‹ 31.7.03 / 0 comment(s) ›
I thought Kiwi ingenuity was legendary but God bless the Brits ... they just invented a better mousetrap. It appears as though the little blighters like chocolate even better than they like cheese so all you need to do is scent your plastic with a little chocolate essence and voilà - one dead Mickey. What'll they think of next?
‹ 28.7.03
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Those records are just made to be broken ... take Lareesa Guttery, a former home province native who bushwhacked her way through 130 bikini lines to set a new world record:
Mrs Guttery outstripped the old record of 77 in just over an hour – and even waxed herself and her staff to help set the new mark.Now that's dedication. And a whole lot of hair. I wonder if her staff have that written into their employment contracts ... "Must make bikini line available to employer and no notice for purposes of wacky record challenges". Hmmm.
‹ 28.7.03 / 0 comment(s) ›
Farewell, Buffy Summers. TV4 screened the series finale on Wednesday night and a pretty enjoyable romp it was too, in that strange wrap-it-all-up kind of way that last episodes tend to be. A few thoughts (and look away now if you're afraid of spoilers):
- Hi Angel ... thanks for the cool new toy ... bye Angel ...
- Fond farewells can be mushy but I wouldn't have it any other way. There were plenty throughout - the Scoobies and Giles talking about shopping just before the big battle, Faith and Robin's banter, Buffy and Spike's calm-before-the-storm moments. All good stuff.
- The übervamps attack was an effective bit of LOTR-esque trickery.
- We like White Willow better than Black Willow ... separated at birth from Galadriel was she?
- Anya's death was shockingly brutal ... it seemed to jar a bit, especially with the cut-to of her lying in the rubble.
- Deus ex machina was in full effect - witness Spike's chunky medallion and Willow's spell - but it seemed to work okay in the context of the story (my cop-out alarm only went off a little bit).
- "Welcome to Sunnydale" ... a large Californian crater. Cute touch.
The best scene was, of course, saved until the very last and ended off-cadence, a BTVS hallmark. With the gang chirping in the background "what are we going to do now?", we zoom in on Buffy who cracks the hugest smile we've seen in a long time, cue credits. "Anything I bloody want", I thought to myself. Brilliant.
‹ 25.7.03
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Old school chum and general gad-about-town John has recently left these isles for a stint in the mother ones, and is regaling friends and loved ones back home with tales of the strange and unusual half a world away:
The search for work continues, somewhat sluggishly. I spent a few turgid days paralegaling for London law firms, truly at the bottom of the food chain - photocopying and paginating pages and silently cursing the constipated-vowelled bitch from the job agency who put me there for £9.50 an hour. After three days I cracked, and went back to being an erotic text message operator - something which, as many of you have already commented, is something I'm instinctively well-suited for. For those of you still unfamiliar with the Mysteries of the Virtual Sex Industry, my job involves sitting at a computer, logged into a website and receiving messages from sad lonely old bastards who pay £1.50 per message and think they're talking to Sven, a 6 ft 6 Swedish bodybuilder with a 9.5 inch cock. I'm paid, appropriately enough, by the hour, with bonuses if I manage to get the suckers to reply more than 5 times in half an hour. As for the content of the messages - let's just say "Men are dogs!" and leave it there.That boy needs a blog, pronto ... and I'm rather glad BT welcomed me with open arms not long after I arrived! Would being an erotic text message operator class one as an I.T. professional?
‹ 23.7.03 / 0 comment(s) ›
Not.so.soft is dead. Long live me(ish)!
‹ 22.7.03
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And the prize for "Inappropriate Ad Slot of the Week" goes to Stuff for their most likely inadvertant but particularly malplaced ad for Westpac insurance:
The story itself is worth a read: a heavy spate of fires in Auckland on Tuesday culminated in a woman self-immolating in the city square. It now looks as though it was just a bizarre coincidence - the fuzz believe that the arsonist is still at large. Life's a strange old beastie sometimes.
‹ 18.7.03
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Poor old Phyllis Caton. She valiantly sat through The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers only to discover she'd contracted a spot of the deep vein thrombosis in doing so:
A clot was diagnosed in her leg and she was treated with blood thinning drugs for six months. Despite the potentially deadly consequences, Mrs Caton said she thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
So, the next time you plonk your carcass down to watch Mr Jackson's latest three hour epic, try a few of the following:
[Check it out at Qantas]
‹ 17.7.03
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Those of us on the planet who are lucky enough to call New Zealand home get to see our beautiful little nation from orbit every now and then, and when we do, it's a marvellous sight (monster-sized). And yes, it's been quite cold down in the South Island in case you were wondering ... the bottom of the North hasn't been much better either.
‹ 15.7.03
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Heather Havrilesky has written another bang-up review over at Salon ... this time, she's turned her sights on a so-bad-it-must-be-good new reality show called "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy":
In fact, the show seems designed not for straight men but for the exasperated women who love them -- and hate their acid-washed jeans. There's something undeniably gratifying about seeing these men -- who, so far, seem to be selected for their swarthy, hobbit-style looks -- getting shaved, buffed, waxed and, best of all, derided within an inch of their lives. No matter how loudly a wife or girlfriend bemoans the unshaven neck or the shirt with the pit stains, it doesn't have quite the impact of a gaggle of men who are this fervent about the rules of maintaining a lifestyle that is both sanitary and aesthetically pleasing.
We probably don't have a popsicle's chance in Hades of ever seeing this on New Zealand television, unfortunately, but you never know (conservative State broadcasting channel One screened "The Truth About Lesbian Sex" a couple of weeks back, much to the chagrin of hot-under-the-collar types from around the nation). "QEFTSG" sounds fantastic actually ... I do tend to like my reality series with more than just the average dash of aigrement (Trinny and Susannah, I'm looking at you).
They couldn't have dreamed up a better handled bunch of queens either ... I mean, just look at those leapt-out-of-a-Jackie-Collins-novel quality names: Kyan Douglas, Carson Kressley, Jai Rodriguez, Thom Filicia and ... Ted Allen (okay, maybe not so much Ted). Plus, adding a few fresh bitchy bon mots to the repetoire never hurt anyone, don't you think? (some would say I have enough already, but they'd be advised to hold their tongues lest they find them suddenly disconnected from the backs of their mouths).
Gird your loins and enjoy, girls.
[Aside: Ms Havrilesky was, in a former internet life, one Polly Esther of Suck.com's Filler which was one of my very best favourite things on the web for a long long time. She rules. She also has a weblog, and you can't go wrong with a name like tinylittlepenis.com now can you?]
‹ 15.7.03
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Lefty investigative/listings stalwart The Listener has finally gone online at last and they've done a pretty comprehensive job of it too. Plus, it's all free which is nice. There's a great editorial from this week's issue too on a couple of notable passings - quite poignantly written Mr McDonald ... well done.
‹ 14.7.03
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From the land that may or may not have brought you nipple scarves (a bit dubious) and panty skirts (even more dubious), I present Hug-A-Pillow™:
Who needs a boyfriend, eh? Give me half a torso over no torso any day of the week.
‹ 14.7.03
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Zinn and Chomsky discuss The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
Chomsky: The film opens with Galadriel speaking. "The world has changed," she tells us, "I can feel it in the water." She's actually stealing a line from the non-human Treebeard. He says this to Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers, the novel. Already we can see who is going to be privileged by this narrative and who is not.
Ahh, the joys of academia :)
‹ 8.7.03
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One of the more interesting film-related stories as of late ... "Dead in the snow":
It was just one of those crazy little stories buried in the morning paper. "News of the Weird," as it's sometimes known, true stories about real life events so unlikely and ridiculous that they attain a kind of absurd magnificence in the retelling. "Cult film sparked hunt for a fortune," was the small headline that attracted my attention that morning back in December 2001. "A Japanese woman searched a remote area of America during a quest to find a briefcase containing almost $1m buried by a fictional character in the cult film Fargo."
It has more twists than the movie, trust me.
‹ 8.7.03
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Party people in the house!
Well, the big day passed without too much fuss ... actually, I had a pretty good time all round. Woke up early-ish and opened my pressies (ta Ma, Pa, sis and Kyle!) then spent the rest of the day rushing around like a blue-arsed fly ... across the carpark to the hire place for glasses and chairs, then a quick scrub of the bathroom, followed by a how-the-fuck-does-so-little-food-and-drink-cost-so-much trip to the supermarket, then an afternoon in the kitchen prepping aforementioned supplies, followed by a quick change, a liberal dash of the new smellies and then waiting for it all to kick off ...
... oh buggery bollocks, there's another goddamn rugby test on! Still when everyone finally did arrive, they did so en masse and the night began properly. Much drinking, laughing, eating, mingling ... a seriously distinct lack of carousing, but thems the breaks. I even managed to score a free drink off Mal when we decamped to the bar a little later on so I was doing okay, I thought. I was subsequently cornered in the bathroom by Ms Amanda, stupidly let slip it was my birthday and was then told to kiss every man waiting in line for a cubicle. Slinking off was never a more appealing option, I tell you.
‹ 2.7.03
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