How good was Earth Hour aye? Everybody switched off the non necessities of life for an hour i.e. the hallway light and collectively New Zealand saved 3.5% of a normal Saturday nights power usage. Great stuff.
Only 3.5% doesn't seem like a helluva lot does it? It's a piss poor amount really which I think says a lot about peoples awareness or desire to switch off, even when it's a much publicised party event like Earth Hour. Which I'm not against, really I'm not. I'm a closet greenie and have been for a few years now. I teach my son about recycling, I collect the water that I use when I rinse stuff in the sink and use it in the garden, I switch appliances off at the wall and I even let the yellow mellow sometimes. But only when it's the colour of apple juice, none of that first morning, Berocca coloured carry on. That stuff stinks at the best of times, there's no way I'm going to leave that for the family to walk in on.
I'm all for sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint, but I shake my head at shit like 'Earth Hour'. Let’s be honest, if we're serious about saving the planet then every hour should be earth hour. Easier said than done, I know, but switching off the lights on a few gay landmarks around the place for an hour is symbolic, but not terribly efficient, especially when the streets surrounding it are still lit up like Hiroshima was in 1945. That little irony seemed to have escaped the organisers of celebrations here in New Zealand, who held concerts and parties in squares and octagons up and down the country, all powered of course by power, which they used copious amounts of to help celebrate saving the power they just switched off.
Personally I think all landmarks should be lightless at night, unless of course they pose a serious risk to low flying aircraft and alike. If you want to see Auckland Harbour bridge at night then take a torch I say, or go sightsee during the day, like normal folk. This need to plaster lights all over everything is one of those things that city councils spend their time dreaming up to waste money on that they could actually spend on useful shit, like amenities, parks and other such rubbish.
I think commercial properties should have their power metered and when a predetermined threshold is met, booya, off goes the juice. Men in raincoats who list one of their hobbies as 'letter writing to the Editor' could all be employed to cruise city centres each evening noting down companies that leave the lights burning for the masses all night, every night. For every hour a light burns in an unoccupied building after 6pm there will be the penalty of an hour's less power during actual business hours. For that real 'Earth Hour' affect none of the offenders should actually be told that this is going to happen. It just does. Fuck yeah.
Any company silly enough not to get the message the first time gets to take it to the next level; for every hour a light burns in an unoccupied burning after 6pm the CEO has his testes wired to the mains for an hour. Now that’s a cause we can all get behind.
A bit like ribbon wearing. Everyone seems to be getting into wearing a coloured ribbon of some sort. I feel bad because I'm not wearing one which I can't help but think sends the message that I must be for smacking my bitch up, or breast cancer, or Aids. Now I'm pretty sure, as long as my arse faces south, that no one is 'for' these terrible things, but you sure do feel like a prick for not owning a ribbon. I feel the same about anyone who doesn’t wear a poppy on ANZAC day, they must be Nazi lovers.
Maybe to detract from the fact that I’m not wearing a ribbon of any sort, I should go and stand somewhere with my willy hanging out of my fly and call it 'art'? Hey, if a fruity Spaniard can get away with it as part of Wellington’s art festival then what can't you get away? I love the write ups that pre-empt nut bars like these too; 'he's challenging the perception of art as we know it'. No, he's not. He's standing in a darkened room with his chopper out.
Try that same technique on your nearest street corner and see how far it gets you. A few weeks ago some French tart chartered a plane and flew a bunch of goldfish in bowls across the Tasman. She filmed this groundbreaking piece of history and showed it to anyone silly enough to pay the entrance fee. All under the guise of 'art'.
I might be a simple lad from Naenae but I know art when I see it. The Sistine chapel is art. The Mona Lisa is art. The Andy Warhol inspired, colours reversed self portrait my son drew at school a year or two back that hangs in our garage, is art. Standing with meat and two vege out in a darkened room of Dixon Street, is not. It might be some Gaylord getting his willies at you checking out his willy, but art it is not. Art, like fashion, is an inbred private joke at the best of times, you either get it or you don’t, but rocking out with your cock out is a lame excuse for a lack of creativity.
Maybe we should wire his testes to the mains for an hour. And call it 'art'.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Every Recession Cloud Has A Silver Lining
Geez this recession business is some serious shit isn't it?
Or so we're told. Someone is always telling us aren't they? There's always an expert on something, somewhere prepared to tell you just how bad it is. I really wish they wouldn't though; those people stuff it up for those of us that really do know it all. But no matter how grim it's going to get, I can't help but think there are some positives to a global recession.
Like how finally we will have a solution to the rampant consumerism that seems to plague just about everybody. With the prospect of job losses and cost cutting we can expect discretionary spending to reduce. With the pinch going on financial intuitions - especially finance companies - we can expect interest rate on hire purchases and personal loans to be high. Loan shark high. If that doesn't curb the desire for the sufferers of status anxiety to feel they have to buy the latest in flat screen TVs to match the neighbours, then what the fuck will aye?
Of course more and more finance companies are going bust because the investments they have made with your debt have fallen through, so the neighbour who still owes a packet on the latest in flat screen TV that he bought with the help of the finance company, is going to lose it as the creditors try and recoup some of the investors money. Suddenly that old cathode number that sits out in the garage or the shed and served every bugger so well for so long is not too shabby after all.
Upgrading the iPod to the latest colour range won't be an option, nor will be the next generation in cell phones; the ones that have a built in toilet. That PC of yours that just doesn't seem to download the streaming porn quite as quick as it use to will just have to do you for a few years, you'll just have to burn your favourite Red Tube clips to disc.
Electrical appliances will have to be repaired, not trashed at the first hint of trouble like the old video player that chewed your stick flick just as it was getting to the threesome bit, again. Those that specialise in small appliance repair will have the kind of brisk trade that their grandfather used to tell them about when he first started the business back in the 50's. Shoes and clothes will have to last more than one season and people will finally start to question whether or not $15 to see a movie that will be out on DVD in a few weeks is money well wasted.
Boy racers like my neighbour will find that not only are their ridiculously loud Jappas more expensive to buy, but the finance and insurance costs of just such a motor will be more than they save by living at home, wanking their days away on the couch until Mum comes home. Those with menial jobs and who spend their apprenticeship at the garage out the back sniffing the old CRC cans, might be reduced to car pooling when they do the Courtney Place circuit because their minimum wage won’t stretch to meet the on going costs of keeping their wanker’s wagons on the roads. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Restaurants and cafes will do it tough because their patrons will have to stay home and heaven forbid learn to cook. Home Economics classes at secondary schools will overflow with new entrants because chances are it will be the only feed that some of those kids get. There is a shortage of Home Ec teachers in New Zealand, a sure sign that for too long now the art of cooking and knowing the basics has been lost on a generation that has everything offered to them pre-pared, pre-sliced and pre-packed for consumer convenience.
Companies are realising that the ridiculous concept that is the corporate lunch and having a 'coffee meeting' is not only a waste of money it's a waste of time. The same companies will look to cut costs and unfortunately that will mean redundancies, no surprise given that usually a figure of about 75% of a companies expenditure is on wages. Those that keep their jobs will find that their email and internet usage will be closely scrutinised as firms look to maximise productivity. No emails and Facebook? Crikey. What will Generation X,Y, or whatever fucken letter we're up to do at work all day? Actually work?
Yep, even a recession has its positives.
Or so we're told. Someone is always telling us aren't they? There's always an expert on something, somewhere prepared to tell you just how bad it is. I really wish they wouldn't though; those people stuff it up for those of us that really do know it all. But no matter how grim it's going to get, I can't help but think there are some positives to a global recession.
Like how finally we will have a solution to the rampant consumerism that seems to plague just about everybody. With the prospect of job losses and cost cutting we can expect discretionary spending to reduce. With the pinch going on financial intuitions - especially finance companies - we can expect interest rate on hire purchases and personal loans to be high. Loan shark high. If that doesn't curb the desire for the sufferers of status anxiety to feel they have to buy the latest in flat screen TVs to match the neighbours, then what the fuck will aye?
Of course more and more finance companies are going bust because the investments they have made with your debt have fallen through, so the neighbour who still owes a packet on the latest in flat screen TV that he bought with the help of the finance company, is going to lose it as the creditors try and recoup some of the investors money. Suddenly that old cathode number that sits out in the garage or the shed and served every bugger so well for so long is not too shabby after all.
Upgrading the iPod to the latest colour range won't be an option, nor will be the next generation in cell phones; the ones that have a built in toilet. That PC of yours that just doesn't seem to download the streaming porn quite as quick as it use to will just have to do you for a few years, you'll just have to burn your favourite Red Tube clips to disc.
Electrical appliances will have to be repaired, not trashed at the first hint of trouble like the old video player that chewed your stick flick just as it was getting to the threesome bit, again. Those that specialise in small appliance repair will have the kind of brisk trade that their grandfather used to tell them about when he first started the business back in the 50's. Shoes and clothes will have to last more than one season and people will finally start to question whether or not $15 to see a movie that will be out on DVD in a few weeks is money well wasted.
Boy racers like my neighbour will find that not only are their ridiculously loud Jappas more expensive to buy, but the finance and insurance costs of just such a motor will be more than they save by living at home, wanking their days away on the couch until Mum comes home. Those with menial jobs and who spend their apprenticeship at the garage out the back sniffing the old CRC cans, might be reduced to car pooling when they do the Courtney Place circuit because their minimum wage won’t stretch to meet the on going costs of keeping their wanker’s wagons on the roads. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Restaurants and cafes will do it tough because their patrons will have to stay home and heaven forbid learn to cook. Home Economics classes at secondary schools will overflow with new entrants because chances are it will be the only feed that some of those kids get. There is a shortage of Home Ec teachers in New Zealand, a sure sign that for too long now the art of cooking and knowing the basics has been lost on a generation that has everything offered to them pre-pared, pre-sliced and pre-packed for consumer convenience.
Companies are realising that the ridiculous concept that is the corporate lunch and having a 'coffee meeting' is not only a waste of money it's a waste of time. The same companies will look to cut costs and unfortunately that will mean redundancies, no surprise given that usually a figure of about 75% of a companies expenditure is on wages. Those that keep their jobs will find that their email and internet usage will be closely scrutinised as firms look to maximise productivity. No emails and Facebook? Crikey. What will Generation X,Y, or whatever fucken letter we're up to do at work all day? Actually work?
Yep, even a recession has its positives.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Top Models Or Christian Rock? Tough Choice.
Moral dilemma. I think I downloaded a Christian track onto the 'ol iPod. Bummer. I had seen the band on TV and liked their sound, looked them up on Wankipedia and after sampling a few thirty second sound bites on iTunes, downloaded their two most popular songs. The suspect song is a catchy little number and sure, it has a lot of 'oh lords' in it and verses about 'showing me the way', but I thought it was a song about breaking up. On closer listening I think it’s about finding Jesus.
So now what do I do? Keep them and just hope anyone listening to my playlist in the car doesn't take me for a paid up member of the God squad, or just continue to rock out with my cock out and enjoy the ride? They wouldn't be the first band to suck me in with their catchy riffs and not too subtle words of worship but then I’ve always thought Phil Collins wrote the book of Genesis, so I’m easy pickings. Maybe I'll download their whole damn album in the hope that it will give me the knowledge I need to pass myself off as a true believer next time I try to gatecrash the Parachute music festival, where all the hot teenage girls all wear promise rings but believe that 'oral is moral'.
Am I only the one who thinks that current Labour Party leader, Phil Goff, looks a lot like the former leader, Helen Clarke? People always thought Aunty Helen was a bit mannish and lets be honest here, we haven't seen the two of them in the same room together for sometime, so there you go. I feel as sure about this as I do that it would be more interesting if He-Man called himself the Master-bator of the Universe. He's clearly got the arms to prove it. He must use both too...
Not nearly as surprising are reality TV programs and the predictable initial elimination and selection episodes. If watching this rubbish has taught me anything, it’s that to guarantee your passage through the early stages you should stand out like a stiffy in bike shorts.
This is particularly true on anything where looks are the focal point of the show, like New Zealand’s Next Top Model, our version of the American show of the same name. Now the makers of shows like this have two options; pick all the pretty girls or pick most of the pretty girls and through in a few fruit cakes for dramatic effect. They will never ever go with the first option because lets face it, a pretty girl is a pretty girl and sure, she looks magic amongst a bunch of munters, but put her amongst a group of other similarly pretty girls and they all look alike. Unfortunately that makes for a very boring hour of TV unless you if you're a teenager who's discovered the wonder that is 'the wank'. Then it’s a rope burn hour of TV.
These 'interesting' girls are almost always not as pretty, but that doesn't matter. The producers of the show hope by mixing in the kooky girls with the attractive girls will lead to fireworks and they're not wrong. The damaged girls resent the pretty girls for being so damn hot and the pretty girls resent the damaged girls for being the mingers in what essentially is a beauty pageant. Eventually the mutual dislike reaches a level where it's not so subtle and shit hits a new level; the scrubbers will get their backs up over the beauty queens questioning their competing in a competition about who’s the prettiest, whilst the Paris Hiltons will feel that the Lindsay Lohans are using their baggage to get ahead.
Compelling stuff alright, but not groundbreaking. This kind of carry on between the differing factions of girls has gone on since ages ago and life as a girly is not all about pyjama parties, pillow fights and shaving each others legs. Its not, but oh how we fellas wish it was.
So sure enough, when faced with the need to cull 30 wannabes down to 12 probable’s you just knew the African refugee girl was going to make the final cut, as was the girl with the career threatening physical illness and the girl whose parents murdered each other over just where to hang the tea towel. Or something like that. Hardly a short listing that is indicative of anything that would happen in real life, but then this kind of product placement is not just restricted to model searches. On Dancing with the Stars there is always an overweight celebrity, not that there is anything wrong with being an overweight celebrity, especially as the population is getting fatter with every passing minute, but why not have ten fatties and two lookers?
I know why and you know why. Nobody wants to watch fatties, not even fatties. They might have their place in obstacle course type shows but that’s about it. Think about all the shows on TV right now that star fatties and they're all about one thing; them losing weight. Why are there no shows about skinny bastards like me getting fat? Why are there no shows about she males like Aunty Goff, or cartoons about ambidextrous intergalactic wankers?
No wonder I've started to listen to Christian rock, there’s nothing worth watching on TV.
So now what do I do? Keep them and just hope anyone listening to my playlist in the car doesn't take me for a paid up member of the God squad, or just continue to rock out with my cock out and enjoy the ride? They wouldn't be the first band to suck me in with their catchy riffs and not too subtle words of worship but then I’ve always thought Phil Collins wrote the book of Genesis, so I’m easy pickings. Maybe I'll download their whole damn album in the hope that it will give me the knowledge I need to pass myself off as a true believer next time I try to gatecrash the Parachute music festival, where all the hot teenage girls all wear promise rings but believe that 'oral is moral'.
Am I only the one who thinks that current Labour Party leader, Phil Goff, looks a lot like the former leader, Helen Clarke? People always thought Aunty Helen was a bit mannish and lets be honest here, we haven't seen the two of them in the same room together for sometime, so there you go. I feel as sure about this as I do that it would be more interesting if He-Man called himself the Master-bator of the Universe. He's clearly got the arms to prove it. He must use both too...
Not nearly as surprising are reality TV programs and the predictable initial elimination and selection episodes. If watching this rubbish has taught me anything, it’s that to guarantee your passage through the early stages you should stand out like a stiffy in bike shorts.
This is particularly true on anything where looks are the focal point of the show, like New Zealand’s Next Top Model, our version of the American show of the same name. Now the makers of shows like this have two options; pick all the pretty girls or pick most of the pretty girls and through in a few fruit cakes for dramatic effect. They will never ever go with the first option because lets face it, a pretty girl is a pretty girl and sure, she looks magic amongst a bunch of munters, but put her amongst a group of other similarly pretty girls and they all look alike. Unfortunately that makes for a very boring hour of TV unless you if you're a teenager who's discovered the wonder that is 'the wank'. Then it’s a rope burn hour of TV.
These 'interesting' girls are almost always not as pretty, but that doesn't matter. The producers of the show hope by mixing in the kooky girls with the attractive girls will lead to fireworks and they're not wrong. The damaged girls resent the pretty girls for being so damn hot and the pretty girls resent the damaged girls for being the mingers in what essentially is a beauty pageant. Eventually the mutual dislike reaches a level where it's not so subtle and shit hits a new level; the scrubbers will get their backs up over the beauty queens questioning their competing in a competition about who’s the prettiest, whilst the Paris Hiltons will feel that the Lindsay Lohans are using their baggage to get ahead.
Compelling stuff alright, but not groundbreaking. This kind of carry on between the differing factions of girls has gone on since ages ago and life as a girly is not all about pyjama parties, pillow fights and shaving each others legs. Its not, but oh how we fellas wish it was.
So sure enough, when faced with the need to cull 30 wannabes down to 12 probable’s you just knew the African refugee girl was going to make the final cut, as was the girl with the career threatening physical illness and the girl whose parents murdered each other over just where to hang the tea towel. Or something like that. Hardly a short listing that is indicative of anything that would happen in real life, but then this kind of product placement is not just restricted to model searches. On Dancing with the Stars there is always an overweight celebrity, not that there is anything wrong with being an overweight celebrity, especially as the population is getting fatter with every passing minute, but why not have ten fatties and two lookers?
I know why and you know why. Nobody wants to watch fatties, not even fatties. They might have their place in obstacle course type shows but that’s about it. Think about all the shows on TV right now that star fatties and they're all about one thing; them losing weight. Why are there no shows about skinny bastards like me getting fat? Why are there no shows about she males like Aunty Goff, or cartoons about ambidextrous intergalactic wankers?
No wonder I've started to listen to Christian rock, there’s nothing worth watching on TV.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Bike Shop
I had to call in on the local bike shop the other day to have my sons bike looked at. It took some finding though; I had never been there before and couldn't find any phone book listings. Infact the only listing of the place I found was online and happened to be a blog by the owner dating back a few years. Maybe that should have told me what kind of place it was - a shop that doesn't want to be found by any that doesn't already know where it is. Global recession anyone?
I did eventually find it, tucked down a side street and only marginally bigger than your standard men’s toilets. It was crammed full of bikes, thus making it a bike shop alright, but it wasn't the kind of welcoming place you would expect a place selling recreational goods to be. Right from the moment I walked in I felt like an outsider. Maybe it was because my calves are too small to ever be mistaken as a cyclist, who knows? Whatever it was I was out of my depth. I knew it and everyone inside knew it.
I had to wait in line behind three other people who weren't it transpired waiting in line, they were merely talking gear ratios with the guy pumping up the tyres on a mountain bike in the corner that looked like it might spend its evening moonlighting as a Transformer. Eventually I worked out he was the owner but then that was easy given that the other person in the shop looking anything remotely like a staff member was a 10 year old girl stuffing a subway sandwich down her gob whilst surfing the internet on the shop PC.
Unable to contribute anything of substance to the gear ratio discussion, I waited patiently until the large, pubescent lad who arrived not long after me and who looked like he might be a good advert for why you should always wear a bike helmet, noticed me. He worked there too apparently, or at least I hope so. I pointed out the broken brake on my son’s bike which he took to with a pair of pliers in such a way that left me thinking 'fuck, well I could have done that'.
Almost apologetically I had to point out that I suspected the inner tube of the front wheel had a hole in it too and would need to be replaced. Sensing that he might have attacked it with the same tool in the hope of appeasing me with a quick fix, I let him know he could keep it over night and I'd be back tomorrow. As I left I took the time to mentally note down some of the accessories they had for sale hanging from the walls so that I might refer to them the next day in a desperate attempt to make like I knew what the fuck I was talking about.
I shouldn't have worried, the owner recognised me the next day and despite having a deep and meaningful with a woman (who's calves were decidedly bigger than mine) served me pretty much straight away. But only after he had finished spinning the wheels on another SUV of a mountain bike in a way that I can only fairly describe as homo erotic. It might have been doing something for Ana Bolic and her impressive calves but I was unmoved.
My sons bike had been taken down to the workshop it transpired, something we only worked out after he had run through a list of bike manufacturers in the same way I would footballers when trying to work out just how much another self professed expert on all things football really knows. My son's bike was none of them and I felt that admitting that we had bought it from The Warehouse was not going to do anything favourable for my repair bill. I eventually described it by colour and was sent across the road to the workshop to locate it myself, thus banished from the shop that good customer service forgot.
It all made me think back to some of my good mates back in my college days who were right into their mountain biking. Sammy and the other Belmont boys coveted mountain bikes the same way I did girls and whereas I was getting into trouble with the fuckwit of a deputy principal for having girls in bikinis on my book covers, they were suppressing stiffies under their desks over the Cannondale’s on theirs.
They would ride their $1000 bikes to school each day and walk around carrying their seats from class to class, possibly because they never rode with them on in the first place, but possibly because they feared they would get stolen. As I always explained it to them, this was Naenae and if one of the brothers was going to go to the trouble of stealing your bike it was going to mean shit all to him if the seat was on or off.
I remember traipsing up some god forsaken mountain with them one weekend to watch madmen catapult themselves down a couple of kilometres of dirt track. We perched ourselves midway down one of the biggest stretches of track and spent the time between flying madmen by discussing shock absorbers, pegs and fuck knows what else. I spent the whole time torn between hoping somebody would crash and worrying that if they did we would be right in the firing line. There eventually was a sensational spill, one further down our stretch of track. Disappointingly there was only the one.
When did cycling - particularly mountain biking - get so serious? One minute we were happy hurtling around the place on bikes either ridiculously too small because Mum and dad couldn't afford a new one, or ridiculously too big because it was a hand me down from your older brother. Or sister, which wasn't cool if you were a boy. You might have spent most of your bike riding childhood cursing the very bar that crunched your nuts most of the time but it was better to have a bar than to have a bike with none at all. Spokeydokeys were all the accessories you needed back then and the only adjustments you ever needed to make was to take those ridiculous padded handle bar protector things off when you came of age to be too cool for school.
For a long time I had an HMX, a yellow one that was neither a BMX nor a GMX. It was H for Hardcore as far as I was concerned. It could have been H for Homo as far as the neighbourhood gang were concerned and they would have thought that way too if it wasn't for the mother of all accessories I had strapped to the ball bar; a loudspeaker with a hand piece that played three different types of sirens. Why even today when I hear just such a siren it makes my nipples and all four of the shiny, black hairs that poke out from them stand on end.
I wonder if some day my son will think back on his bike as fondly as I did mine at the same age. But he'll have to wait till I take it back to get the gears fixed. Back to the shop where skinny calved former HMX riders are welcome, but only just.
I did eventually find it, tucked down a side street and only marginally bigger than your standard men’s toilets. It was crammed full of bikes, thus making it a bike shop alright, but it wasn't the kind of welcoming place you would expect a place selling recreational goods to be. Right from the moment I walked in I felt like an outsider. Maybe it was because my calves are too small to ever be mistaken as a cyclist, who knows? Whatever it was I was out of my depth. I knew it and everyone inside knew it.
I had to wait in line behind three other people who weren't it transpired waiting in line, they were merely talking gear ratios with the guy pumping up the tyres on a mountain bike in the corner that looked like it might spend its evening moonlighting as a Transformer. Eventually I worked out he was the owner but then that was easy given that the other person in the shop looking anything remotely like a staff member was a 10 year old girl stuffing a subway sandwich down her gob whilst surfing the internet on the shop PC.
Unable to contribute anything of substance to the gear ratio discussion, I waited patiently until the large, pubescent lad who arrived not long after me and who looked like he might be a good advert for why you should always wear a bike helmet, noticed me. He worked there too apparently, or at least I hope so. I pointed out the broken brake on my son’s bike which he took to with a pair of pliers in such a way that left me thinking 'fuck, well I could have done that'.
Almost apologetically I had to point out that I suspected the inner tube of the front wheel had a hole in it too and would need to be replaced. Sensing that he might have attacked it with the same tool in the hope of appeasing me with a quick fix, I let him know he could keep it over night and I'd be back tomorrow. As I left I took the time to mentally note down some of the accessories they had for sale hanging from the walls so that I might refer to them the next day in a desperate attempt to make like I knew what the fuck I was talking about.
I shouldn't have worried, the owner recognised me the next day and despite having a deep and meaningful with a woman (who's calves were decidedly bigger than mine) served me pretty much straight away. But only after he had finished spinning the wheels on another SUV of a mountain bike in a way that I can only fairly describe as homo erotic. It might have been doing something for Ana Bolic and her impressive calves but I was unmoved.
My sons bike had been taken down to the workshop it transpired, something we only worked out after he had run through a list of bike manufacturers in the same way I would footballers when trying to work out just how much another self professed expert on all things football really knows. My son's bike was none of them and I felt that admitting that we had bought it from The Warehouse was not going to do anything favourable for my repair bill. I eventually described it by colour and was sent across the road to the workshop to locate it myself, thus banished from the shop that good customer service forgot.
It all made me think back to some of my good mates back in my college days who were right into their mountain biking. Sammy and the other Belmont boys coveted mountain bikes the same way I did girls and whereas I was getting into trouble with the fuckwit of a deputy principal for having girls in bikinis on my book covers, they were suppressing stiffies under their desks over the Cannondale’s on theirs.
They would ride their $1000 bikes to school each day and walk around carrying their seats from class to class, possibly because they never rode with them on in the first place, but possibly because they feared they would get stolen. As I always explained it to them, this was Naenae and if one of the brothers was going to go to the trouble of stealing your bike it was going to mean shit all to him if the seat was on or off.
I remember traipsing up some god forsaken mountain with them one weekend to watch madmen catapult themselves down a couple of kilometres of dirt track. We perched ourselves midway down one of the biggest stretches of track and spent the time between flying madmen by discussing shock absorbers, pegs and fuck knows what else. I spent the whole time torn between hoping somebody would crash and worrying that if they did we would be right in the firing line. There eventually was a sensational spill, one further down our stretch of track. Disappointingly there was only the one.
When did cycling - particularly mountain biking - get so serious? One minute we were happy hurtling around the place on bikes either ridiculously too small because Mum and dad couldn't afford a new one, or ridiculously too big because it was a hand me down from your older brother. Or sister, which wasn't cool if you were a boy. You might have spent most of your bike riding childhood cursing the very bar that crunched your nuts most of the time but it was better to have a bar than to have a bike with none at all. Spokeydokeys were all the accessories you needed back then and the only adjustments you ever needed to make was to take those ridiculous padded handle bar protector things off when you came of age to be too cool for school.
For a long time I had an HMX, a yellow one that was neither a BMX nor a GMX. It was H for Hardcore as far as I was concerned. It could have been H for Homo as far as the neighbourhood gang were concerned and they would have thought that way too if it wasn't for the mother of all accessories I had strapped to the ball bar; a loudspeaker with a hand piece that played three different types of sirens. Why even today when I hear just such a siren it makes my nipples and all four of the shiny, black hairs that poke out from them stand on end.
I wonder if some day my son will think back on his bike as fondly as I did mine at the same age. But he'll have to wait till I take it back to get the gears fixed. Back to the shop where skinny calved former HMX riders are welcome, but only just.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Vote For Anyone But Gaylord Gayford
Clark Gayford optimises the New Zealand B Grade celebrity. He's also, which ever way you look at it, one letter away from being Clarke Gaylord, which is about as funny as the guy gets really. He's been on the radio and he's been on the TV, but it seems that’s not enough for the boy from Gizzie.
Gaylord started out as a member of The Edge breakfast crew, the radio station that pioneered having three fuckwits talk each over other for three hours each morning as you prepare for work, where you'll probably spend the day amongst several fuckwits arguing over each other. He then moved onto TV and was one of the very first hosts on C4 where he played the 'sarcastic guy', a role that could have been funny, but wasn't. He then went on to have a bit part hosting 'Holiday', the travel show on Prime watched by millions.
Now I could go on and on about the guy's history but I won't. Partly because a) there’s not much more to tell and b) you can check it out yourself though by reading his Wikipedia entry which I highly suspect he’s written himself. Now that's the real beauty of a world wide wiki, you can be world famous without anyone else knowing.
Gaylord has one hidden talent; he's a doppelganger of the Aussie singer Pete Murray who's songs your girlfriend probably quite likes and can be found on just about every 'chill out' and 'weekend surf' compilation going. I quite like Pete Murray. I've seen him live and he is one of those real singers who can actually sing the songs he writes. He's also pretty cool and the kind of guy you wish you could swap bodies with for a few days because you suspect he gets his - and quite possibly all your - share of the pootang. And you wondered why yours dried up aye?
Anyhoo, this look a likeness led to the only genuine funny Gaylord moment I can recount. In one episode of some C4 show he co hosted there was an ongoing reference made to the similarity, much to Gaylord’s frustration. All this ribbing culminated near the end of the show in one of the most magical moments in New Zealand’s short history of telly. The camera slowly pans away from Murray (who was touring NZ at the time) to a wide shot of he and Gaylord sitting together on Queens Wharf looking quizzically each other as two people who look a lot alike, tend to do the moment they realise they could be brothers from another mother. Absolutely brilliant. I’ve wet myself just writing this. You had to have watched it I suppose.
Fast forward to now and Gaylord is again on TV and in the news. He has entered the online competition to win the so called ‘best job in the world’, a six-month caretaker position at Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The ‘dream job’ pays NZ$193,000 dollars a year, which seems to me to be an exorbitant amount of money to pay someone who will spend their days telling off puffy, pale English tourists for pissing in the water and killing off the coral, but hey, what do I know? The global recession doesn’t appear to have gotten as far as the Great Barrier Reef it would seem.
TV3 news played Gaylord’s audition tape which was a very polished entry, but then it would be because clearly Gaylord has used the considerable resources available to him as a TV3 / C4 staff member to make it. A luxury that I doubt was available to the other 34,000 applicants that didn’t make the final 50. Gaylord does admit to feeling a ‘wee bit guilty’ to having a ‘few more skills up his sleeve’ than other applicants, but justifies it by revealing that this really, really is his dream job. Oh and he really likes fishing.
Who decided that fishing would make for entertaining TV aye? Lets be honest, even if you do enjoy sitting for eight hours on a boat waiting to catch all of three fish, watching someone else do it on TV is pretty bloody boring. One of the local hosts of just such a program has struck it big by jumping out of helicopters onto unsuspecting big game fish. He was even on Letterman thanks to his YouTube exploits. He reckons he does it to raise awareness of fishing and the delicate matter of how we’re raping the sea of all its resources. I wonder if he’d be keen to progress to the next worthy cause; Quadriplegia. He could jump out of helicopters onto unsuspecting pedestrians, thus making tetraplegics of them both.
Now Gaylord has a job that most of us would quite fancy. He might have got there, like the song says, by sucking a lot of dick, or he might have got there through sheer hard work, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I think it’s more than ‘a bit cheeky’ of him to then use the privileges that come with that one job to get another that will make him a shitload of cash. Will all those that helped him get this far get a cut of the 200k he could earn if he wins the competition? I doubt it. No what they’ll actually end up getting is lots of emails from Gaylord, containing lots of photos of Gaylord standing knee deep in the Great Barrier reef with a big Gaylord stiffy. What a guy.
I don’t know how many votes I get to cast but they’ll all be for the other buggers and thankfully others share the same thought because currently Gaylord is a long way back in the polls. Good fucken job.
Clarke Gaylord, back on your Prime TV screens sooner than you, or he, thinks.
Gaylord started out as a member of The Edge breakfast crew, the radio station that pioneered having three fuckwits talk each over other for three hours each morning as you prepare for work, where you'll probably spend the day amongst several fuckwits arguing over each other. He then moved onto TV and was one of the very first hosts on C4 where he played the 'sarcastic guy', a role that could have been funny, but wasn't. He then went on to have a bit part hosting 'Holiday', the travel show on Prime watched by millions.
Now I could go on and on about the guy's history but I won't. Partly because a) there’s not much more to tell and b) you can check it out yourself though by reading his Wikipedia entry which I highly suspect he’s written himself. Now that's the real beauty of a world wide wiki, you can be world famous without anyone else knowing.
Gaylord has one hidden talent; he's a doppelganger of the Aussie singer Pete Murray who's songs your girlfriend probably quite likes and can be found on just about every 'chill out' and 'weekend surf' compilation going. I quite like Pete Murray. I've seen him live and he is one of those real singers who can actually sing the songs he writes. He's also pretty cool and the kind of guy you wish you could swap bodies with for a few days because you suspect he gets his - and quite possibly all your - share of the pootang. And you wondered why yours dried up aye?
Anyhoo, this look a likeness led to the only genuine funny Gaylord moment I can recount. In one episode of some C4 show he co hosted there was an ongoing reference made to the similarity, much to Gaylord’s frustration. All this ribbing culminated near the end of the show in one of the most magical moments in New Zealand’s short history of telly. The camera slowly pans away from Murray (who was touring NZ at the time) to a wide shot of he and Gaylord sitting together on Queens Wharf looking quizzically each other as two people who look a lot alike, tend to do the moment they realise they could be brothers from another mother. Absolutely brilliant. I’ve wet myself just writing this. You had to have watched it I suppose.
Fast forward to now and Gaylord is again on TV and in the news. He has entered the online competition to win the so called ‘best job in the world’, a six-month caretaker position at Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The ‘dream job’ pays NZ$193,000 dollars a year, which seems to me to be an exorbitant amount of money to pay someone who will spend their days telling off puffy, pale English tourists for pissing in the water and killing off the coral, but hey, what do I know? The global recession doesn’t appear to have gotten as far as the Great Barrier Reef it would seem.
TV3 news played Gaylord’s audition tape which was a very polished entry, but then it would be because clearly Gaylord has used the considerable resources available to him as a TV3 / C4 staff member to make it. A luxury that I doubt was available to the other 34,000 applicants that didn’t make the final 50. Gaylord does admit to feeling a ‘wee bit guilty’ to having a ‘few more skills up his sleeve’ than other applicants, but justifies it by revealing that this really, really is his dream job. Oh and he really likes fishing.
Who decided that fishing would make for entertaining TV aye? Lets be honest, even if you do enjoy sitting for eight hours on a boat waiting to catch all of three fish, watching someone else do it on TV is pretty bloody boring. One of the local hosts of just such a program has struck it big by jumping out of helicopters onto unsuspecting big game fish. He was even on Letterman thanks to his YouTube exploits. He reckons he does it to raise awareness of fishing and the delicate matter of how we’re raping the sea of all its resources. I wonder if he’d be keen to progress to the next worthy cause; Quadriplegia. He could jump out of helicopters onto unsuspecting pedestrians, thus making tetraplegics of them both.
Now Gaylord has a job that most of us would quite fancy. He might have got there, like the song says, by sucking a lot of dick, or he might have got there through sheer hard work, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I think it’s more than ‘a bit cheeky’ of him to then use the privileges that come with that one job to get another that will make him a shitload of cash. Will all those that helped him get this far get a cut of the 200k he could earn if he wins the competition? I doubt it. No what they’ll actually end up getting is lots of emails from Gaylord, containing lots of photos of Gaylord standing knee deep in the Great Barrier reef with a big Gaylord stiffy. What a guy.
I don’t know how many votes I get to cast but they’ll all be for the other buggers and thankfully others share the same thought because currently Gaylord is a long way back in the polls. Good fucken job.
Clarke Gaylord, back on your Prime TV screens sooner than you, or he, thinks.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Tell It Like It Really Is, Ronald.
Why don't McDonalds ads tell it like it really is?
It has been a long time since anyone that has served me at a McDonalds has been genuinely pleased to see me or been able to transpond my order into the till without stuffing it up at least once.
Despite being purveyors of 'fast food' the delivery of my food is anything but and I will eventually be directed by the kid behind the counter to stand in some non existent queue which will confuse everybody, just so that he can stuff up the order of the lady behind me.
There I'll wait till the other guy who is not smart enough to operate the magical till only read it, figures out the bag getting cold in his hand is for me. When I do finally get to sit down you can bet that I'm going to be disappointed that my food doesn't look anything like it did on the posters. Because it always looks so good on the posters.
Once seated I'm more likely to be pissed that my order is missing something than I am to be orgasmicly ecstatic at the thought of taking my first bite, which, despite my eternal hoping otherwise, will be decidedly average.
Ill be tempted to go and get the item my order is missing but the sight of several densely packed queues and the very prospect of confusing the members of Mensa behind the counter once more means that I won't.
I'll just finish my cold chips, but not my Coke which after just five minutes is ninety percent water thanks to either the way they mix it or the mountain of ice that goes in each cup. Possibly both. I would usually ask for no ice in places like this but again, I don't want to challenege the gifted behind the counter.
I’ll lament the apple pie I won't taste this visit and wonder just why it is that I wasted ten dollars on this rubbish. Again.
Now that is the McDonalds we know and love.
Someone should have them up for false advertising.
It has been a long time since anyone that has served me at a McDonalds has been genuinely pleased to see me or been able to transpond my order into the till without stuffing it up at least once.
Despite being purveyors of 'fast food' the delivery of my food is anything but and I will eventually be directed by the kid behind the counter to stand in some non existent queue which will confuse everybody, just so that he can stuff up the order of the lady behind me.
There I'll wait till the other guy who is not smart enough to operate the magical till only read it, figures out the bag getting cold in his hand is for me. When I do finally get to sit down you can bet that I'm going to be disappointed that my food doesn't look anything like it did on the posters. Because it always looks so good on the posters.
Once seated I'm more likely to be pissed that my order is missing something than I am to be orgasmicly ecstatic at the thought of taking my first bite, which, despite my eternal hoping otherwise, will be decidedly average.
Ill be tempted to go and get the item my order is missing but the sight of several densely packed queues and the very prospect of confusing the members of Mensa behind the counter once more means that I won't.
I'll just finish my cold chips, but not my Coke which after just five minutes is ninety percent water thanks to either the way they mix it or the mountain of ice that goes in each cup. Possibly both. I would usually ask for no ice in places like this but again, I don't want to challenege the gifted behind the counter.
I’ll lament the apple pie I won't taste this visit and wonder just why it is that I wasted ten dollars on this rubbish. Again.
Now that is the McDonalds we know and love.
Someone should have them up for false advertising.
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