Still waiting for someone I know on Foundphotos...

But in the meantime...

Anybody else find the Whacko Jacko Doco last night creepy?

No, not the actual show, we've seen all that shit before. I'm talking about the advertisements pretty much all featuring young children (including some Anne Geddes style, artfully arranged, naked babies - creepy in the extreme!).

What was the advertisers' target audience?

Great Mysteries of our Time #... um... 3?

Why do you have to make appointments with clairvoyants anyway?

Can't they just call you up if they happen to be busy at the time you decide to go see one?

The Lion King

Really, I have to link to this. Mike is right, the greatest Lion of all time, if not the greatest rugby player ever, was Barry John.

MiramarMike: Barry John: the greatest Lion of them all

I saw him play in 1971 during the Lion's tour of New Zild. The Lions were training in Wellington at Wellington College. My dad was teaching there at the time & we went to see them train. Most excitingly, my dad was also friends with their coach, Carwyn James & we got all their autographs.

John was a better kicker than Wilkinson even, and with the ball was simply untouchable - as the article Mike links to says, he pretty much ended Fergie McCormick's career in 1971.

There were times, when the ball would come to John & the All Blacks would stand still, waiting to see what he would do, as if there was no point at all in attempting to tackle him. On one occasion when this happened, John also stopped & stood there, and for an astonishing few seconds in the middle of a test game, without the whistle blowing, no-one was moving. And then he was off! And indeed there wasn't much point in pursuing him, not only did it seem he couldn't be tackled, but he couldn't even be touched as he ghosted through the increasingly frustrated defense.

And then out of the blue, at the top of his game, he retired, retiring the hopes of an entire rugby obsessed nation that they would ever beat the All Blacks in the near future at least.

The future of TV remotes

STUFF : NATIONAL NEWS - STORY : Smart shoe battles square eyes

This sounds SO stupid. But it reminds me of my uncle, who, irritated with the amount of time his teenagers spent in the shower, wired his hot water cyllinder up to an exercycle & decreed that 20 minutes cycling was required before a hot shower would be permitted.

You'd need a shower after that.

To be fair, he only took these steps after the illegal water wheel that he'd built on the stream that ran through his garden, and under his driveway, was discovered. I suspect such measures are encouraged now, rather than banned.

36-6. This week's netball

The girls are so gracious in victory, "Man, we dicked them!". I feel obliged to counsel "Don't say that! Until they're out of earshot."

The score might say it all. Although truly, the team that succumbed this week was 2nd in the table. But didn't I say last week that M's team were 2nd? I can't remember, although it is true.

For some inexplicable reason, despite there being enough games in the season to do this, the tournament does not run by having each team play each other twice, and then ranking the table according to wins & points.

Apparently that would be unfair for the teams who are... useless. They may be demoralised & never play again. Hooey.

What they do is: At the beginning of the season each coach is asked "Is your team any good? Or not?". I'm not sure even, how they're supposed to know if thay're any good at the beginning of the year...

So they split the A grade into A1 & A2. Then they play 3 "grading games" within the two A grades.

At the end of the 3 games, the top two from A2 switch places with the bottom 2 from A1.

And so this weekend we played the top team from A2, who came up with an unbeaten record & a truck load of points - they'd won by considerable margins. And we crushed them.

Paradoxically, one of the teams that was relegated, and which we beat by a narrower margin - 33-15 or something, it's on this site somewhere, crushed their opponents too.

Now what will happen is that there will be all sorts of dicking around with the draw & the same handful of teams will play each other over & over to make it fair on everyone else. Possibly they will rejig A1 & A2 further.

Just ridiculous. Out of interest, do any other kids tournaments do it in this fashion? Or is it more usual to to play the whole field against each other once or twice & tally up the points?

Maybe I'm the one with the ridiculous notions...

UPDATE: M's rep team came 2nd in their tournament yesterday. They won 5 out of 6 games - beat one club's A team but lost to their B team, indicating that with a little more discipline, total victory was within their grasp! Good start to the rep season though.

More on music

When I was a teenager, I had an astounding revelation. I shared it with my initially sceptical friends, but they quickly came to agree as we tried it out with every appropriate song. More recently, I tried the theory out on my wife - I can't remember which song prompted it, but she remains sceptical (innocent that she is).

In any song, the word "Rock" is a euphemism for the word "Fuck".

It's true! Try it.

Was it David Cassidy who warbled?:
Ooh... I wanna ROCK you baby!
ROCK you all night long.

Abba similarly implored:
ROCK me
Gimme that kick now
ROCK me
Show me that trick now
ROCK me

On the other hand... Michael Jackson claimed:
I wanna ROCK with you
All night

See? Maybe you already realised this. I thought it was obvious, but I'm surprised that not everyone thinks so. Maybe there are exceptions...

I may add more during the weekend as they come to mind.

Although... what are we to make of the B52's Rock Lobster....

My music.

Everyone else is blogging music (I so can't be bothered to link to the rest of the Wellingtonists), so I may as well demonstrate how hip & cool I am too (like their parents perhaps).

But first, I want to ask what is it with tribute acts? Do I really want to see some guy who looks like both Elton John & Billy Joel singing their songs? Does anyone? Are they the same people who go & see stageshow versions with the original cast Are You Being Served? I don't even want to see the real Elton & Billy.

As for Queen tributes... and please, I don't want to hear from anyone who loved anything that starts with Abba...solutely, or anything.

Although the Beat Girls are cool.

A long time ago, a lecturer (Bill Manhire I think) read to us from Playboy magazine. And if reading from Playboy doesn't show that irony was alive & well in the 70s, I don't know what does). The point was that he read from an interview with Bob Dylan, and Dylan was asked "What are your songs about?" And Dylan's response was along the lines of "Well some of them are about... 3 minutes long, some of them are about 5 minutes long, and some of them even, are about 10 minutes long".

Well that might be fine for Dylan, but what are the Eagles' songs about? They probably represented perfectly the California sound of the 1970s. A sound preoccupied with a flashy, tropical lifestyle of sex & drugs & complete vacuousness. I so wanted to be there. Life in the Fast Lane. Etc. They also wrote songs about cowboys. How good can it get?

So I want to set the record straight about The Eagles, They seem to get a bad deal these days. In my final year of college, Hotel California was THE album, and THE song. So in a way, if my life has to have a soundtrack, songs from that album would probably cover the "coming of age" years. Frampton Comes Alive was the other big album that year. But I never really liked it. Actually, I hated it & history seems to agree with me in retrospect. Peter Wankton, we used to say.

My family won't let me play Eagles' albums. Not while they're around anyway. they're a bit iffy about the Beach Boys & b52s too. SO I never get to listen to "my" music.

But take any Eagles' song at random - say Peaceful Easy Feeling, which isn't off Hotel California, but who cares? Look at the depth in the lyrics here. I have annotated with their real meaning. In case you're slow or something.

I like the way your sparkling earrings lay,
against your skin so brown
and I wanna sleep with you in the desert tonight
with a billion stars all around

(I like sex outdoors with groupies)

'cause I gotta peaceful easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the ground

(I'm on a lot of drugs)

And I found out a long time ago
what a woman can do to your soul
Ah, but she can't take you anyway
You don't already know how to go

(Groupies are fine, but masturbation is best)

and I gotta peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the ground

(2 stanzas in & I'm still off my face)

I get this feeling I may know you
as a lover and a friend
but this voice keeps whispering in my other ear,
tells me I may never see you again

(I'm so out of it I'm not sure if I recognise you, I hear voices and I have 3 ears)

'cause I get a peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the ground
'cause I'm already standing...
on the ground
oooo, oooo

(My pants are really tight).

I should really do this for the lyrics to Hotel California, but let's face it, no-one knows what the hell that song was about. Probably groupies, drugs, sex & tight pants too. "Warm smell of WHAT? Rising up in your face"?

The Complete List - ALL-TIME 100 Movies - TIME Magazine

Cripes... I've seen 63 of these....

The Complete List - ALL-TIME 100 Movies - TIME Magazine

Must get cracking on the other 37 I suppose.

Autumn brings them out...

This is a bit late... the season must be over I think. But at certain times of the year it is not uncommon to see strange faces in the Botanic Gardens. I used to notice the same thing when I lived near the town belt in Vogeltown.

Autumn always sees more people than usual, often wearing army surplus coats & hats, but not always (just allow me to stereotype for a moment). Have I mentioned this before? Anyway... they're mostly around & underneath the pine trees, and their eyes are rivetted to the ground.

I have always just assumed they're looking for magic mushrooms. I don't know what shrooms look like (truly - and it seems a dodgy thing to find out by trial & error, much like learning how to use an electric fence without the manual - which I know I HAVE mentioned before), but I assume it's not these, because no one picks them.

And now... back to SunnyO, briefly...

Probably been a while since you saw photos of sheep here... but here are the lawnmowers. Taken before the black one went bald though. And it's growing back, in case you were worried.



And penultimately (there IS one more photo to come later). I mentioned a while back I'd walked up & down the beach taking photos of beach sculptures. This is the only one photogenic enough to bother posting. Even the one that looked just like a bosom wan't worth it (and actually, it was the middle part of a daisy), it just looked dodgy.

Streetlight by fog... or fog by streetlight...

Whatever.

Dogs & toys...

It's always a good idea to take a ball on a rope, or even just a rope, on a dog walk. If you run into other dogs someplace where you can (covertly) let them off the lead, ropes come in handy for them to chase & play tug o' war.

Wilma loves being chased by as many dogs as possible with a rope in her mouth. She dodges, and hides, and comes running out from unexpected places in bushes. She loves it.

Usually, I'll tie the rope to the lead so I don't have to carry it. The other day, she was playing at home with a ball on a rope that I usually don't take on walks. So this time, since it was a toy in favour again, I took it with us. It didn't tie very well onto the lead. And by the time I got to the lawn, I found it had fallen off somewhere along the way.

Had a bit more time than usual that day, so I decided we'd retrace our steps & find the ball. We'd wandered far & wide throught the gardens on that occasion, so it was a long walk.

No sign of the ball anywhere. Until we got right back to the gun emplacement near the Met Office & Carter Observatory, which is about 2 minutes from the start of our walk. And someone had found the ball we dropped pretty much straight away & placed it where we'd notice it.

Time for some photos!

I had a couple of hours to myself last night (skived Tennis Club - well actually, I forgot all about it & wondered where everyone was when I got home), so I took advantage of having access to the PC to down & upload some recent pictures.

Also... while I'm here, As this site closes in on 10,000 visitors (only 6000 or so of them will be me I'm sure) I continue to be astonished at what people google in looking for (and I guess, what they find). A big one recently has been the phrase "best dressed dogs". "Nipples poking" continues to be a favourite. And of course "Nicky Watson". Nicky is clearly this year's Rache Hunter. One guy (I presume anyway) came in on "Her clothes fall off". And another was looking for... "spanking Faramir". Good stuff.

Onto the photos... from various dog walks.



Panoramic view of the harbour. The airport was indeed closed that day.

Questions... always with the questions...

And further...

How come Vader (at the beginning of... Star Wars - the first & fourth one) doesn't even recognise the planet he was born & raised on? And his uncle (or step-father, or brother-in-law, or whatever) Owen, who brought up Luke?

Is it at this point I should just be suspending disbelief? (Breathe in & out, it never actually happened.... it's not true). it's just one of those accepted symptoms of unexpected success & sequelitis...

Pillocks.

STUFF : ENTERTAINMENT - STORY : Star Wars fans burnt in light sabre duel

A Star Wars Question.

Here's one for the mega geeks I suspect. Something I don't understand...

In the original star wars films, I mean the ones with Luke & Leia & the gang, how come Darth Vader didn't recognise his old pals R2D2 & C3P0?

Meanwhile, here's the best review I've read of the new one so far.

This guy goes into a sauna...

The best joke I have ever heard. If you've a long memory, it was once one of Steve Braunias' Listener columns. I told it to high acclaim at a black tie party at Lake Ohau Lodge on December 31 1999. Everyone had to speak after dinner, I had planned to lecture them about why the real turn of the century wasn't until Dec 31 2000, but at the last second told this joke instead. Man, we got trashed that night. Then set off fireworks.

These are not Steve's exact words, and if some of them are, it's because they were so memorable they stuck in my mind.

So this guy goes to a sauna. It's Friday night & he's had a really heavy week. He's driving past the place & thinks "Hmm... that's what I need, a nice unwinding sauna".

He pays his admission, takes off his clothes & stows them in a locker in the dressing room, wraps a towel around himself & heads on into the sauna.

And it's nice & relaxing. He's there about 10 minutes, when the door opens & 3 guys look in. They see him, then close the door, and the guy can hear them discussing something outside. Then the door opens again, and the 3 troop in & say gidday.

So, they're all sitting there for another few minutes, when one of the 3 men says,
"Hey mate.... do you, do you fancy getting stoned?" and he holds up a really fat joint.

The guy thinks about it, then he says,
"Aw... no thanks, but you guys go ahead"

The man says,
"Are you sure man? It's really good stuff, and it's a real blast to get stoned in a sauna."

The guy thinks about it a bit more. It's been a really bad week, and suddenly he decides "Fuck it, why not"
"Ok" he says, "Why not"

So they all take a few deep drags, and one of the men is prattling on about what quality gear it is, hydroponically grown and all that. And the guy is thinking to himself "They're right, it IS a real blast to get stoned in a sauna. This is REALLY good stuff!"

He lays back, and after a few minutes he drifts off to sleep. He wakes up with a jolt & it looks like some time has passed. The 3 guys have gone. He thinks to himself that it's time he got moving too.

He goes out to the dressing room, and to his horror, he sees that his clothes, including his wallet & car keys, are gone from the locker. Panicked, he looks out the window & he sees the 3 men getting into a car. One of them sees him & waves his trousers at him.

"Oh shit!" he thinks, as he races out into the carpark wearing only his towel. The men are driving off now, but the guy manages to flag down a passing taxi.
"Follow that car" he gasps. And the chase is on.

They travel for miles. The guy is really scared, his heart is racing, and he's really, really, stoned. His one hope is that the men in front will throw his clothes & gear out of the window so he can get dressed, pay the taxi driver & go home. And never, ever mention this to anyone.

They're miles out into the countryside now, and the car ahead shows no signs of stopping. the taxi driver asks the guy what he wants to do periodically, he keeps telling him to keep following the car.

Then they lose it. They're in the middle of nowhere & they have no idea where the car ahead got to. The taxi driver stops & turns around & asks the guy,
"Where to now?"

The guy doesn't know what to say. He tells the taxi driver that he has no wallet nor money, and he can't pay for the ride. There is over $500 on the clock.

"There's only one thing for it." says the driver, "Get out & bend over the bonnet."
"What?" says the panic stricken guy.
"You heard me. Bend over & take it like a man"

And he does. When the taxi driver has finished with him, he rather meanly takes the towel, gets back into the taxi, and drives away. Leaving the guy naked, humiliated & cold, standing in the middle of the road.

This is the worst day of his life. No contest. He starts to walk back the way he believes town is. He walks for quite a while, his feet are sore, other sensitive parts are sore. And then it starts to rain.

He moves to the side of the road & tries to shelter under a bush. Suddenly, he feels the need to take a huge dump. He is feeling really sorry for himself.

He squats down & starts straining...

Suddenly, one of the three men comes swimming out of the darkness towards him & says,
"Hey man, I know you're really stoned, but you can't take a shit in a sauna."

Swimming Pool

Saw this DVD called Swimming Pool, with Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier & Charles Dance, & directed by Francois Ozon. And it's your typical art-house French film about naked aging & young hotties lounging around a swimming pool, except it's in English.

Honestly, is there a movie where Charlotte Rampling keeps her clothes on? But to be fair, it's a short scene & she's looking pretty flash for 60ish. Sagnier on the other hand, is naked pretty much the whole time. And looking REALLY flash for 20ish.

Rampling is a prim British crime novelist along the lines of Ruth Rendell. Her publisher gives her the use of his house in France so she can work on her new book. At first, everything is just peachy, but then, the publisher's over-sexed daughter turns up to ruin the peace with loud music & even louder sex.

The women detest each other at first, but slowly begin to warm. Then there's a violent crime. And then... there is a scene near the end that causes you to question everything (yes, everything) you've seen so far.

This is a nice easy film to critique actually, because saying anything is out of the question without spoiling it.

The pace is languid. The scenery, including the two leads, is highly decorative. The acting is great - Sagnier holds her own with the more experienced Rampling too. The swimming pool itself is... a metaphor! Yes! See if you can spot it.

Ozon also directed the amusing 8 Femmes which had Sagnier in the ensemble cast, and Sous le Sable, with Rampling.

Anyway, have a look.

So I need a new job - hire me goddamit!

Sigh... I suppose I'll have to get off my chuff & do something. Much as I hate to have to admit my wife has been right all along.

Problem is... well there are two actually: 1. I'd really like to do something that I really enjoy, can get passionate about even; And 2. it has to pay quite a lot of money, because the job I'm bored with, does & me & the bank have this symbiotic relationship thing going on. I owe them a truckload of money, and they seem to insist that I keep paying it back.

So what do I do now? Hmm... how to explain it... I run a little team of analysts that do all the statistical reporting for a largish corporation. You often see the results of my work in the newspaper. But you woudn't know it probably.

Anyway... how did I get here? Accident really.

I studied English Lit at varsity. I was not the most dedicated student, but university did wonders for my self confidence & social life... My first job was with State Coal Mines.. part of the Ministry of Energy at the time. Actually, my first job was buying & importing mining machinery. But after a a year or so, I blagged my way into their Information Unit - and there my job was producing the in-house magazine, writing speeches & press releases, a short history of coal mining in NZ which got sent to schools & for all I know might still be being used somewhere, and generally having a grand old time. When the whole gig ended, one of the Deputy Secretaries of Energy gave us all a pep talk, said he hoped we'd all enjoyed ourselves... looked straight at me & said "I know you did."

Then... we were "corporatised". I mean, I'm not going to go into the mechanics of the thing, but we were the first government agency to be... laid off essentially. I spent about 3 months lazily cruising for a new job, I imagined I'd probably end up in an advertising agency (don't ask me why) or something. I think I saw myself lunching & carousing with models & actresses... don't even bother telling me advertising isn't like that - a job's what you make it right?

What I actually did was get an interview for a rotating shift computer operator job with a sharebroking firm. It paid well, Summer was coming (it was a great summer that year) and I could see some advantages to having days off...

The sharebrokers was fascinating... when I was interviewed, they made a big thing of mentioning the lucrative profit sharing scheme. Man... it sounded great. Figured I'd get a real job in Autumn. So I signed up & started working with these flashy sharebrokers. One of my most embarrassing professional moments involved a room full of attractive female wannabee Dynasty foreign exchange dealers. I was trying to fix their computer system. I came running down from the computer room upstairs, fronted up to this room full of 80s big hair, breasts & shoulder pads, took a deep breath, and said "Sorry, I can't get it up." There was quite a long silence actually, before they all fell about laughing at my expense.

It was early October, 1987.

In some ways the worldwide sharemarket crash made things even more interesting. in about 6 months, I went from being the lowliest member of their 6 person IT unit, to being the entire IT Unit. The learning curve was steep, and in a couple of years I was marketable enough to score a Systems Team Leader position with the NZ branch of a Fortune 500 company. That was interesting too, but in a different way. And I've been stuck in the IT field ever since.

Back to the sharebrokers though briefly... our Computer Room was on the 3rd floor of a building in Panama Street (it's not there anymore), next door to the corporate kitchen, and across the hall from the corporate wine cellar. Our corporate chef was a lovely woman called Wendy - I think she's got a cool restaurant going in Martinborough at the moment. It meant that the kitchen was eminently raidable in the early hours.

Additionally, Wendy's affable son, John, and some others (including a cute law student called Sue, and a funny guy who was involved in Canteen called Brendan), would come in in the evenings & stuff envelopes for mailouts. We'd all sit around the boardroom table, drinking corporate wine & eating left over corporate lunches, watching TV. To explain a little, my job involved endless hours of waiting for backups to complete, so I wasn't necessarily skiving off.

Wendy's son John eventually became a trainee sharebroker. then he finished his masters & decided to become a journalist. The firm's partners warned him he'd never get anywhere in journalism. You be the judge. (Actually, I used to attend the brokers' monday morning briefings & I formed the theory that if you did the exact opposite of what they recommended, you'd make a lot more money. I really should have tried to prove that I think.)

So... back to me... I need a new job. Something I enjoy doing as much as I enjoy stuffing around with these blogs. does such a thing exist? Would anyone hire me?

What can I do... well, let's ignore the IT thing for now, I'm just a technocrat these days. Staff management & checking their work (we have to be right) takes up most of my time.

Possibly I can write a little - I like to think so anyway. I'm not sure if I could do technical writing though. I'd probably wizen up & die if I tried. I reckon I could do a column... but I also reckon that market is pretty much saturated at the moment.

I CAN actually do the public speaking thing too, not so flash if I have to prepare a speech - I've found I'm boring & stilted then. But if I know what I'm talking about, it seems I can engage a group, and pretty much wing it for as long as you like.

Also... now that I think about it, I'm a great problem solver.

How does this translate into big bucks & financial security? I haven't the slightest idea.

Advice please! I throw the problem over to the floor....

I'll try not to make a habit of writing about myself. Or family & friends (although there is a short story about my mum & a guy who liked safari suits that I've been kicking around in my mind. - younger bro - does mum still read this?)