Posts by Megan Clayton

Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First

  • Up Front: All Together Now,

    Alas Emma, I am at present hormonally impaired; my fantasies this trimester mostly cohere around someone replacing the rotting front-porch post and then bringing me a dish of savoury carbohydrates and some fruit while I'm at work. Neither of these things are metaphors. It may be that I have to outsource my lascivious gaze in the meantime. I rely on you to defend its existence to the internet.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: All Together Now,

    With the appropriate caveats from Craig's comment that fantasy does not necessarily indicate intention.

    Indeed; the online responses I have read to the businessman-with-a-Hummer's quotes have mostly been of the "what a dick" kind, as opposed to the policeman's implication that if he does have an accident involving a cyclist in future, one cannot help but infer intention.

    In the case of the complainant whose case is the subject of this thread, I think we would be foolish even to infer intentionality about the Irish ( pace stephen clover).

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: All Together Now,

    Tess's comments upthread speculating on the possible impact of sharing fantasies online implicit in this case came to mind when I read this story.

    Interesting to note that a police officer specifically targeted in the Hummer-owning businessman's fantasy of running cyclists off the road says that if the businessman did hit a cyclist in future his online comments

    wouldn’t help in court. The comments I’ve seen on the internet – it’s starting to wear thin

    This story of course applies to a very different context and no crime is yet alleged. I do think however that it points to the way in which there isn't a settled social custom as to how the things we say online are read in light of what may or may not happen (or have happened).

    I should also note I find myself far more at ease with the idea of someone fantasising online about group sex with a posse of Irishmen than someone fantasising online about running down cyclists on a hill road, although, as Emma might argue, this is perhaps a private matter of taste.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: History Repeating,

    The ad I'd like to see rescued is a double-length epic rap for Sparkles (1983).

    Was that "put a sparkle in your smile (smile)" or an earlier version?

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: History Repeating,

    I thought too the phrase from the Labour ad, "round the corner of the seventies" (or similar), was a curious coinage. Was it a common-place phrase from the time, or an attempt to describe the novelty of the new decade?

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: History Repeating,

    If I may begin by answering a rhetorical question from the featured episode: in my experience (of dogs), dog poo turns white when the dog has consumed meat with plenty of fat in it. So a dog that has eaten a butcher's bone will produce white dog poo, but a dog eating commercially-prepared biscuits won't.

    Perhaps we can infer a shift to owners feeding their dogs more biscuits and fewer bones and raw meat in the last twenty years? Might this also be a middle-class phenomenon?

    These are the sorts of pressing questions for which I am prepared to delurk on these pages.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: The Missionary Position,

    We have two gates and a plaque on the second that reads "Beware of the Dog". Would-be door-knockers stay away by and large, and although I wouldn't presume to say that correlation equals causation, I will say that they don't know our terriers are large on bark, short on bite.

    The most interesting missionary I ever met was a young Ugandan at a youth group function back in my still-Christian teens. He was I suppose twenty-four or twenty-five, but keep all us teenagers enthralled with tales of Idi Amin and his bishop-assassinating ways.

    I remember him (the missionary, not Idi Amin) as very sweet and understated and wished, even then, that all missionaries were similarly so.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Random Play: @fltfoxz. Gr8. C u 2moro,

    As I recall, a few people had that problem! I'm from Christchurch so it was all booked on the tubes. The higher number of folks working in Wgtn who are willing to walk anywhere to do anything sometimes works against 'em, it seems...

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Random Play: @fltfoxz. Gr8. C u 2moro,

    Eddie Clark mentioned Gillian Welch at the Paramount as one way of solving the alt-country-in-noisy-bars dichotomy. I went to this gig. The seated audience/stage performance dynamic was wonderful: rapt, largely silent attention from the audience through all the extended solos (who knew from the recordings that, when playing, David Rawlings appears to enter a trance and bend and dip round and round from the hips?) and wonderful singing.

    The sound was also well managed within the space: it sounded close to the recorded sound, so that the variations from the album tracks were all the more special. (You may not have thought it was possible for "Revelator" to rock, but you would be wrong.) I imagine, however, that with just two performers who record a live-type sound anyway, that's probably not too hard to achieve.

    The waiting, however, was the hardest part: audience admitted, seated by the start time and then waiting and waiting. Welch and Rawlings were late starting, which of course is no big deal in a bar venue, but in a concert hall setting it was tough, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Audience members were shouting out pleas for the show to begin (and someone cried, "thank you for coming!" when eventually the performers made the stage). So again, an incomplete synthesis, but one that fixed the problems under discussion here.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: Hellfire's a Promise Away,

    Should your daughter ask when you started "going out", you may find it helpful to tell her that yours was more of a "staying in" relationship. She can infer the rest according to her age and abilities.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 Older→ First