Gee thanks

Ah, another New Years Eve, a splendid occasion when I can look back on the past year's shittiness and anticipate another twelve months of the same stretching before me. I'm not sure that I will do anything to mark the occasion. Well, not much beyond what I have already done, go to drinks with work people. All pleasant enough until we began discussing the film Children of Men. Limited babies, right, sure enough leads to the state of affairs in China where the birth rate of boys is greater than that of girls. Fine, cue heart rending story of foetuses flushed away. All I could remark was that it made a refreshing change from the man drought. To which someone responded something about my particular suffering. Well I think we are all the poorer for the existence of such a retarded concept. For me 'Man Drought' is right up there with 'Shoe Fetish' for sheer overworked inaninity. And I really do relish being told exactly where I fit into the scheme of things, that is, fat drab.
Perhaps I can find solace in the fact that the people who were screaming at me when I walked up the hill (naturally from the safety of their car) were't making specific slurs. It was more a wordless grunt. Maybe I should even be flattered there was none of the usual fat ugly bitch comments.

At last

Someone finally ID'd me when I was buying a bottle of wine. It has been ages since that happened, I was beginning to feel persecuted in fact.

Betrayal at Krondor

Can't actually tell you what the plot is, I keep skipping through the plot development so I can level up. Or not as the case may be. I seem to be at an impasse.
But I am thrilled to find out that when I make it through this, there is a sequel.

It is very peculiar finding out news nearly a decade after the event. So much for having my finger on the pulse.

If you're happy with a nappy then you're in for fun

Naughty of me to link directly to another site's photo, but hey, the traffic here is low and I'm into sharing and enjoying. And wondering about stylists.

Breakfast of champions

This morning, a chocolate or two. As far as I can tell it is still the season of gluttony. They were roses chocolates, one of them was a Hazelnut Praline. I think that is what they are called. I had the sudden notion that these are the pave settings of the chocolate world. Not a hell of a lot of the defining ingredient, all ground up and mushed into a coarsely textured centre. I could stretch the analogy further and suggest that as they were Roses chocolates they equate with cubic zirconia jewellery. The manufacturer probably used assissted hazelnut and hazelnut shell, not the actual nuts. Which could explain the significant grit factor.

Still, how wonderfully decadent.

Do I dare to eat a peach?

Yes, and it was quite delicious.

The dream

Killing a lot of people, many of whom I knew, because they were all turning into zombies. That's what I dreamt the other night. This morning I woke up at 6 something, and I can't help but wonder if this was because I had reached a particularly interesting point in my spree? If only I remembered more of my dreams for long enough to tell people about them. Like the one I had about a friend cuddling Marc Ellis's baby.


Funnily enough all my dreams seem to be horrors.

Grrrrarrrg

Yes, work was just getting a bit much for me today. Holiday period and I thought there would not be so much to do, but lordy how that bookguard rolled in. I have not even made a dent in the piles that were set aside for me to do, and not even a look at the enclosures, single sewn hinge tape and the minor mends awaiting my ministrations. It was awash with holds, simultaneously mind numbing and time consuming. By the time I left this afternoon (late again) I couldn't actually string a sentence together properly. I can only imagine what it would have been like without a tape deck.
Today I was luxuriating in some bogan sounds, particularly the joy of early Metallica. I'm not sure that is the best music for book guarding situations however, I find I need the uplift of something more radioesque and overproduced. Or the gleeful filth of a John Waters film soundtrack. I'd forgotten what a treasure the chicken grabber song is.

The Notebook

Heaven help me I am trapped in a room in which this ghastly movie is being played. The main female character is a screamer, the story is loathsome and the framing narrative set in a rest home makes me feel ill.

Not everyone feels the same way though, here is a review from IMDB

An old man in a nursing home reads a story to an old woman each day. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun. They met one evening at a carnival many years ago. Allie's parents separate Noah and Allie. They disapprove of Noah's lack of wealth, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her for several years, Allie meets and becomes engaged to a handsome young soldier named Lon. In a local newspaper, Noah's picture catches Allie's eye. He is standing in front of a fully restored, 200 year old home. The article is filled with praise for his accomplishments. Allie's heart nearly bursts. The last time she saw this house it was a rotted decaying shamble. She stood enfolded in Noah's arms in the great entryway and listened to his plans to buy and restore this house. Just the way she wanted it. With her love for Noah still alive, the picture pulls at her heart. She has to go back, see if Noah is okay, and tell him about her marriage. They both think the echo deep in their hearts, the one that has lasted all these years, is not shared by the other. The cry they could not stifle. It wasn't over for me.

Thanks Dontee, that was beautiful. Particularly the last lines.
Hilariously one of the plot key phrases on the database entry is "lost trousers". Must have been a figural element for someone then.

Just so none of you have to go through the same horror as I do I have added a spoiler. Highlight below to see the movie ending cut to the chase.


You guessed it, the couple in the rest home are the young lovers Allie and Noah in advanced decrepitude. She remembers who he is in a rare moment of clarity & vomitously they die together, comfortably in their sleep. Unlikely and nary a skerrick of stray faeces anywhere. I feel cheated.

Oh yes, I now have mad skillz

I have just received a complement on my pavlova I made for Christmas.
On an unrelated note, or at least a tangentially connected thread of review. I have just been looking at old threads on Something Awful where I was stunned by a short comment in the celebrity section. Neil Gaiman's daughter sucks at giving blowjobs. This is wrong on so many levels. She is not a celebrity, doesn't even warrant an identity and lets not get started on the terrible opportunity to pun. This may be a back handed complement, only the other day a thread I saw on there started out querying why "fat chicks" love wicked, and degenerated into gobble gobble gobble.
Yeah, it always seems like the threads advertised at the side bar are pretty phobic on that site. I get the impression of a bunch of people who feel pretty cool, much like those using p2p music sharing programmes. Somehow goondom, or collecting music negates the inherent nerdiness of using computers all day.

Surely not that many cool people can exist, all at one time? Totally explodes the notion of reincarnation doesn't it?

God bless us every one

Something to warm the cockles, or even the sub-cockle regions.

I am having a special special day in Alexandra. At present the conversation has turned to sports and injustice with liberal mentions of pooh packing. The mind boggles does it not? Needless to say I do not feel like I have a lot to input into this conversation. But rest assured my little cabbages, I am gathering sweet boring stories with which to regale you all later.

Anyway, I hope you all make it through the day. Sometimes I feel like Jesus was born just to make my life a misery, albeit an overstuffed and socialised misery.

Hello! I'm right here!

I wonder if I can harness this power? I can be at an event, converse with people, and yet the very next day they ask me if I was there or not. Case point, after the work function. There is an ugly photo of me for goodness sake, but still they wonder if I went out with them. I had previously thought that my method of social survival was trying to make people laugh. I figured that not being ornamental I should sing for my supper. But this news opens up realms of possibility. I can just sidle on into an event, clean up the olives, quaff the beer or fancy wine, and sidle out with no-one the wiser. Wall dancing, flagrant and shameless displays? Everyone will just assume that it was some more memorable character at the party. Fantastic.

Oh yeah, and someone should eliminate the Personalised Plates ads.

Now this is what I am talking about

You wanted to know what I meant by winged anus? Well, here you go:



Watch out little car! Speed like the wind (oops tee hee hee)

Move over Waldronville

Ho Ho HO!

OMG Check out her butt, she's like one of those rapper's girlfriends

Check out these puppies.
Cancel Christmas now, they definitively prove that there is no god.

Empire building

So time consuming, so bad. Look at me. No, probably don't even imagine looking at me. But I am hovering over my trade me listings wondering why more people haven't bid on my fabulous stuff. Its 2 something in the morning and I start work at 8.30. Fie! For shame!

Water cooler gossip

Nope, not much to be had at the Library Christmas party, though there was some serious rug cutting later on, always mindful of the lumbago. Things were enlivened by the youth contingent having drinking games in the kitchen, fueled by a bucket of punch. Punch recipes have changed very little as far as I can see, but this version was much classier than most I've had. Smirnoff and something called Wipeout (prophetic?) juice and fruit salad. Not tinned fruit salad, freshly made. A number of people were very merry on wine, and mercifully not a karaeoke number to be heard. At least I don't think there was. I got the start time wrong and was late, even for my imaginary start time.
Afterwards several people went into town, I thought I was rather brave going along as well since graduation was on. I went to 10 bar, watched some funny dancing and lamented the shameful misuse of C & C music factory samples in bad pop dance music. Escaped from there as quickly as possible and checked out Carousel. I will always be inclined to call it Casserole now since someone forgot the name and went with that. Just like Alibi will be pronounced Aleebee.
The taxi queues were phenomenal so I was glad I could just walk home unnoticed. Why would anyone notice a derilict sloping up the hill when there was so much tacktastic dress on display? Glassons, you have a lot to answer for.

I still believe...do you?

The sliced in footage of Timmy thrusting and gyrating is relentless. As are the fan sites. All other treats - like the very young Keifer Sutherland - are so many cherries on top the mammoth Studmuffin Capello.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord

The work Christmas function. The proper one (the gig last night could have stood in, there were so many library workers there). We'll see if I fare better at this event, but the heavy Karaeoke element has just about got me broken out in hives. Its BYO so maybe some messiness will occur? How I long for some entertainment, and how tragic it is I seek it among work colleagues.

Special interlocking hugs

Ahhh, the sweet feeling of being put in one's place. You start to thinking that maybe you aren't a complete waste of time, space and precious oxygen and then something happens to force the realisation that no, actually no-one gives a fuck. And yes, oxygen is precious. I had to do Christmas shopping today and there were a lot of large people heavy breathing in this warm weather. Oxygen, I dare say, was at a premium.
I went to see a couple of bands last night at the dirty old Crown, how nice to be back there. It was like a reunion or something, though a bit frightening, as if Dunedin has been in stasis.
As usual I was the gooseberry in the mutually masturbatory love-in circle jerk taking place in the "scene". A scene redolent with people of such breathtaking and daring non-conformity that my tiny conservative mind was thrown into turmoil. Just how much recycling can go on there? And is it like after soccer matches, where all players shake hands with one another at some point, except the scene requires special rubs?
From what I can see the potential for cross pollination is awesome and the mutual affirmation of hotness parties receive must be both a consolation and a solace, especially after the disappointing rugby world cup results. I figure once you are in the scene, you need never be alone again. Those of you who have had the misfortune of reading Sharon Green books will know what I am talking about. Do I show my age? Lets just say if we could build a computer graph like on the L Word the results could be startling and unfathomable.
Anyway, the Futurians were great, even better than I remembered, and I got to catch up with some people I had not seen in ages. This pleased me even if they didn't give a rats arse. I even managed to find someone who is more socially inept than me, although unfathomably they seem to have more success socially. I expect it is a matter of persistance and trying, while I get bored of it when so often people bore or repel me. Sometimes both. It would have been funny to watch us waiting for someone else to say something entertaining. It transpires that I am better at coping with the awkward silences. Booyah.
I can't help but observe and realise that really, for all their brown-nosing and self congratulatory chatter, most people are just as loathsome as I am. A negative retake of Byronic satire - they're no better than me. Secretly, in arrogant moments, I think that they are worse. Unfortunately I usually get a dose of reality at that point. Casual cruelty is the worst kind; dismissal at the first whiff of something better coming along. How terrible to not even merit concerted bitchiness. Well, I know my place, and it is not in the pantheon of local gods.

Something in the air?

An odd conincidence: I saw this in this weeks Photoshop Phriday

Vindicated

I was debating with someone about the song "Have you seen her" and they pooh-poohed my claims that MC Hammer had done a version. Nu-uhh, I'm right (even if it was originally the Chi-lites).
Been short of topics to post on lately, I have been running late for days. No matter what I do I seem to be ever further behind schedule. It does not help that I hover over my trade me listings at every opportunity. Well, I can't entertain, so let the words of the master take you there.

ah yeah, I'm glad I put this tape in,
I'm just gon' cruise down the road,
look at the stars in the sky,
and drift off into the sweet memorys that I have,
of a love that my heart has been searching for,
for so long, and I know somewhere,
If I keep searching, that love I'll find,
the picture grows clearer and clearer,
from the back to the front of my mind,
and like love, a love I know I'll have,
the girl that I want, she'll be mine, she'll be fly, and it'll last,

I see her face and I can't let go,
she's in my dreams and my heart, so let me know,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
I'm looking for that love,
she's a thought and a vision in my memory,
I haven't met her, but tell me where could she be,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
I'm looking for that special love,
(love, oh love, love is a feeling that I need)
love is a feeling that the Hammer definetly needs,
(please be mine)
baby be mine,
(I need your love to make it)
I need your love to make it,
so why don't you be mine,
the search is going on,
from coast to coast,
a women for the man, who's propping the most,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
my heart is beating strong,
this love cannot be wrong,
I need her and I want her, so come on to my home,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
I'm a keep looking,
at the movies, in my car, on my stero,
at a game of Different World or the Cosby Show,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
yo veo, tell me what's up,
at the track, at the club, or out buying dub,
if you've seen her, then I'll have her, cause I'm in love,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
my heart is hurting so bad,
(love, oh love, love is a feeling that I need)
love is a feeling that I know I need,
(please be mine)
be mine baby,
(I need your love to make it)
I need your love to make it,
why don't you be mine,
(baby, be mine)
where could she be?,
at the store around the corner,
or wondering at night,
or chilling with another brother holding the mic,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
Hammer, you know I'm looking,
calling all my friends all around the place,
Guy, Lavertte, or my homey Rob Base,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
if you've peeped her out, tell me,
yo, veo on the phone,
Ted, Dre, or Ed Lover,
Fab Five, homeys won't you help a young brother,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
I got a picture in my mind,
the thought is so clear of the love I need here,
like D-B magic, and why don't you appear,
(have you seen her?)
oh baby, why don't you appear,
(tell me have you seen her?)
I can see yo' face,
I'm seeing her face, again and again,
come knocking at my door, and you know I'll let you in,
(have you seen her?)
have you seen her?,
(tell me have you seen her?)
oh, my sweet love,
searching 'round the world, what more can I say?,
the girl is hard to see like an unseen VJ,
(have you seen her? tell me have you seen her? have you seen her?)

Tha'ssum NASTY lyrics, and don't blame the misspelling on me, I just cut and pasted it.

Auction this day! Auction this night!

Though I was up far too late playing playstation last night I managed to be up early enough to check my sales - 6 people are now watching the fedora, but the bids remain at $5.50. Someone will get a bargain unless we all close our eyes, cross our fingers and shout "I believe in fairies". But not Faries, Wizards and Gifts. Thats horrible, and I always mean to complain to the council about that bloody bubble machine they have going. This isn't Shooters for goodness sakes. All I have to do is come up with a decent sounding skin allergy and I will be away laughing.

Breaking news yesterday was that the Bubble had Burst. Stay tuned for unwanted updates on timeframes, weight and distinguishing features (although I didn't think babies had any). If I get them, so do you. So there.

What a precious and fragile thing life is

Alas, my new friends and I have been torn asunder. They were toenails, and they have been cast into the council rubbish sack. I will always remember our special times together, and laugh like a drain at the nay sayers who said "They're too big, they could not possibly be human toe nails" Let us all draw a lesson from the nails that could, keep following your dreams and you will grow strong and true.
In the mean time, I am wishing that those beautiful bastards out there would bid on my trade me auctions. I am congenitally averse to giving people bargains.

Fine, I will stop the amateur dramatics

I'm still not sure what it is on our couch, but on actually inspecting them properly they seem too large to be nail clippings. The absolute horror of that statement is almost too much, my mind is pulsing. Not even counting the shekels I might get on Trade Me is calming down. No chance of soothing music, I am finally trying to get my speakers and CD player fixed. Next step the broken standard lamp.
Should clean up but the internet is compelling, this is why I had to stop the auctions in the first place.
I am also tempted to play some sweet playstation, but that is pretty sad. The game I am playing is embarrassingly clunky, and slow. I also have that little direction problem so I can't start back into it until the living room is empty. You'd think I'd be more skilled, what with all the careful placing of stuff I do every day, but no...

A conversation

Hey, that's some pretty sexist television we got tonight, well, the stuff that is not just pandering. Campbell Live and his hard hitting surveys of what New Zealanders look up on Google (Rugby and Paris Hilton, bleugh), followed by a sycophantic interview with the creators of Bebo. What, you had so many broadcasting and media companies beating at your door to get a piece of the 40 million viewers? Thats wonderful. I'm sure the tie-in will benefit everyone. Do your kids use Bebo? Finally a sycophantic interview with Dustin Hoffman, doesn't look a day over 60, really.
But I'm so glad you agree with me about Deal or No Deal. I glanced across the room and I noticed you were cringing too. Jeremy Cordett trying to come across educated by torturing an ancient Rome analogy (well, I suppose it was a brutal society. The bevy of 26 postie plus catalogue beauties waving and smiling as they tried to walk in unison towards the camera. And that grotty little upstart who tried to out-matey the show's host. You and I were both appalled, and if I had not beaten you to it I know you would have hit the power switch too. Yes, though you come across tough I think you are really quite sensitive, brittle even. You are layered and 3 dimensional, a rounded personality. Such inanity depresses you also, which is one of the reasons I have valued the moments we've shared. I had some reservations when I first met you, but I'm becoming more sympathetic. Maybe you are making me a better, kinder person too.
Too often we don't express our finer feelings. Well no longer. Right now, in front of my 2 blog readers I'm saying it. Thank-you giant toe nail clipping, thanks for being a friend. I have the feeling you are here to stay so I can look forward to many more special couch times.

Halfway house

I realised yesterday that my flat has turned into a bloody drop-in centre. Got home from work and saw that the back door had been left wide open. Good one guys, you're just lucky I have nothing worth taking. Later on that evening I found a pile of toenail clippings sitting on the couch. It was truely foulsome, but I left them there in a passive aggressive frenzy of sharing the pain. If no-one notices them I am going to start casually sliding the topic into conversation. Oh yes, me and the toenail clippings, we're watching tv together. Its really special. I've never known anyone who is such a good listener. We could talk for hours.
Other option is for the cat to eat them, but I do not think that will happen, she is too busy screeching about nothing in particular.

The empire on which the sun never rises

Trade Me. I remember why I stopped listing items a while ago. It was because I was getting annoyed with people asking silly questions and expecting bargain basement prices so they could sell stuff on at their boutique stores. And being slack about payment. But most of all it was because of the shocking lack of interest my GLORIOUS 1970s gear received. Things are moving slowly at present, much as in every other aspect of my life. Everything is so utterly depressing. All my friends moving away. All 3 of them that is. Living with younger flatmates who are already more confident and able than I ever will be, or perhaps that is the advantage of not yet realising how futile it all is. Undiplomatic as it is, I often wish my parents had been sterilised. How fortunate I am to have been born in an era with unprecedented opportunities to moan. Online, I could vlog, blog or podcast my own special blend of disgruntlement. The jury is out on whether that is any better or worse than using online resources to create wish-fulfilment fiction. I guess before the internet people had moaning hotlines, before that Party lines, and maybe before that they clustered around the radio listening to someone moaning. Lord Haw Haw perhaps. The creative might have tried a few 12 bar blues. Still earlier and they could just libel each other in the paper; what fantastic fun that must have been!
Maybe I need a diversion off-line. One that I can manage even though the early starts I am enduring just compounds my bad moods. So, how about bringing back coded messages in the personals columns in the ODT. The thrill of trying to break the code and get the gossip will liven up my days no end. I may live vicariously because lord knows nothing ever happens to me, except the occasional shouted insult enlivening my walk home. That's usually someone driving by. I can generally hold in my pedestrian rage even in the face of bad Dunedin driving.
Presumably driving in larger cities is of a higher standard than that in Dunedin, so that is one reason to try to get out of here. But then, wouldn't I just be moving to become even more boring and insignificant elsewhere? Is it possible? Could I be more of a depresso hermit than I already am? It's this kind of thought that makes me wish I could be part of a colonising power. Can't make it at home? Go and be superior to another race even while you don't measure up to your own society.

Vroooooooooooom

It all just happened so fast. One minute I was feeding the magazine covers through the glue machine and the next American Hot Rod was making sweet sweet love to the bottom roller. Inseparable. We had to shut down the operations to disentangle the two & I now have to salvage the magazine by making a new cover for it. It was pretty funny, although it made cleaning up a bit more difficult. Yeah, so if you see a rather unglamorous looking Hot Rod on display you know who is responsible.

On the edge of oblivion and all the world is Babylon...

I find that there are some songs I only need to listen to the first few bars of, and I am instantly amused. A little bit more by Dr Hook for instance, and pretty much anything by Wang Chung. Did you get the title reference? Yes, a clever acknowledgement of their party time classic "Everybody Have Fun Tonight (everybody Wang Chung Tonite)". I recall reading a Real Groove article some years ago. Some pompous mutt was reviewing the latest NIN album, the Fragile at that time I suppose. He was talking about how he had created a music video for the tracks in his head. He was mentally playing it as he strutted down K road, in all liklihood a tinny whine emitted from his Ipod headphones as he posed. Can one pose while in motion?
Today as I walked to work listening to Wang Chung I could not but wish that I had facilities to make my own music video for it. I have not done the choreography or anything, but I planned to have a team of dancers in pastel toned shell suits, with particularly pithy lyrics printed on them a la Wham's Wake Me Up (before you go-go) T-shirts.

Hurry up, dammit

I have just listed some stuff on trade me. Not up to my best blurb standard, but I have to try to get rid of some of this crap. There it is, waiting for attention, and no-one has even looked at any of the glorious items. Philistines! Tight fisted pillocks! Idiots! Well, I knew that the public didn't understand already, so I don;t know why I would be surprised by this.

Time to stop fixating, better go and do something else.

Yeah, another brilliant day

Another fairly quiet day and evening, visited people then reached that crisis point, what to do next? Several factors contributed to my decision to disappear. Proposed venue (kareoke bar) and stylish costume changes among them. Lord knows I don't intend to wind up hanging out with people better looking than me all the time, but it always happens. Probably because there are not many people who aren't & they have the same ambition as I do.
So here we get the "Oh but people think you're funny/clever/sop" commments as if that will ever garner as much respect as looks do. I'd rather remove myself from the situation than be ignored, maybe occasionally thrown a pity remark from bystanders. If you can't be fabulous, go home & that goes doubly for people who can't escape their thoughts for long enough to cheerful and funloving.
Fantastic, so I head off with a little therapeutic Laid Back & decide to check out the possibility of moving to the UK to work; there is that skilled worker visa you can apply for...Guess what, turns out that even to an organisation that knows nothing about me, I am an unskilled oaf. What exactly was the point in a qualification or two at university & busting a gut being nice to mongs to get a job? Take a pay cut to improve oneself then find that, sorry, you aren't going to be taught anything worthwhile after all, but we like your enthusiasm for learning. Attempt to clap your hands and miss as you repeat, yay, you're a really hard trier, thats really good (patronising raised note).
No prospects, no sign of a millionaire benefactor, no reason to get out of bed in the morning. This just caps it all off. I'll never be able to leave my low wage job while management can fuck off any time they like. Imagine, covering books for the rest of my life & never actually getting taught what I thought I was being hired to do. So much for being sure to be able to scrape together enough points to get the hell away from this shithole. No, I am destined to be one of those poor bastards who stays in the same small town all their lives while acquaintances jet off to foreign climes then return for lifestyle choices, like to raise their repulsive children.
Knowing my luck I'll end up being the cleaner, wiping sputum, pus and shit all around the marble surfaces, except I am not even qualified to do that. No doubt I would have to enrol in another damn Polytech training course. Imagine a room of people cleaning with prescribed products in the prescribed way, dropping like flies from OOS. Perhaps Europe and the States will have need of my 'Janitorial Magic' tm, and mysteriously put a check box for 50 points for it. Its the same old situation, the usual people are rewarded, given opportunities for being good looking and having type A personalities. Presumably the rest of us are the bulwark of strong dowdy reserved people from which such flaming acheivement is launched. The simple folk who keep the country ticking over, never do anything of note and breed husks of cars in the yard. How fortunate we can all enjoy things like regional rugby and live our lives vicariously. Perhaps religion will feature because there is nothing in existance that makes life worth living, so wheel out the imaginary.
Hang on... don't missionaries and ministers get relaxed entry regulations... Is this the beginning of a brilliant and Macchiavellian scheme?

Divine, the most beautiful woman in the world

Hmmmm

I was sure that there would be some major Christmas events going on in Dunedin, like a Christmas in the Park. It seems I was wrong. Yesterday the civic Christmas tree was ceremonially lit up, and the flying anuses have reappeared along George and Princes streets, but there is no mention of a carols in the park event. Checking out the Coca Cola Christmas in the Park site I see mentions of Auckland and Christchurch extravaganzas. Other centres miss out, such a shame. Perhaps as a nation we have to finally admit to ourselves that we just don't have enough celebrities to sustain the heady festive bunfight. It was ridiculous, a community could guage their relative importance by who was sent down to MC the event. Auckland got Shortland Street actors, Wellington politicians or something, Dunedin got Nick Eynon, several years after his fifteen minutes. Who is he? I hear you cry my little cabbages. Well, I don't know either and I don't care. Both he and the good folk of Dunedin can heave a sigh of relief because he is not coming here.

We do get a Christmas in the Pa though, but I may not be in town, I might be experiencing the many splendours of Alexandra.

The next door neighbours are screaming. See, they are getting frazzled already too.

All you ex-Dunedinites

should be jealous, look what is on offer for New Year's Eve:

Mark Laughton Motors - New Year’s Eve Concert

Dunedin’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are as unique as the city itself and the Dunedin City Council and sponsor Mark Laughton Motors have great plans to once again see the New Year in in style.

Starting at 7pm with a motley crew of family entertainment, face painters and balloon artists, the upper Octagon will host local band Catgut and Steel featuring Anna Bowen and her puppet fiddler. Good quality street theatre, the Community Express Train, along with food stalls, games and activities for children, will ensure continuous entertainment until 9.30pm.

From 9.30, the Oxo Cuban Collective will dazzle the crowds with the ultimate ''All Ages Gig''.

A new stage in the lower Octagon will mean that you can get closer to the action than ever before, and see the performance from almost any angle! Some of the greatest Dunedin talent and rising stars have worked together for months to produce a set that will have everyone dancing in the streets.

This year the Oxo Cubans Collective will expand to take in the exciting talents of the University of Otago’s Contemporary Rock Course led by Graeme Downes (formerly of the Verlaines) and will also feature former Pink Floyd bassist Rob Bruce, who now lives in Dunedin.

Stay for the countdown to mid-night and be rewarded with a spectacular firework display to herald in the new year.

Now what were we saying about musical legacies? Where is Peter Chin in this line-up? How can I escape? And just how long have the Oxo Cubans been a collective?

Just wait 'til I dig out what is on for Dunedin's Christmas in the Park

Just peachy

It's Saturday, and whats on the agenda? Cleaning up the shithole that is the flat. The kitchen is just sumptuous, and don't dwell on the toilet where there has been a terrible case of bad entry angle. Just what I really love on my day off from work, after a really boring & crappy week. Screw human rights, bring back slavery.

Oh no

We made it through the horror that was Movember (largely unscathed at the library), and Rocktober barely blipped onto my radar. But I have just realised, I can't watch TV or listen to the radio from here on in, because I might be subjected to Christmas advertising, or worse still, Christmas songs. Now how will I drown out the voices in my head?