Sometimes The Good Guys Win

Sometimes, just sometimes, the good guys win. Like in the movies.

Only real life is not like in the movies, especially in the world of sport where it's usually the bad guy - the arrogant pricks, the cocky bastards - who win and that's why they win. But this week two teams of good guys won their respective finals and balance was restored to the universe.

The first was Barcelona winning the Champions League final over an arrogant Manchester United, who despite being the defending champs, found out that dominating the likes of Stoke and Portsmouth week in and week out doesn't really prepare you at all well for beating the best continental sides.

Now Man United play good football and have some world class players and up against a Barca outfit devoid of its first choice defensive back line were favourites to be the first team to win the Champions League twice in succession. But as is often the case with Captain Hardouts they misjudged the passion of the opposition.

Barca play beautiful football. This season they have scored goals like teams did back in the 60s, when teams played with four or five forwards and you only had defenders because you had to. No one really made a living as a defender back then and no one earns their exorbitant money these days when they line up as a defender against the Barcelona class of '09.

Admittedly it wasn't a goal fest in Rome, a place where the resident football fans like to use knives when fighting with opposition supporters and rightly so; knives are silent and the quieter they are the more likely you are to use them. Guns for show, knives for a pro. Or at least a Roman football fan. Yes Barca only scored the two goals but one was a towering header by the shortest player on the pitch - Lionel Messi - but that says it all really.

Yep, the Catalan Club destroyed their opposition in a display that proved that not only can the good guy win but he can look damn good whilst doing it. Some credit must be given to their Mancurian opponents who took their defeat with some grace, unlike their compatriots from South London who suffered the same feat two weeks earlier. Never have a bunch of grown men acted like spoilt children as the Chelsea players did that night at Stamford Bridge. The poofters.

24 hours later and half a world away a similar victory, albeit on a less grand scale, occurred just round the corner. Knobs and Knockers, holders of quite possibly the best mixed indoor football team name ever, won the Div One title for the first time. Now the $5 bulk order indoor trophy might not have the same lustre as the Champions League equivalent but for we amateurs the taste was just as sweet.

Fresh from overcoming semi final opponents who had beaten us during the season and finished above us on the table, we then had to play in the final the top team who had scored so many goals we had to wonder if they actually had any opposition to date. And all this with no star player who had injured himself before the semi final!

Once the dust had settled and the argie bargie had ended and there is always argie bargie when teams too accustomed to winning start to get beat, we were the winners, proving that 120 goals is not much use to you unless you score them all in the final. Both teams conducted themselves in defeat much the same way the sore losers had at Chelsea a few weeks ago, making victory all the more enjoyable.

Yes sometimes, just sometimes, the good girls and boys win.

The Hamster Sells Out

I've always had a lot of time for Richard Hammond and not just because he's a small man who likes wearing pink shirts.

Here's a guy who has possibly one of the coolest jobs on the planet; test driving some of the coolest cars on the planet. Here's a guy who not only totalled a rocket powered car but lived to tell the tale, proving that he might very well be the smallest of the three Top Gear presenters, but he has the biggest ticker. Here's a guy who during severe flooding in 2007, left his Porsche 911 - in which he had been stuck in traffic for 13 hours - to run home for his daughter's birthday. He ran 16 miles (26 km) in two-and-a-half hours (from 3am to 5:30 am), arriving home before his daughter woke up.

And here's a guy who despite owning several muscle cars and the aforementioned Porsche, prefers to cycle his way around cities. Yet despite all this awesomeness, is now appearing in the latest Telescum ad flogging off their new network as if it somehow compares to test driving all the very cool things he's actually test driven.

Now I relaise that overseas celebrities make a bit on the side by advertising products that they wouldn't usually promote in their home country, but surely at some point a fella as awesome as The Hamster has to put his hands up and say 'I ain't promoting this, it's shit'. It is after all just a phone network. Getting into a jet powered dragster capable of achieving 370kmp is exciting, a cellphone, no matter how much streaming porn you can watch on it, is not.

He's wearing overalls and everything too, making it look like he's actually going to 'test drive' something that could potentially explode into flames at any second. A cellphone won't do that, not even at a petrol station, despite what the petrol companies will have you believe. It simply doesn't emit enough of an electrical signal to cause a spark. Static electricity does however and getting in and out of your car while you fill up is more likely to cause the sucker to explode. Remember that the next time you scratch your nuts in your parachute pants whilst at the servo.

So what if Telescums XT network is super fast? That's not much of a brag coming from a company who's broadband service is one of the slowest in the developed world. They're also waxing on about how XT will allow you to access the internet quicker and in more places than ever before, all on your mobile phone, which is just the best place to view anything isn't it, with its miniscule screen? How often do you find yourself alone with your mobile wishing you could surf the Net? Fuck all? I thought so.

I don't know about you but I pretty much get my internet fix in about 20 minutes at the PC. Sure its a big place this world wide intraweb but who regularly looks further afield than their favourites most of the time? There is only one thing that keeps your interest when you're bored silly on the Net and its tits and arse. Now there is a selling point for Telescum; 'XT will bring you T&A quicker than ever before'.

Imagine the geezer next to you on the bus watching porn on his new XT mobile. It'd probably be okay if its straight or even girl on girl, but if its that kinky cake fart stuff that DougalMac is into then its going to be just downright objectionable. I couldn't help but wonder something similar whilst driving behind an SUV the other night; they had TV screens in the back on which the kids were watching some cartoon. How distracting for others driving would it have been if it was an interacial gangbang? Imagine claiming that as the cause of your crash on the insurance claim.

The world doesn't need XT and its faster internet and we don't need cellphones that seem to be getting bigger not smaller. Whats the deal with that? I thought the endgame in mobile phones was a Zoolander phone? I had one once and all it caused me was grief. It was so small it didn't reach my ear and motuh at the same time so to speak I had to move it between the two. I never heard anything as I did anyway - the sound of people laughing at me drowned out everything else.

So despite The Hamsters endorsement I aint buying it and hopefully you won't either. This is why cassette tapes are making a comeback; life just gets too complicated real quick.

Not your finest hour Rich, not your finest hour.

Convenience Costs More Than You Realise

My wife and I moved one step closer to total non verbal communication this weekend. We, or rather she, installed a wireless router meaning that we can sit in separate rooms, surf the net and send each other emails. Despite this new found virtual freedom we haven't completely ex communicated each other, we've made plans to meet in a chat room during the week.

Having wireless Internet means you really can take the laptop anywhere. Why right at this very moment I am taking a loaf out of the oven and I'm not even in the kitchen. Luckily for you the reader that this laptop doesn't have a web cam aye?

Going wireless is all about convenience isn't it? Well that's what they - those that make money from you buying their wireless router - would very much like you to believe. And in a way it is, but me being able to check the overnight soccer results in bed this morning and not five metres down the hall in the study is not so much convenience as it is just plain laziness.

Isn't it interesting how the definition of the term 'convenience' has changed since our parents day? Back then it was convenient that the corner store stayed open to lunch time on Saturdays, not that anybody ever went to the shop on Saturdays because the weekend was time for spending with families and relaxing after a week of work. Now days we see convenience as the entire family being able to waste their days away on wireless Internet all at the same time.

There is no bigger bastardisation of the idea of convenience than the fast food chain and there is no bigger bastard than McDonald's who, despite a recession, have decided to open more stores across New Zealand, 30 in fact. Now it's not like we don't need more Golden Tits around the place, why even this week a study conducted by Stats NZ showed that consumption of takeaways has increased by $10.5 million. Now that's convenience for you alright. Convenient for the bastards at McDonald's.

Yes buying the family dinner from Maccas is handy, especially on that week night when the kids had soccer practice and you worked late and traffic is shit, but 10.5 million is a lot of those nights. I think people misconstrue just what Maccas and their brethren offer in these difficult economic times. A normal sized meal will cost you $8 - $10 which I would wager is actually more than it would cost to make a homemade equivalent, unless of course your idea of a meal is a 1kg block of cheese. And lets not forget about the nutritional content of the Big Mac vs the seasonal stir-fry...

Don't you just love the way chefs tell you that their creations are 'fantastic dishes'? Well they would - they're not likely to tell you it's shit are they? Never trust anyone with a vested interest I say.

There is a less obvious downside to convenience, especially when the consumption of food and drink is involved; the rubbish it produces. I challenge anyone, even a blind man, to drive down any suburban street in this clean green country of ours and count how many fast food wrappers, empty coffee cups or squashed water bottles they see. A cup of watery coffee from the servo might be convenient on the way to work but the global warming that the empty will add to isn't.

Maccas might very well create 4000 new jobs with their expansion, all of which will be taken up by teenagers who will finally be able to buy the P and booze they've been gagging to experiment with, that's a plus, but they'll just add to the avalanche of crap that already has a stranglehold on our stretched infrastructure and choking ecosystem. And who has to pay to clean this ever increasing pile of convenience up? You and I do, through our taxes and rates. Now how convenient is it that we pay twice for convenience whilst the likes of Macca's not only don't pay nuffink, but actually make money out of our laziness? Dang. That shit is whack.

This blog is fantastic, by the way. And fresh. And not at all detrimental to the environment despite being terribly convenient.

Gaylord Gayford - Yesterdays News

Now a few weeks ago I thought we agreed we'd vote for anyone but Gaylord Gayford in the world wide internet competition to find the next caretaker for the Great Barrier Reef. Imagine my surprise this week to find out that he had made it to the last fifteen. Geez, its almost as if no bugger reads this blog.

Gaylords good fortune made for more mutual hand jobs between him and former employers TV3, who's resources he had used to get that far. They ran the story almost every night this past week and so often I had to wonder if there was any genuine news to report on. There was of course, but then that’s NZ for you; we care more for the antics of a cheeky wanker than we do the events of the world, where the adults live. We love that someone like Gaylord has gotten as far as he did because in some twisted way we like to think he represents NZ and that’s a cause we can get behind.

My real beef was not really with Gaylord. Yes, he's annoying and not the tiniest bit funny but deep down I hoped he would win because aside from the gratuitous follow up segments that Harae Mai John Campbell would do on him if he did, he'll be off our screens indefinitely. Man I hadn’t been that excited about a TV idiot moving on since Jason Gunn did back in the days when Thingees eye fell out on camera and gave everybody under the age of 10 nightmares for years. Gunn eventually came back and rather spookily hadn't appeared to aged at all. His jokes certainly hadn’t. All the oldies love Gunn but then they always did have a soft spot for the 'special' kid didn't they?

No what really twisted my nips about the whole Gaylord Gayford thing is that an event that is not in the slightest bit newsworthy made its way into the news. It's wasn’t even an event that is spectacular in its ingenuity. Oh wow, a competition on the Net. Big deal, at any one moment in time someone is pulling some stunt on the intraweb whether it be auctioning their 'virginity', raffling their house or selling a feijoa that looks like a Kiwi. Is it mildly amusing? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Maybe, but the Great Barrier Caretaker Hunt is right up their with Two Girls One Cup; you only want to see it the once.

Did you ever hear about the waster who walked the length of NZ a few years ago calling himself Bro Millionaire? He begged his way to an absurd amount of money on the back of being a little bit cheeky and a little bit entrepreneurial. Just like Gaylord. ZM, the radio station of choice for those that like to be told what they like, was right behind him and gave him all the free publicity he needed to make more money in a few weeks than you and I will in years of working full time. Wow, when you think of it like that its not so cheeky any more is it? When cheeky Bro Millionaire asked me for a dollar I told him to fuck off. Now that was cheeky.

See I'm always wary of advertising that makes it way into our conscious under the guise of 'news'. Why? Because as an individual I have a choice when it comes to unsolicited advertising; I don't have to watch the ads on TV, read the piles of junk mail that passes through my letterbox and I can hang the fuck up on cold callers. They’re all easy to ignore but when we start allowing subliminal advertising to infiltrate our news then we're giving up the power of choice. Let us not forget that this is how the Nazi propaganda machine worked too.

While there is no 'product' in Gaylords case, it borders on advertising. It's a competition based around a tourist attraction. Sure sounds like advertising to me. So is the story of the car company that's rolled out a new hybrid or the clothing manufacturer that has come up with some fantastic new fabric. A world first it may be, but I don't give a monkeys. If I do want to know that gem of groundbreaking news then trust me, I'll find it.

And the real proof was in the result. Gaylord didn’t win and for that I am both delighted and pissed off, for reasons listed earlier. Mind you neither did the kinky looking German girl, Mirjam, who got my vote or the sexy Australian girl, Hailey, who I cast a second vote for whilst pretending to be my wife. Hey I could only vote the once but both looked great in a bikini...

No Gaylord Gayford didn’t win but did you see that on the news? Or on Stuff? Or on Harei Mae John Campbell? No you did not. Because it wasn’t news when he was trying to win and it definitely wasn’t news when he lost.

I rest my case.

Sensing Bullshit - And Making Money Doing It

Fans of the TV show Sensing Bullshit have collectively wet themselves this past week with the release of Kelvin Cruickshank's book 'Walking In Light'.

Surprisingly the book sits atop the non-fiction charts this week which either shows that Cruickshank and Bullshit has a lot of fans, or it’s been an exceedingly slow week in the world of non-fiction. I suspect it's the latter but either way Cruickshank is probably wearing a cheesy smile as big as the one he has on the cover of the book; each copy costs $45 and you don't have to be clairvoyant to solve this rape case.

Now the loose translation of the term 'non-fiction' is that it's true and / or that it depicts events that actually happened. Yes, Cruickshank’s book is an autobiography, of sorts, but it tells the story (and it is a story) of "his earliest physic experiences and his struggles to accept his gift". A gift lets not forget, that is yet to be scientifically proven actually exists, so how the hell does his $45 cash cow make it into the non-fiction category?

Well lets be honest, if The Da Vinci Code can make that list, so can my yet to be published memoirs of Vietnam. Unlike Cruickshank I won't use my real name, preferring instead to use my non de plume Heywood. Heywood Yablowme.

Cruickshank’s blurb continues on about how his $45 enema contains recollections of the "amazingly accurate communications he has shared with believers and skeptics alike". I wonder if Cruikshank’s recollections differ from those people he’s listed. It's his side of the story after all and hey, if you really want to dispute his telling of it then you're first going to have to shell out $45 to read his version. Even if you were to find out that what he said you said wasn't really said at all, he still wins! The fucker. He saw that coming, because he’s a medium. You didn’t, because you’re a tit.

Isn't it funny how "special guys" like Cruickshank who have "special gifts" charge shitloads to share it? It's almost as if they don't want to share it at all. If I had the ability to solve unsolved cases I would give up everything to travel the world helping Police lock up the killers of the world and end the heartache for the families who lost loved ones to the bastards. If I was actually any good at it and my information actually led to arrests and closure of cases - something that Cruickshank or any of his like have yet to achieve anywhere in the world - then people would pay for me to do so.

I wouldn't need to write novels that have about as much factual content as the Mr Men series of books. I wouldn't need to charge $70 for the DVD of the scripted, post produced TV series that is as much reality television as is The Hills. You can even buy a Cruickshank tee shirt for $50, or pay a couple of grand to take a spiritual tour of Ayers Rock with him. You don’t get the tee shirt for free if you do, its still $50.

You see so called psychics don't actually have jobs, they spend their days rehearsing the act that is being a ‘physic’ and they have to make ends meet somehow. If you're silly enough to pay to see them live or buy the DVD you're doing nothing more than pay for a show, containing performers who like actors have learnt their lines and wait for their cues.

Further into Cruickshank’s book blurb it lists how he struggled with his 'gift' until nine years ago when he had a breakdown and finally accepted he was 'special'. Here’s what I think actually happened nine years ago; Cruickshank realised he could make a lot of money pretending to see dead people. All he had to do was learn a whole bunch of names that were common 50 years ago and learn how to use the power of suggestion when 'questioning' people.

Walking In Light? Wanking you in the dark more like.