Ex-pat journo in "Flores man" shocker

On Thursday, Australian and Indonesian scientists announced the discovery of the Homo floresiensis, who stood about one metre tall and walked the earth about 13,000 years ago. "Flores man" is thought to be a descendant of Homo erectus, who had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about 2 million years ago. Local folk tales suggest the hominids may have still been living on the Indonesian island of Flores until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s.

Exclusive

But in a Drinks-After-Work exclusive, we can reveal that "Flores man" is alive and well and getting on rather well with the locals. The little fellas, locally known as "Flossies", are said to be the life and soul of the party, have a predilection for expensive cocktails and like to have their heads scratched. They also love to ride around on humans and can get quite amorous, as our reporter Chris Holm demonstrates in a recent photograph from the jungles of Flores. While they don't speak English, or any of the local dialects, it's reported that they have no difficulty understanding and communicating in the international "language of love".

R.I.P. John Peel OBE

John Peel is dead, so I spent some hours in the middle of the night listening to all the Peel Session LPs I could lay me hands on - distressingly only the Damned and the Syd Barret were able to be located - and the CD reissue of the Siren albums on Peel's label Dandelion.

I've already read several carelessly-hurried obituaries wailing "how will we ever replace him". Fer chrissakes the man's barely cold... what kinduva half-witted thing to say is that? I think I'm gonna start issuing contracts for hits on the offenders...

Peel's motto regarding the music he presented on his legendary radio show was "A balance between things that you know people will like and things that you think people will like". Reading it now it may seem a little obvious but it's a hard balance to find; it's also one I've always strived for in my modest efforts on the radio.

Courtesy of the BBC:

• John Peel's bullet point biog.
• If you would like to remember John, or to offer your words of condolence click here.
• For advice on how to cope with bereavement go to One Life's help pages.

Jen-Smacked-Face met the man - more than once - and she stole his taxi. Here she eulogises eloquently about him.

3PM Edit: Lord-only knows why I put "Sir Robert Peel" in the title of this entry. Please accept humble apologies. It was the middle of the night - perhaps I was google-fatigued. Title adjusted accordingly.

He takes my breath away

So-called "President" Bush is on the campaign trail in Florida, and helicopter-hopping all over the state. In Fort Myers on Saturday morning, he emerged from his chopper Marine One to the Top Gun theme blaring from the stadium PA. After the rally he presumably left to have a fist-fight with Iceman, a dog-fight with a few Russki Migs, and sex with Kelly McGillis. Or something.

I was intending to cook up some devastatingly witty and/or sarcastic appraisal of this blatantly ridiculous conceit, combine it with some fantastically thoughtful insight, and retire, satisfied in a job well done. It'd be a blogger's duty at the very least. But I really only want to cuss his stoopid chimp-faced hick ass all the way back to the stump out from under which he crawled and... etc. etc.

Has Been..

William Shatner has a new album out; Has Been, the long-awaited follow-up to 1968's The Transformed Man has just been released. Actually if he'd waited 18 months or so, he'd probably hold the title for Most Delayed Follow-Up Album in History of Rock. [I believe Brian Wilson would currently take that honour for Smile, released last month.] But that's not what I want to talk about.

John Russell reviewed Shatner's new album in Sunday's Herald. It wasn't a bad review, all things considered, but one thing made my hair stand on end. In his review, Russell alerts us to the fact that Mr. Shatner apparently prefers to be known as The Shat.

This is beyond comprehension. The only - and this is stretching it - reason I can think of to explain why Shatner would like us to affectionately refer to him - in the past participle of to shit - as recently excreted feculence, is that he's the dom. in some sort of S+M relationship with a coprophagiast.

Some googling later, and it would appear that Shatner has been colloquially known as The Shat for some time. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and all that, I guess, but if a bunch of people started calling me 'piss-o' or something similar I'm pretty sure that rather than resign myself to it, I would draw some sort of line in the sand and tell them to fuck off. [Darling aquaintances, this isn't an invitation to test my resolve. Cunts].

John Russell's review isn't available online; here's one at, somewhat appropriately, Crud Magazine. [Happily, Crud Magazine is worksafe!].

Belated thoughts on the late Christopher Reeve

After I saw Chris Reeve's post-accident remake of Hitchcock's Rear Window, starring himself playing the wheelchair-bound voyeuer-guy, I held some hope that the intrepid dude'd be able to forge a whole new career for himself... a second-wind, if you like, as the most utterly perfectly-awfully typecast actor of his generation, y'know...

also starring Christopher Reeve as the guy in the wheelchair...

Or if not, at least the actor appearing the most in god-awful remakes of reasonably-daft-but-classic movies. [Cf. Village of the Damned.] [Also, if you follow the link to IMDB for the Rear-Window remake, check the Trivia entry... "The scene where Jason's breathing tube comes loose and he has to chatter his teeth to get the nurse's attention really happened to Christopher Reeve shortly after his accident". Uh, for fuck's sake!]

Everything Is Wrong With Me riffs pretty-amusingly on Reeve's demise... gotta say right-on about the fucking NY Post and that Metropolis bullshit, too.

I can't believe it's not butter...

Umm, I can. Perhaps a more accurate product name might be I Can't Believe It Causes Cell Damage!.

Some notes about smoking-in-bars...

[Weird.. TV3 news is b'casting live from Fashion Week and the show is over for the night and Dimmer's Crystalator is blaring out, being used as room-clearing music...]


...Anyway... an Irishman walked into a pub... and had a beer with me. Really. With reference to the impending ban on smoking in bars in NZ, here's some snippets of things he told me about the aftermath of similar legislation coming into effect in Ireland.

• Attendance or custom or whatever went down by 70%
• Result of this drop was that the breweries and the bars drop [oh the heavenly punning] the price of beer, conceivably to entice the punters back
• One bar spent over a million quid building a rooftop outdoors area where people could drink and smoke
• Said bar cleaned up, attracting smoking punters away from other bars from miles around [this apparently no mean feat, in the legendarily-parochial Irish pub scene]
• Another bar has built a guillotine-style contraption on its outer wall where a punter can stick his head out into the street and smoke a ciggy. Queues ensued.

The only thing I really had to contribute is that I know that one reasonably well-established bar here in Wellington is building a secret "smoke-easy" beneath its regular bar.

Go Prohibition-styles... Elliot Ness... Al Capone... Untouchables. etc.

Bad dream or...

I just awoke from a nightmare. I was an All Black, and we had just lost the 2003 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final to Australia. George Gregan was there, except his face looked like Kerry Prendergast. He/she was very excited, getting right up in our faces, yelling "Three more years, boys, three more years". Smug bitch. Eventually he to be restrained and hauled away by some of his team-mates, who may or may not have looked like Rex Nicholls and Alick Shaw.

I'm not really sure what happened next but shortly later a microphone was lowered from the roof of the stadium to where Brian Tamaki was waiting in a pink spandex jumpsuit to sing a medley of WHAM hits.

Gone postal

It's not all bad news. I will be appeased - somewhat, but not utterly - if after special votes are counted, we get to wave ta-ta to that bastard Alick Shaw. The turncoat Shaw, former Labour candidate for Wellington Central [before being trounced by Richard Prebble in '96], latterly Deputy lap-dog for Kerry Prendergast, hangs on to his seat on council by the very slim margin of 260 votes; coming quickly up his rear is Green Party candidate [and anti-Bypass group Campaign for a Better City stalwart] Iona Pannet. My sources tell me there are about 1200 special votes to count.

It's already been rather pleasing to have witnessed the ditching of Prendergast 'lieutenants' Ngaire Best, Sue Piper, Ian Hutchings, Judy Siers, and David Zwartz from council. If Shaw exits stage-left after specials are processed, her already-waning support takes another major body-blow. [Though in a cruel twist Hutchings will likely wrench the Northern Ward back from 18-year old newcomer Hayley Wain.] And, rather pleasantly, Bryan Pepperell, Jack Ruben and Helene Ritchie remain to kick Prendergast's ass around, as well as Mr. Ray Ahipene-Mercer who not only can set up my guitar any day, but is not averse to a bit of idiot ass-kicking himself.

And in other news, there were also encouraging signs after votes were counted for the Regional council. Fran Wilde, Chris Laidlaw and Margaret Shields, all former Labour MPs in Wellington or outlying districts [Kapiti], and generally bloody top blokes, are all now Regional councillors. Wilde, who of course had a decent hand in the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in the mid-80's and was also Mayor of Wellington for one term in the 90's, has her sights set on transport issues; said issues would surely have to include the looming inner-city bypass.

Watch this space, as they say.

Well... piss up a rope

As the provisional results began to point overwhelmingly to Kerry Prendergast having been returned for a second term as Mayor of Wellington, the weather did the decent thing and packed it in. In fact, as any sensible-thinking person spent today in mourning for Wellington's well-being, it's continued to comprehensively piss down.

Unfortunately, technical difficulties have apparently prevented other important information from coming to the fore at this point, including the make-up of the City and Regional councils. But we do know that voter turn-out was appallingly low, the lowest for many a year. Big ups apathy and indifference.

O well, at least I probably don't feel as bad as the supporters of the Australian Labour Party. Wow. John Howard. Again?

There's something wrong with my robot

Mailbag time. Jen-Smacked-Face wrote:

Patels Superette!! How long has it been since I last heard those words? (Seven years exactly, since you ask.)

Far be it from me to ruin someone's nostaglic reverie, but Patel's Superette is the same in name only, I'm afraid. In them good old days, the staff/owners were your friend, and weird dissaffected young whiteys worked out the back [I bought some CDs off one of them at some point]. Plus they had Lotto. About 3 years ago, they changed hands and that was the end of the golden weather, as they say. These days it's owned and staffed by a strange breed of extremely brusque folk, who speak another language, watch TV a lot and don't always look at you, even when taking your money. O, and no more Lotto. Sorry.

Kellie Wilson, Sales Administrator, Hutchinsons (NZ) Limited, writes:

Thank you for your letter informing us of the problem you had with our Chopped Italian tomatoes with chilli and garlic 400g. We pride ourselves on marketing quality products and were very concerned when we received your comments.

The processing equipment used is very effective and the problem you have experienced is thank fully [sic] very rare. We have however informed our supplier and requested to discuss the incident with Quality Control and the Production Team.

Please find enclosed a $10 grocery voucher for you to use how you wish, we are deeply sorry or [sic] any inconvenience this may have caused you and hope that you will be able to resume your relationship!

Why shucks, thanks Kellie. I'm a bit disappointed though - I was rather hoping that you'd demand the instant resignation of the entire Quality Control and Production Team, and send me a million bucks. I'll guess I'll have to settle for the voucher, then. Maybe next time I'll have to find a black fat-tailed scorpion instead. Thanks for the mandate to use the voucher how I wish though - if I remember I'll send you a photo of me and the lady hoovering drugs with it.

Muffy writes:

Steve, your literary shenanigans never fail to amuse... Heaps of hot lovings, muffy

Muffy, are you my mother? No, just kidding. But I've got a strange, nagging feeling I know you. Did we meet at the first Lord of the Rings wrap-party? Or was that you up amongst the pine trees on school sports day, 1990. You've got my interest, now, you enigma, you. Wanna leave me a clue?