In which I lose sleep over being called an idiot on Andrew Bolt's blog.

How can it have come to this? I only wanted to join in.... to take a small place amongst the intellectual giants who come to sit in awe of the greatest living Australian...

Instead I have been cruelly shot down. PWNED, if you will¹.

I feel so small. How did I C You know I wasn't one of the idiots form some block of 200,000 he'd counted already? How was he even able to work that out? That's just the thing about people over at Bolt's blog I guess..... they really are just that friggin smart.


¹Although, just quietly, and on a serious note to Mick. I would much rather that some random group of people dumb enough to take Andrew Bolt seriously on any issue at all think I am a 'soft touch' than to know with dread certainty in my more honest and quiet moments, that I am both a racist and a coward. I should also probably just say that it's been pointed out to me that 111 is the number of boats, not people. Just so you know I realise that now and that I still don't care (it's true, I'm afraid I don't usually bother to read Andrew Bolt's posts very carefully and this was no exception).

In which I stop traffic.

I wish to relate, dear reader, the events of some nights ago which characterise nicely that emotional roller-coaster I will charitably call 'my life'. It was a cold and windy night. I say this not just as a cliched story opener, but because it fucking was, O.K.? There was one of those southerly winds you get here that both chill you to your giblets¹ and remind you that winter is a-comin'. Did my poor mitten-less hands freeze solid, I hear you ask in a tone con notating the deepest of concern? While I am touched by your evident worry, dear reader, it is my happy charge to inform you that no, they did not. I have, in short, been re-united with my mittens, and in the subsequent reveling I have, I am ashamed to admit, failed to inform you, my fellow mourners, of this happy news. How did this joyous event take place? Well, it all started with a conversation with one Adriana Siddle². Knowing me as well as she does, dear reader, allowed her to ask of me question of such startling simplicity and breathtaking brilliance³ as to warrant an appreciative "ah" from you, the audience⁴. Whilst I was wallowing in some characteristic and well-deserved self pity, I was asked the following (and brace yourselves): "Have you ..... checked the pockets of all your jackets?". I had not done this. As a result of so doing, however, I have been united once again with my mittens of awesomeness +3.

Anyways, I was walking home on the night in question with a satisfied strut and a hankering for fish and chips. It was while I was closing in on the noble fried-fishmongers that a curious thing happened. I was bitterly disappointed whilst strutting across the zebra-crossing opposite to realise that the day was what can only be described as 'a monday'. This is important in as much as the fish and chips shop on Aro Street is closed on Monday. My mood rapidly improved, however, upon realising that the mitten-accentuating strut I adopt whilst sporting these lovelies had finally paid off. A driver who had stopped to let me pass casually leaned out the window so as to say (and this seemed to be the only possible explanation) something along the lines of "what fine mittens you have, sir! Wherever can such items of apparel be purchased (indeed, I had not thought such wonders possible in this world)?". Once again, however, I was both forced to taste bitter disappointment and consult this chart. I had mis attributed the cause for this arse's communication with me to be my mittens, when I should instead have linked it with that kind of second-long pause you only really get from realising that a fish and chips shop is closed. What he actually said was the following: "Hey, mate, if you're going to cross a road fucking cross it, alright? Don't fuck about". Such situations piss me off mightily. What the fuck is one to do? In the time it takes for you to even realise what has been said, the bastard is already a few hundred metres away from you and your response of "I know you are, but what am I?" can no longer avail you of anything. Curiously, but two nights before my office-mate had a cigarette stolen from his mouth in similar circumstances when an expert kick-boxer sucker-punched him in the face, took it and walked off. We have since concluded that the only adequate answer to such circumstances is to constantly carry a loaded gun⁵. Even Michael Moore could not possibly argue with this clear and present need.

In the mean-time I must satisfy myself with the knowledge that he caused himself more of a delay in yelling at me than I did. Just so you all know where I'm at. With my life.

¹I am now crossing the word 'giblet' off of my Stuff to use in a sentence - Urgent!! list.

²It needs to be pointed out for various reasons that myself and Adriana are at the moment officially together. I love her very much and she needs to stop being silly.

³Alliteration This is satisfying....

⁴ And, just quietly, my people are everywhere. Those of you who fail to do this will be crushed. As you were.

⁵"Oh, yeah?" bang "well, one of your tyres is flat, arsehole".... "An expert in kick boxing, is he?" bang " It didn't seem to help"......

In which I am in Mourning.

I have lost, dear reader, some very good friends of mine and wish to default to the (paraphrased) words of a soul greater than mine to express my resulting sorrow...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Behold my cold bare hands! Let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes drone up high at public cost
Scribbling on the sky the message They are Lost
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves¹.

They were my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought my gloves would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A few days ago, dear читатель, when the weather had gotten sufficiently cold & windy, I sought out the welcoming warm embrace of some old friends. I have not until now felt strong enough to relay to you the following truth: Alas! Alack! Woe and despair, they were nowhere to be found! However shall I now survive the winter? Without them, I am not sure I want to....

¹Dual Fingerless gloves/mittens, of course. As a sign of respect.

A moment in the day in the life of Fitz

"Why" I found myself asking myself "does nobody ever take me seriously?". Shaking my fists at an uncaring universe for effect I asked once more "Why????"¹.

I then took a long hard look at the hands before me. "Ah", I said. "Perchance it's because I'm the kind of person who'd wear those."

On said hands were a pair of bright red (wind-proof) mittens. And not just any mittens, either. With these mittens, you can fold the portion covering your fingers back so as to render them into a set of fingerless gloves² with large flappy attachments on the back. Flappy attachments which ... and get this ... can be folded over to make you fingerless gloves into mittens!!! Picture the scene, if you will. It's cold and windy, and I find myself stopping off for a point of business in a corner store. I fumble clumsily for some change with my bright red mittens on, then in frustration make as though to take them off. "But sir!" the good store-keep exclaims. "Quite apart from the obvious chore involved in removing then replacing such lovely mittens over such a trifle, you run the risk of accidentally leaving them behind!!". I smile and offer a rejoinder "worry not, noble store-keep, and observe!" Then, to the wonderment of all in the store I simply fold the top mitten-portion back to reveal my naked ever-nimble fingers. I conclude my business and carry on outside, where an icy wind bites at my poor bare fingers - but do I care? No sir! with a simple flick of the flap, so to speak, my fingers return to toasty goodness.

An unfortunate side-effect, however, is that I look like a dork.

¹At this point the universe appeared to slow down so that, to my ears, the above exclamation sounded a little more like Whuuaaaayyyyy..........

²The kind you see on the hands of sad old drunks clutching a half-consumed bottle of cheap whisky in one hand with which to drown the reminiscences of broken dreams whilst singing, oh I don't know, Brother, can you spare a dime? and warming said hands over a fire in a 44-gallon drum.

Small talk in a lift

I was just in a lift with a view to getting back to my office with a cup of coffee I'd just made. The coffee room is on level 3. My office ........ is on level 4. Having absent-mindedly pressed the button I said to myself "why aren't you walking, dufus?" when, horror of horrors .... the door opened revealing a disgruntled passenger. I paused. In the few moments it took to scan my immediate vicinity for another individual who could conceivably have pressed the button the passenger in question asked me (my check confirmed no other plausible candidate - also, note that I have written this aside in brackets, and not as a footnote) "are you getting in?". Noting that my mouth was now too dry to speak, I mutely nodded and darted in keeping my eyes on the floor and hoping against hope my co-passenger would speak to me no further. It was not to be. "I'm going to level 5" he said (and there are only 5 levels), pointing toward the buttons by the door as though to politely check whether I needed a button pushed - but I could sense that tone of accusation in his voice. Like Phillip Ruddock and Anakin Skywalker before me ..... I had become the very thing I was sworn to hate.. "Me too" was all I could think to say.

Upon arrival at the 5th floor I paused at the staff directory on the wall. Initially, this was out of habit, since this allows me to dart through the swinging door accessing the rest of the floor just before it closes behind the second to last person in the lift. But as I did so, I now thought instead to wait until my silent accuser had left before just walking down the stairs. After a brief uncomfortable pause, I realised I was being watched. My lift-mate was holding the door open for me. "Are you coming?" he asked me, knowingly it seemed. "Oh. Yes." I walked calmly around the corner where I found and read one of those Maths is really useful, kids! signs they rather inexplicably put around maths buildings even on such floors as are occupied exclusively by people engaging in research ....... until I heard the tell-tale sound of a door closing that said to me that, barring another trick from my lift-using tormentor, it would now be safe to make good my exit. It was. I slunk quietly downstairs with my tail between my legs.

How was your morning?

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.

And so the game continues

I guess at least two things have occurred to me over the last, oh, 48 hours what with the .... barrage¹ ..... of 'post something you bastard' messages I've been receiving. The first is that my life is not, it turns out, all that interesting. The second is that god (assuming he/she/it/Frederick actually exists) must, what with his/her/its/Frederick's constant state of omnipotent watchfulness over everyone, think that people are completely fecking loopy. I'm afraid I just can't imagine there'd be many of us who, if followed around for a day, wouldn't commit some act which, while completely reasonable and sensible in the confines of our own head, would make a casual observer believe us to be a nut-job².

Anyways, not having all that much else to post about .... rather than going and committing an act such as this travesty against human decency and in addition offering the excuse that, lately, my creative juices have been employed elsewhere, I'm going to dwell on the second thought for a moment.

So it turns out I am in the habit, dear reader, of .... darting .... through doors. Which is to say .... well, picture a set of revolving doors, or the kind of doors that are slowly self-closing. Imagine you are approaching such a set of doors which are just beating you, if you get my meaning³. Being as I am a student of human folly, I have noticed that most people negotiate their way through such a circumstance by simply extending their arm, opening the door a little further ajar and proceeding through the open doorway.

I am not such an individual.

I treat this circumstance as a kind of ....well, game. The rules are very simple. If it is at all humanly possible to get through those doors without touching either the door itself or the wall into which it is closing .... this must be attempted.⁴ Anyone wishing to understand the giddy thrill achievable through this game is directed to go to this video, fast forward to 1 minute 59 seconds into it and reflect on just how cool that scene really was.

There is, however, a moral to this story and it is this. Given the lengths to which I sometimes go to play this game, it is perhaps surprising that I would not have found the following piece of advice helpful before now. It is, we can all agree, highly likely to encounter someone else trying to get through the door going the other way. This being the case, playing said game while carrying cups of hot tea can be a very bad idea.....

Here endeth the lesson, grass-hopper.

¹Are we happy with this word "barrage"? I'm not quite sure that requests from 2 individuals should strictly count as a 'barrage' .... I'm going to run with it, though, on account of how it probably represents around 20% of my actual readership.

²Well, at least I hope this is true...

³Which is to say your rate of approach is just insufficient to beat the doors effort to close in front of you.

⁴This is important.

On Why the Dentist is not Dead

My much-publicised¹ vendetta against the dentist on the other side of the wall came, as some of you are aware, to an uneasy truce recently. This truce owed itself to the fact that the music seemed to have died down some time ago, which naturally made me very nervous that the tooth butcher in question was reading my blog. I was living daily in fear of his tracking down where I lived and giving me an involuntary root canal. It was a very trying time for me.

I have now realised the real reason for this decrease in volume. 

I have been leaving the loovers near the roof closed.

¹ If you count this blog as heavy publicity, I guess....

Plus Ca Change*........

As I settled in for my morning coffee whilst perusing the latest offers of cheap viagra, new & improved penis enlargement techniques and an exciting new (and mysterious, unless I click on the kindly supplied link) product guaranteed to keep my woman satisfied in bed¹ that I receive like clockwork in my Mac email account², I ruminated upon possible titles for this post.

This is a trivia post, incidentally. 

I had initially considered something like: Name Changes, Ball-Sucking Continues. Not a very witty or brilliant one to be sure, but it's inclusion can only help people cotton on to the general class of performance we achieved last night more quickly than they otherwise would. Also, it helps google direct people looking for specialty porn to my site, so I just thought I'd add it³. The above title was settled upon instead to further my ongoing attempts to come across as a debonaire, witty, Oscar Wilde-type man of the world. I think we can all agree that this cause progresses nicely.

Anyhuckus, our night begins with your hero⁴ doing just that little bit of nail-biting. This owed itself to the fact that Sam and Geoff were, in order to get me to engage in such nail-biting, waiting around the corner until precisely 7:30 before entering the trivia-dome. Possibly that last was a lie, but that's how things seemed from my end. And if it's going to be me, Georff and Sam this week, I thought to myself, we're going to be the Gaussian Eliminators again, damn it. As it transpired, oh my brothers⁵, we did not bathe this name in glory. Adriana showed up slightly later, which made for a team four times the strength of last week's debacle. Unfortunately, this corresponded to a single goat-blighting point extra for fuck's sake. What, I am forced to ask myself, is the fucking point of it all?

So why, I hear you ask, did we suck so badly? Well, for one thing the puzzle page was harder this week and not just 4 easily recognisable characters/individuals . We got only 11/16. What really hurt us, though, was....... well, let me put it as follows. There was a real advantage to having Dave instead of me as el-capitano: Dave doesn't drink. This means that towards the end of the night his judgement doesn't get so appalling that the following scene might take place. You're given, as a five point bonus question, What Broadway Musical was based upon Puccini's  La Boheme?. Fitz agonises as follows: "Look, it's going to be something like Rent. Something like Rent..... shit what could it be....... I'm thinking of a musical like Rent...... Fuck ! Think people! Like Rent, OK!!!" .... and so on. We ended up not being able to think of such a musical, and the space was left sadly blank. The correct answer was Rent.

Other Notable Fuck-ups:

1. Which singer was placed in the boot of a car in an Eminem clip? Also a bonus question. Our thinking: "Dido", since she wrote the music he was rapping over in the clip. Our entered answer: Christina Aguilera. Our reasoning: "When you absolutely, positively have to have a skanky ho in your boot: accept no substitutes." I maintain we would not have found such reasoning persuasive sober. Dido was the fucking answer. 
2. Name the cocktail made of rum, lime juice and sugar named after a Cuban town? I immediately wrote "Daiquiri", knowing damn well that it is an originally Cuban cocktail the original ingredients of which are precisely: (white) rum, lime juice, sugar. We changed it to "Mojito". Why? Fucked if I know. Daiquiri was right.
3. What does a milliner make? My gut feeling "hats". Our answer: "linen". Same reasoning as in the last one. Hats was right.
4. Who wrote the Album Pet Sounds? I wrote down "The Pet Shop Boys", thinking it a good guess. Georff knew the correct answer to be the Beach Boys. It would have been nice, in hind-sight, if he'd fucking told me!!!!!

Notable Gets:

1. What is Mitch Buchannen's son's name in Baywatch? I'm not proud.....
2. What is the name of the mythical city of gold after which the spaniards lusted? Thank you Cities of Gold.
3. In what famous video series are college girls asked to take their tops off in exchange for cash? Thank you, Sam, for not only knowing the answer, but treating us to a long, drawn-out pre-amble of umm-ing and ah-ing that fooled no-one.

Notable questions we got wrong by virtue of just not knowing, the answers to which I'm sure some of you will get with laughable ease.... go on, you bastards, have a laugh

1. In what city will the next winter olympics be held? Go on, Dave/Martin. Laugh at the sports illiterate.
2. Name Othello's Wife One of those "shit, now people will realise I know a lot less Shakespeare than I'd like to pretend" moments, there. A bonus question, too.
3. Who will captain Australia in (I think) the next 20-20 match? Yeah, same commentary as before.....

Have fun. Over and out.

* I would just like to take this moment to voice my disgust at the terribly un-cultured status of Australian keyboards. Their failure to allow me to place the required cedilla on the "c" here fills me with a deep and abiding sense of shame in my countrymen.

¹Statistically speaking, I am informed, it is almost certain I'm just not doing it for her. I suspect the real reason here is that she doesn't exist.

²Seriously, though, I have to take my hat off to these spam-meisters. It took them ten minutes to discover this account had just been created, zero in on it and engage it in the email equivalent of carpet bombing. Bravo!

³ You probably don't want to read this footnote. I just thought I'd get some more google-whoring out of the way in an out of the way way, if you follow me. Ahem. titty fuck arse horny blow job donkey sex well-hung she-male goats on heat college girls who will do anything for a peanut nuts scrotum midgets midget sex porn porn star porn actress porn producer porn camera-man porn afficionado porn consumer porn distributor anti-porn protestor bondage S&M mistress whip who's been a naughty boy then bollocks right bollocking give the dog a bone wink wink.

⁴That would be me, just to forestall your smart-arsery. Smart-arsery being a word, incidentally, I would very much like to think found its way into a Dr Seuss book.

⁵Someone's been watching A Clock-work Orange recently...... by which I mean me. I'm not just parroting an obvious statistical near certainty.

Ode to a Nondescript Bird.

Every now and then we can have our lives drastically affected by outwardly minor events. Tiny happenstances, chance meetings or non-meetings which incrementally adjust the lens through which we see the world - taking a hazy, chaotic mess and leaving our sight clear if only for a precious fleeting moment. It could be a small, nondescript bird that flies into the cell of some prisoner locked in solitary confinement in some black pit of a dungeon somewhere that reminds him of a greater world that still exists outside his own torment. It could be a trusted friend informing us that it really isn't as socially acceptable as we had heretofore assumed to wear our underwear on our head. I am here today to inform you, dear reader, that I, too, was touched in such a way over the weekend. At precisely 19:35 on friday night I recieved the following text message from an unknown sender:

Are you fuckers coming or what?

The profundity of these words I have even now, quite frankly, failed to adequately come to terms with. There is, I feel, something in them for all of us as we sit here awaiting the outcome of today's pivotal federal election. Are we fuckers coming........ or what? or what, you fools? Only once before now have I been so affected by a mis-sent text message. This occured to me a little under a year ago when I recieved the following two messages involving three individuals who, in order that their identitys be left protected, I shall refer to as Scrotum, Wench and Slapper. The first went as follows:

Hey there scrotum im slapper younger sister. WENCH IM 20 N I HEAR YOU LOOKIN 4 A
GIRL FRIEND. GIVE ME A CALL TONIGHT. HOPE YOU DIDNT MIND SR¹ GIVING
ME UR NUMBER.

It was shortly followed by the following message:

Scrotum its sr¹ sis wench, id like to meet u my sister says ur a
really nice guy! send me a txt..

Needless to say, it has to this day been a great source of sadness and regret to me that I could not, at the time, think of a suitably pithy way to tell the hapless Scrotum, Wench and Slapper just how much their situation had touched my life and, of course, to inform Wench that she had the wrong fucking number². I do not wish, dear reader, to live with such regrets as regards Senor Are you fuckers coming or what? His or her words were simply too deep and world changing to go unheeded and unthanked. Should anyone reading this feel the need to thank this person³, just let me know and I'll send you their number.

¹This is intended to be a 2-word abbreviation of Slapper. A fact more apparent when real names are being used.

² I briefly considered pretending to be Scrotum, but this seemed kind of cruel, even by my standards ....... and also more than a little creepy.

³ Preferrably in a cryptic, non-sensical manner.