Some More Rants

                                           Accented

I’ve been a bloke with an accent for more than forty years now,

and being that way I’ve had plenty of opportunity

to learn about the phenomenon,

and to observe and analyse its various aspects.

I’ve learnt that since the tongue and the other muscles

we use to make sound

are, indeed, muscles,

they become trained over time to move in certain ways,

but with exercise this can gradually change.

I’ve also learnt that untrained people

usually notice differences in speech patterns

and miss similarities entirely –

when I talked on the phone to some crap rellie in Texas,

back around the turn of the century,

he told me that I sounded like a Kiwi.

The most boring thing, though,

about being a bloke with an accent

is that since accents are such totally superficial things,

like huge noses or red hair or burn scars,

they’re all that superficial people notice,

and the world is full of superficial people.

Now, they might be too polite

to comment about a huge honker or a disfigurement,

although – I don’t know – maybe it’s 50-50 for redheads,

the first thing that many thousands of people

have said to me since the sixties,

upon selling things to me in shops and so forth,

is to inform me, pleased as punch with themselves, that I have an accent,

as if I didn’t know.

As soon as I see that certain look – a sort of smug, supercilious smirk –

the look of dimwits who think they’re Sherlock Holmes –

I know and dread what’s coming.

“Where are you from?” or, worse, “Where’s home?”

and in the more than a quarter of a century I’ve been a Kiwi, also,

“Are you an American or a Canadian?” or similar crap,

as if I had some obligation to produce my CV

to superficial strangers on demand.

Incidentally, I’m neither.

I’d lived in ten different localities in three different countries

before arriving in Otorohanga from Micronesia in 1988.

So bloody what?

I used to make up stories to keep from becoming too bored, such as

I learnt English at a KGB spy school in Bulgaria in the 1960s,

but, nah – that’s too much bother to waste on ill-mannered numbskulls.

Now I just tell ’em I don’t wanna talk about it.

That works sometimes.

                      Political Correctness

When I first heard people use the term ‘politically correct’

upon my return to university life in 1990,

I wondered what the fuck they were talking about.

It turned out, of course, that this was just jargon

for ordinary human decency, consideration, and respect.

I couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t just say that

and felt that they had to invent such a ridiculously

self-satisfied, judgemental, threatening, starchy-stiff term,

unless it was to set up an easy target for the dickheads

who oppose ordinary human decency, consideration, and respect,

a target that such dickheads could enjoy

sneering at, ridiculing, and otherwise knocking down

with little effort and without overtaxing their minimal intelligence.

                          Deterrence

Corporal punishment is supposed to be a deterrent,

to make children and adolescents think twice

about misbehaving due to the fear

of the pain that adults in authority

can consequently inflict on them

with a cane or a paddle

or some similar weapon,

yet my experience as a teacher

in schools with corporal-punishment policies

was that the same kids

received administrative wallopings

over and over again, undeterred.

Capital punishment is supposed to be a deterrent

to make people think twice

before committing murder

or other violations of the law

of those jurisdictions that have it on the books

due to the fear of

not-all-that-sudden death.

If this were truly so, and it does deter, then

those places should never have to use it,

but they do,

usually often.

             Noble and Base

Although I taught my children

whilst they were growing up

that there are no good or bad words,

only good or bad thoughts,

many people – even here in New Zealand –

adhere to eleventh-century class snobbery

in a country on the other side of the world,

in which words derived

from the Norman-French language

of the conquerors and new ruling class,

such as urine and copulate,

became noble and acceptable,

and words derived

from the Anglo-Saxon language

of the conquered and subjugated class,

such as piss and fuck,

became base and offensive.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Just symbols for sounds.

It seems that some folks just love to feel offended.

        If Only The Bullshit Were True

The slimeball must come to the park at night,

because even when I’m the first to arrive,

at dawn or even by moonlight,

the trail is there to spoil things.

What the slimeball does several times a week,

as he or she proceeds along the riverside footpath,

is tear open several

of those pink artificial-sweeteners packets

that places that sell hot coffee provide,

presumably empty them into the slimeball gob,

and then drop them onto the ground.

This means that however aesthetically pleasing

the dawn and the trees and the river and the birdsong are,

a trail of bright pink rubbish

screams out for my eyes’ attention.

Not for the likes of slimeballs

are pockets and rubbish bins.

It would please me enormously

if the extravagant claims

of those wacko conspiracy theorists

about aspartame’s ability to damage health

had even a glimmer of a shred of validity,

but alas, they don’t.

                   Capon With Wild Rice

When I worked as a dinner-clothes wearer

in an overpriced formal French dining room

one diner, whilst perusing the menu,

asked me what a capon is.

Being naïve in regard to

the insufferably squeamish ways

of upper-middle-class middle Americans,

and being the holy fool that I was,

I gave her the direct dictionary definition.

The next day the hotel’s assistant food and beverage manager,

who wore swastika cufflinks and liked me not at all,

came at me in a rage.

How dare I tell a customer that a capon’s a castrated rooster!

A capon is not a castrated rooster!

A capon is a kind of a chicken, and that’s what I was to tell ’em!

When I went home I checked my dictionary again.

It read, “capon, n. A castrated rooster.”

                           Very Good Taste

Twice now on facebook,

people have supported opinions they’ve expressed

in comments beneath my postings –

one in support of an arbitrary and somewhat infantile food preference,

and one in support of an aesthetic preference based on pretence –

with the claim, “I have very good taste.”

As if their aggressively self-confident assertion of this

made it axiomatically unquestionable.

One even made the claim twice.

Notwithstanding their superfluous use of the qualifier,

as if it were possible to make a meaningful distinction

between ‘very good taste’ and just plain ‘good taste’,

their making this assertion

defeated their argument rather than supported it,

because with good taste, as with power,

if you have to tell people that you have it,

you don’t.

                           Memes

Before the internet word-thugs hijacked the term,

a meme was a unit of cultural information, an idea,

or an element of social behaviour

transmitted via words or the example of actions,

usually through the generations via imitation.

Calling those little internally-captioned photos,

illustrated jokes, YouTube flare-ups,

and similar facebook shared posts

that become overwhelming forgotten

within a few days,

or maybe a week or two,

and completely forgotten soon after,

replaced by countless similarly forgettable postings

memes

is both an insult to the word

and an indictment

of what has come to pass for our culture.

                      Humbug, Indeed

I don’t know what disgusts me more about Christmas:

the smugly hypocritical and contradictory religiosity –

Christianity and peace on Earth? Give me a break! –

or the hideously rapacious and wasteful commercialism,

with its incessant, soul-shatteringly schmaltzy music

in every public place.

             Faux-Wisdom Horseshit

I get just about physically sick

when I see quotations and other facebook postings

confidently asserting,

with no empirical basis

or well-reasoned support,

those fine-sounding 

and supposedly inspirational and motivational and uplifting

supposed truths

– usually involving positive thinking,

Mary-Poppins optimism,

or some similar bilge –

that have nothing to do with reality

as I have experienced and observed it,

and are in truth nothing but

smug smirking by the fortunate,

telling people who are unfortunate

that being unfortunate

is all their fault.

More Old Age Stuff

                Getting On In Years

People who say that getting old is all in the mind

don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

My mind – meaning intellectual capability,

curiosity, imagination, creativity, and so on –

is as strong and vibrant as ever,

if not more so.

Getting old, for me at least, is all in the body.

My knees hurt more on chilly mornings, for one thing,

my thighs ache after climbing small hills,

and although I’ve always felt uncomfortable

with being normal,

my research on the internet reassures me

that my disturbed sleep patterns –

insomnia, I’ve learnt, is something different,

but most of us call it that anyway –

and my body’s erratic thermal regulation,

which means that I have to be constantly

adding and shedding clothing layers,

are normal signs of ageing.

I’ve also noticed, but haven’t researched,

that my hair, which has grown lighter in colour,

though still not white or grey,

has begun to grow much more slowly,

and that my beard and nails

have begun to grow incredibly fast.

Denying these and other physical changes, to me at least,

would be an example of a mind that’s old.

I’ve always tried my best to be intellectually honest,

and I don’t intend to change that now.

              Two to One

As the GP took my blood pressure

and listened to my thumper,

I compared how young my mind felt

with how old my body felt.

Then I turned my head to the right

and saw a small mirror on the wall.

The reflection of my countenance

filled the glass,

and I reflected upon my appearance.

That sealed it –

it was two to one

in favour of old.

             Being A Grumpy Old Weirdo

I realise that I occupy a niche market,

socially,

and that as a person I don’t appeal,

for one reason or another,

often under the heading of being

different, or weird,

to most other people in general.

Still, I do try to be nice, respectful, and nonaggressive,

but despite this some people

have actively disliked me,

two examples being my children’s grandmothers.

Both of them.

Sometimes this has in some ways been incomprehensible to me;

at other times and in other ways,

well, yeah, okay.

It’s easier now that I’m officially old.

Being a grumpy old fart,

irascible, cantankerous, and eccentric,

is a generally acceptable role.

          Hair and Teeth

When I was about thirty-five

I made a sentimental journey

to visit old friends in Los Angeles

and, amongst others,

caught up with Alfredo,

a truly lovely person,

who was then about fifty.

He told me that his age made no difference to him

because he still had all of his hair and teeth.

As I compose this I’m fifteen years older

than he was then.

I still have most of my hair

and all but two of my teeth,

but that means precious little

to me.

             Cataracts: Feb 2014

It’s strange and interesting,

but also increasingly inconvenient,

this business of slowly going blind.

I now need to wear glasses when watching TV,

something I’d never had to do before,

and the smaller screen graphics

have become too blurry to read,

especially if I watch from more than a metre or two away.

I frequently have to sit up close

to the computer monitor

to see what’s going on.

I was unable to make out clearly the features of a woman

just a few metres away at the bus stop

because she was a bit to my left.

I’m blinder in my left eye.

I have to get down on my knees and put on my glasses

to see if a bottom-shelf price marker at the Pak’n Save

is $6.98 or $8.89.

I can no longer read the fine print on labels,

no matter how I adjust my glasses

or change the labels’ distance from my eyes

(this means that I didn’t know the alcohol percentage

of the cheap Indian whisky I bought).

       Codgerhood

On a day with no orders,

no work, no meaning,

fussing pointlessly

with my word collection,

it occurred to me

that I really had become

a dotty old codger.

       Civilisation and Age

As my understanding

of the corruption

endemic in human civilisation

has increased,

the ability of our species

to harm itself and others

has also increased.

It now seems to me

that sooner or later, therefore,

a whole world of metaphoric shit

is going to start flying

from that metaphoric fan

and that things even here

in inconsequential Hamilton

are likely to become too ugly to contemplate.

I feel sad for my daughters,

but selfishly think

that it’s a good thing for me

that I’m old.

   The Spectre of the Misery Industry

I’m getting to an age

at which I’ve come to fear

ending up in a rest home:

crappy food,

high costs,

underpaid and overworked hired carers

who don’t really care

about those depending on them,

at least as individual people,

and who quickly become inured to their suffering,

and neglectful of their needs.

The up side to all this

is that it provides big bucks

for the plutocrats who own these places

so they can buy

loads of shit that they don’t need

and that doesn’t make them happy –

the only thing that can make them at least feel happy

being the thrill that they get

by fucking over less-powerful people.

              Continuously Me

I don’t climb stairs two at a time any more,

and sometimes I feel more comfortable

grabbing the banister with two hands,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I can no longer walk more than a few dozen metres

without experiencing severe back pain

unless I take some analgesic

a few hours in advance,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

The cataract blinding my left eye

makes the faces of people even just across the street blurry,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

My body temperature takes at least an hour to stabilise

after I walk to the supermarket and back,

even on pleasantly cool mornings,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I can no longer enjoy large, balanced meals,

and feel full after eating a single sandwich,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I no longer produce copious amounts of semen

almost continuously,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

Intro to Marketing 102

                    Segment Occupation

One thing that marketing has done for all of us

is to provide us with numerous homes, like it or not,

places where we feel comfortable and secure,

called Market Segments.

In regard to wine, for instance,

I occupy the price-sensitive segment of the market.

Fair enough.

This makes me neither proud nor ashamed, just comfortable;

together they and I have pigeonholed me

right where I rightfully belong.

When it comes to orange juice, however,

my market segmentation is somewhat more nuanced.

I was, for instance, in the supermarket one warm day,

and, since I didn’t have a car and had to walk

for twenty minutes to get home

carrying a heavy backpack

(after all, it contained, amongst other things,

four bottles of price-sensitive wine),

I decided to buy a small,

drink-it-down-in-two-swallows bottle of juice.

I went to the open fridge where they display such things

and grabbed a little plastic bottle of orange juice.

Then I noticed that the marketers had prominently crowed,

right there on the label, that the juice was ‘Gluten Free’.

Orange juice!

Shit.

Not one orange on this whole orange-shaped Earth

has ever had one whisker of any whole-grain protein.

I put it back and chose another brand.

I didn’t think I’d feel comfortable

occupying the fuckwit segment of the market.

              Who DO They Appeal To?

It matters not one jot nor tittle

to the meatballs who produce and broadcast them

that the repugnant Jeep commercials

on the now-defunct sport channel,

with their representations of vomitously smug Jeep buyers

and model names redolent of American jingoism,

disgusted me to the point of wanting to smash something,

because, hell, I’m not in the market

for any new car at all, anyway.

                Demand and Supply

The amount I buy in supermarkets

and other places that sell food and groceries

is so small – except for wine –

that it must make but a negligible impact

on the demand for the items involved.

This means that the management decisions

in regard to whether to stock those items

result from other people supplying

the demand for them,

putting my tastes at others’

collective mercy.

I’m grateful for some of the odd things that they buy,

and resigned when odd things I like

disappear from the shelves.

                     Market Value & Value

My house’s market value has fluctuated

down and then up

within a span of about a hundred thousand dollars

in the ten-plus years since I bought it.

No matter how many dollars

the market has quoted as its value,

its value to me has remained about the same

in regard to being a warm, dry, comfortable, and convenient

place to live.

Well, yeah.

Economics is, after all, just a pretend science.

The price of a tree has no relation to its value, either.

Obviously.

                    Demographics

One of the many aspects of marketing

that frosts my arse

is demographics,

as if my age, income, educational attainment,

employment status, ethnicity, place of residence,

whether I own or rent it,

and so on

defines who I am

and pigeon-holes me

as indistinguishable

from others in those categories,

or can even predict what brand of beer I’m gonna buy.

It’s similarly hideous

to an Israeli academic named Zaki,

who somebody at the uni

(people who know the U of Waikato

politics department know who this was),

threw me at 25 years ago,

and who was truly

one of the most irritating assholes I’ve ever known.

Zaki told me,

with his arrogantly self-assured Israeli attitude,

that just by knowing my surname

he knew everything about me.

I was, apparently,

one of a particular kind of Jew,

all of whom are alike.

Interchangeable.

Don’t get me started on astrology.

  Global Capitalism and My Shoe Problem

Being poor,

I have a problem with shoes,

because due to the nature of the global economy,

and the way that the egocentric,

type-A greedheads run things,

and of course the unfortunate nature

of my childhood and adolescence,

the only ones that I can afford

are the cheapo sweatshop products

that fall apart,

with remarkable rapidity.

I do an awful lot of walking, but still ..

The soles of a pair that I’d had

for less than three months disintegrated

just before I composed this,

even though their uppers still looked new.

The only shoes that I have as I compose this,

being unable to afford new ones,

are some old leather sandals,

and a pair of dress shoes

that I bought in 1989.

Both were actually

made in New Zealand.

I’ve had to get both

re-soled once.

That’s one reason why

New Zealand lost its shoe industry, I guess:

people didn’t have

to replace Kiwi-made shoes

often enough,

thereby reducing sales.

                   Educational Branding

The flow of the conversation

led Martin to say something dismissive

about Waldorf-Steiner schools.

Geoff, who prides himself on his erudition,

opined as to how he couldn’t see how any parent

could take Steiner schools seriously,

and launched into an explication of their history.

He was just getting to

Steiner’s involvement with Madame Blavatsky

when I interjected that it seemed to me

that most of the parents involved

are just buying a brand,

and don’t give a shit about this historical stuff,

any more than they’d research Ronald McDonald’s biography

before treating their sprogs to a burger at Macca’s. 

Privately Mocking Commercial Symbolism

Years ago,

when I sometimes used to watch

television other than sport,

I would always wonder,

during those commercials

for coffee or other hot beverages,

whether those actors

playing mothers in their thirties

who always held their cups or mugs

in both hands

did so because they had the shakes

from the previous evening’s piss-up.