The Non-Return Of The King

The wife has had her back surgery, hence the delay. This was all made more bearable by the fact that her beloved Bono has recently gone through the same procedure.

That voodoo doll has paid for itself. Twice.

Bono may be a strange, hypocritical little gobshite with a grossly oversized head, but his pain and misery has had a calming effect on the wife. The piece of spine that was removed now sits on the bookshelf preserved in vodka til we decide what to do with it. I was thinking of getting it made into a paperweight and making a present of it to the wife’s mum.

I travel to delightful suburb of Three Kings every day and was fascinated to learn that it was named after a collection of volcanic cones (actually four in number) sitting inside a much larger and shallower explosion crater.
Which really just goes to show that despite having a literacy rate of 109%, the understanding of maths here in Mordor is only 12%.
The area around Three Kings was drastically quarried over the years and now only one cone remains, mainly as it has a large water tank that was built on its summit at the beginning of the 20th century and is somewhat difficult to dismantle using tools for breaking into cars. Now known as Big King, it has been designated as a public reserve and will not be quarried. No matter how much it begs to leave the area.
Up until I read all of this I just assumed that the rest of the cones were stolen as the area is known for its high crime rate and scant regard for personally property. In the first week I started working there a work colleague went to the bank and was about to go inside when a guy in a wheelchair outside rolled up and advised her not to as it was being robbed by two armed men at the time. She fled the scene like a greased rodent but the guy in the wheelchair remained. It was probably the first entertainment he has had since his television was stolen.

Though I am some 7 months in to my time here and getting more accustomed to the Kiwi way of life, every day in Mordor I see or hear something that causes me to do a double take. Sometimes this is one of the collection of phenomenal mullets out in Three Kings, but more usually it is something on the quite bonkers media that catches my eye or ear. The other morning there was a caller dropping the F-bomb on a radio discussion and this language wasn't checked or apologised for by the hosts.

The caller then said “Shit….I just said “f*ck” there, didn’t I. Shit, sorry about that…”

Earlier this year we went to a fair at Mission Bay and one of the stalls was called “Finger Puppet Heaven”. I’m reminded of Demetri Martin’s wise words that the phrase “Finger Puppet” is only ok as a noun, but even given this, should children really be subjected to a stall where dead finger puppets abide? That just cannot be right.

Just as London has its Pearly Kings, Mordor has its Hubcap King. Whilst passing through one of the homelier (and by which I mean the kind of home that has a burnt out car on the lawn and police tape as a fence) areas of the city we passed a house that has the entire fence and some of the walls decorated in silver hubcaps of all styles. Not knowing if these were either stolen items displayed like a Predator’s trophies, salvaged from the road by the rest of the Maori womble clan or actually purchased for this very purpose, we stared in wonder before accelerating off into the night.

We then got out and checked the hubcaps were still on the car.

Red and Brown Dawn

It’s been raining here in Auckland. I mean really RAINING. The kind of rain that makes you think about constructing a large boat and selecting two of every animal before you realise that the whole thing is fundamentally flawed (why are the dolphins being spared?) and a load of bollocks.

Because of this, stormwater drains have taken a bit of a battering and the other morning we had what can only be described as an “incident”. Roots had penetrated the sewer pipe and for some reason the volume of water running into the stormwater drain had backed up into the trap and poured into the sewer line. This had the effect of blowing the already partially blocked sewer pipe at the nearest available release. This happened to be our front lawn and so we awoke to a lawn that had gone from green to brown overnight as human excrement flowed freely out of the blown cap. To the untrained eye it looked like a patch of Holbeck.
Fortunately it was sorted within 24 hours and the only cost of this tragedy has been an area of grass around the leak that has been killed off by either my post curry bowel movements or the cleaning chemicals they pump through the pipe as a public health measure.

28th May was Hug A Ginga day here in NZ, largely thanks to a promotion by the radio station The Edge and because the soulless ginner abominations were singled out, several counter arguments were brought to bear about what is essentially gingerism.
Personally I find red headed women attractive and Alyson Hannigan, Felicia Day, Christina Hendricks and Karen Gillan spring easily to mind. Ginner men, on the other hand, tend to be poor ambassadors for the cause.
Think of a ginger man and you automatically see the gurning face of Mick Hucknall, the unholy visage of Carrot Top and the frankly punchable Chris Evans. *Shudder*

The upshot was that highlighting their ginger hair, pale skin, freckles and cold, doll like eyes for even one day a year brings to light that they are picked on for being different. Therefore the other 364 days seems to be Slug A Ginga Day, and the pro-ginger activists wanted to change the way we see the copper coloured mutants once for all by not acknowledging their differences.
The public saw it otherwise, however and were happy to hug the ginners for one day a year while pelting them with rocks for the rest. That's people for you.

Gollum's Commercial Breakdown

I’m finding the adverts her in Sauronville hard going. The standards tend to swing between shockingly awful and risqué to say the least. Some of the stuff that happens pre-watershed has the wife and I exchanging wide eyed looks of bemusement. Though to be fair, they showed an advert for Skins at 7pm and bleeped out “f*cking” but left in “tw@ts”. Random.

Richard Till is the most annoying creature in all of Mordor.
It’s not the sound of this shrill voiced ghoul’s human voice.
It’s not even the way this grinning, dead eyed spectre leers at you from the screen trying to lure you into its food based doctrines.
No, it’s the way the voice falls and rises at stupid moments to miss any sort of point or structure. He could be saying anything, be it “eat healthily”, “worship me, mortals” or “kill your family. Take the knife and do it now!” but you won’t hear it. You’ll just focus on his annoying cadence. Actors held in the thrall of this hideous abomination stand beside him declaring unswerving allegiance to his unholy cause in order to further add to the subliminal programming.
Only the most disciplined amongst us can find the strength to switch the channel before it is too late.

Sky City is the local big casino run by Australians. We went in at New Year and it just looked like every other casino we have ever been in, with its gaudy carpet, dead eyed faithful throwing dollar after dollar into unforgiving slot machines and lots of Orientals.
They have recently tried to change this image by running an advert showing young, hip, financially secure, fun-loving individuals gambling, laughing, drinking and dancing alongside middle aged, artificial hip, financially secure, getting out of the care home-loving individuals enjoying themselves as best they can with full colostomy bags and a pacemaker.
I have it on good authority that all of the individuals featured are either actors or staff and do not represent the real punters, many of whom were too busy to be pulled away from the slots or bingo to appear on camera. Plus they were all wearing shorts, and that isn’t the image that Sky City wants to project.

Infomercials are also rife here with a special place in hell being reserved for the AA Insurance one which looks like it is a daytime chat show and is there just to have the AA bloke being “interviewed” spouting about his competitive rates and premiums. Even for Christchurch, apparently.

The most annoying ad has to be for the “The Amazing Maze In Maize” which is just those five words being shrieked more or less in tune by a man who is having his testicles cooked in a George Foreman grill.

However, the crowing turd in the pipe is the new raft of Burger King ads.
These started off quite innocuously with the Burger King (who looks uncannily like a man in a Barry Gibb mask) playing tennis before being informed that sales of his beefy goodness were down in Hobbiton.
The next ad has him at the airport where he refuses to take off his crown to go through security and does a runner over the barriers. Yeah, just the kind of thing you get shot to death for at any US airport. Well, that and looking remotely Middle Eastern, anyway.
Then he is viewed on airport security tapes making his way across the tarmac after presumably hijacking an airliner. I guess the Air Marshals must have missed him.
Once he reaches NZ he proceeds to annoy people by turning up unannounced and then shoving a burger at them.
He turns up on the porch of a guy playing the banjo (which goes to show that these are merely generic ads rather than country specific which are then slightly tailored using voice overs. It also explains the lack of Maoris in the ads) and starts dancing in that hillbilly kind of way. You know, the kind of dance that is used by many a slack jawed yokel to woo his own sister (who is also his mother).
After gracing us with this delight he shows up next to a very nervous looking guy in a sauna and invites said naked man to get his jaws around his Whopper.
Finally, in the spirit of all mask wearing sociopaths he appears silently behind a couple who are kissing in a car.
So, essentially you have a creepy bloke in a mask showing up when you least expect it as an advertising gimmick for BK.
No wonder the sales are in the toilet.

Sh*te At The Museum 3: Nick Griffin Must Die

We went to the Auckland Domain last week to visit the museum. When the wife heard it was a war memorial museum, there was much rolling of eyes, gnashing of teeth and general complaints about man’s inhumanity to man. When she heard there was a Holocaust section she soon perked up though.
She’s a strange, strange woman.
Anyway, here are some highlights and lowlights…

Highlights-
The museum itself is stunning well built and sits on a hill overlooking the city, which is a fine testament to those who have fought and died for this beautiful nation.
The memorial inside is spectacular and there is a library section where you can search the electronic database for names and get their entire service records as well as available bios and photos. It’s sombre reading.
The Maori history section is likewise excellent and contains a Marae, a massive Waka and an in depth section on the frankly mental Maori Wars. It also has a huge section on early colonial history and development which I found very informative for the 3.5 seconds the wife allowed me to view it.

South Auckland's sole unstolen VCR, preserved here for posterity.

The Volcano experience is a lounge area you go into with a TV and couches and a bay window (which is actually just a screen projection) overlooking Rangitoto. The TV eventually fires up and after a short faux news clip about earthquakes, the water in the bay starts to boil, the earth shakes and the volcano goes off like Cheryl Tweedy on a nightclub toilet attendant.
The aftermath is one of a devastated buildings, destroyed vegetation and the sun barely peeking through a sky still raining ash. To be honest, it looked a lot like the pictures I’d seen of modern day Christchurch.

Lowlights-
The section on Pacific history left me a bit cold. Maybe it’s the European in me but history should be exciting and full of murder, religious intolerance, genocide and horses becoming Senators. The Pacific history was all about war canoes, tribal skirmishes and thrilling tales of fishing or mango collecting. Which is fine if you are into that stuff, but really dull if you have lived in the same country as Prince Philip.

Nazis. To quote Dr Henry Jones Jr "I hate these guys". So, every time I see Nazi memorabilia it makes my blood boil. Despite the fact that I was in a museum with a large WW2 section I still had the first pangs of disgust when I turned the corner to find a large V1 bomb strung up over the stairs. I needn't have worried, though as the actual dedicated Nazi section was quite small, comprising of a corner of the exhibit and featuring a large swastika flag, a hundred or so Nazi party badges and a dagger. There’s probably a larger display in Nick Griffin’s living room (and sadly, not shoved up his arse along with some rusty razor wire and a rabid jackal).

Growing up there was always a stereotype about Japanese tourists with cameras. I never fully understood this until a bus pulled up outside of the museum and about 30 Japanese tourists piled off, each holding a camera. One bloke even had three cameras on him. One huge SLR slung over one arm, a video camera over the other and a small digital one. As all were probably digital, why would he need all three? His wife just had a small digital and they were both taking pictures of the same thing.
Maybe Japanese foetuses are given small cameras to film the birth on their way out of the womb. It would certainly give a whole new meaning to the "Box Brownie".
Anyway, once they were let loose they were snapping everything in sight, which meant I was in their way. A lot. One even tutted at me at he tried to take his twenty seventh picture of propaganda poster.
Now, I’m not having a go at the Japanese here but like many nations the people who choose to be tourists are sometimes not the best ambassadors for their home nation. I can think of a few Brits I have known who only wish to order egg and chips while abroad. Very loudly.
But, the shutterbug remains as an enduring image of the Japanese, much like the Kamikaze pilot and tentacle porn.

Hell Mariachi

A few weeks ago we had to take a trip to the hospital after the wife had a back injury. Despite the fact that the driver took us over the bumpiest roads imaginable we made it there safely, signed in at the desk and had our pick of seats in Accident & Emergency, which had the capacity to hold about 30 people but held 3 at this time. Including us. The only other patron was a woman who had a splinter or something.
Once swiftly seen, we navigated our way to the pharmacy before trying to exit the maze of corridors. The problem with Auckland is that the terrain is volcanic and therefore very hilly. You can go in one door at ground level and by the time you get to the back of the building you are two floors up and watching knuckle dragging locals tipping a stolen Ford Falcon into some lava. Anyway, we ended up in the bowels of the hospital and eventually came to an upward sloping corridor where we could hear organ music. Thinking that this was being piped through the sound system but still needing to ascend anyway we went up the slope and the music got louder and louder. At the top of the corridor was a way out to the back of the building and staff car park, but on the right was a man playing the organ. There was nobody else around.

Once out we didn’t venture back into the hospital so I had no way of knowing if this music was being piped through the rest of the building (I couldn’t see how) or if it was just a bloke playing the organ for the delight of departing staff members.

Orakei has a Maori womble. I’m not joking. A Papa Smurf a-like, this old man makes a daily circuit of the neighbourhood rooting in bins, hanging out in front of the nearby dairy (local vernacular for a corner shop) and generally warping the very fabric of space/time with his military grade body odour. Bedecked in a beanie hat and parka (even in the height of summer) and with a face that has more lines than Kate Moss’s coffee table, he wanders the streets getting into daily adventures worthy of a Mike Batt tune. One day I’ll actually stop and talk to him to hear his rags to tatters story, but until I lose my sense of smell I’ll keep a respectful distance and he can remain a local enigmatic legend. Albeit it one who smells of piss.

The Mexican restaurant in Mission Bay has reopened. It has now been renamed Two Amigos and rumours are afoot that it is still owned by the same miscreant who closed the place down after doing a runner with 15k of compensation money. I’m thinking that the name is a bit of a throw off as the homophobic tossrag seemed to be dead against anything involving Two Amigos. We went past the place the other night, and despite the fact that the waiter was wearing a huge sombrero; the place was emptier than Tiger Woods’ sponsorship diary.