The shopping news

We are lucky that nothing interesting is happening in the news right now, that the General Election and the global financial catastrophe are such trivial matters. Otherwise, the Herald would not have been able to find space on its front page to tell us that Dan Carter has got a brand new shop. Mr Carter, who played Rugby Union for Canterbury, is now in the rag trade. He also has a new Rugby team, in France and a luxury seaside home, chosen by his team's management. He is a busy man.

Meanwhile, another bit of retail news, of lesser importance and therefore on an inside page: Real Groovy has gone bust.

Mama's got a brand new bag:

These are the things we could do without

What is it about the coming global recession that is so appealing? Of course it will cause untold misery to countless numbers of people but, even so, everybody seems to be looking forward to it. Let's look deep into our black hearts and ask ourselves why; and let's answer that question with a list, because everybody loves a list: it beats thinking.

• Bush will be buried
  For eight years, that bastard wanted a legacy, and look at what he is getting. Even Hoover was remembered for his dam.
  
  
• America, the not so beautiful
  We know that they are good people but we also know they are weird. Their Liberal equates to our Conservative, only with better teeth. All we want them to do is realise that perhaps Woody Guthrie had a point, that's all.
  
  
• Fuck the golden youth
  With their trust funds, their perma-tans and their boundless self-confidence, rich kids make us all feel a bit passive-aggressive-Marxist-Leninist. But never mind, because soon they won't have the trust funds. So, get a job, Remuera Boy; that's if you can find one.
  
  
• Schadenfreude seems to be the hardest word
  But so much fun when you can pronounce it. We may be suffering ourselves, but so will lots of other people, many of whom we do not like: those scissors-thin women with their annoying little dogs; personal trainers; brand managers; those men who are always talking loudly on their phones; pilates consultants; life coaches; interior design consultants; girls with really big handbags; anybody who drinks at Sponge; the list goes on.
  
  
• The bullet point stops here
  Because its all about lists. Once we had newspapers full of news, which was written in sentences. Now we have frippery, written in lists; and we only have that because it keeps the advertisements apart. Once we had jobs where our managers treated us as adults; now we have Team Leaders, who patronise us with PowerPoint and bullet points. Everything has been reduced to one-line idiocy. Let's hope that it all evaporates with the money supply; perhaps in the ruins of the global economy we will find some books to read and so rediscover the Joy of Thought.
  
  

Tears for Fears:

Will this do?

For Giovanni, seeing as he asked.

Don't lets be beastly to the Greens

While other blogs, such as that of Mr Slack, mock the Tories for their posters, only the Fundy Post is prepared to risk disapproving looks and muttered comments from our peer group by taking on the Greens.

Turned out nice again

They are publishing our idiots, here. Yes, it's crazy but it's true: Muriel Newman is being cut and pasted by the Heartland Institute. And it's all about the Royal Society of New Zealand, which "beggars the imagination" (this must be the poverty of desire, one supposes) of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. As you will read, the coalition of the unwilling has identified a clear conflict of interest among most of the scientists who sit on the Royal Society's climate change committee - they work for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. That is to say, they are experts who are employed because of their expertise by a body which does atmospheric research; thus they are tainted.

If you can be bothered to read to the end of Muriel's piece, you will find that the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition describes those scientists who agree with it as 'Rationalists.' Call me old-fashioned, but I thought scientists were meant to be Empiricists.

Almost grown up

I know that a recent survey revealed that 45% of so-called adults play computer games daily, but that still leaves a slim majority of us who choose to make some effort at being grown-ups, who do not demand constant entertaining and who strive to see the world as it is rather than dwelling in a fantasy land of computer-generated bloodbaths or Disney fibs or lifestyle choices or Oprah Bloody Winfrey or low-fat gyms or positive thinking or fundamentalist religion or five-plus- a-day or Lotto or advertising lala-land or any of the other infantilising tosh that is spewed out to generate money by encouraging us to remain in nappies.

Joe Bennett gripes and mistakes Iceland for comic-book Greenland.

To Sir with love

It is harder to undermine Western cultural values when doing so entails promoting illegal acts, e.g. promoting homosexuality when homosexuality is illegal. It is much easier to promote things that are legal, e.g. when homosexuality was legalised in 1986 it enabled homosexuals to go into schools and and lecture students on all the practical details of homosexuality, thus affecting the values of future generations.

Kiwi Polemicist recalls the good old days of the '80s, when school children were give a bottle of milk every day and a thorough grounding in Practical Homosexuality.

Night of the plastic knives

Sorry, chaps and chapesses, for the lack of blogging recently. I have an excuse: I have been mad. I will explain sooner or later.

Meanwhile, kudos to Dave Crampton for breaking news about Bob McCoskrie, who suffered a garden makeover: four women dressed in black stuck around 1000 knives in his front lawn. Further investigation by the MSM reveals that the knives were plastic, while Dave followed his scoop with an apology from the women in black.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the garden wall when the McCroskies returned from their trip. How did they react? "Oh my gosh, darling, we've had conceptual artists," perhaps. But notice how quickly McCroskie takes advantage of the situation, blaming the EFA for revealing his address (welcome to New Zealand, Bob, where everyone knows where everyone else lives). And what of the neighbours, who "said they had seen four women dressed in black on his lawn, but thought they were putting candles out?" Does that sort of thing happen so often as to be unremarkable, du côté de chez McCroskie?

And what sort of woman dresses in black and sticks plastic knives in a lawn? And where can I meet one? Do these people have funding from Creative New Zealand? Does Et Al have anything to do with this? Is this the work of passive-aggressive ninja assassins? Or are they just too politically correct to use real knives?

I think we should be told.

The Early Days of Channel Fuhrer

As noted by an anonymous commentator to my earlier post, Reading the Maps describes an astonishing night of talkback mayhem. Astonishing not just because the callers were spluttering about the Jewish Conspiracy but also because the hosts were Karen Hay and Andrew Fagan. And if you wade through the comments on Maps' post (how is it that that these nutters have no shame about posting thousands of previously published words written by a more respectable nutter, as if it proved their argument? No, don't bother telling me) you will find a comment by Andrew and Karen's producer (incidentally, I despise the affectation of calling celebrities one does not know by their first names) who says:

That's what talkback is. Not the right, wrong, black or white. It's an open forum for learning, expanding & entertaining the mind.

Oh yes, that is what it would be. Horansome could put it a lot better than I, but I think it fair to say that conspiracy theories do not add to knowledge. And conspiracy theories about Jews lead to Jew-bashing.

It is a shame that none of the callers seemed to have commented on Mr Fagan's surname. There was a poster to Ian Wishart's old site who spotted undercover Jews everywhere, usually by their craftily-adapted surnames. Those, like Dr Michael Cullen, who did not appear to be Jewish he called "cryptos:" Jews so cunning and devious that they convince others they are Christian Gentlemen. This commentator once travelled to Twizel, where he found every shop was owned by cryptos. I forget his name.

And whilst we are on the subject, I note in passing an old post by Ryan Sproull, in which he cheerfully admits his ignorance of why Israelis support their government's treatment of the Palestinians, but carries on to give his unqualified opiion: "I suspect it's a combination of compulsory military service and parental conditioning." It's those Jewish mothers with their chicken soup, that's what it is; not those Palestinian mothers who strap bombs around their sons' bodies and send them off to the bus stop. Not, of course, that Ryan is racist: he couldn't possibly be - Israeli chicks give him a stiffy.

I am not sure which I find more appalling: the traditional Jewish-conspiracy nutjob or the armchair anarchist combination bigot-and-sleaze.

Ceci n'est pas un promo:

His drug hell

Cocaine: nature's way of telling you that you are too rich.