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There is a bleak irony that it is Annette King, a female Labour MP, who wants to implement ASBOs in an effort to bring us back to a kind of pre-Magna Carta legal state.

Had ASBOs existed in New Zealand in the 1880s and 1890s it seems unlikely women would have gained the vote; Suffragettes were remarkably unpopular with many segments of society, and Kate Sheppard most likely would have found herself drowned in ASBOs for her then-anti-social behaviour. No women voters, no women MPs.

And Labour, of course, is a product of the politicisation of workers who fought hard—sometimes to the death—for the idea that the ordinary person has the right to associate with other workers to better their positions in life; again, it would not be difficult to imagine that employers who were happy to use cudgel wielding thugs to break up union meetings would be only too pleased to ASBO union and Labour party activists out of existence.

If it were not for the principles embodied in the very Bill of Rights and principles of common law Ms King holds in contempt—the right to free association, the right to a trial before one’s peers, the right to confront one’s accusers—it is likely she would be stuck in the same kitchen as her ancestors.

Although it might perhaps be better for the country if she were.

That’s depressing enough, of course. But what’s even more annoying is that it gets nothing but a few press-release derived articles in the press by way of coverage. TV3 can devote airtime to Brian Tamaki and his OHNOESWARONCHRISTIANS fuckwittery, but something that might actually affect the whole basis of our legal system? Whatever.

Likewise there may be an opposition, but it’s not like you’d know it. National can devote hours to worrying about Ian Wishart’s fantasies about David Benson-Pope, but poking the government about this nonsense? Nope, that’ll be left to the Greens and, if we’re lucky, ACT.

Cats programming.

Cats swimming. With video.

Who will win?

Ahh, nostalgia. I was drawn into a record store and was browsing the classical section when I was hit with childhood memories of the Dick Weir Show and happy Sundays lying in bed listening to Bad Jelly the Witch, Benny Hill’s Ernie, and Peter and the Wolf. What, I asked myself, could be finer than passing on a little of that bliss?

Unfortunately I was buggered if I could remember who composed the last of these, I rung Maire, who was able to supply the answer; Prokofiev. As it happened, I was in luck; the store had a couple of different recordings to chose from - well, sort of. One was narrated by Barry Humphries in his Dame Edna persona, so that was off the list. The second, a Naxos recording with Jeremy Nichols narrating, has been taking me back to that happy place all afternoon. I hope Ada enjoys it as much as I do.

Ada has been in fine moods in the mornings this week; positively hysterical, in fact. Everything is somewhere between merely amusing and hilarious:

Daddy, you’re coming to my cot. chuckle

Getting out of bed? Hilarious! Magnificant!

A book for the morning? Whatever you select will, I promise you, be the wittiest tome compiled for the edification of infants. I shall cackle at the turning of each page!

Getting changed into today’s outfit? Splendid! Undressing is amusing; dressing is a riot of pleasure! By the way, did you enjoy my clever prank of grabbing your glasses and hurling them to the floor? Was it not entertaining?

My squeaky chicken? Bravo! Tummy time? A delight!

Plane Dead is one of those movies that must have started life as a bull session. Eventually the evening got to the point where someone was giggling about how cool Airplane and the 70s airplane disaster flicks that inspired it were, someone else was ruminating on the success of Snakes on a Plane, and someone else mentioned how much they were looking forward to 28 Weeks Later.

Then, as one, “Zombies on a Motherfucking Plane!”

Well, maybe it wasn’t quite like that. But if it wasn’t, it should have been.

It’s a fun production; it starts out touching on all the 70s airplane disaster movie conventions: the captain who’s about to retire, the sports star, the nun, a criminal being escorted by a cop, randy stewardesses, you name it. The Bad Guys have a secret package with an armed guard down in the cargo hold (dum dum dum!), and the plane flies into a huge storm (dum dum dum!), complete with retro exterior shots of the plane lit by lightning.

With plenty of foreboding, then the action is unleashed.

Spoilers follow.

The storm, of course, triggers the release of the secret cargo, a _28 Days Later_ style fast zombie created by medical researchers trying to create super-soldiers. At this stage the pace is still pretty measured; people go to check on the cargo, get zombified, and then all hell starts breaking loose, which brings me to beef one with the movie: I don’t think fast zombies really work that well in a plane. They rampage through it way to quickly because, well, it’s a plane, and they’re ferociously quick and lethal. Rupping through bulkheads and so on, they’re unstoppable. It could have had more tension, less turkey-shoot with slow, classic zombies.

Eventually, qiuckly, we’re down to a few survivors. The Evil Scientists get theirs, of course, survivors are rescued only to zombify, there is self-sacrifice and so on. The criminal turns out to be the only one who can land the plane (the pilots having come down with a bad case of zombie) while being pursued by fighter jets with oders to blow them out of the sky.

Beef the second: when one zombie went through the jet engine after being sucked out of a missile-created hole in the side of the plane I was waiting for the zombie spray to infect the pilot behind, or rain down on a city Return of the Living Dead style, or for the jet to actually be blown out of the sky, both of which would have been way cool endings in classic zombie movie style. Didn’t happen. Le sigh.

Of course, landing the plane leaves us with zombie sequel possibilities, as previously ejected zombies drop from the sky into the same desert plane where the survivors are seen marching off into the sunset.

Various cast members from The Mummy are hamming it up here, and there’s some decent acting given the overall silliness of lines (“I made a promise, and I keep my promises!”) and plot (zombies on a motherfucking plane!); the criminal is done especially enjoyably. Good fun overall, but I’d have liked it a bit better with a slightly grimmer ending and the aforementioned Romero slow zombies.

In particular, I’d love to ask Big Norm for advice about how my teen can get into punch-ups over the Haka, punch out plate-glass windows in motels, and general drunken mayhem.

…why childless Helen Clark should be allowed an opinion on child-rearing issues when you’re a right-winger, is it OK for me to ask why the Catholic Church is allowed opinions on the same topic when they’re a bunch of childless virgins who think a former Hitler Youth member is the voice of God on earth?

I’m a sucker for the better French action films: La Femme Nikita, The Professional (shot in English, but as Gallic as Provence), The Brotherhood of the Wolf…

Now sure, part of the reason is that these are the better films that make it out of the French-speaking world; I’m sure there are plenty of crappy French action flicks that no-one bothers to subtitle and market to us Anglophones; but it’s not as though I’m comparing them to, say, the execerable Robot Jox or other bottom-of-the-barrel efforts shat out of the lowest-hanging sphincters in Hollywood; I’m thinking of the mainstream Hollywood actioneers that I grew up with, and have fed into the contemporary idea of what an action movie is.

But there is a difference, I think, and it’s one that comes from thinking about one of the best Hollywood action movies I’ve enjoyed in the last decade: Ronin. Ronin isn’t a French movie, but it shares some of the sensibilities of the French action movies I enjoy—a certain deliberate motion about the characters, a feeling of the movie as being as much a character study as an action film.

Character makes a big difference.

Again, there are exceptions: going back in history to the 60s Hollywood action movies, particular war movies like The Dirty Dozen or The Great Escape there’s more effort put into sketching out characters.