Posts by Morgan Nichol
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Up Front: Safety Net, in reply to Roger,
It's tough, because whatever hand slapping might happen would be well after the damage was done.
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Up Front: Safety Net, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I'm not any kind of lawyer, but I say yes. Privacy Act and Health Information Privacy Code, at the least. So Privacy Commissioner and Health & Disability Commissioner would both likely take a very dim view of such outrageous carrying on.
I guess being forced into having a GP that goes to church is one of the things that living in a small town forces upon you. But I'm much more happy having a GP who is into science, not faith.
I don't want my doctor to asses my morals, I want my doctor to tell me what the fuck this lump is, or why it hurts so much when I do this.
Let's say for instance that I've masturbated my long suffering penis into a red raw and very sore state, I don't expect to be told I'm a bad person for thinking all those dirty thoughts and abusing my body, and I certainly don't expect people I know to be told that I'm a bad person, what I expect is a prescription for some soothing medicated lubricating lotion.
You know just hypothetically.
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Up Front: Safety Net, in reply to Emma Hart,
One of the scariest things I've had to do this year is find a medical professional I could trust in a context where I would have to reveal my sub identity. No, I don't like being called an idiot. It's quite a lot scarier to feel that I might not get fair, adequate medical treatment.
I don't understand this.
My simplistic world view is fucking me up again. Shouldn't doctors just do doctoring and shut the fuck up with judgey bullshit? I mean they don't even bother telling me to sort out my digusting fat body, which seems much more likely to hurt me than how I fuck.
Is it something that's bitten you before, or is it more of a general fear thing?
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I just wish I didn't know they'd continue to find new and ever more creative ways to disappoint us. It's such a dark feeling, knowing that our government are composed of a bunch of complete meatheads, totally compulsive about following their ideology, even when by their own measures they're pushing failed ideas.
I feel so powerless. Voting isn't enough.
I try to talk about it on the internet, but my audience is naturally composed of people who already agree with me. So how do we get rid of these fucksticks? How do we convince the people who vote for these complete failures that they should rethink their choices without seeming like we're criticising them rather than merely hoping they'll make better informed choices in the future?
Of course a big part of this is by shining light on these toads in the media, but our media seems so badly broken. So we need to fix it, but how do we fix our media when the most effective parts of it are completely owned by the bad guys? I do what I can with my little corner of the internet, but it's such a small corner.
So depressing.
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Can I also say, Emma, your post was really beautifully written. Despite talking to friends and family living in Christchurch, I really have no understanding of what life is like there now.
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Here's something written after the 1931 Napier quake. http://laytonduncan.com/post/3506659242/i-never-understood-how-a-man-could-dare-to-watch
I never understood how a man could dare
To watch a city shaken to the ground
To feel the tremors, hear the tragic sound,
Of houses twisting, crashing everywhere,
And not be conquered by despair.
Although his buildings crumble to a mound
Of worthless ruins, man has always found
The urge to build a stronger city there.Within my soul I made my towers high.
They lie in ruins, yet I have begun
To build again, now planning to restore
What life has shaken to the earth; And I in faith
Shall build my towers towards the sun
A stronger city than was there before.After being down for a few blazing hot bluebird days for a couple of friends' February wedding, then followed a while later by a lovely brisk Winter visit to see The Girl's family, I'd only just discovered and fallen in love with Christchurch's inner city. And then about a month later the September quake hit. Terribly frightening, we brought The Girl's family up to stay with us, it broke my heart talking her nieces. 6 & 8 year olds shouldn't know how to talk about how "serious it is down there, with all the death". But there it was.
A friends terrifying experience with parts of his old brick office coming off, located in the beautiful lanes in the city, soon seemed to be nothing but a fading memory. Regular tweets about aftershocks notwithstanding, the worst seemed to be over. The damaged walls pinned back into place. Everyone went back to work.
But now his office is gone. So is everything nearby.
Losing the people is a tragedy, losing the city is also a tragedy, but it might be a tragedy that can be somewhat ameliorated by taking the opportunity of reconstruction and make something glorious.
It's clear from virtually everything he's said publicly that it's an opportunity that Jerry Brownless & his ilk will see squandered; that bottom-feeding property developers will fritter away with ugly (and seismically inappropriate) tilt-slab construction. Quick to build, ugly as sin, and incidentally constructed in such a way that they need to be demolished and rebuilt pretty much every time there's a serious quake.
But the engineering problem of building earthquake tolerant buildings is solved. The city can be rebuilt safely. Just look at what Tokyo stood up to. The buildings rocked, and sometimes cracked, but they certainly didn't ever risk falling.
If the rebuild is DESIGNED, and I don't mean individual buildings, but the whole reconstruction of the inner city - designed by designers, by real urban planning experts (the best in the world of whom must be lined up to help Christchurch), and definitely not by politicians.
Designed to be lived in. Not driven through. With space to be a human. And built beautifully.
Well it could become the only other place in the country where I could imagine moving to. (Such is my love for the scattered villages of Auckland it would take a lot to get me out of here.)
But of course it's not really any of my business, I'm not from there. I recognise this.
So I look it to people like Layton Duncan, not a property developer, just a man who loves his city, and wants to see the best possible city built to replace what was lost. http://polarbearfarm.com/
The site doesn't have much in the way of detail yet, hopefully he'll go more public about the whole project soon, but I've spoken to Layton about his plans, and it's at least a glimmer in the dark.
A glimmer that will be snuffed out if the people of Christchurch leave it to "other people" to grow their beautiful new city. But we're here to help if you need it.
Build your towers towards the sun.
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I know some people seem to think that even proposing having Kanye was a stupid move, but I lost interest as soon as he was pulled. If he'd been on the bill, I'd have been there. Of course there are a whole lot of other acts that would have had the same result, and probably many of them would be much cheaper.
I've found the whole #BDOMemories exercise to be quite revealing, I simply don't remember most of the shows I saw. In many cases I only remember one act from a given year, to tell me if I was even there or not.
Looking back over the lineups, some years, way back when, were just stuffed with awesomeness. This year... Well. It's weak. Last year was pretty weak as well, but I wanted to see Die Antwoord, so that was that.
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Hard News: #BDOMemories, in reply to Sacha,
Sure, but it was fucking great in there. I'm sure it would have been less fun if he'd been way up on a stage, rather than right there.
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Oh god no.
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Hard News: Nobody wanted #EQNZ for Christmas, in reply to Lilith __,
Twitter user Laura Campbell reported (and posted a photo of) liquefaction a few minutes ago: http://twitter.com/#!/dyedredlaura/status/150035378349408256