlike movies about robots achieving consciousness, the main character Major was once human and still has suppressed memories of who she was before she became a government weapon.

She has control of a body she can't feel and, strangely, was given breasts complete with nipples but no female genitalia.

She has the ability to become invisible which allows her to use stealth with her targets.

The theme song for the film is a wedding song and it gives me chills. Here it is in the opening sequence of the 1995 film:




If you've heard anything about the new movie it's likely about the controversy of casting Scarlett Johanssen as Major.

This was another in a long line of Hollywood fuckups when it comes to casting ethnic characters.

Heaven forbid American audiences have to watch an unknown Japanese actress play the role of a Japanese character written by a Japanese author.

It makes for uncomfortable watching when Major finds her Japanese mother and speaks to her in American accented English.

A young Japanese girl gets put into a white woman's body and while her mind is supposedly unchanged, she can't speak Japanese with her mother. ハァッ?!

One film reviewer criticized the scene where the robot emerges from white goo saying that this was the epitome of white washing but in its defense, it was an exact replication of the anime version (seen above) and was not some blatant statement of racial superiority (not this time at least.)

Now that we've addressed the white elephant in the eiga, let's move on to visuals.

They were absolutely gorgeous and faithfully reproduced the best scenes from the 1995 anime .

The reunification of Major with her mother gave her a palpable humanity which was missing from the animated film. She meets her supposed nemesis in this film and learns of their common history. The film ends with the original theme song from 1995 which was amazing.

If it weren't for the idiotic casting decision I think this thing would have probably owned at the box office.

Take note film industry, the world is totally ready to see people of different ethnicities acting out their own stories.

Professor Phillips

Our media department was looking for some law students to pose for a law school pamphlet and I thought it would be fun.

As compensation they were giving out $20 gift certificates to the local mall.

I'm used to being one of the older students in all of my classes and I'm used to be asked if I'm a member of faculty when I go to the uni's medical center so when they said they didn't have anyone to pose as a professor I gladly volunteered.

I was having one of those days where I feel all puffed out but I sucked in as much as I could and struck various poses with a collection of papers.

My fellow students looked on in feigned enthrallment while I pulled faces that felt maternal.

I was told to put my hair behind my ear so they could see my face so I'm sure you can see my graying temples. Yay.

I kept trying to strike casual poses (cause I'm the cool teacher who get's the kids of today) and I was told to straighten up.

"So sorry, I'm a natural leaner," I said.

I was next directed to gaze at a spot where an imaginary student named "Stephen" was standing.

"Oh Steve, you card."

I feel like I just got memorialized as the dowdy professor who is really into cats and crafting.

Can't wait to wince at the results.

I took my giftcard and went to see Ghost in the Shell at the mall.