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.

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).