Coming out of your pockets under a National Govt: $50,000. Ask me how!
Week's end edition
And so this is Friday and what have we learned?
Here sits a man who wonders if he dare write that he feels the Covid cloud finally clearing and his energy returning. Still an occasional fuzzy numbness of tongue, though. Let's see if he is able to write next Friday: no cloud at all. He would very much like that.
He would also very much like it if we could go back to the way of things where smart people held more sway than noisy stupid ones.
An infant’s life depends upon a blood transfusion, and grown people with not a lot of wisdom but an abundance of agenda presume to know better than experts.
Wrongheaded people of this kind have been bobbing around for a long time like just so much flotsam and jetsam in the currents of vaccine denialism and conspiracy delusion. But this pandemic has given them altogether more prominence and boy are we having to suffer the certitude of fools.
There is a song that a certain kind of person likes to croon to themselves all day long that goes I'm right and the world is wrong and when oh when will they listen to me?
Here's a reply, Liz Gunn, and Sue Gray, and all the rest of you: How about never? Does never work for you? Because it works perfectly for me.
I haven't seen Liz Gunn on the streets of our seaside village for months now but if I see her again I don't expect to politely agree to disagree. Fuck that.
Quiz
1. What is the town slogan of Naseby?
a. Naseby, you're standing in it
b. 2000ft above worry level
c. Freeze a jolly good hollow
d. Ice to see you, to see you ice
2. Which one if these dead-set legends did not come from Levin ?
a. Life photojournalist George Silk
b. Rugby star Christian Cullen
c. Comedian of the decade Michèle A'Court
d. Citizen hero and investigative journalist Nicky Hager
3. Monomania is what?
a. What Americans call glandular fever
b. Obsessive preoccupation with one thing
c. Hipsters complaining that stereo ruined the sound of LPs
d. Listening to Christopher Luxon without complaining
4. What music served as the backdrop for the first episode of The Ascent of Man?
a. Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
b. Jerusalem by Hubert Parry
c. Gregorian Chants by Monks of the Abbey of ST Ottilien
d. Careful With That Axe, Eugene by Pink Floyd
5. When Frankie Goes to Hollywood goes: In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasure dome erect, who is being misquoted?
a. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
b. Rita Coolidge
c. Samuel Longhorn Clemency
d. Rudyard Cool-head Kipling
6. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather?
a. Emmanuel Kant
b. Imran Khan
c. Genghis Khan
d. D’ath Vader-Khan
7. Who are these two characters in the popular Netflix drama The Crown?
a. Dodi and Logan Roy
b. Dodi and Rupert Murdoch
c. Dodi and Mohamed Al-Fayed
d. Dido and her manager
8. What is the English way, according to Roger Waters?
a. Never give you up, never let you down
b. Hanging on in quiet desperation
c. Out there happening to our future, not letting the future happen to us
d. Bondage
9. By what name is the popular Kiwi combination of dehydrated onion soup and reduced cream known?
a. Soup surprise
b. Yeah nah gras
c. Onion dip
d. Adoration of the Maggi
10. What has King Charles banned from royal residences?
a. Netflix
b. Phone tapping
c. Foie gras
d. Onion dip
Answers
1. What is the town slogan of Naseby?
b. 2000ft above worry level
2. Which one if these dead-set legends did not come from Levin ?
b. Rugby star Christian Cullen
3. Monomania is what?
b. Exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing
4. What music served as the backdrop for the first episode of The Ascent of Man?
d. Careful With That Axe, Eugene by Pink Floyd. Surprising, watching it again, how many wild little flourishes there are. With the benefit of freeze frame, Professor Bronowski’s specs reflecting the light become positively proto-punk
5. When Frankie Goes to Hollywood goes: In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasure dome erect, who is being misquoted?
a. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
6. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather?
c. Genghis Khan
7. Who are these two characters in the popular Netflix drama The Crown?
c. Dodi and Mohamed Al-Fayed
8. What is the English way, according to Roger Waters?
b. Hanging on in quiet desperation
9. By what name is the popular Kiwi combination of dehydrated onion soup and reduced cream known?
c. Onion dip
10. What has King Charles banned from royal residences?
c. Foie gras
Dismal Awards
Dismal Award the First to Old Mate Grabaseat for distinguishing himself in this week’s MPs with their hands out the farthest table.
Yeah, yeah, I get that the rules say it’s entirely within the MPs allowance rules to rent one of your seven properties to yourself and have the HARDWORKING TAXPAYER pick up the tab. But if this guy had the first idea about leading by example and being true to your credo, he’d be nobly foreswearing any kind of personally advantageous troughing. But that assumes a man who has the first idea about leading by example and being true to your credo.
Dismal Award the Second to The Appalling Trump along with a Simpsons Nelson haha for attempting without success to assert that the rules do not apply to him.
We cross to Mastodon for a concise explanation from Teri Kanefield of the manner in which he has been handed his ass.
We have a decision in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal in Trump's special master case: The court vacates the Sept. 5 order, and remands with orders to dismiss. Trump loses. (I told you he usually loses in court where facts matter). The case goes poof. VAPORIZED.
Dismal Award the Third to The Cynical Twisters of Fact and Meme-Makers of Mendacity, the National Party of NZ for brazenly going very much farther than they lately claimed the government was doing in introducing consistency of taxation to KiwiSaver fees, aided and abetted by misleading and inflammatory memes. How much, do you reckon, under this new retirement age policy of theirs, everyone aged 50 or under will lose out on? Oh look! Someone’s made a how do you like those stupid apples of yours now buddy? meme. Good.
Dismal Award the Fourth to our Security Services. Let me at once hand the mic to Felix Geiringer to ensure accuracy.
The NZSIS has agreed to apologised to Nicky Hager for unlawfully obtaining his private phone records and to pay him $40,000 in compensation. I acted for Nicky Hager in relation to this issue.
This is an important result for journalism. Our intelligence services are given substantial powers for use to protect New Zealand from harm. Those powers cannot be used to go after a journalist’s sources just because the Government does not like what that journalist is saying.
Dismal Award the Fifth to perpetually petulant man baby Jordan Peterson.
I could really do without the land acknowledgment,
he wrote of the QANTAS flight announcement practice,
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Stick to (1) flying and (2) making money.
I don't want or need moral lessons from you or any other corporation.
One headline declared: Jordan Peterson fumes at Qantas over indigenous acknowledgement 'propaganda'.
A more accurate one would be: Jordan Peterson is nothing but fumes.
What a standard-bearer he is for obdurate resistance to any notion of seeking to understand past wrongs and right them. What a balm he is for every sulking pouting man who can’t believe we didn’t stop the clock at 1950.
Hall of Fame
Into the Hall of Hame go two marvellous pieces of entertainment on The Tonight Show. That Jerry. He had me at the Alligators, I entirely agree about the poker.
And also on the Tonight Show, and big thanks to Kerry Chamberlain for this, Bob Dylan’s Jingle Bells through the decades. Unerringly accurate; still great in all chords and styles. You will never hear me say otherwise. The man’s a genius. Cheers Kerry!
Adoration of the Maggi - this cannot be bettered
From the distance of an AirNZ hour away I think you fully recovered brain-wise at least. Very readable