I've said it before, and I'll say it again....

.... Japanese people are strange. Really, really strange. Often in an endearing way. This .... is not quite one of those times. Also, to borrow a line from Chris ... they should call Ben Mario, 'cause he just got 1-upped.....

In which I am in a bad mood about being in a good mood1

In a manner of speaking, that is. It's just that, well, I feel I'm at my best when I'm ranting about something .... only at present I've kind of got nothing to rant about. Which has left me a little annoyed, to be sure, but not enough to rant about it. I can't even summon up the vitriol to rant about that, either come to think of it. Or that. Or even that, for that matter.

Now, while I like sitting around all day recursively defining arbitrarily large sequences of stuff I just don't feel like ranting about, I guess it's time to let it go and move on. This is not the kind of thing I'm very good at, so you might want to all take a moment to drink in this personal-growth-of-Fitz moment. So, I purchased a bed today. It's a good bed. I got it on trade me which, for that majority of you who are hard of being in New Zealand is much like ebay, only better in every conceivable way. I bring that up, in the context of my general state of rantless-ness, because there was at least one petty vendetta I still held close to my heart, which was the systematic egging (or possibly leaving a burning bag of dog shit on the doorstep) of every house that had advertised a room to rent and arranged with me a time to come and view the place only to tell me upon arrival at said time that sorry, the room was already taken². I'm feeling a lot more well-disposed to such individuals now, however, and have decided that, on balance, I think I'll let them live on account of the fact that if I had gotten one of those rooms I wouldn't have found myself in possession of the room I'm going to be moving into on Wednesday.... which is far and away the best place I've looked at. It's on Aro Street. In the Aro Valley. The flat-mates seem fairly cool. The room is large, warm, surprisingly sunny and completely devoid of the truly unfortunate wall-paper pretty much every other house of comparable age I looked at sported with a perverse sort of pride. I'm about a 10 minute (tops) walk from uni. If I walk out the front door, turn left, and walk around 10 or so meters I find myself at arguably the best bakery in Wellington. If I walk a further comparable distance, I find myself at probably the best dvd shop in New Zealand. Why, only today was I sitting at the bakery in question having a conversation with an organic chemist about his conversion from practicing karate to taking up aikido. There was a long, drawn out explanation of the philosophical differences between the two martial arts and the kind of people who practice them, which I felt was getting a little too "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" for my tastes right up to this incredible point of stillness where I have to admit I achieved a truly Zen-like insight of my own into mysteries of the universe. "So," I said nodding thoughtfully, "what you're telling me ........ is that aikido is to karate.......... what Mr Miyagi is to the Cobra Kai". This, I feel, illustrates nicely not only the type of place I'm moving in to ... but just how far I've come as a person.

¹Also, in which I borrow my method titling posts from Jetta the dog, the failure of whom to update their journal for quite a while now has left a small 3-legged staffy shaped hole in my life. Come back, Jetta, we miss you.

²Arse-cunts!!!!! Seriously, on one occasion I trudged wearily up hills at 9:30 on a cold windy Sunday morning whilst fecking ill only to be greeted at the door by some chilled-out arse who took a few long drawn out nods of his arse-with-ears head before making such a statement. Not that I'm bitter. Actually, I'm fucking not. It's fucking annoying me.

Meetings with my supervisor, metaphorically speaking

Rod: "Andrew, assume the position."

(Andrew gingerly removes pants and bends over the nearest available table.)

Andrew: "You may commence boning, now, master."

I'd like to talk to you about Sweden1

Australia, as I'm sure you're all aware, has seen fit to go about purchasing billions of dollars worth of sleek, aerodynamic, awe-inspiring killing machines with money we could otherwise have ploughed into education, health, supporting under-privileged combinatorics PhD students² or .... I don't know ..... something we might actually end up using. Now, I'm wise enough in the ways of the world³ to realise that we're just never going to get over this desire to have cool tanks, ships and planes and shit .... so instead I've been thinking about something we could actually do with them.

Is there, I thought to myself, a nation on earth of such pure, unadulterated evil that invasion (or at the very least bombing back into the stone age) just for shits and giggles could be seen as justifiable, nay morally obligatory? It occurred to me, dear reader, that in fact such a country not only exists, but has been insidiously veiling its perfidy for years now with a cloak of high living standards, low crime-rates, silly accents and bad music⁴. I'm talking about Sweden, people.... Sweden⁵. They gave the world ABBA, and we said nothing - for we do not watch the Eurovision^TM song contest. They gave the world IKEA^TM - and again we said nothing, for no-one is man enough to admit that they have a small collection of strange post-construction-superfluous connective plastic thingies they hope like hell are not essential to the well-being of their cabinet. Then they gave us Hälge ... and there was nothing much to say, really. Would we stand alone, dear reader? I think not. I submit that the maiden mission for our shiny new F35s is clear......

Figure 1: proposed bombing route sticking to international
airspace and avoiding national boundaries⁶

¹You see, dear reader, it's occurred to me that Google whoring is for losers. I've decided to try my hand at a little crazies trawling. And methinks that the true crazy is of a mind to post first, read footnotes later.

²You think all of those multi-coloured pens and 3 hour lunches at 5 in the afternoon pay for themselves? Ask Geoff.... they don't. In fact, after this post I shall look into an 'sponsor a combinatorist' scheme. I submit that there is no heart so hard as to be supplied with Geoff's downcast visage and not give generously.

³Honest....

⁴Yeah, you heard me Dave. For Abba alone must the Swedes die....

⁵I'd just like to take this moment to forestall a few scurrilous insinuations. This maniacal desire of mine to pluck Sweden clean from the stream of history has nothing at all to do with the fact that a Swede kept me awake last night .... and not in a good way. I spit on such theories, sir, with the phlegm of righteousness.

⁶Norway doesn't count.

Here's hoping Tristan Dunning vanity searches.....

I have been recently surprised, dear reader, to hear the details of a brief exchange which took place on the evening of friday 20/6. Sensitive as I am to my civic duties, and in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals involved I shall refer to the first individual merely as "Person A". As for the second ... I shall refer to them only as "Tristan Dunning". The exchange itself, then, dear reader, went roughly as follows.

Person A: Hi, so I heard about that article you're going to have published ... congratulations!

Tristan Dunning: Why are you talking to me? I don't speak whore.

Of course, there are many levels on which this exchange appeared, at first sight, perplexing to me. In the first instance, the sentence structure was significantly more sophisticated than I would have thought possible from Mr Dunning¹. I suppose, however, that where this exchange was truly world-view-changing for me was in as much as up until now I had been under the impression that, at some point in his life, Tristan had had sex. Assuming, then, that he is speaking the truth ...... this exchange begs a very real question: How? Was a translator involved? Do they communicate merely by his repeatedly placing fifties into their outstretched palms until reluctant acquiescence is achieved?

To any that can answer this most mind-boggling of conundrums, I offer a gold star and a chocolate frog.

¹Indeed, while I was not necessarily surprised to learn of his inability to speak whore, it was certainly something of an eye-opener that he could speak English that well.....