Acta Sancti Oscar

thezahir @ 2009-11-08T11:12:00

2009-11-07T22:15:03Z

Hone Harawira beleives that the Da Vinci Code made the Louvre famous. Rather more offensive than his other comments I feel.

thezahir @ 2008-11-27T00:05:00

2008-11-26T11:06:51Z

Party at my house on Friday, 7.30 or so on. Late notice I know, but you should all come. It'll be awesome.

Detailed post-election analysis

2008-11-08T22:48:00Z

New Zealand is full of vapid shallow morons and yesterday they banded together to fuck the rest of us. It's hard to believe I live in a country where people are willing to elect assholes like Roger Douglas, Bill English, Maurice Williamson and Lockwood Smith to parliament. Roger Douglas!

I'm not at all happy. I don't want to sound like a supervillian, but New Zealand will regret its decision before 2011.
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Also, did y'all see me on tv last night? I was at the Labour Party HQ when Helen resigned.

thezahir @ 2008-10-25T16:42:00

2008-10-25T03:43:02Z

Alan Greenspan admits he was wrong about the free market.

This is the best birthday ever!

thezahir @ 2008-10-19T23:38:00

2008-10-19T10:44:26Z

So uh...convince me that all music other than Townes Van Zandt and Yungchen Lhamo doesn't suck? I kind of want to like listening to music again. So what have you been listening to, I guess?

The Continuing Campaign for the Aggressive De-election of Rodney Hide

2008-10-03T23:02:46Z

Did you guys see that thing a while ago about Helen Clark's comments about Iraq? I don't really care either, but I sort of want to draw your attention to Heather Roy's comments:

It was also an insult to the United States; "to whom we owe a debt from World War 2 that we can never repay".

I raged pretty hard. There seems to be this idea around New Zealand that WWII was somehow our war, as much as it was Britain's or America's. Obviously I don't think that's true. I blame Michael Joseph Savage.

tl dr; Vote Richard Worth in Epsom.

thezahir @ 2008-08-31T13:02:00

2008-08-31T01:07:55Z

I'm bummed out. If Winston Peters hadn't stepped down yesterday this would have been the third time he'd been dismissed from cabinet. Three different administrations! I'm pretty sure that would have been a record.

More liek Prince Crapsian, amirite?

2008-06-22T05:09:43Z

Look, I enjoy a casual disregard for human life in my movies as much as the next guy, but Prince Caspian was still pretty stupid.

I was hesitating to post this, because I bet if you totalled up the number of times if bitched about something on livejournal I'd look like a negative asshole. So I will balance out my thinking Prince Caspian was bad with this tangentially related comment:

I'm reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity right now, and I think it's really good. It's taking me a while to get through it with schoolwork and all, but I'm really enjoying reading what he has to say. I won't say it's got me to think about my personal spirituality or anything masturbatory like that, but it is a well-written defense of Christian doctrine, for anyone interested in that stuff.

Kenya: 900 dead, economy down

2008-02-03T04:22:11Z

Here's Lord Malloch-Brown, British Foreign Office Minister, on the current situation in Kenya:

"This country is hurting. Its economy is way down. Tourist receipts are way down. It's a country which at points this weekend seemed almost physically divided, with roadblocks preventing people moving from one side of the country to another."

I'm not particularly angry about this, either. You can't be angry, really. All Malloch-Brown is doing is admitting to is the golden rule of capitalism, the reason that Kenya is in the state it's in. It isn't at all unusual to think about human life in valued terms.
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I've been thinking a lot about politics lately, mostly because I'm living, working and spending every waking moment in the Wellington goldfish bowl. This will all change when I get back to Auckland where no one gives a shit about politics and life is cheap.

thezahir @ 2008-01-24T18:22:00

2008-01-24T05:41:04Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7199736.stm

India launches an Israeli satellite to spy on Iran. For those of you keeping track at home, Israel and India both possess nuclear arsenals, and neither is party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has signed the NPT and does not have the bomb. This isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black. This is the pot and the kettle teaming up to insist that the crystal vase is black, and then launching 300kgs of steel into space to prove it. Here the analogy gets a bit confused.

And now, cynicism

2008-01-22T05:13:45Z

Oh, if only Sir Ed had struggled on until April or May. A little closer to the election and we could have had fist fights in the aisle of Holy Trinity as politicians clawed at each other for the chance to wipe away a tear as they stood by the coffin.

This business has really revealed our news media as the pack of vultures they are. The New Zealand Herald today printed the program of the funeral and the words to the hymns, so that if you have your newspaper open in the church you can sing along. Close Up (and some of you may know my opinion of Close Up and Mark "Political Neutrality" Sainsbury) were having a poll on whether we should rename Aoraki-Mt. Cook in honour of Sir Edmund! Jesus Christ, such arrogance.

High point of the Summer

2007-10-31T09:05:35Z

Anyway, I'm having a party at my house on Friday, the 16th of Nov. and I'd like you to be there. I think we're telling people to come over around 7 or 8, but really, I'll probably be around here all day. Come over whenever. We'll get maudlin and lament yet another step into decrepitude. It'll be pretty fantastic.

What I do instead of doing what I should

2007-09-07T08:47:14Z

I don't know if any of you still read for fun or not, but I read a great essay today. George Orwell totally serves Tolstoy in epic street battle, over King Lear of all things. It's old and good, so I'm sure you've read it, but I'm enthusiastic even when I'm late to the party.

thezahir @ 2007-08-03T18:53:00

2007-08-03T06:58:24Z

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/08/tehran-terror-and-colonial-mystique.html

"As Joseph Massad points out in 'Desiring Arabs', this Orientalism has been smuggled into human rights and gay liberation discourse by those who ought to know better: the certainty that there is something unique about Islam that proscribes and punishes homosexuality went alongside propagandistic claims by the ILGA and others about the "mass execution" of homosexuals in Iran. There is today a bitter argument among human rights activists, Iranian diasporists, gay rights activists and so on about the extent of repression of gays in Iran... As Rostam Pourzal points out, a number of gay rights organisations have pointedly shunned the claims being made in some quarters about an anti-gay "pogrom" in Iran. The Iranian government is repressive of all sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage, but I suspect that the claims now being made by a few individuals - often transmitted through Peter Tatchell who is totally unreliable these days - reflect the state of Western liberalism, and not the state of Iran. They reflect the obsession of liberals with Islam and questions of identity, and they also provide, whether they mean to or not, one plank in a propaganda campaign against a country that Washington is currently targeting."

WTFWJD

2007-07-09T09:08:16Z

Someone has a sense of humour

2007-06-28T10:40:46Z

Tony Blair has been made some kind of peace envoy to the Middle East. I wish profoundly that I was joking. Unfortunately, Ariel Sharon's abortive life is being artificially preserved in a Jerusalem hospital somewhere, so I'm unable to say that Anthony Blair is the worst man alive to be made an ambassador to the Middle East. Nevertheless, he wouldn't have been my first choice.

Why I hurt so bad

2007-06-10T11:20:44Z

Mungyodance 2. Furries finally doing something useful? Perhaps. I'm kind of broken from playing it today. In between all that yiffing furries find time to do a lot of bar raping I guess.

thezahir @ 2007-06-03T17:07:00

2007-06-03T05:12:14Z

Humans hard-wired to enjoy altruism. Ayn Rand stupid, ugly.

Protect the shota! Hurry!

2007-05-31T08:10:29Z

LiveJournal goes nuts with banhammer at behest of self-appointed "Monster Hunters". I shit you not, monster hunters.

PROTIP: Your kids can't get raped on the internet.

Edit: And then livejournal is all like lol no just to spite me.

Where's your god now?

2007-05-16T12:04:19Z

My politics lecture came into class today and starts telling us all what a bad day he'd been having. Someone at the back of the class yelled out, "Jerry Falwell's dead." Suddenly, smiles all round.

This is now a dream journal.

2007-05-12T09:48:53Z

I had a nightmare where if you said Billy Collins's name three times he would appear.

...actually, is Billy Collins even dead?

Growing Up

2007-04-25T00:43:44Z

Up there with finding out that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don't exist: I just took candy from a stranger and it was delicious. In the future I shall do so whenever possible.

The Romance of Commerce

2007-04-13T00:04:32Z

You know what the internets need? Less YTMND, more Tripod pages collecting trivia relating to Adam West's Batman. Especially the quotes section called "Lecturing Robin".

Dick: "Gosh, Economics is sure a dull subject."
Bruce: "Oh, you must be jesting, Dick. Economics dull? The glamour, the romance of commerce... Hmm. It's the very lifeblood of our country's society."

Robin, to Carpet King: "You must be that gentleman I've read about. Aren't you a king or something?"
Batman: "Robin, England has no king now. England has a queen, and a great lady she is, too."

Robin: "Picked up the seal pulsator yet, Batman?"
Batman: "We're still over land, Robin, and a seal is an aquatic, marine mammal."
Robin: "Gosh, yes, Batman, I forgot."

And my favourite:
Robin, looking at Batgirl: "You know something, Batman?"
Batman: "What's that, Robin?"
Robin: "She looks very pretty when she's asleep."
Batman: "I thought you might eventually notice that. That single statement indicates to me the first oncoming thrust of manhood, old chum."

But it's all I can do not to copy and paste the whole section. Words to live by, indeed.

And babies? as they used to say.

2007-03-27T23:13:46Z

Russian intelligence leak places the US invasion of Iran as happening on Good Friday at about 4am. And there's also this. This would of course be a ridiculously dumb decision, and the articles aren't authoritative or anything, but I'm pessimistic enough to accept just about anything at this point.

As long as we're linking, this is a fascinating article on so called Islamic Fundamentalism from 1989. Rather than seeing radical Islamism as a reaction to to the West, International Perspective suggests it fills a similar roll to nationalism, that is, a bourgeois ideology used to negate class in highly class based societies. It argues that distinct nation-states are less established in North Africa and the Middle East, and so the xenophobia that has been used in the West to break down class consciousness is often inadequate.

Keeping you abreast of my life.

2007-03-22T22:14:54Z

I just I had a dream where I had to kill shapeshifting Nazis, for no adequately explained reason. Pretty awesome. Also, was I the only one who saw those looks Nazi #1 was giving Nazi #2? What was going on there?