I Married a Dog

There is a wonderful line quipped in Ghostbusters by Dr Venkman (Bill Murray) when he rather nonchalantly explains to his colleagues that his girlfriend, now turned into a hellish demon with a canine disposition of Cerberus, is just that, a dog. “So, she’s a dog…” It is typical of Venkman’s understated throw away humour but its a line that snapped to mind last night when the Hindustan Times picked up a story of an event that is not uncommon in India - a person marrying an animal. But AP picked it up as well and it was splashed across the Sydney Morning Herald today. According to all reports this marriage was one of atonement, the groom having not only felt aggrieved for stoning and killing two rutting dogs years earlier, but was now convinced his stroke and other illnesses were a direct result of that culling. Marriage would appease the gods. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. After all it looks like he is doing his own ghostbusting. By all accounts he can divorce the dog with no ill effects and is not precluded from marrying a two legged creature (bird?) when he feels that is appropriate. In the meantime he has no in-laws to concern himself about, he has not had to add an extra room onto the house, his toothpaste tube can continue to be squeezed just the way he wants and the cost of the reception was kept to a minimum. Her family had no guests and while the groom had a feast all she needed to sate her hunger was a bun. Training her to fetch slippers will be a career enhancement, not a red neck sexist approach to living together, and “bitch” will be a term of endearment. Sounds like a marriage made in …well, India of course.

Confused Chinese Pirates

In the spirit of the craziness that can come out of China, witting or otherwise (movie titles and packing instructions) the following is hillarious. At first glance this DVD cover looks pretty normal. But take a close look at the back cover. The pirate graphics specialist has grabbed text from a variety of places to compile the back cover. Reference to “Arnold” (”back better than ever”) to start with - I can only guess this refers to the Californian Governator. In the text we start with reference to Michael’s movie but it soon morphs into a review of “Laws of Attraction” and the credits are nicked from “Shanghai Surprise”. All those English characters look alike so it kind of makes sense. The brazen plagiarism is breathtaking but the publish and be damned approach underpins some of the humour in this. Of course the irony of the “What Controvosy?” header would be lost on the pirates. And no, don’t ask me where I got my hands on this DVD but thanks JP for bringing it to my attention. (Clicking on the image should get you a better view).

Escape from Colditz

My boyhood years were spent with my siblings in small rural town in Otago, New Zealand. More rural than town, our upbringing had a Huck Finn flavour about it in some respects. A well established and fond memory are the “contraptions” built by one of the brothers, the building of one being distilled in this (very) short story.

Escape from Colditz
A Story by PickledEel

Walking Through the Roman City of Jerash

I took some photos and video when in Jordan recently. An earlier blog refers to that visit but the video gives a better feel for that place. I loved being able to walk through a place that gave such a sense of historicity yet connection with its inhabitants - all at the same time.

Eating Squirrels in New Jersey

For those of who are not Americans, and/or who live outside of the CONUS there is a quip which explains the quirky, bizarre and just plain weird. It is simply “only in the US”, usually said in a condescending tone, the combination of which helps the listener understand that there is a rational reason for the weirdness. Most commonly used when referring to the escapades of Hollywood. Here is one from the other coast that falls in that basket though. It goes something like this:

Have no fear New Jerseyans, the toxic waste hasn’t made it unsafe to eat squirrels after all

Born in A Solomon Islands Dog Kennel

On our third day at Fauabu we had a look at the existing medical facilities. They are pretty primitive. The clinics to which the locals come, emerging from the jungle along invisible tracks, are extremely rudimentary. It is the post natal and post “op” care that we are building this ward for. And if we needed reminding of the need (we didn’t really) this morning’s visit got us focused. Here is the delivery room. Girls walk out of the bush, deliver their babies on this table and then recuperate on a veranda before walking back to their village. If there are a couple of deliveries happening at the same time then the spillover uses the floor. Perhaps what struck us most forcibly was the fact that this third world facility was operating only an hour or so flying time from first world hospitals and resources in Brisbane. But the lingering impression is the pride with which those who run the clinic showed us around. It is not much better than a dog kennel (one of the lads muttered he would not let his dog give birth in here) but it is all these trained nurses have got.

April 2003

Not so Sleepy Wellington - but Still Windy

I thought when I interviewed with Eric that my next overseas trip was going to be back into Asia but I ended up in New Zealand last week. In Wellington to be precise. Which is where the New Zealanders hide their politicians. In a building that the locals call the Beehive. It kind of looks like one of those upturned wicker type beehives , though nothing like the boxes we used to raid as kids - there were no bears in our woods doing that. It was the local ten year old boys, who would have copped a hiding if we had ever been caught. Wellington for me is always about memories of the Wahine disaster in 1968, also marked for being the year one of my sisters was born. Later I sailed into Wellington from Lyttleton and the bow of the Wahine was still protruding from the harbour waters. It has long gone but I still see it there in my minds eye. A buoy still marks the spot. Interestingly when I was there last week the winds that blew about town approached some of the speeds that lashed the harbour when that ship went down. Wellington has changed a lot since I was there in the early 1970s but it has a slow country town air which is pleasant. You can walk the length of the CBD very quickly but a slow stroll takes you through a quite cosmopolitan dining and drinking scene which is not what I have ever associated with this very windy place. I happened to be there in February actually and the businessman I was with for lunch bumped into two ex Army friends as we walked to lunch. Men he had not seen since his Army days. Its that sort of village.

The video here catches a more recent ferry heading for the harbour mouth, then the view out over Wellington (with the QE2 in port) and then some views of the Malborough Sounds as we headed back to Sydney.

Jews are Smarter than the Average Bear?!

Race is repository of IQ points apparently. According to a reporter sympathetic to the notion and who attended a symposium on the subject at the American Enterprise Institute. Certain Jews apparently demonstrate higher IQs than other demographics. Some Jewish communities apparently flash up an average of 107-115+ of those points when the global average is about 100. It would be interesting to know just how rigorous the testing was. I wonder from a slightly cynical standpoint – I swotted my IQ tests before I went through my officer training examinations. Not that I saw any test set by the military which I had seen in my rehearsals. But putting the brain to that sort of training and discipline, and having some practice at breaking down a problem presented in a particular way, meant I not only completed those timed tests you are not supposed to complete but easily packed 20 or 30 points onto the result. Some of my colleagues, who swotted their university exams like mad were horrified that I swotted my IQ exams – somehow that was not the same thing. I am not sure what their reasoning was but it seemed a reasonable approach in my book.

So Jews are allegedly smarter – if IQ points ever really mean anything. Their claims raise some interesting questions about race, Darwinian theory, comparative intelligence of Christians, the impact of historical events like the holocaust, and pogroms throughout history. Not to mention the matter of being a tight knit demographic which tends to marry and interact within its own bounds- thanks to that round of instruction from Mt Sinai, reinforced by lessons such as the Exile into Persia (Israelis are still trying to get back there lately I see!) Plenty of comments on the issue can be found at the Slate site. Based on my own experience of IQ tests and being able to load up a result I think the following probably apply:

Jews are great swots.

Those tightknit Jewish communities pass around volumes of previous IQ tests for others to swot up on.

Jews own and manage some of the greatest libraries in the world (just don’t tell the Vatican) and those old IQ tests are carefully catalogued, examined, distilled and methodologies are circulated to all Jews.

Schooling for your Bar Mitzvah is really a thorough grounding in IQ test papers.

Circumcision means you are less likely to cock up your IQ results (theory only applies to 50% or thereabouts of the population)

The Shin Bet and Mossad knock off any competitors before they can get to the examination room.

IQ tests are written by Jews.

And in the spirit of those supposed results I would hasten to add that there is no scientific basis to my theories. Which is a long winded way of me saying IQ metrics are bunk at best. But then I work with a Jew who has a brain as big as a house and who definitely is smarter than the average ah, person.

Paul Tibbets and That Nuclear Bomb

Paul Tibbets made news again yesterday with the announcement of his death. (NYT Obituary) Paul was the pilot who flew the Enola Gay (named after his mother) from which the nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. The news of his death prodded surprising reactions from some in the the newspaper blogs I have been reading. I have the view, perhaps historically driven, that the decision to drop these two weapons was sensible when weighing up the costs of Operation Olympia, the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. With more than one million casualties anticipated, the code breakers indicating the Japanese military factions had convinced the country to fight on and that the defences of the areas into which Olympia was to be directed had been reinforced, combined with Iwo Jima and Okinawa giving a foretaste of what a hometown fight was going to look like (pretty nasty), the two bombs made a lot of sense. But sixty or so years on and our revisionist perspectives prompt comments and views I don’t entirely understand - some thought Tibbets’ (apparently) painful death was a sign that he got what he deserved from God (just as well God is not a vindictive fellow isn’t it?!). Others felt he was an officer simply doing his job (I am sympathetic to that view) while others felt he could have said “no” to the mission - clearly failing to understand the times in which Tibbets lived, or the structure in which he worked. All mixed up in other commentary that gets emotive after all this time about the rights or wrongs of various aspects of that war, aspects which have no connection with Tibbets in any way. Sadly Tibbets lived some of that ambivalence, emotion and hostility in his latter years and he has asked that he be buried with no tombstone least that be a site for protest. Whatever the rights or wrongs of that war it is a part of our history with threads that tie into the fabric of our community today. Beating up on Tibbets now, or at any other time for that matter, isn’t going to change any of that.

Truck Trip to Fauabu (Foo arm boo)

We drove into the night from Auki along a track through the jungle with no lights. The sky was a heavy velvet blue drape that gave no sense of where we were or what time of the night it was. We forded creeks and crept past silent villages, thatch and lattice barely visible in the starlight. The cabs of the trucks were silent as we wondered at what we had gotten ourselves into. After the bustle of the the last few days getting everything loaded onto the ferry, this silent, reflective trip seemed very surreal. Nearly three hours later, after finally finding ourselves on a slightly better road we stopped in an open space at the steps of a white house that looked vaguely out of place in this dark jungle. White clapboard, tidy blue framed veranda and a tin roof. After the quiet trip we were all like boisterous kids as we found beds, moved food in and set up the mosquito nets. And discovered that it was now three o’clock in the morning.

I woke after the sun was well up. A couple of the lads were still snoring away but Mick was gone. I shuffled outside and saw him on the far side of the clearing talking to one of the local men, both beside a large tangled heap of timber. Turns out it was all chainsaw cut 4 x 2, intended for us to turn into the clinic building we were supposed to be working on.

The place is an old leprosy mission site, built in the 1920s but now gone to ruin. Some timber and stone buildings remain, and one clinic was rebuilt, but the main indication that things used to be different are the crumbling concrete slabs that mark where the leprosy mission buildings used to be. There is something sad and ghostlike about the place. But behind the house we discovered we are a short walk through the coconut trees to the beach, where we could see, to our amazement, dolphins playing in the water. We also found a crowd of boys who were very adept with their machetes, chopping palm wood into toys. In this case a small car, complete with wheels which turned. Even the axles were made from palm wood! Kids with swinging, whacking machetes though - this will be an interesting couple of weeks.

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