A few of my favourite things...

I'm nearly at the end of week two of an eight week tour of duty in Christchurch. I just went to that link I just linked to and it welcomed me to the future christchurch.co.nz website however we don't seem to have reached the future yet because it's not working. By the looks of things in the future we will all be speaking another language where every sentence starts with 'lorem ipsum' although it does tell you that the temperature in Christchurch was 11 degrees on July 23 2006.

That's the best thing about Christchurch, time stands still. I bet if you come here in the year 3009 things won't have changed much. The square will still be a bit rubbish, there will be cyboyg racers in modified hover cars and old people's heads preserved in jars of bubbling liquid will moan about the price of heat pumps on telepathic talkback stations.

It's easy to moan about Christchurch so I'm not going to. Instead I'm going to tell you a few of my favourite things that only Christchurch has to offer. So, in no particular order...

1. The Magnolia tree down my folk's drive.

Look at this pretty puppy. There are heaps of magnolia trees in Christchurch and right now they are flowering beautifully but they are all shit compared to my mum and dad's magnolia tree just outside the bedroom window. This is the mother of all magnolia trees and as I back the Corolla (more on this soon) down the drive and knock a few of the flowers off with the wing mirror I feel blessed that the Cooper magnolia tree shits all over every other magnolia tree in Christchurch and probably the world. Last year mum and dad awoke to find two Japanese tourists up the drive taking photos of each other in front of it. It's that popular. If you think you have a better magnolia tree post a picture of it or shut your pie hole. Words are meaningless, images are everything. This photo isn't even the best it's looked, it looked heaps better a few days ago but it's still better than your magnolia tree isn't it. Yes....yes it is.

2. The weather.

The weather has been really nice.

3. The Court Theatre bar.

I'm down here doing a play at The Court Theatre. The Court Theatre, like Christchurch is another place where time stands still. Everytime I rehearse in the upstairs rehearsal room the ghosts of old actors surround me and the voices of Peacock, Wilson, Cooper (another Cooper, no relation), Fogarty, Butt-Walker, Corbin, Gorman, Glubb, Spargo, Cosgrove, Olivier, Jacobi, Richardson and Gielgud seem to whisper in my ear, "What the fuck are you doing back here?". I wonder where they all are now? Thanks to Facebook I know where they all are now, except for Gary Gielgud....I wonder where he is now? Anyway, the best thing about the Court is the bar where like time, the prices have stood still. As a member of the theatre company I can get booze so cheap it would makes your eyes water and drip into your glass of booze so your booze would be made up of your own tears which may have some alcoholic content but would still be more expensive than my booze. My booze is cheaper than your own tears, it's that cheap. The barman/woman at the Court have been great as well. For most of my life I was served by Jan who was brilliant and wouldn't serve gin to anyone under 40. Then there was a lovely man with the brilliant name of David Bain who has just left to make barrels for Peter Jackson. Next up is an Anglican priest apparently...brilliant. There is no better feeling than drinking booze before an early show on Mondays and Thursdays and knowing you are paying less than all the moaning geriatrics who normally get things cheaper than you. They have worked hard their whole life, fought in two world wars and your booze is at least $2 cheaper than theirs. Brilliant!

4. KFC.

Regular readers will know about my love for the dirty bird. There's a drive-through on Papanui Road on the way home from the theatre. What makes it even more special is that I get to drive through in....

5. The Corolla

This is the kicker and makes every trip to Christchurch worthwhile. When I'm down here I get to cruise around in this. Yes, you're not hallucinating, this pimped out piece of Japanese perfection has fuckin louvers. Louvers at the rear! This is a 1989 Toyota Corolla, 5 door, touring also known as the sexiest car ever made and I get to drive it every day and watch the faces of all the jealous locals who wish they were driving it and I'm not even a local anymore. This thing drives like it looks, moderately well. Here is a link to a wee film to see it in action.

So many good things. I was hoping to get to 10 but I have to stop here and go and learn some lines. I will finish the list in the next post. If you would like to go for a ride in the Corolla or just stroke my louver let me know.

May contain nudity

Following on from my last post which featured a disturbing bar graph I present you with a disturbing line graph to illustrate a disturbing trend that is disturbing me. The john legend is as follows: blue line = comments on blogger, red line = comments on facebook and yellow line = likes on facebook. It doesn't take a chart whiz to notice a downward trend on all three indicators of my blogs impact and I'm disturbed by this. John Legend had hits with "If You're Out There", "I Used to Love You" and "P.D.A (We Just Don't Care)" which just goes to show that John has suffered through a disturbing case of blogmalaise as well. I am determined to reverse this disturbing trend and have decided to resort to the only two marketing methods I know, fit birds and nudity.

After minutes searching the internet I have found a picture of a very fit bird indeed and here she is. What a dirty little minx, look at the provocative way she is holding that door with her hand hovering over the knob as if to say "My door is always open and my hand is right over your knob" or "Come inside and let me touch your knob" or "I like this knob" or "Wow, there's a knob on both sides of this door, I love a knob on both sides" or "This knob is silver, like the Lone Ranger's horse, I would like to ride the Lone Ranger's horse or your knob" or "Fancy a root?" Images like this verging on really really soft soft porn are guaranteed to increase readership and comments in the short term and alienate and sicken people in the long term which is exactly what I'm after.

I bet you all really fancy her don't you, I'd love to know what you're up to with her in your sordid imaginations even though she's probably unobtainable. Well, prepare to vomit in your mouth, that saucy minx who you're fantasising wildly about right now is actually ME in a DRESS. I know, it's hard to believe isn't it, it's like one of those reality dating shows where you find out right at the end that the winning woman has been dead the whole time and nobody realised, except the small boy who could see dead women. Yuck, yuck, yuckity yuck. Go and have a shower and let's never speak of this again.

I dressed up like this for a conference in Rootaroa last week with Jared who regular readers will recall bravely braved four days at the Food Show with me. The theme for the conference dinner was prom night and I was last years prom queen Candy and he was Randy. All the delegates dressed up as well. I got felt up by men because it's not gay to feel up another man when he's dressed as a woman so it's OK and there's nothing gay about it, because he's got screwed up paper as boobs and he's wearing a dress...so it's not gay...OK. I also got groped by middle aged women but that's not sexual harrassment because he's a man dressed as a woman and I'm a woman and woman love to grab each others bits, have pillow fights in their nighties and talk about riding Silver. Jared had his tackle groped by a large English man dressed as Gene Simmons but that's not gay because Gene probably goes both ways.

Conferences are great fun, especially when you don't have to sit through the endless tedium of train-wreck presentations backed up with endless powerpoint bollocks. No matter what company it is and what product or service they are peddling, 90% of conference presentations spout the same old crap that everybody knows anyway...stuff like this:

"We must work together as a team to exceed the customer's expectations everytime and provide a service second to none in this competitive environment to survive the current recessionary climate. Margins! We must be lean and dynamic and approach every opportunity with the knowledge that our actions reflect the brand and all of us are the most important resource and together we can win and make our targets. Margins! My door is always open and I will endeavour to implement all your ideas to make this organisation more effective. Margins! We must all think of the bottom line and think outside the square and think differently from our competitors. Margins! We must be harder, faster, stronger. Margins! We are a winning team and together we will win."

This can be summarised as:

"Make your targets or lose your jobs."

After hours of this you may be invited to go to a break-out room where you listen to more of it in smaller groups and write on a big bit of paper in different coloured felt pens. Then you read the words you have written, words like 'brand awareness", "customer focus", "symbiotic" and "follow-up" before the bits of paper get screwed up by the facilitator to be used as boob stuffing for the piss-up in the evening.

Then it's time for some team-building where you thrash a drum for a couple of hours in unison or run around blind-folded tied to a cow with your team-mates hand up it's arse to guide it around all your other team members lying naked in the shape of your company's logo.

Then you go back to your hotel, put a wacky costume on, go and get slaughtered, try and cop off with someone or tell your CEO what a bellend he is before kissing him and vomiting in his mouth. Wake up at 6am with a steaming hang-over, return to conference venue and repeat if you still have a job.

I'm sure some of you have some fantastic and saucy conference stories so why don't you comment on this blog and share them. If I don't reverse my disturbing trend I will resort to nudity in my next post and that really will be disturbing for all concerned and ruin my chances of becoming Prime Minister of America.

You have been warned.

GP Abuse

The last four days of my life have been spent at the Auckland Food Show, and event where over 30,000 people are treated to "a stellar array of the very best in food and wine." For $22 you can spend 8 hours wandering around three gigantic halls of delictable delights, sampling smoked paprika flakes, wagyu beef and Paul Holmes Extra Virgin Olive Oil. You could even sample Paul Holmes himself as he was there, apparently he tasted rich and meaty with a good nose.

For $22 you could also spend 8 hours wandering around three gigantic halls getting absolutely rat-arsed. After four days of meticulous observation and statistical analysis I have prepared the following bar graph.There's something about us Kiwis and free alcohol that makes us act like the Kurgan out of the fantastic film Highlander. We start driving on the wrong side of the road, try and chop other people's heads off and lick priests. I remember being in the New Zealand theatresports team in Los Angeles in 1994 and we all went to a party in Malibu where there was lots of free beer. It was lots of horrible American beer like Budweiser and Miller Lite however that didn't stop us and we began to drink the stuff as if it was little bottles of Bella Swann's blood and we were all Robert Pattinson. I was at a loss as to why none of the other teams were following our lead, the Danes came and pawed at a bottle, licked the rim a bit and wandered off to sniff each others bottoms, the Germans dipped their sausages in and marched off to invade the dance floor and the South Africans just sang their new national anthem over and over again. Even the Aussies were restrained. We got rip-roaringly drunk and my team-mate Simon fell of a fence during the 45th singing of the new South African national anthem much to our amusement and nobody elses. We couldn't help ourselves, it was free.

At the food show you could go and get lots of free wine samples and by midday people were staggering around being low rent and obnoxious. I was dressed as a Belgian beer maker in full Shakespearian attire with a large grey moustache and the drunk people just loved me. On the Thursday I was Napoleon Bonoparte with very large pantaloons that I had to hold up for fear of exposing my little general to the general public. I won't go into details as to why I was dressed like this, it was incredibly creatively fulfilling and I produced some of my best work and I can now pour a very good pint. The point I want to make is that the general public are arseholes.

They really are. I'm sure there is some equation to prove the number of dickheads increases exponentially in relation to group size, alcohol consumed and ridiculousness of the costume you're wearing. Perhaps something like this:

Jared and I were giving away free beer and even then a lot of them were rude and belligerent. They had paid their $22 and that meant they were going to get drunk, their children were going to get drunk, they would eat enough to last them for a week and their children could kick Napoleon in the balls. Jared who was slowly dying alongside me, actually heard some delightful father say to their whining spawn, "No, we're not leaving, you haven't eaten enough yet." Last year I used the ancient put-down line, 'If I wanted to hear from an arsehole I'd fart' to some large man who wouldn't shut up and then he promptly proceeded to pull down his pants and show me his arse-hole before falling over and spilling his free glass of beer over his own anus. The image is forever burned on my retinas, like I'd stared at a big brown sun. This happened at 2pm on a Sunday.

I'm not sure why this happens. Sure the booze plays a part, however even without it, the general public are stupid, rude, dumb, thick, annoying, punchable and a bunch of muhs. It should be compulsory for everyone to work at least six months in a service industry, either in a cafe, bar, in retail, dressed as Napoleon and then maybe they would understand how horrible they as members of the general public have been and change their ways. Yes, I admit it goes both ways, there have been many situations where I have smiled and been very plesant while ordering a coffee only to be graced with a look reserved for someone who has farted in a broken lift. Bad service is intolerable however if you, as a member of the GP have given bad customerice you should expect bad service in return. You hear stories about waiting staff spitting, or whacking off into the food of rude diners however if they were allowed to do it in front of the diners at the table it would be much more effective. If I'd been allowed to do that while dressed as Napoleon I would have felt much better. I would probably be in hospital, but would feel much better.

GJC4KFC4EVA

God I love KFC. If the Colonel wasn't some rotting corpse infested with maggots buried deep down in a field in Kentucky I would kiss him on the lips and offer to do much more if he would just whisper those sweet 11 herbs and spices into my ear. Recently I stumbled upon an article in The Guardian claiming to have the secret receipe and for those of you who can't be bothered going to the link, here it is...
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)

Who knows if this is the real thing. Perhaps it's even better than the real thing although I doubt that's possible even if Bono says it is. Bono talks a lot of shite anyway and comes up with lyrics like, "Stuck together with god's glue, it's gonna get stickier too'. I always thought 'god's glue' was a euphemism for jizz and if so there's much better rhyming potential with 'duck butter' anyway. Here is a receipe for Bono:

1 teaspoon ground bollocks
1 pair of silly big glasses
1 pair of tight pants
1 big potato
4 litres of sanctimoniousness
2 tablespoons of Irish tiddly tiddly Accent
Mix until smooth and tasteless and sprinkle over a tablespoon of Brian Eno before serving cold.

Feel free to add receipes for your own favourite bands or singers.

But back to KFC. Some euphemisms for KFC include 'KFaeces', (thanks to Jari for this I think) and 'Dirty Bird', (thanks to Ben for this one) . Deep down part of you knows that by consuming KFC you are consuming small amounts of pooh and dirt along with the bird but if you're like me, that's all part of the thrill. I don't smoke, or take drugs made up of single letters, I have no desire to jump out of a plane or bungy jump or fall backwards into the arms of a bunch of actors doing some wanky trust exercise however I do love to eat KFC because you know it's not good for you, it feels dangerous, naughty and wrong and you keep furtively looking out the window in case somebody you know sees you with chicken juice dribbling down your chin and a breast hanging from your soggy lips. Just typing that last sentence has got me all moist for some of the Colonel's crack and I've already had some for lunch.

Here's is a picture of me with Ben eating some of the Colonel's finest in Clapham Common. I had been told that the best place in London to go and share your meat with another man was Clapham Common and they were right, it was lovely. Look how happy we both are. I think this love of KFC comes from growing up in Christchurch. For a long time KFC was the only fast food you could get in Christchurch. It was such a special treat and I still associate it with occasions like birthdays, marriages, Christmas and death. Just like Pavlov's dog I start salivating when I hear a bell rung by a Russian with a big bucket of chicken. In fact Ivan Pavlov bears an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Harland David Sanders, so they may be the same person which raises questions I can't be bothered asking or answering.

Please don't judge me for my KFC obsession. I only ever have a two or three piece quarter pack, I never eat the potato and gravy and all this new fangled hot spicy wing crispy nibbler stuff is anathema to me. After every meal a small part of me dies. I feel guilty, dirty and ashamed but I know I will do it again and ask myself the same question, 'Which came first, the chicken or the Greg?'

Doin' it for the kids

I apologise for the lack of bloggage recently, I've been working hard to bring the magic of theatre into the lives of children on the North Shore by dressing up as a tree, river, fish, dancing flower and baby bear. I also jiggled a soft toy bunny with a Welsh accent behind a bush. Here's a photo of me as baby bear with the actual set in the background. I look a bit like what you might get if that horrible man Jay Kay from that horrible band Jamiroquai rooted a horrible raccoon.

I've done a lot of children's theatre. My first show was a variation on the traditional Goldilocks story called 'Goldilocks and the Three little Rumpelstiltskins'. I can't remember much about it except that it was done on a budget and I played all three bears with a different type of fur coat to indicate which bear I was. The brown fur coat was for the grizzly bear who was angry, the white fur coat was for the polar bear who was cold and the black fur coat was for the black bear who was...black. He entered to hip hop music and sounded like what you might get if Flavour Flav had rooted Chris Rock while Gary Coleman stood by with a turkey baster and a pipette of his own duck butter. You can imagine how a skinny white guy pretending to be a bear of African American origin went down in early 1990's Christchurch...they loved it.

I'm still amazed we didn't receive any complaints. A few years ago I was playing the Hare in 'The Hare and the Tortoise' and I based my accent on Al Pacino in 'Scent of a Woman' and said 'Hoo-ah!' whenever I couldn't remember my next line. After the show an American woman came up to me while we were being bum-rushed by the kids in the foyer and whispered in my ear something like, "Black people can be good people to, you shouldn't reinforce racial stereotypes to small children." I stammered something like, "I'm a hare, not a black person and I'm meant to be Al Pacino", but she had gone before I could finish. You could hardly call the hare a bad person either, sure he was boastful but he got his comeupance and apologised to the tortoise at the end and joined in on the final song. The kids loved the hare as well, I was swamped with sticky children wanting to pull my tail and sign their stubs.

Children are great fun to perform to. It's just like performing to a bunch of really drunk adults. They yell stuff out that makes no sense, scream and cry for no reason, start talking when they are bored, wet themselves and fall asleep. They have no concept of how one should behave in a theatre which is fantastic. I've been to so much dreadful theatre where the audience sits in silence bored beyond belief, gives the cast a big clap at the end, tells their friends they came with afterwards how wonderful it was and then returns home feeling miserable having wasted $50 on two hours of self-indulgent thespwank. Children are brutally honest. Some memorable criticisms of my performance include, "You can't sing.", "You're dumb.", "You look like a girl." and "My daddy wants to kill you."

What children possess in abundance is imagination and a wonderful ability to completely suspend disbelief. If you've got the acting chops you can put on a different wig and you are instantly a different person. They just go along with it. I made what is possibly the worst prop in the history of New Zealand professional theatre, a giant hand painted on floppy cardboard glued to two bamboo sticks that I jiggled onstage while yelling 'Fee Fi Foo Fum' and the kids shat themselves. The management of the theatre also shat themselves and gave us a professional props person from then on so it was all worth it.

I did have a bit of a moment last week when I realised I was 35 years old and playing a baby bear. This was followed up by another moment when I was waving blue fabric up and down being a river while bubbles fell on my head. This was followed up by yet another moment when I was dressed as a tree who looked like he was giving a blowie. You cannot help but question your career choice at moments like these and ask things like, "What am I doing?", "Where is my life going?" and "Why do I look like I'm sucking cock?". But then you remember that you are getting paid to work with fantastic people to make kids laugh and you're not working at McDonalds or a call-centre selling wine.

At those moments I also think of the best moment of my acting career so far. I was the Big Bad Wolf in 'The Three Little Pigs'. He was an East London wide-wolf but sang like an asthmatic Elvis Presley. This is no way implies that people from East London are big or bad. My big number was about how much I loved eating bacon sandwiches however by the end of the show I remained hungry. We were in the foyer afterwards signing and hugging when this wee boy, maybe 4 or 5 years old, came up and handed me four small bacon sandwiches with their crusts cut off wrapped in glad-wrap. His grandmother explained that he had been to see the show yesterday and was very upset the wolf never got his dinner. That night he rang her to make some bacon sandwiches and bring him back the next day so he could give them to me. My jaded old luvvie heart melted and I gave him a big hug and felt better about everything. Hoo-ah!

True Lies

What a week it's been. My computer gets a virus and Michael Jackson dies. We don't yet know how The King of Pop popped his clogs, it may have been a virus but it seems more likely to have been an overdose of prescription drugs. The sort of prescription drugs one might prescribe to a horse who had trouble sleeping or perhaps to a person about to have a ten hour operation.

Whatever the case his death certainly had nothing to do with his state of health. He was in fantastic shape, absolutely fantastic. I know this is true because The Incredible Hulk told me. He said, "I'd never seen him look better" and that, "he seemed fine, alert, no pain at all." Even though that final phrase seems better suited to someone who is just a head being kept alive in a jar of bubbling liquid, who's going to disagree with The Incredible Hulk?

Here are some photos of Michael Jackson and as you can see he's an absolute picture of health.













It must be great being a celebrity, not only do you get paid lots of money and lots of people want to have sex with you, you can go on TV and tell fibs and get away with it. The Incredible Hulk could have said, "Underneath his slim exterior Michael Jackson had a body just like mine and could bench press 400 pounds upside down while sipping on gin and Jesus Juice" and everybody would have agreed and nodded their heads and thanked The Incredible Hulk for his startling revelation.

It must be such a rush knowing you can spout forth with any old bullshit and nobody picks you up on it. In California The Terminator has told everyone that instead of getting paid or getting your tax refund you will receive an I.O.U which he says are "rock solid". This from the man who said, "Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million." It must be reassuring when you're feeding your children sausages made of dirt that you have a stack of I.O.U's from The Terminator in your top draw just waiting for some financial institution like Wells Fargo to convert them into your hard earned Benjamins. Wells Fargo got $25 billion worth of I.O.U's from Obama but recent stress tests have shown they probably need another $13.7 billion in order to remain well capitalised. Hasta la vista baby.

Luckily in New Zealand we don't have celebrities, all we have are people on Shortland Street, people who used to or currently play rugby or cricket and Marc Ellis. These people try and tell us fibs but we just laugh at them because we know somebody who knows them, they are related to us or we are actually them.

I went to a focus group on Thursday where I sat around with nine other men and discussed the merits of a new series of TVC's for a large hamburger producing multi-national company that is desperately trying to rebrand itself to make you think their offerings are as healthy as Michael Jackson. E,I,E,I,O,U. It was quite surreal walking into a small room in a Parnell hotel and seeing nine middle aged men and a video camera. I half expected my cup of tea to be laced with rohypnol but still had two cups and three pastries and loosened my pants. I was getting paid $70 and times are tough. After listening to a few of the test voice-overs my fellow focus groupers began suggesting better replacements, namely, Colin Meads, some Aussie guy who plays league who I'd never heard of and Marc Ellis. As someone who has done a bit of voice work myself I began crying on the inside and wanting to shove all the hotel pens up their posteriors. Not only would this have made me happy, it would have produced a video that could have made me more than $70. I wondered what they all did for a living and how they would feel if instead of using their accountancy/plumbing/gynecological services I got Marc Ellis over to probe my U-bend.

Not only do celebrities tell fibs, they think they can do anything. Rappers can be fashion designers, singers can write books, actors can advise developing countries on economic policy and Sting can do all of it while having tantric sex. One thing they can't do yet is cure swine flu. BBC World has just told me Ron Weasley has a mild case of swine flu and Harry Potter hasn't helped one iota. Boy wizard my arse.

win32:virut

I'm writing this on my Netbook. It's a bit like a laptop but you can't call it a laptop because it's smaller than a laptop which makes it easier to fit on top of your lap. And don't even think about calling it a notebook. If you call a netbook a laptop or notebook I.T people will look at you with a wry smile and then attempt to explain your error using words like cloud computing, solid state and x86, which isn't even a word. Talking to I.T folk is like talking to dolphins, you know they know more than you do and they have a lovely smiling faces but all you hear are squeaks and whistles unless you are a dolphin as well.

If you are interested, netbook is a portmanteau of the words internet and notebook.
Portmanteau is a portmanteau of Natalie Portman and te au, which means the gold in Maori, i.e the golden girl in the film with Tem Morrison.

Portmanteau is a good word. Win32:virut is not a good word, because it has a colon in the middle and because it is a virus. The colon in your body is used to pass shit out of your system, the colon in win32:vitro turns your system into shit and then dumps it all over you while making more shit than seems possible for its size, like an evil evil baby.

Here's some more words that sound like clicks and whistles when you say them aloud: Parasitic file infector of PE files with .EXE extension, an IRC bot communicating on TCP port 65520, polymorphic entry point obscuring (EPO) and my favourite of all ZOMBIFY.

On the monitor of my desktop, a portmanteau of the words de and sktopiary, i.e a bush trimmed into the shape of a German shepherd, there is a blue screen filled with more squeaks and whistles like: linux kernal, mersenne twister, DoD 5220.22-M and my favourites of all URANDOM KOK.

The screen is telling me that in 10:29:25 I will have erased everything on my computer so even if I left my computer in the Pentagon and 100 Pentagon people worked for 100 years with 100 monkeys to see what things I had on my computer they would only find out that I once tried to install my own sound card and lost half the screws before putting the outer case back on.

The program I am using is called Darik's Boot and Nuke 1.0.7. I don't know who Darik is but I'd like to thank him or her, unless they are the Ukranian who wrote win32:virut. The last few days have been somewhat stressful. It's been like watching an episode of Target where a dodgy Ukranian builder comes into your house, sniffs all your undies, craps on your carpet and whacks off over your record collection while sticking your toothbrush up his bum. The fact that I invited the builder into my house in the hope of getting my hands on his crack makes it all the worse. Although I frisked the Ukranian vigorously with my anti-virus software I have only myself to blame.

I have tried in vain to battle the builder with the help of various dolphins around the world and their dolphin discussion forums. I have downloaded scanners and software fixes and booted myself into safe modes with no success. The Ukranian builder knows my every move, he blocks my access to the sites that may offer assistance and every scan just makes him angrier and more destructive. So I have resorted to the scorched earth policy. A small parcel of documents and mp3's have made it on the last chopper out and my hard drives are being annilated before my eyes. This is probably what William Shatner felt like when he blew up the Enterprise, it is painful, liberating and necessary. I just hope the builder is not clinging to the bottom of my chopper waiting to corrupt me again.