The Best Part of a Holiday...

The ClubDes Management made our annual pilgrimage north to warmer climates this week and despite the reprise from the daily grind it provided, it’s always good to be back, or as Junior so eloquently put it “The best part of a holiday is coming home”.

We took a bit of a sabbatical away from technology this break, choosing not to take out laptops with us. We didn’t go completely cold turkey though, keeping our cell phones and iPods on us at all times, a choice which I became quite stoked with the morning I figured out how to surf the web on my mobile. Now I really can have streaming porn with me at all times.

Fortunately we were offline by choice and not because we’re Telescum customers relying on the XT network for anything, because it seems that little gem has finally gone tits up.

Which comes as no surprise to me, because not wanting to blow my own horn or nothing – I’m a lower rib (or two) removal away before I can fulfil that lifelong dream – but I did foresee it happening some time ago.

Not that it was hard to pick because there is a certain amount of inevitability about a company that fleeces such an obscene amount of money off its gullible customer base that sooner or later, they will fuck it up. A point only highlighted all the more when they recently rebranded with a ‘logo’ which my four year old niece could have drawn. And they paid how much for it?

If you’re not an XT user then you should still be alarmed; this is the company vying to be given the contract that will allow them to be the purveyor of New Zealand’s ultra fast broadband infrastructure...

I did once nip into an Internet cafe briefly (whilst away) to check a few things though and yet again I found myself seeking the answer to the unanswered question I always have in such a place; just what would they do if you cranked up a porn site? Would they kick you out or merely ask that you turned the volume down?

In the end I never tested the theory because I’m not that desperate for either porn or the need to know, but I can’t help but think that subliminally I always choose a seat with my back to the door for just the day I do.

You will be pleased to know, I am sure, that the world of many trying to look like mutton dressed as lamb in our ‘hot spots’, like Taupo, has not diminished. The place is full of Miley Cyrus wannabes checking themselves in each and every glass shop fronts and like minded young boys pretending they know just what they’d do if they were ever to see a woman – other than they’re Mum – naked.

Hastings, one of my old haunts, was no different, only scarier. The men there favour a haircut that is half mullet half minge and for some reason has to be part bleached, especially if you’re naturally dark haired. The girls, perhaps in retaliation to the insult that the aforementioned hairdo seems to make on their tastes, seem to have taken to wearing black business suit socks with everything, including short skirts and jandals. Nice.

Then there were the four or five gang prospects who took a liking to the mother-in-laws Mercedes that we were driving.

Much like the Internet cafe I was faced with a moral dilemma; keep my eye on the parked Merc whilst Junior had his hair cut whilst at the same time trying to pretend I wasn’t staring at the bastards scoping it out, or merely take them for the law abiding citizens I am sure they are and do nothing? Needless to say we moved it out of sight as soon as we were finished.

Yep, the best part of a holiday is indeed the getting home.

Up Yours Telescum

You know, I'm not always right but I'm never wrong and a case in point is my picking in an earlier blog that the Telescum XT mobile ads were a fizzer compared to the 2 Degrees effort.

This week the masses thought so too by voting the XT ads the worst on the annual Fair Go Ad awards. Admittedly the 2 Degrees ads didn't win the best ad category (despite being a finalist) but that's probably just as well because other wise this particular blog would be twice as long extolling just how easy it is being the smartest guy in the room.

Interestingly Fair Go is the second most watched show each week on NZ telly, so that means more than just Grandma put down her latest issue of Readers Digest to vote. Readers Digest mags were great weren't they? I challenge you to find a bach / holiday home / doctors waiting room that doesn't have at least one amongst the reading material on offer. I reckon they are second only to Commando comics in terms of proliferation back in the day where you were guaranteed to find one, or several in magazine racks everywhere.

So I picked it like a broken nose that Richard Hammond would prove to be a lot less popular than our own Rhys Darby who lets face it, is in everything at the moment. The problem isn't so much The Hampster but the fact that the XT ads are, well, gay.

Zoe Bell is a top notch girl but no one is buying her 'out to sea in a ship container' rubbish. For a product that purports to be exceedingly high tech it was a real teabagging of the consumer by Telescum to try and have us believe ads that were decidedly low tech. So the phone works in a tunnel? Shit, lets sit down with a coffee and celebrate Christmas then.

Unsurprisingly it was an ex-pat Pom who accepted the award on behalf of Telescum and an ex-pat Pom who explained just how the 2 Degrees ad was shot which beggars the question; is their anyone working in the telecommunications industry in this country who isn't from the Mother country?! I know they broke the Enigma code during World War II but that doesn't make the buggers the authority on all things phones, especially the poofs over at Telescum who clearly don't know anything about making ads.

And don't you just hate blogs and articles that are full of hyperlinks like this? I always wonder if the writer actually wants me to read their work or spend all my in-between-porn-time at other sites....

P.S. That last one is a link to porn actually. Don't click it if you're at work. Admittedly information that would have been useful two paragraphs ago if you already have, my bad.

Uma and Zoe discuss just how stink the XT ads are..

A Funny Telco Ad? Imagine That Jermaine...

Nice one 2 Degrees; you’ve only been in the mobile biz for all of five minutes and you’ve already blown away the opposition in the eyes of a public gagging for some competition.

The Rhys Darby ad is head and shoulders above the Telescum XT network effort that has me not really wanting to watch Top Gear anymore. A pity really because Dickie Hammond is quite amusing when testing cars and other shit that actually requires the wearing of fire retardant overalls.

I wonder how many folk actually know who The Hamster is. Admittedly Top Gear might have an appeal that is a little greater than just those that watch the show on Prime but it wouldn’t be much more. If you didn’t know who he is then you’re probably thinking he’s just another annoying English accent in another annoying Telco ad. And you’d be right.

Everybody who knows Rhys Darby is. He’s Murray, the manager of The Conchords and NZs funniest guy right now. Any production that lets him play on what comes naturally to him is guaranteed to get the attention of the masses and even if 2 Degrees have blown the whole advertising budget on just the one ad it’s a keeper.

And the key is that it’s Rhys playing Murray, or is that vice versa? It’s not a desperate copy by some cheeky bugger trying to stir the porridge that is The Conchords success, like the Moro ad (NZs Fourth Favourite Chocolate Bar) or the two Aussie wankers on the pizza ad singing unfunny songs. Nope, this is the original; accept no substitute.

Good on you 2 Degrees. You are the equivilant of a text message in the timeline of mobile providers here in Godzown but you've already shown you know us better those ex-pat Pommie wasters over at Telescum do. Now I don’t know anything about you, your products or your prices – but I want one.

Imagine that!

The Hamster Sells Out

I've always had a lot of time for Richard Hammond and not just because he's a small man who likes wearing pink shirts.

Here's a guy who has possibly one of the coolest jobs on the planet; test driving some of the coolest cars on the planet. Here's a guy who not only totalled a rocket powered car but lived to tell the tale, proving that he might very well be the smallest of the three Top Gear presenters, but he has the biggest ticker. Here's a guy who during severe flooding in 2007, left his Porsche 911 - in which he had been stuck in traffic for 13 hours - to run home for his daughter's birthday. He ran 16 miles (26 km) in two-and-a-half hours (from 3am to 5:30 am), arriving home before his daughter woke up.

And here's a guy who despite owning several muscle cars and the aforementioned Porsche, prefers to cycle his way around cities. Yet despite all this awesomeness, is now appearing in the latest Telescum ad flogging off their new network as if it somehow compares to test driving all the very cool things he's actually test driven.

Now I relaise that overseas celebrities make a bit on the side by advertising products that they wouldn't usually promote in their home country, but surely at some point a fella as awesome as The Hamster has to put his hands up and say 'I ain't promoting this, it's shit'. It is after all just a phone network. Getting into a jet powered dragster capable of achieving 370kmp is exciting, a cellphone, no matter how much streaming porn you can watch on it, is not.

He's wearing overalls and everything too, making it look like he's actually going to 'test drive' something that could potentially explode into flames at any second. A cellphone won't do that, not even at a petrol station, despite what the petrol companies will have you believe. It simply doesn't emit enough of an electrical signal to cause a spark. Static electricity does however and getting in and out of your car while you fill up is more likely to cause the sucker to explode. Remember that the next time you scratch your nuts in your parachute pants whilst at the servo.

So what if Telescums XT network is super fast? That's not much of a brag coming from a company who's broadband service is one of the slowest in the developed world. They're also waxing on about how XT will allow you to access the internet quicker and in more places than ever before, all on your mobile phone, which is just the best place to view anything isn't it, with its miniscule screen? How often do you find yourself alone with your mobile wishing you could surf the Net? Fuck all? I thought so.

I don't know about you but I pretty much get my internet fix in about 20 minutes at the PC. Sure its a big place this world wide intraweb but who regularly looks further afield than their favourites most of the time? There is only one thing that keeps your interest when you're bored silly on the Net and its tits and arse. Now there is a selling point for Telescum; 'XT will bring you T&A quicker than ever before'.

Imagine the geezer next to you on the bus watching porn on his new XT mobile. It'd probably be okay if its straight or even girl on girl, but if its that kinky cake fart stuff that DougalMac is into then its going to be just downright objectionable. I couldn't help but wonder something similar whilst driving behind an SUV the other night; they had TV screens in the back on which the kids were watching some cartoon. How distracting for others driving would it have been if it was an interacial gangbang? Imagine claiming that as the cause of your crash on the insurance claim.

The world doesn't need XT and its faster internet and we don't need cellphones that seem to be getting bigger not smaller. Whats the deal with that? I thought the endgame in mobile phones was a Zoolander phone? I had one once and all it caused me was grief. It was so small it didn't reach my ear and motuh at the same time so to speak I had to move it between the two. I never heard anything as I did anyway - the sound of people laughing at me drowned out everything else.

So despite The Hamsters endorsement I aint buying it and hopefully you won't either. This is why cassette tapes are making a comeback; life just gets too complicated real quick.

Not your finest hour Rich, not your finest hour.

Hooked On P

We are in the grip of a P epidemic here in New Zealand. It’s gotten so bad that the main conduit of the P doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s pushing the stuff.

I am talking of course, about Porn. Oh we have a small thing with methamphetamine over here too but that’s far less interesting.

Here in New Zealand we have had (until recently) only the one telecommunication provider: Telecom. For a while, the man owned Telecom and ran a small profit doing what a Telco does best. It was a small time setup for a small time country. Those of us who grew up in rural NZ got to share the one phone line with all the other houses up and down the gravel road we all lived on. It was known as a ‘party line’, because sure enough, it was shared by many parties.

Back then no one really put down the phone when they said they were going to if they picked up mid conversation – the voyeur in us all often meant you tried to listen in for as long as you could without being noticed. The seeds of the P epidemic it seems, were sown long ago.

Of course a ‘party line’ today is not what it use to be. Now you pay for the pleasure of talking to a girl who you can bet looks nothing like her picture in the back of the magazine….

Anyhoo, then the man decided to sell his Telco to a bunch of foreign suits, who, recognising the potential for a spot of national sodomy, turned the business into a licence to print money. Because there was no competition, the prices and coincidentally, the profits kept going up and up. All the while the company portrayed itself as the good guy, by rolling out years of TV advertising that took images of cute & cuddly wildlife and paired it with feel good songs from the sixties.

No one really cared that their phone rental cost so much at that point. Those animals were so damn cute and those tunes so damn catchy. "How could a company like that be anything but be genuinely wanting to do it’s best for us?" we collectively thought.

Now the man has decided to rein in the foreign suits and has passed legislation requiring Telescum to share the infrastructure and more importantly, the wealth. For regular Kiwis, that has meant broadband – which was painfully slow under the one Telco - has now started to get a bit quicker, cheaper and therefore more accessible with several Telcos offering the service (We still lag like a dial up connection in comparison to the services and pricing plans of other developed countries however.)

And so began the epidemic. Most of our communities are small and it's almost impossible to exit the segregated adult section down at the local video shop without bumping into someone you know, so anything offering relatively free T & A is too good to ignore. Hence we've turned to the internet en masse and we’re now making up for lost time. New Zealand has one of the highest (per capita) Internet usage rates in the world and I reckon most of it has to be porn. What else is there to view on the net in such large quantities?

Teachers are doing it, public servants are doing it, lawyers, librarians – we know they are because they keep getting caught with it all on their work PCs. Personally, I’ve never understood the need to keep porn. There’s so much of it on tap, why keep the images? Unless it looks like someone you know. Or fancy.

So the latest bunch of Telescum TV ads no longer feature cute animals. They’re keeping it real this time, focusing on New Zealanders using quick broadband to 'get connected'. And they're getting connected alright, to Next Door Nikki. At the end of each ad is a real surprise for the ‘unscripted’ participant – favourite singer turns up, long lost family is on hand etc - just to remind us what a good bunch of jokers Telescum are at heart.

However, not one ad has portrayed what has to be the largest demographic of Telescums broadband users, the online porners. With so many of Telescums users undoubtedly surfing the good stuff, why not represent them in an ad? The numbers involved would even make those surfing online one handed, more than those who are not. So we’re talking about a majority here – that makes it mainstream by my definition! If it's mainstream, surely it's not taboo anymore?

And the surprise at the end could be that Next Door Nikki actually meets her online voyeur, the 35 year old married white male with the online profile of the 15 year old college boy. It's going to be surprises all round if that ad ever makes it to air.

Now that would make me sit up and watch. I might even pause the porn to do so.