At around 5:30pm on Thursday, New Zealand hit the big four-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, making us the 161st most populous nation in the world. We're expected to peak at 4,810,000 in 2046. It's also significant insofar as the mark was reached the day before Anzac Day, the generally accepted date for the nation's "coming of age", where in 1915 our lads hurled themselves against a cliff in Turkey and were promptly massacred.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
‹ 26.4.03
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Oh, and Easter was good: chocolate was eaten, beverages consumed, Ms Amanda La Whore was crowned Miss Drag Wellington (and rightly so) and the owners of the house rang us on Sunday morning and said they'd already let the place. Such is life.
‹ 23.4.03
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This little gem turned up in our mailbox yesterday:
I realise that the text is pretty weeny in that scan but the gist of it is there are parents in our 'hood who are willing to supervise their five-year-old (sorry, 5 years 3 months) daughter doing household chores for you. For $2 a day. Call now!
I know I haven't been one for a while but surely five-year-olds have better things to do with their time? Like eating paste and screaming, maybe? I'm of half a mind to ring the parents up and ask if she can crawl into my chimney and clean it, or remove the little bits of yarn from underneath my warehouse of industrial looms or something. But the real kicker is the second bullet point - she will trap and remove possums for you for $5. Now that's one wily little five-year-old.
‹ 23.4.03
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Four days off ... brilliant! Not that I have a whole lot planned you understand - chocolate and alcohol consumption being the most likely two over the course of the weekend. Kyle and I took in Star Trek: Nemesis which (finally) opened on Thursday and I liked it a lot. Sure, the movie had its share of flaws (t'was a bit "shallow" (for want of a better term) at the end of the day) but the battle sequences were wonderfully done and Jean-Luc strolling towards the bridge at the end, to the unlikely strains of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies", was quite poignant.
Tonight, we move from the sublime to the ridiculous as a bevy of dubious ladyboys scratch it out for the title of Miss Drag Wellington, and there's a house in Wadestown to check out tomorrow in anticipation of our move to bigger digs next month.
Bonnes Paques à tous!
‹ 19.4.03
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As I've mentioned before, John Cameron Mitchell's Sex Film Project is certainly one of the most intriguing celluloid propositions to emerge in recent years and it's just a shame that it'll probably never get an airing down in little ole Noo Zeeland. Paul Festa's online account of the audition process makes for compelling reading too (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) ... eat your heart out Carrie Bradshaw.
Allow me one moment of shameless name-dropping indulgence when I say I met Mr Mitchell in New York and he's quite the gamine gentleman indeed. And that's why we love that city ... it's full of wonderful people who are only a degree away from quirky celebs. Time to start saving my pennies again methinks.
‹ 17.4.03
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So it turns out that Japanese "panty skirts" (see below) aren't all they've cracked up to be (sorry, couldn't resist). The previously-featured-on-brainsluice "nipple scarves" are a bit off the mark too. Consider me duped.
‹ 17.4.03
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And a propos of not very much at all, "three Kenyans died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that slipped down an open-pit latrine while its owner answered a call of nature".
‹ 16.4.03
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God bless Wellington. Not only is this charming city our nation's capital, it also sits on a fuck of a lot of fault lines ... eat your heart out California! I was watching telly the other night and felt a fairly sizeable jolt - like someone had backed into our building with their car or something - and workplace conversation the next day confirmed it. Proof positive was found on the recommendation of one of said colleagues: t'was this beastie, 3.4 on the Richter scale and 25 kilometres deep, probably in the the middle of the harbour. Check out that link for a whole lot of spoddy NZ seismic info.
‹ 16.4.03
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How does the sun look right now? Pretty bloody cool actually.
‹ 16.4.03
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War is a funny old business. I haven't talked about <hushed tones>happenings in Iraq</hushed tones> at all because it's ultimately quite sad and depressing (especially when music conservatories, hospitals and museums are being vandalised and looted). You want punditry? Then get it here. Some things do grab your attention though, so I'm mentioning them here in case you missed them ...
Hot Marine Of The Week award goes to Lance Corporal Carey Floyd of the 1st LAR based in Camp Pendleton, California. There'll be blushing under burkas all over Baghdad, I bet. Also, Gawker.com gets asked "Is Bruce Weber an embedded photographer?".
Compare and contrast: this story about former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's net fame (posted "Fri April 11, 2003 09:13 PM ET") with this story about former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's net fame (posted "02:00 AM Apr. 14, 2003 PT"). How embarrassing for Wired ... beaten to the punch by old media. Or am I just being naïve about how this whole media thing works?
Some choice quotes from MSa-S himself: "My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all."
"I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly."
"We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead."
‹ 15.4.03
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That rascal Jonno has only just gone and created the bestest blog-related competition to ever grace the interhighweb ... The Penis Blog Project. The premise is simple - match the blogger to the member and win fantastic tackle-related prizes! [Hint: the big ones probably belong to the line-up's former porn stars]. So the next time you describe weblogs as being a load of old bollocks, chances are you're right on the money (shot).
‹ 15.4.03
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Rockall is currently hitting the headlines at ickle.org ... check out the link to the bizarre-but-true story of the lump of rock that should have been forgotten about. Also from the whacked-out-shit files comes "What happened to me and the new girl (or, "The girl who cried Webmaster")" - a tragi-comic tale of when Ms Right becomes Ms Wrong and how your blog can save your life (via Iain). Again, you just can't make this stuff up.
Oh, and while we're vaguely on matters ickle, last months saw the site's second birthday - we're now up to 279 items from 83 punters. Not bad, eh? Of course, being the rapacious little beastie it is, the site always needs more submissions - get scribbling today and give my creative juices a rest!
‹ 14.4.03
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You remember nipple scarves, right? Well, those crazy Japanistas have done it again. I present to you ... "panty skirts":
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "visible panty line", doesn't it?
‹ 9.4.03
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Ian's fond of punny news headlines so I thought I'd just make mention of this: "What a friend we have in cheeses".
‹ 3.4.03
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The Office of Film and Literature Classification is charged with classifying publications for viewing in New Zealand. So when your empowering statute states that, "a publication is objectionable if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good", what do you do? You find out what exactly the public good is.
The 2002 Research Report (big PDF) is the result of getting 141 people together, showing them naughty movies and having them rate it across several dimensions. It makes for fascinating reading and there are some priceless quotes in there ...
"Cool setting. Good soundtrack. Everyone will like it." (Young man)It's porntastic!"The stupid noises the woman made made me feel better about the stupid noises I make." (Young woman)
"I've known some screamers but I just wanted that woman to shut up." (Maori man)
‹ 3.4.03 / 0 comment(s) ›