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.

Boobs On Bikes, Tanks and Midgets

It's one of those decisions that could go oh so wrong when at work; do I view the Boobs on Bikes pics online or not?

If you're lucky like me then photographic slide shows are disabled by the security settings on your network so the choice is made for you but I wonder how many did? Not that it mattered because later that night they (being gigantic mammaries) were all over the news. The funniest aspect of just such a story is watching some female news anchor like Hillary Barry having to fight back the disdain she clearly has for having to introduce such a trashy item.

And it is trash. Boobs are boobs and ridiculously large ones aside they fall right into the 'seen one pair seen them all' category. Promoter Steve Crow is man who has undoubtedly seen more teats than a dairy farmer and although he may be many things, he is smart and I reckon he's realised that sex alone doesn't sell these days so this year he kicked up a notch and bought something new to the masses - freaky sex.

You know shits gotten freaky when they have to get someone named 'Chelsea Charms' in on the act. Did she ride a tank because her breasts are so big or was it just to complete the image of mammoth milkers? In any case it doesn't do anything for me personally. Tanks? Yes please! Titanic titties? No thank you.

But its remarkable just how many Aucklanders line the streets this same time every year to watch Steve Crow's floppy Filipino breasted freak show when they could see a lot more quality teet on The Net. And they're not the smartest bunch (well certainly not the ones they interview on the news) which just adds to the freak ability of the event I suppose.

All this breasticle talk reminds me of the time back in my country school days in good ol rural Hawkes Bay. The local school was one which catered for kids of all ages, it had to because no other bugger was going to really, but it was certainly a good thing because we got to mix with kids of all ages, especially when it come to swimming season.

Now we had these two sisters at our school that were physically advanced for their age and that meant big ol titties, the kind of which many of us hadn't seen since the days of sucking on Mummies bittie. It was quite the sight that pool of ours; two well endowed girls splashing away like the carefree teens they were and the entire male student faculty unable to stand up in the waist high water because of it.

I shall never forget the momentous day that one of them had an astronomical wardrobe malfunction whilst mid frolic. Her shoulder strap - perhaps in hindsight ridiculously too thin to ever really support just such a fantastic specimen of nubile breast - snapped, releasing the said mallow puff for all we fellas to see. Now that alone would have been enough to keep many of us going for well into our late teens but in a marvelous twist of fate it remained unnoticed by it's owner for several time standing still, water splashing over it moments.

I can still picture it to this day and consequently wrote that entire last paragraph one handed, but that is how a breast should be bared - just enough so that it can be appreciated and fantasised over for several seasons later. This is where I think the Erotica Expo blows it load far too soon, by having the assetts on display too early in the transaction. Parading goose pimpled knockers down the main street might be a great way of getting yourselves on the news but is it going to get punters through the door that wouldn't usually rock up with their cocks up? I don't think so.

Now Steve Crow is a funny looking fellow and if ever you needed a reality check on just what the porn industry really looks like then he's the man to have a gander at. But the thing I like about Crow though is his acumen; Harei Mai John Campbell had him and that ridiculous waste of space that is Lisa Lewis on the other night arguing over a contractual dispute. Lewis, who's average assets have been plastered over the place ad nasuam thinks that her appearance should be worth more than the likes of Ms Charms. Crow in his usual brash self disagreed and quite rightly told the silly bitch to bugger off.

Yep, he certainly realises that sex alone doesn't sell any more. Freaky naughty does and just you wait, next year I reckon he'll go for the next logical step for the Parade; Midgey boobs.

The Joe Karam Show Begins...

Joe Karam is finally a free man, acquitted of the crimes he was imprisoned for some 13 years ago.

So too is a fella by the name of David Bain but the way the decision was captured you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the cheeky darky Karam who has spent most of those 15 years behind bars and not the palungi Bain. TV cameras were allowed in when the verdict was read on Friday and rather than focusing on David - at least on TV3 anyway - they were focused on Karam, who rather humorously spilt water all over himself in excitement.

An impromptu press conference held on the steps of the Christchurch High Court was just the start of The Joe Karam Show. Understandably the six foot Bain, he of the huge ears, was too distraught with relief to speak, so Joe did all the talking. You would think that after 13 years of wrongful imprisonment Big D might have something to say, but no. JK on the other hand had lots to say and man can that guy talk.

He continued the sermon with Harae Mai John Campbell. Now the top shelf had been flowing since 5pm so Joe waxed on about several things, mostly himself, none of which really made much sense. In his defence though he did say at one stage that "this is all about David really" but no one seemed to notice so on he waxed. Only when Harae Mai John interviewed the two QCs did we finally get a full understanding of just how hard the team had to work to get where they were that Friday night.

Karam meanwhile, just in camera, stumbled off into the background and almost fell through the hotel rooms closed ranch slider. He had already made his first 'Hurricane' reference whilst being interviewed by Marvelous JC but you can bet it wasn't his first that night. It's a reference he likes to make often - that the case of David Bain is the same as that of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, a black man who was falsely imprisoned for a triple murder he never committed 1966.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about the case and a movie was made starring Denzil Washington. Karam must have liked the movie because he once flew Carter over to meet Bain whilst he was still in jail. Carter is undoubtedly an inspiring individual but the case of a man imprisoned because of the colour of his skin is slightly different to the case of David Bain. No word yet if Washington will play Karam in the movie of David Bain.

Now I should officially go no record as confessing that I have always believed Bain knocked off his family. I've read both books - including Karams - and being someone who likes to know the facts of such things I was convinced by what I had read that the man in the naff homespuns was convicted fairly. It took 13 years for those facts to be challenged and revealed to be in some cases far from factual which unfortunately does throw the Crowns case into doubt. Fridays verdict doesn't necessarily prove that Bain was wrongly imprisoned because he was innocent, more that the case against him was not good enough to prove he was guilty. Funnily enough many people feel the same about Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter.

Still, despite the acquittals, Bain still can't seem to shake controversy. Two jurors not only embraced him after the verdicts on Friday, but later that evening appeared at the 'Camp David' after party. Incidentally the 'Camp' reference refers to the American Presidential retreat of the same name and not the fact that Bain and Karam appear to be close. Very close. Now that would be camp.

The actions of the jurors, however niave, captures in a nutshell what most of us suspected regarding the retrial; that Bain had a huge amount of sympathy amongst a generation that didn't really know much more about the fella than Joe Karam's Hurricane references and the images of him in those homespuns. That was going to count for more in a retrail than any debate over the size of a bloody footprint.

But you can put your money on one thing; the Joe Karam showing is just cranking up. I suspect the first book on the acquittal will be either be by him or about him. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a combination of the two. Bain meanwhile is a free man and good luck to him.

Shit is going to get really interesting though if one day he knocks off Joe and his family...

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.

John Campbell Blows. Himself.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to see a guy give himself a blowie – and let’s be honest, who hasn’t – then tune into TV3 at 7pm each week night. John Campbell might not physically be able to pull it off, but he always has that look of someone who just did.

If I was to be honest, I’d have to admit that I usually don’t mind John. I’m not likely to put a photo of him on my ceiling above the bed anytime soon, but I can handle him in small doses. John is the kind of guy that uses pigeon Maori a lot so as to appear a genuine Kiwi bloke. The thing is John, genuine Kiwi blokes, like myself, don’t actually use any pigeon Maori unless we’re mocking that one dimensional character on Bro Town, but there you go.

John doesn’t wear a tie with his suit so as to appear casually relaxed, but at the same time, seriously anally uptight over the news of the day. John pushes the boundry of decency by sometimes saying some soft core profanity like ‘bugger’ and ‘bastard’, and gets away with it because he’s always smiling when he does. John’s the kind of guy you would hear shorten names like ‘Noel Leemings’ to ‘Noels’ because he thinks it makes him sound more Kiwi, when in fact it makes him sound like a twat, as does anyone who shortens the name of an appliance store.

But John is a hard core reporter who lives life on the edge. This week he had one of the scrotes that pulled the Waiouru museum robbery appear incognito on his show. That’s right, New Zealand’s most wanted man, who to date has evaded capture, sitting casually in a studio with the tie less John Campbell. The perp was so well disguised with his hoodie on, face blurred out and voice changed that it could almost have been anybody. It’s almost unbelievable, but it had to be true because John had his serious frown on and never once did he turn it upside down.

Needless to say the Cops were interested to speak with John the next day and so they did, turning up at the TV3 studios with a warrant. John probably welcomed them with a ‘Kia Ora’ and called them all ‘maaate’. This of course made the lead story of TV3 News and not unsurprisingly the lead story on John’s program too. It was right at that moment, that I realised the only way John could have been giving himself a bigger gob job was if he had had a couple of ribs removed so that he could fully deep throat his bad self.

For a start, there is no two sided story to be told here. The pussies that robbed the museum did so for personal gain and desecrated the memory of men with vastly bigger testes than they. Men who fought in World Wars won those medals whilst doing their duty so that these pricks could have the freedom they clearly don’t seem to enjoy having today. That, in my opinion, makes those that took the medals public enemy number one and no one with an ounce of national pride would hesitate in calling the bastards in were they to come face to face with them.

But then that says a lot about Harae Mai John I guess. Him and his station are now hiding behind journalistic principals and stoutly promising not to reveal their sources, which I could understand if they had just prevented a huge injustice from happening, but they haven’t. What they’ve done is man milked a gutless crime for as much airtime as they could and poor old John has the lockjaw to prove it.

Reporters, or rather the guys who sit at the desk with someone else’s hand up their rectum and read an autocue should stick to reading the news, not trying to make it. And what about the lawyer who we’re supposed to believe is a hero because he got the medals back? Apparently he did the same to some rare paintings that were nicked a few years back too. I reckon that makes him either extremely resourceful to be in the right place at the right time - not once but twice - or a decidedly jammy bastard who shouldn’t be trusted. He is a lawyer after all.

Personally I hope the boys in blue put all the pricks in jail for obstructing justice and then we can have a new public health poster that reads something like “This is your anus before journalistic integrity” and “This is your anus after you go to jail for journalistic integrity”.

Kiaora John, you tit.

A Rove By Any Other Name....

I hate to start things off with a character assassination - but this one's been overdue for quite some time...

Australian talk show host and cardigan wearer Rove McManus is not funny. Nor - on the whole - is his show. I've given it a lot of thought and I've done my research - forcing myself to sit through several episodes in the pursuit of fairness and thus ruling out the slim chance that I was 'catching him on a bad night'.

There are some amusing moments on his show, on occasion, but they usually don't involve Rove or any of his regular guests who like their host, are unfunny. Roves mate Pete (and I'm guessing this is how all the regulars got to be on the show, cause they're Roves mate) is decidedly unfunny. He is rotund and looks like he should be funny, but isn't. His biggest claim to fame is the voice over he looped through the annoying James Blunt song that just made it, well, more annoying. Pete gets a lot of camera time on Rove. Shame he's not funny.

So why is it that so many people think Rove is funny?

You see here in New Zealand we have a group of people who like to spend their time imitating our most populist creatures - sheep. This group of 'trendsetters' (a group predominantly made up of whats left of the Friends TV show fan base) like to have whatever is being marketed as the next big thing and thus buy / watch / follow it in such numbers that it does indeed become the days hottest property. Not by quality, but by sheer weight of numbers succumbing to its marketing.

Rove and his TV show is a big hit with this crowd. I suspect they download him onto their iPods so that they may watch it in between periods of listening to their favourite radio station, 91zm. A station that unashamedly promotes itself as being a big fan of Rove.
Which in itself would be okay, if their influence didn't force itself over into the mediums I enjoy - all of whom do their best to play it cool and act all independent but are so subconsciously scared of missing out on what ever threatens to collectively float the boat of this small country that they almost inevitably buy into the hype too.

No one has any balls over here anymore.

One man who made like he did for a wee while was a current affairs presenter by the name of John Campbell. Now I like John - he's a local lad, is quite funny at times and makes a good argument. Well he used too, when he was the heir apparent to the 7pm current affairs viewing audience crown and was fighting tooth and nail to get it. But now that he has his hands firmly on the jewels, his have almost disappeared, leaving a pale imitation of the street fighter that used to ask the hard questions of his guests. Those guests have been bumped from the lineup and their places taken by regular appearances on the Campbell Live show from the likes of - wait for it - Rove McManus.

The two have quite the affinity for other it would seem. John wishes he was as popular with the sheep as Rove appears to be. Rove likes John because 'there's no one in Australia like him' which to me lends itself to more questions than it does answers on just why Rove digs John so much.
The irony to all this is that once upon a time we Kiwis found nothing more annoying than an unfunny Australian. If that unfunny Australian was annoying too than that meant instant removal from the Christmas card list. Personally I think Rove's unfunniness makes him annoying, so he's off my list for this year.

So both men get the big channel change from me these days when their respective shows come on the telly. It is after all the simplest way to avoid the subject, but with so may sheep wanting to be in on the hype in this day and age, is it really that easy to escape the celebrity any more?

If enough sheep tell you you're 'soooooo funny', does it actually make you funny, even if you're not?