Weather warning
Just so y’all know, I’m like, due to have a baby this week. So if I vanish for, let’s say, 5 days or more you can probably safely assume the imminent explosion has arrived.
Maybe even Asher could tell you all. Since he’s supposed to make some kind of blog announcement if I die, maybe I could persuade him to make an announcement if I give birth?
OK so it’s been a while..
Little known fact: I originally set up this blog because I wanted to get into the habit of writing so I might just maybe start writing better.
Little did I know that I was about to fill a void in the NZ blogosphere by writing about political issues from a Green perspective. Which, at the time, no one else was doing or was better placed to be doing. So after a wee while I noticed that there was a few people not only reading my blog, but continuing to read my blog. So I just kept on writing about what was going on from a Green perspective. But not as much of my writing was as analytical as I would have liked, I just didn’t have time.
Now things have changed. I don’t work there any more. There are other Green blogs. There are other things too but those are the main two.
So I’ve decided that this year I’m going to take some time to get a bit more disciplined in my writing. So consider this me re-enacting a new years resolution from a few years ago. And you can all get excited about seeing me write more! Well, I will anyway…
Continue Reading →
Yes folks, we have a logo!
No cool anything can go without a logo these days. Now mine took a little bit longer to create, but may I present…
The logo!
wow
I just hit 10, 000 hits on this website. And that’s since February. Nice!
Thanks to all the people that have come to visit, hope you had fun. ‘Cause that’s the most important thing!
Blogling
OK time to come clean. This blog is probably going to go into hiatus for a while as I’m slightly occupied being pregnant!
So I’ve been like half-dead for the last couple of months which is why I haven’t been posting much. Starting to feel better now but still pretty tired for those of you who care.
I’ll be able to start writing more when I stop work but that won’t be for a while. But I promise that I won’t start blogging about being pregnant. There are so many pregnancy blogs out there it terrifies me. Personally I can’t imagine why anyone out there would be interested in the gory, intricate details of gestation. But that doesn’t stop thousands of women around the world from doing it.
*shudder*
So anyway, coming home in November to have the baby (no way am I having an Australian baby!) so see y’all then.
Poo weather
In the weekend, there was supposed to be the Ironman in Taupo but it was shortened due to terrible weather conditions. This meant the swim was cancelled and the bike and run shortened to 90km and 21km respectively. A number of athletes chose not to complete this shortened course due to the dangerous conditions.
One of the people who didn’t compete was my mum. Mum was entering her first Ironman and has been training for ages to enter and is naturally, very disappointed that the race couldn’t go ahead. But I am still really proud of her and I can’t wait until next years’ event to be there to cheer her on in person.
Yay mum, you’re my biggest hero!
Love
Me 
Haere Mai!
Welcome to the new and improved Bloggreen! Featuring Kakariki Films!
Yip folks the old sites are gone and the new one is up. It will take me a wee while to complete the transition, so posting will be a bit slow for a bit but I won’t be posting on the old ones anymore so please update your links. They’ll stay there for a little bit, but not forever.
I’d love feedback on the design/look/feel etc and of course I welcome your deep, intellectual banter on the plethora of wonderful issues I will be discussing in the future. Or you can just laugh at the dumb shit.
Welcome and enjoy
Arohanui
All my bags are packed…
Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be be back again
Gidday mates! This is my writing somewhere halfway between Hamilton and Sydney on board a delightfully smooth Freedom Air flight, drinking a cheeky wee Sauvignon Blanc, listening to Noam Chomsky (Post 911 Terrorism and the US, CBC Interview, 2002) and counting my blessings that I managed to be psychic enough to get the passport/leaving the country timing sussed so I didn’t have to fork out my money and biometrics for an ePassport.
So what have I been up to? I’ve been cruising around the country over the last couple of weeks saying good bye to friends and family. Got to spend Labour Weekend in the Hawkes Bay so that was pretty wet (/understatement). But the sunny Bay of Plenty made up for it. After being in Winstonland for a few days (bought some SEXY new boots – if you’re a tramper, go to new tramping shop Hikoi at the Mount), I headed to the ‘Tron to sort out last of the business I needed to do. Hamilton included Halloween parties, gatecrashing Rocky Horror Picture Show closing night parties and drinking far too much.
I also popped up to Auckland for a night to say goodbye to friends and family and had the most amazing time at the Dogs Bollix. One of my favourite goddesses in the whole entire world, Kim (Green Auckland OOP Office Drill Sergeant) organised drinks there and invited a whole heap of local Greens and I invited some of my friends too. I walked past earlier in the day and saw that it was open mike night which made me pretty excited. But I was not prepared for the most amazing night ever! Firstly, catching up with Auckland Greens was great. Nice to have an opportunity to see how Greens outside of Wellington saw the election and fun to share my opinions on how things are going.
After that the music started. It was obvious once things got going that this was a regular crew of people that came to this regular night at the Bollix. They were mostly older people but it wasn’t open mike as in up on a stage, rather everyone sat in a big circle and jammed. It was so cool! Some amazing talents and an incredible atmosphere. They even sang Waltzing Matilda which I figure I should get used to hearing more often. But a big thank you to all of those people for welcoming us into their wonderful community.
But had my last night in NZ last night. Had dinner at home with the folks and then went out with a friend to drink beer and play pool. Started at Diggers Bar and got thoroughly thrashed at pool, but enjoyed some great live music. Then we decided to go find somewhere neither of us had been before but the only places that fitted that description were pretty awful looking. So we headed to Sohl Bar for a cocktail. After cocktails it occurred to me that I should get rid of the rest of my NZ currency so what better way of doing that than going to the Casino!
I’ve never been to a Casino before. In fact I don’t like them very much at all, but this time thought there could be some mild entertainment value in going to a casino with the explicit purpose of losing money. Now among my things I know about is pokie machines (c/- Bachelor Social Sciences one of my majors was Psychology), in particular the behaviour reinforcement schedules that they use to ensure you a) lose money and b) keep losing money, which is why I stay well clear. But I struck a wee problem in my plan of losing money in that I was not very good at it! My friend next to me was quite good at it, but I seemed to get the machine at the right stage in the cycle. So I’m putting money in the machine and it keeps giving it back! I ended up resorting to giving some of it to my friend to put in for me cause he was much better at it than I was. I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t have the right attitude 
But I did get rid of it all eventually and as we were sick of seeing all these miserable looking people sitting around tables (which did lead to a highly amusing conversation about whether they’d actually kick you out if you acted like they do in the advertisements) we left at about 3am.
So I’ve had one hours sleep and way too much booze and they just announced the next round so I’m going to go and read my book. I’m reading ‘The Explorers’ by Tim Flannery which is a collection of diaries from the colonisation of Australia. Just getting myself armed and ready to play with any racist locals I may encounter.
Love to all my friends and whanau, miss you all dearly.
xox
P.S. It’s fucking hilarious listening Chomsky get interviewed by someone who doesn’t agree with him, he just destroys them intellectually. I think this guy must have gone home and cried after doing that interview! He gets points for trying but doesn’t know shit compared to Chomsky.
Next Thing
Time for an explanation as to what the hell is going on in the life behind this blog. I’ll give you a bit of context and answer DPF’s post about blog fathers and I will not comment on the gendered language behind the family tree concept, lest I get attacked by the anti-PC brigade..
I started this blog a couple of years ago when I was finding myself getting very frustrated with the world around me but couldn’t really jump up and down about it publicly due to my role as a public slave. I was also on a mission to improve my writing so I figured if I got into the habit of writing more often it might improve that way.
So I thought I’d set up a blog as a place to publicly vent my spleen. I never expected anyone to read what I wrote and I didn’t promote my blog at all but then after a while I noticed that people had started to read it, and then come back again for more. Quite odd. Then I felt the pressure of an audience and kept going. I also noticed that I was a lonely Green voice in the blogosphere so thought it was important that someone was representing there (until I was usurped by that damn frog).
And it’s been fun! There’s still been a lot of stuff I’ve wanted to write about but haven’t due to lack of time or little technical issues like breaching parliamentary privelege But I’m thankful that I’ve been able to engage in the world around me in the form of dialogue.
I don’t think there is any particular blog that inspired me to get going but I’d be interested to know if there’s anyone out there who got inspired to start their own after reading this one. I know I certainly built a couple of blogs for other people.
So now I’ve left my job and I’m on my way to the next thing. I fly out on Friday to Sydney. Just in time for the protest against terror laws and the Rock Against Racism and to visit friends and family and then I’m off to Melbourne to find a job and somewhere to live and to take part in the National Day of Community Protest for workers rights.
My grand plan for the next thing is the get involved with film. I’ve been a hobby film maker for a while now, mostly covering protest action, Green Party events and whenever my friends have babies. But I’m planning on making this my full time focus from now on. One of the things I loved about my job is hearing the wonderful stories of things going on in our communities. From the youth radio set up in Porirua to get kids off the street to the 12 year olds running political campaigns in their communities to protect things dear to their hearts, to the old ladies running community breakfasts for those too poor to afford the most important meal of the day. There is stuff like that happening all over the place and we never hear about them. These stories deserve to be told, not just because it’s important for us all to hear about them but because most of those people out there feel like they’re doing these things alone and get really isolated. It’s hearing stories about what other pieces of fantastic community action are going on that keep people going on their own work or inspire them to start their own.
And of course there’s a bigger picture interest for me here. We are at a fascinating point in world history, some say that the decisions we are making now will determine the survival of humanity. I believe that it’s really important that the resistance to capitalist globalisation is recorded, in our own words. I know that for me, as an (r)evolutionary activist it’s reading stories of activists from days gone by that inspire me and keep me involved in activism and help me with my critiques of the world around me. I find it entertaining when I think that my generation is far more radical and visionary than any previous, and then I read writings by Emma Goldman from a century ago to realise that it’s quite possible that the opposite is the case.
So I want to tell stories of resistance. I hope to focus my work on antiracist stuff, particulalry decolonisation and immigration issues. But want to do work about prison reform and prisoners rights as well as getting into some more core environmental issues like the rainforest protection work going on in Tasmania at the moment.
So that’s what the next thing is. I will be reporting on what I get up to and I will be continuing to blog on my thoughts on the world, although my parliamentary focus will probably fade away as I gradually reclaim my soul from the evil toxicity of the parliamentary environment.
So thanks to all my readers, especially those of you with nice comments to make.
Watch out world, here I come.
Yay for me and yay for you lot
Yesterday some lucky punter (who happens to be from Corinda, Queensland, Australia, is using Win XP, Firefox and has a 1024×768 resolution monitor, but only stayed for 2 seconds!) was the 10,000th visitor to this website! How exciting! So big thank you to all of you out there who come and read what I have to say. It must be boring but I hope to entertain or inform you occaisionally. And at least my blog is slightly more interesting than high school girls sharing their bitchy stories online.
So just to add to your excitement, frog managed to incite some interesting debate about the size of Don’s carrot (not for the faint hearted). But deep within the comments someone linked to the Ex-Exclusive Bretheran website (can you be an ex-ex-exclusive I wonder or is that just a bad stutter…). And they have their very own forum which is pretty amusing. For those that know me you’ll know I just dig forums, might have to go join this one!
In other news, Russell Brown shares a wee email from the Press in regards to the end of Alexis Stuart’s columns due to her inability to have an original idea. I for one am more than pleased to see her go. I have been reading the Maxim magazine for a while now (for entertainment ok?) and I always get so irate after reading her articles. I always want to write a great big long rebuttal but can never finish them I get too mad. For those that don’t know her work, she’s one of those ‘it’s all feminisms fault that the family has destructed’ types. Cause, like, relationship laws, anti-domestic violence and rape campaigns, health protection, equal pay, voting rights, citizenship rights etc etc etc are all really bad and families were just so happy before all that happened, yeah right! Good riddance.
Last but not least, I’m leaving Wellington today, off on some new journeys. Will keep you all updated and will fill you in on the whole story when I get to my final destination!!!!
Arohanui