A Wet Fryday

I was of the view until recently that Hamilton had only one quality which was that God, in a fit of adversity and perversity, created Hamilton to make Auckland look good. Then along came Dick Hubbard, and Hamilton failed even in that endeavour.

That then presented me with the challenge of finding something else totally useless. I excluded politicians and pukekos because, whilst both are blights on the landscape and seem to have little useful function, they are both testimony to God’s frailties and humility—He knows He made a mistake in creating politicians and pukekos but is prepared for them to remain as shrines to imperfection. As is Brian Tamaki, except that Tamaki has nothing to do with God, of He him.

So then we have moss.

What on earth, and particularly on a wet step, is the use of a moss, except to make money for Rod Genden and Wet & Forget? Mosses are, Wikipedia tells me, small soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm tall, though some species are much larger. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems. At certain times mosses produce spore capsules which may appear as beak-like capsules borne aloft on thin stalks.

Sounds like The Green Party to me.

But having just slipped on my step and come close on several other occasions during the recent rains I cannot think of any reason for moss’s existence (Mr Genden apart) and I shall not trouble myself to find one. Moss exists; it is enough.

On a slightly happier subject, I am enjoying a new and previously unknown malt scotch from my beloved Islay. It is called Smokehead and is described such: "It’s like a cannonball - an explosive rollercoaster of peat, smoke and spice with some delicate sweetness. The single malt flavour is described as fresh, fruity and immense, with notes of sherry, iodine, toffee, smoke and sea salt. The taste hits the palate at once with cocoa, peat and some honey sweetness, before exploding with peppery spice and more earthy peat."

Peat is, as many of you know, a rudiment of good malts and particularly so of those of Islay. The major component of peat, which is "mined" for use as a fuel and as a horticultural soil additive, as well as in the production of Scotch whisky, is decaying moss of the genus Sphagnum.

I did not know that.

Oh well, it seems Hamilton in the totally useless stakes, as in much else, continues to stand alone.

----------------
Now playing: Katie Melua - Dirty Dice
via FoxyTunes

Hello Sailor

I am of the blunt-end sharp-end variety of sailor. In other words I know as much about actual sailing as Helen Clark knows about fashion. But I do have some knowledge of theatre and presentation, and, like many New Zealanders, I am staying up, forsaking the enticements of (among others) Morpheus to stay in bed, in favour of watching Television One’s coverage of the America’s Cup.

For those reasons I feel I am entitled to comment on the commentary. To put it bluntly: Television One’s commentary team of John McBeth and Peter (Pete) Montgomery has to go. The former still knows nothing of competitive yachting, and the latter has failed to recognise that most viewers now do, and he, himself, has reached his use-by date or lay-line as “we” in yachting circles call it.

Am I alone in being fed up to futtocks by McBeth’s incessant giggling at his unfunny “jokes” and by Montgomery’s incredibly patronising attitude to viewers and guest commentators, most acutely recently with Russel Coutts, with repeated interjections such as “for the folks at home, who nothing of sailing, explain what you just said”? Individually these irritations may not amount to much but collectively and accumulatively they are starting to spoil much of this event for me.

So, here’s the plea…

If we are to have New Zealand involvement in the next America’s Cup, and let’s hope we will, get rid of McBeth and Montgomery. Instead let’s have a commentary team comprised wholly of current and former America’s Cup sailors and skippers—people who know what they are talking about. There is precedent. Channel Nine’s cricket commentary team is comprised entirely of former players, so is that channel’s rugby league commentary team—both are the best in the business.

However, will such a team be too technical for us “landlubbers” as Peter Montgomery described you and me Tuesday night? No, I don’t think so. I understood every word Russel Coutts uttered (when he got a chance) that same night and Peter Lester is always clear, concise and accurate. Of course Coutts may not be available as a commentator for the next Cup but Lester will be and Dickson is likely. I am prepared to bet, too, that if Alinghi lose the Cup Butterworth will be looking for something to do.

But that’s for the future. For now I have no choice but to put up with McBeth and Montgomery if I want to watch the live coverage. Unfortunately, with these two around, I have to say my Cup doesn’t exactly runneth over about that.

----------------
Now playing: The Mamas And The Papas - If You Go To San Francisco
via FoxyTunes

A Failure to Amuse

To rise each Friday morning at 6.00 is a pleasure and a privilege. Fryday is a labour of love and an essay of edification. It keeps me in touch vicariously with the dismaying and the dismal such as George Bush, Helen Clark and Hamilton. It allows me to acknowledge and highlight delights such as farm, friends and wife. Fryday lifts my spirits and vanquishes the hangover—or at least I hope and trust it does for I definitely have much of the latter this morning after indulging too much of the former last night.

But there comes a time, a Fryday, where I have nothing to write, nothing to contribute. A failure to amuse. I and you dear reader are left with drivel and dross. Such is the case this morning. I have risen at 6.00, the Muse has not. She remains like many women (though none within my close acquaintance) unresponsive and cold, with a permanent headache.

Is she teasing therefore when she offers up in a whisper her sole contribution that I should pay tribute and thank two other women? If I mention “yesterday” those women will know who they are and know why I cannot elaborate. They also know all about labours of love and are indeed much more adept at coping with one than I seemingly am today. They enrich my life—something which, sadly, you may feel Fryday has singularly failed to do for you today.

----------------
Now playing: Johnny Cash - Closing Medley (Folsom Prison Blues/I Walk The Line/Ring Of Fire/The Rebel - Johnny Yuma)
via FoxyTunes

Plonker2

I arrived home last night to find a house on my street; not next to it, not adjacent to it, not even in close proximity to it, but on it. Of course it was prudently parked so as not to impede traffic or create a safety hazard, and for that one is grateful. Nevertheless one still hopes it is not a permanent fixture because a house on a street tends over time to be an inconvenience and an eyesore, nor is house-parking a proper and durable function for the street itself, particularly one already traumatised by being called Gilbransen.

But one has to admire the people who put the house there and will I hope eventually remove it. I have long had a love affair (platonic entirely) with house removal experts, and my house on the street brought to mind a Fryday piece I write many years ago when I was living in Hatfields and still writing Ridin’ the Rainbow. I think it worth repeating. I called it plonkers and I have left in the bit about Bush because it gave the story purpose.

I woke Thursday morning to find that during the night someone had plonked a house on the section next door but one from mine. I heard not a thing. That it had been done and done successfully and silently I consider manifest miracles of a miraculous profession.

I am privileged to know a couple of house removal experts reasonably well. What they do never ceases to amaze me for the laid-back "not a problem" attitude they bring to even the most challenging task. I mean, have you ever seen a house, or even larger buildings such as churches and school rooms on the move at night? Do you ever wonder how confident the men, seen dimly only as silhouettes against a myriad of flashing lights, are that they will get their monolithic charges over that hill, under that bridge, around those bends and up that drive?

They are. They manage. Not a problem.

Truckies generally, and house removal experts specifically, are among the most laconic and likeable men and women I have come across. And whilst this may seem a pointless Fryday, I want to use it to pay tribute to them and their skills. They deserve it. And I spend enough Frydays slagging off at people.

And talking of George Bush...

Have you been reading of the furore surrounding Bush's use of a U.S. Navy S-3B Viking jet aircraft to get himself onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln? The cost of that landing, which is the criticism behind the furore, doesn't worry me. What worries me is the reasoning. Apparently Bush wanted to experience what it was like to be up front with the pilot (as apposed to upfront with the populace) when landing a jet on a carrier. He originally wanted to do it in a Hornet, "like they use in Iraq", but the Secret Service vetoed that in favour of the more sedate and safe Viking (they preferred a helicopter).

So, here we have a President, the Commander in Chief, who delves into the American military toy box--the most powerful and lethal in the world--to indulge his whims. I could say that the whole bloody war in Iraq was an indulgence of a whim. But let's stick to the carrier landing and a reminder of a Fryday I wrote on January 31 listing the reasons why George Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq. One of the reasons I highlighted was this:

"He (Bush) gets to fondle all those choice big guns and stuff."

There you go. Another, but entirely different, kind of...plonker.

----------------
Now playing: Ry Cooder - Hey Porter
via FoxyTunes

An Unfortunate Accident

Yesterday I heard the killing of Jhia Te Tua described as an unfortunate accident. Setting apart for the moment the fact that very few accidents are, to my knowledge, any less than unfortunate, let’s look at the phrase and how it was used and abused.

The killing of baby Jhia may have been unfortunate (though that is an obscene belittling if this tragedy) but accident it definitely was not. Whilst nobody, killers included, could possibly say there was intent to kill the two-year-old it is entirely wrong to say it was accidental. The drive-by shooting of that house in Wanganui was a deliberate and planned action—probably indefensible. Therefore the result of that action cannot by definition be termed an accident, but it was described as such.

To be frank, I didn’t think about that too much. But there was the other big and tragic event of the week—the killing of two girls in Christchurch by the actions of an enraged party goer. What I found here was a degree of similarity between the two events, yet a curiously different way in which they were perceived and described.

In the Christchurch tragedy, the intent was to create mayhem, there was deliberation and, deliberately or not, people died. In that, it is no different from the Wanganui killing. But I am yet to hear the killing of those two Christchurch girls described as an accident. What is the difference? I would hate to think it is race-based and that the apologists for all things Maori are again on the march. But I don’t think it is that. I think it is instead someone just getting caught up in the emotion of the moment and making a silly and platitudinous statement. Anybody who is questioned by the media is in danger of doing it. I have done it and will do so again.

That’s one point.

But then I wondered if in fact anybody had said it at all! All too often the media in this country, lacking imagination or energy, will simply make up a quote or a headline based impurely on what they THINK may be the case. Let me give you an example. Whether it occurred or not in the Wanganui case I don’t know. But I could point to a thousand examples of it definitely happening in similar cases. Imagine the opening of the television bulletin thus: “Wanganui is in shock tonight at the killing of Baby Jhia.” Is Wanganui? Really? Did a reporter actually go out and find some resident who said “I am in shock?” Unlikely. Even if they did find someone, does that person represent all of Wanganui?

I know that seems an insensitive argument, and I am wrestling here to state where I am coming from. So, I’ll use another example too often heard: “Maori are angry…” Excuse me? These days Maori is an all-embracing term. Chances are the “Maori” who are angry are actually a diminutive group of disaffected activists lacking recent attention. Yet (all) Maori are angry.

Do you get the point? It is too easy for lazy and unimaginative media to come up with these statements without any real foundation for them. Moreover, they seem to trot them out with abandon. Normally, it shouldn’t matter and maybe I am being too pedantic. But to report the shooting of a two-year-old as an unfortunate accident, whether actually said or not, is nothing short of a shameful disgrace.

----------------
Now playing: Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
via FoxyTunes

Black & White

Let me tell you about my Border Collie, Bess.

Bess is a big fluffy bear of a dog, not unlike one of those exfoliating balls you can buy for the shower. She is about eleven years old, which is not old by Collie standards, but old enough to give her the wisdom to know the difference between right and wrong.

Bess never does anything wrong. She has the gentlest and most generous of natures. Her main aim, after eating and sleeping, is to please. The slight tarnishing of the image and the reality is the alacrity with which she despatches rabbits on the farm—but that is a problem only for the rabbits. In all other respects, Bess wouldn’t hurt a fly, which accounts for the proliferation of flies and paucity of rabbits on the farm. She does patrol the road verge, which suggests a latent militarism, but is more a quest for butterflies with which to meld and bond. Bess’s world on the farm is provided by circumstance and fashioned by subservience. Don’t get me wrong: she is not forced to do anything; she just does anything…to please.

She likes me; I like her.

A week ago today, we both lost a mate. A great mate. No worries for Bess; her mate had left before and always come back. This time that won’t be happening. Bess is yet to realise that. But perhaps that’s best for Bess. Because when she does, I think it will likely take her some time to come to terms with. If ever.

In that, she is not alone.

----------------
Now playing: Ted Hawkins - Ladder Of Success
via FoxyTunes

Warming to my task

I like debate, particularly when it is intelligent and witty as it so often was in central government in the times of Norman Kirk and David Lange, exquisite orators both. By contrast the debates to which I am most often exposed, those in the chambers of the Rodney District Council, are immature, facile, unproductive and, yes, embarrassing.

But they are not boring.

My God, if you want to know boring (though why would you?) you need go no further than a scientific debate. And there is no better example than Global Warming. I use capital letters here because Global Warming, the issue de jour, seems to have taken on a life of its own and become a substance and an entity without really trying and (germane to the debate) without any real proof of really existing.

Yet scientists and the media have embraced it with alacrity. The catalyst for all this is the release of a United Nations report, scientifically-based apparently, but predicated on the same computer models that consistently fail to forecast the next day’s weather. Previously United Nation reports commanding media attention include the revelation that we (New Zealanders) are smacking our children too much and that our poverty levels are reaching third-world status.

Who the hell researches and writes these UN reports, anyway?

That apart, the UN’s Global Warming report has pitted scientist against scientist and, encouraged and courted by the media, they have administered and admonished us with a plethora of profound and boringly prosaic pronouncements on the subject.

It is second only to the Super 14 as being the most boring contest of wills this year.

Let’s move on. The scientists have had their time in the sun.

----------------
Now playing: Turtles - Elenore
via FoxyTunes

Bored With Bush

I feel fully justified in calling this a shit of a day. It has rained incessantly and with dyke-hardness for most of the night. Rain has been the predominant show-pony in this inclement weather but wind has striven manfully to match it. In the middle of the meteoric metrological battle has been me—unable to sleep, wrought with civil defence guilt (though in practice it is nothing like a civil defence emergency) and musing on…life without George Bush. I am not concerned for Fryday; there plenty of other targets and to be honest I am bored with Bush. The world is bored with Bush. The danger of the depraved which gave certain edginess to his presidency is long gone. To call President Bush’s run-down (literally) to the next election as a lame-duck presidency is to do an injustice to both the disabled and the ducks—he is less than both. There is nothing left, or is there? I remember thinking at the height of the Watergate scandal, when we had all long-since ceased to take a prurient interest and all hoped it would end, that President Nixon might go out in a blaze of inglory in a vain desire to leave us more of a legacy than a scandal-wracked presidency. He didn’t, though the shot of him about to board the helicopter, with two arms outstretched, was probably the biggest “finger” to the world we have yet seen. I know another politician who will likely do the same soon, but with subtlety and characteristic servitude. President Bush is not that politician, but will he make a grand statement, as I feared Nixon would? No. President Bush hasn’t got it within him. In my opinion and based on his recent disappearance he is a shell without power. His cabinet is gone, his senate is gone, his congress has gone, his credibility—well, that was never there. He is still Commander in Chief but the heart has I think been taken out the military—they will no longer fight the President’s and, obliquely, God’s crusades. So, fear not: there is nothing to fear from Bush in these last years—he is no Muldoon or Clark—he is man without legacy other than to be the most forgotten President since Cleveland. And like Cleveland and Nixon and all other unassisinated presidents before him, Bush will quietly retire and found his presidential library. The difference with Bush is that for all its power and status a Bible makes for a very small library indeed.

----------------
Now playing: Turtles - Elenore
via FoxyTunes

Let's Do A Little Smack

Helen Clark made an interesting observation (honest) the other day in relation to Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill. She said that those whom police were already arresting for assaults on children would continue to be arrested. Given that, why then do we need a law that seemingly embraces everybody else? Furthermore, when we have a plethora of laws covering assaults on any person, regardless of age, where is the gap that needs to be filled by the Bradford bill? Where is the problem this bill is meant to solve? Where is the evidence that suggests smacking of children has a lasting traumatic effect on those children? Or that society is somehow indicted and diminished because a child is smacked in the home or class-room? Where is the evidence to suggest that outlawing spanking will deliver a better society with more stable contributory young people—indeed, there appears to a body of anecdotal evidence that the reverse is true. And finally, where is the police force or other body with the resources and the zeal to enforce such a law?

I ask these questions because if one takes this anti-smacking bill at face value it becomes very unsettling. The bill is not aimed at those who do great mental and physical harm to children (they according to the Prime Minister are already being arrested under existing laws), nor is it aimed at curbing acts of great or even minor brutality—again, those are covered by existing laws. Technically, even a mild-smacking is covered by those same laws.

So, I am driven to the conclusion that this proposed and already redundant law has no purpose other than to issue a series of statements. They are:

• Sue Bradford has little else to do.
• A bill such as this taxes, but just squeaks into, the limits of the Greens’ collective IQ.
• The Kahui twins unfairly focussed on Maori.
• The white middle-class hasn’t been picked on for awhile.
• Regardless of how often it is humiliated, Political Correctness refuses to give up the ghost.
• Somebody somewhere always knows what’s best for us.
  
  ----------------
  Now playing: Rocky Horror Show - I Can Make You A Man
  via FoxyTunes

Dressed to Kill

Have you seen Helen Clark lately? Nobody else has either. The face that once launched a thousand shits among the National Party and its supporters has been mysteriously absent these days. When she does pop up it is in a much muted fashion indeed, without fire, ideas, or venom. The other half of the erstwhile dynamic duo, Dr Michael Cullen, is also absent without leave. In fact, he has become the Paul Holmes of politics: yesterday’s man and largely irrelevant.

Why the change? Can it be put down entirely to John Key and his emergence as a credible alternative? Many may think so. I do not. I believe it is that Fryday is finally having an effect. After successfully reshaping Hamilton and sending Christchurch into hiding. After earning George W. Bush an admonishment from God. And after years of unremitting due diligence on our present Prime Minister and her alternate, Fryday has successfully brought the Clark of the House to her knees, though I hasten to add in no unseemly way.

Was it the “Dear Michelle” letters to her therapist that did it? Again, many may think so. Again, I do not. Hardman and I know it was Fryday’s attacks on Clark’s fashion sense that drove her to ground. They were unrelenting, unremitting and entirely justified. She once dressed, as we remember from a very famous photo and a subsequent Fryday, like an aluminium can. There were other horrors, and the more she wore them and the more Fryday commented on them, the more Fryday wore her down. The woman who was never into fashion went out of fashion. Fryday killed her political career.

Sad, really: not for the country but for Clark. And for Fryday. Fryday is running out of targets.

Still, there are local body elections this year.

----------------
Now playing: Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale
via FoxyTunes

Career Openings

Last night I dreamt I attended an opening. I cannot now recall what was being opened, but I do remember the Prime minister being there and remonstrating with me about the Dear Michelle series; she wanted to know who was “leaking” the information.

That I should have such a dream is not unusual. As a council functionary I am inclined as they say to attend the opening of an envelope, and earlier last night I had in reality attended the successful opening of the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa. My role on such occasions is minor; usually it is to look after the press corp., which in Orewa consists of one reporter. Last night, without even that reporter to look after and seeking solace because Maggie was in Sydney and I would be returning to an empty house I made it my mission to look after the mayor and the sole attending cabinet minister Judith Tizard.

And what does that entail? Not a lot. Both are highly capable politicians (yes, I know, an oxymoron) highly capable of looking after themselves. Apart from an odd drink—a very odd drink: Rodney’s own avocado juice or some such—delivered to the minister, I did nothing for her. The mayor was a little more challenging: he too had drinks (more practically and I am sure enjoyably, red wine), but I had on top of that to look after the mayoral chains.

You’ll of course remember the embarrassment caused Waitakere City when its then mayor, Tim Shadbolt, lost the mayoral chains? Well, “my mayor” has a habit of giving ours away. At occasions such as last night he usually finds some kid to be pictured wearing the chains—the mayor says the chains are not the symbol of office, they are the symbol of the future, as is the kid, and it is right and proper that he, the mayor, passes the chains to the next generation. Well and good: the chosen kid is invariably and inevitably thrilled, but let’s consider this—I am the one charged with looking after those chains, and when, as last night, said kid goes for a wander among a throng of some three hundred people I get sincerely worried.

My job is not dissimilar to the American Secret Service protecting the president. I may not speak into my cufflinks but I do wear dark sunglasses. And when something goes wrong I can go into a mild panic (though giving of course the facade of calm) and activate a full security alert, which last night consisted of my asking everybody there I know: “have you seen that bloody Kid.”

I found the kid; I could see him across the crowded room. What I couldn’t see was the chains; he no longer had them! The mayor was in the middle of a television interview. The press was there, how had I missed that? I interrupted.

“Have you got the chains back?” I asked

“No. I thought you had,” replied the mayor.

“Shit!”

What?”

“Nothing. I’ll fix it.”

And fix it I fully intended to do but right at the moment I felt like a Secret Service agents who has just taken a bullet for the President.

Now, let me tell you something about Mayor John Law: last night without a plaque to unveil or a ribbon to cut he opened Orewa’s Estuary Arts Centre with “a cuddle with the Minister (Tizard).” The guy has style and substance. He also has a wicked, if somewhat malicious sense of humour, which last night manifested itself by waiting fully five minutes before pulling the chains out of his pocket and yelling across the room, “I've found them Mike.”

I took the chains. I looked at him. He saw the look. Fortunately for him he was spared the thought. The thought was: “Well, at least you’re not George Bush, but right now you come close.”

Last night I returned to my empty home. But now I was at least not on my own—I had my thoughts to accompany me. And, unlike my absent wife, they were not pretty.