FNC - Famous Last Words 🎙️

Hello! It's Friday! Welcome to Friday Night Chats! It's so lovely to have you here. I am so glad it's the weekend. First week back of the school holidays and my gosh it's easier to write when I don't have so many kids around! I had a really good week work-wise!

The back-to-school adjustment hasn't been that easy for my little one, but the hours I have had have been awesome. It's so much easier to work. Which like yeah, trying to do one thing at a time instead of 50 things is easier: Groundbreaking. But anyway!

It has made me very much realise that I want, and need, to work. Home schooling all day and working all night is not sustainable. I know we can figure it out, and we have more support from family than others do...I feel hopeful despite it all.

As a family this week we watched Jane Goodall's last words on Netflix. If you want to watch it with little ones, you might want to skip just to the end words she speaks to camera. And maybe only if they're not too sensitive.

My youngest (huge fan of Jane Goodall) watched the whole thing while crying. My eldest was bored and didn't care. But we forced him to be inspired lol.

I mean, it really was so beautiful. If you don't want to watch, here's a line that stuck with me:

“And if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world – if you want to save the planet for the future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren – then think about the actions you take each day. Because, multiplied a million, a billion times, even small actions will make for great change.”

I believe my New Year resolution was something like - less doom scrolling. But I've failed so badly that I've decided to DOWNLOAD AN APP.

I have now banned myself from going online from 10pm till 7am lol. It's actually appalling but honestly, I am proud of myself for doing it for one night. Last night I got anxious and allowed myself to unblock Facebook and Insta for eight minutes and I had a quick look online and then managed to turn it off again. So, I dunno, progress for my addicted, terminally online ass.

Thank you for all the Pipi advice! Here’s an update:

I am going to take all of your advice and do my best!

What I've been reading:

I have been enjoying all of the Taylor Swift album reviews. I love a one-star review if it's not related to anything I've worked on haha.

The Alternative, a music website I've never been to, had a great one: Album Review: Taylor Swift – ‘The Life of a Showgirl’. With the incredible line:

With every album it’s become more and more obvious that Taylor makes a point of forcing in some SEO-slop lyrics made to be slapped on merch made by Cambodia’s hardest working ten-year-olds.

OOF.

The Standard had a good one: Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl review: Penis metaphors and poor little rich girl tales start to chafe and The Guardian's Taylor Swift’s Charli xcx hit job misses the point – and underscores her tedious obsession with conflict.

I only just saw TODAY that Jilly Cooper died. I loved her books. Such good trash. I read Wilde's End by Saxon James which was great wild mountain man smut.

A hot guy buys a town with his two hot brothers. Then a hot mountain man climbs through his window and threatens him to leave the town which actually isn't abandoned. At least I think that was the plot haha.

I have now started Pretty Mess by Lily Morton. Basically, smut is going to save me from screen time. That's my plan anyway.

Other things I've been reading:

So, You Wanna Shitpost: A Creator’s Guide to Weaponized Nonsense.

Jobseeker changes turn young adults into dependent children – and squeeze households further

What do you do if there’s a Nazi flag in your neighbourhood? 

Who wrote the cabinet paper recommending NZ not recognise a Palestinian state?

Not voting in local elections is rational. Voters need better reasons to engage

Credit where it's due, this is a good piece by Stuff: The prime minister says young people need to get jobs. These young New Zealanders say it isn’t that easy

“[Christopher Luxon] is suggesting, you know, just abandon your family, abandon all the stuff you've done in your home, and just move to somewhere else. Has he not considered the cost of moving, the cost of setting up a new life?” Jayden said.

“And to move for seasonal work - there’s not that many jobs, and it’s not permanent. So we’re just meant to spend all that time, energy and money moving to an area, but for what?”

I would love to see more journalism like this, actually testing out government policy and the impact it has in the real world.

A relic of horny Hollywood: why The Mummy remains a classic bisexual awakening movie

What I've been watching:

Not much to be honest. My son insisted he wanted to see Prime Minister than wanted to leave halfway through. I loved the first half, so I think I'm going to try to see it again. He was annoyed there wasn't more about the negotiations under MMP. Then he felt really upset about the mosque shooting which was understandable (more understandable than being fascinated by MMP).

My favourite show is back! The dumbest best show on TV comes out tonight so I will be watching with my kids haha. I mean look at this! It's perfection:

And if that wasn't enough, the spinoff: 9-1-1: Nashville, comes out tonight too and it looks even worse/better! Camp TV that requires no brain power to watch is my favourite type of TV. I adore it. I love it so much I once wrote about it for The Spinoff: Help, emergency, I'm addicted to 9-1-1. 9-1-1 used to be my son's special interest but he went off it, but fingers crossed it's back! He read my review and said it was good by the way if you want to know what 9-1-1 is all about.

What I've been listening to:

I started listening to Juno Dawson's book Human Rites, the third book in her Her Majesty's Royal Coven series. Well fourth, if you count the novella Queen B.

Nicola Coughlan of Derry Girls and Bridgerton fame is the narrator, and I could listen to her all day. Even though it's been hard to remember all of the characters and what happened to them in the earlier books. Coughlan narrates all of the books if you're keen for a listen - the books are all about witches and are a kind of allegory around trans rights and misogyny but it's not too in your face.

I also loved listening to 'We’ve done it before’: how not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster'. It's about 40 minutes long or so. The Guardian is quite good if you don't want to commit to a podcast or 15 hour book lol.

What I've been hoping for:

I'm hoping the genocide will hold. And the killing of Palestinians in Gaza will end. I am hoping for an end to occupation and brutality all over the world.

We finally wrapped up the tents drive. In the end, 72 fundraisers raised a grand total of NZ$158,000 in 14 days! We were able to provide 90 tents.

That means, thanks to you we have been able to shelter up to 1,260 people in Gaza

We aimed for 60 tents at NZ$1700 each. We were able to do that and then give an additional 30 verified families on our waitlist tents. That's 150% of our goal,

We still have families on our waitlist - so you can still encourage people to donate directly to the mutual aid account.

Account Name: Prosean Pictures
Bank Account: 06-0574-0906928-00 

What are you reading? Watching? Listening to? What are you hoping for?

I hope you have a lovely and gentle weekend. I think we all deserve a little calm eh? Some sunshine....Some summer. As always, I can't thank you enough for your support and for being here with me. I can only do this mahi because of you and it means so much to me. I think you're all wonderful. Arohanui Emily x

Finally, I love this Tiktok from Josh so much that I bought the print in on website (and the Cats are Communist print).

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