Mt Maunganui - Land of the Weird

Welcome, then, to Tauranga, the city where laws like having to wear a helmet whilst cycling and not using your cellphone whilst driving were made to be broken.

And you and I both know that these perps would’ve gotten to that state via gateway misdemeanours like jay walking and not actually fully coming to stop at a stop sign..

Not that there’s anything new in that state of lawlessness, my history with this part of the world includes being the place where I learnt - and first got caught - shoplifting. It was the classic rookie error too, I reached above the ice cream fridge / counter thing to steal a chocolate bar, because I didn’t think the shopkeeper could see me doing so….through the glass.

It’s also the place where I had my first interracial sexual experience. I kissed the Maori girl from next door that I fancied on the cheek. I think we were 10.

See my father lived in Greerton and in the years before his eternal paternal abandonment I would holiday here with him for months on end, or whenever it suited Mother to have me back which as far as I was concerned, was always way too soon. Them were good times.

My father’s then soon to be wife was a hottie who had a thing about leaving bowls of lollies on the table as a snack. Naturally being under the age of pubes and starved of such a thing back in the real world, I gulfed them down like a kid with diabetes.

In fact everyone was forever giving me lollies. The stoners next door would buy me bags of the things just for cutting down a bush with the wooden sword Dad made me, whilst said sexy Step Mum let me pick what I wanted as a $10 mixture for one of my birthdays. And that was back in the day when things cost a cent!

We’re not staying in Greerton though, the extended ClubDes family and I. No we’re in Mt Maunganui, one of the countries hotspot's at this time of the year. Fuck knows why because this place is distinctly average. Oh sure, it has a beach but the Gold Coast it ain’t.

The holiday house we’re staying in is quaint, in an ‘everything is bloody backwards’ way, like the light switches which are in the last places you expect them to be and gates open outwards, not inwards. That kind of thing.

The owners must be grandparents too because there are kiddie locks on everything, the ones that require a degree in dexterial engineering to open them. Those things are going to be a shitter when the arthritis kicks in. Maybe just teach your kids not to go into cupboards aye?

Crimes against fashion runs into their thousands up this way and far be it from me and my Scott Disick GQ style to criticise but some people round here are dressing themselves in the dark, surely. All of which just adds to the ‘weird’ factor of the place really.

Like the Upper Hutt Posse across the road who had a skateboard and bongo drums party the first night we were here. I kid you not. There were more black metal tee shirts on show than one of those Asian run knock off shops and yes they did get the Led out around midnight, but yet somebody bought the drums…

Still, it’s a holiday which means you don’t really give a shit about those things. Besides, I pulled up alongside a mint, cherry red Dodge Charger in the main street the second day and the sight and sound of it will keep the mecaphilliac wank bank stocked nicely thanks very much.

Roll on New Year’s, maybe then I'll discover what all the fuss about this place is really about...

The missus and I are making this place look good, real good.

Merry Christmas, Bitches

At this time of year, please take time out from all the present opening, face feeding, binge drinking and shameless coveting of the 16 year old first cousin to remember the man who sacrificed himself to save us, so that we may all live free of fear...

I'm Batman.

Genius In The Workplace

Sometimes even I am in awe of the genius that surrounds me at work:


And sadly I can almost imagine that the train of thought that preceded this was something along the lines of "Hey, it's in the bin, my work here is done".

I kid you not.

Christmas Queues Since Ages Ago

Christmas is a busy and stressful time, especially if you work in retail (and I have) but shit in my mouth, some shops could do a lot towards making life easier on themselves.

Take for example NZ Post Shops which haven’t changed the way they do things for so long I’m beginning to think that they actually enjoy the misery the cause and why not aye, if you’re not enjoying your job why should anyone else?

If you take a history tour through the website you can read about how pioneering post shops were back in the early 1900s. In fact there’s so much historical goodness on the site that it will feel like you started reading it all back in the 1900s and just to complete the picture, if you go into a post shop today and experience their complete lack of technology, you’ll feel like it is the 1900s.

Oh sure, they’ve got ‘puters and stuff. But they’ve also got queues almost long enough to almost make it back to that period...

Let me just say at this point I am in no way having a go at Posties because they do a fine job and around this time of year, a damn good one. If Posties were to be removed as a means of making way for technology then the world would be a little sadder for the experience. Our Charlie (the dog, not the old adversary from ‘67 – ’69) would also have no one to bark hysterically at other than the secretive Asians across the road. Oh the irony.

I loathe going into the Post Shop because in a world where everything can be scanned, weighed and stickered in some impersonal, cold, self service kiosk parcels and alike can’t at the Post Shop. Why the fuck not I ask myself whilst waiting 20 minutes in a queue of people wanting to do just that.

Even if you have had the sense to pre package, sticker and attach postage to your parcel, you still have to wait in line to hand it over to the grumpy bitch behind the counter to put in a bag. A bag that could hang somewhere secure but accessible I imagine but hey, why make life easy for your customers aye?

Now my reluctant sojourn into Camp Customer Service was to register the Passion Wagon for another six months of smooth rides and delivering every time. I didn’t have the actual rego form with me but I did have all the relevant account / reminder numbers because I know how these things work, you have to have some sort of unique identifier and I was sweet, I had three.

But yet still, after waiting in the queue till about roughly 1963, I was told by Mrs Clause at the counter that I needed to fill out a form, despite her being able to bring my deets instantly up on screen using the plate details. Why then, did I need to fill out a form I inquired? I just had to. For no other reason I could fathom then her needing to stamp it at the end of the transaction, because what else is she going to do with the modern marvel that is the manual hand stamp, just another relic in a store full of them.

Now it's not often I lose my rag but I came very close to that morning, almost as much as the afternoon I rock'n'rolled on full auto whilst pulling away from the two Parkies who had just told me to move on from a loading bay whilst waiting to pick up Mrs ClubDes. I fucken hate Parkies.

Still, it is the season for giving so this life changing feedback will not disappear needlessly into the wasteland that is the internets. I shall point out these opportunities for improvement to the good folk at NZ Post not via their website – I know how they are with technology after all – but by post.

That’ll learn them.

The queue at our local NZ Post Shop dates back to the 1900's...

The Lost Art Of The Secret Santa

I’ve said this once but I’ll say it again: the art of the Secret Santa gift giving in the office is not what it was.

Once upon a time colleagues took the time to find out two things about the co-worker they were buying for; either what they were interested in or what would embarrass them the most. Thus the point of Secret Santa philosophy was fulfilled, it bought work mates closer together.

Now shit has just got silly. No one gives anything as thoughtful as a book of hand drawn sketches of rifles to a gun enthusiast or as amusing as a tube of KY to the 40 year old virgin anymore. Even the mandatory pack of nudie playing cards (guys for the guys, girls for buyer) has dried up quicker than Grandma.

It started when people started giving stress balls and those ridiculous plastic reindeer that shat chocolate covered raisins if you pushed down on their hind legs. A gift that serves no purpose whatsoever because even when you know what they are, who on earth is going to eat reindeer shit?

Personally I blame the advent of The Two Dollar shop and other such emporiums of tat that act as a Mecca for those that just can’t be arsed. A minute, plastic pool table for the desk is neither practical nor functional so why even contemplate buying the fucken thing? Besides if I’m that bored at work a second hand stick mag in the mens will do the trick and it’s well under the $5 limit.

For the completely unimaginative Secret Santa means buying a box of crappy wafer sticks from the Warehouse, or a bag of lollies. For the completely disorganised it’s something pinched from the stationary cupboard or the stapler from Stu’s desk.

What is amazingly to me though is that despite the frugality of the economy these days, no one has yet started giving blocks of cheese, two litre bottles of milk or preserving jars full of petrol. Secret Santa is just not that practical I guess.

Thank fully I am blessed with thoughtful team mates, or at least two of them, for my last two gifts have been AWESOME and have been clearly purchased by someone who has done their homework, realising that I am both a ninja and proficient in handling the AK47:

Not that I would ever use a firearm whilst slicing and dicing my way through a garrison of very bad men because as we all know, swords don’t run out of bullets.

Mind you my last two efforts have been pretty good even if I do say so; a six pack of dirty Rheineck and a good night in for Ron Jeremy last year and this year? A mega can of horse piss aka Red Bull for Candylane because she loves the stuff. Actually I could’ve taken a warm steamy one in a bottle and saved the $5 really for all the taste or nutritional content that rubbish has in it. Next year maybe.

So it might be too late to not give that crappy chocolate cacking reindeer now but give it some thought next year aye?

Christmas

Who wants to sit on Santa's lap?

Fudge Packer Vacancy, Apply Within

Mirror Earth, The Final Frontier.

Another edition to the wank bank this week for the space geeks amongst us, with the news that some big -fuck-off-shiny telescope has discovered a ‘mirror earth’ 600 light years away from us.

Firstly - what a waste of a telescope. Our gaff is located in a position where I can see into many windows of many houses and I could use just such a thing to indulge my voyeuristic tendencies that at this point in time, extend only to noticing that the teenage girl next door was taking pictures of herself in the bathroom the other night.

True story too, I could see the flash going off from our kitchen. Thankfully, even though the glass was frosted, I could tell she was clothed so I was not forced to trawl the internet to find the images which might have been upsetting to her parents. It would’ve been a tough job but hey, look after your neighbours and all that…

Secondly - naturally I’m skeptical because if it really is a mirror earth then there’s every chance there’s a mirror me on it living a life equally as unexciting as mine (as detailed above) and surely that can’t happen in the one reality, can it?

Apparently this mega scope has also spotted some 2000 new candidate planets which really does put our inconsequential existence into perspective doesn’t it? The sci-fi industry love this shit though because equally as many scripts of TVs / movies about life revolving around those planets are now being written as I type.

Oh and this mirror earth is closer to the sun than we are, so it’s warmer, for longer. Thus even its mirror Wellington is a better one because it does not blow like 50 Bastards, all of the time, nor is it constantly like Pearl Harbour outside (nasty nip in the air).

Ironically this week marks the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbour attacks which all sadness aside, are a reminder that modern armies just don’t do surprise attacks any more, not on that scale.

Today’s war zones are just one big game of who can hit who the hardest and no bugger surprises no bugger, just like Nam; Charlie and we spent all damn day and night looking for each other and the only real surprise was that occasionally, we bumped into one another.

Maybe we should’ve had a telescope.

Life Lessons, From The Bouncy Seats

Conversation turned to trampolines in The Club the other day, partly because Lancey has just gotten his clan one.

Not a trampoline the likes of which we had back in the day mind, no this is one of those can’t hurt you ever, can’t have fun jobs. Which got to us discussing just how those death traps on legs from days gone by, provided us kids with a rite of passage into later life, something Lancey’s spawn will now miss out on thanks to the Big Limp Dick Safety Brigade.

Who didn’t learn a valuable lesson from getting their nuts crunched and pinched when falling through the springs on a trampoline? Not to mention failed flips, mistimed landings from nearby structures or launches into pools that came up short.

Every kid had at least one incident of being catapulted off the damn thing by an older kid bouncing twice as high as every other bugger. That usually ended in a mistimed attempted landing on the frame from a great height, thus crunching the gnads and grazing the ankle / shin / thigh when landing half in the springs and half off the frame.

If you were really lucky you finished that particular artistic move with a face plant on the grass below. I can still hear the laughter now…

Who didn’t find out the hard way that laying underneath it whilst your older brother depth charged the hell out of the thing in a stress test that was never tried in the factory because it was presumed that such a load would ever be heaped upon it and even if so, who would be silly enough to sit under it if it was?

Well we were of course and a couple of those in the head and back learned us didn’t it.

What about the valuable lesson we were all given on the importance of maintaining balance whilst sitting in the corner awaiting your turn only to fall forward or worse, backwards, off the thing when some bugger got a little eager and upset the structural balance by jumping in early, making the ‘no more than two’ rule Mum always dropped on us a very valid point.

I lost count how many times I got ejected by clothesline, flying drop kick or throw to the imaginary ropes that failed to stop me from the copious Royal Rumbles we ran on ours. Dodgeball was another big favourite at our house, until some hard out fired the thing at point blank range whilst you were mid flight and took your legs clean out from under you. Many an emerging facial pube was removed in the resulting face to spring action that inevitably led to.

Ours had a particular design flaw too that meant if you bounced hard enough, on just the right angle, the leg would pop out from the frames which lead to a monumental collapse of epic proportions. I can still see my sister hurtling off it at an acute angle after just such a structural fuck up.

Not that some of us have stopped learning from the humble trampoline. Bruiser has lost two in as many years in a perfect example on how impossible it is to anchor the bastards when you live high above the common folk in the valley below.

One of them very nearly made it down there too only to be swallowed the bush on the hillside directly below his place mid flight. It will be found one day like a forgotten plane wreck leading those who located it to question “How the fuck did this get here?”

The other came to rest through the rear window of the Audi owned by some Asians down the road. Their response to that was to chain the bent and broken frame in their front yard till someone claimed it. Of course that didn’t really pan out because we all know how Asians are with answering their door when knocked on; they don’t. How the hell did they think that was going to work?!

So Lancey’s lot will experience none of this and miss out on some of life’s cruellest, but essential lessons. They will instead be bored with it after about five minutes and move back indoors to the gaming consoles.

No one ever got a gaming console to the balls.

Don't Tase Me Sister

This is a promotional picture. Not from underwear website, but Taser, the people who make, well, Tasers.


I think what it's trying to say is: "Yes, ladies can wear what they want without fear of harassment but if you're going to walk around with your nungas hanging out of an open neck shirt then you're going to need a Taser to ward off the fellas who think you're right up for a bit of motorboat action".

And they would be right.

Still, you can Tase the physical but your two pronged 10,000 volts can't touch the wankbank girls.