Maori Party MP Hone Harawira is describing tough new anti-tagging laws passed by Parliament on Thursday as a tool for harassment.

The bill passed its third reading by 107 votes to 10, with the Greens, the Maori Party and ACT voting against it.

Under the new law, anyone convicted of graffiti vandalism can be fined up to $2000 and be ordered by the court to clean up graffiti.

The legislation bans the sale of spray cans to those under 18 years of age, and requires retailers to restrict access to spray paint, so the public cannot get access to it without the help of shop staff.

It will also be an offence to be in possession of a so-called graffiti implement, which includes only spray cans, and other items such as felt tip pens.

Hone Harawira told Nine to Noon tagging is a symptom of poverty, and needs to be addressed more creatively.

"We've got to do something about tagging, but lets get a lot more innovative about how we do it, than simply pass a law that will do two things ... enable police to harass innocent kids and admittedly won't stop tagging."

— http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/latest/200806201207/13bd8d7b

I'm kinda surprised to say this, but I've been hearing an awful lot of sense coming out of the Maori party recently. Like this and being against banning BZP. I think maybe because their constituency is already so marginalized and outside the mainstream they have more of a handle on what is actually going on.

My friend hates the idea of going underground, but I think she's going to have to :/

Felt tip pens now illegal to carry. Sweet fucking jesus.

But National MP Judith Collins said treating tagging as "some sort of resistance artwork" would lead to a breakdown of law and order.—The Dominion Post

Nice one Judy, well done! I can see you have your finger squarely on the barely discernible pulse of this proud nation. Christ, I swear to God it takes a mirror and a qualified medical doctor just to verify that the country is actually still breathing. Rigor mortis has obviously begun to set in, the skin is cool, nay cold to the touch and any remaining flickers of movement could easily be explained away as just a few rogue nerve impulses, the last pathetic spasms of a rapidly dying brain.

What this country needs is a giant defibrillator, a huge jolt of sixteen billion volts straight to heart of everything, to wind up the springs of this run down clock and set things back in motion.

There's a new breed of miscreant on the streets of your city or town. We're smart and resourceful and we ain't into stealing shit or causing any violence, but instead proving our point, making our mark, playing out just enough rope so as you can hang yourself with it, then tying the other end to the towbar of a passing SUV.

Fuck you Judy. I hope you have all your values securely fastened in the storm cellar cos it looks to me like a moral hurricanes a-coming and the destruction it brings could completely obliterate your obsoleted way of life.

Not a revolution.

A wave.

Mission a-fucking-accomplished. Vodka is in the bag.

How many dudes you know roll like this? How many dudes you know flow like this? Just one, motherfuckers: ME

Technical problem needs solving—I'm the only programmer at my company—big deal, big client. You ever seen startrek: You know how inevitably Scotty tells Kirk that the ship is basically fucked, the dilithium crystal just shat it's pants and cracked itself and that he cannae fix it in less than sixteen hours captain, sixteen hours at best.

And then Kirk turns to Scotty with a terrible smile in his eye and a swagger on his lips and says “Mr Scot, you have two.”

Five hours sleep last night. Nineteen hours straight coding, nowhere near a record but I was already pretty tired. Sometimes I can and do perform miracles. Sometimes I pull, not just rabbits, but entire herds of elephants outta my ass. But it's a hit and miss affair. That's the thing about the miraculous, you can't always rely on it because magic does not obey the laws of physics.

Whenever I do this shit my boss buys me a bottle of vodka. How well he knows the carrot that keeps this donkey trundling.

When I woke in the morning I found my that cheeks were still wet from tears: crying in my sleep I guess, like a little fag with a skinned knee. Judgmental motherfuckers. Nothing like a party, to make you feel totally utterly alone, and also like stringing yourself up by your boot-laces. Well, at least I'm still drunk, thank heaven for small mercies.

I kinda figured that being open and honest would be enough. but it seems that it isn't and I guess that it ain't. Kinda funny, I honestly think I've done hellva lot of very cool stuff, I've done a lot of interesting things that many of these people couldn't even begin to start to imagine, and yet they still somehow manage to make me feel like goddamn fucking worm.

Tried to apologize to Cat, figured she's no stranger to “Sorry”, that she'd understand. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped.

Slowly learning who my friends are.

I like to think that my friends are all, in general, well, they're good cunts, they're solid, they fly straight as an arrow in the absence of gravity. By process of attrition and erosion all the chaff gets chipped, inevitably away, you quickly learn who you can rely on, who the people left remaining that are worth paying any attention to.

I honestly don't think I could survive without such a solid base of bedrock. What would I do? I couldn't imagine. I tend to give people too much off the benefit of the doubt in the first place. I mean, I'm pretty open: I've told my boss about my drug use. In fact... if it was a problem I think I'd just goddamn fucking quit... I actually suggested we do mescaline as a team building exercise. I tend to think that everyone has pretty much the same liberal kinda attitudes that I do, I guess I'm kinda privileged in that sense, cos when I encounter conservatism I'm actually genuinely shocked. Like what the fuck. Go back to 1634 or whatever. I honestly thought you people died out with the inquisition or the hand crafted stone flint spear.

I like think that I am capable of very, very much, and this shit sounds to me like challenge. I mean: I'll race you to the finish you bastards. Cunts trying to tell me I've done too many drugs, ah, what is it you do again? And what exactly have you accomplished? When it gets down to brass tacks the proof is in the powdered glass I'll make you swallow, and I hope to God it cuts you up.

A bit of drunken fucking arc welding, that'll make me feel better about myself.

I guess we've grown apart. These people are as a alien to me as I am to them. More fool me for trying. I just find their sense of values, well, extremely fucking warped. Kinda stupid I guess, trying to fit my square peg into their sandpaper hole. Best, given the available evidence, I guess best left well alone. Fuck this shit, I reckon you should go back to the roleplaying games, you worthless goddamn fucks. Meet you! I'll meet you! You'll see my name in the history books, otherwise, if you have something to say! otherwise lets do coffee! ...otherwise I suggest you go roll dice.

We've come to the divide, I guess, you and me, and you're totally free to tell yourself you took road less travelled, I am lunatic, I figure.

I'm sure you have all kinds of exciting characters to play.

Actually, fuck you. Can't believe I even bothered.

See you in the newspapers. Am I total failure, or a brilliant success? To tell the truth I can't even tell anymore.

Getting OUT, getting out and running away to freedom, that would be sweet. But there's no place left to go to. You can't just make a graceful escape, because everywhere leads back IN, and all the roads go nowhere. That's not what they say though. They say that if you don't like it, lump it, else maybe you should leave. Say that, by staying, you're tacit, you're complicit in the scheme – you agree to concede a generous measure of yourself, and also agree to play by the all the rules in rulebook and jump into the ocean and tow the party line with your teeth.

What do I want to be I grow up? Ah, that's a tricky one. I want to an astronaut. I want to be a fireman. I want to be; a river, in full flood, that bursts it's banks in tempestuous laughter and covers the city in dying fish they must then clear away with bulldozers.

I want to be a punchline without the joke.

Joining bits of metal together is extremely satisfying.

I call this piece "Untitled #4"

I mean: I love scams, but I also have a kinda got a kind of grudging respect. I love pulling cons; —- but they have to, I mean: it's a mush:: or else possible: mane just a must or necessity ; they have to hang themselves, so to say: so to speak: you know what I man bro, or maybe: what I brag: what I mean in this case: I know you mute understands: I'm sure, I sire you wtf watt non-comprehende! I gringo loco total scat fetishist!—- or else whatever fucked up pigeon english we happen to be speaking at the time

Damn. I mean: lubie. Sweet jesus. That's one child I actually wish I was the father of, rather than just paying some random other cunt to take the paternity test for me like I usually do. re

Hey man, we're friends: I know you won't say anything.DAMN! HOT AS FUCK! Just being objective. Honestly, can't blame a cunt trying to be scientific, it's just my statistically significant opinion, you know.

Shut your goddamn mouth Charlenne! i paid for your taxi home! didn't even make you give me a blowjob afterwards! pretty goddamn generous if you condescended to ask me!

To that end, after kiwicon we're going on a WEEK LONG NORTH ISLAND URBEX TOUR.

Fuck yeah. Gonna be AWESOME. Drains, powerstations, old mines, abandoned mental hospitals, the works. Back to back B&E, criminal trespass and avoiding the insidious lurking evil of the passive infrared. I honestly can't think of a better way to spend seven days.

God knows I need the break. Things have been a bit human meatgrinder on the old emotional frontlines recently, you may or may not have noticed.

In some ways I really regret writing the previous entry, and in other ways I do not: embarrassing, well, hell yes, of course! but also, it is also quite illuminating. There's what you're saying, and then what you think your saying, and they're not always the same thing.

For me getting drunk is like sending an unmanned probe down into sunless Mariana Trench of my subconscious, and then forcing myself to re-examine the grainy video footage of whatever strange and grotesque fish have somehow managed to survive in the cold bleak waters of that particularly inhospitable environment. I sink beneath the waves of coherency straight down to the bottom like a concrete slipper. When you write you tend to make unforced errors, you reveal, despite what you may desire, the truth. Being honest isn't always attractive. On the contrary, on occasion the truth is so ugly it cracks one mirror after another. And with me it's all unforced errors. I am compelled, driven forward like a blinkered mule being whipped viciously from behind by a invisible master he is unable to turn his head and see.

To be honest I only remember writing about sixty percent of the shit on this site, the rest was produced, almost automatically, in a kind of alcoholic semi-trance or stupor; I go elsewhere, elsewhere entirely, and I come back from these furious alcoholic blackouts clutching a fist full of torn pages, from a book I cannot find, anywhere, on any Rolodex in the entire library of daylight.

I am compelled, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a thing.

Apparently I was a total mess the other night, as usual can't really remember any of it, apologize to anyone that had to deal etc.

Tries to organise an orgy at our flat.... Total and absolute; an appalling and abject failure. In the end I just ended up sucking my flatmate off, while his girlfriend drilled me up the ass with an eight inch strap-on dildo. I mean: it was fun and everything, but a little bit of audience participation could have made a simply average night TOTALLY GODDAMN AWESOME. The applause at the end was good though. It's nice, feeling that your talents have been at least somewhat recognized.

I dunno bro, I mean, I didn't swallow—I just let that shit drip from my lips like so many dribbling drops of off-yellow spray paint –- but, you know, unless there's a chance of some AIDS going on I kinda think it wasn't really worth it, I guess I kinda have a death wish. But it's like this with everything, everyone wants to be a spectator—and nobody wants to be the spectacle.

Because being in the position of the watched is some harsh steel wool scrubbing on your skin. You must be willing to open yourself up to criticism from every angry angle. Hey, don't hate the PLAYA, hate the GAME. Hate the stark irreducibility of the black and white chessboard that lets me continue to let make my money: SYSTEMATIC IGNORANCE motherfuckers, it's IMPERFECT INFORMATION that leads to the MARKET INEFFICENCY that keep the Sir Edmonds flowing through my hands.

I have everything you might need. I am a purveyor of the purest distilled substance of dreams. I got the chemical formula to every problem you may possibly encounter.o

Man, my problem is I actually care. and the shit, the people, don't care about me back, cuts me like a broken window pane. God I'm such an idiot. To even imagine; this reciprocal,lunacy unpredictable by the most fortuitous of prophets.. What was I thinking. Basic, basal insanity. Base levels mmMagical wish fulfilment.

She is beautiful, but more importantly: smart and total. like a solar eclipse.

In comparison: I am dull shadow. And so stupid, so fucking stupid.

Why? Why! Do I fall in love? With anyone? I guess God really does play dice. So, so goddamn impressionable and so, so goddann stupid. I fall in love with these girls but you know, no matter. Flag it man; I've tumbled down too many stairs already.

Fuck it. They can crash into my iceburg, rather than vice-is-versa.

Man, at this late stage of the game, well, I've been clocked in the face a fair few times: but love is the most brutal thing i have ever experienced.

Fucking women man, like I got a clue what do to.