Remembering what's important in life

You know you want a dream lifestyle block!  http://www.nz.open2view.com/Property/214121. 

Inane utterings about toothbrushes

At the moment, I am in a short-attention-span frame of mind. So it was a mistake trying to buy a toothbrush. Has the toothbrush industry been taken over by a Marketing 101 class doing a spoof exercise?

Take the Access, for example. It promises not only a rubber handle with superior grip, but also claims it "reaches behind back teeth". In order to....????? Clean tonsils? Then there is Colgate's micro-sonic power brush, which promises outstanding sonic cleansing because it "combines high-speed sonic vibrations with multi-angled bristles". My brain equates "sonic" with "boom", which seems disappointingly unlikely in this case since the brush is powered by a single AA battery. Reach has the "dualeffect" brush, with "massaging fingers". Not in my mouth, thanks. Johnson & Johnson offers a brush with an "antibacterial microbe handle" – surely a great relief for all those avid toothbrushers who worry about microbes on their toothbrush handles.

After carefully reading each packet, I decided to select my toothbrush using the same criteria - no, criterion - I used when I selected my car. Colour.

Food brutality

I've been very absent for the past three weeks. Not that I haven't been thinking about blogging. It just took a backseat to some personal upheavals, and I found, much to my surprise, that I get blogger's block when I'm feeling happy. And when I'm feeling anxious. And there haven't been any other emotions happening.

But today, I witnessed an outrage that finally put the blogger block to rest. In what feels like a past life, I travelled the world, and witnessed much public kindness and much public brutality. So much so that I feel pretty hardened now. But, there are two images that continue to haunt me. I like to think that it is merely coincidental that both were witnessed in New Zealand in the last 5 years.

My sons and I were standing in line at a bakery, behind a young mother who ordered a lovely, fat, pink finger bun for her toddler, its lush coat of icing spangled prettily with hundreds and thousands. The child reached up expectantly. My own cavities hummed with excitement.

It was then that the act of violence occurred. Ignoring the child's outstretched hand, the mother grabbed a napkin and vigorously scrubbed the icing off the bun. The poor child looked on bravely while I looked on horrified. He accepted the ruined treat humbly, and, I thought as I glanced down at my boys, with surprising grace. He was clearly used to this.

I still don't get it. Isn't the icing the whole point of a finger bun?

That mother would get on well with the group of parents I used to sometimes, despite my best efforts, bump into when I was walking my nannying charges through Central Park in New York City. These mothers banded together to oppose ice-cream trucks. One mother admitted:

I feel kind of bad. I want my three-year-old, Katherine, to have the full childhood experience and all. But it's really predatory for ice-cream vendors to be right inside the playground.

Is that really easier than just saying "no"? One mum insisted to her son that the ice-cream van was a "music truck". Perhaps sent as a public service for people with an uncontrollable craving for Greensleeves? She complained:

As a new mother, everyone advises you on toilet training, but the ice-cream truck, nobody ever mentions that.

In their ideal world, parents would discard the ice cream, and present their children with the stick.

I thought of these mothers when I witness the other brutal, haunting event that occurred when I was pregnant with my first child. Now, when reading this, bear in mind that I am not a clucky person, even when pregnant, even after having three children. When I meet other people's children, they generally have to work pretty hard to earn my friendship, let alone any smidgen of respect. The same ruthless approach tends to apply to parents. And I have no qualms admitting that, while I am undeniably supportive, I do judge other parents (to myself), and take smug pleasure when my judgements prove correct (which is often).

At a crowded food court at the policy-wonk end of Lambton Quay one busy lunch hour, a very large woman, with her very large husband and very large child (I guess he would have been around 4 years old), ambled into the food court and found a seat. Nothing significant in that, and I was so engrossed in selecting my sushi that I barely registered their presence, other than hearing the kid scream.

To this day, I do not know what made me look, but I glanced across and noticed the woman trying to breastfeed her child. Being pregnant with my first child, and still quite career-focused, I shuddered at this prospect and wondered if I would be this woman in 4 years time. The kid refused a feed, so, with evidence of much practice, the woman reached across to the next table, picked up the sugar bowl, dipped her nipple in it, and then offered a feed to her son again. Naturally, now that the item on offer was now sugar-coated, he accepted with less restraint this time.

One of the side effects of the personal upheaval of the last three weeks is that I seem to suffer from amnesia. I'm not sure why I share that last story with you, other than to suggest you never use sugar bowls in cafes.

When inanimate objects attack

Rage against inanimate objects is on the increase. Do not bother telling me to buy a Mac because I cannot afford it, but I do know that between my PC and me, one of us has to go. In short, my computer is suffering from a bipolar condition where it can be perfectly normal in the morning and completely “shutdown” in the afternoon. Sometimes.

I have tried to be compassionate but in a fit of angst (unfortunately for the computer, compounded by a marriage break up), I Googled "inanimate object rage" and discovered over 250,000 entries. I am not alone. Global bloggers unite in inanimate object fury.

"Inanimate Objects Hate Me!" shrieks wittandwisdom.com. "This past weekend, while attempting to mow the lawn, I had what I’ve patented as a Witteurysm, which is when one blows a part of his brain out of his earhole due to the actions of an inanimate object."

There was a story in the paper recently about a Japanese man who got so angry at the new apartment block next door overshadowing his house that he got a gun and shot the building 12 times. That will teach the building to block his sun.

In New York, it is common to see people attacking taxis with umbrellas and fists because the taxi did not stop. In Singapore, I witnessed elevator rage, with someone becoming so furious at the lift, which stopped at every floor, he began thumping the wall (obviously, as this was Singapore, he was arrested).

The loss of self-control is overwhelming as we scream at these uncaring objects that glare back with vacant expressions and no remorse for the pain they cause.

Krapiti Coast Hypoocrasy

It must be obvious now that I do not enjoy living in Krapiti.  Yes, I have made many wonderful friends here who I hope to remain friends with for many years to come, even when I shortly move back to Wellington.  Yes, the climate has provided us with a wonderful garden and memorable trips to the local beach.  Yes, there is a sense of close, caring community spirit here that you really notice in times of need that I don't believe is so evident in the bigger cities like Wellington.

But, there are many many many negatives with Krapiti.  The road, the random wasting of ratepayers' money on proposed aquatic centres, the politics of personal agendas.  And, now, I find myself having a sanctimonious rant on poo.

Every walk I have had with my children over the last few months has been noticeable in the lack of dog poo ruining our shoes and pram wheels.  The council effectively addressed that issue (but the fact that it was necessary to impose a bylaw with fines, rather than persuasion, does rankle with me).  But brickbats to the council for being hypocritical on its poo stance.  While the dog poo may have reduced noticeably, and the numbers of people carrying highly useful plastic bags has increased, a remarkable amount of horse manure remains on footpaths, on the side of the road, and all over the  beaches.  To the point where it is just preferable to not go for a walk or go to the beach at all, just to avoid the massive quantities of horse poo.  For a while, I was collecting it in large sacks for the garden, but that novelty soon wore off when all I wanted to do was walk from kindy to the beach and not have to scrape shoes and pram wheel ever few metres.

So, although I said I detest bylaws and fines for something that should be a point of personal pride and respect for the area we all live in, I rang the council to ask if there were any rules on the dropping of horse poo in public places, like there is for dog poo.

The response:

Horse poo isn't as bad as dog poo because horses are vegetarian so their poo composts down without risk to human health.

True.  But does that mean vegetarian humans are allowed to defecate on public property?  Does that mean I should be encouraging my children to play in poo?  Tell me, Oh Irritating Call Centre Dufus, would you let your child play in horse poo?  I realise that horse poo may not be toxic or harmful to humans, and is in fact very good for the garden, but it is still a waste product and it is aesthetically unattractive for a suburban district, unappealing to step in, and revolting to witness children playing in it.

Having said all this, one of the greatest floors I have seen was in a house in Waipukurau where they made their conservatory floor out of cow poo (the difference between this floor and the Krapiti situation, of course, is that the floor was hard and looked clean and tidy).

The council keeps trumpeting its green horn about how attractive life is on the Krapiti Coast.  Horse manure coated roads, footpaths, cycleways and beaches is a green step too far for me.   I am a poo prude.  It is not an attractive look, and leads me to conclude that there are a significant number of residents in  Krapiti who might like their open spaces, but are arrogant and inconsiderate in how their behaviour might impact on others.

Seeing victims everywhere

(This is not an anti-feminist rant!  Far from it.  It is more a rant on how some women are letting the side down!  So start showing some blog etiquette and bloody read the blog before going off at me. )

She has a look on her face as if she's perpetually confronted by the ghost of Benny Hill. She is convinced that at least one half of the population is out to get their filthy hands on her. That she herself has nothing to fear is not just ironic, but the heart of the matter.

The Constitutional Feminist is a new creature. Germaine Greer is not a Constitutional Feminist, for she can provide opinions that are intelligent. By contrast, the Constitional Feminist feels it her duty to stick her stupid beak in wherever a woman is so much as a bit player in the game. Routinely passing herself off as a "researcher", an "academic" with a "special interest" (that special interest being "women"). She is no different, in reality, to a horny teenage boy - not interested unless there are girls involved. Had she been moved to write anything at all on the events of September 11 2001, it would probably have been a lament for all the dead women, along with a diatribe toward al Qaeda for not trusting females to carry out the hijackings. She views the tale of humanity as nothing more than Adam vs Eve.

A little while ago, one such individual blogged a tense piece, outraged that she was unable to buy clothing for her daughter that was age-appropriate. (I don’t want to tell you who this blogger was because the author drives me to murder with the useless diatribe. I refuse to give the blogger any marketing. But it involves an appendage at the end of a limb and, ironically, a receptacle to observe one’s sexiness). This is normal as the Constitutional Feminist is always ready whenever the issue is the "sexualising" of women (women looking sexy, presumably with the aid of a shiny reflecting receptacle). She has a big problem with females who appear sexually alluring, and it's an opinion one might have thought she herself would surely be too embarrassed to make public. When the anti-sexy lobby is at long last championed by one who is, herself, gorgeous, that is the day I will begin to consider that maybe this isn't all about jealous little girls.

Not that I am unsympathetic. I have strong memories of what it was like at fourteen (indeed, sometimes even now), when I wished my features were as beautiful as those on display in the magazines. My escape hatch, rather than wearing "sexualised" clothing, was bizarre clothing and dyeing my fringe bright red (punk rock from a respectable family), a scene where looking ridiculous was the very point, and from beneath such a deliberately ugly facade I scowled at the "Beautiful People", as if they were somehow lesser than me for simply having won nature’s raffle. I grew out of it – very much so – extraordinarily so - but the ghost of that childish envy still visits me occasionally, when I see Halle Berry and re-imagine my life with her looks upon it. A psychologist might observe the clothing I wear these days - drab, quaint, or boringly sensible - and conclude that such clothing serves the same purpose as the robes of punk.  It is an exemption from the contest I know I can’t possibly win, disguised as my personal preference, which, of course, has nothing to do with vanity, and everything to do with the difficulties of cleaning off dried vegemite.

The Constitutional Feminist is evidence that "adulthood" is largely an urban myth, that one never fully abandons the desires and insecurities of youth, but simply learns to camouflage them among more serious matters and motivations.

Whatever else she might be, The Constitutional Feminist cares very much about the impression she makes. It follows that she cares about how other women are perceived beside her – her daughter, for example - but one shouldn't be fooled into thinking such concern is at all intellectually noble. It is the rage of teenage envy, fermented by years and fortified by time, and therefore seemingly mature, but not. Maturity has nothing to do with years. It is earned, gradually, with each acceptance of little injustices that the young cannot understand. The Constitutional Feminist scratches those itches with feminism, a notional factory that takes sour grapes and turns them into principles. One doesn’t have to grow out of feminism as one must grow out of punk, or a childish inferiority complex.

But the other irony of a life lived in theatrical indifference to the male species is that The Constitutional Feminist does not know men anywhere near as well as she thinks. It wouldn't occur to her that when a man sees a sexy picture of a women he does not necessarily presume her to be without intelligence or honour. Nor would it strike her that men are less likely to objectify the person in photographs than The Constitutional Feminist is likely to disrespect them - that many men, unlike herself, seem to know the difference between a magazine and a woman. It would be totally beyond The Constitutional Feminist to imagine such a thing as a man who doesn’t judge a women by her livelihood. She presumes everyone to be like herself - a freelance magistrate, narrow and shallow, dismissive of those who don’t play by her morals.

Too often, Constitutional Feminism is an opening for a type of politicised evangelism. Take the Australian Women’s Forum, for example. Dig beneath the veneer of feminism that dolls up their website and you find a solid god-fearing bedrock that looks less of a feminist think tank than a conservative Christian lobby group whose overriding priority is to criminalise abortion. Such people masquerade as academics and concerned intellectuals when in fact they are more like products of a politicised nunnery, blindly enslaved to an ancient text and angry at the knights who never came knocking.

Which wouldn’t be worth mentioning if The Constitutional Feminist was a fringe dweller, or just a sister doing it for herself. But feminism has become the bogus justification of power for the thick and envious.

Waiting at the yellow light

I was going to suggest that the dearth of blogs from me lately was because of my devastation at my marriage collapsing, but the reality is I was stuck in traffic.

Submissions close today for the Kapiti highway options.  An interesting press release from Chris Turver marked the event:

More than 3,000 individual submissions on the government’s plans for a four-lane expressway through Kapiti have been received by the New Zealand Transport Agency – and staff are still counting.

Chris Turver, an advocate for the expressway to be constructed on the existing Western Link Road road route between Raumatiu South and Peka Peka understands the total is a record for a public consultation process on a government roading plan outside Auckland.

He says the response reflects the huge interest in Kapiti in getting it right and he hopes the majority of the 3,000 responses to date will be in favour of the Western Link Road which has already been supported by a 2,100-signature petition.

The petition, organised by Mr Turver and KCDC Councillor Ann Molineux, ran for just three weeks and was delivered yesterday to NZTA Board chairman Brian Roche, with a copy to Transport Minister Steven Joyce.

Interesting times.