Taking the Piss @ 15000 Feet

Is it just me or is our national carrier attempting to wind back the 'credibility clock' on NZ to about 30 years when the world really did think we were a bunch of untamed natives and yokels?

Their latest in flight video stars Richard Simmons. Yes, he’s still alive and yes, he still wears shorts so short you can tell he’s crazy because you can see he’s nuts. Hey, is the ratepayer still bailing out Air NZ, because if so I want my money back.

First we had the series of ads where everyone was covered in body paint. That was okay but curiously not a nipple - male or female - on show. Funny that. Then the All Blacks starred in one where the gay flight attendant tried to get a kiss from Richard Kahui. That bit got pulled because the Homophobe Brigade was worried that somebody somewhere was being pulled off to it!

Admittedly those two campaigns were mildly sophisticated and amusing, but then shit went downhill coincidentally around the same time CEO Rob Fyfe decided he was so well known that someone might want to bid for his grundies on Trade Me. Puh-lease. Next Door Nikki he ain’t. At least she doesn’t wash hers before she puts them in the post. Allegedly.

Then they had a puppet who achieved world wide WTF? status when he starred in a promo vid rapping with Snoop Doggy Dogg. Snoop clearly needs the money because why would you star in anything with anyone who has a hand up their bottom? Unless you’re Nikki’s naughty neighbor, Annie. But I digress...

What was the puppet anyway? A rat? Or a possum? Were all the Kiwi puppets taken that day they made that decision, as well as the NZ names? Rico, my arse.

And now we have Richard Simmons and speaking of men that look like rodents, Paul Henry. Henry, like The Doggfather, clearly needs the money too because a year ago he would be making fun of a guy like Simmons, in between taking the piss out of women with mustachios and Indians of course...

Personally, I like Richard Simmons but not at the exact moment when I grip the arm rests and wish like hell my flight doesn’t end up like the first episode of Lost, but yet at the same time, if it does could I please hook up with Kate? Pretty please.

Put that Simmons and Henry vid on though and I just might hope the damn thing crashes. On takeoff even.

Imagine finding this in your bush?

Just Ask Colin

Colin Meads, bless him, seems to be the authority on everything these days doesn’t he?

He’s the go to guy on the topical questions of the day, he really is. How to best deal with angry parents on rugby sidelines? Ask Colin. And what about the kids playing, how will it affect them? Colin will know. Change the silver fern to red for the Rugby World Cup? Let’s run it by Colin first.

Now I know the man is a living legend and made quite the impression back when Kiwi men were men and the rest of the part time, skinny, white guys playing rugby were nervous, but it’s all a bit like asking Grandad what he thinks of the Japs 66 years on from WWII; the answer is never going to change.

Yet still we keep asking. Maybe that’s why we keep asking? Because we know we’ll get a meat and veg answer. But good on him, here’s a man who at the ripe old age of 74, still works the farm at Te Kuiti, drinking his deer jizz supplement or whatever it is that keeps him young and yet still has the time to churn out words of wisdom from a simpler time.

What a legend.

Oh and my solution to the angry parents on the sideline thing? Arm the match officials. Lets us then see how mouthy Captain Hardout on the touchline is likely to be when the ref is brandishing a yellow card, a red card and a Glock.

Shit ‘em right up.

Colin and friends, in simpler times.

The Shared Lunch & Double Dipping

Shared lunch.
Pot luck dinner.
Mystery meat special.

These are all phrases that don’t sit well with me.

It’s not that I don’t like social eating, I do, but I have this thing about eating food that I haven’t seen being prepared. Oh and sure, I don’t see food in a restaurant being prepared but somewhere on their wall is a certificate that says at least the one time somebody bothered to check, they were good with hygiene and shit.

Just not in the same place on the bench, obviously.

And these things always happen at work. The same work where the shared kitchen looks like downtown Baghdad and that’s on a good day. Not to mention the similar state of the toilets, or the proliferation of non hand washers we have on our floor and you can perhaps understand why I’m a little less than hesitant to partake in the one we’re supposed to be having tomorrow.

I used to work at an insurance firm where my colleagues were of many ethnicities, which was great. The job was mind numbingly boring but hey, at least the conversation was always interesting. They loved their shared lunches too, only they weren’t so much a celebration of eating but a competition to see who could bring the hottest, spiciest concoction known to man.

Now the real problem with food like that is not that it would peel paint if applied to such a surface, but that it usually reaches the table looking like it’s passed through the family cat first. It might taste great but you eat with your eyes first, or so they say and mine had a gag reflex for stuff like that.

There was this one guy at that same firm who used to come to things like morning tea shouts and shared lunches empty handed, yet fed from the trough as if he had worms or something. If that wasn’t bad enough he double dipped everything, which pretty much cleared the table for him, the bastard.

It got so bad he was never actaully told when a shout was happening and if one was we tried to make sure it happened when he was away. I watched him at one once and he never actually talked to anybody, he just spent the whole time scanning the table for the next wet thing he could dip his half eaten sausage roll into. What a guy.

Incidentally that guy was the first ‘blogger’ I ever met. I only found out he blogged because he added every new employee’s email address to his distribution list that he used to announce he had a new posting, which was almost always, without fail, shit.

He liked to think of himself as a political watchdog and would write about how little money he and his family had under the government of the time, which was their entire fault of course and nothing to do with the fact that his wife wouldn’t work because she was manic depressive. It only took me about five minutes of talking to the guy to find out why that was too. The boring bastard.

But I think I know where this fear of the unseen really comes from.

My step father is to blame. He who used to make the family breakfast clad in his poorly inadequate briefs and only, I might add, after about half an hour of scratching, stroking, flicking and rubbing every surface, orifice and sticky out bit of his ever extending body.

Hand washing, particularly first thing in the morning, was not something we did at our place. Not doing so ‘made you strong’ and ‘put hairs on your chest’. And my toast most days. So I figured if that’s what happened to the food I could see being prepared, what the fuck was happening to the stuff I couldn’t?

So there you have it. An irrational fear of unseen food preparation explained. Now you try going to that next shared lunch at your place of work...

What A Bunch Of Cork Soakers

Well Ken ‘Moon Man’ Ring got that one right didn’t he? What a cork soaker.

Sad isn’t it, that one aging hippy with a theory about the moon and tides has almost had as much press as the earthquake he reckons he predicted. Even sadder that the media in this country tried milking it for everything they could get, just in case. The cork soakers.

Good ol Ken - let’s call him Ringpiece for short - predicted that another major earthquake would happen in Christchurch on the 20th of March, just before lunch time. Ringpiece, it should be noted, claimed to have predicted the big one too. After it had happened.

Then he changed that prediction to be a couple of days either side of the 20th. Finally he decided it wasn’t going to be an earthquake at all, but rather a spot of bad weather. Naturally a lot of folk down that way, upon hearing this prediction, freaked. And who would blame them given that their life these days is one big aftershock occasionally interrupted by normality?

So why the change in prediction this time? Did the pressure of expectation get to him? Did the moon and tides suddenly change? Maybe the tsunami generated by Japans earthquake threw the charts of course. Whatever the excuse something must have happened because it’s quite the downgrade isn’t it, from a major shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates to a spot of precipitation in the air?

It was foggy in Christchurch today actually. Cue the spooky music.

Maybe it’s because just like physics and tarot card readers he’s full of shit? Ringpiece reminds me a lot of a conspiracy theorist and I farken hate them. And just like a theorist it strikes me that someone like Ringpiece doesn’t actually need to prove anything.

Oh sure, science hasn’t yet proven any correlation between the cycle of the moon and the frequencies of earthquakes but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. Likewise no one has actually proven that Tower 11 was an inside job on 9 / 11 but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t and nobody can really say for sure if MI5 killed Princess Diana because again, no one has proved they didn’t.

Only they have, for all three of the above scenarios, but guys like Ringpiece thrive on that little bit of doubt that exists when the full story can’t ever be laid out from start to finish like it is in the movies. They work on coincidence and happenstance and so long as there is fear of the unknown they get the publicity they long for in order to promote their myth conceptions.

And Ringpiece has had loads of publicity. My favorite was when he appeared on Harae Mae John Campbell’s show and got ripped to shreds by a host who was given the dirty nappy of all interviews by his producers and was clearly pissed about it. He got a lot of stick about it too did John but I for one thought he did a fine job tearing strips off a fear monger.

In Ringpiece’s case it’s a win win situation; predicting weather and shit is flaky at best and no one ever expects meteorologists and alike to get it right all of the time. So he predicts a lunar event that if it doesn’t come off means nothing, no sweat off anybody’s sack, but if he gets it right he becomes the authority on everything. Or in his own words:

"My business is only a bunch of opinions, as I have wearily repeated. There is no claim on accuracy; proof or anything other than that I have opinions."

"I don't claim to predict the weather. No-one can. We are not gods. Nobody has all the answers. In my books, it states on paragraph one on page one that what I say is opinion."

Nice bit of bullet dodging that, claiming his is an opinion. The book is $48 by the way and can be found on the shelf labeled ‘B for Bullshit’ at your nearest bookseller. Right next to Kelvin Quickwanks literary efforts.

Christchurch did have a sizeable aftershock last night, 5.1 to be exact. The believers will of course say The Moon Man got it right but that ignores the fact that before he changed his prediction three times, he reckoned it would be a magnitude 7+. In his own opinion, of course.

Perhaps he’ll claim next that tomorrow is going to be Tuesday too, in a remarkable piece of foresight he could have only extracted from his ring piece.

What a cork soaker.

Ze Kinky Germans

I was reading something online today about a guy who is the foremost Sexologist in Germany, Dr Volkmar Sigusch. He’s just released a new book and was speaking to the German paper Die Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: How do websites like YouPorn, which is viewed by millions, change sexuality?

Sigusch: It's part of the neo-sexual revolution that began in the late 1970s and continues to this day. A key feature of this revolution is the large-scale publication and commercialization of details that were once secret. Sexuality has been trivialized. The interesting thing about this is that exaggerated portrayals apparently destroy desire more effectively than any repression.

SPIEGEL: Can YouPorn help reduce feelings of sexual guilt?

Sigusch: Only superficially. But for people who are desperate and searching, sexuality on the Internet offers an incredible release. In the past, every pervert believed that he was the only one who had an abstruse desire. Today, he can find out on the Internet that there's someone like him in New Zealand or Patagonia. On the other hand, Internet sexuality shows that we're becoming more and more self-involved. I'm talking about self-sex.

Now you know that he means you New Zealand perverts aye? Cause I only visit YouPorn to read the articles. And only a German would call it 'self-sex'.

And is it a pre-requisite, do you think, of being a Sexologist that you have to look like a sexo:

Christchurch & The Good Times - Epilogue

Sometimes in moments of great tragedy you have to find the time to laugh.

Case in point this comment on the news tonight, taken from a desperate house wife who is clearly disgusted to hear that the working girls of Christchurch have had to find a new red light district now that their usual is presently out of bounds:

“Well it’s just wrong. They’re not moving in here. My kids are coming home soon and I don’t want them have to dodge condoms, faeces and needles on the front lawn...”

Oh yip.

Now either the prostitutes down that way are kinky bitches with drug habits, or my mother has moved down there because that’s just the kind of crazy, out of touch comment she would make about something she knows very little about.

Faeces indeed.

Christchurch & The Good Times

Well it didn’t take some Cantabrians long to reveal their real priorities after the big shake did it?

Some folk aren’t overly worried it would seem, about the loss of life, the lack of toilets or possible the public health issues that that will cause if left unchecked for much longer.

They’re not even bricking it over the massive loss of jobs and infrastructure within the area or even the cost to the local and national economy the quake has started to cause.

Instead they’re worried about missing a few fucken rugby games when the World Cup comes to town. Yeah because that really would be a disaster wouldn’t it?

Oh sure, not hosting any games will mean a massive loss of income to the city but hey, I say anything that means you don’t have to suffer 10,000 drunken Poms strutting around the place like their team is God’s Gift has to be a good thing doesn’t it?

Going by this new story it would seem that the economy down there is getting a pretty good ‘injection’ of funds anyway...

One thing is for sure, there have been some pretty disturbing scenes down that way that none of us will forget in a hurry. I witnessed a disturbing scene in Christchurch once and it had nothing to do with a natural disaster.

A group of us went down with then flattie and all round good guy Simmo for his younger brother’s 21st. Now he’s deaf is Simmos brother so the party was full of people hard of hearing, no problem there. Only it was karaoke.

Which I didn’t think was going to be a problem by the size of the speakers they were bringing into the venue before hand, only they didn’t stack them so much as lie them face down so as to send the phat bass beats through the floor where they could be felt.

Now deaf people can’t hear themselves so they don’t sing, they growl. Especially when they’re clapping in encouragement, which is not actually a bringing of the hands together in a classic sense, but a waving of them above the head.

Bruiser and I sat there not knowing whether we should laugh or bleed out of our anus thanks to the intestine churning sound waves resonating up from the floor.

They had the rugby on that night too. NZ verse someone. Half way through we of full hearing figured out that the sound wasn’t actually broken on the TV but on mute because nobody in the room needed to hear it anyway.

Then the stripper arrived.

Now this was a full on family affair; kids, strapping rugby players, Granny with the handy cam, the works. No one battered an eyelid when the talent turned up, in fact quite the opposite, they all moved in closer and started clapping (in sign language remember) and growling even louder than before.

The poor girl looked as petrified as the 65 year old muscle that came in with her, which in itself was weird but hey, we were well beyond the point of surprise by then. But to her credit she worked the routine like a pro and got the hell out of there before Granddad had the portable CD player unplugged.

Yes it was quite the night alright.

So all the best Christchurch; I have nothing but good memories of you, none of which involve rugby matches (although we did go to one that weekend too).

Something In The Water?

It is a little known historical fact that during the Second World War the English troops had an additive blended into their tea leaves that was supposed to suppress sexual arousal and thus keep the men focused on making war, not love. True story.

They tried the same thing on us in Nam but we Long Range Recon types were too busy drinking our own pee to have time for tea. Besides, Charlie could smell both a mile away.

Now we don’t knowingly add anything to our char here at ClubDes but there must be something in the water because a few of our regulars have spawned recently and it’s a beautiful thing.

In fact there’s so much of it going on we’re even contemplating opening a Daddy Day Care and bringing these kids up, old school. Hey, it worked for us fellas and let’s face it, we’re awesome.

So, introducing then, the newest members of the ClubDes Massive:

1. Coops & Nat

Welcomed baby Eva into the world last month. Here is a pretty fair representation of what will happen at the end of her one and only date and that’s even before she gets to the letterbox...


2. Skids & Stace

Two brilliant minds, albeit one with misguided football loyalties, combined to produce Angus aka The Chose One on account of his birth date being exactly 10.10.10. Signs of the boy’s genius have already started to surface; he is already claiming to have invented the question mark.


3. Big Gay Ray & Natties

Already have the one bundle of joy in Paige and now have the wonderful news that a little brother too, is on the way. They’ve even decided to name the young fella after my junior which is a nice touch. Sadly ‘Big' or ‘Gay’ probably won’t feature in the names of any kids we have in the future...

Shop Smarter New Zealand.

You know who really gets on my tits? This guy:

Brett McGregor. He won NZ Masterchef last year, despite being in the bottom two elimination three times, which in itself makes a mockery of the competition format I reckon. If you’re in the bottom that many times then you are, by default, crap and should be kicked out forthwith.

It was the same in the Aussie version; one guy was in the bottom two almost every week yet, somehow, he managed to pull something special out of his own bottom when it was just him and some other equally useless contestant.

Eventually he did get the arch which was just as well because that guy was a crier and turned on the tears on almost every occasion. Brett didn’t cry admittedly, he did something far worse; he won.

Now he appears in Countdown ‘Shop Smarter NZ’ TV ads and brochures. And that’s it. No restaurant, no career, just a guy chopping chicken breast in his Masterchef apron as if he somehow deserves to keep wearing the damn thing.

He’s a school principal apparently, or holding out to be one. Nope, he didn’t give up the day job, he doesn’t live the dream and he doesn’t seem to give a shit about the fact that in winning a comp he didn’t really seem to care about, he shot down the dreams of someone who did. What a guy.

I think Flight of the Conchords said it best:

Murray: I'm so angry, I feel like swearing.
Bret: Oh, Murray, you wouldn't swear at us.
Murray: Go Fuck yourself, Bret!

Yeah. Go fuck yourself Brett.