Dogs of War

Back in the dawn of the 1980's, my old man tried his hand at running kiwifruit on a farm out west of Tauranga. We lived in caravans next to the shed, right across from the neighbour's battery chicken farm.

The neighbour's dog, a mangy beast with something short of a full Labrador in him, used to wander onto the farm and hassle our dogs, two German short-haired pointers called Kaiser and Rommel (like another certain disruptive entrepreneur, the old man liked his Germans). Kaiser was a 12 year old former gun dog champ, brown-coated and freckled with white patches of hair. Rommel was not even three, dark liver hair and whippet thin.

After a week of skirmishes between men and dogs, where the dog kept coming across the fence and my old man kept telling the neighbour he'd put a .22 bullet behind its ear, the day of the final dogfight arrived.

The old man was out on his tractor working on one of the nearer blocks. The dogs were with him, and it wasn't long before the neighbour's dog caused trouble. It had caught Kaiser unawares and had latched onto the old dog's throat. Out of nowhere, Rommel zipped in and nipped the dog firmly on its arse. The dog yelped out of pain or surprise, giving Kaiser his escape. It turned to see the source of counter-attack already halfway across the block.

Nor did the dog see the bullet that hit him. It yelped in receipt of it and retreated to less painful territory, limping badly and leaving the old man wondering whether the wound was mortal or merely a winging. Rommel and Kaiser preceded the old man on his tractor back to the shed by a good minute, seemingly none the worse for wear.

The old man put the rifle away and went across to tell the neighbour the news. The neighbour accepted the dog's fate, and we all went out searching the borders of both lands looking for the missing hound. I found him, curled up on a corner section under a tree as if sleeping. The neighbour took the dog away, to a grave or an offal pit is uncertain.

Kaiser and Rommel lived largely happy lives until they died. Kaiser was put to sleep aged 16 years after his legs gave up. Rommel went walkabout off the farm a few years after this summer skirmish, presumably ending up with a short life span in the illegal dog fighting circuit. He was always a better runner than a fighter.

Birth of Gonzo

Just as Kroc didn't invent McDonald's (he was a milkshake maker salesman), Hunter S. Thompson didn't invent the term Gonzo. That honour belongs to Eichhorn:

And now, here's National's Jack Marshall posing in front of some subversive comics he wanted to ban:

This post is dedicated to Deborah Hill Cone and all the other writers, comics and blogsters fighting to keep the NZ in gonzo. Keep calm and keep creatively self-destructing on behalf of the public good.

Deconstructing a Dead Whale

There is no clean and tidy way to dispose of a dead whale. Everyone from Greenpeace to Norway knows that. The old man of the sea that washed up at the Pram Boat Club was always going to be a mission to inter.

I'm glad my hunter/gatherer mate went for a rubberneck so I didn't have to. The crowds of gawpers, the tang of cordite and intestines fugging the air that does nasty things to my memory. Ta but na. Even he was stunned by the amateurism and gore that went into digging out the jawbone. He reckoned they should have used a chainsaw and be done with it.

A funny fact about whaling; the Law Commission's Alcohol in Our Lives Report never mentioned it, but the Maori who worked on the whaling stations didn't drink with their European workmates. They socialised, they smoked tobacco, but kept away from the demon drink.

It was only in the 1860's, when converted Christian Maori started preaching to their own, that alcohol became an accepted part of Maori habit. Even then, places like Parihaka sprang up as oasis of socialisation without inebriation. Later on, the same quantum effect of culture occurred in the 1950's with the urbanisation of Maori. The generational fallout from that continues today.

Anyways, the remains of the whale passed by my rented whenua sometime yesterday and is now interred somewhere in Raumati South. The jawbone is getting picked clean by sea leeches or whatever. And I'm finally going to sit down and read Moby Dick for the first time.

We are all mutants

I don't have hemochromatosis. My father had me tested. Unfortunately, he did. Such is the dice roll of mutation. My Scanda-Belgian genetics has flared up in other ways; Viking Disease, for example.

But my worries are naught compared with what follows with the Young Ones. Wait until Playstation Claw or iFrequency Earing Loss gain momentum. All those First Person Shooter gamers might just be damaging their DNA as badly as the Instant Whitening of Hair Power that politics bestows on its players, splurging their fight or flight adrenaline supplies for the instant hit.

The same could be said for the stress levels of those caught between the electronic disruptions and the squeeze for higher productivity to feed the corporate grinder. There is a very good chance many of us are all getting older younger.

I'm no fancy big city geneticist, but I would advise a similar strategy to gene pool lineage as to financial investment. Keep as broad a portfolio as you can, because you never know what tomorrow will need.

The Great Samoan Dream

A Raumati Xmas

The Great Samoan Dream, on some elemental level, is much like the Great Korean Dream, the Great Indian Dream, the Great Abbo Dreamtime (and so on). Peace without war. Harmony without authority. Security without guns or fear. And beach cricket.

Apropos to nothing

Back in the mid-90's, I was watching Braveheart on video at the old man's house in Tauranga. It was just after he had quit the Act party and joined the Nats in Tauranga, for the simple purpose of defeating Winston Peters.

Near the end of the movie, he walked past and snorted, "That movie is complete rubbish. Apart from the part about Robert the Bruce betraying Wallace. That was real. The English didn't kill Wallace. His fellow Scotsmen did."

A game of chance

I know a thing or two about gambling. I was conceived to save a dying marriage, a bad gamble if ever there was one. Around the time of my birth, my father was enjoying a winning streak at the racecourse with a horse called Breathalyser. The purchase of said thoroughbred was the result of Dad's lawyer's cut as part of a spectacular payout at the law courts over a drink driving accident lawsuit (This being before ACC removed personal liability, but that's a whole other kind of recursive coincidences which won't be discussed for the moment).

Breathalyser's luck ran out with a broken leg and was buried somewhere behind Awapuni racecourse, near Mt Cleese. Her daughter, Once Eliza, never recaptured her Mum's glorious run. Many childhood weekends were spent at the races as Dad fruitlessly tried to recapture that original thrill. My brother was so well versed with the form from hanging around the Members' Stand, jockeys and trainers, if 12 year olds could place bets at the trackside tote, he'd have made a fortune.

As a teenager, I accompanied the old man to Cambridge when he was invited to open a Stud Farm. He described horse racing then as the sport that can turn paupers into kings and kings into paupers. I stood there inhaling the horse shit and expensive scents of the peacocks preening and strutting around the concourse.

Dad took me over to Oz in 1986 with his mates Len and Dawn, in what turned out to be a hellish casino road trip from Burleigh Heads to Melbourne in two weeks. We went to the Rugby Club pokie halls, Jupiters' Casino, and every type of gaming house in between. Although the age of entry was 18, and I was a young looking 16, I never was turned away from a game or pokie while I was there.

In yet another bout of staggeringly amazing coincidences, Dad was inspired to do this jaunt by a daring man called Ken Morgan, who had gained notoriety for opening a casino outside New Zealand's territorial waters on a boat called the Gulf Explorer. You'll know Ken as Dakta Green:



Ken Morgan had ruffled a lot of feathers among the public, the unions and even within the Labour party caucus. The Golden Kiwi ticket was in the process of being upgraded to Instant Kiwi, the stupidity tax of Lotto was forming, helped no end by witnessing the Keno board at Jupiter's first hand. The Casino Control Authority (now the Gambling Commission)  was but a glint in Dad's eye.

By 17, I was among a handful of school mates with TAB phone accounts. Even the Head Boy of the school read the Friday Flash in the Common Room. Rugby, racing and beer ruled. I also had my meagre $400 in savings invested in shares. Miami Vice and Miami Wine Coolers also ruled, for a short time. In the end, the TAB account dissipated much more slowly and entertainingly than the shares fared. It was 1987, after all.

I met Judith Collins in the 1990's, when she was the head of the Casino Control Authority. If memory serves, Auckland's Harrah's casino was being issued with a five year license and a 150 kilometre monopoly boundary for the same period. The idea was that competition would be introduced and all Harrah's had was a head start.

Some public functions were part of the initial conditions, such as the Bus Terminal and what is now known as Sky City Theatre. But similar stipulations were made on Christchurch Casino, when it was still independently operated. The playing field was, as they say, level.

On a personal level, I had become hooked on pokies by this time. They proved far less exhausting to concentrate on than people, although they were quite high maintenance. It would take years to realise that all this cash was being thrown away all because I didn't want to go back to the flat.

I was cured of all major gambling habits in my thirties. It was a sure-fire treatment I'd recommend to gambling counsellors everywhere. I became a roulette dealer at Sky City. The job was so demoralising, stressful and repetitive, the mainly immigrant dealers worked hard to save up and leave to become taxi drivers.

By coincidence, the bread and butter punters of Sky City was also Auckland's immigrant population, possibly seeking sanctuary in the one place that will never ostracise them for their visible (and invisible) differences. While they still have a dollar in their pocket at least, unlike most of New Zealand.

There are a thousand examples I could give you. The best one is the depressing recurring memory of standing at a playerless roulette table at 3am on a Sunday morning, hands in sight of the ever-vigilant cameras above, fingers akimbo on the dirty felt cloth. Staring at the rows of expressionless faces lit up by these machines, Slot Sluts umbilically connected to their hosts, their parasites.

Of all the forms of gambling I have witnessed, none robs people quicker and more efficiently than a pokie machine. There's half an hour between races. Lotto is weekly. Even an Instant Kiwi takes half a minute to get the kick (or not). Table games at least have to employ some human capital. Most casino pokie attendants are burned out table games dealers. And you'd be surprised how little labour it takes to service a pokie machine, and how much competition there is for those relatively cushy jobs at the casino.

We all need pressure valves. Gambling, within reasonable limits, is one of these good vices. Wellington should still get a casino, as I said earlier. But they should exist in the spirit of all hospitality, and that is to redistribute money from the rich to the poor (workers) for a reasonable service.

You're asking for trouble if you mercilessly exploit the poor for inflated personal gains. Because it is the taxpayers and citizens who have to pick up the tab when it goes wrong for those who can least afford it.

To bend one of the old man's repetitive quotes, money may not buy happiness, but it does buy you a way to externalise your miseries.

Shooting the Pook

"Yes I've voted" sez the orange man sticker on my desk. In light of the 7pm embargo on polspeak, let me entertain you with a true story coaxed out of the memory banks before the live-blogging begins. Shooting the Pook is Part Two of the Hunter Chronicles. Part One here.

This particular story is inspired by the Pook winning this year's Bird of the Year Award, and partly due to the latest iteration of George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant doing the rounds.

...

The old man must have set some kind of record for killing things in this country. Long before he worked the chain at the Longburn freezing works, he spent most of his spare youth in the hills shooting a wide variety of animals. Deer were his favourite target. Ducks were probably second. If deer was an epicurean kill and ducks the next skill tier down, rabbits were the equivalent of fast food.

Most days the .22 would lie in the car. Sometimes in the boot but, if he hadn't killed anything that day and there was a spare hour of light on the hills, the rifle would be within arm's reach of the driver's seat. The glovebox was always full of shotgun cartridges, the ashtrays full of live .22 rounds. I had orders to keep an eye out for rabbits as we travelled the back roads on the scenic route home.

"Wind down your window," he'd say as he put the magazine into the rifle and pulled back the bolt. The barrel would slide past my nose and out my window, aimed at the grassy knoll where a rabbit was having its last supper.

I learnt early on I could not be a doctor. I never got used to the smell of intestines. He'd bury the guts in the back yard under stones, so the dogs wouldn't dig them up. In with the dead cats with a bullet behind their ear, which he'd shot with the .22 from his bedroom window. There were strays living under the house, he insisted. Even after a Lost and Found report on the Palmy radio station matched the description and location of one such trespassing feline now pushing up stones.

My father had experimented with a kiwifruit farm out Te Puna way, west of Tauranga. It had what an environmentalist might consider a wildlife sanctuary, but what my father saw as a killing field. Ponds and gullies aplenty for the countless pheasants and California Quail who added their fates in with any ducks and rabbits. The poacher could stay home and shoot away to his heart's content. No need for stealthy racetrack rabbit hunts or Centennial Lagoon Duck massacres now.

It was no surprise that firearms were involved in my father's idea of a manhood ritual. One summer, the old man decided it was time for me to make my first kill. I had shot slug rifles at targets since I can remember, but shotguns were another step up entirely. It was time for my first .410 lesson. If I passed this exam, one day I might even get to use the .308, like my brother could.

My brother had been converted to marksmanship some years ago, and he accompanied Dad and me to the swamplands behind the caravans where we lived. No honourable ducks were at risk from this folly. The rabbits, quail and pheasant were too twitchy for a novice. Even the lowly Miner birds were considered too quick-witted for my first slaughter. I was going to shoot a pook.

Pooks were the very bottom of the skill tier. Strutting swamp hens, they only manage to get airborne from an ungainly waddling take-off. Most of the time they just stand like sitting ducks. They were generally left alone as they tasted much like the swamp crap they ate, but for the purposes of the ritual, this bird would suffice as the sacrifice.

We were downwind from the swamp as we approached its edge. It didn't take long for a pook to come into range. We lay prone on the grass and the old man signalled for me to pull the hammer of the gun back. I did so, closed my left eye and put a bead on the mired blue bird.

I lay there and nothing happened. The pook eventually meandered away and out of clear shot. I couldn't pull the trigger. At least, I knew I wouldn't. It was time to face the wrath of Dad and tell him that I couldn't shoot the pook. I wasn't expecting the punishment, which seemed to consist of never being invited to shoot anything again, which suited me just fine.


A few days after this manhood fail, when no-one was at the farm, I took the .410 and my brother's gun dog Rommel and went back to the swamp. Rommel managed to flush a pook out of the gorse bushes and I winged it as it tried to flee. It sat high up in the bushes squarking in pain. I sent the dog in to retrieve it, but he came back puffed but empty.

I shot at the pook again, but that seemed to make it worse. The branches were blocking a clear shot. I walked back to the caravan. It didn't take long until the shrieks were out of earshot.

...

And now, here is a photo of some black swans on Wharemauku Pond, a peaceful sanctuary favoured by ducks, pooks and swans alike:

Fierce Invalids Home from Lukewarm Climates

We were driving through Te Horo a handful of years ago, me and a couple of hitch-hikers I had picked up around Porirua, heading north to Auckland. Both were European backpackers, and as we cruised up State Highway One, the bloke would ask what the history of the place was. "Nothing of consequence," said I.

Strictly speaking, this was true. This wasn't Poland, doormat to a dozen conquering dynasties. But by the dozenth time this guy asking "What happened here?" as we zoomed through Te Horo, I plain admitted I had not a clue.

I had a flashback of 2001 in Oz (the We Went on Holiday by Mistake Tour as I now call it), when I was quizzed on the picaresque qualities of the Bay of Islands/ West Coast/ Ninety Mile Beach and illuminated my ignorance by saying I had never been to these places.

The hitch-hikers had gone their own way by that evening, but their curiosity gnawed at me for years. So I read. I read Edward Jerningham Wakefield and his Adventure in New Zealand. Rauparaha, a vague mash of childhood tales, came alive. I read on pre-colonial Maori. I read The Coming of the Maori by Te Rangi Hiroa. I read Michael King. And then I read some more.

The next foreign hitch-hiker who asks gets the full lecture. More importantly, the tardy education gave me a greater appreciation of the western coastline north of Wellington. Mana and Kapiti Islands now have deeper meaning. And it is into this land of Rauparaha that I now reside.

Auckland and I do not get on. This is the fourth attempt at living in Auckland that has failed miserably. Here's a sprinkling of lessons learned this time around:

• There are too many Glens and too much godiness in Auckland. Glenfield, Glen Innes, Glen Eden, Glen, Glen bloody Glen! Is Glen Scottish for mall? The quantity of big box churches is a bit of worry, the fundamentalist vandals more so.
• The Heineken Mastercard Rugby World Cup had better pour a truckload of business into Auckland, because Wednesday night down at the Viaduct right now looks grim.
• West Auckland politics seems even more incestuous and crony broken than the rest of the city. The rich and wealthy thumb their noses at the laws, making fithy lucre at public expense. The liquor licensing boards pick winners and protect losers. The middle classes get hassled by the Council for minor pruning or attempting to plant a veggie garden. Want to do up the family home? Prepare your wallet for a conga line of Council inspections: "Da-da-da-da-da, PAY! Da-da-da-da-da, PAY!" The masses get to fight over the scraps left over.
• Outrageous Fortune was a documentary. I scoffed at the last season. Judd and Pascalle getting together? That was a step over the line of suspending disbelief, eh. But no. After witnessing West Auckland, it's the sort of place where screwing the step-daughter while the Mum's in prison seems sane.

So, fuck Auckland. Titirangi might be the Wellington of the north but give me the real thing.

Still Life

Almost set for blogging again. Just getting the raupo laid. It really ties the place together.

Escape from Pleasantville

Growing up in Palmy, I had a rather traditional NZ childhood upbringing. Hours and days of glorious solitude. Laissez faire parenting with the occasional slap from the invisible hand. Moving homes, moving towns, moving in fits and starts. Family quality time compressed into the confines of a moving vehicle, with all its "Are we there yet?" brittleness.

Escape was the goal. I realised that the first time I tried to run away at age five. Alas, there was nowhere to run to. Then I discovered books:

Nicked from here, HT BoingBoing.

Books were the only thing that lasted in our house, and they were plentiful. The old man made me burn many things, but never a book.

When I visit friends with kids these days, I keep a quiet note of the quality and quantity of their libraries. It's not a snob point, it is a matter of access to education for their sprogs. Or themselves, for that matter. Alas, the tidings are not good. Brains cannot be fed on sports biographies and recipe books alone.

And yet, my highly selective polling of NZ homes fares much better than the ones done on US households:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.

That's ripped from here, which has much more depressing evidence of the continuing decline in American intelligence. But screw the adults, what about the children?

As many as 42 percent of American children come from families without the “luxury” disposable income to purchase new books, according to a NYTimes “Fixes” blog post, and tens of millions of families have no books at home at all.

HT Melville House Publishing via onegoodmove.

This will not have a happy ending.

Selling NZ by the Pound

“Write drunk. Edit sober.” - Hemingway

Pardon, dear readers, for the sporadic blogging over the last few weeks. There are many reasons why this has been so, but the main one is that I haven't been drinking. Sure, there's been the occasional beer here and there, catching up with old mates, but none of the long, contemplative solo drinking that fuels the really original content (moderated of course with chain-smoking rollies and puffing on the old pipe).

I haven't been drinking because I have moved out of the Hobbit Hole in Wellington and into the Daktory in Auckland. The Daktory is New Zealand's first cannabis clubrooms. Like Te Whiti and Tohu's little experiment in Parihaka before it was crushed by the armed constabulary back in the nineteenth century, the Daktory forbids alcohol. So here I am, perched at a mate's place's balcony overlooking Great North Road with all the basic blogging ingredients; a view, a bottle of red wine, a full stash box, and a pack of duty free tobacco. Let's go.

As long time readers will know, I have been hassling for some small time to reform NZ's stupid, archaic, disproportionate, hypocritical drug laws. I have reached the conclusion that hell will freeze over before our poll-driven, majoritarian politicians lift a finger to change these bad laws persecuting a vulnerable minority.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact straw that broke the camels' back; Operations Lime, Bitters, Cobra, the never-ending arrests of pot users and home growers. Or perhaps it was NZ Customs seizing all vaporisers imported into NZ not long after I gave evidence to the Health select committee demonstrating one:

Vaporisers are one of the most effective harm minimisation tools for consuming cannabis. Because THC and other cannabinoids evaporate at a lower temperature to plant material, a vaporiser allows users to grab the medicine without the tar and burnt plant material entering their lungs. Absorbtion within the lungs is quicker than mouth sprays such as Sativex, and therefore dosage can be moderated much more accurately.

Vaporisers are to cannabis users what the Needle Exchange Program is to heroin users. Even rabid former drug czar Chairman Jim Anderton supported legislation in favour of the Needle Exchange. And Customs won't let these vaporisers in at all. Customs' reasons for doing so are wrong-headed and contradictory, but it is too expensive appealing to the courts when faced with the bureaucratic legal monolith of NZ Customs that makes dealing with ACC look like a box of chocolates.

It's all part of the rolling maul to allegedly eliminate drug use by removing utensils. There's a bill floating through parliament right now that will eliminate them even more by banning the sale of pipes, bongs, and parts thereof. Let them smoke joints and buckies, eh. That's some screwy version of harm minimisation right there.

Speak of the devil. Here's a TV3 puff piece on pipes at the dairy, complete with an interview with the empty shell known as Jim Anderton. Pipes help remove tar and other toxins from smoke on the way to the lungs. Pipes aren't as effective as vapes, but they're a crapload safer for users than an unfiltered joint.

That journo wouldn't know harm minimisation if it jabbed them with a dirty needle or a Hepatitis B joint. Fortunately for TV3, they manage to balance this rubbish out with this raw footage interview with the Police's Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Cahill, who seems both reasonable and clued up. I'd buy that cop a beer to bend his ear.

While vanilla politicians such as John Key, Judith Collins and Simon Power continue to arrest my people, invade their homes, steal their assets, and generally ruin thousands of lives every year whilst blowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on cops, choppers, courts, the clink and whatever other social costs of useless prohibition, I have had enough. It is time for some civil disobedience as well.

"John Key" holding a pound of cannabis

So here I am living at the Daktory in New Lynn, New Zealand's first cannabis club. The Daktory provides a friendly supervised environment for its members whilst funding cannabis law reform. Hey, it's not as if Lion Nathan or Vodafone will sponsor the cause. In the two years the Daktory has been operating, there has been no fights. It has maintained a self-regulating etiquette based on the internationally accepted AHOJ-G criteria (pdf):

The sale of cannabis is illegal, yet coffee shops are tolerated in their sale of cannabis, if they adhere to certain criteria: no advertising, no sale of hard drugs, not selling to persons under the age of 18, not causing public nuisance and not selling more than 5 grams per transaction.

I have never found a place in my life as supportive as the Daktory. It's the Whanau Ora of NZ cannabis culture. I am with my people. Time will tell if the cops bring the hammer down on us here at the Daktory, like they are already trying to do with Switched On Gardener and Operation Lime. Dakta Green is facing trial later this year for charges trumped up during a fortnight of police harassment back in 2009. I'm assisting in his defence.

Alas, I must go. I am not only blogging, but also babysitting. Daughter of Madame J is 10 years old. I have just told her that when I was her age, the police used to arrest gay people, raid gay bars and lock its patrons up in prison. Her jaw just dropped. It's amazing how intolerant this country once was, and still is. We hope for a change towards a more tolerant society, but in the meantime I'm living like it's legal. Wish me luck.

2010, Year of the Shit Sandwich

Here is Part One of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe look at 2010:



Parts Two, Three, Four, Five.

Nothing purges 2010 quite like New Year's Eve at Onetangi Beach on Waiheke Island:

With Maryjane the Cannabus:

Getting in the face of people who can afford overpriced food in a recession:

Although 99.9 percent of people didn't complain to police about our presence, some complaints were made on New Year's morning, and we were visited by the local police:

But they left without hassles. The Ostend Market people were friendly too:

And a big thank you to the crew of Sealink who sailed us all there and back again:

A very happy 2011 to you all.

Perky Nana

Belated congratulations to Cactus Kate for winning the inaugural Air New Zealand Bloggers Award. Well deserved. I am proud of the grey hairs that she gave me when she was just a wee contributing writer to the old Prebble's Rebels newsletter back in the 90s, and I was the litigation-averse editor. Even back then the Mallard-baiting was there. Her defamatory byline from back then is seared into memory; "Mallard is a duck that needs to be shot down." A baker's dozen years later, the Mallard & Cactus pot stews on with flavour and vigour.

Can't fault runner up Dim Post either. Danyl has earned a pop on the podium for unrelenting wit, something that still eludes the criteria for a Queen's Birthday gong. You'll never get a CBE for shitstirring and short of a paid writing gig this is as good as it gets.

I'll take the judges' word for it on Whale Oil as runner-up as well. I don't read Whale Oil for the same the reason I don't read The Standard. Sure, I'll link them in the sidebar, but the signal to noise ratio is just too much for me.

Or maybe it's the symmetry that bothers me. I have met Cameron once, whilst considering joining the Blogmobile before the last election. That instant recognition of Child of Politics Syndrome. That mercurial will to make a difference mixed in with Oedipus and Dagg knows what else. Suffice to say that I quickly relised we could not share a confined space for the lengths of time required. Each to their own but bugger that. Besides, I had no-one to look after the cat.

And thank you to the judges of the Blog Awards for the constructive criticism for my entry in the awards. It's more than I get from my CVs or job interviews. Damnit, I knew I should have entered The Alcocop Paradox instead of the Dick Cheney thing, but oh well. But I must single out Tim Selwyn's comment:

A decent mix of liberalism, or a liberal mix of decency - perhaps both. The humour has its moments, but ironically the style in these posts - in this day and age and in this medium - are not really that Gonzo at all.

Allow me to retort.

Firstly, it's goNZo not Gonzo. Secondly, does it count if it written on the spur of the moment? Does it count if every single goddamn post ever written has been under the influence of illegal substances? Shit, maybe I've been too inarticulate, not grasping the Zeitgeist or something.

OK, here's a bone, and it fits into the MP perk feeding frenzy going on over the last Labour Government. Forget that this is historical navel gazing is at a time of belt tightening looking back at an era of boom times and artificial growth during the mid-Noughties.

Have a read of the history of Trev and how he got kicked off the Palmerston North City Council over a poaching bust with US pop star PJ Proby. Have a look at Google Street View at the place I spent my first four years of life and how the gate lanterns look identical to the Palmy Lagoon lighting that was also bought with city funds in that era:


View Larger Map

For the record

I remember back in 1979 when I was nine years old, my father took my sister Uptight Rodriguez, then 16, on an around the world tour. A large part of her character was built on that trip; the incentives of what money could buy were fused into place, as well a crash course in a foreign culture. The old man left her lost in Rome for over a day, her without one word of Italian to her credit. She lived.

The old man always had a habit of disappearing at inconvenient moments that would make the guy who left his kid outside Mermaids look positively parental. While my mother was popping out Uptight in the Palmy Hospital Maternity Unit back in '64, the old man had disappeared into the bush without warning for over a week; hunting was his alibi. He once rationalised his actions, saying that he was a better father than Barry Crump. For overseas readers, it's a bit like saying George W Bush was a better president Nixon. Not a high hurdle, capito?

Among the treasures brought back from this world tour into Fortress NZ, as it was back then, were a few pirated tape cassettes picked up for bugger all in Bangkok by my sister. She got something like a dozen tapes for the price she'd pay for one in NZ. The cassette case for Abba's Arrival was plain white cardboard with a small photo of the original album cover glued onto it.

I'm not sure whether they lasted shorter or longer than the legitimate copies. The Range Rover's tape deck liked to snack on either, chewing through songs so often, you'd be listening to each song as if it was for the last time. I think the Abba carked it later that year at a race meeting outside Fuck Knows. The Range Rover doubled as a Child Care Centre back then too. My favourite toy was the cigarette lighter. We were at racecourses for so much of our non-school hours, if thirteen year olds were allowed to bet, my brother Randy would have made a fortune. He knew the form.

Damnit, this post is supposed to be about copyright, but it keeps veering off into Dad. He's creaking around upstairs louder than normal, what with him dead nine years tomorrow and all. I never took my chance to bury him out behind Matata back then. He was never as accessible as the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Besides, Matata needs the phosphate. I hold him partly responsible for the Matata landslips in 2005 though. I imagine him tunnelling beneath the ground with his artificial hip bone, searching for just one more rabbit to kill.

Screw it. I'm not deleting any more paragraphs. We'll just have to see where this one goes. The plot is copyright.

Back to those Bangkok pirated cassettes. Those dodgy tapes saved a little of me and my brother's sanity. It saved us both from high-rotation Pat Benatar, which was Uptight's sole music tape before the pirates delivered their booty. The mobile childcare centre (ie the Range Rover) was ruled by the eldest, and besides, neither of us boys owned a tape between us. We only had vinyl, and at the time my collection consisted of one Star Wars LP, so Uptight played pedantic DJ in the cage.

It's not Guantanamo Bay, but put me in a room with non-stop Pat Benatar, the effect is similar. So, let's hear it for the cheap knock-offs of South East Asia! Variety at unheard of prices. And where was the harm? Second World citizens (NZers) helping to fund the Third World (Developing Countries in NowSpeak) through commerce.

It's not as if the four Abba artists were missing out on a lot. There's not much change between three quarters of fuck all (royalties) and nothing. In fact, seeing as how Uptight already had the LP of Abba's Arrival, the pirate tape was just a pre-internet version of format shifting. Abba and the label lost nothing. They has already grabbed their skim.

Abba don't feature in this Four Note Medley (HT HuffPost), but they quite easily could have:



The point of all this ranting and tangents is entirely due to the entertaining (and freely observable) blog fight between the subjective objectivist NotPC and the realistic economist Offsetting Behaviour over copyright. In the 1D binary RandWelt of NotPC, copying is theft. Meantime, Crampton entertains the trade-offs.

According to Cresswell, the Axis of Awesome featured above should be paying a craptonne of licensing fees for pointing out the pop folly of four notes. How anyone can entertain a copyright on a musical progression in perpetuity is a nonsense. It's like claiming copyright on the alphabet. Nat Torkington pointed out the absurdity of this position at PublicACTA, when he said that every time someone sang Happy Birthday, they should be paying their due royalty.

According to Cresswell's creed, Lady Gaga (who does feature in the medley) should be paying due credit to all the many and varied music and fashion tropes she based her success on. Which is bunkum. She is due credit for a limited time, novelty value if you will, before it enters freely into the public domain, where it will be masticated into something else. That's life.

On a wider front, NotPC's dogma bears little resemblance to reality. Life is not fair. Creators have never got their just dues. Johnny Depp got more money from his Alice film than Lewis Carroll ever saw from his original work. Van Gough and Picasso never saw any of the money that the art wankers now charge for their works. Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, two men who changed the world for the better more than any dozen US presidents, died in poverty. Vulcanised rubber guy went the same way. Socrates was poisoned.

The McDonald brothers were conned out of a proportionate cut for inventing the industrial fast food model. It was milkshake maker salesman Ray Kroc who grabbed the idea, after wondering how the brothers were chewing through his deluxe 5-spindle milkshake model so quickly, and bought them out for a million bucks a piece. Here's the same fact strained through The Wire:



Suffice to say that copyright is an illusion and that copyright holders aren't always right, no matter what the law says. Common usage counts too. More recently, we have witnessed changes in ACTA process with the penultimate lifting of secrecy today, as well as the surrender on Three Strikes. But I don't quite think the Very Large Rights Holders are prepared for free yet. And neither is NotPC.

Christ, I need a prog rock enema:

Philosophy & Object Violence

Pablo at KiwiPolitico looks at the ad-hockery of NZ policy. A lot to think over and the thread comments are also illuminating:

NZ’s so-called “number 8 wire attitude,” supposedly evidence of Kiwi pragmatism and resourcefulness, is actually the logical result of a chronic and perpetual lack of planning and an ex post, ad hoc approach to policy-making. One interlocutor phrased it as “policy by anecdote,” where politicians relate stories they have been told as proof that similar approaches elsewhere can work just fine in NZ.

Bryce at liberation looks at the Heatley affair and the 'ethical sickness' of entitlement:

Various commentators and politicians have expressed bemusement about what they see as the essentially trivialness and non-intentionality of Heatley’s resignation-inducing offence with his credit card. Yet it should be reiterated that Heatley scandal was over what was essentially his theft of taxpayer funds for his own private use.

Stephen Hawking, extreme violence to inanimate objects and cheesy soundtrack. It must be a Pink Terror Hawking chaser:


Pink Terror Hawking from mike barzman on Vimeo.

Now that's sharp

Great gonzo's gonads, a big thank you to Chris Trotter for pointing to Mark Ames' eXile. This is industrial strength satire from a kindred vicious mind. Take this classic reprint of 20 Reasons We're Ashamed to be Americans. A sample:

We would seriously consider converting to Islam if someone would slowly saw [Seth] McFarlane’s head off while forcing him to sing the theme song to “Three’s Company,” complete with laugh track.

Vampire Squid Hunter Matt Taibbi has co-written Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia with Ames. This pair could quite well qualify for the reincarnations of Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo. We are in awe.

Making plans for Nigel

Russell Brown comments over at humans.org.nz about the weirdly condensed article in the HoS about ODD and "autistic syndrome disorder" (sic). I first clicked onto ASD as Mr Bean syndrome, which explained a hell of a lot about my unintentional anti-social behaviour within the autistic spectrum.

This clip is dedicated to Nigel Latte, who knows as much about ASD as the next pop psychologist:

The Write Stuff

As many of my close friends know, I've been mulling my Great Kiwi Novel Kiwianatopia for some small time now. It's still all in my head, as I have had issues with not only breathing life into the characters, but also a grand fear of turning out anything less than a goddamn masterpiece. It doesn't help that I compare everything to Alan Moore's portfolio.

Thankfully, I've had some excellent advice. Apart from The Guardian's advice (Part One, Part Two) from some of my favourite authors, including Neil Gaiman, Will Self and Ian Rankin, I highly recommend Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Special, which includes such luminaries as Dr Who's Russell T Davies, the guy behind Black Books and Father Ted, and the Eastenders' scribe:











But what I really need is a muse...

Jesus gonna fuck you up

The righteous and the restless has been set off over at DPF's on the ODT editorial on intolerance. This has all been brought to a head due to some liberal church's advertising which compelled some loons to act as god's tools of destruction. And what tools. What utter presumption or insanity.

While we're waiting for religious fundamentalism to turn up in the DSM VI as a mental disorder (a pinch of schizo, a dash of messiah complex, and a large cup of delusion), there's always the Dude for advice:



I'm not some fancy city philosopher, but I am the ninth most popular search on Google Images for fundamental doubt. But you don't have to take my word as gospel. The Dude is onto something here. Or try Tom Robbins in Skinny Legs and All for some summer reading. He successfully argues that organised religion bears false witness to the divine, therefore religion is blasphemous.

Checkmate, game, set and match point.

This thing is bigger than all of us.