Despite the ominous creaking sounds from Nelson city’s overburdened and out dated infra structure, at a time when town water supplies are under constant threat and sewage is threatening to burst free from a straining and inadequate system, its all too predictable that the peripheral business of “branding” has risen high on the local agenda and is the one exercising the finest minds of the city’s brains trust. Our brilliant city fathers or someone purporting to be like them – a committee of the council dolts who squander our rates with idiot insouciance has decided we need to upgrade the present underwhelming city slogan “Nelson – Live the Day”. You can’t help but agree that this meaningless drivel should never have been permitted to see the light of day.
Saatchi’s stolen branding for Wellington, “Absolutely Positively Wellington” arguably did that city no harm and, given its “free from the ether”provenance, must have done well for generously recompensed Saatchi’s too. With all the creative talent supposedly centred in Nelson and budgets strained to breaking point and beyond you would hope that our brains trust might resist the idea of farming out the slogan job to expensively hired outside talent. However the involvement of pricey consultants might be an idea too hard to resist for the profligate Hands Up gang. Before they blow more of our hard earned shouldn’t we, the beggared victims of Hands Up, offer our own fragrant thoughts and suggestions.
Let’s see, what has Nelson got going for it? Supposedly, we are a centre for the arts – oceans of crap and mere spoonfuls of quality art are produced here, although in insufficient quantity to maintain any sort of effective arts marketing presence. We receive a lot of sunshine. We are a tourist destination, a small ugly town in the midst of beauty. We are comically badly run. We have reasonable schools and some faltering industry. We are a significant fishing port. Wine is produced locally. We are so laid back as to be almost comatose, hence of course “Live the day”, a slogan too stupidly diffuse to mean a thing. According to some notions of geography we are close to the centre of New Zealand.
I propose these for consideration
Distinctly Average at the Centre of New Zealand
The Sunstruck Navel of New Zealand
The Sun Shines out our Arsehole
Now of course it’s early days yet and a lot more consideration may have to be given to these, and others as you might submit. More consideration perhaps than the city fathers showed when they elected to build two unspeakably inept, architecturally nil, sheds on the fringes of Trafalgar Park, sited to be amongst the very first things our visitors will see as they enter the city. Implied but not stated is, Nelson – who gives a fuck.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Colours of New Zealand
Some time ago when Queen Helen was in power I wrote about the baleful effects on our beloved land of her blinkered socialist vision. I was offended by her ruthless and quite unscrupulous grip on power and the way that nine years of nanny statism had destroyed initiative and hope in a once "can do" self reliant society. The effects of these socially engineered years are with us to this day and will not lightly be undone. Thank God Ms Clark has taken her "humanity" to the UN. She'll have more money to spend but as that talk shop is more about good intentions than actual performance her ability to do harm will be mercifully checked.
The Colours of New Zealand
Precious China was crazed and nearly shattered by the erratic lurches imposed by Mao, the Great Helmsman. Now once green and picture perfect New Zealand is becoming primered in pink at the broad brush strokes of the Great Dauber whose passion for art may be less than Churchillian and only slightly north of Hitlerian.
Time was the New Zealand paint box was a well of innocent colours, unnuanced, simple bright and clean. True, at times these were veiled by Scotch Mist, a grey wash curiously characteristic of bygone New Zealand cooking. But there was an underlying honesty to it all. Then came Lange, Douglas and the great upheavals of social policy and a whole new palette was on display. It was so bright, so harsh and so recklessly hopeful it seemed as if we’d suddenly become acquainted with the colours of South America.
Latterly, under the iron grip of the doctrinaire apparatchiks of Helengrad we’ve seen a steady dimming of the New Zealand palette and a surly slide into the tonal scale of a wet afternoon in an Albanian Iron works. Over 18’s can try and brighten their lives with these…
Grinding Halt Scarlet Colour familiar to all New Zealanders struggling to get anything done. Found on the familiar and nearly unbreakable tape that binds everything the government touches.
Socialist Red An ancient but endlessly updated mix of ambitious greed, petty vindictiveness and smouldering resentment applied in way too many places. Worse, it runs appallingly, staining nearly everything to an unappealing and pervasive Nanny Pink.
Nanny Pink A particularly unpleasant dirty pale red as once found on sticking plasters; and like a plaster used endlessly as a cut price cover up in lieu of more meaningful, more thoroughly researched or diligently applied schemes
Bitter Orange The hue of the light that bathes Aucklanders, where over consumption and stretched capacity has muddied once pure white light.
Media Ochre A pallid beigey brownish shade carelessly slopped over nearly everything and inevitably patchily applied. Gives most things it covers a uniformly cruddy appearance.
White Gold The new colour of avarice. Popular in Government circles, it’s slapped carelessly over the once fashionable Pristine Green. Quickly starts to look dirty under even the most cursory inspection.
Belly Yellow A gutless rather transparent shade randomly and hopefully applied everywhere in paint overs of government excess. Mixes readily with standard issue government red to produce bitter orange or with opposition blue to produce smug green.
Smug Green Depressingly familiar shade as found in gardens purged of colourful exotics in favour of the more muted New Zealand native palette.
Virtuous Green Enthusiastically and tastelessly drizzled into even the most personal corners of our lives, in a one colour fits all frenzy, its as monotonous in its own way as the institutional Reds of government.
Tepid Blue An unusually recessive colour associated with the leading opposition party. Often appears quite pretty but quickly fades or flakes off. Uncertain formulation and careless mixing frequently the problem
Entitlement Purple Mixture of the usual red and blue its seen in the aura of those in high office. Also seen in the wattles of the common folk when viewing the perks of those in high office and footing the heavy bills these occasion
Vapour Grey A useful colour produced by committees and suited Wellingtonians for the writing of promises that government and local bodies might actually have to keep.. Appears reasonably solid at first but quickly fades to near invisibility.
Moody Black A somber tint that darkens the mood of once brightly optimistic and self-deluding New Zealand. Sometimes known as bottom line black it’s used quite often by government to intensify or deepen its various reds
Soiled White A nearly universally applied wash, it shades once pristine reputations and obliterates cherished legends, such as that of our “green-ness”.. Lends a shabby dirty appearance wherever it’s found and frequently masks even more unpleasantness beneath.
Scientists assure us that soiled white forced through a prism with a number 3 coal hammer will split to reveal the primary colours of New Zealand. They offer the only faintly comforting suggestion that US primaries produce the even dirtier and more opaque Religious White.
Needless to say secondary and tertiary colours derived from these primaries abound in their muddy profusion. Despite improved technologies and the supposed immediacy, purity and transparency they were meant to bring, the Kiwi paint box is becoming like something issued by an Iron Curtain government, One can’t help but feel its time that the Great Dauber once more laid down the brush and entrusted the work to defter hands.
Dot Snice
Dot Snice is a Nelson Art teacher. She professes, unconvincingly, to be colour blind and her rancid opinions are mostly her own. They are shared by me of course.
La Helen or the great dauber was notoriously exposed as a fake when a painting supposedly done for charity by her own fair hand was found to have been created by someone else. The over 18's stricture above reflects Labour's zeal to zeal to social engineer rather than get to root causes. The asinine government of Helen Clarke's day decided to restrict sale of spray can paint to over 18 year olds in order to stop the writing of grafitti. There could be fewer more telling examples of their obdurate stupidity and self referential blindness. NZ Voters finally had the wit to show Helen and her cohorts the door in 2008. Bitter Orange, refers to Auckland's periodic power brown outs. White Gold, to the "dairy" revolution that has seen cows rather dirtily replace sheep on the NZ farmscape. These pieces work best in their time but enough remains true that I'm airing it now. We are still awash in Nanny pink and soiled white and even the latest formulation of Yellow hasn't been sufficiently opaque to blot out the peccadillos of ACT's Rodney "I've got nothing to" Hide.
The Colours of New Zealand
Precious China was crazed and nearly shattered by the erratic lurches imposed by Mao, the Great Helmsman. Now once green and picture perfect New Zealand is becoming primered in pink at the broad brush strokes of the Great Dauber whose passion for art may be less than Churchillian and only slightly north of Hitlerian.
Time was the New Zealand paint box was a well of innocent colours, unnuanced, simple bright and clean. True, at times these were veiled by Scotch Mist, a grey wash curiously characteristic of bygone New Zealand cooking. But there was an underlying honesty to it all. Then came Lange, Douglas and the great upheavals of social policy and a whole new palette was on display. It was so bright, so harsh and so recklessly hopeful it seemed as if we’d suddenly become acquainted with the colours of South America.
Latterly, under the iron grip of the doctrinaire apparatchiks of Helengrad we’ve seen a steady dimming of the New Zealand palette and a surly slide into the tonal scale of a wet afternoon in an Albanian Iron works. Over 18’s can try and brighten their lives with these…
Grinding Halt Scarlet Colour familiar to all New Zealanders struggling to get anything done. Found on the familiar and nearly unbreakable tape that binds everything the government touches.
Socialist Red An ancient but endlessly updated mix of ambitious greed, petty vindictiveness and smouldering resentment applied in way too many places. Worse, it runs appallingly, staining nearly everything to an unappealing and pervasive Nanny Pink.
Nanny Pink A particularly unpleasant dirty pale red as once found on sticking plasters; and like a plaster used endlessly as a cut price cover up in lieu of more meaningful, more thoroughly researched or diligently applied schemes
Bitter Orange The hue of the light that bathes Aucklanders, where over consumption and stretched capacity has muddied once pure white light.
Media Ochre A pallid beigey brownish shade carelessly slopped over nearly everything and inevitably patchily applied. Gives most things it covers a uniformly cruddy appearance.
White Gold The new colour of avarice. Popular in Government circles, it’s slapped carelessly over the once fashionable Pristine Green. Quickly starts to look dirty under even the most cursory inspection.
Belly Yellow A gutless rather transparent shade randomly and hopefully applied everywhere in paint overs of government excess. Mixes readily with standard issue government red to produce bitter orange or with opposition blue to produce smug green.
Smug Green Depressingly familiar shade as found in gardens purged of colourful exotics in favour of the more muted New Zealand native palette.
Virtuous Green Enthusiastically and tastelessly drizzled into even the most personal corners of our lives, in a one colour fits all frenzy, its as monotonous in its own way as the institutional Reds of government.
Tepid Blue An unusually recessive colour associated with the leading opposition party. Often appears quite pretty but quickly fades or flakes off. Uncertain formulation and careless mixing frequently the problem
Entitlement Purple Mixture of the usual red and blue its seen in the aura of those in high office. Also seen in the wattles of the common folk when viewing the perks of those in high office and footing the heavy bills these occasion
Vapour Grey A useful colour produced by committees and suited Wellingtonians for the writing of promises that government and local bodies might actually have to keep.. Appears reasonably solid at first but quickly fades to near invisibility.
Moody Black A somber tint that darkens the mood of once brightly optimistic and self-deluding New Zealand. Sometimes known as bottom line black it’s used quite often by government to intensify or deepen its various reds
Soiled White A nearly universally applied wash, it shades once pristine reputations and obliterates cherished legends, such as that of our “green-ness”.. Lends a shabby dirty appearance wherever it’s found and frequently masks even more unpleasantness beneath.
Scientists assure us that soiled white forced through a prism with a number 3 coal hammer will split to reveal the primary colours of New Zealand. They offer the only faintly comforting suggestion that US primaries produce the even dirtier and more opaque Religious White.
Needless to say secondary and tertiary colours derived from these primaries abound in their muddy profusion. Despite improved technologies and the supposed immediacy, purity and transparency they were meant to bring, the Kiwi paint box is becoming like something issued by an Iron Curtain government, One can’t help but feel its time that the Great Dauber once more laid down the brush and entrusted the work to defter hands.
Dot Snice
Dot Snice is a Nelson Art teacher. She professes, unconvincingly, to be colour blind and her rancid opinions are mostly her own. They are shared by me of course.
La Helen or the great dauber was notoriously exposed as a fake when a painting supposedly done for charity by her own fair hand was found to have been created by someone else. The over 18's stricture above reflects Labour's zeal to zeal to social engineer rather than get to root causes. The asinine government of Helen Clarke's day decided to restrict sale of spray can paint to over 18 year olds in order to stop the writing of grafitti. There could be fewer more telling examples of their obdurate stupidity and self referential blindness. NZ Voters finally had the wit to show Helen and her cohorts the door in 2008. Bitter Orange, refers to Auckland's periodic power brown outs. White Gold, to the "dairy" revolution that has seen cows rather dirtily replace sheep on the NZ farmscape. These pieces work best in their time but enough remains true that I'm airing it now. We are still awash in Nanny pink and soiled white and even the latest formulation of Yellow hasn't been sufficiently opaque to blot out the peccadillos of ACT's Rodney "I've got nothing to" Hide.
Where to start
I've long wanted an outlet or public forum for my fragrant, if errant, thoughts. Following an excellent blog from Australian artist Hazel Dooney I discovered a logo and prompt that invited me to begin posting a blog of my own. Simple as that. Now here I am with insufficient time and an empty head. To be rectified as I look back at some of the things I've written and drag them into the light to play upon this page. The horrid fear is of course that no one will read it but me - but I shall have my "public forum". A place to let off steam or to get a bit of dirty water off my chest.
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