I musht be in heaven

I browse the job sites now & then, just in case that dream job turns up. That includes the Government job site, not that I think the dream job will turn up there, but something interesting might well & that can be fun too.

Well today a real interesting one turned up. Field Collection Officers, NZSIS.

YES! "Field" Something "Officers"! Spooks!

Intrigued I dug further.

The vacancy says this:

Working in conjunction with investigative sections in one of our core business areas, you will be part of a team that builds and maintains relationships with people of interest and relevant to our national security. To accomplish this, you will be required to establish contact and interact with a wide range of people and form an effective working relationship with each. You will need to be capable of modifying your behaviour to integrate with the range of people you will meet and the different environments in which you will find yourself. You will also be able to empathise with people whose view you may not share.

Can't you see it?! You'd be a "liaison" with narks from sundry groups (the Greens?) and ne'erdowells that might threaten your life with a switchblade knife (what a guy, makes me cry undt I did).

I've read le Carre & Deighton, Fleming too, I know this means "Tradecraft"! And sure enough, the job description is online for all to see.

And past the usual blurb we see:

Tradecraft: Use appropriate tradecraft to support meetings with agents, potential agents and intelligence interviews. To identify and apply appropriate mitigates on security issues related to agent handling; to operate in accordance with accepted best practice and standard operating procedures

"Appropriate tradecraft", I like that. Lots of scope there.

No mention of tux allowance and Aston Martins, but I'm game to speculate there'll be "dead letter drops", and cool surveillance equipment. Wires. Maybe the odd "wet job" too.

There might even be times for disguise & funny accents.

Don't you love this country? There's no covert recruitment from universities, there's just an advertisement on the bog normal government jobs website.

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours...

This had us chuckling in the weekend, essentially, after an 18 month dispute over a sewer pipe running through his property, a man cut the pipe at the boundary and capped it, leaving the neighbour with nowhere to go.

Neighbour cuts sewer pipe | Stuff.co.nz

What was particularly amusing to us is that we know both parties, one used to shear our sheep, the other sweeps our chimneys.

A portrait of the artist wearing Toxic Shorts

Everyone's got their costumes for special occasions, I've got a dinner suit upstairs that has seen a few formal outings, I have suits & jackets for work, I have certain clothes for walking the dog, pretty much the same set for gardening & an old business shirt & the Toxic Shorts for painting.

Actually, I retired the Toxic Shorts today, and replaced them with the shapeless track pants I bought for $5 in Rebel Sports about 5 years ago wore only once because people would stare at me in public.

The Toxic Shorts were bought some years ago on Castaway Island in Fiji, they were white & blue, with the Castaway Island logo down one side. I bought them for swimming togs, but only wore them once in the sea as they went completely transparent.

Their appearance, transparency aside, was not so great that I'd consider wearing them to a social occasion such as a barbecue, so they became painting attire.

No-one's painting attire looks stylish, but every appearance af the Toxic Shorts brought such remark, that the shorts achieved some level of family notoriety. Garlic cloves & crucifixes would be dusted off & worn prominently.

I was painting tongue-and-groove in the laundry today, it's a long story, but the clothes dryer got moved, the vent hole was plugged, the tongue-and-groove sanded & filled & then glooped over with something like a cross between putty and undercoat (it hides a lot of sins - there're a few borer so this is just a stop gap until the wall cladding gets replaced at some unspecified future time.) Today I applied the first top coat.

At some stage Mrs Llew popped in & noted the absence of the Toxic Shorts. But she said "What the hell is with that hideous old T shirt?"

"Doesn't it make me look like Marlon Brando?" I enquired.

"Yes, but not the young one." Was the final judgement.

Still, the laundry wall looks better than it has in years.

Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs here!

Am I the only person who is wondering if the dog that that Tongan guy barbecued in Auckland the other day was registered? I mean, he can get a refund on his registration fee if the dog dies. Yeah right.

Am I the only person who thought "One less neglected pit bull terrier cross off the streets"?

Am I the only one getting more curmudgeonly in my old age?

We slaughter thousands of animals in all sorts of disgusting ways every day for food, leather & soap (check those ingredients sometime). We euthanise hundreds, if not thousands of dogs for sundry reasons each year... you see where I'm going with this right?

Ask yourself, what would Kwai Chang Cain do?

Stoush over Wainuiomata monastery - Stuff.co.nz

It still grieves me that he was found dead in a hotel cupboard with his dick in his hand...

Scenes from another planet

Were "theme parties" a 1980s thing? Or does every decade subject itself to the phenomenon?

Here's the picture that will shortly embarrass a friend of mine on the anniversary of his half century on Earth.



I avoid theme parties these days, but it appears there were times I pulled out the stops. Must have been drunk. I recall I was wearing a cute vampire for a lot of this evening. Must have liked bananas.

Scenes from another century

The brother of an old friend emailed me the other day, he asked if I could search out any old & embarrassing photos of his youngest brother, in time for his 50th birthday. And so I found myself in the attic, dredging out scenes from my life from so long ago, they were printed on paper. Many have degraded to the point of unscannability (is that a word?).



I remember having multiple copies of this photo made around 1978 or 1979 for everone involved. It was taken at Staglands in Upper Hutt. The camera was sitting on the top of someone's car.

Included are myself, 4 guys I went to college with, two guys who were in my 1st stage English tutorial, two friends of one of those guys, and two friends of one of those friends. Among others, they're who I hung out with much of my time at university.

These people can be variously described, without doing them any justice whatsoever, and only accurate at all at that point in time - many of these people have changed in ensuing years. But they included the sporto, the "good bloke", bookish guy, the "complex" one with a hint of narcissism that irritated everyone & bludged cigarettes, the party girl, the accountant to be, the muso, the serious drug consumer, the chick everyone wanted to shag, and the chick everyone did shag. The lines between them were a little more blurred than that suggests though.

Apologies if you're in this photo, you choose which one you were OK?

I flatted with one of them for years, and I know where all are at the moment, save for 3. I still catch up with 3 of them regularly. Some are overseas. Not all of them still have hair.

Will work for good cause and money.

OK, I'm on the lookout for work. No wait. Now I think about it, I'm on the lookout for money, and if I have to work for it, well so be it. I'm not proud.

Fact is, I'm superfluous to the business I've been working in for the last 3-4 years, part of my job was to automate things & reduce overheads.

I did that part really well - I have saved the business a whacking $8k a month. Not counting my salary!

But actually, what it is, is I have time on my hands right now, and what better way to use that time than by making money!

But here's the rub: the thought of returning to an 8-5 corporate IT job just kills my soul. I've applied for a few, had a few interviews, and have completely failed to find any enthusiasm for the process at all. Mrs Llew recognises this & is very, very supportive.

I've pottered around the orchard, marketed a few nuts (not enough to sustain the lifestyle to which I am accustomed though - we don't have enough nuts, I mean, to give up the day job, so to speak).

This is not to say I've been idle, around sundry parts of the lower North Island I have variously: trimmed, cut & chopped; scraped, sanded back, filled and painted (although Mrs Llew has heroically painted also); dug and planted many varieties of tree; concreted and mortared; lifted lino and hardboard; arranged sanders and polishers, and telecom and electricians; moved beds, chairs, chests of drawers, TV cabinets and a HUGE old TV back and forth around the country; listened to weeks of Radio NZ, and hours of Timeless Hits; and sprayed dangerous chemicals over fruit trees.

And I must say I found that last one a little disagreeable, and I will shortly do a Handling Hazardous Chemicals certificate and get much better headwear than the mask and goggles I own (thesxe are chemical strength & good quality, but I feel I need sturdier headwear than that, something like a sou'wester with eyeholes perhaps).

I've done some writing, but have neglected all the blogs to which I supposedly contribute, have hardly commented anywhere at all... but I do draw the line at waking at noon & wandering aimlessly around the house in my pyjamas. In fact, I don't own any pyjamas anyway. I also never turn on the TV before the evening news, if then.

Mrs Llew playfully suggested I may be going through my mid life crisis. "Hello" I said, "Do you see a '68 Mustang ragtop outside, and/or a hot 25 year old? That's clearly not the case."

Women have no idea atr all how to conduct an enthusiastic mid life crisis.

So what to do....? I saw a cute seeing eye puppy today, it was in a MacDonalds, heroically trying not to react to the smell of food, not an easy task for a labrador pup - I thought that might be a really cool career - bringing one up I mean, not being one. I suspect that's a voluntary thing though.

Or a professional poker player. That would also be cool. I wonder if I'm any good at it.

I'll take suggestions if anyone can be bothered, I'm thinking laterally, something worthwhile & enjoyable, possibly something part time, not necessarily something that pays megabucks, you can take it as given that I won't be retraining to be a lawyer or anything. And don't email me any job descriptions for IT manager for an insurance firm OK?

You don’t need a fiscal stimulus if you’ve got Jesus

Heh. Words of Wisdom from Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry.

One of the things about living between two houses is that you often find yourself moving furniture between one or the other, then, when something changes (like the impending arrival of someone to stay for a year or so) you move it all back.

So yesterday, I was in a borrowed Toyota van, moving a double bed back into town, and a single bed, and sundry other items, back up the coast.

Someone else's car can tell you lots about the owner: it may be messy, or pristine, full of ciggie butts, or other odds & ends, but the most joy by far, is to listen to someone else's choice of radio channel.

I'd change the station, but last time I did that with this van, I'd failed to notice which frequency I'd started off with, and it was mentioned to me that leaving the dial on Radio NZ was not appreciated.

So yesterday I decided to leave the station as was & I tootled into town to the strains of variously:

Bend It - Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Titch
12 Steps to Love - The Tremeloes
I Write the Songs - The Guy Who Wrote the Songs
Something by Dean Martin that I didn't recognise

I misted over slightly at that Pony She Named Wildfire, I marveled that it had been a long time since I'd heard Jonothan Livingston Seagull (and I have now renamed one of the characters in my nascent novel, Jonathon Livingston Segal).

At Pukerua Bay, Michael Jackson's Ben* segued perfectly into something by Roberta Flack & the rest of the trip was spent with Mana FM, who seem to specialise in Motown funk & R&B.

On arriving home, I told Mrs Llew that I wasn't sure what was scarier, the steering or the radio station. Mrs Llew revealed she'd made a passing comment to the van's owner a few days ago, about the singer Pink. The van owner asked "Who?"

On the return trip, the Supremes on Mana FM sputtered once, and morphed into a Jackson song so heinous, that my mind had blocked it out until now & channels I tuned into pretty much deny its existence, no mean feat for a Jackson song at this time - The Girl is Mine (The Girl is Nine?), a feeble duet with Paul McCartney. He was a lover, not a fighter, apparently.

I endured ABBA's Dancing Queen, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, Buddy Holly's Oh Boy, The Streak by Ray Stevens, and surprisingly, Hello Sailor's Blue Lady followed by Midnight Oil's Power and the Passion..

I warbled along to It Never Rains in California, Roy Orbison Crying, and gritted my teeth to Sir Cliff's Devil Woman.

I didn't catch the station's name, but much mention was made of "Timeless Hits", for which the cutoff date seems to be around 1975.

* A quick word at David Gest, who hosted an MTV show of MJ's 40 "Greatest" videos the other night on TV, Ben was not a song Jackson wrote about his pet rat, it was the theme to the 1971 movie Willard, a mediocre schlocker about a guy with a rat called Ben, whose friendship goes horribly wrong.

They've found the Rock!

Or the Church... I can't remember which one Paul was. Oh wait, he was the bass guitarist.

But anyway, it seems someone's opened an old tomb, and OK, it's been rumoured for eons to be the tomb of the Apostle Paul, but they appeared to be satisfied that this is indeed he, because carbon dating says the bones date from the 1st or 2nd century.

That settles it, it has been long known that the only person to die in Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries was the Apostle Paul.

Tests confirm St Paul's bones - Pope | Stuff.co.nz

Hell yes.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

After the referendum

Everyone be vigilant, if Larry Baldock, or anyone else behind the wording of this odd question (should it be legal to control parents' behavour by smacking them, apparently - look, I heard Baldock telling Sean Plunket* what HE thinks it means, & my take is grammatically more valid than his) ever rails about falling literacy standards, we should have grounds to demand our $9m back.

* I think that Plunket, as a journalist was more upset by the assault on the English language than the issue of child assault, every definition proffered by Baldock was met with a frustrated (and correct) "But that's not what it says."

And uh... you're going to have to look for that plunket interview link yourself, it's been months since I posted & I'm exhausted after this. It'll be on the Radio NZ site somewhere

Alexander the Director's Cut

I finally caught Oliver Stone's Alexander. Reviews of the original version suggested that all the film's highlights were in Colin Farrell's hair...

Well same for the director's cut as it turned out.

Pretty so so... but if you're in the mood for a film about a rowdy Wham tribute band brawling their way aroung Greece & Asia Minor, it's probably worth a look.

Alexander (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fresh figs

In the last few weeks I've tried fresh figs for the first time ever. Not just fresh figs, but homegrown fresh figs!

Actually, we lived in a place with a fig tree once before - it was too tall to reach the fruit & the birds got every last one, every year. SunnyO has a fig tree too, and it's much smaller so the fruit is within reach. However, for the last several years, the birds have consumed every last fig well before they ripened enough for humans.

But this year, I purchased a number of diverse lengths of bird netting. I netted off grapes (partially successfully) tomatoes (very successfully), and the small fig tree (EPIC result!).

Figs are very nice, they're better when they're slightly squishy than when they're firm. I recommend you try some if you have the chance.

(Sorry for lack of photos of homegrown figs).

Figs/Ficus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some Thoughts on the Botanic Gardens | the wellingtonista

Cross post from the Wellingtonista.

Some Thoughts on the Botanic Gardens | the wellingtonista

Remember the SRA booklets at school?

I can't remember what it stood for, I'll punt that the "R" is for "reading" though. ANyway, someof the more interesting stories involved Niagara falls - there was the tale of Blondin (was it?) who repeatedly tightrope walked over the falls, and there was another, at least as bizarre3, about the loonies daredevils who rode over the falls in various barrels & vessels. For many, it was their last act of recklessness.

Anyway, from this story - some guy survived the other day, he was barrel-less - and it ends with this salutory piece... a good place to earn a Darwin Award, if that's your thing.

But stunts at the massive waterfall are much less common, with the last known attempt in 1995 when an American man attempted to ride a jet-ski over the falls and trigger a parachute. His body was never recovered.

I wonder if the jet ski was though.

Man survives Niagara Falls plunge | Stuff.co.nz

More stories

Fun with (big) numbers

How much is a trillion dollars? | Whale Oil Beef Hooked

Hat/tip Whaleoil (what the hey, he's nearly housetrained these days), via DPF

Great Moments in Sub-Editing. # 1

Hayden Panettiere is reportedly trying to get her ex-boyfriend kicked off of hit television show Heroes.

Break-up causes trouble for Heroes | Stuff.co.nz

As You Do

So I was looking up Roger Kerr in Wikipedia... have a look & see if you can fathom this bit of his bio:

Kerr was a senior figure in both the New Zealand Treasury and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He met an untimely end at the hands of switchblade killingsworth in 1979.Pussy.

Roger Kerr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aww... another sad animal story

Penguin flatmate run over | Stuff.co.nz

Senior Sergeant Richard Hocken, head of Wellington's strategic traffic unit, said speeding and racing were known to happen in the area, but speed bumps were not always a practical solution.

"To be honest, I'm dubious when people call for speed bumps, it's often a knee-jerk reaction to issues they see themselves. There has to be some good reason for them."

Um... to slow cars down? Anyway, it's sad (and funny in a way) but Juan Carlos' demise was probably unavoidable.