Women have periods. Period.

It must be one of the silliest articles yet in a periodical renowned for silliness. This morning the NZ Herald published an article on how much periods cost women over the course of their lifetimes. That wasn’t the silly part. The silly part was listing what else that money could be spent on. And no amount of obfuscation such as the article’s “Just Kidding” last line can obscure the fact that the article is just plain stupid.
Am I taking it too seriously? Possibly. What do I know? I am a man.
But the same edition of the NZ Herald carried an article about a British lawyer (a male) who has been roundly criticised for his “objectification” of women by describing a female lawyer’s Linkdin photo as stunning, and his own daughter as “hot” after she posted a photo of herself working out in a gym. And by the way, whilst his phraseology by contemporary standards may be unacceptable, they are nevertheless accurate—in both cases.
But is that story any more objectifying women than one calculating the cost of their periods and the equating that cost to:
*Nearly 4000 jars of Marmite
*4251 packets of TimTams
*A Damascus Skull Dagger (whatever that is)?
Now, I know the article is not seriously suggesting that the money—$16,000, by the way—could be better spent on these items. But then to compound the silliness by stating that items such as tampons, pads, pain-killers and panty-liners are “so-called luxury items” just rubs it in. And who calls them that, by the way? I am sure women don’t. And I am damn sure you would be hard-pressed to find a man who does. The most you would get from a man would be why doesn’t the Herald even it up and ask what it costs for man to shave over his lifetime. The difference is that a man doesn’t have to shave. As I understand it, women don’t have such a choice—and I am not talking about the shaving.
No, women have periods. Period. They confront them. They contain them. They control them. But they should not be confronted with the cost of them—still less the implication  TimTams would be a more inviting alternative.

When Whetu Calls: Taking Note.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11507595

I knew the call would come. The knock on the door.

ME: Good morning.
HE: Kia Ora, Bro.
ME: And what are we selling today?
HE: Me?
ME: You.
HE: Not me, Bro. I’se saving you stuff.
ME: Really?
HE: I’se saving you the stuff of having all that embarrassment stuff of offending my cultural identity…and stuff.
ME: And how am I doing that? And how are you going to do that?
HE: What?
ME: Save me the embarrassment of offending your cultural identity.
HE: I am going to take off your hands—free, like—all those $10.00 notes you got that got my Tauranga all over them.
ME: You mean taonga—treasure.
HE: Yeah, what you said.
ME: And why?
HE: Because it has got all that tukutuku design that you fellas don’t have permission to use from us fellas.
ME: So, you are from the Te Hau ki Turanga Trust then?
HE: The who?
ME The Te Hau ki Turanga Trust. The “fellas” who are saying that the Reserve Bank doesn’t have the right to use the tukutuku design panel on the new $10.00 note. That it infringes their cultural identity and that the wharenui in which the weaving patterns used on the note is owned by the Rongowhakaata Settlement Trust, which was confirmed in the Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Act 2012.
HE: Yeah…what you said.
ME: I don’t have any.
HE: Any what?
ME: New $10.00 notes. They are not released until October.
HE: Oh.
ME: Yes, oh.
HE: No problem, Bro.
ME: No problem?
HE: No.
ME: No?
HE:We fellas in the Trust will trust you.
ME: I am delighted to hear it.
HE: A cheque’s okay.

Fryday: It's all the Fashion.

Love is in the air.
I don’t really mind; it is after all only a minor pollutant. More an irritant, really,  that occurs mostly at this time of year, like hay fever. Unfortunately this year it coincided with a far greater seasonal irritant, Auckland’s annual “Fashion” Week.
Now, I have to readily acknowledge that I somehow missed my invitation to the event and like most of us consigned to below P in Auckland’s alphabetical social list my only exposure to the considerable over-exposure of this week’s fashion offerings was what I saw in the media. Am I resentful? Am I envious? No. Am I being completely truthful there? No.
I would  like at least to be acknowledged and promoted to the F list alongside Auckland’s lengthy list of failed public relation professionals, anybody who had or still has any form of relationship with Len Brown, and Auckland Transport executives. However, that was not to be.
But, I still feel the love.
I feel the love of young fashion designers, Hohepa Thompson and Mia Brennan who took the opportunity of a Fashion Week catwalk to publicly declare their love (or is it aroha?) for each other by Mr Thompson proposing marriage to Ms Brennan. I was once warned off making a similar public declaration, citing the possible embarrassment if the proposee refused. The warning was well-meant but without subsequent foundation. I was accepted, and so was Mr Thompson which is little surprise given that he and Ms Brennan have been living together for three years and have a seven-month daughter called Tallow.
Ms Brennan said yes and, according to the NZ Herald (cringe alert), the Fashion week audience went “aahhh”.
But what strikes me about this is that their love’s public expression and explosion for each other was one of only two moments of genuinely sincere, non-pretentious, non-patronising, believable and eminently practical events in the whole Fashion Week calendar.
The other was the launch and appearance of Confitex’s incontinence panties.
The young couple’s sincerity did not perhaps extend to their fashion offering. And here I quote from the NZ Herald coverage details about the loving couple’s creations: “Their Hangi Collection brought together her summer-friendly dress designs with an environmentally friendly dyeing method they cooked up together. Clothes are left to simmer in a hangi only to emerge with a sepia print effect. Any irregularities, including the odd scorch mark, are integral. ‘We were just talking about family and food and how it brings everyone together and the idea of country and cloth,’ said Brennan. That set them experimenting, with joint dye and design time sandwiched between Thompson's day job as a painter in the relaxed resort town.”
All very laudable. But really? “Family and Food?” “Country and Cloth?” “Cooked up in a hangi?”Now, who is going to wear that? Be honest.
But also be fair—it is highly unlikely that anything featured in Fashion Week is likely to seen beyond the catwalk. Nor, I think, is it intended to. Fashion Week is not there to have any practical purpose. Or indeed any purpose.
Except one.
Fashion Week like party political conferences and just about every other “conference” organised world-wide is there solely for one thing—for everybody to have a good-time. The only gatherings that aren’t, and both are unique to our dear dear New Zealand, are marae meetings and Green Party conferences.  Nobody expects to have a good time there.
But, unlike Fashion Week,  at least their hangis dish up something more edible and edifying than country and cloth.

It is all getting rather silly

Sometimes I hate myself.
This is one of those times.
This is one of those times when I give additional publicity to those whom I believe have already been given a surfeit of publicity. I say “been given” because at least one of those persons is blaming the media for unwanted attention, saying that she has done nothing that warrants it, that she is “hurt and saddened” by it and states, rather incongruously given the publicity about her, that we don’t know shit about her.
Well, Millie we do know shit about you, we have been fed shit about you and, yes, we have to agree that you have gone through a lot of that brown stuff.
The problem is we no longer give a s**t.
Many of us, I think, are sick and tired of hearing about Millie Elder-Holmes. And lest she lays claim, as she has, that it is not her fault, she has however played the distraught “widow” to the hilt and so frequently and theatrically, one is left to wonder whether it is more than a little contrived and whether Rosemary McLeod’s column, to which Millie has reacted so violently, is not more than a little accurate.
The second person I am sick of hearing of is Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner. Yes he/she has gone through a gender regeneration (not very successfully in my view, she still looks like a man in a dress) and she may well be one of those many sad people who were born and forced to live in the “wrong” sex. But to make the whole thing a media circus replete with publicists, Vanity Fair covers and a reality TV show is at the very least bordering on the boring.
And that is perhaps the problem with both Millie and Caitlyn/Bruce, they are boring.
In Caitlyn’s case we are now told that Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner may appear in the I am Cait reality show to boost its ratings. I doubt it will work. It may have escaped Kris’s attention but the programme itself is as boring as the proverbial bats**t and having someone, anyone, from the world’s most boring, past their use-by date, family the Kardashian Klan appear on the show is not going to help.
I think in time, and soon, the whole Jenner/Kardashian thing will go away. It is after all as unsustainable as an Ashley Madison romance.
Millie Elder-Holmes I am not so sure about.
Rosemary McLeod may well be right.
I don’t think we have heard the last of—and from—Millie Elder-Holmes yet.

The Day the Laughter Died

I read an article today that put forward the hypothesis that 70 is the new 50. As someone who is closer to 70 than 50 I should have derived some comfort from that, except the article alluded only to women and only to the fashions they wear. So, without any positive reinforcement or evidence to the contrary from the NZ Herald, I have no other option but to acknowledge and accept that I am old. And male.
And when you do get to my age your thoughts all too often rebel. Unbidden and oblivious to restraint they wander into uncharted and unwelcome territories such as mortality, and what might have been, what could have been, and what—perhaps—should have been.
The latter came to mind this week when I learned of the passing of an old friend—one whom I had not seen for many years, but did, still, in his passing leave me with memories of years that are among the best of which I am blest.
He and I were half of a quartet of comedy writers and performers called Klik—three men, one woman. For a time we were semi-professional both as performers and as writers. And, yes, we were very very funny. We could get laughs from most anything: from the shooting of the High Noon singer because the waiting sheriff got bored with the song, to the cloth cap, rampant unionist slave who buried Julius Caesar and was not prepared to lend his ears. And then there was the classic Eskimo for Dinner sketch in which an eskimo shared a dining table with an aristocratic couple and ended with the “coupling” of the wife and eskimo.
You had to be there.
And I was there, with this man, this woman, and my “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Irish mate who were collectively Klik and for a time we so, so clicked. We wrote at night and we wrote drunk—well, two of us anyway. We often performed the same way. We watched McPhail and Gadsby and knew for sure we were better. We watched Monty Python and were not so sure. We had a good time. We gave a good time, The scripts are yellowing behind me as I write this.
Today the Irishman is gone, long gone, and as of this week so is The Man.
The Woman told me. She lives, still. And teaches art.
And back then, had we thought about it, had we wanted it, had we been sober enough to reach out and grab it, we could have been, perhaps should have been, making you laugh still.
Now, it is only me who hears the laughter.
RIP Kevin.

As Cecil C. Sackrider Sees It: Mounting Mammon.

As my wife, Pastor Billie-Jo, and I were lying in bed last night praying and thinking as we often do of the second coming we were visited, as we often are, by Our Lord.
The message He brought was joyous and uplifting for it is foretold that we are to be saved—that God still loves America, forgives America and as an expression of his divine love and forgiveness, we are to once again have a Republican President.
The Lord saith to me, and through me, that our time of purgatory, so ordained when we turned our back on God, embraced homosexuality and other evil acts and elected a black President are at an end. The Lord saith to me, and through me, it is so ordained that there will be no more more Democratic Presidents, no more Black Presidents and—God be Praised—no women Presidents.
God is good. He so loveth His people. Republicans.
And here I say to you an important message, It is God’s will, God’s instruction, God’s anointing that the man who is to be our next President is Jeb Bush. It is so stated in The Bible: “There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.” (Exodus 3:2) And that bush which shall once again set America afire will be John Ellis (Jeb) Bush. It is so written. But God warns us, lest any man in his blindness and far from the sight of God be tempted to the dark side of Donald Trump, the false Republican, know this for it is also written in The Bible: (Matthew 20:12)” Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” For Donald Trump is a succubus of Mammon. A money changer. A man who whose god is money and money is god. God be praised, there is no place in religion for money.  And so it is said by God. And so I say unto you, my friend, we must extirpate our great nation of the scourge of Trump. Assist us in this Our God’s work: send your gifting of $100 (tax deductible) to our Saving Christians Against Mammon (SCAM) fund to help us help the White house to once again be the home and haven of the True Faith and that Faith be through God’s anointed second son of George H.W. Bush, Jeb Bush.
As a special offer, for this week only, all of the blessed givers will each receive a Bampillow pillow personally embroidered with the Lord’s Prayer by Pastor Billie-Jo.

•    For a list of God’s Gifts, as delivered personally by God to Pastor Cecil C. Sackrider (handwriting verified), send a check or money order (minimum US$99.99) to the Cecil C. Sackrider Ministry 1069E West 35 Street Montgomery Alabama United States of America, Zip Code 666.  Checks should be made out to CASH (Congregation Against Satan’s Handiwork). All donations over US$50,000 go into the draw to win a personal phone call from Our Lord, as delivered by Pastor Sackrider.

Phyllis J. Fenwick: Letters from North Korea.

Fryday is fortunate in having readers throughout the world who take time to comment on various posts. We rarely publish those comments, but are no less grateful for them.  Even rarer do we give Fryday over to another writer. An exception is the self-styled and self-appointed  “international correspondent” for Fryday Miss Phyllis J. Fenwick. Miss Fenwick, 86 years old, is on a perpetual quest for the ancestral breeding ground of the Devonport guppy—a fish that the whole world, apart from Ms Fenwick, knows could not possibly exist. Often, as in this case, she writes to Fryday about her adventures. If you would like to know more about those and Phyllis and her doomed quest, including her recent trip to Somalia, she has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/phyllis.fenwick.3. Currently, Phyllis is on her search in North Korea at the personal invitation of “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un. Whilst there is difficulty communicating with the outside world, she did manage to get this through to us earlier this week. Have a good weekend and remember: nothing should be taken too seriously.

Dear Fryday Friends
Greetings from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As you can imagine, I am so excited to be here. Ahead of me, I am told, is to be an audience with the young president for life, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Why such a young man should want to meet an old woman such as me, is beyond me.
However, I am told that he does and is even most insistent on it, so perhaps he too shares our interest in the ancestral breeding grounds of the Devonport Guppy and is willing to materially assist my search.
Certainly, everybody has been most helpful since I arrived. There was a representative of the North Korean Government there to meet me when I arrived at Incheon airport in South Korea. He very quickly ushered me into a car and we headed north. A nice young man who sadly smiled very little, he said through an interpreter that we would be travelling on back roads for the most part so I could see as much of the country as I could. How very kind of him to think of that. When we arrived at the border with North Korea, he said he would have a new experience for me. Indeed he did! Instead of crossing the border as most tourists do, he took me through a very special tunnel under the border! I felt very special. He said that the tunnel, I believe it is three miles long, was dug single-handedly by Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il in three days! Extraordinary!
Now I am in Wonsan, the administrative seat of the province of Kangwon. I am impatient to head north to the nation’s capital Pyongyang to meet the President, but I am told the delay is because I first have to be greeted formally by Kangwon’s governor. The problem is that they do not yet know who it will be this week. And here, my friends, we arrive at one of the most outstanding revelations yet of my thus far short stay in Korea.
Contrary to what I was told before leaving for Korea, North Korea is not an authoritarian state ruled by a dictator. In fact, and here I am sure you will be as astonished as I, it is the most democratic country I have ever visited.
The people here all owe that to their much loved supreme leader Kim Jong-un who carries on the tradition of his father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim II-sung (I am wondering if they are related to that dreadful Kim Dot-com, but I think not).
According to my guide and his interpreter, the family has always been insistent all North Koreans have a leadership opportunity. Kim Jong-un personally selects the country’s leaders, as did his forefathers before him, and to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity those leaders rarely last more than a week.
What a wonderful system. New Zealand has much to learn from North Korea.
So, I am waiting to find out who Kangwon’s governor is to be this week. I am sure he will be very nice.
Indeed everybody I have met has been most obliging, and most industrious—perhaps too industrious. Yesterday, I spoke to my guide and his interpreter about the breeding habits of the Devonport Guppy. Just three hours into my dissertation, the interpreter rose and said he and his guide were required elsewhere on urgent government business. They promptly left and I haven’t seen them since. When I mentioned this to the manager of my hotel, he said I was not to worry. He said that many North Koreans disappeared and were never seen again. Funnily enough, he must be one of them. I have not seen him since, either.
Yours sincerely, your friend,
Phyllis J. Fenwick (Miss).

As Clear as Chrystal

In these days of highly technical and proficient playback equipment, it is possible for us to see things that film-makers and certainly those in front of the camera never intended us to see. Instant pausing and high resolution clarity have opening up a new vista of nip-slips, cameltoes, crotch shots and pantie-peeks for those so inclined to search for them. I am not. I did once, when I had a “did I see what I just saw” moment concerning Debbie Reynolds. But it was enough, and I haven’t bothered again. Debbie will I am sure feel most obliged.
Which is why I find Chrystal Chenery’s disgust at having her unwitting and certainly unintended “crotch shot” posted on social media so understandable and hardly surprising. Yes, the poster, Wellington DJ Dom Harvey, has taken the post down and apologised to Chrystal for it, but that hardly absolves him from what, at our kindest, should be seen as a deeply immature act.
You know the story: Chrystal Chenery appeared in a relatively scanty costume to dance The Jive for the Dancing with the Stars final. At some time in the 1:45 minute dance sequence her underwear is on view for a split second. Harvey found it, captured it and the published it on on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. He said he did it as a joke.
But I have to say (and here I do not have the hypocrisy to claim moral ascendancy) the act displays more of Harvey than it does of Chenery. Think about this: to do what Harvey did, he must have first had the prurient thought that Chenery’s leg split warranted a closer look. He would have then rewound his player, paused at the approximate place, and advanced frame by frame until he found the exact moment. He then either took a screen grab or photo of the still shot and published it. All of which takes quite a lot of work and none of which is particularly appetising.
But let’s look again at the first part of the process: Harvey must have first thought that it, the leg-split, warranted a further look. Really? Is that really how you get off, Harvey? Not much different really is it to those who sneakily take upskirt shots or hang around girls changing rooms. Pretty immature, really.
And one final thought on this: Harvey’s wife, Jay-Jay Harvey, also appeared as a dancer on that programme, and has rushed to his defence. All very laudable. But what if it had been her rather than Chenery who had been subjected to this intrusive indignity?
Somehow, I don’t think Dom Harvey would have found that quite so funny…or interesting.

Letters from Wogistan: Dear Richy

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Office of the Foreign Secretary

123 Bruce Springsteen Boulevard (third door on right). Telephone: 125.

Captaino Richy Mcaw

New Zeland Rugby All Blacks Team

At New Zeland

Dear Capitano Richy

The Democratic Republic of Wogistans peoples send warm greeting to you esteemed capitano of mighty All Blacks rugby team.

We much like rugby in our country. Our big team is Kraconuts. Kraconuts captained by esteemed President Yoseph Flaglantelie, who play all positions, win last fourty national contest in a (front hah hah) row. He 86. Now retire.

We offer you position now you to old for mighty All blacks. In Wogistan you not be Capitano, you be GENERAL! You bring Dan Carter with you, he not have to cart anything in Wogistan. You boths get free membership of Spartacus Male Gym and Bathouse.

You much like rugby in Wogistan. All players get own boots.

Come now. Do not take to long.  You get old. Wogistan gives yous last chance for yous to win World’s Cup.

With sincere facilitations,

Yoseph xxx

Yoseph Wankerstan

Foreign Secretary The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Proprietor Spartacus Male Gym and Bathouse.

The Book of Mormon II: Unware of the Underwear

Last week’s Fryday about The Book of Mormon needed little research. The Broadway show, which was Fryday’s primary focus, is justly famous, as is the Mormon Church’s light-hearted reaction to it, which I also covered. But what the research uncovered was what covered the Mormons themselves—their underwear. I was unaware that, until recently, devout Mormons had strict protocols about the shape, style and even colour of their underwear. The same underwear protocol applies to  adult males and females, and in basic style there was no real distinction between the two. What Mormon children wear is not governed by the strictures. Thank goodness (and God) for small mercies in smalls for the small. If they were forced to wear what their parents wear they would likely be bullied incessantly in the schoolyard.
    The adult Mormon underwear comprises a white cotton all-in-one called the ‘Garment of the Holy Priesthood and the New Name, which covers the whole body from the neck to the knees and is cut off at the arms like a T-shirt. There are some special coloured temple garments that can be worn by members of the armed services, but for the vast majority of Mormons, garments are always white. This symbolises physical and spiritual purity. The garment is sacred to the wearer not for what it is, but for what it represents. According to the church, the garment helps the wearer to focus his or her life on Jesus Christ and to thereby lay claim to the blessings promised to those who do so.
     Nor are Mormons are unique in the wearing of special clothing for religious purposes. Perhaps the most well-known example is the yarmulke, which is worn at special times by many Jewish men or at all times by devout orthodox Jews. Similarly, in some religions a minister or priest might wear a special collar that has religious significance, or nuns may wear special clothing that signifies the religious order to which they belong. In all cases the special clothing reflects the religious conviction of the wearer.
    However, the protocols surrounding Mormon underwear have changed and I imagine that many Mormons these days do not adhere to them. I am forced to imagine that because I am clearly not in the habit of checking Mormon clotheslines. If I do have a Mormon reader—and again I am not in the habit of checking—you may wish to confirm the (to some) seemingly archaic practice is no longer practiced.

You've Seen the Show...

It is rare for Fryday to support, let alone compliment, any orchestrated religion. But it does so now, knowing it has chosen a largely unpopular and much derided religion, though it may still possibly offend a segment of its readers.
The religion is The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
The only exposure most of have to that church is the frequent knocks at the door, the inevitable blindingly-white shirts, black ties, and earnest faces of the missionaries. That exposure, though polite and often brief, is still intrusive and for most us unwelcome.*
However, the Mormon Church at least seems to be seeped in a sincere dogma, unlike Scientology, “Bishop” Tamaki’s farcical cash-cow and just about every televangelist. I just wish they wouldn’t take themselves so damn seriously.
Or, do they?
One of the more popular shows on Broadway at the moment is The Book of Mormon. Written by the creators of South Park, Trey Park and Matt Stone, The Book of Mormon is an irreverent satire of the Church of Latter-day Saints. It tells the story of two Mormon missionaries sent to ply their scriptures and serve their sentences in a remote village in Northern Uganda rather than their preferred destination—Florida. The show opened in 2011, has played to sell-out crowds since, won nine Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and is the highest charting Broadway cast album in forty years.However, given the subject matter, you would expect the Mormon Church to take offence.
They didn’t.
The Church’s initial response to the musical has been described as “polite and measured.” Indeed it was. I have read it. It astutely states at the start: “Of course, parody isn't reality, and it's the very distortion that makes it appealing and often funny,”  and ends with the gentle admonishment: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ,” something the writers of the show say they acknowledge.
But the somewhat surprising reaction doesn’t stop there. Park and Stone state that they talked to and were helped by many Mormon missionaries, past and present, while writing the show. And—believe it or not—the Church has even advertised in the show’s programme. One of their funnier advertising lines is: ’You’ve Seen the Show. Now Read The Book.”
So, who knew? The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints has a sense of humour!
I didn’t know.
That said, they are still not going to get through my damn door.

*I had one friend who welcomed the intrusion, always inviting the missionaries in so he could debate their dogma. He is gone from us now, so I guess—and hope—he is in a position to now know the essential truth of his debates.