Penultimate holiday snap round-up

Ok you lot, sit still and pay attention.

Approximately Ring of Fire

In the Bay of Plenty there's plenty of small, conical volcanoes... some on land and some out to sea. This is Motuhora (Whale) Island, from Waiotahi Beach, near Opotiki.



White Island (not visible), is the most active of the islands.

How the Elephant Got His Trunk

In Huntly, whilst admiring the lovely power-station, I had an ephiphany. I was suddenly struck that here, at last, after all these years, had I finally seen a great grey-green greasy river... approximating, somewhat, the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River of Rudyard Kipling's cautionary fable The Elephant's Child (or as it is colloquially known, How the Elephant Got His Trunk) from his Just So Stories collection. Suddenly, with piercing clarity, I could see in my mind just where it was that the Kolokolo Bird sent the Elephant's Child to find out exactly what it is that the crocodile has for dinner.

 

This river, of course, is the Waikato River rather then the Limpopo, and despite a thorough examination of both banks, did not appear to be all set about with even one single fever-tree.

More mulch for the memoirs

Skinny dipping at sun-rise, Hoffman's Pool, Kauaeranga Valley, Coromandel

Granted, sunrise was about 8.30 am given that we were in the lee of some fairly monumental landscape, but the water was like ice. With shoulders under, you couldn't speak, let alone breathe... communication was limited to short noisy expulsions. Crown jewels disappeared in the direction of the centrally-heated abdominal cavity, much to the amusement of the Jarman. It was a foolish and excruciating - yet invigorating - way to start the day.

Wildlife, Kauaeranga Valley, Coromandel

Yep, that's a cow licking it's arse. Another one of those things we'd all do, if we could. Apparently.

Cows are quite good. If I may be allowed to anthropomorphise for a moment here, they have very wise faces. They will also happily look you in the eye - with their large, souful brown eyes - for minutes, and let you quite close to photograph and admire them. But they're not all work and no fun; the angle their ears describe to the sides of their faces is quite jaunty, and the attitude of their heads often verging on the rakish.

I also quite like how they talk. Very sombre... the lowing of the cattle and all that.

What you don't ever want to do is to think about sausages; specifically in the context of the lips, udders, and anuses of cows.

Quite often, if you spend long enough hanging around on the edge of the highway checking out the cattle in the field, a farmer will come and zoom anxiously up and down the road in his car or on a quad-bike, a bit like a jealous girlfriend.

Horses, a more recent enthusiasm, are also quite good.

Crime-spree in Gisborne

Hmmmm. Long story short... Small commercial book-shop in Gisborne (popn. 43,000). Discovered 5 copies of new edition of Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451 - the 50th anniversary edition - on the shelf. Immediately postulated theory that store clerk mistook same for book-of-movie of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 and ordered 5 copies, thinking "these'll sell like the proverbial". Chuckling. Delighted with compound irony of situation given theme of Bradbury novel. Delighted with self at inventing 'compound irony'. So delighted, in fact, was compelled to celebrate and liberated one of the copies by putting it in my pocket and walking out of the shop.

Now, let me say at this point I did feel a bit guilty. Also, I did not attempt theft without first checking that there wasn't a security tag on the book, that the staff were busy, and reminding self that we would be driving to another part of the country in a few minutes.

It's a good book. I also have the DVD of the Francios Truffaut film adaptation from 1965.

If it wasn't 0258 in the AM and if I wasn't exhausted and starting to think - and write - like Bridget Jones, I'd link up this post... look back later after I've had a chance to do it, 'k? Edit: Done!

You'll also notice, if you look closely enough, that that is - of course - not the security camera picture of me liberating new edition of classic Ray Bradbury novel. Of course it's not - unless you think I'm writing this from jail. I just stole the picture off the internet. God bless Google Image Search.

Goodness me I'm bad-ass.

Most blatent song quotations ever...

Elastica, for butchering Wire's Three Girl Rhumba [Pink Flag] in their hit Connection. They settled out of court.

Closely followed by Devo's Uncontrollable Urge [Q: Are we not men? A: We Are Devo!] which liberally lifts from Led Zeppelin's Misty Mountain Hop [Led Zeppelin IV] in its intro.

NOTE: Least blatent song quotation ever - Neil Young's Borrowed Tune [Tonight's the Night] which he 'borrowed' from the Rolling Stones' Lady Jane [Aftermath]. Sing to the tune of Lady Jane:

I'm singin' this borrowed tune / I took from the Rolling Stones
Alone in this empty room / Too wasted to write my own

The implications of this lyric are massive and bleak. Massively bleak, even, possibly.

Others, perhaps?

EDIT: Allmusic.com's Stephen Thomas Erlewine comes up with some bullshit argument in support of Elastica's 'song-writing' practices. I also overhauled the post, re-doing all the links that mysteriously vanished from the published version.

The Futureheads in revisionist revivalist copyist shocker

As soon as I heard them I thought The Futureheads were a great band, but right now I'm listening to their album The Futureheads, with a view to deciding which track to play on my radio show tomorrow night... and suddenly they just sound like lame-ass retro-fitted copyists of the worst sort. This is hard to swallow - all at once they sound like The Jam's [particularly In the City], Devo, the Cars, XTC, Psychedelic Furs and Gang of Four. And that's just for starters.

Of course this shouldn't be a problem for me 'cos I love all these bands... and this shouldn't be a problem for me because I think that people who dis' bands for sounding like their influences are unrealistic idiots and, well... wankers; but basically I always have a hard job endorsing such bands when the timing is so utterly propitious to their fortunes.

What am I saying? Great band, but... well, put it like this - there could never have been a better time in the last 20 years for a band sounding like The Jam, Devo, The Cars, XTC, Psychedelic Furs and Gang of Four to put out a record. Know what I mean? [And get fucked, I actually came up with some of those comparisons myself. You think I'd link to sites which make the same comparisons if I hadn't?]

So anyway, what am I going to play in my set? Robot of course:

"I am a robot.. living like a robot.. talk like a robot.. in the habititting way / In the future we all die.. (robot!) Machines will last forever.. (robot!) / Metal things just turn to rust.. when you're a robot / The best thing is our life span (i don't mind).. We last nigh on hundred years (i don't mind).. / If that mean's we'll be together (i don't mind).. I have no mind, i have no mind...

Anyone who knows me will understand. I'm slowly regressing into fantasies from an imaginary childhood of space-travel and robots and shit and... and here's looking forward to some new material from The Futureheads. [Although some of the remixes on singles like First Day and Decent Days and Nights are right-up-to-the-minute and pretty damn hot].

If you haven't heard The Futureheads and you like Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party - or indeed any or all of the above-mentioned groups - then you owe it to yourself to check them out. Dammit fool, whatchoo waiting for?

Everything is Wrong With Me guy

Folks, allow me to direct your attention to Jason Mulgrew. Jason is the best, the funniest, the plain ole good-god-damn baddest blogger on the planet. In fact, as he tends to keep reminding you with only just enough irony, he's a fully-carded Internet Quasi-Celebrity.

Jason used to blog as Everything Is Wrong With Me but now he's gone legit and got his own site. But don't let that put you off checking out his archives.

There's no-one's musings I would rather waste my precious time reading.

[Jason, if you are reading this, I hope this puff-piece is sufficiently fluff to earn me a blow-job].

EDIT: Someone asked, so here's the answer to the question: He's actually a bloody good writer. Somehow he manages to convey a combination of self-conscious sensitivity and devil-may-care ebullience... which captures something really new and vital in the 'zeitgeist' as well as allowing his readers a hilarious and thrillingly voyeuristic 'schadenfreud'.

Legless in Devonport

At The Depot art space in Devonport, both the coordinator and the coordinator's dog were - in what must be some sort of first - missing limbs. The coordinator had one of those coloured-oxidised-aluminium stick-with-foot-on-end contraptions, while the dog wasn't nearly so lucky.

They both also seemed to be reasonably good-humoured about the whole thing, which is why I trust they will be the first to forgive me for the appalling pun in the title.

We were there on an urgent fact-finding recce for my bruvva, who is showing some work there next week and needed to know gallery configuration and floor-plan and so forth. Nice space... however the stuff on the wall was fairly wretched [when we were there, anyway]. Hopefully Andy will do me proud, especially with the interactive installation piece I helped him build [more soon...].

More travelogue

101 Croations

What we found really strange, as we bowled into Kaitaia from the north, was that the Welcome To Kaitaia sign said it in Croation too. Big letters. Dobro Dosli. I wish I had a photo - it also has weird Croatian-lookin' accent marks over a couple of characters, which helpfully won't show up in this font. [how do I know it was Croation? Lemme just say that it helps sometimes that the Jarman is from East Jarmany.]

The good thing about Croation - or any of those Slavic languages - is that you can pull off a passable imitation/parody of them by talking in strange, gruff, oddly-metred low register monotones. If I was to phonically represent our attempts at pronunciation it'd look something like:

dob-o-roh dozzsh-lee

Try it. It's fun!

So anyway we spent the next few days running round laughing stupidly at cows in fields and saying "Welcome" to them in Croation.

Apparently there is a large Dalmation population in Northland. They used to be gum-diggers.

Look who's back...

I've just gotten back from a two-week touring holiday around the North Island of New Zealand, with the Jarman. Previously I'd never been further north than Auckland City - yep that's right, never even crossed the Harbour Bridge - so the trip's been packed with new sights and sounds.

3,500 km later and it's good to be back. Thirteen days of not being able to properly clean the wax out of my ears has certainly taken it's toll on my mental state.

Cape Reinga in a pea-souper

I've never been to the Cape before and we picked a fantastic day to go - a low front had just moved in off the Tasman Sea bringing with it a depression resulting in cloud, rain and fog all over Northland. Visiting one of New Zealand's premier scenic attractions without being able to see more than a few feet in front of your face gave new meaning to the term "fucken waste of time" but what the hell - I've seen it on calendars and postcards my whole life and the Jarman wanted to go regardless. So go we went. It also gave me an opportunity to piss about with the manual settings on my new digicam to try to get some images for use in artworks.



The lighthouse experience was weird. You could hear the two oceans smashing into each other and the rocks below - the water-heavy atmosphere carried the sound and whirled it around and made it seem as if the waves were crashing just behind you; similarly, you could see only a couple of metres down the cliffs, and I have no idea how far I was from the sea-level.

This was the view from the carpark, looking back up the approach road, and from inside the car. Perhaps it was some sort of act of disappointed rebellion as - despite the presence of two cops strolling around the carpark telling tourists off for doing the same - we sat and ate our sandwiches, well inside the area designated as sacred and so food and drink free. To no avail I tried to spot spirits as they zoomed overhead, making for the afterlife.



An abundance of bauxite or some similar mineral gives the soil a freakish red colouration, and in the weather conditions that afternoon the landscape was distinctly alien.



Then we left and drove to Kaitaia.



Coffee to go in Kaitaia

Looking for a quick fix upon reaching Kaitaia we settled upon the rather charmingly-titled "Flix-Mix". Entering it appeared as if they were closing up; machines were being cleaned, floors mopped, and jokes told. Not wanting to waste any time I chose quickly from the menu-board and advanced to the counter.
"Hi, what would you like" sez proprietor.
"Macchiato to takeaway, pls" sez I.
Incredulous look follows. "You wha'??"
"Macchiato to takeaway, pls."
"What the hell's a macchiato?"
"Um, it's a long black served with steamed milk."
"Are you serious? I've never heard of one of those before."
Pointing... "Um it's up there on your board."
Look of bewilderment replaced with look of amusement. "Ooohhh. When my cousin painted that up for me he looked up some extra coffee names on the internet. Nobody's ever ordered that one before."
Me "Ahhh.." etc.
"Where you from then?"
"Wellington" I say, knowing what's coming next.
Merriment, jokes about city vs. country culture follow. "Ok how did you say you make it again?"
Me looking at ristretto, macchiato, thinking fast "Nah better not. What do you recommend eh?"
"Large flavoured latte."

Mine was Irish cream flavour, and utterly delicious.