shoe and tell 2

This is Putu, the chicken I was given at the end of my last stay. She has had three litters? broods? ... sets of chicks since then. The first lot was eaten by dogs. But the hens of round 2 are are about to lay. Soon I will be up to my neck in fowl. Actually I am going to trade them in for a pig ... I should have enough by December ... so I can enter the circumcision ceremony. Papa BB is amping for me to do it, as he will be my sponsor. This means he has started to refer to me as his pig - a joking way of referring to a wife ... Hmm ritualised homosexuality anyone?

shoe and tell

Here's the rooster I ate at my going away dinner.

I did not eat this turtle. They know not to hunt them.

I had a great time though, endangered species not withstanding. Some very sad and disturbing developments though. One sister in law died in childbirth. Premature labour brought on by yet another bout of domestic violence... Another uncle has a very serious case of elephantitus ... and one of the teachers ... ayoung guy died in his sleep.

And me?I accidently swam with a shark. I was standing in waist deep water inside the reef, and noticed a fin slowly rise above the water about 15 metres away. I thought I was hallucinating until I heard one of the chiefs resting on the stage ... a kind of verandah affair just above the beach cry 'shark shark'. This is it I thought. So I started to carefully and splashlessly move back to the shore about 40 metres away. Because of the shape of the beach, it actually dips down just near the shore, and I thought if this shark is going to take me, he'll do it there. My legs were a bit shakey once I got out of the water, but no damage.

When I got back to my house I mentioned the adventure to my brother aged 9. Oh it wasn't a shark, just a dolphin, he said. And he would know because he was there. And he knows better than the chief ....

Other than that it was pretty much work work work. I didn't drink nearly as much kava as on previous occasions and that seemed to have allowed me to preserve a calm demeanor in the face of the usual shenanigans -consultants not turning up when they said they would ... the laplap and the water shortages ...

Oh well am back now, and back into it.

getting away

attempt two ...

So I am off again tonight ... hopefully.

An update on smiling man for those of you who may remember. Yesterday on my way to work, my smiling buddy you know the one intellectually challenged but a charmer was hanging at the traffic lights with a brother? caregiver. He rushed up while I waited to cross and put his head on my shoulder and said ... "You're a naughty man" ... What does he know that I don't?

bound for

nowhere ....

So as you might imagine form my typing on this interweb thingy I am not in the village. I am at home, in my kitchen.

I got as far as Auckland, but my flight from the "grad was delayed and missed my connecting flight to Island-land.

Oh well, try again Sunday.

little boxes

In the (smells like teen) spirit of tidying my bedroom because of landlord sneakiness, I bought fifteen of these.
I have actually only constructed these five. The rest lie uselessly flat inside their packaging.
But won't I be tidy? Won't I be impressive? Won't I look organised ....

I should stop this

arse-ing about and get on with preparing for the foray into the islands. The concept of organising myself is paralysing. So instead, I sit here. I have presents to get, structures to prepare, house to clean, as I know my nosey landlord will sneak in while I am away. Speaking of houses I saw one that I want. I went to one of those online mortgage calculators and well let's just say homeownership and I will probably never be friends.





Anyways as Max often entitles her posts, but with probably not intentionally skitey pictures of her destination I'll be away ...

Not quite Paris, is it

your eye and its partner

So blogger ate my template ... not to worry ...
So what have I been up to? Wouldn't you like to know ... Escaped to the big city fun for some cat sitting, with a curiously uninteractive cat. She didn't miaow she didn't purr and she doesn't sit on you. Just near you. It was unbelievably cold down there too. The house seemed impossible to heat. It is the first time I can honestly say I was glad to get back to Palmengrad. Not that it is a lot warmer here, but my little brick fortress sure keeps the heat in. Work has continued to suck my will to live ... in fact working isn't what it was cracked up to be ... what can you do? an ex-languid youth has gotta eat ...

I did have fun down in the 'ville though. Met up with EmB and AB and we got a surprise special guest visit from, well Ab did we were merely collateral visitees. I'm off to the islands next week, despite the fact I have not procured a school bell for the new village church ... I will be in trouble with the elders. I guess they just don't make bells like they used to ... In other news I have been reading about them Persians. What with the hoohaa about 300 and my love of Ole Herodotus. So in Persian Fire, which proposes that whole shebang was the birthplace of east versus west carryings on, and that the Greeks were terrorists states, I did learn one thing that I am sure that movie left out. At the battle of Marathon there were 600 Thespians! War of the lovies I'd suggest.

In other reading news ... I don't get out much ... aparently in Igbo culture a very excited greeting for someone who you have not seen for a while is to say "your eye". The proper response is "your eye and its partner".

So, dear reader(s) Your eye!

Holy moly

On the way to the supermarket I passed an Islamic sausage sizzle.

Recently at some kind of interfaith seminar our beloved leader confirmed that we were not a theocracy. The links, she would have us believe, have long be severed. The only protest this raised was Bishop Brian Tamaki http://www.bishopbriantamaki.org.nz/ and his creepy destiny church. Performing a haka in protest, they claimed the PM had betrayed one hundred years of christianity in this country. So Brian what about all those other hundred years your tipuna were here?

Weirdly though, given the PM's assurance, the speaker of the house grimly says a prayer as the first order of business in parliament ...

The downside of the vanishing christian heritage of the nation is the selling off of some of Wellington's architecture gem. St Gerard's monastery is now a chiropractor's office, the Fortuna Chapel is trapped inside a retirement home and now Stella Maris and the Star of the Sea may be sold off.

go rhyme your runes in june,

I'm not your seventh son ...

So how's your June progressing? It's finally got cold here, particularly the nights I have slept on the couch. This is a sign for me that things aren't going so well ... the tv as night nurse ... Things have been crazy busy at work ... but I can't blog about that ... but can you say hostile takeover?

In other news, there is no other news. I have been moping and working only. Aren't you glad now for the June blog silence? I have been reading Wierzbicka's theories of semantic universals, particularly her views of the non-match up of emotions. When she compares the Russian words that are most commonly translated as sad, she notes this very big difference. (The preposed question mark suggests this is a marginally acceptable construction. Nothing before the sentence indicated this is a grammatical construction).

On cuvstvoval kakuju-to grust', on sam ne znal pocemu.
?On cuvstvoval kakuju-to pecal, on sam ne znal pocemu.
He felt some sadness, but he didn't know why.

The difference is the interpretation of vagueness, only grust' allows this reading, and this impacts on other aspects of the grammar of the language. Here they are as adverbs:

Pecal'no ja smotrju na eto pokolenie
sadly I look on this generation
"I look with sadness on this generation."

grustno ja smotru na eto pokolenie
sadly I look on this generation

The difference between the two is the interpretation of sadly. In the first it is a judgement about this generation; the second implies a facial expression, describing the manner in which the event of looking was carried out, i.e. "With a sad face, I look at this generation."

Okay enough semantics. I am cleaning my house, and cursing my toilet today. Over the past few months its refilling power has slowed to a trickle ... making it awkward with guests. Now it has stopped altogether.

manly hugs and chick fights

the usual saturday night then ... Started out late last night, met up with karaoke buddy and the Maori-Samoan dream team who hadn't see for ages, W - the Maori half was also very excited to see me, and I was crushed for some minutes against the wall with him. Unfotunately for me they love to drink in the rugby head bar ... which makes me feel tiny and somewhat out of place. But as if rugbyheads were bad enough, women who fetishise the hegemonic masculinty represented by the various 1st XVs in attendance are far worse. Yappy ageing chihuahua lady started hitting on the Maori half of the afore-mentioned team, and karaoke buddy made it worse by telling her to move away. Ended up Samoan landed a few good punches on the chihuahua snout before I stepped in as the human wall. The chihuahua yapped and yapped until we left. And then tried to follow us to another bar to continue the fight.

Hurray for rugby.

this is the one that we played at assembly ...

Last night I went to my first school dance ... that is if you don't count the 'Disco for Kampuchea' that Jane Kaeshagen and I organised in Grade 7. Actually, it wasn't a school dance it was a real gig at 'the tummy', the all ages venue here in the 'Grad.

Days gone by I used to go see my friends' bands. The D4, Hustler, Glam R Us. Now I go to my friends' kids' bands. Still it was pretty awesome and like being at High School. The Semi Automatics opened for a couple of older bands, but there was still a see of emos all throwing their goats as if NCEA depended upon it. And the lead singer, pretty charismatic for a 16yr old really did intro one of the songs with the title of today's post. So cute... except for the girls screaming 'Oh.My.God. everytime one of their little friends arrived.

I'd like to link you, but they appear to be the only band that aren't on myspace.

Unfortunately one of the other adult team was this really creepy French guy who appears to spend too much time at home. It was like he had never seen women before. He was also amazed that I had no idea how much baby sitting cost. But why the fuck would I? I have a day job.

So well anyway, cleaning the house can no longer

I trust you have been talking among yourselves ...

while I have been in communicado ... or should that read while I have been a moody bastard?

Apart from a dash down to the big city where I celebrated the lovely E.B's birthday with 3 delicious cakes with my friends AbD and Matty B among others, life has been one long festival of shite. Since blogging, drinking, misbehaving and have one's own opinion is strictly ix-nay at my workplace I can't fill you in on that ... so you are saved from reading a long and heartfelt whine ...

So what have I been doing? Apart from the big Ws whining and working? Not a fuck of a lot. Certainly not gardening. I did pay my electricity bill twice on the same day, giving me a whopping great early payment discount this time round! And I undertook shopping therapy. I meant to buy shoes, but came away with pants and a shirt which I now have to wrap round my feet for sins, which is exactly what you should do with woollen trousers, eh?

I have been reading Herodotus - father of history, or so his agent says, - but not in any English Patient-y sort of a way, but because it is the closest I have come to reading fiction after Lucy Ellmann disappointed me with Doctors and Nurses.

Later tonight I will be going out in my new pants. I rarely go out pantless, but this will be their public debut. I am celebrating that a friend has got a job in a real city. She however is less celebrating and more freaking out. Needless to say I will be sad to see her go, and since she is my going out buddy? accomplice? it now dawns on me I may not have needed new pants after all. Or perhaps they will go out and look for friends like the poor empty pants in What was I so scared of?

lotus, mittens, towel

So life had become insane. My clients, my colleagues, my dog .... okay I don't have a dog, but if I did it would have gone insane over the last two week period. So what is a boy to do? Well run away is always a good (grown up) option so I headed for the big city for a .... big city experience.
I cried in the national archives, I got bored at a boring seminar run by Ms Smug Researcher, and got a cold.

I did have though with Melf and Mcdreamy ... dinner, drinks, back home by 10pm.

I actually need a real holiday I think. Not visiting Australia, not the islands ...

Sorry this post is whine, but hell, do what you are good at.

Cardy Rock!

So after a stressful week of co-worker meltdowns and recalitrant 'clients' and computer to owner harrassment, I went out and took Max's advice and drank to kill off the Rennie dreams. Glad that's over, though it now seems that bad dreams are plaguing her ...

Anyways, started out with the historians and ended up with B and P of the Wanganui adventure story. He's an old welly acquaintance so we seem to share a lot more common interests. Ended up seeing the Brunettes. A fine fine band, and many cardy wearers in attendance. Hurrah. They started out life as a retro laden duo - a kind of Carpenters thing with glockenspiels and cute melodies. Surprisingly now they are a swinging six piece, with all but Jonathon guitarist, songwriter and singer swapping instruments all night ... Is that something you should do with a clarinet?

It was nice to be a fan again; looking up on the stage with admiration and excitement. And the bar had gisborne gold on tap. I haven't drunk that beer in years. So nostalgia dressing has deepened into do other nostalgic activities. Perhaps I am having a mild midlife crisis ...

Anyways so Friday night was rocking, and yesterday I could do nothing. I attempted to get cheap fresh vegies from the farmer's market but got bored along the way. Tried shoe-shopping - a desperate joke, and came home and sat on the couch contemplating cleaning, working, tidying and achieved none of those things.

Today I woke early and wandered about, and am now realising that all the love I had for the world has evaporated as it does by this time every sunday and all my best laid plans, like those of humans and rodents, come to naught.

bad dreams in the night

It's like I'm on Lariam again. Nightly I am visited by this crazed woman named Rennie. She's violent and manipulative and well just plain evil. The first dream, started out nice I was visiting my old friend Catherine. Her house turned out to be my apartment in Paris ... of course, and the neighbours across the balcony were this really nice middle aged couple with Australian accents. Rennie, their daughter came to stay and the shouting and screaming started and somehow I was in their apartment and discovered the bodies. Rennie had stabbed them in the bathroom. For some dream-logic reason instead of calling the police she had me cleaning the blood out of the shagpile ... Who puts shagpile in the bathroom? For the last week she has been back in my dreams, and she makes out she is my friend. She follows me to bars, and if I don't pay attention to her she goes off. The other night it ended with her having followed me to a bar dressed in a giant rabbit suit ... not the playboy bunny kind but the full plushie sort. When she wasn't getting noticed she grabbed a bear bottle and bashed her own teeth out. I woke up with the vision of her standing there with blood pulsing out of her mouth and dripping onto the costume matting the fur.

Any Freudians/Jungians out there care to explain? Neatest correct entry wins.

oh and ...

stay tuned for reality tv show blogging. If the guests don't turn up there will be time for commentary on Alpha males go wild in the pirates show aka Everything that is wrong with Matthew Ridge - that's for you, AbD. And oooooh boy, hey Rudi.

the gates of hell are close

by. It explains all the flies in my house. And before you say anything, not just my house, Palmengrad is swarming with these devil's henchmen. I just went medieval on their flying asses with the spray, something that I am actually usually quite opposed to, but enough already.

So househunting continued today ... a railwayman's cottage. Very cute hundred year old villa with a little verandah but I was sensible enough to take an advisor this time. And as soon as we hit the kitchen she said get out of here now. So back to the original plan of waiting for one on Savage to come up ... I'm not so good at waiting though.

I drunkenly invited some people for tea tonight. I shouldn't have. I should be working ... and the evil flushing mechanism on my toilet ... the cistern of hell? ... has gone wonky as it always does when I am expecting visitors. I being drunk at the time, only remembered by chance this morning about inviting them, so I am not sure if they have remembered at all. I have left a message on their phone, and now don't know whether I should prepare all the tasty treats or not ...

I guess I could have lots of vegan leftovers, if you are up for any ...

big ho

me owner.



I went house hunting yesterday. Though kinda on the down low. I was sort of accompanying a colleague who is looking for a new house, but with the vague understanding that I might be interested. I have been slow coming to the idea of homeownership. It seems like a weight around the neck more than anything else and to be honest I never thought I would earn enough that the lady bankers wouldn't scoff down there silk scarf wrapped throats at the thought of a mortgage for me. But it turns out that I might be earning enough to get myself into ridiculous debt.





I have the self awareness that I am not a do-er upp-er-er and have not the supposedly kiwi diy dna but it would be nice to live without that GODDAM red paint in the living room.



My only problem is that there are only two streets in this town that I want to live in, and the people living here (yes the Sav is one of them) don't seem to move a whole lot. Apparently a lovely lady died just round the corner, so we went and had a look at the carnage she had wreaked when she was feeling a little more spry ... circa late sixties by the look of the carpet and the drapes. This beautiful 30-40s state house with rimu and matai floors had all of its original features ripped out - the doors replaced with that beer-bottle coloured textured glass and one of those rubbery concertina doors. She had also made little curtains to hang over such offences as the wardrobe doors and even over the fusebox!

what happens to the rat that stops running the maze?

The doctors think it's dumb but it's just disappointed...

Yes more nostalgia music buying. I am trying now to resist an Afghan Whigs restock. A week of unrelenting stress, angst and to admit to you all anger, well just a little. The weekend again and here I am in the kitchen thinking music of the early nineties. Talked on the phone for over an hour with C.C in Sydney, which was great, trans-Tasman gossip lines though. And it looks like NYC for 40th birthday ... any takers?

On the surface this weekend is stretching out into a silent and empty few days, before the clients return on Monday .... for another short week ... anzac day ... but underneath it all will be the nagging suggestion of work to be done, bedrooms to be tidied and the like. I am going to go looking at houses with a colleague. Really for her, but secretly for me. I have never really wanted to be a home owner before. I guess though I am relenting to the Pakeha dream of owning land ... and if I don't do it now I will never get it into it.

I'm pretty picky too. There are really only a few streets I want to live in in this town, and even then only a few houses. In fact, I think I really want to own this house, but that's not an option. Open homes scare me ... hell as you know ... I can't really stand visitors. So being a stranger is some poor person's house, basically invited to judge their taste and decorating skills is a bit off-putting.

Well enough dullness ... Would you like to me blog on american idol/america's top model/dancing with the stars ?

I thought not.

nostalgic dressing

pays off. Against all predictions, dressing as you did circa 1986-1989 does not make you look tragic, or like some misguided ageing hipster. It makes you look younger. Cooler. During unsuccessful shopping outting I was handed a flyer for a rock and roll gig. I might just go.