Pornography

 First published in Column 8, on 23^rd October, 1991

Jenny Shipley can’t be anyone’s favourite person these days, but she reduced her demerits slightly in a recent speech to the National Council of Women.

Fed up with the soft approach to pornography, she said, ‘I make no apologies to those who believe they should be free to choose for themselves what they would view and read.’

She wants to put a Bill through Parliament that legally defines pornography, and freely admits she’s advocating legislative censorship.

Quite honestly, though I know something has to be done, I don’t know where she’ll start. The country is saturated with pornography, and it’s become so insidious we take it for granted.

When my uncle owned a dairy some years ago, he got himself into strife with the distributors because he wouldn’t sell any magazine flaunting naked bodies. How many shopkeepers would make a stand like that now? I only have to walk outside my house to the grocer’s next door to find advertisements of naked women adorning the pavement.

Is it coincidental that two of the most popular New Zealand plays of the last decade have contained frequent scenes of nudity? (Male, just for a change.)

Once it was uncommon to go to the movies and see nudity (apart from foreign movies, which spiced up their plots with naked bodies, whether they had anything to do with the story or not.) Now it’s the norm in almost anything we see not only at the movies but at home on TV.

Even on the news. Apart from the Nightline episode of lovers coupling, which at least took place after 10 pm, there was the report on the young women stripping at a pub in Wellington. This was shown during the tea hour in our house.

Worse than the young women’s behaviour was the bestial shouting by the male spectators, and the casual indifference of the pub owner. For him it was a way to make money. Lots of it.

That doesn’t bother you? Then perhaps the fact that videos with pornographic content are available in nearly all video outlets, and are often taken home and shown to children concerns you more.

Or maybe it doesn’t. It certainly didn’t concern somebody in charge at Washdyke, when children were freely able to watch pornographic videos stored on the school premises, without a single teacher being aware.

I think we’re so corrupted by pornography we barely fuss when it slaps us in the face. Things sexual corrode us, seeping into every area of our lives. It’s a form of idolatry, and some people can’t stop worshipping.

No wonder so many crimes in this country have a sexual content. Virtually every magazine we open has some article in it on the subject that was once taboo.

We’d like to think it’s because we’re more broadminded now, that we’re balancing out a time when people never talked about sex – supposedly.

We’d like to convince ourselves that it’s not psychologically good for us to be modest about the matter. Fat chance of being modest, in this day and age.

Humanity is notorious for swinging from one extreme to the other. Maybe Jenny Shipley’s aggressive attack on pornography heralds a return to some semblance of balance in the whole matter.

Maybe not. Either way, she’s got an uphill battle.

Jenny Shipley in 2013

 One of the plays mentioned above was probably Foreskin’s Lament. I don’t know now what the other would have been, unless it was Equus.

The Washdyke incident should have been a surprise, but since then any number of schools have been found to have pornographic material available, often on the computers the children can access. It makes the news, but doesn’t change the mentality of those in charge. And each morning, as I open the newspaper, I’m faced with yet another case of some male – including well-known ones – hoarding child pornography on their computer, often on their work computer.

Shipley’s legislative aim found some ground in the 1993 ‘Films, Videos and Publications Classification Bill.’  But of course, classifying material leaves it still freely available to those want to see it, whether they’re of a proper age or  not. And even though most streaming material these days shows classifications, it offers no way for children and younger people to avoid what is shown within the movie or TV series.

Sounds alive

First published in Column 8 on 16^th October, 1991

Even given the trend in newer movies to overlap speech and add all manner of extra noise, I’d been puzzled for a while as to why, when these same films appeared on television, I found the dialogue increasingly difficult to pick up.

Since I can be woken at night by one of my kids rustling the blankets three rooms away, I knew the problem wasn’t deafness.

Recently we went and watched the video version of My Left Foot at a friend’s house. Between telephone calls, children getting bored, and my youngest son re-enacting World War II behind the couch, hearing the dialogue was difficult.

But that wasn’t all. Many of the words seemed to get washed away in a muddy flood. Extreme concentration was required, and not only because the main character’s speech was so impeded.

Frustration finally forced us to invention: after reading about the fact that much of our television – including the videos we play – is actually being transmitted in stereo, my son and I decided to do a bit of electrical engineering.

We stuck a stereo cassette player that had seen better days on our television, wired it to the video via the connection we’d purchased for copying my brother-in-law’s trip-to-NZ videos, screwed the speakers to the wall and hey presto, instant stereo.

And if you’ve never tired it, have a go. (Of course you can have a go more ‘professionally’ than we did.) As they say in the ads, you’ll be amazed at the difference.

Sounds that never get a chance to be heard above the general racket of the average living room now make their presence felt, coming across crisp and clear.

Contrast our viewing of My Left Foot with the first film we saw after introducing stereo – Mississippi Burning, with Gene Hackman. We’d watched it with normal television sound; later we played the recording back in stereo.

Now thunder rumbled in the background – there’d been no hint of it before – in fact, you wondered why the sky was often overcast. As Hackman and Willem Dafoe crunched across the grass, every blade could be heard bending and crying out for mercy. When one of the baddies came home and (yuk!) beat up his wife, the smashing and crashing nearly splintered the set – the television set, I mean.

The experience took me back to those marvellous days when cinemas were first fitted with wide wide screens and stereophonic sound. In the Regent Theatre, with its sound system hidden amongst the Arabian Nights decorations, I remember watching Lawrence of Arabia while magical Maurice Jarre melodies swept across every seat in the cinema.

Every booming bass note, every tinkle of Siamese cymbals was audible in The King and I, along with Deborah Kerr’s heavy breathing after Shall We Dance. The opening sequence of West Side Story brought strange whistling noises out of each quarter of the auditorium as the camera floated eerily above the deserted streets.

Now I know my living room will never quite equal the magic of a spacious 1500-seat cinema with its ceiling full of twinkling stars. Nevertheless a vastly improved kind of sound these days accompanies our television viewing.

Even Marlon Brando, method-acting mumbling in his Godfather role, would have his every word heard.

Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia

I’m interested to read about this amateur method of stereophonic sound that we ‘installed.’ I have no memory of it now, and it seems most unlikely that I had much to do with its invention, being a bear of little brains when it comes to such things. I imagine my number one son (who would have been eleven at the time) was the ‘inventor.’

These days, of course, things have got much worse rather than better. You’d think that modern televisions would have vastly better sound than they used to, but in fact the sound seems worse, and we’ve resorted to using a round boom speaker that (mostly) clarifies what’s being said on-screen. But better still is the presentation of movies and TV series (on Netflix at least) with sub-titles. We watch practically everything that way, and it’s only occasionally annoying.

In Retrospect

First published in Column 8 on the 9^th October, 1991

Today is something of an anniversary. I don’t suppose it will go down in history as being equivalent to Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Hannibal the Alps, but I thought I might make a little note of it.

Today marks the anniversary of the first Column 8. Forty-seven columns later (I had time off for good behaviour), I’m still surprised at how many usable ideas there are in the world. Or to put it another way, I’m surprised how an idea can be teased out to fill up the space allotted.

Because it’s an anniversary, I need to apologise for some errors. These are the ones I know about.

Early this year an elderly ex-serviceman rang up to say that I’d turned the name of the leader of the Iraqi nation back to front. I’d called him Mr Hussein, when, of course, he’s Mr Saddam. The same person went off on to a tangent to inform me that daylight saving isn’t the same as it used to be, and since daylight saving has just arrived, I’ll tell you what I learned.

New Zealand was originally only 11½ hours ahead of UK time. In 1926 we extended this to 12½ hours and then a couple of years later brought in summer time, which for some months of the year made us exactly 12 hours ahead. Still with me?

However, what was officially only daylight saving time became normal time in 1945 after four years of being emergency daylight saving. (Nature’s contribution to the war effort,  no doubt.)

Finally in 1974 (while I was out of the country) we had another change. We gained an extra hour in the summer, making us 13 hours ahead of GMT. (I tell my wife every year that rising an hour earlier affects me adversely for weeks, but in her inimitable fashion she scoffs.)

The other major mistake of my year was to confuse Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Someone sent me a letter via the Midweek on this, and I lost it two minutes after I read it. My apologies to the writer for not answering personally. Everyone knows that Art Garfunkel sang Bridge Over Troubled Water – don’t they?

I’ve had some interesting phone calls over the time I’ve been writing this column. One very nice lady rang to ask my advice about her rhododendrons – I must have appeared more knowledgeable than I am.

I tried to say in a later column that it’s necessary to read what I’ve said, not what you think I’ve said. Anyway, Column 8 is a not too subtle mix of fact and fiction. Supposedly in article writing these days that’s the trend.

After another column my wife received a phone call when I was out. An elderly lady was very concerned about the things I’d written on the English language, when I’d said there were words lacking in our vocabulary.

She said English was already difficult enough for foreigners to learn without adding yet more words.

Not everybody agrees, but I think English is not the world’s most difficult language to learn, or to spell.

Most European languages, for instance, have at least as many messy verbs. And long ago the English wisely rid themselves of all the cases – many nations still suffer from these, needing to know whether cats or dogs or wart hogs are masculine, feminine or neutered. If you can’t get that right, all your adjectives and verbs and various other grammatical bits go astray.

Mark Twain once translated the following directly from a German textbook:

Gretchen: Where is the turnip?

Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful maiden?

Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera.

(Here’s to another year.)

see below

This piece goes to show how accessible I was as a columnist. Of course there were plenty of people who read the column who already knew where I lived, or knew my telephone number. But getting direct mail, or phone calls (perhaps they got the number from the phone book, which in those days was still a highly accurate publication) is something that probably wouldn’t happen any longer. People did occasionally write directly to the Midweek, but others obviously thought it more appropriate to approach me directly.

As for English spelling, I might have exaggerated a bit, but the language itself is a piece of cake compared to many in the world, which is presumably why it’s been so successful at exporting itself.

I don’t appear to have a copy of the column in which I discussed daylight saving, though I did rant on it elsewhere on my blog some years later. The photo attached above, however, has an interesting history, as shown below (inaccurately?) - courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Archives New Zealand.

A chorus of opinion from “eminent men” on the subject of daylight saving was in the spotlight on this day 24 October 1912.

When the S S Ruepehu set sail to New Zealand it was carrying 12 pamphlets on the English Daylight Saving Bill from the London High Commission. One of the intended recipients was MP T K Sidey who was introducing a similar bill into the New Zealand Parliament. The pamphlet, which set out the case for daylight saving, includes comments from everyone from the King of England to a Piccadilly shopkeeper. “Sunshine destroys germs and raises the vitality,” declared the Earl of Meath who was also chairman of the London Metropolitan Gardens. A London businessman had this to say of one of his book keepers, “a capable fellow” who had been “wasting away” with an undiagnosed illness: “Poor fellow his life has been lived without sunshine. We buried him five months later in the Highlands of Scotland!”

Despite this call to action New Zealand’s reaction to the pamphlet was muted. Daylight saving was not introduced here until 1927.

Shown here is the pamphlet from London

Memory

 First Published in Column 8, 2^nd October, 1991

Every so often I have a burst of enthusiasm about improving my memory.

Especially when someone named Andrew walks into my shop, someone I know reasonably well, and I call him Grahame.

To sidetrack for a moment. There must be something mystical about the name Grahame. When I worked at the DCC a few years ago, two staff members confidently called me Grahame at every meeting. Do I look like a Grahame? Perhaps. I have the sort of face that prevents me being called by my right name, since two other acquaintances call me David.

Enough of other people’s problems with memory, and back to my own.

I’ve several times got enthusiastic about those books that teach you how to remember peoples’ names by associating their faces with something absurd. I once read a Reader’s Digest which had condensed a whole book about memorisation into a three-page article. This snippet inspired me, though on inquiring at the library for a copy of the book, I was surprised to discover that some former borrower had ‘forgotten’ to bring it back.

Not to worry, there were plenty of other books available on the subject. Most agree that the basis for remembering people’s names is, as I said, to link a feature of their face with something absurd.

This is all very well. The difficulty is trying to manage this in the company of someone new. Conversing with a stranger is often difficult enough without simultaneously performing the mental juggling act of trying to find some oddity about their face.

Suppose you meet a Mrs Burton. You may note that her furrowed brow resembles Richard Burton in his later days. This may connect up in your brain cells to Welsh mountains or coalminer’s lanterned hats or How Green Was My Valley.

While you’re doing all this thinking, Mrs Burton is likely to suspect you’re either a rather distant conversationalist who hasn’t quite got it altogether – or that perhaps you’re on medication.

And six weeks later you may wonder why she looks started when you greet her as Mrs Green – or even Mrs Taylor.

Suppose when you meet Mr Brown he hasn’t a single outstanding feature about him? What will he think when you worriedly scan his features while failing to answer his questions? Or Mrs Schweigenhauser, whose name is not even re-pronounceable and produces a mental blank.

When you meet someone briefly at a gathering it can be well nigh impossible, unless you have the quick wit of a Goon Show scriptwriter, to pinpoint some feature quickly enough to help you out.

You know how it is: the host introduces you to someone, throws in a word or two about them, and then drags you off to meet someone else. Or else you’re introduced to a roomful of faces and the host says, ‘I’ll tell you all these people’s names.’ Then he helpfully adds, ‘Though you’ll forget them all, anyway.’

That’s really encouraging. Since people often don’t even introduce others by their first and last names any more, how do you hang hooks on to a succession of Georges, Bills and Freds, or even Angelas, Mays and Marys?

I know the system works, but my brain doesn’t seem fast enough to make it work when I need it. I know it works on memorising other things, because I’ve used it successfully. (I think I’ve used it successful...?)

Perhaps I’ll have to concentrate on the technique that was tried out on me recently. We met a new couple at church and the husband threw my name into every phrase he spoke.

However, I hope he’s better at this game than I am, and next time we meet he doesn’t say, ‘Hello, Grahame.’

 

Courtesy Predatorix

In recent years I’ve abandoned this involved technique and have spent a moment or two jotting down a new name in a specific list on my phone, with some short note about them. Sometimes I tell them what I’m doing. If I missed remembering the name straight off, I just ask them again. What’s the problem? They often fail to catch my name either, but at least one of us is trying to ensure that the next time we meet, their name is intact. And for the most part it works. And people respond well when they’re addressed by name. So many of us don’t bother once the initial meeting is over.  

Obsession!

 First published on Column 8 on 25^th Sept, 1991 

I spent the better part of a wet Saturday afternoon last weekend at the Computer Expo being held in the chandelier-lit Southern Cross Hotel.

Computers intrigue me, though not to the extent that I’ll discuss them from dawn to dusk. But there was a particular Point of Sale set-up on display which impressed me as being of possible value for my shop. In fact, so impressed was I that I lay awake till 2 am thinking about the possibilities.

Computers have this tendency to make me become obsessive.

(I might have been awake till two anyway. We had three extra boys in the house because of a birthday party, and it was only in the wee small hours that I finally managed to command them to stop talking, whispering, giggling and occasionally exploding in the room next to mine.)

The first computer I owned, a little hand-holdable PB100, bought for the budget-wrecking sum of $199, had the capacity to keep me awake until the stars packed it in and went back to bed. Especially when we went on holiday one Christmas.

In those days, after long hours at the beach, the kids were asleep by nine. I had ‘a little time’ to become better acquainted with my new toy.

The LCD screen was so small it could only display one line, and in that line there were only about 12 characters visible. By the early hours of the morning, I felt as though I had as many eyes as the average housefly.

The miniature keyboard was worse: after a session on it I had less use of my fingers than the Incredible Hulk would have had picking up a split tin of pins out of a shaggy pile carpet. You couldn’t type on it – put more than two fingers near it and you rendered it invisible.

But I couldn’t leave the computer alone. Only sheer exhaustion made me drop into bed, and even then my mind continued to solve problems set in motion, with frazzled brain cells wearing themselves out before their time and sending manic messages flickering across the cerebellum.

I can understand how inventors feel when they’ve stumbled across something undiscovered. The obsession with getting the thing right takes precedence over all social concerns and bodily needs, so that to the rest of the human race it seems as though they hardly belong on the planet.

Three years ago we bought a decent-sized computer, with a normal screen and keyboard. One of the first games we had was Emerald Mine, and in the month or so that it survived before the disk collapsed from almost permanent use, normal life ceased.

Everyone had their own score registered and an unofficial competition began to see who could get through the 90-odd (!) levels first. Meals were delayed, home-work undone, patterns of sleep disrupted.

My wife was one of the worst. The determined streak that comes with her side of the family carried her through countless obstacles and setbacks. Every so often (usually while I was getting the tea), there would be a heart-stopping cry of triumph as another level was conquered. There were more cries of anguish, however, as the computer conquered the player.

These days we’re wiser. We tackle games that don’t insist we die seventy times seven before we learn how to stay alive.

In our household obsession with things computerised is fortunately not a permanent problem. What might be is the loss of a large number of brain cells when, burning the midnight 30/40, my upper storey goes into overdrive.

PB100 - courtesy Tourdion

As for obsession with computers, my older son became so focused on the desktop model that he would type entire programmes into it from a library book, and would have to go back through pages if it turned out he’d made a mistake in the input. When the Internet arrived in its earliest stages, he would sit for up to an hour trying to get online while the modem wheezed and gurgled as it tried to connect. Usually this would be first thing in the morning before we were awake – and the computer was in our bedroom.

His brain cells didn’t collapse or disintegrate: instead he grew up to be a software developer with considerable skills.

The PB100 was very frustrating: if you made a mistake on it, you had to start all over from the beginning. Admittedly there were only a very limited number of bytes available on it – a piece of history on the Net says: ‘For programming, the built-in memory of 1 kB leaves 544 programming steps and 26 memories.’ Apparently you could by a pack that gave you an extra kilobyte of memory!

The 30/40 (actually 30w/40) referred to at the end is a make of engine oil produced in the 1990s.