This Is A Black Out

Wankipedia blacked out its pages this week in protest against some proposed bill that had something to do with film and music piracy.

Quite why the six poindexters who write the stuff on Wankipedia thought that their actions would save the world of free and illegal downloads I don’t know, their site offers neither, but hey, each to their own I guess.

The bill probably proposes the same thing that all the other ones that get put forward by governments around the world do; let’s shut down the means of getting copyrighted shit for free. Naturally, all those that do pinch the stuff suddenly get up in arms about potentially not being able to. What a fucken surprise.

‘Imagine a world without free knowledge’ is the heading on the black out Wankped page. ‘For over a decade we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopaedia in human history’ it goes on to read. ‘US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet’. Stirring stuff, I hope someone doesn’t have to use this chair after me…

Only I don’t really see the correlation between say, downloading a movie / song illegally and writing anything on a wiki. Oh sure, if you plan to write the synopsis of the movie you just pinched for free then you’re affected. But hey, if a fat kid falls in the woods and no one is there to see it is it still funny? You know it is.

Ironically the wiki black out page has links to Facebook, Google and Twitter, none of which decided to do the same to theirs.

I’ve gone on record about this stuff before but I shall repeat it because I love the sound of my own voice. I believe you should pay for something that someone with far more creativity than you and I have created. Now I don’t agree with paying an extra two hundred percent on top of what the artist gets, just so that every bastard in the manufacturer-to-consumer chain gets his pound of flesh, but you should pay something.

For instance, I won’t pay $35 for a CD because very little of that goes to the cardigan and scarf wearing writer of the song, but I will buy the song I want off iTunes for $1.50. Nor will I pay $20 to see a movie just to cover the wages of the waster at the candy counter that have their pubes, but not their heart, in filling my box of pop corn.

If you’re one of those geezers that doesn’t even believe that they should pay that then you can fuck off. Black out your page if you want but I’m not buying your argument or your desperate cries for solidarity when you’re faced with the prospect of losing something that was never yours to have for free in the first place.

You can stick that on your blacked out wank page too.

This was a pic of the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, naked. But as I copied it illegally from a porn site I didn't pay for I felt it only appropriate that I black it out...

Skip The Light Fandango

One of my favorite tunes on the wireless at the moment is a lovely wee ditty called ‘The A Team’ by a fella named Ed Sheeran.

You’ve probably heard it and / or seen the music video, it’s quite good. Unfortunately despite the title it has nothing to do with the most awesome and possibly best TV series ever of the same name…

It’s one of those songs that talks about angels and stuff and will undoubtedly be played at weddings by couples who haven’t listened well enough to realise the song is in fact about a homeless girl who sells herself to pay for her drug habit. Hence the line ‘she’s in the Class A team’ which has nothing to do with how popular she is / was at school. It really is deep on so many levels.

Apparently this is not a new phenomenon. In the 70’s the big wedding song of choice was ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ by Procol Harlem which talks about skipping the light fandango and other fruity things one does when one has a more than casual relationship with Charlie. Or cocaine as it’s sometimes called.

Not to be confused with ‘the’ Charlie, or soldier of the North Vietnamese Army who I had more than a casual relationship with back in ’69. He certainly wasn’t up for turning cartwheels across the floor or jizzing all over sixteen vessel virgins. Well maybe, who knows how Charlie unwound after a long day of being invisible. He was a man of mystery after all.

The writers of that particular song have long denied that it is actually about drug use but hey it was the sixties after all so who really knows aye? They sure wouldn’t. Sheeran on the other hand makes no such ingenuous claims; his song is what it is and he wrote it after doing a performance in a homeless shelter. What a guy.

I remember the very sexy Dido saying something similar about a song of hers at a concert me and the missus attended once. Hers was about locking herself and a drug addict mate in a room and going cold turkey till she was better. Naturally it was a huge wedding song at the time.

Incidentally my mate Marco bumped into Dido whilst in a cheese shop in London town one time. He reckons she was quite rude but that’s what you get for entering a cheese shop Marco, you tit. Might have been a fish shop actually, but that’s irrelevant.

So if your mate is about to pick The A Team as her song to walk down the aisle to, as she marries her favorite cat, then show her the vid on The YouChube. There are actually two clips, one of which is just Sheeran playing his guitar in the recording studio. You’ll know it because, well, he’s playing his guitar in the studio and he looks a lot like the ginga off Harry Potter. And it’s a bit gay. That’s not it. Pick the other one.

I’ve seen it a couple of times now and each time it reminds me of why I could never be a frequent flyer with working ladies because I am just too damn paternal. The one and only time I visited a strip club I spent the whole time wanting to take all the poor girls home and just give them a damn good cooked meal.

I don’t recall feeling that the time I saw a similar themed New Year’s show in The Hutt a few years earlier where a very talented young lady did remarkable things with a ping pong ball and a light stick. Not at the same time mind you because that really would be talent wouldn’t it? But then that was just tacky.

In the case of the girl featured in The A Team video I would run the poor girl a long hot bath, buy her some new stockings and let her have a good nights sleep, maybe even make her breakfast in bed the next day.

Oh sure, it won’t pay for her drug habit but at least she won’t need Ron Weasley to write a song about her for fucks sake.

Stuck in her daydream, been this way since 18...

Rumble in the Jungle BYOC (Bring Your Own Chair)

As an ex Special Forces Delta Black Op Super Army Soldier (SAS) man myself I don't know whether to laugh or cry at these guys.

The dude wearing the Hawaiian shirt (with the map of Africa on it) must've missed the 'Khaki or Camo Only' memo that morning and has pulled off the army equivalent of going to school in your uniform on mufti day.

Still, it looks like he knows how to handle that chair...

What Not To Wear This Summer (Or Ever)

Let’s take time out for a moment to take the piss out of what some folk are wearing, because someone has to.

Far be it from me to judge and all that PC shit, but I am a raging metrosexual and if there’s one thing I’m quite good at its spotting ensembles that work and those that don’t. It’s my channeling the inner gay at its finest.

Let us then begin:

1. The dress that is short at the front and long at the back, the mullet of the fashion world.

I think that this particular item owes its ‘popularity’ to the TV show on gyppos that aired a few months back. That in its self should explain why this garment is a failure on so many levels. It is the female equivalent of the sleeveless vest; neither here nor there and I don’t care how good the legs are, it just looks as silly as a fella wearing a cape.

It is the latest item in something I like to call ‘Hepatitis Chic’.

2. Retro swim shorts, especially the flouro pink ones.

I saw a teenage boy wearing a pair of this a few months back at the turf and thought that maybe it was just the first bad choice in a long line of many that kid will make over the next few years.

But then I started noticing more and more of them in various menswear stores and realised that yet another relic from the late eighties is back, the flouro fucking swim shorts. Yes, caught somewhere between a pair of boardies and good taste are faded pink togs, best worn with copious amounts of coconut oil, aviators and looking like a dick.

3. Jean Shorts (the really short ones)

Speaking of retro, these have been making a steady comeback for a few years but seem to have exploded this summer. Now I love seeing young girls wearing these as much as the next happily married man, but I do worry about the body image dramas these bring our young women who already have a shitload of that on their plates.

Put simply, some girls just don’t suit them but what is a parent to say when their young princess wants to wear what everyone else at school is, even if they’re bulging out of ends? It’s not a decision I envy having to make. And if they’re the cut off variety why would you want the inside of the pockets to hang out the leg? That just seems naff.

Still, what I know aye? Gok Wan I ain’t but I promise you this, you won’t catch Junior wearing a mullet skirt, pink togs or jean shorts, not while I’m paying for the wardrobe anyway.

As you were.

Reading Is Sexy

I love books me, always have. I don’t read nearly enough these days on account of the small fact that I know everything anyway so why bother aye?

But you always read on holiday don’t you? Several books usually and in such quick fashion that you’ll soon forget what it was that you read. It is thus, essentially, a time wasting exercise but very much a time honoured one so we all do it.

What people have in their bookcase of their bach or holiday home that you’ve rented is always an eye opener I find. Usually it’s the age old stock standards; Readers Digest, a few classics, a bit of romantic fare and if you’re really lucky, some Commando comics, which are the shit and it’s a shame that no one stocks the case with them anymore. Mind you, some bugger like me would pinch the lot so it’s probably a good thing they don’t.

Our latest gaff had a mixture of pretty much three genres; surfing material, guides to countries they’d visited and NZ House & Garden magazine. Clearly we were guests in the home of people who have surfed the world looking for the perfect duvet and drape combo.

Their DVD collection was equally as condense; almost every Tarantino movie and Season One to whatever of Outrageous Fortune. They also had a bit of a hard on (inter racial) for Richard Pryor and Chris Rock so needless to say with three kids in the house we signed up at the local Video Sleazy and rented some family fare, like Summer Heights High.

I read three books whilst away and enjoyed them all but I’m pretty sure at some point I just got in the zone and won’t recall big chunks of them. Which is how bullshit starts really doesn’t it? Someone reads a book, forgets most of it but drops some gem of wisdom in a social setting that is pretty much made up with the caveat at the end “I read it in his book”.

Then you have to check Wankipedia to corroborate whatever it was that Tim Tim Nice But Dim waxed on about that one time, which of course is contributed to by people, who read, wait for it, books. Sure, they list them as reference points but are their recollections any better than my speed reading three in a 10 day period?

And let us not forget that it was Smarty who gave a party and no one came.

I only read nonfiction which makes me sound like a complete wanker but seriously I do. Harry Potter books aside (and they made movies of them so they must be true) I haven’t read any fiction since about the age of 16 and I can’t really recall why I stopped with the made up stuff. Probably because of some grossly inadequate sexual experience I had with one actually. Nonfiction story of my life.

If it hasn’t actually happened then I just can’t contemplate wasting several hours on it. You might as well tell me the contents of that dream you had last night for all the factual content I will get out of a story, so I just don’t bother.

Not everything nonfiction though. Our holiday home did have Lance Armstrong’s book on the shelf and once I had finished my pile considered, albeit for a moment, reading it. But then the Tour de Pharmacy is such a sham of an event I reckoned it’s actually a work of fiction that he won it so many times so I left it where it was.

I must have got desperate though because I did read – and I use the term generously – the wife’s Woman’s Day. Honestly there is more factual content in junk mail than that shit.

That’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

My holiday reading...

Normal Service Has Resumed

Home then and thank god for that. I much prefer being bored out of my wits on my own couch, fuck you very much. A few final thoughts on The Mount though, for future reference:

1. Turns out what we thought was The Rena, actually wasn’t. Unless it’s sunk in the last 48 hours and no one has told the people. I reckon it’s the latter.

2. Roundabouts are generally including in town planning to speed up the changing of direction and to keep traffic flowing. Not so in Mount Manganui where everyone joins in a game called ‘Let’s see how many cars we can squeeze in between pedestrian crossings’ of which, there are a ridiculous amount across each of the exits of said roundabouts.

3. So if the crossings are always being used and the cars are all backed up, is anyone really going anywhere?

4. Wearing your bikini down the main street is cool, if you live in LA, not so in NZ where it’s a case of undies undies togs and you’re wearing the undies. Not so cool.

5. Why do the majority of people at Carnivals always look like they would be right at home living the life of a carnie? This is not just restricted to The Mount mind you..but I did meet Heath Ledger there, he was running the merry-go-round. True story.

6. And do the residents of The Mount get the shits around this time of the year when their usually sleepy town gets overloaded with horny teenagers, backpackers, gyppos, carnies and boat crews? Given that most of the locals are retired and of an age where the fear of anyone colored and /or foreign is already at panic attack high, then it has to be quite the trip.

So there we go. Rest assured then that normal service has resumed, do not adjust your internets.

Yet another free flowing morning at one of the many Mt Maunganui roundabouts...

They Cancelled New Years?!

Yep, the bastards cancelled New Years.

Here we are in Mt Maunganui aka The Mount, aka Mangas, for New Years and they cancelled the thing on account of it raining for a few days before hand. Eight hours to get here, only to find it gets called off for a bit of moisture. What a bunch of fucktards.

Not that a road trip up here should actually take that long mind you but I made the elementary error of not actually consulting a map in detail before hand, as every fella should do. Especially one who has had the exceptional military and martial art training I’ve had.

Oh sure, I had a fair idea where to go and got here we did, but I missed valuable time and fuel saving routes which, in the jungle, would get a man killed. There are no petrol stations in the jungle, only Charlie and he doesn’t take five cent discount vouchers.

Not all of the festivities were canned mind you, the fire works were still fired off which was great by all accounts, if you were directly underneath them. Not so if you were anywhere that required squinting and peering through the thick cloud because then you were right shit out of luck.

Still, I suppose when you’ve got a barge full of high explosives sitting out in a busy harbour you can’t really leave them floating about for too long, the last thing Tauranga wants right now is another maritime disaster on its shores. They say that there’s no such thing as bad press but having an inbound oil tanker collide with a shitload of fireworks you never let off because it was ‘a bit damp’ would well and truly test that theory, I reckon.

Did I mention that we can see the Rena from our corner of the beach? Not so close that we can see the dudes on board changing their minds, but close enough to sit there and think that, all environmental impacts aside, it would be kind of cool to see the thing crack in two whilst watching…

The sailors from the Rena are all around the place too. At least we think that’s who they are; there can’t be too many all male tour groups of Asian descent, dressed in several layers of thick clothing despite the mid twenty temperatures, that choose Tauranga as their Christmas destination of choice.

Despite the cancellations, which I’m pretty sure was just a few bands along the main drag that nobody would’ve actually turned up to see anyway, Mangas still went ‘off’. At least I think that’s what you could call a whole bunch of dudes in cars driving around the place revving and tooting and yelling out of the windows.

Remembering that this is midnight of course and there are numerous backyard fireworks displays happening at the same time and it all started to feel a little bit like downtown Baghdad on a good day. Only with Brotown accents.

However the most disturbing aspect of all this cancellation business was not that they flagged New Years, because lets be honest, I haven’t done that shit since that fateful night alone in a hotel room in ’99. No, it was that the Miss Mt Maunganui titty and thong fest, I mean beauty pageant, was cancelled.

What a disappointment for those girls that had lined up to be salivated over by the many men around here who would’ve lined up for the free perve aye? What are those girls going to do with their time now?

They’ll probably have to make do with a couple of married guys sitting on the beach pretending to look at the Rena, that’s what.