Things To Do At Xmas When You're Dead

Aren’t the Chrissy holidays great? All that time off work – unless you’re in retail then this period of the year really does blow – to do the things that you just don’t seem to get round to doing the whole other 350+ days of the year. Like gardening, which I need to get out and do but unfortunately for me my neighbour likes to partake in a bit of nude sunbathing behind the fence that runs alongside the strip I need to weed.

Now normally I wouldn’t see anything, the fence that divides us is a good six foot high and where she’s laying she is quite sheltered from view. Infact it was only by chance one day whilst my wife was up the embankment behind our gaff that she happened to glance down and see said pink bits. But like all good fences that have been up a while, the wood has buckled a little and decent gaps have started forming between the planks and when the light is right, or you’re standing at the right angle, you can see through the fuckers.

Now I know it and I’m damn sure she knows it, so either she’s up for a bit of glory hole action or, whilst I’m minding my own business weeding with my head down and iPod on, she’s gonna call me for perving. Usually I wouldn’t mind a bit of the girl next door baking her dumplings in the summer sun but my neighbour is fifty going on a hundred and the last thing I, or anybody, wants to see through the crack in the fence is some grey haired spider action. Needless to say that particular task is being put on the back burner till I notice her car is gone from the drive. Fuck it I might have to even get out there at night and do it.

Usually there would be a time limit on when I have to have a task like that done by, but Mrs ClubDes is in Aussie for the week leaving me alone for a period that I was tentatively proclaiming to be ‘WankFest 09’ but only to wind her up before she left. So Junior and I are home alone, living on the couch, clad only in our undies eating three square meals of toast with various toppings and getting all the essential vitamins and nutrients one finds in the average can of Coke.

It hasn’t been all Playstation and Mythbusters marathons though; I have managed to embark on a spring clean of epic proportions and am feeling quite chuffed with my efforts. Not that ‘clean’ is the appropriate word, when we men spring clean we really only move junk from one location to another. We compress, we never throw anything away.

You never threw anything away in Nam. Anything you could discard Charlie could use to hurt you; empty cans, bottles, nails, stick mags, faeces. You name it and cunning ol Charlie could build a bomb out of it. Yes, even shit. Sneaky bastards.

My pontificating over exactly which chore to do next was sadly put into context over the weekend with the disturbing sight on the news of strewn motorcycles across some byway down South. It was a stark reminder that whilst most of us will be in cruise control at the mo, someone, somewhere is in a rush on our roads and inevitably putting lives at risk.

This is a topic that’s become quite poignant to me with my best mate Coops recently buying a motor bike. I always knew he longed for something big and throbbing between his legs but a bike was a bit of a surprise, even for me and I don’t surprise easy. Just ask Charlie. Now Coops is as smart as they come and he is well aware of the dangers on the roads having had to police them for several years, so I don’t doubt his judgement – but bikes change people and the way they approach travel.

The way I see it, motor cyclists have two big dangers; themselves and other drivers, some of whom struggle to notice other vehicles around them with four wheels let alone two. Now if you start mucking around with the natural order of things, like speed limits, lane markings and peoples abilities to judge distant and speed then shit is going to get serious real fast.

One of the dead cyclist was said to be a methodical, calculating, experienced cyclist. No doubt and far be it from me to speak ill of someone who I never knew and is now the departed, but he tried passing eight cars in one hit on a short stretch of road! Not the best type of methodical calculation to be fucking up.

There is this great Andy Garcia and Christopher Walkin movie called ‘Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead’, which is definitely worth the $4 weekly hire down at Video Sleazy and apart from lending itself to the title of this particular blog, has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of this blog.

Unless you’re a dead cyclist.

Merry Christmas from the Gaylords.

Christmas Day is upon us and if you’re anything like me it’s not so much about the season of giving these days as it is the season for getting time off work!

But it’s all for the kids really, a fact that becomes frighteningly apparent only after you’ve had some. Of course it’s never apparent when you’re a kid because its just one big present takefest but when I look back on those days now I wonder just how my parents did it so impressively for so long – on less money and less opportunity too.

Our parents would buy us stuff throughout the year and not leave it till the last minute, mad farken rush that seems to befall most people these days. There was no such luxury of the late night suicide run to the mall back then either. Almost as soon as the tree went up at the beginning of December that would be a shitload of presents under it just screaming out for we excited kids to try and take a peek and blame any partly open presents on the cat. Of course nothing under the tree at that point would be for us kids but it drove you mad seeing that bloody pile every day.

Thankfully kids these days have four school terms, the one and only advantage of which is that they finish school quite late in the year meaning they don’t quite get the Chrissy bug till around the same time you do, about a week before the big day. Very little present tampering can be planned and executed in a week. Trust me.

My son – almost ten – has given up the ghost that is the Santa myth. He’s done the same with the Easter bunny too but strangely still holds on to the belief that the tooth fairy exists! It’s a shrewd bit of play by Junior because whereas the other two bring cheap presents and cheap chocolate – now that’s the story of Jesus – the mythical molar fairy brings cold hard cash and that is the shit, even when you’re ten.

My belief in the big fat fulla died out not long after I realised that it was mother who kept buying me Master of the Universe toys when I clearly stipulated in my letters to Santa that all he had to leave under the tree for me was a mega pile of G.I.Joes. I even sat on a lot of semi erect penises in the various Santa Grotto’s around the place asking for the same thing, whilst clearly in ear shot of my mother, who I now realise had that same glint in her eye that she always had when she played the ‘I’ll buy him something he doesn’t really want so I can claim ungratefulness when he gets disappointed’ game.

Did you know Santa wears red and white because Coca Cola put him in their colours for a promo once and he’s been in it ever since? How’s that for the best advertising campaign ever? Think about that next time you do that thing you like to do in the shower with the empty Coke bottle that saw you taken to A & E once where you had to use the excuse “I had finished drinking and just slipped on it after putting it down”.

So my Christmas day will be spent with the extended family and the food fest that is Christmas lunch at the in-laws. It’s a fantastic day with lots of presents, happy kids and booze on tap. Last year I decided to make a day of it and tried to drink the wife’s 18 year old train wreck of a cousin under the table. Little did I know back then that she was a certified alcoholic and I never stood a chance - by the time I was slurring my words she was just getting warmed up, so needless to say my day ended with a comatose power nap on the couch and a shirt dowsed in dribble.

I did have quite the insightful discussion though, whilst inebriated, with the wife’s other 18 year old cousin and just how much porn he surfed whilst locked away in his room all day. It was one of those discussions that always seem to be louder than it actually was, probably because the room had gone quiet. I also questioned him at length as to what the two gauges on the dash of his pimped out motor actually did and what was the point given that we can all only do 100kmh on the open road?

I don’t recall him giving me much of an answer but that might have been down to the fact he was half way down the hill driving it away when I asked. It’s true what they say you know, excess alcohol does slow down your reactions….

The father-in-law loved it; he had been working on me for years to turn in a performance like that in front of the Aunties. His theory is if you can’t get pissed on Christmas day when can you aye? It’s a theory I’m beginning to see the benefits of and lets be honest, rules are meant to be broken – that’s why my wife and I don’t use the ‘safety word’ any more.

Anyhoo, Merry Christmas to you all and I trust you’ll have a safe one. I’m off to see if there is any G.I.Joes wrapped up under the tree for me this year. I’ll blame the partly open presents on the boy and if that doesn’t stick, the cats.

The Dog Has Bigger Balls Than I

Another moment of groundbreaking television took place last night when, right slap bang in the middle of your average households meal time we were bought the news item on Muzza, the dog that had his man berries removed. Which in itself is nothing to report on but just in case you hadn't regurgitated all that you'd eaten at this stage, we got to see him have implants tacked on in their place.

Now I could start on a serious thing about just how this shit gets on the news ahead of any number of world events that are far more newsworthy, but I won’t. Instead, let me ask of you a few pertinent questions:

a) Do you walk around looking dog’s bollocks?
b) If you do would you then own up to being someone who checks out dogs balls by pointing out that you've just seen one that doesn't have any?
c) Even if you did do all of the above, do you think the dog that you've just seen without any gives a shit?

Who thinks this shit up, I mean really? Who decided that there was a market for silicon testes on dogs? Emasculated owners who worry that a lack of plums on their pets might reflect badly on people’s opinions of theirs, that’s who. Hey, these teabags wouldn't fly if there wasn't a market for them would they? And so there we have it, final proof then that pet worship has finally crossed the boundary of compulsive obsessive to downright disturbing.

The only thing that could make this any worse is if we were to presume that the reason the guy wants his four legged friend to have gnad implants is so that he can feel them banging against his............nah, lets not go there.

Now admittedly I'm awfully fond of our two cats but I'm not so obsessed with their well being that I'm about to attach a couple of ping pong balls between their legs. Especially not on our female cat and not just because she's a girl, but because it's just too fucken much. It's a sad day when our own physical neuroses are passed to our pets. What's next aye, false teets on bitches?

Maybe I'm just a little 'teste' about testes. I think it all harks back to the day I was visiting the type of medical facility - for reasons we won't go into - where a fella can whack one out into a cup and not only will he not get into trouble for it, he'll be thanked for not spilling any over the side! Incidentally the set up at these types of places is usually a lazy boy off in a small room with a selection of stick mags and a box of tissues. Tough break if print porn is not your thing but great news if you have a tissue fetish.

I actually stumbled upon the room when looking for the toilet because strangely enough it makes up part of the mens room - you walk through the mastabatorium to get to the pisser. Funny thing was after finding the reading material next to the tissues I didn't really need to go pee any more....

But the real highlight of the visit was the consultation with some doctor whose name escapes me – probably due to the traumatic moment I am about to describe - but I suspect it was either 'Fingers' or 'Peter File'. His party trick was a surprise teste inspection that he decided would be prudent 10 minutes into our consultation and even before I could quip something witty like 'Doc I thought you were crazy but now I can see you're nuts', he had mine in his hands which the bastard never washed before he started.

To add insult to injury he made some passing comment about them being smaller than usual but to this day I stand by my reasons for them being so which were threefold; it was cold in his office, I had a massive pube on and yours would be too if some guy you had only just met started fondling yours.

Maybe I should think about implants....

Why Seedy Santa Only Comes Once A Year

I've come to realise as an adult just why it is that Christmas comes only once a year; because it's a mission and a half to put up freakin Christmas trees!

I did ours the other night and I haven't been that ball deep in foliage sweating like a rapist since ‘Nam. Which I've had a few flashbacks to recently but then I always do this time of the year what with the high humidity, the hot nights and lots of Asian students about, all of whom I strongly suspect of having a hand grenade or AK47 concealed on their persons.

Why just the other day DougalMac and I were enjoying each others metro sexual company down at the lagoon and I was reminded of a similar idyllic setting we had encountered in Da Nang in '68. We'd come across a water hole amongst the hills and had taken to bathing. There we all stood, soaping each others backs all the while hoping that whoever held our single bar of soap didn't drop it, when out of the reeds snaked an advanced patrol of VC.

Quite why they didn't open up on us there and then has always been a mystery to us but we'd like to believe it was because that even they, with their narrow little eyes and communistic ideals, were moved by the poignancy of several hardened men taking the time to gently soap each other in a brief reprise from the madness of war.

Either that or they were awestruck by the length and girth of Lancey's M60 – and I don’t mean the one he'd left on the bank besides the pool.

Yep, someone was watching over us that day. Perhaps it was 'ol HeyZuez himself. He's the reason we have a Christmas after all, not that we should joke about it like Tui did last week with yet another of their billboards. Despite the harmless humour of it all - and it was one of the funnier Tui efforts in quite some time - somebody complained about it. That somebody was a Christian, proving yet again that a small religious minority in this country can't handle the jandal, quite possibly because they know that we know that their religion is a sham.

Not that complaining about Christmas is restricted to Jesus and his home boys, some folk have decided they don't like the giant Santa that has stood in central Auckland for the last 50 years because he has a long crooked index finger, which makes him look ‘seedy’. Now let’s get one thing straight, if he was bumming Rudolph whilst a topless Mrs Claus watches on then it could be claimed he was ‘seedy’, but a crooked finger...

Don’t you sometimes wish Christmas could be like it was when you were a kid with no responsibilities? My grandparents lived in an old Victorian house with ceilings as high as a P addict and every year Granddad would get in a real tree that only just fitted in the room. That sucker - the tree, not Granddad - would soon be covered in decorations, candy canes and so many lights that half the town had to sit in darkness whenever we switched them on. It seems over the top now - says the guy who just struggled to erect a 5 foot plastic tree from China - but that is what people did back in the day.

They didn’t do shopping malls packed to the brim though. Apparently Christmas shopping means only one thing at this time of the year; hard out five fingered discount time as professional shop lifters hit the shops en masse. Who knew there was such a thing aye? I mean we were good back in my College days but we would never have called ourselves ‘professionals’ but we would've practiced more if we knew we could make a career out of it!

I remember once spending almost an hour in Toy World once waiting to pinch as many G.I.Joes as my mate Brent’s bomber jacket would hold. I made like I was buying them for my little brother and even went to go so far as to joke with the owner that ‘they all look the same to me haha’. The fuck they did. I was hard core and I knew what I wanted and the moment the guy went out the back to check something I had more plastic down my pants than a lezzo with a strap on.

It almost went pear shaped though. No sooner had I got out the door than those Joes not tucked into my pants fell out the arse of Brent’s jacket and onto the pavement. Luckily the stores window display shielded me from view and I was able to kick them out of sight of the shop before picking them up and legging it all the way down the main street. I must’ve made quite the sight; a pubescent boy in an over sized jacket running down the street with G.I.Joes in hand and a small erection.

Now that’s seedy.

Back Slap the Smart Stack

It’s not always easy being the smartest guy in the room and occasionally even I have to stop myself from being sucked into a ‘there’s one born every minute’ moment. Like the other night after we’d watched a bit on the telly about the latest craze sweeping the nation, or at least the two schools shown playing it; Speed Stacking.

The game is as simple as time itself, or as the NZ web site of Speed Stacking describes it:

“Sport Stacking is an exciting individual and team sport where participants stack and unstack 12 specially designed plastic cups in pre-determined sequence.”

And it certainly looks exciting. The kids playing it were all cracking a fat over just how fast they could stack and unstuck the specially designed plastic cups, which must have adamantium or something in them because they cost $36 for a pack of 12! Fuck me; I was on board right up till that little gem nearly slipped under the radar and here I was thinking that maybe it was a nice cheap hobby for the youth of today.

And I was all set to buy my boy a set too until I dug a little deeper and realised that this little enterprise could be the biggest cash cow since some cheeky prick decided to bottle water and sell it. $36 gets you 12 plastic cups. With flames on them. Or camouflage (pink for the girls) and each cup carries the official WSSA approval mark, which is important because only Speed Stacks – the $36 dollar cups laced with Kryptonite and with flames on them - are the only cups permitted for use in WSSA sanctioned events.

Who knew there were WSSA sanctioned events aye? Who knew there was even a WSSA? Who even knows what the hell it stands for? No bugger, but for $36 you might just get to find out. The site makes a big deal about just how great the sport is for kids and offers great deals for schools who want to get on board, Destiny Church stylez.

First you ring up and order a free set of cups, just to get the juices flowing and then you really start paying through the starfish:

2. Order a StackMat & Timer for $50.

3. Order a Sport Pack (or equivalent products) to cater for your school or organisation (using an Instructors' Order Form). Anywhere between $500 - $900 per pack.

4. Encourage students to purchase their own equipment (using a Student Flyer, collated on a Standard Group Order Tally Sheet) and earn FREE Speed Stacks equipment for your school. Sets start at $36, remember? Throw in $25 for the manual (how hard can it be?) and the ‘How To’ DVD at $15 and it’s go time.

5. Consider the purchase of a Tournament Display. This is essential if you wish to run your own competitions or demonstrate at a large meeting. $220 for that bad boy.

But hey, what price ambidexterity aye? You're probably already pretty good at it. Do you play a musical instrument? Type on a computer? Play video games? Masturbate regularly? If you do, you're probably using both hands. The most important thing to do when sport stacking is to use BOTH hands. That doesn't mean picking up a cup with one hand and passing it to the other like when you’ve been playing with yourself all day and your wrist hurts, no. Each cup should be handled by only one hand. When you use both hands, you're using both sides of your brain and promoting right brain development which houses things like awareness, focus, creativity and rhythm.

And gullibility, although I couldn’t find mention of that on their site any where. The hard core can even become ambassadors in their area but only after they’ve submitted a questionnaire which asks them to detail ‘their vision for stacking in their area’ and has only three available answers to every question; ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘No but would like to!’. Seriously, I couldn’t make this shit up.

Speed Stacking is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. It’s a pastime that promotes coordination, determination and activity in our kids that doesn’t involve a screen, a keyboard or a joystick of some sort. But it’s no coincidence that if you stack three of the specially designed plastic cups on top of each other you get a pyramid, which is what this little enterprise is, a pyramid scheme to make shit loads of money for the dude at the top.

I’ll buy my son some cups alright, but they’ll be from the $2 shop and they won’t have flames on them, or pink camo, or the official WANKA seal, but they’ll do the same job and he'll have just as much fun.

And I’ll still be the smartest guy in the room.



The specially designed plastic cup, with lithuim and kevlar coating. And flames painted on.

Dizzy Is As Dizzy Does

Just when my faith in the common sense of young women today is restored, some dizzy bitch comes along and destroys it again.

A few weeks ago, Hayley Westenra, all round good girl and New Zealand songstress took a very public stand against her record company’s attempts to sex her up by giving her an ‘image makeover’. They reckoned that she had reached an age where it was okay to start dressing like a slut in order to sell more CDs. Hey if it worked for the Welsh version of our Hayley - Charlotte Church - then it would work for Westenra, right?

Only it didn't work for Church because the people buying her classical CDs were predominantly good, wholesome folk who bought the CDs for their musical content and not their soft porn covers. What music companies seem to not get is that the kind of guy who likes an artist because she wears skimpy outfits is going to get his fix by downloading photo shopped pics of the artist wearing little or no clothes, not by buying their latest CD.

Church also decided to go main stream and started singing pop songs that sounded no different than every other manufactured one hit wonder around at the time. Not surprisingly the album sales dried up not long after and for a while there she was perhaps better known for being the girl that used to sing beautifully but now dresses like a skank and roots a well known rugby player.

Church doesn’t sing so much these days, probably on account of her chain smoking, but she does host a successful TV show in the UK, is good for a few controversial comments and still roots a well known rugby player.

Thankfully our Hayley had the common sense and self belief to tell the record label where to shove their proposed sexing up of her. As she so aptly put it "Occasionally, I have had to stand my ground on image issues. I am not a tarty person and I don't wear those clothes when I am out, so I don't wear them to perform or for interviews either."

Her record label Universal says that talks about her image have always been age appropriate, meaning if they could have tarted her up before the age of 21, they would have.

So Hayley restored my faith in young women and had me thinking that maybe they weren’t all Charlotte Church wannabe’s. But then I saw the story this week of the young girl from Massey that was photographed topless by a man posing as a photographer from a modelling agency. The oldest trick in the book that one. I’ve tried it several times myself but I didn’t strike gold like this guy did.

Now admittedly hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there were several clear cut chances for our young heroine to realise that alarm bells were ringing fucking loud and clear, but clearly the allure of being the next Hills girl was a little too strong for common sense to play a part in proceedings.

The girl was approached in a mall where she worked, offered $500 for the photo shoot and a ‘contract’ posted to her. I suspect if she had turned it over she might have found it to be written on the back of a Weetbix packet, but it was only after she had signed it did she start to notice that things were getting ‘weird’.

The guy took her to a hotel, rather than a modelling studio. Ding ding. The friend that she’d taken for support wasn’t allowed in the room with them whilst Hugh Hefner took his shots. Ding ding. Rather than using a flash camera with a big fuck off zoom lens that one usually associates with a professional, Hugh pulled a dirty digital camera from his bag. Ding ding. Ever the gentleman, Hugh had our girl jump straight into a skimpy bikini and start the provocative posing. With a lollipop. Ding fucken ding. Somewhat surprisingly at this stage, he asked her to take her top off. There was no alarm bell ringing at this stage, it was a full blown air raid siren! Not entirely sure if she should or not, Paris was only convinced when Hugh told her that flashing her boobies would ‘open up options for her’. So she did.

Realising her mistake a few days later, quite possibly when she found she wasn’t in the pages of the latest Vogue like she had been promised, Paris told her father. He contacted the Five-O and surprise surprise, discovered the man had falsified his name and the modelling company. Well I for one didn’t see that coming did you? It’s almost as if the semi he undoubtedly had whilst taking the pics wasn’t a dead give away.

Poor Paris is beside herself, of course. "The photos could be on the Internet for all I know," she said.

Somehow I don’t think she’s going to be too disappointed if they are.

The Summer Time Perv

Summer it would seem, has well and truly arrived. You know it has when your washing gets so dry and stiff you have to wet it again to fold the bloody stuff.

I don't think it's so hot that people need to be driving around topless though like some folk round here have been. We hardly live in the Mojave Desert and last time I checked, most cars have air con, or windows, those things that can be wound down. Now I can understand driving with your shirt off if you're getting in your car beside the beach to drive further down the beach, but to pick the kids up from school? I don't think so. Think of the children for Christ sake. They don’t want to see middle aged male areola and never do I.

Remember how about 15 years ago some nerdy folk used to harp on about us all using air con less in order to save the ozone and how we all ignored them because we loved getting out of our ice cold cars and walking into ice cold shopping malls? Now we have global warming and we wonder just why the planet is heating up and why we have to drive around topless. Go figure.

The female version of driving topless is to walk everywhere in short shorts. I think that quite possibly every female member of the student body has started wearing them at the college I have to drive by every morning to drop my son off at school. Not that I'm complaining because I seem to be immune these days to the site of trim, taught, tanned teenie legs, possibly because my eyesight is such that I can just make out the back of my hand on the steering wheel, but lesser drivers are not. You can tell by the way they weave all over the road trying their best to take in both sides of the view at once. Somebody needs to put up warning signs around the place before some unsuspecting pedestrian gets parked on.

Summer perving is a rite of passage for any young man. It's usually the masturbation preparation period of a fella's life that precedes the period where he discovers just what words work best to find the free porn when using Google. It's about this time of year that car loads of sweaty young guys will spend the day to-ing and fro-ing between beaches around the place, parking up every now and then when an opportunity presents itself to perv at older girls in bikinis. Despite the sweltering temperature, none of the good ol boys will actually get out of the car on account of the massive hard on that all this girlskin on show will inevitably cause. Hey, we've all been there.

I have actually. I remember spending such an afternoon in the back of Jase’s very cramped RX7 at Days Bay one afternoon. There the four of us sat, with our legs bent, getting an eyeful of the two hottest bodies on the beach that fortuitously happened to be laid out right in front of us. Any doubts we might have had as to whether the girls cottoned on to us were gone the moment they started to leave and took a detour to come over to the car just to tell us we were 'fucken perverts'. A bit rude of them I thought. Their magnificent bosoms and pert arses distracted us from the very panoramic harbour view that lay beyond them but did they hear us complaining? No, they did not.

Still, not quite as bad as the time Bruiser was driving and missed the lights turning green at the intersection on account of two blonde's in bikini tops crossing the road several metres in front of us. He might have gotten away with a lazy perv too, had it not been for the girls in the car beside us, who after witnessing that he no longer needed hands to hold the steering wheel in place, tooted, waking him from his three-way fantasy. Jealous bitches.

Personally, I don't see the point in looking longer than a second or two, or even more than once. Admittedly it's a very primal thing for us fellas to stare like we do and it simply comes down to the fact that we like to watch, sport usually, but if it's an attractive girl wearing very little you can be assured that will usually do it nine times out of ten. The one guy who wouldn’t is gay. But that doesn’t mean it has to be blatant or disturbing, which it seems to be as men get older and perhaps of more concern, is that girls flaunting it get younger.

And let’s be honest, a little attention can be very flattering. Hey if I actually looked like Titan from Gladiators like I like to think I do, I'd be strutting around in a thong too hoping to catch the eye of everyone, including the gay guy. There's no harm in looking as they say but fellas, take it from me, when you're parked up at the lights and sex on legs walks by, just look the once aye?

Shakespeare: More Memorable Than A Nut Dump

Shocking news this week that some schools are considering dropping Shakespeare from their curriculum. Whilst they’re at it they’re going to reduce the basic content in maths, history and business studies, in order to make subjects easier. Instead of actually teaching, these schools are going to group all the kids together on day one and let them spend their entire school lives alone, smearing excrement on one another.

Who are they hoping to make the subjects easier for I wonder? Pupils who can’t concentrate on anything that can’t be squeezed onto the screen of their mobile phones or deadbeat teachers who spent most of their three years at TeaColl rolling and smoking mega spliffs between bouts of fornication with one another?

Schools are no longer the hard arse institutions they were in my day, we all know that, but I think there needs to be a serious case of hardening the fuck up here and learn to make subjects that aren’t always interesting, unforgettable. Life, on the whole, is hard. When you eventually stop spending most of your time playing with yourself and finally get a job, you soon realise just why it was that you were made to sit through things like math, business studies and Shakespeare.

Yes, today’s youth are easily distracted and have the attention span of a goldfish, but that doesn’t mean we as parents and teachers have to share the same lack of foresight that our children do. It’s all a little too convenient for my liking, deciding that because little Tarquin doesn’t quite get to grips with Macbeth that we should decide to can it all together. Fuck it, let’s forget schooling all together and lets wrap him in bubble wrap and have him play all day on a trampoline with safety nets up the side.

I watched some ugly kid on the news the other night try and justify her disinterest in all things Shakespearean by trying to claim that it was a whole different language. And text speak isn’t? Yes it’s a little fruity, but by dismissing Shakespeare because you can’t be arsed figuring out the prose is like telling me you didn’t get Matrix Reloaded after watching the first one because there wasn’t as much fighting. Mental note to yourself: Don’t even start with me if that meant you gave up on Revolutions.

I can honestly recall more now about the two Shakespearean plays I studied 12 years ago than I can about the last dump I took. Admittedly it was nutty and thus hurt a little on it’s way out, but that’s all I remember. The memories I have of King Lear descending into madness and of Macbeth spiralling into self destruction are as vivid as anything that I’ve watched on YouTube and more thought provoking now than most movies I watch. That’s solely because the teachers that taught us, like Mrs Thorby, had manberries of steel and made them jump from the page and do just that.

Not that it happened over night mind you. My first foray into Macbeth was about as fun as that nutty stool I mentioned a few moments ago. I really struggled with it right up till about three nights out from essay deadline day, where, in the wee small hours of the morning I turned out one of my most accomplished works ever to see the light of day. I did an essay on the loyalty of MacDuff and it was so good the entire English faculty thought I had plagiarised it – and this was in the days before the internet! It was the second highest scoring essay over both 6th and 7th forms that year, one of only three A+’s handed out and catapulted me into the stratosphere of scoring that is intelligent girls, who were all of a sudden interested in me because I was clued up on Shakespeare.

Unfortunately lightning didn’t strike twice; well at least not for my best bud Coops because the essay I wrote him to hand in as his own work only scored an A.

So how do we save Shakespeare? Well a good start would be for school boards and principals to put the pressure on staff to actually do the job they’re hired to do. Too often we blame the kids, who lets face it, are on the whole, complete wasters these days, but there’s no surprise in that. Just because you can’t translate Shakespeare into text speak it shouldn’t mean that you put it into the ‘too hard’ basket.

Shakespearean plays are more than just the written word. That’s what stoner teachers too afraid to teach them and what kids who can write entire sentences with vowels simply don’t get. They are timeless and poignant because of the characters, the tragedies, the emotions and the actions that are behind the words. Shakespeare’s plays prepare you for life because they reflect life. It’s that simple.

The irony of all this talk of giving The Bard the flick is that the schools contemplating it might replace his works with other written works such as blogs. Who knows, maybe they’ll even read mine, they would be silly not to really, but I’ll tell you something for free; I wouldn’t be here writing this today if it weren’t for my getting to grips with Shakespeare all them years ago.

Name Calling Never Hurt Nobody

My son has recently joined a Cub group. They sent us an email the other day telling me that this week they'd be going kayaking. My knee jerk reaction was 'The fuck they are...' but then that's my reaction to most things. Once I had calmed down I soon realised that that's why things like Cubs and Scouts exist; to give red blooded young boys the opportunity to do the things their lame metro sexual Dads don’t, like kayaking.

I probably wouldn't think to take my boy kayaking because a) we don't have a kayak which is somewhat essential and b) unfortunately I've become one of those limp wristed Dads who stops to think what might happen to his only child if things were to turn to shit. I haven't gone so far as to buy one of those trampolines with the safety nets around the outsides mind you; I mean what’s the point in those aye? Falling off the trampoline whilst being suplexed by the big bastard from next door is a rite of passage, if the good lord didn't mean for us to fall off trampolines then he wouldn't have made them with four foot high legs.

We had a massive trampoline as kids, my sister and I. It was so it could have quite possibly been Olympic standard size and man did we get some hang time on that sucker. The first incarnation had on it some heavy duty canvas, made from the same stuff Granddads tents were always made of. Heavy duty army issue stuff that whilst somewhat water resistant, actually absorbed the rain like a sponge. It held strong right up till the day it tore during a mid arseplant of mine. Still, even right up till the end it was hard core enough to break my fall so that I only cried like a girl for a little bit after it happened.

We have one out the backyard these days too and I am pleased to report that it has no safety sides and is regularly used for an all in neighbourhood royal rumble. Wrestling doesn't seem to have caught on with my son’s generation quite as much as it did with mine. Maybe it has something to do with that ridiculous rumour that it's all choreographed. We never once choreographed any of the summer slams that used to go down every morning before form time in our third form year. See that's how friendships were really formed in our formulative years, by being tagged in by a guy who had just super slammed some unsuspecting class mate.

Occasionally things got out of hand. Like the time Big Rob slammed equally Big Brent up against the column heater on the back wall of the classroom. Who would've thought that the combined weight of two strapping young 13 year olds would have been enough to rip it off the wall aye? How could they have not considered that when designing prefab classrooms I wonder?! That particular move bought the entire male population of our class a written warning and a school lifetime wrestling ban. Not that it stopped the rivalry. Coops and Brent, often best mates, were often wrestling with each other in a way that only a psychologist who specialises in homoerotic behaviours amongst young men could explain.

It usually started or finished with name calling. Coops was known as the 'Kung Fu Man' on account of his martial arts interests while Brent was the 'Aussie Bumfucker' on account of his being Australian. This moniker was almost always followed by a physical gesture that can be best described as a squatting man inserting an eight foot dildo in his anus, just in case anyone in earshot was unsure as to the meaning of the term 'bumfucker'. Coops was always an expressive young man with his gestures and still is to this very day.

Brent's unfortunate nickname was right up there with Daphne Blackballs. She was an older girl that lived in our 'Hood back in my younger years who was very dark skinned. Being the multicultural lot we were back then and accepting of all colours and creeds we were quick to point out the obvious. She had quite the potty mouth too as I recall, but that might have been down to the fact that every time we saw her we teased her over the colour of the male genitalia she didn't actually have.

But I was amused and quietly chuffed to learn that some things don't change. My son and his mates were calling each other pet names at their cub meet the other night. I couldn't quite work out who Patricia was because there were no girls in the room, until he told me afterwards that that was their nickname for Patrick.

Admittedly there were no Kung Fu Men or Daphne Blackball's, but poor old Zach is called Zach Efron which in this day and age is as good a burn as it gets no matter what the age.

Elections and Erections.

So the national erection has come and gone and just like ‘ol Grandad it will be another three years before we have another one. It struck me whilst taking part and later watching the drama unfold, that the national erection is quite possibility the only event untouched these days by gratuitous sexual exploitation. I watched almost five hours of election night coverage and there wasn't even so much of a see through white blouse.

Hardly surprising given the subject matter I suppose, I couldn't imagine that even at celebratory post election bash they would be much chance of pulling. Not that I've ever been to one but it seems the average age at these things is 50ish, but hey who knows, all the swingers I know are 50+ so maybe it’s one big car key party and as more and more young people get involved you can be rest assured it will be only a matter of time before its wall to wall T & A. How else will they keep their attention otherwise?

It would've been wall to wall cock over at the Erotica Expo, the second biggest show in town this weekend. We did plan to go, but I only just managed to extract myself from bed to vote, let alone spend a couple of hours walking around the Events Centre trying to make like I didn't have an erection the whole time. Incidentally, one of the best ways to hide a stiffy whilst standing is to lean back against a wall and rest one of your feet half way up the wall, thus creating a casual, but cool stance that hides even the fullest woody. How many guys were up against the wall at the Expo I wonder?

My dodging the sexpo wasn't due to me being frigid at the thought of handling an eight foot strap on dickie or perving at those that use them in the course of making their living, far from it. But I've had a cold all week and unlike those that call in sick as soon as they get the slightest head rush when getting out of bed in the morning, I tried to work through it for far too long.

There's nothing quite like having a cold when the weather is great outside. If feeling like shit wasn't enough then it's hot everywhere just to remind you what you're missing. Just to top it off I spent too long outside last week when I wasn't sick and got sunburnt for my troubles. So now I'm burnt, sick and miserable, trying to crack a fat over the election coverage because I’ve missed the sexpo. What a winner.

I was genuinely surprised not to see the name 'OBAMA, Barack' on my voting form on Saturday. I looked everywhere and it clearly wasn't there so I wrote it at the bottom and ticked it. I hope they've counted it. It did seem like America's election earlier in the week was the world's election didn't it? Maybe all them uptight types who think we're too Americanised really have a point. Right up till the final days of our election I couldn't help but notice that we we're still getting more coverage from the States than we were of the Helen and John show.

Obviously them electing a cheeky darky was groundbreaking stuff but let's face it, Mr Sulu from Star Trek could've been running against McCain and have won it I reckon and he's a fictional character. George Takkei, the homosexual Asian man who played him probably wouldn't have done so well had he run as himself though. It's a uniform thing really.

Sarah Palin was the only deviation from the bullshit that gushed from the Republican War Machine but even she knew she was on a hiding to nothing with Grandpa McCain and eventually started putting the boot in - or at least the high heeled stiletto, the kinky bitch. Palin’s presence in the American campaign show wasn't a complete loss though, at least not for the porno Palin lookalikes who were quick to put on the dark framed glasses, tailored suits and do ‘Joe the Plumber’! Google that one if you dare.

Back at home it was the end of an era with the Teflon Don - Winston Peters - getting the boot. Winnie was always good for a laugh but he backed the wrong horse in appealing to the Grey Power crowd like he has done all these years. The problem with having a rent-a-crowd whose average age is in the high 70's is that they're more likely to cark it between elections than your average punter.

For the record I voted Green and not because I like hairy women and retro minge. It was really the only vote I could make on good conscience because you wait, in three years time we’ll be gagging to get rid of John too and the cycle will begin again...

Fugazi Facebook Friends

I finally did this week what I’ve been putting off for a while; I removed ‘friends’ from Facebook that weren’t actually friends at all but status seeking people I used to go to school with. It was a decision I didn’t make lightly because I for one have been burnt by the Facebook burn that is removing ‘mates’ without their knowledge, but enough was enough.

One guy I went through my entire school life with added me as a mate. He and I did time on the dark dangerous Naenae streets where blood is thicker than water and people died for the colour of a headband, but fuck it, I was friend 264 so clearly he didn’t think to look me up when he first signed up to the ‘ol FB. I don’t doubt he’s still a stand up guy – he is by all the outstanding causes and groups he likes to add himself to – but we haven’t said boo to each other even after we’ve been added so what’s the point aye?

Life’s too short to spend all day trying to read through the actions of people you used to know just so you can see the ones you do. I signed up to Facebook to a) post anonymous nude pics of myself on young girl’s profiles and b) to catch up with mates overseas. Now I‘m as curious as the next guy to see how the hot girl from school turned out, but once it’s obvious that she isn’t then it’s highly likely that you’ll have as much in common with her now, as you did back then – bugger all. And you can bet she’s not going to appreciate your nude shots no matter how tastefully done they are.

Apparently you can’t post objectionable material on Facebook. But if I post nude pics on the page of someone who wants to see them i.e. Dougal Macca and we make them private so that only we can view them, are they really objectionable? If a fat girl falls in the woods is it really still funny?

A psychologist from one of Europe’s biggest mental health recovery organisations believes that at least 10% of Facebook’s 110 million users are addicted to the site. I think some of them appear upon my list of friends actually. He reckons that:

“The acquisition of friends is like any other fix but it’s competitive. You judge yourself by how many friends you have online. You go out of your way to amass friends and that means people bend out of shape and become something they are not.

To appear successful, you go and put yourself in credit card debt by buying clothes and handbags. If you’re an addict you need to do things to fix yourself and make yourself feel better. People in recovery look for ways of being ‘fixed’ and these websites can act the same way.”

NB: The clinic will help you rid your addiction if you’re part of the ten percent – but at a cost. I’ll save you the cash right now – turn the PC off, go outside and get a life. Simple.

Now eternal optimists and self help gurus will try and tell you that you can never have enough friends. They’re also the type likely to try and tell you that drinking your own pee is ‘cleansing’, so there you go. I don’t necessarily disagree with the first statement but there is such a thing as real friends who you see, contact or interact with regularly and Facebook friends who can be virtual at best.

One of my ex class mates tried adding me the other day, as friend 207 but I had learnt my lesson from the last time she tried something similar, on Old School Mates or some gay site like that which is the poor cousin to the likes of Facebook and Bebo. She had emailed me only to garner a response which I duly did and I never heard from her again. Until the other day but now the shoe is on the other foot and it’s me making the decisions. Luckily for me she is not as hot as she once was so the decision was easy; delete!

So if you’re reading this and you were a Facebook friend and find that you’re now not, I make no apologies. I really just got tired of my profile being fill of you talking shit with your mates, none of whom I know or care about and you inviting me to join groups or applications that I know or care about. You may have even let yourself go since College and thus my interest in maintaining a virtual friendship dropped considerably after viewing your pics.

But if you want to add me as a friend again maybe I could send you some of mine that I have on file…

Halloween Cometh...

That classic Kiwi tradition – Halloween – is just around the corner and that’s usually the cue for a mega piss up with your mates. Sometimes that even involves getting in costume for the night and in case you were dead set devoid of ideas we’ve rustled up a few that should cut it on the night and a few that probably won’t…..

Superheroes – always a crowd pleaser.





Pulp Culture – movies & comics, the classic geek look.





Freaks & Geeks – there’s freaky and there’s naughty, sometimes you can even pull off the much desired ‘freaky naughty’ look. But it’s a fine line between success and failure with this one.





Goth – No explanation required.




Risqué – There’s nothing quite like being anatomically correct.




Just Plain Wrong..






Just Plain Right..



Full Retard – no one ever won an award for going full retard. Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, Rainman, look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic. Sure. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump. Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and he won a ping-pong competition? That ain’t retarded. But this guy has gone too far…

What Price Life?

If you’ve been following the Nia Glassie murder / manslaughter trial then you’ve probably already heard several good reasons as to why we should have the death penalty in this country. If you’re one of those limp dicked individuals who doesn’t care about stuff like this because it hasn’t happened to you, then lets recap:

The three grown men charged with her murder:

• Would regularly punch, kick and generally assault the three year old.

• Used her for wrestling practice, body slamming and jumping on her.

• Would hold her up to the ceiling by an appendage and drop her.

• Hung her from a clothesline and spun it until she fell off.

• Put her in a tumble dryer until she bled.

If you’re not remotely sickened by anything I’ve listed above then you have a lot more in common with these scrotes than I. Let’s make no bones about it, this was not your ‘accidentally tripped into the door’ type of family violence, this was sadistic fucked up shit dished out by animals with absolutely no place in our society.

See I believe that if you choose to step out of the boundaries that society deems acceptable then you cease to belong to society. These three, along with the fourth charged with manslaughter and the mother who did nothing, also charged with manslaughter; do not belong in our society. We don’t want them or their offspring – heaven forbid we give them the chance to father offspring.

Sure everyone makes mistakes; everyone’s nicked something from the corner diary or stolen milk from a letterbox. I got caught shoplifting at Foodtown when I was at College, the in store detective caught me with a fistful of TV Hits magazines down my baggy jeans. Well actually they were Coops jeans, the fact they were ten times too big just meant I could conceal heaps more stuff in them.

I was disappointed at myself for being caught, mostly because I had picked the guy for being an in store detective but I figured if he didn’t actually see me pocket the goods he couldn’t hit me up for them. But I figured wrong. Luckily the Cop who took me down to the station didn’t look in the backpack I was wearing because it was full of stolen merchandise, thanks mainly to my partner in crime them days. Sam Momeny, the Iranian boy who would’ve had a hot younger sister if it wasn’t for the fact that she had to start shaving the mo a few years before he did.

Luckily when the Cop dropped me home no one was home for him to tell. A few weeks later I had a distinctly bad feeling about a brown enveloped letter that arrived addressed to my parents. I opened it before they got home and luckily it was a note from the Five-0 detailing my misdemeanour. They never found out in the end but getting a two year trespass from the place where most of my mates worked pretty much ended my life of crime. Like most people I grew up and started to value things in life. These wankers don’t even value life itself.

What’s the worst that can happen to these pricks? Well hopefully they get theirs in prison but failing that what’s the harshest thing our justice system can dish out on them? Fuck all, that’s what. These guys will be back on the street in 10 years time and lets hope breaking straight into the living rooms in the dead of night of those civil libertarians who oppose the death penalty because they believe that sub humans like these three can be rehabilitated.

I think it’s time to start sending the message to guys like these three and Liam Reid, the spectacularly tattooed fuckwit who is on trail for the rape and murder of a deaf woman who probably never ever sensed him until it was too late, that their actions will not pass without consequence anymore. Reid would go on to rape another woman nine days later and despite overwhelming DNA evidence denies both. But then he would because he believes in his own mind that he is beyond reproach, that he’s done nothing wrong, that he not bound by societies rules.

Let’s do the world a favour as far as guys like Reid are concerned and when the guilty verdict is handed down – and it will be – let’s not even bother about anything else but taking them out the back of the courthouse and putting a bullet in their head.

I for one am happy to pull the trigger.

The Blue Thunder Root

Now, I love my wife, but if she were to up and tell me one day that we would be spending some family time standing around the local roundabout waving placards with her name on it just so she could get elected to parliament like the local National candidate did this past weekend, then I suspect Mr Jug Cord would have to pay a visit.

There are just some places you don’t expect to see advertising hoardings and a manic roundabout is just one of those places. How many votes is she going to get by distracting people there anyway? She might get the odd pity vote given that she has wheeled out everyone in the immediate family even dear old Dad who had to prop himself against the ‘Remember to Indicate’ sign, but I think, on the whole, no one is going to give a flying fuck.

KFC have learnt that lesson. Their six foot ‘Now Hiring’ window erection has failed to attract the ‘eligible for the minimum wage’ audience it targeted. Granted it’s big and bright enough for the text generation to see it, but they’re too busy texting whilst navigating the roundabout to see it.

My neighbour’s son is just such a genius. He starts his rotary turbo up several hours before he plans to depart and leaves it rumbling in the garage whilst he nips back in to have a quick jimmy over how sweet it sounds. I had a mate who used to do the same thing with his motorbike. He reckoned the manufacturers recommended it. Fuck me it does.

Now it’s not like we're talking about Granddad’s old black and white telly that actually needed half an hour for the cathode ray tube to warm up before you actually saw anything; no a motorbike or car for that matter is a highly engineered piece of kit – it’s made to go as soon as you turn the fricken key. Quite frankly if the guy who was selling me a motorbike told me it needed half an hour warm up time then alarm bells would be ringing my friend.

Did you see the doco on Mechaphilia the other night? Fantastic stuff. Mechaphilia is the sexual attraction to machines. There are only 12 known sufferers in the world, or at least bold enough to admit publicly that they like sticking their willy up the exhaust pipe of their motor. Not that there seems to be much suffering going on either, it looked like they were quite enjoying it given the blurred out images that these guys post on the world wide intraweb every day.

The programme focused mainly on one guy in The States (where else aye?) who likes to jizz all over his 1970s VW Beetle, or any car for that matter. His claim to fame was that he had given the original Blue Thunder helicopter a quick shafting the day he was left alone with it on a sightseeing trip. Unfortunately the Blue Thunder chopper no longer exists as it crashed in the early nineties, quite possibly because the avionics were filled with mans milk, who knows? Needless to say it was only a matter of hours before the British film crew had footage of him whacking one out over their four wheel drive.

Perhaps as a wind up they took this guy to a huge car show to gauge his reaction, needless to say he cracked one the whole time and proceeded to perform some pretty heavy frottage on anything with four wheels. How his old corduroys contained his excitement I’ll never know but it was certainly there on show for all to see.

I suspect my neighbour is a closet Mechaphiliac. In fact most boy racers would have to be wouldn’t they? Deep down I can imagine they’d all like to jam the ‘ol chopper between the seats and lube their ride. Both my neighbours – mother and son – like to toot as they leave, every farken time and they come and go and they come and go a lot. Perhaps it’s a signal that they have infact left. Perhaps they don’t actually talk to each other and thus communication is by car horn only. Perhaps it’s a sign that the streaming porn can start and / or the Mechaphilia postings can begin?

Perhaps they’re just annoying bastards.

How To Win An Election.

You know summer is well and truly around the corner when masses of nubile young women take to the streets in the early evening, running, whilst wearing very little. Consequently its around this time that the reported instances of young male drivers having accidents due to "sun strike" skyrockets. Now I've heard firm, perky nungas called a lot of things in my time but 'sun strike' is a new one on me too.

Not that all the running eye candy on show at this time of year is solely for the benefit of the heterosexual man. I passed a particularly buff individual who was so cut I was tempted to pull over and offer him the box of plasters form the medical kit in the boot. He was running with his top off, not because it was hot enough too, just because he could. See running at this time of year is not so much about getting fit as it is 'me me me, look the fuck at me'!

It's also about now that we non runners dust of the barbecue and begin the enjoyable task of chiselling off the crud that has been caked on the hot plate since the last time we used it. We did ours on the weekend, although admittedly Mrs ClubDes did ours - I was out running with my top off.

We had some friends over and talk eventually turned to politics like it does in election year, the only time anyone in this country talk’s politics. Even then the discussion was decidedly un-political in that we focused on personality, not policy. Why is it that here in NZ we are more concerned with who is coaching the All Blacks than whom is running the country?

National seem destined to win and would have to do something monumentally stupid to fuck it up. Still this is politics, there's plenty of time for that to happen. They all have that smug bastard look about them and have even started talking about life after they've won the election. Now if there's one thing I hate it's a poor winner.

Now I'm not advocating one party over another - I lament the fact that we are remarkably devoid of plausible political alternatives in this country - but I hate the thought of one pack of wankers inheriting a victory that they never really earnt simply because they're offering the biggest bribe. Is 'who's going to give me the best tax cut' really a responsible way to choose your next government?!

One of my social study teachers ran a class election back in my college days. Isn't it weird how all the male social study teachers were strangely effeminate? On recollection all of ours were real pink jersey wearing types and my god did we roast them for it. None of them ever had any control over the class and Bruiser and I would take to playing games like who could call out the rudest word without getting caught, or the natural progression from that game, who could summon the teach with the rudest name. The art of it was to be just loud enough for him to know that you were calling him yet at the same time stifling the delivery just enough to muffle the fact that you had just called him 'greatbighardcock'.

Anyhoo, the whole class election thing really kicked off. I led the B'Stard Party, so named after a Rik Mayall character on TV at the time. Seeing as how I had the biggest chopper I naturally had all the lads behind me. Or it could have been that our campaign was built on the promise that we'd take the party logo stickers off the pink bits of the Penthouse centrefolds that doubled as our party posters. Yeah it might've been that. We campaigned for shorter skirts on the girls and longer lunchtimes, you know, standard stuff. The girls had split into two cliques and as is always the case when that happens with sheilas, shit started getting personal.

After an initial ballot we boys just about had the numbers to rule alone, but not quite. The bigger of the girls cliques, lead by the chick with the biggest mouth funnily enough, were a close second, close enough to rule out the other clique. Because neither side had enough to rule outright we had another ballot, one that 'ol bigmouth thought she'd win easily because the girls would side with her in a show of vaginal solidarity.

Only she thought wrong. Her slagging off the other clique came back to haunt her and she went down in flames and being the graceful loser she was - this was the same girl that would fake debilitating injuries in the final stage of every 100 meter race she wasn't winning on every athletics day - packed a sook and never spoke to me again.

The irony is that same girl tried to add me as a friend on Facebook the other day. My response? Delete! Oh and we removed the party logo stickers too. What can I say? We were a political party that stuck by its pre election promises....

What's In A Name?

All my life I’ve had people mis-spell or generally stuff up my last name in one way or another. My last name is not common, but then nor is it a breakaway Russian state either; it’s just not one you see every day.

It’s still English mind you. It wasn’t like I was one of those Asian kids who’s last name was infact their first name which never got used anyway, so you called them by their middle name which also turned out to be the province they were from. Nor is it like my Tokelauan mate Dan, whose father’s English name came about after he originally came over here for a rugby trip and never went home. He and the rest of the team spread out all over the Manawatu – so as to avoid detection from the immigration authorities - and called themselves whatever town they were living in. Thus his last name is Levin.

Teachers at school were forever fucking up my last name. Funny how it was not cool for them to be pulled up on their poor comprehension of the written word, but if it was me stuffing up my reading then the whole friggen class got to hear about it. Most of the time I think they did it on purpose just to piss me off. It’s all part of that mental war game that teachers like to play from the moment you walk in the room. It starts with name calling and ends with rhetorical questions that you answer. Before you know it you’re outside the principal’s office for half a day. True story. Who knows at age 13 what the fuck a rhetorical question is anyway?

But most of the time I put it down to lazy eye syndrome, which is not the same as ‘glad eye’ which is what the poo chick at work gives you across the room after a few wines on a Friday night. It’s like when that same poo chick sends you that spam email that has all the adjoining words taken out of it, but yet somehow your brain can still read it. Only in my case it was bored shitless teachers reading an N when it should have been a W. I took to writing it in bold most of the time, and several sizes bigger than the rest of my surname just so they would get it right. I think in all fairness it just egged the fuckers on.

Still they’re not as bad as the fat bugger on the plane who came up to me one time because he had spotted my name in big letters across the back of the football top I was wearing. He asked if my name was spelt with an N because his was. He showed me his boarding pass and he was not wrong I tell you, his name was spelt with a N. Pity mine wasn’t.

But by College I was well use to having an identity crisis regarding my name. Back when I was about ten I used to go and stay with my father in Tauranga. Incidentally it was his family name that would later give me all the grief in life. I should’ve seen the writing on the wall when not long after this story took place he pissed of to the other side of the world never to be seen or heard from again. Nice one Dad, you tit.

I used to introduce myself to the neighbourhood kids as some other Christian name, because mine was never quite cool enough. Imagine their surprise when they’d knock on the same door I disappeared into at the end of each day and ask my Dad if ‘Steve’, ‘Dave’ or ‘Ian’ was home, only for him to tell them to piss off as there was no one living there by that name.

It all came to a head the day they spotted me behind him. I rolled my eyes at Dad as if to say ‘these guys are on crack or summit, why else would they be asking for someone you’ve never heard of?’ When he looked away I rolled my eyes at them as if to say ‘My Dad is on crack or summit, why else would he not know his own sons name?’. I think I nearly pulled it off. I diffused the situation on my way out the door by telling them they had to call me by my real name which was fucken news to them because they thought I was somebody else anyway!

When I eventually got married I hyphenated my name because it seemed the metro sexual thing to do. After all I thought it was only fair given that my wife and son were doing theirs so I would do mine. Now you’d think three distinct names separated by a space and a hyphen would make things easier, but no. Now I get called my wife’s family name, even by people who have an email from me which has been clearly signed ‘Des’. Don’t even try saying a hyphen name on the phone because the people on the other end are not really listening at the best of times.

Hyphenating your name used to be the sole domain of the poofy upper class, but now it’s the done thing by an insecure society that has devalued the institute of marriage. It’s a father’s way of saying ‘my seed must carry forth’ and it’s a mother’s way of saying ‘I have a steel vagina’. No wonder our kids are growing up without a sense of identity, we don’t even give them that luxury when naming them anymore. My son’s soccer team this year was made up of several hyphenates, of which he was one obviously, but that’s a sign of the times.

One of the fathers who consistently got my name wrong was a hyphen himself. Now that is just taking the piss.

Recession? What Recession?

My wife and I dipped our collective family jewels – figuratively speaking – in the running river that is the housing market again this week. We figured with all this talk of a recession it might be a good time to buy. Fuck were we wrong.

NZ might now officially be in a recession but I don’t think anyone has told homeowners trying to flog off their properties at the same over inflated price they bought it for. This was always going to happen of course. Prices got so crazy a few years ago that we all knew as soon as the arse dropped out of the housing market that there would be tears before bedtime. One house we made an offer on has been on the market for months. The vendor declined our offer – which was very reasonable given the current climate - because he’s holding out for 40k more. Good luck with that mate, hope you’re happy to wait a few months more.

One thing that hasn’t changed is absolute amateur behaviour of the people posing as real estate agents. Once upon a time, people like my mother, the stay at home mums of my generation, ended up selling Tupperware and Avon as a means to an end. These days the very same type of people sell houses - the product might have changed but the ‘gagging for your dollar’ way of going about it hasn’t. The tendering process of buying a house is supposed to be a confidential one, where only the real estate agent and the vendor gets to see all the offers on the table. Well our stay at home mum pretty much told us what our competitors were offering as a means to get us to offer more, which of course would be in her best interest too because she gets a bigger cut of the wedge.

It’s like when you go to a recruitment agency and the consultant makes like you’re her new best friend and talks you up as being perfect for a vacancy she has. It’s easy to get sucked in by the show of false sentiment and think that she’s on your side and that any day now the two of you will be sharing long, warm showers together. It’s a great feeling but guess what? She isn’t. A fact that dawns on you a few days into the job from hell that sat open on the same consultant’s books for months. To her you’re just a four figure payout and a set of test results.

I remember going to this new agency this one time and after going through all the standard typing, Word and Excel tests had to sit through another two hours worth of psychometric testing. After about half an hour I’d had enough and simply ticked ‘A’ on every multi choice question from that point on. My consultant was somewhat confused when reviewing my ‘interesting’ results until I pointed out – rather smugly I might add – that I had merely answered ‘A’ 327 times in a row. She made some disparaging comment about how my results couldn’t possibly accurately reflect my potential to a prospective employer given that I had chosen the first option on every question. To which I replied something along the lines of ‘well if the job was as boring and as useless as your testing I wouldn’t want to work there anyway’.

I never did hear back from that agency now I come to think of it.

It didn’t take China long to get back onto everyone’s shit list did it? Just when they had hoped we’d forgotten about all the civil rights violations, the whole Tibet thing, Engrish and badly made McDonalds Happy Meal toys that only last two or three goes, comes the whole milk powder scandal. Turns out the guys who make the most milk powder in China knew about the problem but did not disclose it publicly for at least a month throughout August, whilst Beijing hosted the Olympics. Fair enough, no one likes a kill joy after all but this was hardly a ‘we’ve run out of paper plates’ or ‘someone’s double dipped the tomato sauce’ type of party faux pas. No this was more a ‘someone’s pissed in the punch’ type of cock-up.

Still, it could be worse. Like the couple having a quickie on the train tracks who got run over by a freight train in South Africa last week. Apparently its quite a frequent event in the part of town that it happened – for people to rut on the tracks – because the working girls often take their clients their for a romantic root amongst the passing 3000 tons of metal. Gets me moist just thinking about it actually. The funny thing was that the driver saw the two and sounded his horn several times but yet they didn’t move? Now that’s what I call getting your moneys worth. Put’s a whole new spin on the term ‘horny’ doesn’t it?

Apparently the condom the guy was wearing was found still on his chopper, despite the fact that he was found in pieces. Now there’s an advertising slogan in that somewhere….

Algebra + Economics = Rubber Fist In Anus

Funny isn’t it, that when the price of petrol rockets up it’s always because of just the one reason, but yet there are thousands of reasons offered as to why it never drops in price just as quickly. Dang, that’s whack.

It’s a bit like getting money out of the IRD when it’s owed to you. They purposely try and bore you into submission by having you fill out a huge mountain of paper based bureaucracy, in triplicate, in the hope that you’ll get pissed off and forget about it. But when the role is reversed and you owe them money then shit gets real simple; pay up or we kill you. Geez even the mafia are discreet about the ramifications of not paying what is owed by the time it’s owed.

I was once overpaid by Income Support back in the day when my life revolved around reading the morning paper cover to cover just in time to do the same with the evening paper. By then it was all old news so I often wonder why I bothered but hey, what else was I going to do? I was unemployed for all of a month after I left college and in between reading the papers, masturbating my brains out and coming up with funny voices so as to ring up the talkback and pretend I was someone I wasn’t in order to pass off my extremist views on pressing social issues like the use of apostrophes in public signage, I collected the dole for a short period.

The government gave me a $110 in the hand each week, no questions asked. I had bugger all rent to pay because I was still living with the old man. Man I was living the dream. Well, not really, but I did buy a lot of comics with what I had left over after paying my rent and buying my papers. Life didn’t get any better than that.

Then I got a job and forgot to cancel my dole the first week I was working and subsequently got overpaid. Seeing as I was now a high roller, earning $12 an hour at Hallensteins I decided to play hardball when they rung me to tell me I owed them and arranged repayments of $2 a week. Fuck that told them – when you mess with bull, you get the horns.

I paid back all of it bar about $4. I couldn’t be arsed walking down the road to the grotty welfare office to pay the money so I never did. They kept ringing and I kept ignoring them because I was hardcore. Unbeknownst to me they passed the massive debt of mine onto Baycorp and that was the end of my credit rating for six long years. Four bucks for crying out loud! It probably cost more for the letter and envelope they sent me the debt collection notice on! But I blame myself. Not for the first time I had failed to heed dear old Grandma Eve’s advice when she always said ‘Smarty gave a party and no-one came’.

Maybe that’s the reason I hate game shows. I don’t know about you cats but I take no delight in watching someone win free money on TV. In fact quite the opposite, I would like to see a game show where they take money off you – IRD style - if you don’t get the question right. Now that would make for interesting viewing. Certainly better than the NZ version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they seem to ask extraordinary hard questions like ‘How do you spell RSVP?’.

See money management is not something they ever taught me at school. They spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to teach me how to math with letters – something that no prick ever used after they left school – but not essential life skills like how to avoid having the financial equivalent of a rubber fist shoved up your jacksee. Economics seemed like a good place to have learnt that shit but I did it for two years and I can’t remember what the hell I did there the entire time, other than take the piss out of Mr Moriaty, an intelligent yet small man who didn’t like me or my wingman, Coops.

Of course we didn’t help matters by doing things like placing the duster just out of reach – even if he jumped – atop the blackboard before the start of each lesson, or making outrageous claims that just couldn’t be left unchallenged like that it was we that had invented the question mark. He disliked Coops particularly, but that was probably because Coops countered everything he said with a very open ended, but insightful “But what’s the point?”

It was of course a rhetorical question. There is no point of learning economics because the Arabs own and run everything and Asia consumes everything. Lesson over. That’s why the price of petrol goes up like a rubber fist up the chocolate starfish, but never down.

Helicopters and Wheelchairs

My god, aren’t helicopters magnificent? Now that’s usually only a call I’d make when describing two horses mating or voluptuous young breasts, but helicopters are right up there in terms of choiceness.

Choppers - as we ex-army types refer to them - could quite possibly be the best invention ever. Tanks would be a close second and fighter planes third, but choppers are the business. They’ve been using them every day at my place of work all this week which has pretty much meant an eight hour woody for me and Dougs each and every day.

Of course we had a lot of choppers in Nam, the place was full of them. There was so many that Lancey once woke up in the morning - after a night out looking for five dollar boom boom - in bed with one. Only our side had them, the Vietcong never did which was a good thing because it’s a little known fact that Asians don’t like heights or flying and that’s the reason why most of them are shorter than your average Caucasian. We loved riding in the choppers and there’s nothing quite exhilarating as taking a whizz from a chopper as it rips across the tree tops I can tell you. That's what really caused the deforestation in Nam, not that Agent Orange shit.

Have you been watching the Paralympics in China? Probably not, because most of the Western media packed up when the able bodied athletes did and got the hell out of Dodge. Admittedly I haven’t watched much but only because I can’t help but see the funny side of the Paralympics – which is terrible I know - but hey, at least I’m watching!

Take for instance the Woman’s 200 metres final. The leader arsed it about 20 metres from the end and given that she had a prosthetic leg fell in such a way that she spread herself across two lanes and scuttled the second place getter too. Third and fourth – a NZ girl – who thought they were long gone 20 metres from the end eventually finished in the medals! If that wasn’t mildly amusing (and it was) then the 5000 metres wheelchair race featured a 6 chair pile up on the home straight. Only five athletes finished the race and the medals were given out before the tournament committee decided to scrap the race and do it again later in the week.

Now a couple of questions remain unanswered regarding that balls up; Firstly those wheelchairs are like those all-terrain-take-up-the-whole-damn-footpath baby buggies that posh pricks buy and are almost virtually impossible to roll. So how did the first chick to crash get it oh so horribly wrong? Secondly if this happened in an able bodied cycle race would they have scratched the result and raced it again? No. It would have been oh dear, how sad, stiff shit.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than being the cause of the biggest wheelchair pile up since Auschwitz, the girl who eventually got disqualified (even from the rerun) because she fell in the path of everybody else gets penalised twice – once for falling and twice for having no legs and thus being unable to roll anywhere but in the way of the chasing peloton!

I’ll tell you who should be disabled, at least financially, are those rich pricks who run finance companies into the ground and walk away with their assets untouched. Man that’s just not right in my book. I was reading about the guy who was in charge of Lombard Finance, a failed company that owes its investors $127 million. This guy pulled down a salary of $400,000 a year. How the hell do you spend that much money let alone earn it? This guy didn’t spend his on luxury cars, he didn’t need to, they were part of his remuneration package – he got a new one every year!

I think the law needs to be changed so guys like this – who live blatant extravagant lifestyles before and after their companies collapse – should be accountable right up till the day every investor gets every cent back and if that takes years then so be it. He can start by cashing in on everything he bought with their money in the first place.

After all, if I went and took the prize money we’ve gathered for the winner of the Help Desk Massive Pool Comp and put it on some horse down at the TAB with long odds and lost, who should get indiscriminately pushed down four flights of stairs by assailant unknown; me or the nag?

Weetbix, Telethon and Titties.

Whoever said that fibre was good for you clearly hadn’t eaten four weetbix a day, every day, for breakfast when they made that statement.

I have - and my sphincter is not thanking me for it. I told my mate at work about it the other day and he told me that he felt sorry for my toilet. Feel no pity for the carzie my friends, it is porcelain after all and quite frankly is built for this shit, literally. Unfortunately the soft pink tissue that makes up the rim of my anus is not. Infact, the term ‘ropeburn’ springs to mind.

Pink toilet paper never really caught on did it? No one minded having it on the roll so much I think, it was more the case that used pink toilet paper shows up a lot more easily when washed out to see than white. That aspect of it never really caught on at all the popular swim beaches that’s for sure.

Now I’ve been chowing down on NZs favourite breakfast – and how the fuck do they know, have they asked everybody? – on account of it’s Stat Attack trading card time again and as readers of this blog know, or the owners of kids can attest, they’re like gold up and down the playgrounds of Aotearoa. Honestly, the things I do for that boy of mine. My old man would never have been so forthcoming. He would have told me to stop being a bloody poof over some poofy cards and given me ten lashings across the bare buttocks with his leather belt just for good measure.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I continued to wet my bed well into my teens. It only finally stopped the day I landed in ‘Nam. You don’t dare wet your bed whilst in ‘Nam. Charlie can smell Caucasian urine a mile away, even closer if you ate asparagus the night before. And don’t even think about taking a dump whilst on patrol. You either hold that turtle head in till you get back to the firebase or you eat it whilst it’s warm. For many years even after I returned to civilisation I continued to drink my own whizz, not because I had to but just because I liked the taste. War does that to a man.

WeetBix have always been associated with trading cards. Remember how every pack back in the day had a couple from some series that you never ever had the chance of completing. By the time you got through the box and bought another, the 30 card set of World War Two fighter planes that you were really gagging to complete had long gone and you were forced into starting on some gay set of trains, castles or seabirds. I don’t think there actually ever was a complete set of World War Two fighter planes; it was all a ruse created to disappoint heterosexual boys.

Another blast from the past is making its way back in 2009 - Telethon! How good was Telethon aye? 48 hours of crazy, wacky, hi-jinks perpetuated by New Zealand’s own B, C and D grade celebrities mixed in with a few nobodies from overseas from shows you never really watched anyway. Throw in hourly performances from the local line dancing troupe, crochet club and that mute juggler from Cuba Mall and you really had the precursor to the TV show that has become NZ Has Got Talent.

If you were really lucky you got to stay up late and watch the really risqué stuff that happened when all those celebrities stopped drinking coffee to stay awake and turned to the top shelf booze to keep them ‘spontaneous’. It was only then that they’d shave off each others moustaches and play that lame game where you pass the piece of fruit around the room using your neck cause it made it look like you were giving each other a hicky. Man that was some wacky backy stuff wasn’t it?! Whew, good times.

Let’s face it, everything between the first and last hour of every Telethon was shit and its not going to hold up to today’s standard of entertainment unless it starts, continues and finishes with one main ingredient; Titties. Lots of them, preferably naked but I think most of us will take what we can get on whomever they can get. Actually titties are so good that I’m genuinely surprised we’re having a Telethon because I think they could quite possibly cure the cancer they’re going to try and raise money for.

This thought occurred to me the other day when far from there being thousands out in Auckland protesting the Boobs on Bikes parade, there were actually thousands out supporting it, taking every vantage point possible and all of them getting more of an eyeful than I ever did when I snuck a peak at the Page 3 girl in the Sunday paper Dad always used to buy along with a loaf of unsliced fresh bread.

Now if only Weetbix did a Tittie Attack series of collector’s cards……