Australia Fare

The present animosity between New Zealand and Australia because of the Rugby World Cup Final is both contrived and hoary.
I say contrived, because most of it seems to me to be through the media which has taken some fairly innocuous comments by the respective coaches and blown them out of context and importance.
It is hoary because it is boring, not original and certainly cliched. I also don’t think it is a true representation of our feelings to each other, and is based, largely, on stereotypes.
Good natured ribbing between two nations is okay and we are not the only nations indulging in it—France and England, USA and Canada are others. The difference though is that those other countries went to war with each other: USA and Canada (1812), England and France (1799—1815), whereas what do Australians and we lob grenades at each other about? An underarm, a crowded house, a racehorse and a pudding.
Yet we are called “sworn enemies”. Really?
Now, you may, rightfully, accuse me of taking this too seriously. And I am. But I am only doing so because others—inside the media and out—are, taking the competitive nature of our two countries  and placing on it connotations and ramifications that it doesn’t deserve and for the most part don’t exist. By all means hope for an All Black (sorry, Michael: New Zealand) win but let us not over-indulge or succumb to this xenophobic nonsense which seems totally bereft of humour and grace.
We should be above that and Steve Hansen is.
Even if the Australians and Michael Cheika are not—just kidding cobbers. :)

Letter from North Korea

From time to time I receive correspondence from a friend whom I have known for more than a quarter of a century. Phyllis J. Fenwick (Miss) is 86 years old and, if what she tells me is true, has lead an extraordinary life. She continues to lead that life with her one all-embracing interest being her perpetual quest to find the ancestral breeding grounds of the fabled Devonport Guppy. That quest has taken her over the world and when she is overseas her usual means of correspondence with me and her other friends is Facebook, with which she is quite adroit. Currently, Phyllis in in North Korea, apparently at the personal invitation of President Kim Jong-un. Internet coverage isn’t great in North Korea, but Phyllis managed to post the following on Facebook and I thought I would share it with you. One final note: Nothing in Phyllis’s life is meant to be taken seriously and nothing is as it seems. Have an enjoyable Labour weekend.

My Dear Facebook Friends
Many of you have been writing to me asking where I am and why you have not heard from me in such a long time. Your concern for me is vey kind and I am most touched. Let me assure you I am well, but—alas, I am still waiting in Pyongang for my meeting with young President Kim Jong-un.
I have been given many excuses as to why he cannot see me and I am extremely gratified that such a busy young man is taking the time and the courtesy to keep in touch. However one wonders how one man can cram so much into such a young life. On one day, I am told, he is finding (and indeed has found) a cure for cancer. On another day, again I am told, he has succeeded in inventing a nuclear powered moped for the masses. And amidst all this I am informed he has found time to personally deliver no fewer than 20 babies at Pyongyang’s Maternity Hospital.
I am told that, more than anything else, Kim Jong-un likes making babies.
However, it remains frustrating for me not to be able see him. I even at one point suggested to one of his aids that President Kim might like to make a baby with me, but I have not heard back
So, with nothing much else to occupy my mind, I spend much of my time reading or watching television programmes. Most of the programmes are political broadcasts, though there is the odd cooking show (Kim Cooks and Kim’s Kitchen Rules among them) but there are one or two surprises such as Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, which I understand to be the President’s favourites. There is also something that looks like a North Korean version of Game of Thrones, with President Kim playing all the roles except those who die—it appears those roles are played by some of his ministers and army officers, and their death scenes are very realistic indeed!
No word on the Devonport Guppy yet. A fish was brought to me the other day for examination, but it proved nothing more than entrails from the Game of Thrones set (I am told) and was mistakenly used as a fish dish in one of Kim’s cooking programmes. I fear for the producer if Kim Jong-un hears of the mistake. He is such a perfectionist and the producer might even get a very sharp talking to.
No such harsh words between me and my very dear young friend Elizabeth, back in New Zealand. It is her birthday on Friday and I am so distraught that I shall not be back in time to share in the celebration.
However, my wish for you Elizabeth is that you have a lovely day spent among good friends who love you as I do.
And for the rest of my Facebook friends with whom I am blest have a wonderful day.
Your friend,
Phyllis.
xx

I Take it all, back.

This week Fryday is suffering from a bad back. I am told that there are many things that can damage a back: age, weight, posture, standing too long, sitting too long, sharing your bed with a dog (the canine variety), and I am guilty of just about every one of them. No wonder my back is objecting. My main issue, however, is my occupation. It is a sedentary occupation and does require long hours at a desk typing. To be fair, that is by choice; there are writers who chose to write standing up—Dickens, Hemingway (at times), Churchill and Nabokov among them. Shakespeare is thought to have stood at his writing desk. But it is not my choice; I like to sit and write. So, my problem comes down to choice of chair and its ergonomic design. And I don’t want to go anywhere near those new fangled options such as Swiss Balls and knee chairs—I am a traditionalist. So, it was on to Google for a bit of research (which ultimately became more confusing than anything) and to Warehouse Stationery, which at least has the convenience of being local. My chiropractor, who has wrestled gamely, assiduously and patiently with my back issue also gave me advice. In the end, I settled on convenience, so it was down to Warehouse Stationery I went. They didn’t have a big range of office chairs, just a big price range. The cheapest was about $130, the dearest in excess of $1000. I sat in them all. Surprisingly, the most comfortable was among the cheapest: $160, down from $240.00. It also looks smart, like one of those sports seats in a modern rally car. So I bought it. And I haven’t been disappointed in it. I have spent several writing days in it without incurring any of the pain that beset me from previous chairs. I even persuaded the chiropractor’s receptionist, his wife, to invest in the same model of chair, and she seems equally satisfied. And mention of the chiropractor brings me back to my central premise: the day before I bought the chair I went to him in agony. He did what he could and it was enough to provide relief and restore equilibrium. Then I went and bought the chair, hoping to maintain that newly-restored state of relative harmony. The next day my back was back at the chiropractor—in agony. You guessed it, as much as the new seat is now supplying me with the part panacea for my ills, it required assembly. And, that my friends, is what you call irony.

Letters From Wogistan: Rugby World Cup

Beige of Honor

Some decades ago followers of the New Zealand Men’s Cricket team were called the Beige Brigade. It was because they adopted the then predominant colour of the team’s uniform. And whilst many of those supporters enthusiastically accepted and embraced the nomenclature there were others among us who saw Beige Brigade largely as a derisory term, haplessly promoting that most colourless of colours largely confined previously to the underwear of women who have lost hope, interest or purpose.
 The men’s cricket team soon adopted different colours—pragmatically those of its principal sponsor—and beige was soon confined to memory, a few hapless souls on the Eastern Stand at Eden Park, most of the Canterbury Cricket Crowd,  and all of The Warehouse’s ladies underwear lineup.
That was until this week. This week we saw the color (sic) make an appearance—indeed a predominant and assertive fanfare—at the latest fashion show of the self-proclaimed doyen of fashion, music and presidencies, Kayne West.
Now, as everybody knows, Kayne West struggles for kredibility in most all facets of life. His marriage to Kim Kardashian first and then and his proclamation at the MTV Video Music Awards that he would run for the American Presidency in 2020 eclipsed even his calling his son North. It is foolish to think of Kayne West as anything other than a talentless Chicago rapper with an inflated ego that borders on the Messiah Complex. If you would like examples of musicians who succeed where West fails look to P-Diddy and Usher—they at least have creed.
So, why does Fryday even mention him? Only because I am starting to feel about “our very own” Lorde in the same way I feel about Millie Elder-Holmes and Caitlyn Jenner. In Millie’s case her over-exposure is not entirely her fault, but as predicted by Fryday on August 21 we had not seen the last of her; barely a week later she was in the media again displaying and espousing a very important commentary on societal mores and their role in making her a victim of that self-same society—in other words, her latest tattoo.
Neither is it Lorde’s fault that she is pictured in the front row of Kayne West’s show, only one seat along from Kim Kardashian. But she was and she was photographed and that photograph was promoted assiduously throughout New Zealand as if New Zealand, through Lorde, had suddenly found its place in the world, and was now widely recognised—even without a new flag.
Frankly, I would have been more impressed if she had been photographed next to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
But she wasn’t. She was there at Kayne West’s fashion frippery where he unknowingly, and she knowingly, evoked and endorsed an image and colour that New Zealanders, seemingly with the sole exception of Lorde, have long forsaken and which today is treated much as an embarrassment.
OMG!
Lorde wears beige!
Tell me it is not so.
Lorde help us.

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.