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Darwin Awards shoo-in | Jul 27, 2006 23:45
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Was channel surfing once and caught this great line on CSI:
Corpse cutter 1 [Looking over dead guy with a gunshot wound]: Who takes a gun to a knife fight?
Corpse cutter 2 [Smug old guy with beard]: The winner, obviously.
--
Turning the question around: Who takes a machete into a gun store, with a gun-storeful of gun-nuts, sitting around in a gun-storeful of um, *guns*?
Who would do such a thing? A pure comic genius, that's who.
If he dies or becomes sterile, he'd a shoo-in for the Darwin Awards. If he lives, someone ought to nominate him for a comedy award.
I can see the movie now, "based on a true story"...
--
GUN STORE - MORNING
It's a slow day at the gun store. Only one real customer is there, along with the regular window-shoppers. Camera pans around casually, The Office style.
SUBURBAN ACCOUNTANT DAD is at the counter. He is visibly shaken. Close-up on the copy of Monday's Dominion Post that he is tightly clutching with both hands. BURLY GUN STORE OWNER, dressed in woodlands fatigues, is demonstrating several guns for him.
The regulars are hanging out on the far side of the store. Down the handgun isle, ERIC, wearing his usual black trenchcoat over a school uniform, is quietly reciting model names, range, rate of fire, magazine capacity and other details to himself, working his way down the isle.
ERIC, with Marilyn Manson playing on his iPod, is oblivious to COLONEL MUSTARD, who is explaining how, back in his army days, he could blow a moustache off a Jerry from 600 yards.
In the next isle, PROFESSOR "THE CHEMIST" PLUM is asking KYLE CHAPMAN about the pedagogic methods he is using on the recruits for his new army of Super Aryan Solders. As the word "pedagogic" comes out, KYLE CHAPMAN breaks out in a cold sweat.
BURLY GUN STORE OWNER (holding shotgun in hand): Oh yes, of course it's ergonomically designed. Look how easy it is to load. (loads shotgun)
SUBURBAN ACCOUNTANT DAD (frowns): My physio says I shouldn't put too much stress on my wrist. Are you sure it's okay?
BURLY GUN STORE OWNER: Yeah, yeah... go on, you try it. (hands shotgun to SUBURBAN ACCOUNTANT DAD, pulls rifle out of cabinet and loads it up)
SUBURBAN ACCOUNTANT DAD (frowns): Oh, I don't know... are you sure it'll improve property prices? High-income suburban baby-boomers such as myself are really concerned with property prices, our rampant crime epidemic and health-related pseudo-science. Will it also ensure that I don't burn out from the stress of my very stressful office job?
BURLY GUN STORE OWNER: Well, I read in the Li...
[Loud thud against the door. MACHETE WIELDING GUY shoves the door a few more times. MACHETE WIELDING GUY pulls door open, runs inside store.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): GIMMEALLYOURMONEYORICUTYOUUP!!
[Stunned silence all round. Everyone stares at MACHETE WIELDING GUY, including PROFESSOR "THE CHEMIST" PLUM. KYLE CHAPMAN breathes sigh of relief.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): GIMMEALLYOURMONEYORICUTYOUUP!!
[Stunned silence.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): GIMMEALLYOURMONEYORICUTYOUUP!!
[Stunned silence.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): ...
[Awkward silence, as two handguns, a shotgun, a rifle and a revolver are raised excruciatingly slowly while everyone tries to look innocuous.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): Er...
[MACHETE WIELDING GUY puts machete on counter and puts out napkin with schematics of the store. Close-up on napkin. MACHETE WIELDING GUY traces his finger from "DOOR" at the bottom of napkin to "MONEY" at the top, finger goes back down to middle, with numerous circles labelled "GUY WITH GUN". MACHETE WIELDING GUY puts napkin in pocket, picks up machete, looks around.]
MACHETE WIELDING GUY (brandishing machete): Umm...
[CUTS TO OPENING CREDITS]
--
Scott Common has also pointed me to title suggestions at NZMusic.com for Don Brash's debut album, which will no doubt be wickedbad and boost his streetcred down in da hood.
They include:
Straight Outta Owera
Fear of a Brash Planet
It takes a nation of 4 million to hold us back
And finally, a new Newtown Ghetto Anger for this week:
As usual, click here for more NGA.
Flying under the gaydar | Jul 26, 2006 02:08
One of my own favourite one-liners last year was a description of then-Young Labour President Conor Roberts as "the first openly-straight President in many years". Turned out to be a factually incorrect faux pas - Conor's immediate predecessor was straight. As gay-friendly as he was, I don't think he would have taken offence - though I imagine that his wife wouldn't have been too pleased with me.
But everyone took it in the spirit of jest in which it was intended. It's sort of an in-joke, really, the extent to which Labour Party activists are gay. It's not as if it was a big secret that I dug up - it's apparent at any sort of Labour gathering - Labour has a lot of gay people as members. In fact, you'd have to be pretty daft *not* to notice this.
Disclaimer: I was, once upon a time, a member of the Labour Party. Then I stopped being a member of the Labour Party. I have not been a member of any political party for five years.
This was an observation I made in my very early days, when I was still a card-carrying member, getting my first run-around of Parliament. But it wasn't limited to Labour. In fact, ACT, National and Alliance (back when it was a party) were all full of gay people. I reckon it's a pretty reasonable bet that there are a disproportionate number of gay people in political circles, across the spectrum.
Among the people quoted in Russell's blog yesterday was Grant Robertson. I should probably "out" him for those who don't know: He was Heather Simpson's second-in-command. Oh, and - even worse - he use to be a student politician.
So, okay Rosemary McLeod, there are, indeed, gay people at the highest levels of the system. And there are Labour MPs who are gay. And, I suspect, there are others who may have gay friends or associate with known homosexuals.
I actually think that it's important to acknowledge that there are many gay people in our political institutions. It's the truth. And they are trying to change the country - as most people involved in politics tend to be. And though they're not all actively trying to make the country more gay-friendly, many are.
But if this comes as a shock, then you obviously haven't been paying attention.
An entire generation of activists cut their teeth on the homosexual law reform. It's not a coincidence that a lot of those activists were gay.
It's also not a coincidence that many of those activists went on to find a home in politics.
The Destroyer of the Sanctity of Marriage, civil union, has only been around for a year. One year. It took nineteen years after homosexuality was decriminalised for the state to give legal recognition to gay couples.
In the absence of gay marriages and gay adoptions, is it really surprising that the gay-rights political movement still exists, is still active and still has an agenda to pursue?
But does fulfilling this agenda necessarily come at the expense of the bread and butter business of government? Well, can the government chew gum and walk at the same time? If Rosemary McLeod thinks that our politicians should be spending its time on hospital waiting lists/the power supply/poverty and nothing else, I would encourage her to read the Parliamentary Order Paper.
Top five member's bills:
1) Delete principles of Treaty of Waitangi (Doug Woolerton, NZ First)
2) Cap rates for homeowners (Rodney)
3) Whinge about RMA (Nick Smith, National)
4) Report on bird flu
5) Report on chicken welfare
Bah. The government bills are too dull and technocratic to make fun of. But the Mandatory Homosexuality (Be More Gay) Bill is not on the agenda yet. Nor, in fact, anything to do with gay, gayness, gaiety or gays.
To say that the efforts to make New Zealand gay or gayer is dominating this government's agenda would probably be something of an exaggeration, given that it's literally not on the agenda.
To hell in a hell basket | Jul 25, 2006 09:05
Shocking figures in the DomPost yesterday showed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are places in New Zealand with more cases of MURDER per capita than any other place in New Zealand.
What's more, the statistics irrefutably show that this is not only true of MURDER, but also of robbery, assault, rape and cannabisism. Remarkably, in a country that we once thought of as safe, there now exists crime capitals where instances of such crimes per capita is higher than anywhere else in New Zealand.
One of these is Wanganui, the "homicide capital" of New Zealand, where on average 0.93 person per 10,000 people is MURDERED every single year in 2005. As you read this paragraph, 1.77e-6 of a person has just been brutally MURDERED.
But even outside of these lawless crime capitals, no one is safe. In each category of horrible horrible crime that will certainly happen to you and destroy your life, the DomPost has looked for the ten regions with the highest rate per capita. It's an indictment of modern New Zealand that, without exception, all ten trouble spots were found right here, in Aotearoa. That's right, gentle, law-abiding readers: If you ranked regions of New Zealand by instances of particular kinds of crime, the top ten most crime ridden regions are, without exception, New Zealand regions.
Why hasn't the Police Commissioner resigned over this? What is the Prime Minister doing about it? Does she have a plan to ensure that no New Zealand region is the New Zealand region with the highest crime rate? I bet she doesn't.
Thank god the DomPost released these valuable figures. As they note on their front-page, these are "the statistics you've never read about – till now". And why not? After all, they "show just how dangerous New Zealand is". Because the police work for Helen's PC Sisterhood, that's why. They only "focus on raw numbers and percentage rises or falls". I mean, what's an ordinary person supposed to do with bureaucratic mumble-jumble like "actual cases of crime" or whether crime is "increasing" or "decreasing"?
What we really need to know is whether parts of New Zealand has crime rates higher than everywhere else in New Zealand, and this valuable analysis has proven that there are, thus proving that crime is out of control and that we are all going to be brutally MURDERED.
Especially you. Yeah, that's right, buddy, you.
[Sigh. I suppose we should be thankful because it means that the actual crime figures are so unsensational that the DomPost has to resort to statistical truisms for their fear-mongering. I don't really understand this obsession, though – do people actually want to read stuff that makes them feel unsafe? Does reading about crime make one feel more prepared against crime? I just don't get it. I guess that's why I don't own my own metropolitan daily.]
[Note: Online version of DomPost article may differ from print version. And in the print version, the have another two pages on victims of crime, proving - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that crime is a bad thing.]
Slow vs Shameless | Jul 20, 2006 16:51
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I'm not the only one who's not down wit da kidz these days, it seems. That's the word on the street after Mallard's "leak" of a National Party strategy presentation in the House yesterday. National's attempt to be cool by associating themselves with The Feelers won't work, said various journos at lunch today.
Did they know something I didn't?
Yes: The Feelers aren't even cool anymore.
I felt so out of touch. I thought uncool was the new cool these days, but now it seems that it's only symptomatic of my rapid aging. For the record, I'm just discovering Van Halen. I'm a little slow about these things.
Slow is one thing, but failing to pick up the Dawn Raid reference was... well, okay, that was slow, too. God it would have been funny though, to see Brash wearing a "National: We love Dawn Raids" hoody, hanging out with Che Fu. A perfect David Brent moment, I'd have thought. Hell, they should start producing the hoodies now - I'd buy one.
(The Office is still cool, right? I got told on Tuesday by a bunch of youth marketers that Che Fu isn't cool anymore.)
But seriously, failing to get a cultural reference and being a piece of walk-on inter-referential satire is silly, but shamelessly trying to use a joke to avoid having to front up over Phillip Field is, well, shameless.
The conference where the presentation was given was over two months ago - Mallard would have had this sitting there in his "Get Out of Jail Free" deck. With the usual just-in-time-for-six-o'clock-if-you-just-run-what-we-say timing of the revelation, this is the sort of "transparent and predictable" style of governance that is now synonymous with Labour.
There was not even pretense that this was anything but a baldfaced, cynical attempt to distract attention away from the Field report. Doesn't it bother them that they're trying to whitewash an inquiry that's genuinely deserving of attention? This isn't Benson-Pope-grade, 20-years-ago-he-was-a-bit-of-a-bastard stuff, and it certainly isn't like the he-didn't-fill-out-his-tax-return-properly crap with Parker. Fighting crap with spin is one thing, but surely, they must recognise that something more serious is going on here: This is a minister (allegedly) using his position of power to exploit vulnerable people for financial gain. This is the kind of behaviour that weakens the integrity of government - not just the Government of the day, but our rarest of rarities, a corruption-free government. Doesn't it bother them?
Okay, fine - of course it doesn't bother them. That was just a rhetorical question anyway. But more realistically, doesn't it bother them that their media manipulation strategies are so fucking transparent that they might as well *announce* that they're trying to cover this up?
The sad thing is, as outrageously overt as they were, they achieved their aim. TV3 ran the Dawn Raid thing first, though to their credit, they kept referring to it as a smokescreen to divert attention from the Field report. And having done the same thing in this post, the reality is that the Dawn Raid line is just too good, too attention grabbing to pass up. We have to milk it. We can't help ourselves. And they know it.
Doesn't stop us from sticking the boot in Labour once we're done, though. Assholes.
And here's this week's NGA:
Click here for more NGA.
NGA: through the round window | Jul 14, 2006 12:52
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Keeping it real. Sort of. No, not really. | Jul 06, 2006 14:49
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As usual, here's your Friday afternoon procrastination material, diligently brought to you on a Thursday. Danah Boyd's excellent interview with Kim Hill is right here.
It all gets bit postmodern when fictional characters start having a real presence online. Is the real person's fake persona more or less real than the fictional character's real persona? More to the point, which one is funnier?
Sticking with the Myspace theme, here's this week's NGA:
(Click here for more NGA.)
And while we're on postmodernist conceptions of reality and 14-year-old girls, here's my analysis of the post-microchip spat parliamentary dynamics, as observed at the Green's mid-winter/United Future birthday parties (originally posted on Kiwiblog):
Yeah, so I was at the Green's party last Tuesday, and Don was, like, totally making a move on Jeanette. But, you know, she was like 'yeah, whatever' at first, but cos Helen didn't turn up to her party, she was all 'yeah, I didn't want her to come anyway, cos Don is so much cooler than her'. Do you believe that? I mean, like, totally - burn!
And yeah, so I went down to Peter's party, which I thought would have been really lame, but they had pizzas and stuff. And guess who I saw? Like, *ALL* of Helen's friends. What's up with that? So I txted my friend at the Greens, and we were both, like "wassup wit dat??? an did u c hw mch wa8 rodny lost? i totally saw a chin".
All of Helen's friends were like, "hey, great party, love the pizza", but they didn't even, like, like Peter or anything, they just wanted to make Jeanette jealous and stuff. That's so sad, cos, like I think Helen and Jeanette should be best friends, so they should really make up and not let those boyz get in the way."
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