Devoutly Non-Mormon

Church College is the well-known Mormon secondary school at Templeview, just outside of Hamilton.  The school and the community are a story well worth telling for many reasons, too many to list here.  I taught there as a devoutly NON-Mormon student teacher almost ten years ago.  I was overwhelmed by their fellowship, the friendship that was extended to me and also by their easy acceptance of my own beliefs.  It felt good to be called “Brother” by complete strangers, students and staff alike.  It was a nice departure from the more stentorian “Mr.” or “Sir”.

In spite of my devout non-mormonism, there were one or two folk who, in great humour, would test the depth of my convictions.  Brother McTavish asked me if I’d like to teach full-time at the school.  “Sure,” I replied “but I’m not a Mormon.”  He assured me that wouldn’t be a problem. “When do you want to get baptised?  I’ll put the call in.”  Knowing that the school preferred it’s male staff members to be married men, I informed him that I was still unattached.  “No worries!  We’ll find you a woman, get you married, not a problem!”  It was a tempting offer, but I managed to resist.

Brother Chase, the school maintenance man, was well into his seventies but with an almost supernatural youth.  “I’ve been married almost fifty years boy.  You marry the right woman, it’s beautiful man, beautiful, paradise!  It's just like living in heaven.”  And if you marry the wrong one?  “Oh, marry the wrong one?  You might as well go shoot yourself.”

The Church authorities in Salt Lake City Utah have since closed the school down.  The buildings are still there, a little older, a little sadder, a little more-grey looking.  There is a stillness around the campus, a resigned type of quiet that I don’t recall.  It’s possible that I was an easy target for conversion, but even as a devout non-mormon with a deep love for coffee, I miss the place greatly and the sense of community I experienced there.  I remember it with great affection.

Feet On The Ground, Head In The Clouds.

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Auckland, my friend and I sat, alone, in a tiny basement theatre watching Land of the Long White Cloud, by Florian Habicht.  It is a beautiful, beautiful film about a fishing contest on Ninety Mile Beach.  For five days, the “contestants” (for want of a better word) stand toe to toe with the toheroa and tuatua casting their lines into the boiling west coast surf.  They peer into the ocean . . . concentrating, meditating, waiting.  They dream of catching a fish.  The biggest snapper.

Pieces to camera present these “simple” folk as thinkers, philosophers and theorists.  Sure enough, their social and political commentaries are informed by meaningful things - the roar of the breakers, the huge cloud-filled sky.  A local man shares the secret to his wisdom, his key to a beautiful life: “keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.”    Ossie Perie a large, grey haired man finally catches a snapper. After eight years without a bite it's not the big one, not even a big one, but it's a snapper nonetheless.

Just over an hour later we emerged into the city and it’s bristling, cloudless summer.  The streets were pouring with people, the road choking with motor vehicles.  There was movement everywhere like white noise . . . static.  My head began to burn and I found myself asking why.  It all seemed profoundly unimportant and I wished myself onto the windswept sands, to stand beneath the colour chromatic skies of the far north.  Just to catch a fish.

Mau Paparazzi Madness – Only in New Zealand.

Alison Mau is MAD.  She HATES paparazzi and being photographed and being in the public eye.  Hang on a minute?  Isn’t Mau a media personality, a reporter/presenter whose job is to present the same kind of stories about people just like her.  That alone makes her out and out outrage hard to sympathise with.

Okay so somebody took a couple of photos of her kids.  Tough call.  But if you’re going to play “Who Wants to Be a Celebrity” it just goes with the territory.   From Di on down, it’s not just you in the papers … it’s everybody you know.  Now if her kids were mad, that would be a different story.  They could always write to Michael Laws.

Strange thing is this.  Mau (and fellow media fugitive Mike Hosking) must have reported hundreds if not thousands of comments or stories on other “personalities”.  Does anyone recall either of them ever speaking out against paparazzi before they themselves were personally targeted?  Nope?  Me either.

The real issue is clearly not to do with paparazzi, privacy or the rights of children.  The real issue here is that New Zealand has long suffered from a celebrity drought.  When some guy in a Corolla spends Valentine’s Day taking pictures of news-readers and weather presenters you know, you can only be in New Zealand.

2009 – Year of the Facebook

2009 (thankfully behind us) saw the ascendancy of planet Facebook and everybody, yes EVERYBODY was online and getting connected. Facebook has helped people keep in touch, to share overseas experiences, to show our pictures at Angkor Wat and the Pyramids at Giza to friends of friends of friends of friends.  It’s the perfect tool for stalking ex partners (not that I would but I’m sure others do), or poking them in the eye.  Facebook showed that our lives transcend interesting and fulfilling. It told everyone at once … our lives are FUN!

Surely it was no coincidence that 2009 the Year of the Facebook, was also 2009 - the Year of the Breakup.   As much as Facebook brought us together it busted us apart.  No more sure way to seal the end of an affair than to change your status from “in a relationship” to “single”.  Keep it between you and your other half, you can always take it back.  Share the mistake with your mutual friends, exclusive friends, groups and networks and it’s permanent.  All you can do is watch your ex move on in pictures. Unless of course he/she banishes you to Facebook wasteland.  Facebook reconfigure our most private lives, in the most public way possible.

Perhaps for that very reason, Facebookers were reminded in ‘09 to update their security preferences.  Like a virtual VIP nightclub, you could decide who to let in and who to keep out.  For a tiny moment in Facebook time everyone got cautious.  But not for long.  The insatiable appetite for page views, friend requests and event invites would get the better of many, prompting them to throw back the cyber curtains giving away full and unimpeded access to their new and improved lives.  Are we being defined by our Facebook fictions, our publicised private successes and failures?  It certainly seems that way.

National's Key to the Tax Groove.

Much disappointment but very few real surprises from National.  Tax cuts across the board and loopholes tightened for residential property investment but no capital gains tax.  GST goes up to 15% despite saying they wouldn’t do it.  But nobody really believed that.  We all know what elections are won on.  Over inflated catch phrases masquerading as promises.

Who does this hit the hardest?  GST hits low income earners and beneficiaries obviously.  Household essentials have pretty much a base minimum price and it’s no lower for poor people than it is for the rich.  Tax cuts?  Not much real difference to a low wage earner facing increased GST on, well, everything.  As for closing the loopholes on residential investment property?  Wait and see.

One thing is certain: it's going to become easier for a rich man to pass through a property tax loophole than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of Godzone (whatever that is).  The cost to landlords will be “absorbed” by tenants - the same people buckling under increased GST, who will make do with the crumbs that fall from the tax cut table.

Sarcasm. Yeah Right.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.  It relies on an exaggerated tone of voice to convey that you mean the opposite of what you’re saying.  Sarcasm assumes “zero intelligence”, which is why it is the “comic” device of choice for dumb people.  It flatters no-one.  But it’s even less flattering when it doesn’t credit the audience with the intelligence to see that it is, in fact, sarcasm.  Enter Tui.

Tui are clearly not banking on the collective intellect of their drinking public. While pure sarcasm assumes that one's audience has the brains to “get it”, Tui billboards don’t.  Their bitey “Yeah Right” end note makes the assumption that the Tui audience need to be told: “sarcasm lives here”.  They need the joke explained   These billboards are almost as bitter as the beer they sell.  They want you to sneer not to smile.  Laugh at a Tui billboard and the jokes on you.

Sadly, Tui may well have judged its audience bang on.  I recently wrote a blurb for a company profile, many a Tui drinker among them.   I mentioned in the piece that “the owners brought the company to life”.  “Oh no!” they informed me earnestly, “they didn’t buy the company, they started it up themselves.”