Sweet & Sour man.

I think I might have just been plagiarised. Just a little bit plagiarised. Although I plagiarised a little bit as well, this person plagiarised all of my little bit of plagiarism...which means they are a much worse plagiarist than I. I think.

I'll try and get through the exposition as quickly as possible because it's tedious. A few weeks ago a sweet man named Simon Sweetman asked for submissions to write his blog for him. Sweetman writes a blog called 'Blog on The Tracks' for stuff.co.nz,  the site to go to if you want to read every newspaper in New Zealand except The Herald on Sunday to avoid Gossip Queen Rachel Glucina.

When you see the blog's banner it becomes obvious it's a music blog. Simon obviously loves his music and appears to own the biggest turntable I've ever seen. I don't know what else he does besides blogging but he should definitely be a radio DJ: "Hi, I'm Simon Sweetman, playing the sweet sounds all night long, so get off your seat and move your feet and let the Sweetman make you feel sweet.....maaaaaaan. Here's some Jack Johnson..."

Anyway, back to the heinous crime. I quite like a bit of music and possess two normal sized  turntables so I thought I'd post an entry to his 'Right This Blog 2011' competition. Not that you could win anything. Your prize was being one of the five selected by Simon to do Simon's job for him. It's sort of like that trick Tom Sawyer pulled to get stupid people to whitewash his fence.

“No — is that so? Oh come, now — lemme just blog. Only just a little — I’d let YOU, if you was me, Simon Sweetman.” … “Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme blog. Say — I’ll give you my little turntable.” . . . “I’ll give you BOTH of it!”

Here's my entry...

 

I apologise that it's smaller than I'd like but all you need to know is the title of my post would have been 'Men Who Like M|A|R|R|S, Women Who Like Venus'. I was quite proud of this title. I'm not so proud of, "I am a 37 year old music fan who will bring the noise", but in my defence it was 1.39am, (11.39pm in Melbourne) and I was a little drunk. Bring the noise!? What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, back to the heinous crime. My heinous crime was plagiarising the title of a well-known heterosexual coupling advice book 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus' by John Gray. I'm sorry John but at least I changed the Mars to M|A|R|R|S. M|A|R|R|S only released one song but it was a seminal wonderful masterpiece of a song called 'Pump Up The Volume'. Stop reading now and click the link to listen to it, I promise you won't regret it. The video is just as brilliant. Astronauts! Cosmonauts! Nauts & Crosses! I could write a whole post about this song I love it so much. I bought it lovingly on vinyl about 20 years ago from Round-about Records at the Northlands Shopping Centre and here is a photo that took about 20 years to take on my shitty iPhone of me looking lovingly at it today.

But back to the second heinous crime. After finding out on Monday Simon Sweetman hadn't chosen me to whitewash his blog, I popped online this morning and saw with horrified teary eyes...this.

Sweetmaaaaannnnnnnnn! What have you done! Sweetman's post is based around his belief that, "Women do have terrible taste in music. More often than men do." Based on my experience this is utter bollocks. The truth is everyone has terrible taste in music except me, but that's not the point. The point is I think Simon might have plagiarised my plagiarism and made it worse by not even pumping up 'Pump Up The Volume'. 'Men listen to guitars' doesn't even scan. He could have used 'Men listen to Lars', 'Men listen to NAS' or even 'Men listen to Jarres'.

He even nicked my bloody Feelers gag...

 

I'm the only one that's allowed to rip into The Feelers! I was doing it before you were born Sweetman!  You can't handle The Feelers!!! You're not a sweet man at all Simon Sweetman. From now on I'm calling you Simon Sourman. And I'm calling your blog 'Blog on the Nickelbacks' cos I bet you secretly love the Nickelbacks. Yeah, how does that feel Mr Feeler stealer?

Not so good huh?

Yeah, you know it.

Not The Nine O'Clock Hughes

It's not that easy being red. Lefty, pinko, liberal, commie, Marxist, socialist hippies just aren't as popular as they once were in New Zealand. Imagine being red and ginger. Then you'd be a ginga lefty. Or a ranga pinko. Or a carrot top commie fanta pants socialist. Imagine being red and ginger and maybe gay. Wow. Then you'd be a flaming fanta pants socialist. Or a ranga homo pinko pillow-biter. Or a fanta pant fudge packing hippie carrot riding leftie screaming liberal shirt lifting friend of Dorothy commie. Ginger is also rhyming slang for gay...ginger beer...queer...yeah, so to make things easier you could just be a red ginger ginger.

Imagine then if you were being investigated by police after an alleged late night incident of a sexual nature involving an 18 year old male. What if a man matching the description of the complainant was seen naked and distressed at 5am, "with one hand over his private parts and the other hand with his thumb out, hitch-hiking." This is a comedy goldmine and has all the potential to be as hilarious as this new in-flight safety video from New Zealand's national carrier featuring Richard Simmons. Paul Henry's in the video as well.

Paul Henry would have a field day with this story but now the only way to see him on screen is by flying from Palmerston North to Hamilton. Luckily another media heavy weight has stepped up, the Herald on Sunday's Rachel Glucina. I'd never heard of Glucina before. Previously I'd have guessed that Glucina could be a nasty little STD that just won't go away. Now I know she's a gossip columnist.

Glucina took a leaf out of David Letterman's book and created a top ten list but  unlike Letterman, who has 101 writers locked in his basement to write gags and eat in the event of an apocalyptic episode, she did hers all by herself. You can see the result here...or here.

There are so many levels at work here, the gutter, the sewer, rock bottom. Rock bottom! You missed out on that one Rachel. Let's go through them one by one and see what she's doing.

10. This is funny because Chris Carter was also kicked out of the Labour Party and wait for it...Chris Carter is GAY.

9. This is funny because everyone knows that people with red hair all look the same. Darren Hughes, Ron Weasley, Rupert Grint, whoever he is, Napoleon, Lucille Ball, Molly Ringwald, Ron Howard, L Ron Hubbard, Tiffany...you just can't tell the difference. A few years ago Glucina couldn't tell the difference between Donna Awatere-Huata and a Korean woman named Ms Kim. Under a photo of Ms Kim on Ponsonby Road Glucina gushed, "Now the former Maori activist, who appears to look more Pakeha every time I see her, has a chic new image."

8. This is funny because everyone knows that people with red hair look exactly like objects that are red. Darren's hair is flame-red which means he looks like a fire engine, although he could also pass for a stop sign, a Ferrari or the flag of China. Rachel has missed out on an obvious firehose gag here though. "Put his flame-red hair to work and get a job as Flick the Little Fire Engine and flick his hose at children's shows." Much funnier.

7. This is funny because now Hughes would be surrounded by drunk 18 year old males. Could he control himself? How many could he lure back to Chris Carter's spare room? Could Chris control himself? Could Chris's partner Peter control himself? Could every gay man in New Zealand control themselves? Hilarious!

6. This is funny because red haired people sunburn very easily. And they're all stupid.

5. This is funny because rather than try and keep things under wraps, Hughes publicly named himself last Wednesday. What a fool! Now imagine if he worked for the Security Intelligence Service...stop laughing now.

4. See number 7. Nice use of the words 'hang out' and 'men-tor' though.

3. This is funny because as a ginger man he will undoubtedly have ginger pubes and hence ginger nuts. Gingernuts are also biscuits. Gingernuts are dunked in tea. Tea-bagging is when a man dunks his nuts into someone else's mouth. This one could be funnier that Glucina ever realised.

2. I don't know why this is funny. Unless Rodney Hide is GAY. It does continue her hilarious theme of placing a potentially gay man around young people.

1. Wow. 'Just bum around.' Bum. Bum bum. Bum bum bum. Bum bummy bum. Bumpity bum bummy bum bum.  Bumming. Bumming's Warehouse. Hot cross bum chums.  Innuendo. In-your-end-do. Out-your-end-do. Prick Up Your Ears! I'm free!

Comedy at minorities expense. Funny isn't it.

iMoan

Technological advancement can be measured by the thickness of gadgets. If we ever discover life on other planets our first words should be ‘Show me your phone’ rather than ‘Take me to your leader.’ If alien leaders are anything like the leaders here on Earth they would be the last people you’d want to meet anyway, unless you liked being bored, water boarded or having tentacles shoved up your jacksie at a zero-g  bunga bunga party.

Technological advancement is all about getting thinner, lighter and faster and Earth’s distributer of alien technology Apple know this well. I got an email from them yesterday to say *iPad2 is here and that it’s thinner, it’s lighter, it’s faster and just in case I’d forgotten since reading the subject line, it's here. Then, just in case I got a bit too excited by thinking that it was thinner, lighter and faster than a well made paper plane, or a whippet, or air, the email told me that iPad2 is only thinner, lighter and faster than the previous iPad.

I don’t have an iPad2. I don’t have an iPad1. I only have an iPhone 3G which is thin, light and really really really fucking slow. It is excruciatingly, bone crushingly, wife-beatingly, child thrashingly, animal crueltyingly slow. My iPhone 3G makes me want to cut myself in a hairy place so I can put a very sticky plaster on to pull off slowly over the rest of my life.

I know Steve Jobs doesn’t want me to use my iPhone 3G anymore because Apple has stopped releasing software updates for it. I don’t have a problem with this at all. In fact I wished they had stopped releasing software updates for my phone when they got to 3.2.1.

iOS 3.2.1 Phone worked fine.

iOS 4.0 Phone rooted.

Apple even promised to address my 3G issues with update 4.1 but all that seemed to do was let me transmit my Nike shoe size over Wi-Fi and Ping, whatever the hell that is. Some people told me to turn off my Spotlight search which I had to search like buggery to find but that did nothing. Others said to try a hard forced reset that involved depressing the button on the top and the front simultaneously for 9.7 seconds while pelvic thrusting, rubbing your head and patting the cat until a white apple appeared to signify the phone had surrendered. After trying this repeatedly with no noticeable improvement I realised that this was just Applespeak for, ‘Switch it off and on.’

What makes the whole debacle even more galling is it’s virtually impossible to go back to 3.2.1 Contact. (Probably one of the best TV themes ever.) The process is termed ‘jail-breaking’ which indicates how tricky it is. An uber-geek could pull it off but now they’ve all got iPhone 5s and only use iPhone 3G’s as vibrating butt plugs.

Some of you may have seen this bit of brilliance. Trust me, the iPhone3G in that video is like a Lamborghini to my Lada. When I wake up now the first thing I do is press the Messages icon just in case I want to text someone at lunchtime. Angry Birds makes me angry, Flight Control makes me lose control and SmackTalk makes me want to take smack. Google maps doesn't even bother trying to open anymore.

Still, can't be long before the iPhone 5 is released and that'll be wicked.

*The ‘the’ or an ‘an’ or any article before an iDevice is severely frowned upon by Appleytes. If you make the mistake of asking ‘Do you have the iPad2?’ they will frown and sigh and reply condescendingly, ‘Yes, I have iPad2…do you?’ The only way to regain their respect is to reply, ‘Yes, I do have iPad2 too. Let’s FaceTime sometime.  Hey, nice Smart Cover. LOL!’

I, Knut

I, Knut
am now kaputt.
My back left leg went very odd
and German woman yelled "Oh mein Gott".

I turned around to try to see
my leg moving spasmodically
going up and down
repeatedly.
And down and up
and up and down.
But my leg kept moving the other way
so what caused it I could not say.

"Oh mein Gott"
There it was again.
When I was young people would call 'Oh mein Gott'
and I didn't have to do a lot
just walk and swim and eat a bit,
play with Thomas, stand and sit.

But now I'm big and not so white
Thomas doesn't sleep with me at night
I miss Thomas
I hope he's alright.

"Oh mein Gott!"
That's right my leg.
My left's not right
not right at all
and I know they won't come so there's no point to call
Nancy or Katjuscha
or Tosca my mum
who rejected me for reasons unknown.

Please don't be scared if you're watching me.
I'm sure I'll come right eventually.
Just one more turn to try to see...

"Mein Gott! Mein Gott!"
Now my front leg's gone funny
just like the back
so I can't turn in circles but
I was sick of that.
I'll just stand on my right side
till my left side comes right
but now everythings shaking
fight Knut fight

I'll stick out my right front leg
it's the only one working
it's hard to think now my head won't stop jerking
I wish Thomas was here
he'd know what to do
I'm just a polar bear
in Berlin Zoo.

Now I'm sliding still seated down the rocks by my pool
I can hear people screaming
as I give up on leaning
and then I join in screaming
"Oh Mein Gott"

I see blue sky and water as I sink on my back
And I can see Thomas.
I knew he'd come back.
He's smiling to tell me I've earned my keep
And he strums his guitar
to put me to sleep.

Christchurch II

I think most people have come to terms with the fact that Christchurch is munted. Bob Parker has told us so on numerous occasions and now you can even buy the t-shirt.

Bob also spoke of the roads being "ripped to buggery" and the CBD being a "flaming mess" so all in all Christchurch, according to Bob, is 'a munted mess of ripped flaming buggery', which is probably a better tagline than 'The Garden City'

Now that's been cleared up thoughts turn to Christchurch's future and whether it has one. Christchurch has a lot going for it, some of which I blogged about back in September 2009. What Christchurch doesn't have going for it is that it's built on a big old swamp and a big old fault line that nobody knew about prior to September 4th 2010. Since the devastating aftershock a few weeks ago there has been a lot of talk about how or whether the city should be rebuilt. Some have suggested shifting the CBD to Hagley Park. I think this would mean the Christchurch Botanic Gardens Cafe is the new Cathedral...

The Cathedral

..and Victoria Lake is the new Christchurch Casino.

Goose waiting to play some craps.

Although the Casino is a definite improvement this idea is daft because Hagley Park is the only venue big enough to accommodate The Feelers.

 'A Munted Mess of Ripped Flaming Buggery' in Hagley Park

So, what is to be done? Here in no particular order are some suggestions for rebuilding Christchurch.

1. Have a chat to somebody at The Buchan Group and Holmes Consulting. They designed and engineered The Christchurch Art Gallery which has turned out to be Christchurch's black box. One whole wall of this building is made of glass and not a pane has fallen. It's also quite beautiful.

2. Rebuild the spire of The Cathedral with the same steel and glass construction used on the front of the Art Gallery. Flood it with light at night and let it be a beacon in the heart of the city. Imagine being a first time visitor to Christchurch and seeing that out of your plane window. Imagine returning home to your city and seeing that out of your plane window. If it is structurally and acoustically feasible hang the bells inside so everyone can hear and see them ringing. Use the bricks from the fallen spire to build a memorial in the Square to all those lost in the quake.

3. Don't form a committee. Even the word committee reeks of unnecessary excess, all those extra m's and t's and e's. Unnecessary reeks of excess unnecessariness as well. Committees are just ways for lots of unimportant people to feel important about spoiling the broth. Everyone puts their two cents worth in until there's enough to buy a solution from the $2 shop. When I was head of the school council at Casebrook Intermediate we formed a committee to run a competition to design a new mascot and then I lost all the entries and Casebrook Intermediate still hasn't got a school mascot. All the entries were absolute rubbish but that's not the point. We should have just gone with my idea to have someone dress up as a big apple because the school was originally an orchard.

4. Call Frank Gehry. He designed this.

Don't quote me but I think Frank Gehry entered the competition to design Te Papa. I can only assume someone on the 'Design Te Papa Competition Committee' lost all the entries because we ended up with this.

An Imax and a prison linked by an aqua 'W' cause it's in Wellington.

5. Listen closely to Gerry Brownlee and then do the exact opposite of what he says.

Popular ventriloquist Gerry Brownlee with his dummy Don.