Dear John: Wogistan

Media Release: Team Fryday

MEDIA RELEASE TEAM FRYDAY. I am going to tell you straight. Contrary to the vicious unsubstantiated rumours going on out there, Fryday doesn’t do drugs and is not on any performance enhancing substances of any kind. Those spreading those rumours are nothing but losers, washed-up writers whose use-by dates are so old they is written in Latin and have now resorted to slagging off Fryday to get a few more final headlines. Fryday is a hard-working writer. He doesn’t need drugs. He’s done the hard yards, got the street cred. He’s drunk more whiskey than all of youse have had mother’s milk. He’s fought more bouts with writer’s block than you have had pedicures. He’s seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seven times and understood it by the third time! He have learnt grammer and he knows how to spel. My number 1 priority and I am going to give this to you straight is to give Fryday the recognition he deserves—not hard mate when you consider that everybody he’s up against including probably you are s***heads and cretins. Who’s got the belt mate? Ask yourself that—who’s got the belt? Authorised by: Khoder Nasser Business Manager Teams Fryday and SBW. Word Count: 188 words—No I didn’t promise you 300 words!!!!!That's bullshit!!!!!!

Carpe Diem

It is rare on a Friday for Fryday not to have something to write about. Usually there is something worthy of a little borax or humour. Most of whatever that is comes to me late and Fryday is written hurriedly to catch the moment. Today there is nothing waiting for me: no gift, no pearl of wisdom, no interest from The Muse—and she is not a woman to be forced. No woman is, of course. A man is tempting fate if he tries to mould a woman into his ideal and schoolboy fantasy—or is it schoolgirl fantasy? A much better—and safer—route is to find the exact woman you want off the shelf. There are plenty to choose from. Fortunately I have never been particularly good at shopping. If my wish-list is a diminutive, submissive woman whose brain can be turned on and off, then I have been sadly amiss with those whom I have chosen to be my close friends and confidants. I am surrounded by wonder women none of whom completely fits my superficial ideal, my perfect woman. They are too perfect for that. This week I attended the funeral of a friend’s wife. As I recall, I met her only once but found her charming. She must have been quite something, for the manner in which she was eulogised and the devastation her sudden death caused her husband. I had to leave the funeral early, I have been unwell this week and vulnerable. But that too only demonstrated the beauty of women, a suite of whom enveloped me this week with compassion, concern and sincerity. They know who they are. So if I have somehow fashioned a Fryday celebrating women, foisted on me because I had nothing else to write about, let that not diminish the sincerity of the sentiment. Rather acknowledge if you will that we have a Fryday, and that, before I started writing it, I didn’t know how lucky I was.

Mr Speaker

To be the Speaker of New Zealand’s parliament is to be one of the most important persons in the land. It could be argued that you are there of and at the whim of the Prime Minister. But you have the right, enshrined by royal decree, to call even a prime minister to account, as did the (now) former speaker Lockwood Smith when he called Prime Minister John Key a naughty boy. I know Lockwood Smith well. I have had the privilege to meet him on many occasions—some have been political, some have been business and some (most) have been entertaining—Lockwood is a fine singer and poet and not slow to show it. In all those meetings and all those roles he has afforded me the greatest courtesy, something others have shared and this week noted voluminously. Lockwood is like that—old school. And if that is to be seen that he is also pompous and pedantic—also noted this week—then in the role of speaker those are not necessarily bad traits and could even be deemed to eminently practical. Lockwood, the dairy farmer from up north brought a gravitas to the role of speaker, something his successor, David Carter, the dairy farmer from down south, seemingly has the traits to emulate. Parliament can be a raucous place—Winston Peters on his own ensures it is so—and Question Time on television is pure theatre, I often wonder what my friend Whetu thinks of it, but with Lockwood Smith at the helm it was rarely directionless and if at times he came across as a headmaster scolding parliamentary school children—then that is simply what he was…and who they are.