Do i know how Joan of Arc felt?

Everybody sounds like The Smiths to me. i know it is a sign of age and very sounds-like-Stelly-Dan-esk, but i really have noticed that a lot of stuff i have been listening to sounds a lot like The Smiths. Which is good.

i am fully open to the idea that i am going through some odd existential glitch but have checked with others and they have confirmed my suspicions. So i went back to The Smiths - just to check out i wasn't listening through some kind of false memory filter and well, they do and they don't - sound like The Smiths. Nothing except The Smiths actually sounds like The Smiths. That's the result of my research. So i am comfortable with this and i put my Smiths albums away and carry on. Until the next time i hear something that sounds like The Smiths.

The television company that was going to screen the South Park episode in a month screened it last night, to get everything over and done with. This made me feel happy. The something on families group held a vigil outside the television station studio and sung "Ave Maria" - not well. The representative person (man) from the family thingee-me-bobby organisation has seen the episode now. i think his wife might have taped it for him while he was singing. He was on the radio this morning and kept using the menstrual and menstruating and menstrual blood. i think i am starting to understand where he is coming from. He also talked a bit about truth, as opposed to um, now what was the word he used um, "filth" maybe - i might be mis-representing the representative person. Anyway all boils down they got a lot of press, even one of those closely framed photos on the cover of the paper, the ones that make it look like there are lots of people somewhere when there aren't because half of them are at home taping a TV show for the other half who can't set their videotaping machinery properly because maybe they can't read instructions or maybe the instructions are too hard to follow or maybe they have a core belief that videotaping companies make the instructions too hard to follow so that they all can't protest and videotape the programme at the same time.

i think it's safe to say it's all over now. Until the next time.

... it's the pope, I think.

i'm not a journalist or a media graduate. i listen to the radio. i guess i'm a listener. i watch television. i guess i'm a viewer. i read newspapers.

You get the idea.

"the news". i catalogued an item yesterday where someone said "the news" like that, with the little two finger gesture. "the news" i heard this morning, on a publicly funded non-commercial radio station, is that the "menstruating Mary" in a South Park episode due to screen here in about a month is degrading to women and the Prime Minister of New Zealand has condemned the broadcast of it.

This sort of thing makes me angry. i get to work and the front page of the newspaper has a headline saying:

"I'm Offended" - PM.

Unless they are using the parentheses in the same way i am when i say "the news", this is the same sort of thing that makes me angry.

Like i say, i am not journalist, so can someone tell me: is it okay to make comment about something you haven't seen? The "journalist" on the radio this morning announced all morning that in the episode concerned "the menstruating Mary spurts blood on the Pope". At 7.45am as i was leaving he said "the menstruating Mary spurts blood on the Pope, it's the Pope I think.".

He thinks it's the Pope? Is this not a fact one would like to get clear if one is broadcasting information to people? Forget my previous question, because i don't care now whether he's seen it or not, i just want him to get the facts straight.

i know it is terribly un po-mo of me to want the truth but i seem justified considering it is not big-style truth i am looking for here. i think if you are going to make people incensed, which seems to be the purpose of this "news" story, is it not fairer to make them incensed about the right information?

Part of me knows it is pretty hard to get people worked up about the facts of the whole thing. My memory of the episode, which i saw before the incensement began, is that is was no more incense-inducing than any other episode of South Park i've seen.

N.B. i need to declare my respect for the programme right now, probably, i think it is an intelligent and vital social commentary which is razor sharp and able to enter into a dialogue on extremely current events in an informed manner. Unlike, the publicly run radio station. And it's funny. Unlike, the publicly run radio station.

My memory also is, and maybe i got it all wrong, it is pretty ambiguous where the statue of the Virgin Mary is bleeding from (please note "statue of the Virgin Mary - not the Virgin Mary for crying out loud). i think i am backing this up with my recall of the last line, when the Bishop (i remember him being a Bishop, not the Pope) says "a woman bleeding out of her arse is hardly a miracle.". Which i kind of took as quite a witty stab at the attitude of the Catholic Church toward women, and the functions of reproduction. (An organisation here called The Family something-or-other has set up a website where you can learn about how to boycott the products of advertisers on the television station that is screening the episode. They got first crack of the whip this morning on the radio station, and during the interview their representative repeatedly stated that the episode had no "satirical point". He hasn't seen the episode and I doubt he would think a witty stab at the attitude of the Catholic Church toward women, and the functions of reproduction was a valid "satirical point" even it came and bit him in the arse. Pardon my manners).

The Prime Minister said that the decision to screen the episode was a matter of "taste and judgment for the broadcaster" and that "as a women I would find the episode offensive". (Someone has obviously given her the "menstruating" precis, as opposed to the bleeding rectum/anus version - which i can kind of understand). My point is that to quote the Prime Minister as saying "I'm Offended" is hardly the truth. For starters it's the wrong tense.

As i woman i'm not offended.

The other "news" story of the morning was that female suicide rates are rising in New Zealand (fear seems to sell just as well as incensement). As a woman what i do find offensive is the statement that this is due to "women behaving more like men". Which was the complete summary of the report the rising rates were quoted from. Um, i beg your pardon? With that as your cause, what kind of solutions will you be looking for? The 1950s called they would like their analysis of the research back. i mean it gets your attention doesn't it? It's a perfect headline or sound-bite or whatever it is you call it these days. And yet again i am asking myself why does a publicly funded non-commercial radio station need a sound-bite anyway?

Why is it so hard to get the information correct? Because it doesn't serve any of the "news" agencies to get the information correct. And maybe because no one likes to talk about bleeding arses.

AA Thomas

Okay, so a job comes into work and they are looking for footage of the Harvey Crewe murders that happened in Purakewa, and I'm like, I remember when that happened, I remember it being on the news, I remember the footage on the news.

So I start doing the research and all of a sudden the dates are coming up. The re-trial was in 1973 and I was 3 years old so the murders must have happened even earlier - and they did, they are like 1971 or something and so, I am suddenly confused. Why do I remember murders that happened before I was one year old. Then a workmate says "What are you working on?" and I'm "the Harvey Crewe murders" and she's "Oh, that movie, remember that movie that we had to see at school?" and all of a sudden, I'm seeing what's happening. It's the movie I remember - I remember the movie and I think I remember the movie because, it was the first time something that happened in New Zealand was good enough to be made into a movie, well, that's what I'm thinking in my head when I was like eight when the movie came out. So I realise what I'm remembering is the movie.