Is Necrophillia Dead in the Water?

The publication of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011 confirmed for many what they had long surmised—that sex can be interesting and not necessarily repetitive, let alone solely reproductive. Nevertheless, for many of the women (and some men) then sitting in cattle class surreptitiously soaking up the BDSM adventures of Anastasia Steele it was a guilty and vicarious pleasure. They couldn’t see themselves doing it: all that whipping and tying up, whilst interesting, was best left in the world of fantasy—or at most minor spanking when Bill got home from work. Yet in the high rise apartments of Auckland, the parliamentary offices of Wellington and the boredom of Hamilton, BDSM is practiced and perfected far more often than we may think. For many, it has replaced vanilla sex as the norm, the benchmark. It is in such quarters not seen as obscene or perverse, an abomination or a cause of earthquakes. It is just what it is. Providing it is consensual, it is a pleasure, an adventure, an interest. There is no evidence, like the myth that soft drugs lead to hard drugs, that BDSM leads to greater extremities of behaviour like necrophilia or child sex, both of which can be described as, and are, perversions. Indeed it could be said that a dalliance in BDSM sates the appetite for anything more, and it may well be our most potent sexual safety valve. However, it appears that “Bishop” Tamaki disagrees with this assessment. God has told him, he says, that deviant behaviour—particularly but not solely homosexuality—is the cause of the earthquakes our country has suffered. If we are to believe Mr Tamaki, God is perhaps moving with the times: a plague of locusts or a rain of frogs visited upon our house is so old hat. Mr Tamaki is entitled to his opinion, I doubt it is God’s, but I think I know where true obscenity and perversion rests.

2016: The Year That Is.

So, Fryday enters 2016. In doing so, it welcomes 2016 as an auspicious year and hopefully a rewarding one. The passing of 2015 completes the second decade of Fryday in its original e-letter format and the beginning of its second on-line decade as a blog. Twenty years this thing has been going. However, as most of you already know of the rationale for its gestation and have been content to let it evolve I won’t bore you by further stroking Fryday’s ego or, now,  yours.
Suffice to say, I enjoy your company and your comments and I thank you for them.
I am going to enjoy 2016. Fryday has a verifiable treasure trove before it. Never before, since the heyday of George W. Bush and Helen Clark, has it had such riches of character and personalities to play with, tamper with.
There is of course its stable of writers and visitors: Cecil C. Sackrider, Minister Yoseph Wankerstan of Wogistan and the irrepressible Whetu (though my old mate seems to have gone AWOL of late); they will remain and this year, possibly, be joined at times by the escapades of the indefatigable Phyllis J. Fenwick. Of course anybody who takes any of those too seriously will not perhaps be disposed to have the sagaciousness or the humour that Fryday so highly prizes and depends upon.
But it is not the musty old stable on which Fryday intends to rely. What is more exciting is the “new” set of personalities that it has at hand. There are those whom Fryday has already visited and will again. Handsome Sampson will deservedly not escape scrutiny in 2016 (he will not be allowed to go gentle into that good night) and he of the coiffeur and the coffer Bishop Tamaki. They will remain targets.
However the body-politic is now replete with soft targets—those who cannot fail to attract ridicule and in one case perhaps even cultivate it. I speak of course of the American presidential election and in particular of Donald Trump—Humpity Dumpity—which I am sure will find favour with Fryday’s oldest friend, Hardman.
Of places, Wogistan remains a favourite. Hamilton, I will scarcely visit in 2016—there is always the danger that boring begets boring. Besides, the city seems to have matured of late. Australia seems a lovely place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there; others do it better, satirically. There is a little town in Ohio called Freeport that is neither a port nor free but has interesting “folk”, so we may pay a visit or two there in the manner of Truman Capote. And finally a visit or three south to the little town of Te Whaitu and some barside political commentary from “me old mate” Tarragon.
So, 2016 should be an interesting year for Fryday.
For you, I also hope it will be a happy one, a prosperous one, even the best one. For some of you, I know it will also be a different one; with new horizons and locations—I know you will enjoy them and they will welcome you.
Thank you for enjoying Fryday through the years. May we continue to grow old together.

A Taste of Perfection

I remember a very funny Hancock’s Half Hour (is there any other kind?) called The Bedsitter in which Tony picks up Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Tony reads the first line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, and then sets the book aside, explaining, “If he (Dickens) can’t make up his mind then he (Hancock) can’t be bothered.” In this episode and in many others Tony Hancock, in his shows and in life, was on a constant quest to improve himself. In many of the classic episodes of his radio and television shows he did reach perfection but the quest continued and eventually killed him. Most of us see and accept perfection as an unattainable goal. Nevertheless a few still try to achieve it and that trial can consume them. You probably know some. I do. My own quest for perfection is a little more pragmatic but just as pricey: Lagavulin. The 16-year-old Lagavulin is the single most beautiful single malt scotch in the world. RKN, who I think now reads this column will dispute that but he is in the wrong. Lagavulin is what I call a layered scotch—it has layers of sensation that repeatedly bid entrance long after you have consumed and swallowed your first dram. It is this repetition, akin to “Bishop” Tamaki’s requests for money, that makes Lagavuhlin the gang-bang of all scotches. However, it exacts a pretty exacting set of criteria; it should only be drunk late at night while one is alone and musing, it should be drunk from a proper scotch glass and with (at most) a dash of water, and ideally should be followed by sex. And with regard to the last, I should stress that it is only the Lagavulin that should be sampled alone, not the sex. Do all of that and you will have a taste of perfection. I get through a fair few bottles of it myself, and you can read into that what you will. Cheers!

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Bishop to Rort

The latest revelations—and revelations is seemingly the only link Destiny Church has to The Bible—about Bishop Tamaki come as no surprise to Fryday readers.
Fryday has maintained from the outset that Tamaki’s “church” is little more than a rort and the Christian principles Tamaki espouses on television and elsewhere are impurely cosmetic.
But Fryday believes the end is nigh for Tamaki and his henchman Richard Lewis. The weight of media and public opinion is having an effect: Pastors are starting to mutiny, church members are leaving and revenue is declining.
Amidst his latest pontifications, Tamaki says that God has a plan to restore the lost wealth to the church. Apparently God’s plan comprises installing eftpos machines in the church.
We will never see the back of Bishop Tamaki (and believe me the back of his hair cut looks as bad as the front) but Fryday believes we will see a lessening of his power, his influence…and his victims.
Thank God.

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Prawn to Bishop

I have no time for the self-anointed Bishop Tamaki. Even less time for him after Garth George’s revelations in yesterday’s NZ Herald and Tamaki’s performance on last night’s Close Up. Despite everything said to the contrary by Tamaki and his cohorts, Tamaki is nothing more than a self-delusional megalomaniac. Read this from Tamaki’s autobiography, and I repeat autobiography—Tamaki wrote it himself: “Never before have the forces of religious, political and social activism converged more powerfully than in the life of Bishop Brian Tamaki.” Has Tamaki not heard of Mohandas Ghandi? We are now told that any of “the 700” approaching The Bishop must kneel before him and those bringing gifts can approach closer than those who aren’t. I can only imagine that those bringing a Harley Davidson for the Bishop, as has happened in the past, can qualify to get right up his arse. Personally, I am just grateful to The Bishop for allowing me to be in the same city. Bishop Tamaki tells us that such protocols and covenants are simply manifestations of respect determined and dictated by members of his church, not by himself. Again he is being disingenuous. One gets the feeling that nothing happens in that church that is not initiated by Tamaki or, more likely these days, his chief henchman and head of the church’s “political arm”, Richard Lewis. Tamaki’s response to the various accusations swirling around and about the church hinge on two factors, that it is all a beat-up by the media and that his church is full of love and does good things. There may be some truth in the first, and Tamaki was essentially made in the media, and he has probably sound evidence for the second. But one is drawn to the conclusion that Tamaki is now out of control and that his church and ministry is less about loving God than loving Tamaki. Or does he now think they are one and the same?

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