So the saying goes: What has been seen cannot be unseen. 

Living in Dunedin at this time of year (orientation week) provides clear proof of the truth in this saying. 

Highlights of Monday were:

1. Watching a young man puke from chugging beer/wine/some kind of swamp booze from a mylar bag. At 9:35. AM.
2. Walking home with Christine and Lucas and having what must have been the ugliest pair of breasts known to all mankind shaken at me from an upstairs window. Money quote “Oh shit, there’s a kid” Yes there is you fucking prat, and thank god I’m large and blocked his view or I’d be coming up to take all your shit to pay for the therapy. 
3. Going down into town later that evening and watching a young man dressed as some sort of mummy (underwear and saranwrap) flashing passing cars in what he seemed to believe was a sexy manner. A thought, the two cute girls you were talking to? The were laughing at you. Not with you. Assuming you remember meeting them, they will pretend that they have never met you. I promise you this. 

Otago University students seem to like dressing up (perhaps this is a NZ thing, but I can only speak to Otago) and then getting drunk. This makes for amusing moments… drunk penguins, drunk elves, drunk half-naked people, drunk flappers, drunk people who clearly created their costumes whilst drunk… the permutations go on and on… 

Tuesday’s fun ended with the annual toga party parade. In years past this was, apparently, a mostly peaceable event with happy drunken students going down the main street to other events. It has been billed to students as a sort of welcome to the city version to the graduation parades that the University holds down the same street when they are finished their degrees. 

This year however students got sent to the marshaling point an hour early and the shit hit the fan. Actually the shit hit them. 

People (older students/locals/random people beamed down from spaceships) were lying in wait for them. With puke. And shit. And eggs. And beer bottles. And (in one case) a frozen orange. And garbage. And WheatBix in liquids (one doesn’t really want to think what liquid). And then they threw them at the marching students. 

Now, let’s leave aside for a moment that fact that there are no marches to protest the living conditions of the average undergrad here in Dunedin, and move on to the simple facts. No matter who it was that was throwing stuff, no matter who it was that wound up breaking some shop windows, no matter who it was that caused all this stuff to be flung around George Street, there are two words to describe what happened: riot and assault. 

Now, in the media here there is a lot of hand wringing going on: it’s not all the students (see comments here), we have to wait and see, let’s not be hasty, kick them out (the Otago Daily Times editorial from this morning) etc etc.

What I don’t understand is how is there even a discussion going on? Let the police do their job. Throwing things at other people, causing people to get hurt (reports of cuts to hands, feet and faces, one report of a serious injury to tendons, bad bruising from the afore mentioned frozen orange), and causing property damage are all crimes of one kind or another. They are not just “students being students”. It’s not something that you can write off as “sowing their wild oats”. It’s stupidity, and as long as the University and the City don’t crack down on it people will continue to think that this sort of behavior is acceptable.

Right, so it’s a month since I posted. This makes me sort of lame. Or busy. Or lamely busy. Or just forgetful. 

So, anyway:

Christmas vacations finished up and were grand. We were happy be there, but in the end I think we were probably as happy to get going. A month is a long time to camp in your half empty house and stay with relatives. Also, as much as we have issues with Dunedin, it’s now home and all of our stuff is here.

Part of the problem is that we had a ton of stuff that we didn’t get sorted before we left to deal with. So we finished moving stuff out of the house and got Metro all ready for shipping (NZ animal import rules are pretty strict). 

On the way home we went to San Francisco for a few days. As usual SF is like a tonic for our collective souls, we always seem to be happier and calmer there. For the last two visits there we have used my travel points to stay at the Hotel Kabuki in Japantown. Japantown is cool because it’s a bit calmer and quieter than the main downtown areas but is close enough to a lot of cool stuff that it’s walkable. Cow Hollow, Hayes Valley etc are all aboug 15 - 20 minutes away. This time we got our act together and hooked with our buddy Andrew and had dinner with him at an Italian place he recommended… 

After this sort of vacationy fun we got on the plane for Auckland, and then Dunedin and back to reality. I’ve been hard at the job search, with some luck, since we got back. Lucas has started his first real year of school and can suddenly write in nice even letters and has fully deployed his “how?” “why?” phase… (A sample: Papa? How does electricity work? Me: how the hell would I know, I failed physics…). Chris is working away at PhD stuff: proposals, lit review, reading reading always reading… 

So life’s rhythms are back to normal and, as much as it’s not really home yet, it is good to be back.

A million years ago when in CEGEP I used to write for our student paper, Bandersnatch doing entertainment stuff. Besides the punk shows (hello hearing problems) I also did film and dance reviews and all manner of other stuff. 

I love movies, I think that (besides books and good song writing) they have the ability to encapsulate the hopes and worries and preoccupation’s of a time. They can also allow for total immersion in a world in a way that only the very best of other art forms can even begin to approximate. 

That said, what I love most about movies is going to them. I love the smell of popcorn, the buying of the ticket, the hurrying to the cinema, the buying of the junk food, the finding of the seats.. I love just about everything about it. So imagine my utter joy at finding that there are at least three cinemas here in Dunedin. Now, having a five year old means that you don’t get out much (UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT), but Wall-E opened here in NZ a few weeks back and we promised Lucas that we’d go this weekend. 

So we rushed off to the Hoyts on the Octagon today (rush being a relative term, as long as it’s downhill, everything in Dunedin is about 30 minutes away by foot - we can be at the Octagon in about 10) to see the film at the 11am showing. 

First thing to note, I said 11 am showing, that was the second showing of the day. They have a first at 9am. For kids films this is the most awesomest thing ever. Second thing to note, the place you buy your ticket is also the place you buy your food (a term used very loosely in this case - is cinema popcorn really food?). This strikes me as being very efficient and just plain smart.

Then we went upstairs and got our seats.

A digression (you could have a drinking game based on my digressions - assuming you had some need to die of alcohol poisoning): both the main downtown cinemas in Montreal, the AMC and whatever the Paramount is now called have nice seats. The AMC even lets you fold up one arm so that you’re in a kind of love seat thing with your sweetie. This is lovely. They are utter shit compared to the seats at the Octagon Hoyts.

These seats are like barcaloungers, there had to be at least 4 inches off each side of my butt when I was sitting. They were so big that Lucas took off his shoes and sat cross legged in them. The other really cool bit was that instead of a cup holder, each set had a little table thing, the size of a dinner plate. It was lovely.

Oh, the movie was good as well. Like a modern Lorax.