Hospital Bed Clarity

The world is a crazy place isn’t it, what with earthquakes in Crimechurch, floods in Pakistan and the cell phone thief who uses the stolen handset to take pics of his wang which he then sends to everyone in the contacts book.

Personally I don’t know why the guy has to commit a crime to facilitate such a joyous task, why not just pick up a mate’s phone when he’s not looking? I know I do. I don’t send mine though I just leave them there for the significant other to find one day. It beggars the question though; just what would you do if you got a cock pic from the phone of your best mate...?

Angelina Jolie visited Pakistan this week in one of those poignant but utterly fruitless celebrity endorsements of a cause. Her revelation on seeing the place was that yes, it was quite shit and yes, something really needs to be done about it. And who says actors can only be told what to say aye?

There’s probably several reasons why people aren’t flocking to help the Paki’s like they have other nations affected by natural disasters, but consider this; in the same week we were hearing about the floods we had the Pakistani cricket team being exposed, yet again, for the cheating bastards they are.

So what are the cricketers doing for their fellow countrymen at this time? Living the high life, pretending to be rock stars and taking bribes to bowl no balls, that’s what and Ms Jolie wonders just why it is no bugger wants to lift a finger to help?!

Of course it’s easy for me to have this clarity when locked away in Ward 5 where I spend my days not concerned with the poor and impoverished of the world, but instead getting angry at really important things like the gay designers on 60 Minute Makeover and their decidedly piss poor taste. Since when did being gay mean that you automatically lose any semblance of colour coordination?

But then it’s easy to be a gay interior designer when its someone else’s money isn’t it? Oh how the real rimmers amongst us must cringe when they see the ‘Fabulous’ branch of the movement out in the public eye fucking it up for everybody.

Angelina doesn’t have the time to have my clarity. She has a family and a career of course and must fret dreadfully over just what to do with all those millions she makes from lame movies like Salt. Personally I liked her a lot more when she was edgy, bi-curious and prone to getting her nungas out in movies.

Everything up to Tomb Raider was cool but it’s all gone a bit mediocre since then I reckon. Mr and Mrs Smith was a good wank the first time round but I struggled to rub one out during consequent viewings.

Sadly I haven’t yet had a nurse that comes close to being even remotely attractive as Ms Pitt, yet. The closest so far is tidy, but she does have a passing resemblance to a colleague at work who just happens to be a dude. Which is like fancying your best mates younger sister who is hot and the opportunity is always there, but yet so is the family resemblance...

So what can Angelina do to make a change in Pakistan other than state the obvious I wonder? Maybe she could fly Mayor Bob Parker over when he’s done with being the hero of Crimeschurch and he could do his stubble and Icebreaker orange jacket thing over there? It seems to be working well here.

Or maybe she could bribe some Pakistani cricketers to fuck off home and help out with the cleanup.

Bloody gay interior designers, always getting it wrong...

Politicians and Cashies

I dunno about you cats but I'm well over our politicians fleecing we, the tax payers, once in office.

How is it that many of those elected by the people to serve the people can so easily live the life of luxury when many of those that bought them that privilege suffer through tough economic times? It must be some white cunts joke that we black cunts don't get.

It's almost as if they see being elected as the hard work and everything that comes along after that as the reward. Free travel, subsidised housing, personal expenses paid not to mention the aides these ministers have following them around like a fluffer on a porn set. Fuck me, it's tough at the top isn't it?

For example, Chris Carter, NZs gayest politician (and that's not a slur, he really is) spent over $130k in international travel in six short months whilst Labour was in power. He argues that everything was approved by the PM at the time (she of the suspect living arrangement) and that it was all above board.

Perhaps it was, ethically speaking, but morally it's right up there with stand up sodomy. For example he and his partner, who went with him on all his trips, spent over $7000 in a two night excursion to Sydney which is one hell of an expensive hand job in a hotel if you ask me. How do you rack up such a bill when you and I can get airfares to Oz as cheap as chips?

I'll tell you how; if you think you're above the good folk who elected you then you'll have no qualms about taking their hard earned taxes and living it up at every opportunity. Incidentally Carter thinks that the fuss around him taking his partner on his travels rises from the fact that he's gay. Not really Chris, although that does create some disturbing mental images, but it's because it's really a waste of our money, you tit.

Meanwhile, Bill English, the Minister of Fi-fucken-nance, tries to tell us that he didn't break any rules in claiming an allowance that most of us believe that morally he isn't entitled too. He's paid it back but the question you have to ask yourself is would he have done so if the shit hadn't hit the fan? Either he knew what he was doing and figured no one would notice or he's as thick as the clowns that several major European banks employed to run their empires a few years ago and who had no banking experience prior to getting the job! Not surprisingly they promptly ran the banks into the ground.

I know why these guys get away with this carry on. It's that ingrained 'good on ya mate' attitude we have towards those that pull a sneaky and who come out the better for it. It starts with getting someone in for a 'cashie', or claiming benefits that we aren't really entitled too or staying on ACC for a tad bit longer than we actually should. It happens when they guy next door takes more seafood when out in the boat than he's allowed but gives you some regardless. Everybody has done it, seen it and probably lamented it, but still it goes on because no bugger says nothing.

But the times are a changin' and as High-ho Tito Philip Field found out recently more and more people are not happy with a cashie and aren't afraid to now say so. Here's hoping more of this ingrained, institutionalised wasting of taxpayers money comes out in the wash so those that abuse the privilege can be exposed for what they are; a waste of space. Funny thing though, the Philip Field case, because every transaction I've had with a Thai national has always finished with a happy ending...

Of course those that do abuse the system get away with it for at least three years before you and I can do anything about it. Imagine being able to steal from your employer and know that there is not much he can do about it for three years? I reckon guys like Messrs Carter and English should have a yearly performance appraisal (just as you and I do at work) conducted by those that put them there in the first place. That'll shit 'em right up.

But should we expect anything substantial from geezers who approve their own pay rises? I doubt it.

Carter (MP for Poo Bay, where he likes to drop anchor) and partner. Together camper than a row of tents.

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.

Earth Hour, Ribbon Wearing and Crap Art

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'.

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.

Merry Christmas from the Gaylords.

Christmas Day is upon us and if you’re anything like me it’s not so much about the season of giving these days as it is the season for getting time off work!

But it’s all for the kids really, a fact that becomes frighteningly apparent only after you’ve had some. Of course it’s never apparent when you’re a kid because its just one big present takefest but when I look back on those days now I wonder just how my parents did it so impressively for so long – on less money and less opportunity too.

Our parents would buy us stuff throughout the year and not leave it till the last minute, mad farken rush that seems to befall most people these days. There was no such luxury of the late night suicide run to the mall back then either. Almost as soon as the tree went up at the beginning of December that would be a shitload of presents under it just screaming out for we excited kids to try and take a peek and blame any partly open presents on the cat. Of course nothing under the tree at that point would be for us kids but it drove you mad seeing that bloody pile every day.

Thankfully kids these days have four school terms, the one and only advantage of which is that they finish school quite late in the year meaning they don’t quite get the Chrissy bug till around the same time you do, about a week before the big day. Very little present tampering can be planned and executed in a week. Trust me.

My son – almost ten – has given up the ghost that is the Santa myth. He’s done the same with the Easter bunny too but strangely still holds on to the belief that the tooth fairy exists! It’s a shrewd bit of play by Junior because whereas the other two bring cheap presents and cheap chocolate – now that’s the story of Jesus – the mythical molar fairy brings cold hard cash and that is the shit, even when you’re ten.

My belief in the big fat fulla died out not long after I realised that it was mother who kept buying me Master of the Universe toys when I clearly stipulated in my letters to Santa that all he had to leave under the tree for me was a mega pile of G.I.Joes. I even sat on a lot of semi erect penises in the various Santa Grotto’s around the place asking for the same thing, whilst clearly in ear shot of my mother, who I now realise had that same glint in her eye that she always had when she played the ‘I’ll buy him something he doesn’t really want so I can claim ungratefulness when he gets disappointed’ game.

Did you know Santa wears red and white because Coca Cola put him in their colours for a promo once and he’s been in it ever since? How’s that for the best advertising campaign ever? Think about that next time you do that thing you like to do in the shower with the empty Coke bottle that saw you taken to A & E once where you had to use the excuse “I had finished drinking and just slipped on it after putting it down”.

So my Christmas day will be spent with the extended family and the food fest that is Christmas lunch at the in-laws. It’s a fantastic day with lots of presents, happy kids and booze on tap. Last year I decided to make a day of it and tried to drink the wife’s 18 year old train wreck of a cousin under the table. Little did I know back then that she was a certified alcoholic and I never stood a chance - by the time I was slurring my words she was just getting warmed up, so needless to say my day ended with a comatose power nap on the couch and a shirt dowsed in dribble.

I did have quite the insightful discussion though, whilst inebriated, with the wife’s other 18 year old cousin and just how much porn he surfed whilst locked away in his room all day. It was one of those discussions that always seem to be louder than it actually was, probably because the room had gone quiet. I also questioned him at length as to what the two gauges on the dash of his pimped out motor actually did and what was the point given that we can all only do 100kmh on the open road?

I don’t recall him giving me much of an answer but that might have been down to the fact he was half way down the hill driving it away when I asked. It’s true what they say you know, excess alcohol does slow down your reactions….

The father-in-law loved it; he had been working on me for years to turn in a performance like that in front of the Aunties. His theory is if you can’t get pissed on Christmas day when can you aye? It’s a theory I’m beginning to see the benefits of and lets be honest, rules are meant to be broken – that’s why my wife and I don’t use the ‘safety word’ any more.

Anyhoo, Merry Christmas to you all and I trust you’ll have a safe one. I’m off to see if there is any G.I.Joes wrapped up under the tree for me this year. I’ll blame the partly open presents on the boy and if that doesn’t stick, the cats.