As Cecil C. Sackrider Sees It: The Lord Cometh Over Me Again.

The Lord has cometh over me again. And this is what the Lord hath said. No man shall enter the Kingdom of God who hath worshipped false gods. Hallelujah, say I; Awesome, says my wife Billie-Jo, barely (and often) sixteen years of age. For what the Lord is telling us is that no man who votes for Donald S. Trump shall enter the Kingdom of God. It saith in the Good Book that we shall not worship false profits. And whomsoever is such a worshipper of mammon than Donald S. Trump? The maker of profits. The Republican Party is the party of God. Ordained by God to rule in God’s name. George W. Bush was God’s anointed one and His greatest gift to our great nation. Holy be Praised our Father, for He has come again. As did George Bush Senior so many years ago, and given us a second Bush, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush to save us. So saith the Lord to me, last night when I was with Billie-Jo and at our prayers. And so I saith unto you—friends—that you must heed the Word of God and save yourself from damnation. You must vote for Jeb Bush. And you must cast out so that he is enveloped and drowned in the  depths of Mammon that scourge of God’s society, that succubus of satan, that worshipper of false profits: Donald S. Trump. Mammon is evil. Money is evil. Cast it away. Cast it away now: 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.

• 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.

The Real McCaw (2)

This week we have lost from rugby two of its biggest names, though of course for vastly different reasons—one a tragedy. But as we all mourn the passing of Jonah Lomu at such a young age, we can I think call it a point of maturity—not to say, common sense—that we have not allowed it to overshadow Richie McCaw’s retirement announcement. That announcement was handled superbly, I thought. It paid homage to the great Jonah, sensitively mixing sadness and some humour, and then it moved on. As I now do. In fact, I move back. Rarely does Fryday repeat any of its postings, but I am here repeating one I wrote on December 16, 2011, when it was first mooted that Richie McCaw was right to decline a knighthood—then! And that was then. Now is different and whilst I have changed nothing of the earlier posting I think it still has relevance today. By the way and as some small barometer of the esteem in which Richie is held, this December 16 edition is the most read of all Fryday blog posts since I started recording them in May 2010. The second is a Fryday post (29/6/12) that opined Mickey Mouse was gay. I do not think the two are connected. Here is what I wrote on Richie.


"This morning the Prime Minister revealed on Radio Sport that he offered All Black captain Richie McCaw a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List. John Key further revealed that Richie had declined because he (McCaw) felt it was too early for such an honour. Implicitly that left the door open for one later, and most New Zealanders would probably applaud that. Having said that, I can think of a number of New Zealanders who have accepted the honour who are far less deserving of it. The criteria of who gets a knighthood these days seems to be a lot looser than that of the Knights of Old and Knights of Bold. If we go back to those days, to gain a knighthood one had—generally—to be brave, chivalrous, to exhibit considerable prowess on the battlefield, and to be diligent in protecting the sanctity of a woman’s maidenhood. Well, if we replace battlefield with rugby field and acknowledge that protecting maidenhoods may be more honoured in the breech than the observance, nobody would be more qualified than Richie. But it won’t be this time. Richie’s decision. But when they do come knocking again—as they will, perhaps on your retirement Richie—accept it then. You deserve it. We deserve it. It honours you. And in some way it honours us, and who we like to think of ourselves--the Real McCaw.

The Not So Secret Diary of Handsome Sampson

So, Auckland’s least kept secret is out.
I am not standing for re-election.
Or as Bevan would have said it jocularly in those long ago fun fun days I am not “standing” for re-erection. Oh, those days (and nights) were wonderful. Even these days (and nights) I lie in bed, alone, clawing back every golden moment—the touch, the feel, the silk, the whip(s)—He He.
Will those moments come again?
Will I?
As for Suckland? You can suck yourself. I am not bitter. But as a city, you do not know what you are losing. And you know why you don’t know? Let me tell you—you do not know what you are losing because you are so used to losing that you don’t recognise it anymore. You don’t know a loser when you see one. I knew that as soon as you elected me.
Now you have lost me.
Suck on that.
(Why does she keep coming back to me?)
And what are you going to get to replace me? Goff? Banks?
Don’t make me laugh. Neither of them is twice the man I am. Neither of them will even begin to leave the legacy I have left Suckland. I will go down (oh God, not again) as the greatest mayor this city has ever had. Or ever will have. It was me! It was me who gave the councillors their new chambers and toilets, it was me who gave council staff their new building, it was me who gave every Sucklander the right to look after their berms, it was me who enabled every Sucklander paying rates the chance to contribute more to their city.
Their city.
Not mine.
I cannot be part of a city that has no gratitude.
Will I miss anything?
No.
Will you miss anything?
Yes.
Everything.
Did you see my speech welcoming the All Blacks back after their World Cup win? How jocular was I? All that rousing magic I delivered. And did you see me give the “key” to Richie, joking that there was no actual key? You don’t find that kind of humour everyday. No wonder people often call me a joke.
So, I am going. Gone.
I would have won again, you know that don’t you?
The people love me.
The people love me.
The people love me.
“Len, you are the MAN!”
How often I think that—lying in bed clawing back every golden moment—alone.

Letters from Wogistan: Rugby World Cup

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Office of the Foreign Secretary

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

The President

World Rugby Union Federation

Rugby House

London

England

Dear President Jonah Lomu

The Democratic Republic of Wogistans peoples send instruction to you that Rugby World Cup 2015 final not final.

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan say in letter last month the Wogistan Rugby Team of President Yoseph Flaglantelie play final game against aged foe New Zeland. President Yoseph Flaglantelie come to Twickenham London England (gate 1B) in time for match with boots but not allowed in by security guard.

New Zeland fight Australia instead. Not worthy apponent. Australia empty of many peoples, just many kangaroos who not play rugby and men who hate homosexuals peoples.

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan demands Capitaine Ritchie McCaw returns World Cup and play match again against Wogistan. By way of sorry to Democratic Republic of Wogistan, game to be played in Wogistan (we send bus).

Game to take place after corn harvest when playing field again available.

With sincere facilitations,

Yoseph xxx

Yoseph Wankerstan

Foreign Secretary The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Proprietor Spartacus Male Gym and Bathouse.

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.