Crazy Book Titles

 

An annual staple of early Frydays was the Hamilton Public Library Book of Lists. It listed those books which, for various reasons, attained a special place among the portfolio of books offered for loan by the library.

Unfortunately, the same books kept appearing on the list every year. Fifty Shades of Grey was the perpetual most loaned book; the most popular career book was A life in Hairdressing, and when it came to computers, the most popular books were A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Finding Google on your Computer and A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Turning on Your Computer. The only new books to puncture the status quo were: the most stolen book (from the library), Shoplifting for Dummies (2020), Jacinda—A Love Story (2021) and A Dummies’ Guide to loving Jacinda, Despite Everything. (2021).

With so few entries on the list, the list became unsustainable. So, I scrapped it.

Now, however, I have become aware of The Diagram Group and its awards for the oddest book titles of the year. These are, believe me or not, real published books. They make for interesting reading--the titles, not, I suggest, the books themselves.

I’ll start with the most scatorial of the year 2014. Finalists that year included:

·      How to Poo on a Date: The Lovers' Guide to Toilet Etiquette.

·      The Origin of Faeces.

 

Over the years the Awards have managed to accumulate some strange titles indeed. Here is a sample. Remember, they are real books and can be found on Amazon. I have given you links.

·       BOMBPROOF YOUR HORSE

·        WHO CARES ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE?

·       DOES GOD EVER SPEAK THROUGH CATS?

·        HOW TO DISSAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND

·       SUN-BEAMS MAY BE EXTRACTED FROM CUCUMBERS, BUT THE PROCESS IS TEDIOUS

·        HOW GREEN WERE THE NAZIS?: NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND NATION IN THE THIRD REICH 

·       HOW TO SURVIVE A GARDEN GNOME ATTACK: DEFEND YOURSELF WHEN THE LAWN WARRIORS STRIKE (AND THEY WILL) 

·        KNITTING WITH DOG HAIR: BETTER A SWEATER FROM A DOG YOU KNOW AND LOVE THAN FROM A SHEEP YOU'LL NEVER MEET

·        HOW TO TEACH PHYSICS TO YOUR DOG

·        MANIFOLD DESTINY: THE ONE! THE ONLY! GUIDE TO COOKING ON YOUR CAR ENGINE!

·       DATING FOR UNDER A DOLLAR: 301 IDEAS 

And my favourite:

·      TEACH YOUR WIFE TO BE A WIDOW[1]

So, there are some strange book titles out there and it seems to be that you can find someone, somewhere who has written on just about every subject imaginable. For example, a few years back I wrote a Fryday on the subject of toilet lids and their usage. I went on google to research that and found no fewer than 7,290,000 documents on the subject.

But me, I am above all that. I have life, substance, pride, self-respect and intelligence. You won’t find your Fryday friend writing drivel. Never! God help me if, through sheer boredom, I ever resort to putting pen to paper on meaningless subjects such as, well, for example,  Crazy Book Titles.

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[1] This was one reader’s review of Teach Your Wife to be a Widow: I got my wife an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and she used part of it to buy this book. My health hasn't been the best lately and I've been very busy at work, so I think that she's being very prudent in learning how to deal with "final expenses" and take over the household finances and maintenance of the house and car. Yesterday another book arrived for her from Amazon: A Field Guide To Toxic Plants Of North America. I have such a thoughtful wife! She knows that I have a number of life-threatening allergies, and she wants to make sure that I stay away from anything that might harm me. Gotta go now, it's dinner time. She's made me a big salad that she says will end all of my worries about cholesterol.

 

The Second Coming

 

The Political Podium and how it is being used

 

The Prime Minister’s daily covid updates, usually at 1.00, are past their use-by date, no longer serve any useful purpose and have deteriorated to where they are little more than cynical manipulation for political purposes, bordering on the disgraceful.

Now, you may disagree with me on that. You may think the Prime Minister is doing a superb job communicating with the country and keeping us in touch and keeping us calm.

And keeping us kind.

But I would like to list the reasons that is not true. Some of the following may seem incredibly trivial to you, some of them are just nuances that normally would go unnoticed, but collectively they build a picture of pitch-perfect politicking. So, here we go.

·      Timing: The press conferences are scheduled for 1.00 pm. The Prime Minister is invariably late arriving, sometimes by up to 15 minutes (though she has got better of late). Why is that? If Chris Hipkins or Grant Robertson are running the conferences, they turn up on time. But the Prime Minister? No. There is no, I repeat no, valid reason for her to be consistently late. It is unbecoming of a prime minister and, to be honest, it’s rude. Simple as that. But I can tell you why I think it happens. Could it be because it gives time for fawning sycophantic Press Gallery journalists such as Jessica Much-McKay to blow the government’s trumpet as a curtain-raiser to the “big event”. Pure theatre.

·      Then there is the time the Prime Minister takes to get to the point—again, keeping us waiting for effect. These days, the announcement we are principally looking for is whether we are going up or down levels. Instead, we must wait for that one simple piece of information until Ashley Bloomfield has, in his droning delivery, gone on about the number of cases, scanning rates, genome sequencing, and vaccination rates. Why? Couldn’t that wait until later? But no, the Prime Minister needs to keep us waiting.

·      About Ashley Bloomfield, he has joined the growing list of bureaucrats and media that can’t bring themselves to say Auckland. I am sorry. But I am failing to understand why we are increasingly defaulting to a language of just 15 percent of the population, many of whom don’t speak or understand it themselves. And what is it about his use of the word motu as in “across the motu.” Motu means the country. Why can’t he just say the country? Dr Ashley Bloomfield has become the Andy Coster of the medical fraternity and is condescending and patronising of Maori and, for many of us, offensive and so unnecessary.

·      But now we come to the crux of why I think the Political Podium is past its use-by date—the Prime Minister and the Director General are bringing nothing new to the table. Watch this afternoon’s conference carefully—or, more accurately—listen to it carefully. The Prime Minister is prefacing just about every sentence with “As you have just heard Dr Bloomfield say…” or “You will recall me saying…” So, she is repeating what we have already been told. Why? Does she have nothing new to say and is just hungry for the screen-time?

My point is that if these press conferences no longer have anything to say, other than an update on the statistics, and possibly grandstanding by the Prime Minister. They should be mothballed, and a press release for the Department of Health could distribute the statistics. Now, you may counter that by saying that the press conferences open the Prime Minister to questions from the media. Do they? How about this question to the Prime Minister last week: “How important is it that people follow the rules of Level 4?”

Really?

Let’s dispense with the “press conferences" and, for goodness’ sake, get back to being treated like adults.

Have you woken up yet?

 

For those who don’t know, and many of you don’t, Fryday started four decades ago as an attempt by me to prove the pen was indeed mightier than the sword. I created the Fryday e-letter, one of the first in New Zealand, to fry a Glen Innes panel beater who demonstrably screwed me. That post is lost. Anyway, it didn’t work; he is still in business. But so, too, is Fryday, though it has mellowed and has recently taken a hiatus of a couple of years…until last week’s revival and my homage to Charlie Watts.

Thank you very much for your response to that.

My problem with Fryday is that I have no idea when I start what I am going to write. I get up at 6.00 Friday mornings, go to my computer and suffer. There is nothing.

So, this week I thought I would write about…nothing.

One definition of nothing is a lack of something.

Here in New Zealand and around the world there is a lack of common sense, augmented by a paucity of maturity. How else can we explain the deluge of wokeness that has rushed to fill the void left by the departure of those two great human traits—the remnants of which can be found only in the far reaches of the Outer Hebrides and visitors to Spike Milligan’s grave?

If I had seen that flood of wokeness coming, I would have got Donald J. Trump to ask God to send Moses back.

Examples abound, and I don’t want to give them credence by promoting them here. However, some of them are just plain silly and nonsensical. Why on earth would you not put a baby’s gender on the birthday certificate? Why would you tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln (of all people) in Lincoln Park (of all places)? Why would you appoint newsreaders seemingly incapable of pronouncing Auckland and New Zealand? And don’t start me on the endless “issues du jour”.

None of this is, of course, new. When I worked in advertising in the 70s, an edict came out from Radio New Zealand stating that it was no longer acceptable to use the word manhole; it was to be replaced with person-hole. Thank goodness that didn’t take off, it could have injured someone.

The “issue” I have is that anybody who won’t embrace wokeness or criticises it is automatically labelled out of touch, reactionary, middle-aged or older, white, racist, and inferior. They might have a point on some of those points. I am white and at my age, if I bent a knee, I might not manage to get back up.

But look, don’t label me the way you want to label me. Don’t label me at all. You don’t know me. You only think you know me.

And don’t automatically assume that because you think you are right, I am wrong.

There is in my world, room for diversity. In yours? Apparently not. Ironic, eh?

Yes, the world was asleep before you woke us up. And good on you for doing that. But now you are taking it over the top and getting boring. So boring, in fact, that you are sending me back to sleep.

Good night.

 

Charlie and the Rockalate Factory

I didn’t hide.

I just dropped out because Fryday had nothing to offer you. Trump is gone—though Biden has Fryday potential. Covid was/is omnipresent and boring. Jacinda more so. So, Fryday had nothing. Nothing to offer you.

Then…

Then Charlie Watts died.

That came as a shock. Apparently, there were earlier reports that he was unwell, but I didn’t see them. And whilst he is the oldest of the current Rolling Stones (former bassist Bill Wyman, at 84, is older) Watts led a comparatively clean life and given the hedonistic excesses of the others we could have assumed that Watts might have outlived them. But, then there is the platitude ‘only the good die young’, if you can call 80 young.

I never saw the Rolling Stones play live. However, I saw plenty of video footage of their performances; I would recommend their concert movie Shine a Light to everyone. For me, the one lasting image from the early performances was the slight smile, the knowing looks and the eye-rolling he shared with Wyman while observing the theatrical antics of the front three: Jagger, Richards and Wood. Watts and Wyman always—somehow—stood apart from the others. Those who studied the group say that was also the case off stage. 

Richards in his excellent autobiography Life recounts the story of Watts retiring to bed in an upstairs suite rather than attend a party in Jagger’s suite downstairs. According to Richards, that didn’t sit well with Jagger, who rang Watts and demanded he come down. When Watts refused, Jagger yelled down the phone “You’re my f**king drummer—you get down here!” Watts agreed to the demand, but when Jagger opened the door to let Watts in he was laid out by a right hook from Watts who stood over him and said in a measured tone, “I’m not your f**king drummer, you’re my f**king singer.”

I have heard it said Watts and Jagger didn’t get on particularly well.

But they stayed together for almost 60 years and in the process gave us some of the greatest songs of the rock era, often with an intro beat from Watts.

Among his peers—and here I would recommend an excellent documentary on rock drumming Count Me In recently released on Netflix—Watts was ranked third best drummer of the rock era behind Cream’s Ginger Baker and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. Not surprisingly, The Who’s Keith Moon was right up there, as well. Unlike Moon, Watts was the very antithesis of what a rock-drummer should be and look like. Watts was quiet, measured, sardonic and disciplined. He was married to the same woman (Shirley) for 57 years. He could paint (a talent he shared with Ronnie Wood). Despite not being able to drive, he collected classic cars—whereas, of course, Moon was more prone to parking them at the bottom of a pool. He flirted with drugs and alcohol for a time until he was cleansed by of all people Keith Richards.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Watts described his role with the Stones as his day job. His “real job”, as he saw it, was as a Jazz drummer.

Will the band continue without him? Who knows? They are starting a tour of the United States next month with session musician Steve Jordan filling in for Watts. But beyond that…? The Stones survived the death of Brian Jones (though he had already been fired) and the resignations of Wyman and Mick Taylor. But can they survive this—or should they even try?

What will live on is the music and the memories. And, for me, that enduring and endearing image of the man with the slight smile and knowing look, who was up there simply doing his day job.

RIP Charlie Watts: 1941—2021. Loved you, man.

 

Trucking Hell

 I once spent a month in Scranton Pennsylvania one afternoon.

I didn’t see much of it: just a few suburbs and the inside of a dreary airport in which I was ignored by largely disinterested staff including a cop chatting up the sandwich jockey at the airport’s miniscule lunch bar. I didn’t know what to expect of Scranton, But I guess I expected more than this.

It was the town that featured in one of my favourite Harry Chapin songs—30,000 pounds of bananas—which recounts the true story of a driver of a truck “coming down the hill to Scranton Pennsylvania” losing control and crashing into a house, killing himself and spilling his load of 30,000 pounds of bananas. There was a story going around at the immediate aftermath of the crash in 1965 that the driver, Eugene P. Sesky, was decapitated; he wasn’t, but in a grim irony Harry Chapin was, 16 years later when he crashed into a truck and trailer unit.

Scranton’s only other claim to fame that I can tell was its selection as the site for the American version of The Office. Given that The Office’s creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant selected Slough for the British original suggests what they thought of Scranton.

Despite my impressions of Scranton, I have nothing against it, and I certainly have nothing but admiration for Pennsylvania. It is a beautiful state and wonderfully hospitable. One of my sons and I spent a night at a hotel there where we were joined by a bunch of bikers; from that point neither my son nor I bought a drink and by two in the morning the bar had run out of whisky. I attended a wedding there (another of my son’s) which was a momentous and memorable occasion; I was given a lengthy lesson on how to shoot “all kinds of varmints” using all kinds of weapons by a guy who was looking forward to coming down to New Zealand to shoot bears; and I acquired a new daughter-in-law.

I was also given lessons in history, including much about the great Battle of Gettysburg, not realising beforehand that Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania and that the Confederates got that far north. I could have crossed the state border and visited another place of history—Woodstock. But I didn’t. Perhaps next time.

I drove into Pennsylvania and flew out of Scranton. Those modes of transport are entirely apt: slowly in to relish the beautiful countryside—quickly out to escape Scranton.

I would recommend it to anyone.

By the way, the line “I spent a month there one afternoon” is not mine. It’s Harry Chapin’s, and he used it to introduce his song at live performances. I am guessing he didn’t do many of those in Scranton.

The Post about Posters

It is all getting rather silly.

In the wake of a killing of black man in the United States, as tragic and unjustified as it was, we have been subjected to an onslaught of morality-warriors once again telling us what to think and how to behave.

Yes, I know the killing of George Floyd is just the tip of a deep malaise, but it has led to one of the silliest slogans ever—Black Lives Matter (yes, they do and so does mine)—and a bitter and ill-targeted reaction, including defacing statues, rewriting history and the call to rename streets, towns and even regions because they are now deemed to unacceptable and/or offensive.

Okay, it’s the issue de année. Last year it was the Me Too movement, and this too will pass. But what is galling is that any gains made by such movements and no matter how laudable the intent, they are soon spoiled when they lapse into sheer silliness. The latest is this.

It seems that a recording studio has returned a series of 60s pop posters to the person who gifted them to the studio, because the posters, mostly of white artists such as the Beatles, Elvis, Yardbirds, etc, didn’t give a broad enough representation of gender or race to be featured in [the studio’s]  context.

In other words they are no longer appropriate.

That is ridiculous. They are what they are—a visual representation of the culture of the time. The fact that time is in the past doesn’t make the posters unacceptable and offensive let alone racist today.

The best that could be said for the recording studio's action is at least they didn’t destroy them. But it is still an over-reaction.

So, let’s put a stop to this silliness. Let’s acknowledge that there are wrongs being perpetrated in the world and they need to be addressed. But let’s also acknowledge that stifling the past rather than learning from it is not the way to do it.

As the Beatles said: Let it Be.

The Buck Stops There

My friend Zane said it well, “[Health Minister David Clark] let the Team of 4,999,999 down.” Clearly Clark is not a team player; not only did he breach the rules of Level 4 no fewer than 3 times and was missing in action for much of lockdown, he now has the temerity to blame one of his lieutenants for the parlous state of our porous border—a lieutenant, incidentally,  who never went MIA when needed and as far as I know never breeched one of the lockdown conditions.

Clark said that Dr Bloomfield had accepted responsibility for the border situation and then implied that’s where the matter ends. It does not. It defies belief that Clark believes he has no responsibility in this matter. He may have no direct culpability (I’ll come back to that later) but is morally obligated to support his department and if that means uttering that famous saying “the buck stops here’ instead of his the buck stops there, so be it.

Clark’s actions and inactions make him in my view morally bankrupt and unacceptable as a minister or even as a member of parliament.

Now let’s turn to that other matter. Clark compounds his cowardly swipe at Dr Bloomfield and his own failure to shoulder any of the blame by then accusing our frontline people of not properly executing what he said were clear instructions from the Government.

Really, Clark?

Which instructions, Clark, about what you could or couldn’t do under Level Four were not clear to you when you went on your bike-riding jaunts? It seems to have been clear to the other 4,999,999 of us. Or was it simply that you did not properly execute them.

I don’t want to see anybody out of a job—there are enough of them already. But this minister has to step down. It’s overdue, we don’t need him, and we could do without his arrogance at this time—or at any time.

Oh, and one other message—for the Prime Minister—the buck doesn’t stop there (with Clark) either.

Not so Special, K

Life seems to be measured in redundancies and the creation of them. We glorify in issues de jour and the 15 minutes of fame our drawing attention to them gives us. Usually, I ignore them, knowing they will go away, because there is nothing more boring or indeed redundant than an issue in which Television has lost interest.

But where I do have an issue—literally and figuratively—is the current attempt to make history redundant, or at least history as spoken in European terms. The manifestation of that is the removal and threat of removal of all statues recalling past colonisation—exclusively pakeha.

People, on both sides of the discussion divide, are getting very antsy about that, aren’t they? My issue is that they are focussing on that while a far greater and much more aged issue is getting no attention at all.

I am talking about the letter k.

I ask what possible use is it? We already have the letter C, which often serves the same purpose and sounds the same. The two are interchangeable with, I suggest, C being the more dominant. I say get rid of one or the other. Tip one into the harbour. Daub one with paint. Pull it down and leave the other. I see the one we leave being C because I would hate to see a kountry kalled Kanada and at least we get rid of the Kardashians.

Anyone want to join the movement? I have television coverage lined up.

Road to recovery...without the roadblocks

The way in which we as a country have responded to coronavirus has reinforced what most of us always thought of ourselves—that for the most part we are unified, considerate, kind and pragmatic. We rise to a challenge, do what we are told (for the most part) and just get on with the job of looking after ourselves and others.

Some will say that is no more no less than most other countries are doing and unlike them we don’t have to contend with common and porous borders. True, but in these days of modern transport, isolation is not what it once was, but it is still enough to retain in us a sense of self-preservation and resourcefulness that serve us well at times like these.

However, if coronavirus has brought out the best in us, it has also uncovered some traits of ours that are less savoury.

At first, I thought Fryday should ignore them. We are after all coming out of the most draconian of Levels Three and Four restrictions and our focus now should be on rebuilding the country. But then I thought that if we ignore what happened we are failing to learn from it. If we simply sweep it under the carpet and forget about it, we have the very real danger of it resurfacing again, strengthened this time by the very real power of precedence.

I am talking about the illegal roadblocks that sprung up during coronavirus. Whilst they have been little more than inconvenient (to this point) and none of the forecast violence eventuated, they are still illegal and could in time set a dangerous precedent, particularly because of the Government’s failure to act on them.

The rationale for the roadblocks was spurious to start with, so were the arguments in favour. We were told they were set up to protect vulnerable communities. Why were “their” communities more vulnerable (and valuable) than mine? Because they are largely Maori? Latest figures showed that confirmed cases of Covid-19 among Maori are proportionately far lower than any other New Zealand ethnic group. Whereas, by comparison my age group, 70 and over, is demonstrably the most vulnerable.

It is not a question, in my argument, of them and us. It is a question of putting things in perspective and at least trying to recognise the truth as it pertains to the bigger picture.

And here we turn to chief organiser Hone Harawira's motives. They are in my view not what they seem, or he espouses. He will tell you that it is for the good of the community. Would not the case be made for a more simplistic and superficial motive: Hone needs the attention? He has been out of the limelight for so long that his now largely irrelevant. He was going that way even when he was in politics. Many of his ideas are outmoded, archaic and impractical--replaced by modern real-world ideas promulgated by smart well-educated and visionary Maori.

Hone has nothing else to fall back other than to find an issue, capitalise on it, stir up controversy and stand before the cameras. In other words, do what he does best.

So why am I giving him space? Why not just ignore him? Two reasons: ignoring him won’t make him go away. That would be like ignoring coronavirus in the expectation that it gives up and goes home to Wuhan. Better to put his motivation under scrutiny and have readers consider him either relevant or ridiculous.

The second reason is a more important issue here—precedent. Northland MP Matt King had it right when he refused an invitation from Hone to visit a roadblock to see how it operated. Matt king refused, asking what was the point?  The roadblock(s) could have been serving Devonshire teas (they weren’t) but they are still illegal, and the failure of the Government to recognise that flouting of the law by this or any sector of society is disgraceful.

And what next? What about after coronavirus? Using the original argument of “good of the community” what if Hone thinks, for example, that not enough is spent on the upkeep of local roads or spent on social services? What is to stop him resurrecting roadblocks to extract koha or donations to pay for such services? If the Government's lack of action and tacit approval is any guide, he can do so with impunity.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But even if there is a remote chance on this one we have already embarked down a rocky road.

Questions people ask

One of my most prized office possessions is my office chair. It is a bit old and frayed now, but it still fits my bum like Michel Jackson’s glove. Sadly of late, the chair has begun to show its age in a less visual manner; the hydraulic raising and lowering mechanism has literally run out of breath. The result is that the chair, like a local council I once worked for, is continually sinking to new depths, taking me with it.
I initially contemplated buying a new chair, but then I decided to google the problem and see if there was a quick and cheaper solution. There was. The solution, involving a hose clamp costing $2.35, works perfectly and the chair has a few years more in it yet.
I am not surprised that I could google a solution. You can find almost anything on Google these days. I remember a Fryday I wrote on how to use toilet seats. When, as part of the research for that article I posed the question on Google, I got  7,690,000 responses.
So that got me thinking; what are some of the most useless questions people ask of Google? I am not the first to ask. Here is what Mobiles.co.uk found when they asked the same question:
1. Do cockerels crow when they feel like it?
2. How many toes does a rhinoceros have?
3. Why is your face on your head?
4. Why does cucumber taste like shampoo?
5. What is the average weight of a panda?
6. What is the length of spaghetti?
7. How can I grow taller?
8. Does the Mandela Effect confirm the existence of a parallel universe?
9. Can helicopters fly upside down?
10. What is the lifespan of a mayfly?
11. How do I get my husband a brain transplant?
12. Who let the dogs out?
13. What percentage of people have seen a ghost?
14. What is the funniest joke in the world?
15. How does a giraffe clean its ears?
16. What happens to old false legs?
17. Where can I find gold?
18. Why don’t ducks feet stick to ice?
19. How can I make a time machine?
And my favourite…
20: Google, where are my keys?