The Day The Whole World Got On My Nerves

What is it? Is it a change in the way the wind blows? Is it a planetary alignment? Is it Aunt Flo?

Why are some days filled with countless little nagging things that add up to make you want to lose your sh**?

I underestimated my bank balance and had to scramble to put money in account so next week’s rent will clear. I was trying to pay my phone and internet bill but I couldn’t access my account because I’ve burnt through my paltry broadband allowance and the page for Vodafone (a company that has comically bad service) wouldn’t load. 

Can I just say how irritating it is to pay 75$ a month for broadband that runs out around the 15^th and a simple phone line where calling cell phones from it costs about 50 cents a pop? I’ll bet you didn’t know that New Zealand was trapped in 1998. Well, now you do.

I had to make numerous trips to the bank. First they told me they would charge me $10 to send my payment through to Vodafone. Then I had to walk to the public library and sit on a child’s star shaped stool at tiny child’s table to get on a proper internet connection. Then Vodafone wouldn’t let me get into my account so I had to request a reset of my password which took several minutes to arrive in my email.

There was a big juicy fly buzzing around my head the whole time this was going on and it landed on my arm twice. The feel of it's tiny body resting on me made me so livid that I entertained fantasies of squashing it to a pulp for the next few seconds in order to calm down.

I had to march back to the bank to get my online user number (which is a confusing number that has nothing to do with your actual account) and then go back to the children’s table at the library to pay the Vodafone bill

As I was walking to the bank again, the wind picked up and blew up my dress, causing me to flash people on the sidewalk. It seemed like the sidewalks were just filled with elderly and aimless walkers who moseyed and sashayed and took their sweet time while walking in front of me. I finally made it to the ATM so I could do a cash transfer but the gale force winds kept buffeting me about and caused the flashing of more panty to the elderly sidewalk users.

This afternoon I had to pick up the kids I work with and they were fighting with each other and giving me orders and doing all the things kids normally do but the fact that I am cramping, bloated and hormonally compromised at the moment made me feel mean and testy. 

I had to take them to their rugby games where more errant zephyrs blew us observers around like slips of paper. Also the parking lot was filled with directionless drivers who kept reversing and turning erratically which made me irritable as I watched them.

I'm going to take a deep breath, have an Advil and call it a day. 

In Which The NPR Uses "The Danger Voice"

I suspect I can be mildly eccentric over some things. I can't think of what any of them are at the moment, but I'm pretty sure if you asked someone in my family they could provide you with a list.

Anyway, last night I was reading through a paper from the Journal of the Polynesian Society and making good use of my pink highlighter while the NPR sat beside me drawing pictures of emotionally tortured anime characters.

She wanted to listen to some music from Spotify while we worked and I said I didn't mind.

She got irritated when I wouldn't give her suggestions for songs to play, asked what kind of DJ I was anyway and declared that my room was "boring" and that she was going back to her own.

A few minutes later I heard her call out, "Mom, come here" in what I can only describe as "The Danger Voice."

The Danger Voice is a tone that someone takes when there is a potentially fatal situation requiring immediate attention. It informs the listener that "sh*t is about to get real."

I sprang from my bed and headed toward the NPR's room, fully expecting to see some unsavory character menacing her with some sort of weapon.

Instead I entered the room to find her pointing toward her nightstand lamp with a frightened expression.

"This had better not be what I think it is," I began, leaning toward the lamp for a closer inspection.

It was.

There on the edge of the lamp was a spider, roughly the size of a large snowflake.

It had already laid out one cross section of web. It hung there limply, suspended by its bum and seemingly dazzled by what I can only imagine was the equivalent of a human being staring into the sun at close proximity.

I swiped at the strand of web and it came away stuck to my finger on one end and the spider's hinder at the other.

The web strand swayed back toward the nightstand and the NPR and I watched as the offending party touched down on its surface and scurried away.

The NPR looked contemptuous.

How dare I abet the enemy.

I lost my cool then.

"How many times do I have to tell you about tiny spiders and their threat level?" I said.

I stormed off wondering where this silly phobia began and recalling all the other times she had called me into her room in California to deal with minuscule arachnids of no consequence .

I thought if I told her how most animals do not attack unless they are threatened she would simmer down but she still insists that the spiders have diabolical plans for her.

Today she informed me that the same spider (she was sure of this) had crawled over the edge of her laptop last night and looked at her. She recounted how she had bravely blown it off the laptop and onto the floor.

"And you lived to tell the tale," I said.

In my own room at the moment there is a cellar spider hanging out in one of the corners and minding its own beez.

There is also a Wocket in my pocket and a Jertain in my curtain and I could care less.

I think I'll look for an Arachnologist at my university and see if they can't come over and conduct a one-day seminar on house spiders and their habits. 

A Nerd on Holiday: Snapshots From Stewart and Ulva Islands

A Nerd on Ulva Island

A rare Saddleback or Tieke on Ulva Island

The Stewart Island Robin follows visitors in hopes that they will stir up some grubs for its dinner.

This house sits on a tiny plot of privately held land on Ulva island.

Ulva Island

Umbrella Moss, Ulva Island

Ulva Island Beach

Rimu Tree, Ulva Island

The old stone house by Harold's Bay, Stewart Island

Tui, Stewart Island

Dawn at Oban, Stewart Island

A view of Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island

Old bus at the South Sea Hotel, Stewart Island

Why "Scandal" Sucks

Although it’s going on into its third season in the states, Shonda Rhimes’ television drama “Scandal” has just debuted in New Zealand.

Where to begin? I thought the characters were mostly repugnant and I wearied of listening to Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope try to show people how tough she was. 

The fawning new girl brought in to blindly worship Pope was so tired it made me want to nap. 

When the man who interviews the newbie describes himself and his coworkers as “gladiators in suits,” I winced in embarrassment for his character.

Pope goes around making scandals disappear for wealthy clients. The first one we see her deal with is a decorated war hero (Medal of Honor, natch) who has discovered his dead girlfriend in her apartment and fled the scene after calling the police.

Pope protects her slimy clientele by utilizing a team of thoroughly unlikable individuals.

There’s the red headed lady who threatens to tell a man’s wife he’s seeing a stripper if he doesn’t let her paw around at a crime scene. He calls her a “bitch” and she cheerily acknowledges the title as a compliment. 

I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I would never see clearly again. She later discovers the war hero’s girlfriend was seeing another man and she pronounces that the woman is a “whore.”

Oh dear.

I thought maybe a program written by a woman would be less likely to "slut shame" women or at least dish out some of the same for men. I mean, surely they wouldn’t stoop so low as to suggest that a woman who had had more than ten sexual partners should be ashamed of that fact, right?

Oh dear, again.

It turns out the President of the United States (who looks a little like the character from “Ghost” who had his best friend murdered) is being accused of having an affair with a woman and he sets Pope on her in hopes of making the whole thing disappear.

Pope takes the new girl with her when she confronts the president’s accuser telling her she will leak the fact that she has had “22 sexual partners” to the media if the accuser doesn’t shut up and go quietly into that good night.

Eff that shit—and while I’m at it; eff Shonda Rhimes for being ass backward about women’s sexuality and the number of her sexual partners as well. 

I just double checked and we are not living in the 1950s anymore. This means that women of color like Rhimes can no longer be told to go to the back of the bus in Alabama and also that women can sleep with whomever and how many ever people they want (just as men do) without there being a goddamned double standard.

We later learn that Pope had an affair with the skeevy president too. So much for her supposedly legendary ability to “read people.”

Does president "pants dancer" get called anything nasty, you ask? No, he goes right on being the leader of the free world without so much as a spot on his reputation.

As for the other characters in this drama; there is a creepy guy who mumbles a lot and follows the new girl into the ladies’ bathroom and  a serial philanderer who is afraid to ask his girlfriend to marry him because he might, like cheat on her and stuff 'cause really he just can’t control himself.

It turns out the military hero didn’t kill his girlfriend. He was just out with his gay lover and he didn’t want anyone to know because a. he’s a soldier and b. he’s a conservative poster boy.

First of all, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is cold in its grave and second, I’d be more worried about clearing up that nasty case of hypocrisy.

I hated this show. I hated how Pope just bossed and bullied people and sang her own praises. I hated listening to the syntax and lingo the characters used because it makes Americans look like we’re all a bunch of ego drunk dickheads.

As an American living abroad, I feel like I have to either keep a low profile and pretend to be Canadian or explain how this show has a collection of tacky caricatures because, no matter how many times you try to remind people that it’s just a (poorly written, badly acted) show, they still think most of us are like this.

Thanks a lot, Shonda.

Band of the Week: Tame Impala

Probing Questions From Norway: "What Does the Fox Say?"

Not The U.S. I Remember

When I was growing up in America, I honestly believed we were the good guys in the world. 

I thought we were a shining example to the world with our system of democracy and freedoms. 

Since I lived in the Bible belt I also thought that God had blessed us, every one and was on our side no matter what. 

Because my parents voted for Republican, I thought that must be the party who did things the right way.

What an insufferable little asshole I must have been.

As I grew into adulthood, I realized how bigoted and sexist my religion was. It sought to make young people ashamed of their sexuality, judge anyone who was outside the faith and force women into a role where their sole purpose was to bear children and wait on their husbands.

This was a hetero-normative idea that presupposed a nobleness of male character and an infallibility of masculine judgment. 

Becoming a single mother at age 19 and having to deal with heavy discrimination in the workforce did a lot to convince me that I needed to get out of the South.

I eventual moved to California where life seemed a little better. 

From there I went to live in Mexico for a while and I became a witness to the consequences of my country's exploitation of Mexican migrants.

My country has passed through what I call, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." 

I naively thought they began with the Bush administration after 9-11 but after two years in grad school and a visit to Chile I learned to look further back than that. 

I now wonder if we have ever done anything truly decent in our entire history and I'm struggling to find an example that isn't white-washed or greatly exaggerated. 

In Santiago, I visited the houses of detention that Pinochet had used to torture and murder individuals who were seen as leftist threats. 

I saw the government building known as La Moneda where CIA-backed forces led by Pinochet had overthrown the Democratically elected Socialist president, Salvador Allende. 

America helped cause all this suffering and Henry Kissinger later got a Nobel Peace Prize.

WTF, indeed.

The Supreme Court has recently annulled sections of the Voting Rights Act. They have given the police wide-sweeping authority to strip search anyone detained for any reason and they have declared that corporations are people and that money is equal to free speech.

The "War on Terror" has allowed the country to sink to new lows by whittling away Americans Constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights. 

Who is a terrorist and what are the risks? 

That's for the government to decide in secretly convened, top-security proceedings, thank you very much. 

When the Geneva Convention became an inconvenience, a genius named Donald Rumsfeld invented the term "unlawful combatant" which allowed our great nation to detain "terrorist suspects" for an unlimited amount of time while denying them a trial or legal representation. 

Guantanamo Bay provided the perfect "neither here nor there" location for such a travesty and hundreds of prisoners who had been sold out by their enemies for a handsome sum in their home countries (where poverty was common) were locked up. 

In America, to this day, confessing to being a Muslim is all one needs to be regarded with suspicion and contempt. After all, those who don't accept Jesus as their savior, must be in the service of Satan. Everyone knows this.

In 2011, the U.S. government authorized a drone strike to take out a suspected terrorist in Yemen. This might have been unremarkable had the suspect not been a U.S. citizen who was guaranteed due process by the Constitution. 

President Bush II  Obama allowed the CIA to kill Anwar al-Awlaki because; war, terror, extraordinary circumstances, gas pains, headache, etc. 

Even though this should have sparked mass outrage, there were only minor rumblings.

This was where it became apparent to me how groggy-eyed and complacent the American electorate had become. 

"Just leave us alone!," they said, "A few of us went to the polls a few years ago and voted...what more do you want?!"

It's okay though, because everyone knows he was guilty and a terrorist so his rights don't matter.

The same is true for Osama Bin Laden which is why it was totally okay for us to send in a covert SEAL team to violate Pakistan's territorial sovereignty in order to assassinate him.

In case y'all hadn't noticed, we're sort of a "big deal" in the global scheme of things so we can do stuff like this.

But what happens when certain citizens become alarmed that the government has overstepped its bounds and lied to the public it claims to serve?

I'm glad you asked! 

Please see the case of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange (who is a total asshat, even though I support his cause) and Edward Snowden. 

It was kind of funny back when Sarah Palin accused anyone who didn't agree with her ignorant viewpoints as "not being a true patriot" or a "real American." 

It's less amusing when the U.S. government does it and then uses all of their incredible powers and international connections to gang up on their own citizens.

The following are excerpts from a New York Times article about Laura Poitras who has made several documentary films criticizing U.S. policies and who aided Snowden in leaking his intelligence about the NSA's domestic spying program:

-When she landed at J.F.K., she was met at the gate by two armed law-enforcement agents and taken to a room for questioning. It is a routine that has happened so many times since then — on more than 40 occasions — that she has lost precise count. Initially, she said, the authorities were interested in the paper she carried, copying her receipts and, once, her notebook. After she stopped carrying her notes, they focused on her electronics instead, telling her that if she didn’t answer their questions, they would confiscate her gear and get their answers that way. On one occasion, Poitras says, they did seize her computers and cellphones and kept them for weeks. She was also told that her refusal to answer questions was itself a suspicious act. Because the interrogations took place at international boarding crossings, where the government contends that ordinary constitutional rights do not apply, she was not permitted to have a lawyer present.

“I assume that there are National Security Letters on my e-mails,” she told me, referring to one of the secretive surveillance tools used by the Department of Justice. A National Security Letter requires its recipients — in most cases, Internet service providers and phone companies — to provide customer data without notifying the customers or any other parties. Poitras suspected (but could not confirm, because her phone company and I.S.P. would be prohibited from telling her) that the F.B.I. had issued National Security Letters for her electronic communications.

William Binney, a former top N.S.A. official who publicly accused the agency of illegal surveillance, was at home one morning in 2007 when F.B.I. agents burst in and aimed their weapons at his wife, his son and himself. Binney was, at the moment the agent entered his bathroom and pointed a gun at his head, naked in the shower. His computers, disks and personal records were confiscated and have not yet been returned. Binney has not been charged with any crime.

While being interrogated at Newark after a flight from Britain, she was told she could not take notes. On the advice of lawyers, Poitras always recorded the names of border agents and the questions they asked and the material they copied or seized. But at Newark, an agent threatened to handcuff her if she continued writing. She was told that she was being barred from writing anything down because she might use her pen as a weapon. - Peter Maass, New York Times

This article came out right before the partner of Glen Greenwald was detained at an airport in London under one of their anti terrorism statutes and questioned for nine hours. His electronic equipment was also confiscated although he was never charged with anything. 

Great Britain admitted to calling the White House before detaining Greenwald's partner although, the White House claimed that Britain acted on its own and was not doing the bidding of the U.S. 

Of course they weren't. 

Somebody is a liar, lair and should check their pants for fire. 

While many have been forthcoming in their condemnation of this abuse of power, others still take the line that this man is aiding and abetting a traitor to the U.S. government and deserves what he gets.

I'll just leave you with this poem by Martin Niemoller:

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”