Oink Oink..

I Saw this beast over at the Pauanui Shopping Center today. After I finished dribbling all over it, I took these pics of it. I even got to talk to the owner. A real nice guy he is. Its a Harley hard tail, & was put together in Orange County Missouri in '04. The dude that owned it decided to sell it to finance building a bigger better mouse trap. This guy just happened to be in the right place at the right time.. Serendipity rules huh ? Now aside from enjoying it on the streets round Pauanui, he uses it to promote sales of his Americana that he sells. It works. I was very tempted to buy a set of Betty Boop floor mats for Sherman. I know he would have loved them.. Only the dude didn't have eftpos. Such is life I guess. Sherman will just have to make do with his tatty old Tweety & Sylvester mats a bit longer. He can't complain really. His incontinence problem is solved & he has a new clutch. What a shame you can't get medical insurance for motor vehicles.

What did I do for ANZAC Day ?

Quite apart from having a think & a quiet weep for relatives & friends lost in & as a result of war, & a little meditate on the sheer futility of it all, I mounted an assault on the courtyard with the aid of a trellis regiment. this is the end result.

Looks pretty good huh ? Massive reserves of Browny points in reserve with herself for this effort. I'm fairly proud of it myself & all.

Amazing trust..

You might begin to think that I have a fixation with our feathered friends maybe so. But when you can get a wild seabird to perch on your hand like this, its a bit of a mind blow. The waterfront at Whitianga yet again....

Well hallelujah Brothers & Sisters

I'm going to start a new Church... No, really I am. You see, I get up at around 5.30 AM & the first thing I do... No the second thing I do is brew up a cup of coffee. Then I stagger into the office& contemplate the 'puter for half an hour or so. Thus physically & emotionally fortified, I stagger forth to don suitable worklike clothing & hunt something down in the kitchen to kill for breakfast & lunch. Part of this ritual is the arousal of herself so that she can follow her morning ritual preparatory to her morning walk with a dear friend. Part of her ritual is the preparation of some nameless goop in the microwave & the consumption of same in front of the television watching the BBC news on TV 1. Herself being herself, this also involves compulsive channel surfing during the ad breaks, even though she knows full well what she is going to encounter.

At that hour of the day there is only infomercials & religious programming. Somehow, the ads always seem to involve incredibly fit young people, male & female, pounding away on various machines of fiendish design guaranteed to remove inches off your breasts/buttocks/abs/ thighs/whatever, so long as you follow the special diet that comes with the machine. The cost of these beasts of reduction is horrendous. On the other channels, equally earnest folk of varying age are earnestly entreating us to put our faith (& our cash) in the Lord.

Now here is my very cunning plan. Why not combine the two? I intend to form the First Church of The Holy Exercycle. Its a winner. You see, perspiring adherents will sit on these various machines & while they are losing inches off their flabby abs, I will be trimming sin & building up layers of salvation for their souls.. Can't you see it now ? The first church to ever cater to body & soul at the same time. Hundreds of bodies sweating away flab, all the while singing hymns, & shouting "Hallelujah" & listening to me proselytise. And of course paying me huge sums of money for the privilege while occupying one of the machines that will replace comfortable chairs & pews. I can't lose. Now where was that 0800 number again ????

I'm not one to brag, but.......

But damn, do I have the most drop dead gorgeous grand daughter or do I have the most drop dead gorgeous grand daughter......... This is Anna Jayne with her doting Daddy.. Neat huh ?

Well, whoop de bloody doo....

I watched with a certain amount of amusement a feature on one of our current affair programmes the other night. It would seem that there is this boys school down Hawkes Bay way somewhere that has come up with an incredibly radical concept that produces happy well adjusted, roundly educated boys. It would seem that all you have to do is come up with a curriculum that encompasses a good range of subjects including how to find your way round a kitchen & a physical education programme that IS a touch radical & make all subjects compulsory. The PT programme includes such radical activities as mud slides & a game called "Bull Rush" Those of you of similar vintage to me will know the game Bull Rush. Its a fairly solid contact sport that we used to play at school. I wont bore you with the details, but I did end up sporting a gold tooth from one particular game of it.

My point is this. Every other species on this planet is instinctively aware that for the adolescent male to grow up healthy & well adjusted, they need to go through a period of aggressive behaviour. There are a few that get hooked on the agression & carry it through life with them, the same as there are those that get hooked on alcohol & tobacco & have that as a burden for the rest of their lives. In this increasingly PC world that we live in, we seem to be doing our best to condition our young to a set of mealy mouthed values. Its "okay" not to want to win , its "okay" just to "participate." You don't need to keep scores with kids sports events like rugby & soccer. BULLSHIT...... Kids, especially boy kids love to compete & love to know if they have won or not.

Girls too. Herself still can't challenge me to the odd game of 8 ball without going for the throat. Trouble is she is so damn good at it that I have to play a very defensive game to avoid getting my ass thrashed. We have a lot of fun & it sure gets the adrenaline flowing. Its certainly much more fun than "just being Okay to participate"

My point is this. Well done that school for rediscovering the old values. I'm all for it. At present I am working with a young man who is very negative in his whole attitude to life. I think he was menopause baby & I know he had learning difficulties at school. This meant special tutors etc etc . This seems to have spilled over to his personal life, so that we now have a young adult who to quote the old Walt Disney movie , has an attitude of, "The world owes me a living." Nothing that goes wrong is ever his fault, he seems to have no initiative, & everything has to be done his way or he packs a tantrum. He needs putting over someones knee & spanking. But we aren't allowed to do that any more.

Maybe one school picking up the old values won't stem the tide. God knows that we have a whole generation of kids with mediocre values coming through. But it is at least a start. Maybe they can make the difference to the world that our generation wanted to. Sad but true, most of our really radical free thinkers got side tracked with music, free love & drugs.

Images from Whitianga

This is a pic of some classic Porches that were touring through Whitianga on Friday.. Beautiful arent they ?


Never let it be said that I don't have the birds eating out of my hand either....

Only in Whitianga

Would you find a sign like this in the public dunnies.God I love it... While I was there today, I saw a perfect example of adaptation in a wild animal. We actually managed to score 10 minutes or so to eat lunch & naturally enough had it on the waterfront. The usual crowd of seagulls noisily gathered to help us eat whatever we may choose not to. This included one adult bird who seemed to take an unusual amount of time to settle, & immediately lay down. This was due to the fact that although he had legs, he had no feet. I wondered how he would fare in the rough & tumble of group seagull feeding. It didn't take me long to find out. As I held the first bit of crust out the truck window, he was in the air in a flash, seizing the bread directly from my fingers & was gone before the other birds woke up to what was happening. He didn't come back. I wished that he would. i would have liked to reward his audacity with another bit of bread....