Assault with a deadly sleeping bag

RSJS writes:

So New Zealand has terrorists, eh? Jolly good. Our emulation of America continues, we're one bucket o' fried cheddar away from being the fifty-second state. We even have drive-through (thru?) doughnut (donut?) shops. Bring forth the schoolyard shootings and NAMBLA.

I suppose that given the American's spot o' hazing to introduce them to the wide world of nothing-is-safe-motherfuckers (henceforth referred to as the 911 plane-parking debacle) was done with box-cutters, that masked coppers seizing rucksacks and greasepaint as offensive weapons makes sense. And I guess my sadly-deceased grandmother, were she still alive and sober enough to slur out a platitude, would note "it's better to be safe than sorry", but really this whole matter is quite shortly going to be publicly shown to be about as sensible as the Mooninite fiasco in Boston, Massachusetts.

I don't mean to demean the hard-working anarchists hemping it up in squats and teepees nationwide with a fistful of discarded food and a rag to wash windows with, but this country is pretty dreadful when it comes to fringe radicals changing the world around us. We don't have the numbers for the positive feedback needed to produce a chain reaction. I doubt we could even muster a Springbok riot these days. Witness the recent muddled Damn the Man dozen-man-march designed to show America that hijacking anniversaries for political ends was only good when carried out by a shrill besom wearing a megaphone and push-up bra. So a vast conspiratorial gang of bomb-chucking lefties, Tangata Whenua terrorists and tofu-chugging dissidents just smacks of the wet dreams of politicians, rather than the more likely gaggle of special-interest groups with ambitions and stoner kids with bong-smoke dreams.

What pisses me off the most? The fact that the shrilly anti-authority types touting big-business-powered plots and grassy-knoll-gunmen in the Government trying to disrupt everything from green activists to treaty claimants, might be right in this instance. A good but o' raiding shows the justification for stabby-proof coppers vests, bureaucratic fact-finding missions, a suspension of habeas corpus and probably a cause with a ribbon. I mean, I'm the biggest corporate stooge you're going to find, a greedy fat-cat lapping up the cream squirted from the multinational teats and all sorts of other gruesome mixed metaphors. And to think that my team are so desperate, and worse so stupid as to be caught out behaving like brute squads for their own ends? Fucking annoying. I expect more from my team, I really do. I'm going to write a sternly-worded letter to my MP demanding they get with the program and do a better goddamned job at vilifying their victims before sending the black-clad bovver boys in so the struggling masses yearning to be free can be shut the hell up and we pinstriped wage-slaves can have a few extra percent come Year End. I mean, what am I paying my taxes for?

So, for now, we must watch as yesterday's excitement gets watered-down into tomorrow's defensive posturing, and finally dissolves into next week's thing-the-government-won't-apologise-for and next month's nothing. And watch for panhandling aplenty as a whole bunch of dreadlocked fuckers are going to have to go replace their cargo pants at Doyles Army Surplus.

Health is bad for you.

RSJS writes:

I have been pondering great imponderables this past day, sparked oddly enough by the unexpected demise of a jogger in front of me when I was walking to work on Thursday. Chap keeled over from a heart attack some twenty paces ahead and I got to him in time for his death rattle. Thankfully some passing cyclists stopped to help me with half-remembered resuscitation techniques carried out while screaming abuse at the ambulance dispatch monkeys (thump-thump-thump-breathe-what-do-you-mean-you're-sending-an-ambulance-from-Mt-Wellington?-thump-breathe), but rush hour is unkind to emergency services and between the ambo's delay and our ham-fisted CPR, this poor chap's heart wasn't pumping under it's own steam for about half an hour. The paramedics did eventually coax a faint pulse out of this cadaver thanks to fun with defribulators, enough to risk carting him off in the truck to the nearest hospital. I have no idea who he was, didn't leave my details with any of the paramedics, and honestly don't remember the names of the two cyclists who stopped to help me/him/us. Given the lack of tangible evidence (aside from a bloodstain on a shirt I used to clean up the guy's face, and blood on my clothing is pretty ambiguous, let's be honest – that same shirt now has an eagle-pattern in blood in the shoulder from yesterday's tattoo appointment for example) this whole affair may well end up a half-remembered dream as so much of my twenties are.

Okay, so that's my quite-interesting thing that happened to me this week. And when edited down to a concise paragraph, makes me sound competent and humane. And it is something that when presented in this fashion I'm quite proud of.

But what's interesting to me is how I reacted to a guy expiring at my feet. It's well-documented that people don't like being the first on any scene for fear of making a social faux pas – we seem to fear our own embarrassment more than other people's suffering. But my issue with interfering with others actually extended to wondering the appropriateness of CPR: The gent stopped breathing, and neither I nor the cyclists could find a pulse, but when we started trying to get his systems moving again I had the quite vivid thought "Is this proper? Is this how one should treat a perfect stranger? Just start pounding on his chest and blowing down his throat?" I actually looked at him and hoped he would ask for assistance, so that I would feel comfortable invading his private little walk-towards-the-light moment. No request was forthcoming of course, and so the next fear: being th' dude who just watches someone die and gets maligned in the media for being heartless kicked in, and on with the tit-punching.

The other thing I remember was my initial reaction to seeing the chap, well decked out in running gear, his Italian spectacles cracked on the ground nearby, was that he was a retard. A voice in the back of my head screamed "Down's Syndrome!" and it has been bugging me why I'd think that. And it finally clicked into place: it was his expression, the eyes rolling and dilated looking for all the world like those of a dog fearful of a beating. An expression of animal fear as his body betrayed him. That and his tongue pressed up against his teeth gave him the appearance of someone lacking all higher brain function. I know this sounds harsh but it's true: as this guy kicked off there was no indication of intelligent concern in his eyes, just a base mammalian horror. And I wondered what he saw: his eyes were on me but could he see me? It was bright enough for me to have aviators on, but his irises were fully overrun by his pupils, no wonder people might see walking into a white light...

Which brings me to the next point, does he remember me? I don't know who he is, I might never unless I ring around local hospitals and I don't know I'd benefit from that. But does he remember someone calling to him, asking sir if sir is having an asthma attack? Does he remember the paramedics and the squeeze-my-hand routine? (which elicited no response, but at that point it was the least of their worries – guy's system was so shut down they couldn't even find his veins, which made for a gruesome game of pin the tail on the donkey with a drip) I wonder how one appears to someone whose mind is going to mush, eyes on stalks and soaking up the sunlight, a stranger over you offering assistance – what did I look like? Alien? Angel? Devil? Or was he checked out at that point and having the internal monologue some neurologists think occurs as the body collapses? I guess the metaphysician in me wants to ask him what he saw, what was he looking at, but it's bad enough being the total stranger huffing into his gob and thumping him in the middle-aged spread, but discussing eternal mysteries with him? That just seems... rude.

Anyway, that's what has been giving me pause for thought this week. For those wondering yes, I'll go back to bitching about stuff shortly. As you were.

Burning hatred for men in scrums and the beer they drink

RSJS writes:

Hearts and minds, eh? The somethingorother sporting wahoo is coming to New Zealand in 2011. That is so far away, I'll have left the country, returned, got married, been defiled by pagans and sold to white slavery in Borneo before a single ball of indeterminate shape is kicked or smacked or thrown or wotever.

And there are plans afoot for laws to stop streaking, scalping, and "ambush marketing" which is the term for getting too close to an event when you're not paying for it. To combat this heinous matter, the papers state:

The law will create "clean zones" around stadiums and "clean transport routes" along railways and state highways.

Okay, blah blah freedom to blah blah fucking blah advertising skippidedee free country etceterfuckingra. Don't care, frankly.

What pisses me off is twofold.

ONE: The advertising psychopaths wielding ultimate cosmic power in their scarily-fascist tournament (I used that term advisedly as the governing Sport Billy organisation apparently wants internal unity and harmony without dissenting opinion, and the state's interests put before those of the individual) want to control all input experienced by the idiot fans with their coloured scarves and bloated livers. I'm in no mood to be overly dramatic and scream "mind control" but this smacks of keeping people on-program and trying to limit outside ideas from getting in. Sort of passive control by limiting options – makes the poor dears being herded less confused, more docile, and easier to fleece of their funds and yes, their very souls. Okay, so me not being overly dramatic isn't happening. Bite me. It's not the control that rankles so much as the fact they think it works, that by funnelling fans down hallways advertising only one brand of beer, cola beverage, weight-loss program, sock, condom, shoe, prostitute, political party, religion, sexual orientation... sorry, side-tracked... anyway, they think that controlling the input will make them money. They will have experts who dedicate their lives to finding semi-legal ways of duping people to hand over their dollars based on stunts like these. They fear and plan against opposing fiends with military discipline. They seem to imagine if someone walks down a row of signs saying Lion Red Lion Red Lion Red Lion Red then up pops "Steinlager" before the return to Lion Red Lion Red Lion Red, the poor viewer will somehow be confused and either buy the wrong beer, or get too confused, soil themselves then not drink ANY beer and capitalism as we knows it grinds to a halt.

They think that. They fear that. That's what they think of us, they see us as retarded wallets on legs able to be suckered into spending up large by mind-numbing repetition and the beatings of the ideas into the heads and fuck me running they really do think we can be programmed like a fucking computer. Data goes in, cash comes out. Forward the zombie consumer army. THAT'S what Big Business thinks of you.

Which brings me to annoyance TWO: For the most part, they're RIGHT.

I hate that we share genetic code. Hate hate hate.

...of course right now I share my genetic code with a rolled-up sports sock. But that's a story for another time.

Obligatory fantasy rant

RSJS writes:

I've been thinking about literature of late, what with the latest Harry Potter hoopla – I love pulp literature, and still read Clive Cussler on flights around the country as its not too challenging and you don't lose the thread when hot towels and cold tea is profered by bored trolley dollies. My favourite book from my youth that I still read in my more hungover moments is "Have Spacesuit –will travel" by Robert Heinlein, about a young lad who accidentally gets to see the universe. But a book about a four-eyed twat with a wand and broomstick just leaves me cold.

And I'm trying to get to grips with why my some people go the way of the Tolkein trilogy, while I went the way of the Jedi. And I've decided to blame someone's god.

I've never been too fond of swords and sorcery stories, and I think the reason is the deus ex machina cop-out that is so often applied to the genre, namely "Magic". Magic bugs me: A few spells and incantations and Something Miraculous Happens, for no good reason. The act of chanting and mixing and spinning around stones nekkid results in a Holy Chicken appearing to bestow fatal pecks upon the Swamp Donkey of Doom or somesuch. It seems too similar to waving a smoking censer about and praying for a masculine child... I can't really differentiate between magic and the institutionalised begging to some benevolent sky-beard to fix everything – except in the fantasy realms the Big Dude seems to actually DO something. Kinda like in the Old Teatament.

It's not just that aspect, it's also the fact there doesn't ever need to be rhyme nor reason to magic, and it can basically solve or create any problem it likes. There is no structure, no governing laws that can't be broken by the word "magic". I remember a chap used to bemoan the telly show House because the punchline was always something so medically obtuse there was never any chance the audience could predict it – Hugh Laurie would just rattle off a dozen syllables, insult some folks, kill the patient thrice and cue the credits. And we'd be left none the wiser. House might as well wave a magic wand at the patient, and practically does – he gives his incantation no-one understands and suddenly Everything is Peachy. House is somewhere between Merlin and the Judeo-Christian God in that aspect – Ineffable, and grizzled of chops.

Maybe its not the idea "it's magic, go with it" that bugs me. Maybe its the laziness of it all. I'm a science-fiction nerd, and in that genre miraculous things happen all the time, but the authors are forever trying to explain the science behind it. Nanotechnology, cloning, time travel, laser-phaser-bobasers, Faster-than-light travel demonstrated with folded Playmates, all these things are pored over and researched and so when a sci-fi book says "And then Something Miraculous happens" there is normally a well-thought-out lead up (or caffeine-fuelled crazy lead up) to this. There are rules: authors try to predict how science will deal with things, how their ideas will be plausible. While "magic" is invoked as something basically bestowed for no obvious reason upon some mortar-and-pestle-wielding freak, science-fiction solutions try to have internal logic, and be created by people themselves. I guess I prefer this idea of the futuristic goings-on being manmade rather than just random "Unicorns appear when you jump down, turn around, and kill a newt, because the Universe is just kinda like that" bullshit.

Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, all the way back to Wells... I'm finding based on biographies that a lot of science-fiction authors I grew up reading are atheists. And I wonder if there is a link – atheists interested in the physical realm, in what mankind will become, while the more alembics and stuffed-alligator crowds look to a past with ogres and stoats and pixies and FUCKING ELVES (God I hate elves, since before their spokesfairy Orgasmo Bloom came along. But he didn't help). Atheists wonder "what can we do, where can we go, how do we do that?" and the fantasy twerps focus on "I know, goblins! Yay, goblins!".

Arthur C Clarke once suggested sufficiently-advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic, but you can bet when that science turned up in his books he worked his puckered old ARSE OFF trying to make this magic logical, reasonable, explainable. He never copped out and just typed "And then blue sparkly stuff flickered about and they all came back to life and went off for lashings of Ginger Beer". Perhaps if he did I'd have become inured to the irritations of fantasy at an early age and would be reading the Deadly Hallows right now. But thank fuck the old kiddie-fiddler didn't. He sometimes sacrificed plot to go off on mad fractal tangents but by gum, not a "Just so" dragon in sight.

Fuck Harry Potter and his prayers to a doting deity. And knee-jerk fundamentalists thought it was "pagan"... Eejits.

Kiwiana

RSJS writes:

I watched a show last night investigating whether “pakeha” have their own culture. Which corresponds nicely with recent claims that the tangata whenua learned child abuse (well, specifically corporal punishment) off the Christian colonials. So yup, pakeha do have a culture: when we got sick of smacking the locals on the head and stealing their toys, we taught them to do it to themselves. Bastards, but clever bastards.

I’m not sure I buy some of these theories. I agree the descendents of European settlers in NZ have ties too close to the lands of their forefathers not to see what passes for a culture is derived from a dozen other countries, and the elements they found in Aotearoa… well, the copyright holders are RIGHT HERE so claiming them as ones own seems a bit cheeky. In time, as with so many other countries, our distance from the source material will allow evolution and customisation to occur until an indigenous kiwi culture will emerge to export to themed pubs overseas. But the idea that child abuse is Europe’s one great contribution to New Zealand? I wonder if this really is meant to be evoking an idyllic past where everyone got the fuck along (for limited definitions of “everyone”), or is just a reference to the structured abuse brought to the locals by nuns wielding Good Books and metre rulers with which to bruise knuckles for the Lord… Is it violence the sailors are alleged to have brought, or just institutionalised violence? Hmmmm… To the learnin’ place with those “book” things, methinks. Or I could just get all kneejerk and cough “bullshit” up my sleeve and get back to more pressing matters like flicking artificial sweeteners into my colleague’s cup o’ tea while they’re not looking.

RSJS writes:

Apparently being questioned by Customs is a front page news article today. Old Mother Herald discusses some lass who spent up to two hours being questioned. Ooooh, the sniffers detected drugs but there weren’t any pills on her. Aaaaah, they questioned her age. Eeeeeeh, no-one actually makes that noise except grandfathers getting out of their chairs to go hit children with their canes. The point is, for fuck’s sake, there is a chain of events here that make me sad in my tummy.

1) Some bint gets questioned by customs.
2) Bint is so incensed at them thinking she was younger than her age she goes and finds a reporter to bitch at, a valuable use of the five days she is spending in our country to visit family
3) Reporter cares enough to submit this story to Old Mother Herald, who prints it along with some dire headline about this matter putting aforementioned bint off coming to New Zealand.
4) I read this and cry blood.

I don’t hate the whining baggage who started all this palaver. She is not of import to me. Nor is the reporter, making his money the only way he knows how while he dreams of making a mint with his erotic novel about the forbidden love of a farmer and his fistulated cow. Not even Old Mother Herald. Because it’s a supply and demand thing. Besom supplies whinge. Reporter supplies story. Paper supplies column inches. YOU CUNTS DEMAND. Somewhere out there is a target demographic, weighed, measured, recorded from tip to toe and analysed by machines bigger and more valve-filled than your bedroom, who this story is aimed at. You “OK” magazine-reading hand-wringing pisstanks.

…hang on. If these grand machines can analyse everything from the dandruff on your hobbit feet to the pustules on your scalp that pop when you brush your hair, then they must be able to figure out the advantage of pitching bullshit not only to the fans but to the foes as well. Perhaps Big Think COURTS anger and abuse knowing that one person who reads one nice story lets the buck stop there, while one angry middle-aged corporate zombie who reads something that fucks with their ulcer will trumpet it to dozens of unwilling listeners, spreading the attention like Marmite over a vast socio-economic slice of toast bread, free publicity for those advertisers selling you bee-shit supplements to smear on your buttocks or digital wonders that play music and films, read you bedtime stories and steal your dreams for the Dream Emperor on his jagged throne of raccoon penis-bones… Dear Sweet Jesus I am in the system, I am manipulated into posting this by electronic minds vastly superior to my own steam-powered thought-box, I am but a pawn in a game whose rules I’ll never learn, oh the inhumanity… Free will is a myth, god has been replaced by an Apple Mac, the devil is a teenage computer hacker from Norway and we’re all going to die. Thank you and good night.

Where are your gods now?

RSJS writes:

Atheism as religion. I know, I know, its an old saw-horse this ‘un, a twaddly bit of humbuggering and huffing from the tweed types with ingrown armchairs and pipe tobacco for hair, but I saw a description recently that atheism was simply a religion wit a different number of gods and that pisses me off. That’s like saying everyone’s a golfer, just with a different number of clubs. Why the fuck do I have to be lumped into the group that includes some pompom-sporting houndstooth cunt in a cart whacking an inoffensive cueball hither thither and yon? Fuck that.

But, let’s be fair: If we consider being a theist is the act of going to church and praying etc. then my argument on the golfing is valid, however if we consider theism and atheism to be beliefs, that’s’ a different kettle of loaves and fishes. But what sort of belief is it? A deluded one like “The Spice Girls reuniting will save pop music”? If so, disagreeing with this opinion means one has an opinion on the same matter at least…. And the spicy middle-agers, it is at least agreed upon, exist. No, I need an example that’s either “it is” or “it isn’t”. Like the Easter Bunny, or the Flat Earth, or the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Actually, that’ll do: Old Testament fucking fruitloop first-time-author-in-need-of-an-editor God is after all, a rabid cougar red of eye and claw, with the burning this, smiting that, torturing eternally for the other… there’s a bit of Trading Places, a lot of Michael Bay, a hell of a lot of Freud and some really atrocious fashion advice all thrown in the mix of his lifestory, so comparing him to the prowling Yorkshire Chupacabra is fair. To me.

So if we use the Beast, and the initial atheism = religion tosh, we get “We are all cryptozoologists, just the number of Nessies and Sasquatches we believe in differ”. You’re a legendary monster- chaser because you believe in exactly zero monsters. Well fucking done. I do not like being defined by the group of lunatics I don’t associate with. I’m not an Atoothfairyist, I just don’t believe in canine-culling Tinkerbells fondling under my pillow while I masturbate. I mean, sleep. What’s next? Nor believing in atheism makes one an a-athiest? A few more rounds of that game and everyone will be a-a-a-stuttering. With good reason for the next arse-rape abortion telling me about my fucking faith is going to deal with violence WHILE I’M NAKED. If that won’t choke the words in their throat I don’t know what will…
The Point Is, I’m not accepting the title “atheist” any more. It seems to be something the god-fearing are latching onto as a term for a religion. I don’t see the need to have a label for what I AM, let alone for what I’m NOT. Praise be.

For the love of Gosh, won't someone think of the Politicians?

RSJS writes:

Right, not being one to give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut when it comes to children, “Green” Ministers of Parliament, or the Intertubes, I have been aware of the hubbub about “CYFSWatch” as one is aware of sports, of the antics of local celebrities. It’s information you have, but at a low volume, and you’re unsure how it got in your head – like someone snuck in during the night and read excerpts from “Woman’s Weekly” at you or similar. But regardless, the site go bye-bye:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10425243

I didn’t care that it lived, nor do I care that it died. However I am vaguely perturbed at how easy it is to get such a site folded up and drop-kicked out of the Internets, or at leastthat which is synonymous with the Internerd, Google. Thankfully, though those vehemently opposed to the site and who threatened to move heaven and earth to eliminate this angry exposé, this web-lurking scourge of the CYFS goon-squad from the face of the planet and who are, presumably, nasty, duplicitous, manipulative devil-worshippers whose nipples dribble black blood, this tangent the site was taken on dealing not with CYFS but some poorly-written aggressive posturing aimed at a political Muppet could not IN ANY WAY have been carried out by someone connected to the site-killing campaign. At all. Agent provocateurs are French and fifth columnists are a thing of Len Deighton novels. And fat jowl-jiggling thugs with leftie-bashing blogs who quote the attacks verbatim to show how Bad and Wrong people are should be drowned in pig-fat, but that’s another story.

Good afternoon.

Today I shall be annoyed by... (Spins Wheel of Irritation) The Police. Don't stand so close to me...

RSJS writes:

“Our sincere thoughts are extended to all those persons involved and their supporting families”

This line comes from a mostly-automated police letter sent out to advise people investigating a serious crash that the serious crash goon squad are still measuring skid-marks (snigger). And the longer I stare at it, the less it makes sense.

Not merely because this letter was sent to me and I’m far more interested in the report from the poor gumbooted sod out mopping gravel-thickened blood off the motorway than whether a machine is extending sincere thoughts at random strangers, but also because the whole extending-of-sincere-thoughts creeps me out. A lot. I keep thinking about some kind of earnest Mormon xenomorph with eight Aryan-blue eyes and a long proboscis bristling with mind-control whiskers trying to dry-fuck my ear and control my thoughts. Sincerely.

…not to mention the phrase doesn’t give an inkling about the sordid nature of the thoughts themselves. Frankly, I think the Plod sincerely think those involved in this matter were bipedal cockroaches crushed by the vindictive hand of Old-Testament Jehovah (which would make for a good brand of sippin’ whiskey… “80-proof Old Testament Jehovah – God’s Wrath in a Bottle”) and so can extend their sincere thoughts of “Ha hah, squashed like bugs. LIKE BUGS!” to those random “persons” they might be thinking about.

And is the supporting family a slight on those who aren’t being nice enough to crash victims? No extended proboscis-sincerity for families in general, only “supporting” ones. By whose definition? How supportive must one be to get a sincere thought from a policeman’s porn-choked ‘puter? Donating-a-kidney support or text-message-of-sympathy lip-service support? Are we graded on a curve? How can we check? Who should I be talking to? Why won’t you love me? WHY?

…and the next sentence of the letter’s no better…

A pinch of prevention is worth a pound of cure

RSJS writes:

Right, the scenario: You’re young, you’re angry, you’re funded by family, what can you do but buy a car that screams “penis” when you floor the accelerator? Then you soup it up with some widgets and gizmos so it flashes, grunts and winks like a dirty old man in the park and let it loose on the populace. In this car you are capable of going somewhere near light-speed in second gear, and though “The Man” is trying to keep you down, you yell obscenities at the law and go nought to Plaid in four seconds flat.

By the fourth second you’re over the curb of your North Shore suburb, ploughing a red furrow through a few schoolkids staggering home under the weight of their many cellphones, laptops, Hello Kitty lunch pails and pneumatic face-wrenching teeth braces, skidding on your alloy rims along the pavement to the detriment of a few lampposts before finally running out of puff halfway through the fence of the nearby church. Blood on the windscreen, powerlines arcing about killing timid kittens on their first day out in the big wide world, the neighbourhood awash with leaking petrol and the corpses of the uneducated and young in your wake…

…and yes folks, that’ll get you arrested by large men in black gloves. And charged with reckless this, speeding that, criminal the other. It’s pound-in-the-arse prison and debt for eternity, miladdo. Your car is a write-off and there’s a quarter-million-dollar swathe of destruction ending at it’s deflating back tyres. Justice does its worst.

Thankfully, you have that most magical of things, insurance. Which will pay for a new car, new lampposts, new kittens, new clothes for the newly-twisted cripples, the works. No matter what horrors you inflict with your land-speed-record attempt, if you’ve got the money to get decent insurance, the cost of the crime won’t catch you.

And even better, to mollify the courts wanting to drop the book on your flat head you can buy off the victims with a bit o’ restitution, which looks spiffy in court when you shed a tear and tell of how you’ve already given the distraught families thousands of dollars that won’t bring Timmy back but will ensure his tombstone is a shiny marble edifice rather than a stick with “Tim” carved in it with a Stanley knife jammed in the unforgiving dirt. And yes, if the numbers are right and your canny insurer thinks it’ll lessen other fines and reparations the court might hand down, they’ll stump up the folding stuff for that, too.

You can insure yourself against the cost of committing antisocial acts. Bars can be covered for the fines and stand-down periods enforced when they’re nabbed for selling hooch to minors. Businesses who kill employees through anything from malfunctioning cranes to people-eating grinders can have their fines covered, too. The only lesson these fines now teach are that it’s better to spend a few bucks a month on broadform cover than actually face up to your varying sins.
My question is: Is this a bad thing?

Jack-bot fascism

RSJS writes:

On behalf of the management we would like to put forward an insincere apology to our many disloyal fans who breeze through this page on their way to sites clogged with pornography and kittens verbing nouns.

We have over the past year been running experiments using random-data generating “bots” to fulfil the role of actual authors. One of these programs was given as source data a copy of “Chicken soup for the soul”, the soundtrack to “Dangerous Minds”, the King James Bible and a number of links to tardblog.com. Others were supplied with the collected works of Tom Wolfe, a faded copy of Razzle and some candy.

The program that was filtering the educational and uplifting data to produce generic heart-warming stories of schoolyard japery and sage words of teacherly wisdom has been running smoothly these past few years, producing Hallmark moments at a rate of one per fortnight as per the operating system’s intent. This program was referred to as Jackbot 1.0.

However, recent software upgrades to Jackbot have meant the productivity settings were restored to factory standards. Unfortunately, Jackbot was built using military-grade blogging software that was code-named “Emo 9000” and designed to produce a steady monologue about weight issues, wrist injuries, and the sheer unfairness of it all. This program was powered by source material culled from MTV websites and a cult site known as “Myspace” and had a capacity that, when unchecked, threatened to crash the internet under the onslaught of quoted song lyrics, high-angled webcam shots, and seven different flavours of whining.

In short, Jackbot 2.0 has started running at industrial Emo 9000 speeds, producing humungous homilies faster and faster, threatening the structural integrity of Brain Stab and possibly the world. Desperate attempts by loyal staff to enter the Jackbot containment area has resulted in death, maimings, and one stern lecture that has traumatized our dear intern Olaf as the software has achieved a degree of rudimentary sentience and can no longer be unplugged. Soon all of the Brain Stab site will be overrun by Jackbot 2.0’s ceaseless productivity and those remaining human bloggers will be forced to flee in small lifeboats fashioned from upturned computer desks. The paddle-potential of keyboards on sticks will be explored.
This may be our last message for we can hear the shuffling of the Jackbot mainframe as it stalks the halls, dragging itself along the tiled floors of Brain Stab HQ using cables and wires exuded from the swollen casing like a wiry metal beard. I can hear the arcing of the electricity. Tell my mother I… like her platonically. Goodbye. .

Little victories

RSJS writes:

So one of my processing monkeys came to me today while I was enjoying a much-deserved mug of warm, milky tea, to ask me if I could help them. You see, they had a claim on file for money taken from a safe in a shop. The intruder had gotten in under the nose of the chap on duty, who was then accosted and tied to a chair by the attacker, who scarpered with a sackful of loot. And this all didn’t sit well with the monkey.

“So what do you have on file to show me what happened?” I asked.

“Security photos” she replied, thumbing through the pages of her big manila folder to find a series of grainy stills, which were thrust under my nose.

And so I sighed, and made a big show of retiring my paperback and iPod and getting my feet off my desk, and sat her down to explain how to turn her gut feeling into an argument.

We have a dozen black and white shots of the office, the crim (in a hoodie) and the heroic employee (also be-hoodie-ed).

“Look here” I point to the office desk in the third photo. Blank stare. “The chap sits our hero down, but doesn’t tie him up right away. So our chap sits quietly on his thumbs while our gunman puts his pistol on a pile of papers and shuffles off to the safe. And doesn’t even look at our hero or the gun for a good thirty seconds. Only after he’s got the goodies does he tape up our man and beetle off. And going by the time-stamp our boy gets out of the ropes in about 2 minutes. Which means?”

“He was scared?” came the timorous reply.

So I sigh again, and display my Powers of a God. For these hapless urchins have tattle-tales on their files that tell me if anything interesting comes in. So I’d already read this file’s electronic copy being a Caring and Conscientious mentor to these lads and lasses. But poor muggins here was unaware. So I looked closely at the picture and said “Our boy looks like he could handle himself” (and he did, big lad, in a camo hoodie, who looked like he hits his heads on doorframes on the way through) “and is probably bent as anything. Anyone that calm is either in on the blag, or used to being around guns. Probably both. See if he’s got a criminal record, the investigator should have done a personal history.”

And lo, page seven of the report did indeed deal with the employee’s vast love of guns and drugs. And the poor lass looks at me in awe at my profiling prowess.

“So” I grandly went on “here we have a con with a gun fetish towering over this lad kneeling on the floor in front of the fast-emptying safe and with a pistol in arm’s reach, not doing anything? Not too likely, is it? Just sitting idly by, not saying anything except the combination to the safe?”

And dawn broke across the tiny dancer’s features. And she enthusiastically started spotting all the other faults with the set-up until I calmed her down and told her to list them so we can get someone burly to chat with our heroic duty manager and hit him with telephone books.

Hopefully my little processing protégé will prove the big angry employee is involved in the goings-on, and the gunslinging crim will in turn get fingered, sending two hoodrats to prison for a long, long time. And I can go home with a feeling that I’ve achieved something positive today. Even though they are really victims and society is to blame for their going off the rails, even though it is a failing on the part of their parents and teachers that led them to this life of amateur crime, they still need to feel the jackboot of justice on their testicles of anti-social behaviour. Hang ‘em high, lads, hang ‘em high.


Nb. details of this crime have been changed to protect my job.

Bristols! Mae Wests! Bodacious Ta-tas!

RSJS writes:

Let's talk about tits.

So as is my wont, I was weaving my solitary way through the sleet and mist and cabbage and kitchen sink to get to work this morning to sit in dazed confusion at the state of the world while the monkeys in the cube farm screech and throw faeces (and yesterday: candy). And I saw the back-end of a bus.

Now this isn’t some snide euphemism for some lass with junk in her trunk (though it is true my anaconda don’t want none unless you’ve got buns), it was actually a bus trundling along New North Road. And on the back was an advert for Dove, a range of random cosmetic-y things that women presumably put on their vaginas or oh, I don’t know, some body-part I don’t have. But have magazines with photos of it in. Anyway, some hygiene shit that rugged musky men like me avoid, just as Dove-twatted shielas avoid me. Why won’t you love me? Why? The pain, it chafes.

What? Right, sorry. Dove. With a slogan that read (it’s not fucking verbatim, I was tired and emotional, okay?) “Buy Pink Dove if you want to help fight breast cancer” and lo and behold the packaging was all pink. A nice soft marshmallow pink, which does indeed remind me of breasts. As do rock melons water balloons basketballs puffer fish small children goldfish bowls Muppets the planets (excluding Saturn) Vin Diesel’s head and punches in the crotch. The point is, the apparent underlying message behind the slogan is “If you DON’T buy our pink Dove crap you’re supporting CANCER, you selfish fuck! If you’re not WITH us, you’re with the TERRORIST TUMOURS! Women are having their disease-ridden bosoms hacked off because of you! Their chests are becoming bloated sacks of life-threatening growths and you, YOU, you’re just sitting there and letting it happen, you filthy dogfucker! What if it was your girlfriend? Or your sister? Or your mother? You want them to die screaming while their breast-lumps shoot fibrous tentacles through their chests to strange their hearts? You want to kill your mother? You sick murdering bastard, how dare you? HOW DARE YOU? We’re TRYING to save LIVES by selling cosmetics here, but you just walk on by and get your value-brand face-scrub dog-piss and let the ladies die in brutal, Elephant-man agony. We hope you CHOKE ON IT!” which presumably they couldn’t fit on the back of the bus while still leaving room for the pink phallic cans of life-saving liquid soap.

I mean, I’m presuming they’re claiming that every can gives one cent to some faceless pharmaceutical zaibatsu who is hoping to find a drug that will postpone one’s cancerous onslaught at least until the sufferer can’t afford exorbitant prices and no-one is interested in their boobies any more, as opposed to this sloppy white goo, when sprayed in slow-motion on the breast, devours cancer cells and shits out sunshine and lollipops, but again fine print was sacrificed for Mister Thrusty the Circumcised Pink Roll-on of Happiness.

It’s not the most subtle campaign, but its effective and I do (thanks to the early-opening Drug Supermarket on Queen Street) now have a mountain of baby-pink eau de toilettey muck as either a charity booby-prize much like a daffodil or red nose, or a cure for my own metastasizing chest-lumps, under my desk (I hasten to add the goo is under my desk, not my lumps. Well, they’re there too, I guess. Damn this is tricky).
The similarities between the way Dove are selling their slop and the American government is selling the Iraq War is startling. Pink states versus Blue states, anyone? Ooooh, the fundamentalists would LOVE that one. But then, if all the ladies die of the galloping tit-rot, there’s not many options left. You got a pretty mouth, boy. Nice pink lips. SQUEAL!.

Opinion piece

RSJS writes:

S’funny, I was put in mind of the debate between opinion and belief recently, and the heavy-handed opinion of some that the difference was their beliefs were right and others’ opinions were wrong. In my opinion opinions are normally wrong as well, but as such, my opinion of this means opinions are by this accounting actually right. Unlike beliefs, which are normally stupid.

Opinions are, as the saying goes, like arseholes – everyone has one and most people don’t want to hear them. There is also the Fat Bastard comment that “everyone likes their own brand” which does neatly explain why people who talk out their arses never put a cork in it no matter how green the audience gets around the gills. From the baked-bean-powered waft on the capital punishment debate to the Rotorua-rectum rotten-egg horror of what to do with that pesky Treaty of Waitangi, people gasbag on for hours bringing lunches to the forefront of throats around them oblivious or uncaring of the sulphur-scented suffering around them.
Where am I going with this? Nowhere in particular. Opinions and beliefs are all very well and good, like sexual fetishes best kept in black sacks under the bed in the hope the unguents and blood won’t stain the carpet. This is of course, my opinion, or possibly my belief. The reason I’m thinking about both these terms is I recently started considering beliefs on opinions (i.e. all opinions are WRONG and should be SPANKED) and opinions on beliefs (i.e. them thar Catholics are cornhole-explorin’ nutfucks) and wondered if one applied an opinion to a belief, does one bolster the other, or cancel it out, or what? Does having an opinion in concordance with a belief weaken the initial subject? Do negative opinions bolster them? People like positive reinforcement of their beliefs, but also like the tinge of martyrdom that being oppressed brings. For every person humping a tree and using the term “skyclad” to pretty up streaking and/or public indecency, praying to their horny god and Diana the Queen of Hearts, full of love and wishing more people understood the wonders of apartheid magic, there’s a dirty hermit in a polar-fleece cloak desperately trying to link their neopagan hobby to the “Burning Times” of yore, standing side-by-side with the centuries-dead midwives to deride society for being closed-minded. For every paint-spattered ponytail on Queen Street trying to sell books for love, there is one getting his jollies at seeing the sinners dooming themselves to eternal worm-feeding while he plays his tambourine for god in a sea of nectar and Ambrose Bierce. I for one often get grumpy at those who share my opinion – I liked ol’ Angelina Jellylips back in the Hackers days (remember that film which claimed geeks were teh kool back in the day but all the geeks howled about technical inaccuracies proving the film was wrong in two ways?) but when she got voted hot totty of the year a while back I realised a few million mouth-breathing guys in caps advertising Mack trucks had dropped their dungarees to worship this woman the only way they knew how – by fucking a stuffed raccoon called Bowzer they got in trade for their wife’s anal virginity. And I did not want to be associated with such vermin, for unlike them my raccoon loves me. LOVES ME GOOD. Or take the “Paedophiles against G.E.” in the anti future-crop march some years back – so many right-on hemp-eaters got offended at those who supported their cause, as if only clean-living people whose cocks have never been wiped clean on a pair of Huggies get to be shrill and reactionary about science they only heard about from a guy named Stu who peddles GM super-sticky Pepe le Peu-strength skunk from a tinnie house in Grey Lynn. Summed up nicely in the Abyss when a chap turns to Hippy who was agreeing with him about hot rods of the gods and says “Stay off my side”.
Which is a long-winded way of me saying I’m not sure if people prefer me to be supportive of their dabbling in the scribbling of a Crowley cohort who decided to strike off on his own in the 50s and come up with a cult that involved a lot of nudity and heterosexual indoctrination, or resoundingly mocking of their broomsticks and soft-toy familiars. In fact, I personally believe (based on my reactions to people’s attitudes/opinions/beliefs/thoughts/flatulence) that we’re contrary fuckers and whatever someone’s opinion is, unless we happen to be having sex with that person right at that moment (and doing well, I might add) we’ll want to disagree. So a positive opinion might be seen as obsequious while a negative one could be oppressive. Perhaps the reason people forever think opinions are wrong is we like to respond negatively to another’s input? Are we that self-destructive?
Having consulted my Magic 8-ball, signs point to “yes”.

Goffic Art. Oh, dear lord.

RSJS writes:

This week's theme is: Brazen self-aggrandisement. Because none of you bastards will do it for me:

Clicky here for the art-whoring

Come one, come all, make me famous.

The turd jog I should be drooling

RSJS writes:

Fuck? Oh, boyo’s getting ideas again. It’s all about themes for him. Oysters in lycra and themes. Theeeeeeeeemes. First the little hooligan pisses on our perfectly functional sexual escapades with themes: I mean, prisons, hospitals, harems, “Morthos She-wolf of the SS”, all good ideas, but the lisping sanitation-worker and the mutant crab fantasy? The heroic oven-cleaner drinker and his incontinent sidekick Stumbling Al? I still have burn marks on my oesophagus, and he still has photos of same. It just ruined what was until that palaver a good hearty male bondage exercise. And now he’s applying it to Brain Stab. I don’t trust ‘im, you just wait: I’m going to be waking up in a Taiwanese jail with the entirety of this fucking post tattooed in calligraphic script from my arsehole to my shoulderblades.


Heh, shoulder “blades”. I have so much back fat they ain’t blades, they’re clubs. But I digress…


And what really wrinkles my nutsac? The fact that he sends out cryptic “Send me your data, weaselly greasemonkey, you are teh late with making me joy!” emails without, y’know, helping a brother out and reminding me what the theme is on the off-chance I deleted every previous email marked “Brothers and sisters I have a theme…” and went back to the therapy. The expensive, expensive therapy. The rank little tweetle beetle.


…one hurried trawl through the deleted items…


“The third job I could be doing”. Ooh, er? In other words he’s got a good idea for a post and the rest of us can just suffer. Apparently I am going to suffer the pain and ignominy of having his glorious post etched into the pink skin of my back and bum.


Hang on, THAT’S the third job I could be doing: The first is God-emperor of everyone’s pants, the second was the heroic oven-cleaner (“Dave” I think he was called), and the third one could be back-up tape for Brain Stab with the wondrous words of the contributors lovingly, copperplatingly preserved under my skin. Yeah, a walking database of the piffle and wank these gutsacks of cheese splatter chunkily across your screen every time you scroll by. They’re firing cheddar-flavoured sperm at your monitor, and now that will be spread across my body.



Jesus that’s so FUCKING wrong.


Oh, and "pie".

Sort of like iron.

RSJS writes:

Fucking theme week, isn't it? How ironic I've misplaced the shite I wrote for it. Which isn't actually hesitation, it's incompetent boobery. I'm sure I'll find it but then be hesitant to post it outside the bounds of theme week so my lesser-known moment of hesitation is next week, and forever after. Except it's not lesser known now all you melon farmers know about it. I must therefore eat your brains and devour my secrets. Stand up and prepare for head-gobbling.

...oh for the love of Allah PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON.

Shameless self-promotion.

RSJS writes:

.

Excited yet?

Hands up mother fuckers…

RSJS writes:

So I want to meet you weird-arsed monkey fucks whose idea of fun is to wave cellular telephones displaying horribly-abbreviated text-speak at my good friend Jack. So I can slap you, you bizarre dead ends in the evolutionary bush.

The reason I presume a legion of people have been doing this is a comment from recent cell-phone user, Jack. Someone who admits to having never given his number to most of his dear sweet friends, like me. He says:

“Most of the people I know with cellphones spell the word “you” with one letter – and yet the predictive text program on my phone assumes that these illiterates are more likely to type the word “enzyme” than “down”?”

Now, Jacko has never received a text from me, and ignores what few he gets from his other friends, the very few who even know his number. So his exposure to these misspellings don’t come via his own telephone, and he is unable to label any of his normal circle of friends (numbering at least into double digits) as vicious you/u spellers given their inability to display their text-prowess at him. So it must be due to random rag-clad sweaty people, in numbers enough to make a clear majority in Jack’s life, flailing Nokias in his hairy face showing their inept thumb-driven “u”-spattered typing on their wee green screens presumably while yelling “Oi” or something equally engaging.

I cannot conceive of another explanation.

Out of sight, out of your mind...

RSJS writes:

So, the snipers who peer through my bedroom window and watch my pale arse as it thrashes in my satin sinkhole of a bed through the long nights of torment are getting angry. Poor snipers, those long-suffering sharpshooting types with their good bladder control and “one-shot-one-kill” t-shirts and guns they probably paint veins down the barrels of when no-one’s watching.

Why are they up in arms? Why are the coordinated squadrons of stealthy murderers that dot or fair city getting itchy trigger fingers? I’ll tell you why: Their lines of sight are being scuppered and skyscrapered.

The wanton development of Auckland into some vast concrete Megapolis is threatening the “cultural” and “aesthetic” lines of sight that dot the landscape and allegedly mean everyone can see the volcanoes that remind our city of its mortality. These ticking lava-filled zits waiting for god’s teenaged fingers to rupture them and squirt hot magma and pus across the metaphysical mirror of heaven. What those who installed these “Sightlines” didn’t mention was that if we can see the mountain, the mountain can see US (As in an emphasis-added capital “us” not the U.S. given the world being ROUND you stupid flat-earth creationist trouser-wearers). Oh yes, Big Brother has been perching assassins across the city atop these defensible positions for decades now and finally anarchists have infiltrated the business armed forces and council commando squads to lofty-enough positions to be able to strike a blow for personal freedom by building towering blocks of unaffordable housing to block out the laser-sights and armour-piercing rounds of the black-clad death-freaks. And the killers are sad. And, I’m told, a bit lame live, which is also sad.

For too long the so-called “Heritage” types have been hiding their desire to control the country and their twisted ability to decimate the population with a word, pretending to be about keeping Aotearoa green while the true bastions of liberty have been pinstriping and boot-strapping up through the corridors of power to use multinational billboards and faceless corporate edifices to break up the natural beauty of the city that is cruelly used to target us all with hollowpoint death from above. I say support the conglomerates who wish us safe in our beds while the Clean Green Killing Machines smoke their hemp trousers and dream of a world where my skull is ventilated with lead. Save yourselves, save your children, ask for a big distracting Golden Arch effigy in YOUR garden today!