Cracker by Damian Christie

She’s a funny old world.

I don’t know whether it’s the desperately predictable nature of the mainstream media, politicians and talkback radio, or that there are only so many different types of events and associate responses, but isn’t there something very Groundhog Day about everything that’s happened since that poor woman was killed by a dog the other day?

Even this very blog has been written before. Read this piece I wrote four years ago.

It’s all there. A vicious dog attack; the media start reporting every time a dog so much as looks sideways at anyone; victims start calling to ban dangerous dogs; politicians of all persuasions make noises. Ironically the one thing that stands out – for me at least – from my 2003 take on the issue is that the Holmes programme is no longer, and I work for the show in its place. And no, there was no poll this time around.

It’s so obvious it almost pains me to point it out – but I will – dog attacks happen every week. Last year Auckland City Council – just Auckland City – reported that figures on dogs attacking or challenging people or other animals dropped 15%, to 553 incidents. Even if only 10% of those were actual attacks on actual people, that’s one a week. Most incidents would normally be ignored by the media, but after a fatal attack, it suddenly becomes necessary to report every single attack as though dogs as a whole have suddenly had it with us humans.

And so we have the case of the lady who was bitten on the face when she leaned over to pat a dog tied up outside the supermarket. I’m not defending the dog’s behaviour in this instance, but did we not learn anything the last time the dogs started revolting? If it ain’t your dog, and the owner hasn’t said it’s okay, don’t pat it. That was certainly the message I took away. Dogs get nervous and defensive. If a stranger approaches it and tries to touch it, it may snap at them. If you face is in the way, expect stitches.

To be fair, they’re hardly unique in this regard. Try walking into a bar and randomly hugging as many people as you can. There’s a reasonable chance you’ll get hurt. This was a particular danger when E hit nightclubs in Auckland the same time as the Headhunters got into dance music. Loved-up punters looking for cuddles in all the wrong places. But I digress...

On the weekend, it was an 8 year old boy in South Auckland, “savaged by Pitbull” according to the over-eager subs at the Herald on Sunday. The father was similarly – although perhaps more understandably – brimming with hyperbole:

He could have died. He received three stitches on his right leg, and there's scratch wounds on his left leg.

Three stitches? Scratch wounds? Shit, I’ve come off worse against a coffee table. Although by the time the Herald picked up the story again on Monday, the dog had apparently come back for revenge – the boy now had “several stitches”.

None of which is to say the dog, which had a history of attacking people, shouldn’t be killed. It should, and it was.

Today it was a Dobermann attacking a woman house-sitting for its owners. The woman in this case needed stitches for puncture wounds. The dog was on its own property, which it was probably be trained to defend. Maybe it had a history of aggressive behaviour, maybe it didn’t. Maybe the owners should have put it in a kennel, maybe they should be charged, maybe the dog should be destroyed.

These are all valid questions, and ones that can be largely dealt with through existing laws? We don’t need tougher laws, if anything they just need to be enforced. Are you at all surprised when you read the sentence “the dog was not registered or microchipped”?

As long as we have dogs, we’ll have dog attacks. Just like cars and car accidents, alcohol and teen pregnancy, coffee tables and scars on your toddlers’ chins. What we need to realise is – with the exception of the occasional tragic fatality – these events are commonplace. It’s a fact that seems to have eluded the writer of this editorial in the Herald on Sunday:

But the real surprise, of course, is that such attacks don't happen more often than they do.

What, more than 553 times a year in Auckland City? More than 100 times in Wellington? What kind of Cujo-esque rampage were you hoping for?

It’s not the dogs I’m sick of here, or their sometimes negligent owners. I’m sick of elements of the media trying to create panic simply by choosing to report everyday events which normally wouldn't raise an editorial eyebrow. And on that note – but for different reasons, clearly – I find one thing to agree with in the HOS editorial:

In the wake of two dog attacks, one fatal, in less than a week, we might all be forgiven for sighing and saying "What, again?"

Attuned as I am to the plight of new mothers, it was with some interest I recently read about a study carried out by Harvard Medical School.

The study looked at factors that would help (or hinder) new mothers from losing their post-baby pounds. And it came to four starting conclusions:

1. The more time you spend on the couch watching TV, the less likely you are to lose weight.

2. On the other hand, if you exercise every day, you are more likely to lose weight.

3. The more fatty food you consume… the more weight you lose. Nah, just kidding – the study shows that eating fatty foods will actually hinder your ability to lose weight gained during pregnancy!

4. The effects of these activities are cumulative. Therefore by consuming fewer fatty foods, exercising regularly and not sitting on your arse all day watching telly, you’ll lose even more weight than just doing one of those things!

Harvard Medical School. I shit you not. Diet ‘n’ Exercise eh, who’d have thunk it?

Now I’m no scientician, but I’m going to take a huge leap here and say that the same logic could be applied to, guess what… almost all weight loss! Don’t tell study author Dr Emily Oken, but I reckon other people might already be on to this too. I’ll ask around tonight when I’m at the gym.

I’m wondering how much funding the good Dr Oken got to carry out this study, and whether the likes of you and I could get a bit of cash thrown at us for similarly studies. I have a few hypotheses I’d like to test below:

1. Being really good looking and uber-rich increases your chance of getting laid.

2. Fast runners have a better chance of winning athletics events than slow runners.

3. Fundamentalist Christians really aren’t very bright.

4. JFK was killed by... a bullet.

5. There may not be life on other planets, but there almost certainly are other planets.

6. Most bloggers need to get out more.

…and of course your submissions are welcome over at the System.

Wide-ranging discussions followed on from yesterday’s post on Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill. It was nice to see some lively debate on PublicAddressSystem, especially when contrasted with the name-calling, hair-pulling, cussing and general potty mouthed behaviour across the road. I have a lot of respect for David P Farrar, but some of the company he keeps, jeez…

One emailer raised a point I had hitherto not considered however, and I think it's one all MPs should consider when casting their votes.

What effect will this Bill have on spanking fetishists, both now and in the future?

Having spent a fair amount of time considering the issue (during my lunch hour), vox popping members of the public and ringing around all my ex-girlfriends, I’ve arrived at a couple of conclusions.

Let’s face it. Sex is great when it's naughty. Forget all the “it’s best when you’re doing it with the person you love” rubbish; that’s up there with “when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much...” for explaining to a kid where they came from. (I’m going to tell my kids the truth: Mummy and daddy met in a bar, where mummy had too much to drink and daddy was in fine form…”)

Anyway, whether it’s naughty with someone you love (hotels on holiday, a “sick day” spent in bed) or just naughty with someone you feel like getting down with (alleyway, Speaker's Chair), that's your call. But naughty is better.

So if smacking is suddenly against the law, won’t that make an already kinda kinky act (and I’m talking about the whole spectrum here, from a quick slap on the arse, to an Ian Wishart-style paddling) even hotter? I think it just might. Spanking will become the new, well, I don't know, whatever the hip sex act is right now.

Generationally though, I suspect things will change. If you were never smacked as a child, never equated physical discipline with ‘being naughty’, wouldn’t the whole thing just be a bit foreign? In a world where being smacked was just a completely alien concept, wouldn’t it be more like “What the hell? Did you just strike me on my bottom with your open hand? What’s that all about?”

I’m not just concerned about what effect this might have in the bedrooms of New Zealand circa 2030, but on the BDSM industry in general. It would appear that the whole spanking thing will go through a boom for a while, as it becomes even naughtier, but then suddenly drop off as the now nascent generation reaches sexual maturity.

I’m no investment analyst, but I’d be checking your diversified portfolio if I were you. If it includes any of the following – rubber, leather or latex manufacturers, producers of restraining devices and other such goods, you’d be well advised to keep the above in mind.

As you were.

As Parliament prepares to pass Sue Bradford’s “anti-smacking” bill, the only thing that seems to be clear is that absolutely nothing is clear.

I’m not a parent, and from this position I find it a little difficult to predict exactly how I would raise my children. I would like to think I could do so without ever laying a hand on them, but the ‘unruly child in the supermarket’ model provides a scenario where many people could if not understand, then forgive the parent who gives their child a light smack to get them moving.

What I consider unacceptable is the ‘wait ‘til your father gets home’ punishment, where the child has done something wrong and physical discipline is metered out in a cold, clinical manner. I had such discipline on occasion, and while “it did me no harm” I wouldn’t wish it on my kids.

But I don’t accept Bradford saying that we should pass a law making something –even light smacking– illegal and rely on police and the judiciary to act reasonably in applying it. This is the same judiciary, is it not, who have failed to act responsibly in applying the “reasonable force” test that currently stands, failing to convict parents guilty of what any “reasonable” person would surely call child abuse?

I find it even less palatable to leave such discretion to the police.

Bradford’s Bill has been further watered down –or at least further confused– in the select committee process. The original idea of removing “reasonable force” as a defence has gone, and the Bill instead now allows reasonable force in a number of situations. Most vague is where such force is for the purpose of “performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting,” as long as it is not “for the purpose of correction”. Good, that’s so much clearer.

"Reasonable force" remains undefined, which, need I remind you, was the whole problem the Bill was meant to address in the first place.

If the Bill and associated argument seems confused it could be because underlying it are separate aims. One is ideological. Parents shouldn’t smack children, full stop. There’s no need, parents can use time outs and so forth. The second is to stop the situation where the law (or at least its interpretation from time to time) has allowed some parents to beat their children with weapons.

No-one will criticise the second aim, but New Zealanders are clearly divided on the first – although it wouldn’t be unheard of for Parliament to pass such a progressive law. But this is an entirely different discussion to the one now being had, and Bradford’s “I’m not trying to make a criminal out of ordinary parents” line doesn’t wash. She is; the Bill does, the only question is whether the police choose to prosecute. It’s the same as marijuana smoking – the police might confiscate your joint and tell you to piss off, but you’ve still committed a criminal act.

I don’t know what the answer is – defining reasonable force to allow a light smack but not a beating would make sense, but by all accounts this too is fraught with legal issues. Perhaps we go back to the philosophical drawing board, debate whether a smack is ever appropriate and lead by example, as Governments have done with the various anti-smoking laws passed since 1990. You wouldn’t dream of sparking up in a department store these days, yet I remember working in a shop with those big floor ashtrays scattered all over the place, vacuuming up random ash at the end of each day.

What Parliament shouldn’t do is pass a law that criminalises many thousands of parents every day, and just kinda sorta assume that it’ll all work itself out somehow. Cos it won't.

(Read the Bill and its amendments yourself if you haven't already.)

Is it redundant to finish my half-arsed reviews of the Oscar movies I saw now that the Oscars are over?

Probably.

THE QUEEN
1 Oscar: Helen Mirren (Best Actress)

It’ll never win anything. Never in a million years. Especially not that Mirren woman…

There’s nothing particularly wrong with The Queen, but it never really seemed to me to be Oscar material. Unless they start giving Oscars to a made-for-TV miniseries played over Monday and Tuesday nights on TV One. Because that’s what it felt like.

A strange mix of actual footage and fake events doesn’t help. One minute we’re looking at file of people leaving flowers outside Buckingham Palace; the next, Her Majesty is weeping in a river somewhere because her 4WD has crapped out. Can you spot the event that never actually happened? And when the tight-lipped Queen is one moment being all well, tight-lipped, and the next moment confiding some element of emotional backstory to a random manservant, it doesn’t ring true. Probably because it’s not.

Similarly, one can’t escape the feeling that half the cast were chosen simply because they look kinda-sorta like the people they are supposed to be playing and can do a half decent vocal impression too. Which I suppose is one sort of acting, but personally I just prefer it when actors are pretending to be people I’ve never seen in real life before. Elizabeth I? Sure, never met the big ginger queen, never likely to. Elizabeth II? No go.

But apart from all that, yeah fine. Watch it if it ever comes on TV. But it’ll never win an Oscar for anything I tell ya.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
2 Oscars: Alan Arkin (Best Supporting Actor); Best Original Screenplay.

My surprise favourite movie in quite some time, at least since the equally surprising Me and You and Everyone We Know entered my world a few months back.

Okay, when you boil it down to it, Little Miss Sunshine is a feel-good family movie, and some people have a problem with that. But to say it’s only that is to say that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is just a road movie, or Moby Dick a book about fishing.

I won’t tell you too much about it, just go and see it or get it out if you haven’t already. 15 words or less? Quirky family confined in a small van drive across US facing adversity and eventually redemption.

And when I say redemption, I mean laugh your arse off funny redemption. And judging by all the people who visibly shaking in their economy-class seats with laughter at 3am, I’m not alone in that opinion.

By the way, great discussion after my last post over at Public Address System. Feel free to continue after this one.

Next Up: I’ll talk about something more important than films.

Probably.