Appropriate Acronym

Out of habit and a certain tendency toward masochism, I always search the local news websites for 'leaky'; and this morning that resulted in an advertising link to a website that would explain the implications of the FAP.
What?

No, really.
I followed it and discovered that this is the chosen acronym for the Financial Assistance Package which is the latest Government scheme to make leaky home owners morally and financially responsible for the state of their homes. Basically : New Zealand suffers from a huge leaky home problem because the Government undermined the safety checks in the building industry and the local Councils who earn a great deal of money from the inspection processes legally required in the construction of a house failed hopelessly in those processes; so now the Government plans to pay 50% of the amount it will cost to fix the problem, the Councils will pay a further 25% and it is for the homeowner to find the rest. Oh, and you get the money AFTER the house has been fixed, so you can imagine the builders lining up for that bargain; that's if you can convince the bank to lend you 25% of the total cost of fixing a leaky home with that loan  being predicated on - wait, let me think - oh yes, a LEAKY HOME. Good luck with that one.
So all in all, given the colloquial meaning of FAP, perhaps it is an apt acronym after all.

It's 11.11 on 11.11.11!

Well, it is in New Zealand, and so, it just has to be done!

A small oversight

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/8031618/New-Zealand-scraps-ridiculous-road-rule.html
New Zealand drivers drive on the left, in much the same way as the UK and Australia. New Zealand does however have a unique road rule which states that the vehicle turning right has the right of way. Think about that one.It leads to a number of surreal situations, such as the one I always face when going from my home to the local shopping centre :

I'm in the blue car, wanting to turn left. The oncoming white car wants to turn right and he has the right of way; but obviously can't turn right if there's a car behind me that is going straight; so this means I  have to check my rear-view mirror before turning left; and you can imagine the potential for disaster here.

The rule apparently dates from 1977 and is based on a rule introduced in Victoria (Australia) which helped cope with trams, of which there are a severe lack in New Zealand (except one in Christchurch), so go figure.

So as you would expect, this change is going to have to be preceded by a massive information campaign with very clear cut-off points. And what date is New Zealand going to be carrying out this change?

April 1st, 2012. Yep, that's right. An entire Government department failed to spot that introducing a major change of this nature on this date might just Not End Well, and it was left to the Transport Ministers' private secretary Monique Waayer, to ask the question, "Are we confident that April Fool's day is the right date?".

Massive facepalm!

Is it just me...

or are the hackers getting lazier? I mean, really. I only occupy them for twenty minutes or so on the phone explaining that I have no computer literacy whatever and let them talk me through all the stuff they need me to do in order for them to mine useful stuff off my computer before going "But does this work on a Mac?" or "which IP address is the infected one; we have 17 computers in the house - what do you mean you don't know which IP address it is, how the hell are you monitoring it if you don't have an IP address?"; which I think is enough fun on both sides.
Now they're sending me emails inviting me to log on to obscure sites for support; because that's easier than having to figure out how to hack in when you have an obstinate, obtuse and obfuscating user on the phone. Please, it really does match up with the joke about the lazy Irish hacker who emails you asking you to delete all your own files and send them your credit card information because they can't be bothered.

Zombie Cat

And so, it being school holidays, Honourable Son was up late killing things in horrific ways on the computer, accompanied by his faithful cat, Alley. Because said cat is black, when Honourable Son caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye, he looked down to discover one of his worst nightmares was coming true.

ZOMBIE.....CAT.......OOOOOOOZING............BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIN!!!!!!!!!!

There was this huge bubble of white stuff exuding from the cat's head. The cat, in fairness, did not look menacing, more puzzled. Honourable Son finally managed to move his legs, went and got some paper towel, and tried to collect the brain, at which point it became clear that it was not, in fact, brain, but pus.
I'm impressed with his presence of mind. He held the cat still and squeezed his head until it stopped oozing, then he hurtled upstairs and fetched the Dettol and dabbed the cat's head with that. Apparently EEEEEWWWWWW does not begin to cover it (this from someone who had to stop slicing trolls in half and splattering blood all over the landscape in order to de-pus the cat).
He gave me chapter and verse when I got home from work the next day, while he was getting frustrated with the Internets. To get his mind off things, I offered to drive him to the dairy for a Coke; and when we got back we were greeted in the driveway by a cat who now appeared to be oozing strawberry yoghurt from his head. He hurtled in and dropped his Coke (get your priorities right, I always say) while I hurtled upstairs and got witch hazel, came back for paper towel and met him in the lounge with said cat in his arms.
He's good with animals, obviously, because Alley patiently sat there and purred while we alternately dabbed and squeezed till what was coming out was in fact watery blood and it had largely stopped. At this point I dabbed on witch hazel, and the cat departed to find out if there was food in his bowl. Clearly at some point he had been in a fight, and got a scratch on his head; as is the way with cats the skin closes over while the scratch festers beneath.
Honourable Son, having kept up a nonstop running commentary on how disgusting it all was and how the original explosion had looked like cream and the later ooze like strawberry ice-cream, observed at this point that he was going to be suffering from some serious food issues for the rest of his life.                  
I just phoned home to find out how the cat was doing and Honourable Son tells me Alleys' head exploded again - this time from a different scratch.
Wonder if they make cat-sized crash helmets?

Hmm. Cyclists.

It's winter, it's New Zealand, my daughter is past 12 and so it follows, we have netball at the AMI Centre in Takapuna on a Saturday morning.
If I ever find myself somehow holding the responsibility of building a netball centre, there are a few things I will focus on.
Enough space between courts for anyone over the size of a bulemic dormouse to make their way courtside and back.
Time displays that do not ensure emergency calls to another generation of Auckland neck massage therapists.
Weather protection.
Parking that actually takes into account the possible numbers of netballers wanting to be in the same space at the same time.
So. The parking is diabolical, and I don't even contemplate it; I pull into the convenient layby, drop my daughter, and go and park in Australia and walk back.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.
Walking back this last week, I looked over my right shoulder and mouthed astonishment at the carpark madness. As I did, a lady exited the carpark and aimed for the entrance of the Poenamo Hotel, directly over the road, where a few parking spaces might still exist. She had to dart pretty smartly over the west-bound bit of road, because the lights had changed; she did that and then braked sharply because a couple of cyclists were east-bound and crossing the entrance of the Poenamo. No biggie, they were the only traffic.
Except they obviously were startled, and swerved, though they didn't need to.
She (as it turns out) carried on cycling. He did not.
The motorist pulled into the entrance of the Poe, stopped, wound down her window and started to apologise. Which is as far as she got.
All I could think was - you kiss your mother with that mouth?
He unleashed the most foul-mouthed diatribe on her I have ever heard; and I've been to Wembley, people.
At a point he had his hands inside her window, threatening to 'f***ing smash you, you f***ing b**ch, you cow, you ..."
I had my camera and my phone in my pocket (I'm such a netball mum) so I pulled them out, pointed out I could use them both at once (they're SO clever, these Japanese!) and also told him that (a) he and his partner were never in danger and he was overreacting (b) he was using language highly inappropriate for a venue hosting sporting events for children anywhere between 5 and 18 and (c) he was a total douche. He informed me that his partner was f***ing pregnant; so I suggested he ride after her and guard her. Luckily, we both saw the wisdom of this course of action.
Poor lady was shaking like a leaf; but was planning to park up anyway, so she did not accept my suggestion of me driving her anywhere, or getting a sugary drink of some sort, which I think is what you do for people in shock.
Way to garner motorist sympathy, Mr Cyclist.

And on a hilarious footnote : http://shelleytherepublican.com/2007/06/21/cyclists-the-two-wheeled-menace.aspx

So, on the theme of Annoying Things that Annoy me

..here is one of my favourites.

Given the two facts that motorists are meant to be keeping their eyes on the road ahead and that the Western mind is inclined to read down from the top of the page, I do not know WHO came up with the notion that the word order in road markings should be reversed, so that you end up blinking stupidly over the bonnet and wondering where the "Give" is in "Give Way". The answer is : under your tyres.
Why do they bother doing an eye test for a New Zealand road licence, when clearly the common condition is supposed to be shortsightedness?
Or do they assume, in these days of the Nanny State where Big Brother wil do your thinking for you, that we only have enough mental capacity to process the meaning of one word at a time?
In which case the road marking outside the Corelli School says it all.

Child

That

Mind

Class, brains and charm

She's a real keeper, Richie!

Things that annoy me about the All Black rugby jersey fruckus

OK, let me start by saying that the MOST annoying thing about the news articles following the matter is the continuing pandering to the insistence of A Certain Sports Brand that their name is not capitalised. Adidas (see, I can do it, it follows a fullstop) have a permanent ban on following the common dictates of grammar.Sigh.
"In English, we capitalise words that are proper nouns—that is, they describe a specific thing or entity. They could be a title, a name, or a specific place such as the president's residence: [THEE] White House.
We lowercase words that are considered common nouns—that is, they can be used to describe many things, such as any one of the multitude of white colored houses in the world."
Adidas, that non-specific and common sports brand, are at the centre of a controversy caused by the fact that they are charging residents of New Zealand (that country where the Rugby World Cup is being held) close to 57% more for a jersey, replica of those worn by the All Blacks (the national team of New Zealand) than they are charging anyone else in the world. Adidas New Zealand manager Dave Huggett describes this as 'fair and reasonable' because if they don't do that, they won't be able to 'invest anything in this country for the next 12 months'.
Is it just me, or does that mean New Zealanders who buy the All Black jersey will be the ones paying for all investment in New Zealand rugby for the next 12 months? We will effectively become the sponsors of the All Blacks?
Does that mean we may once again see grammatically correct sports advertising? Because if so, bring it on!
The second most annoying thing about the whole debacle is the addition of the acronym WAG to the New Zealand vernacular. WAG was first used to describe the filthy-rich, spoiled and attention-seeking coterie of football Wives And Girlfriends that did not so much follow the England football team around as try to lead it by  the - well, you know. The term has now been applied to one Nicola Grigg, girlfriend of Al Black captain Richie McCaw, who is weighing in with an opinion on the jersey debate. What does she have to say? This, on Twitter.
"Why the hell shd @adidas change it's prices?? It's like me telling Louis V I won't buy their bags anymore bcos they're too $$$."
Two salient facts.
Louis Vuitton bags cost anywhere between $570 and $5802.
Louis Vuitton had not, last time I checked, established an international reputation for rugby.
I would have called this next statement a fact except it's an opinion : the fashion industry is the worst waste of space in the world and its immediate demise would affect few people per capita, and just possibly would lead to luvvies everywhere raising their eyes from their swollen egos and noticing that many people in the world have Real Problems Not Of Their Own Doing. Death, disease, daily terror, deprivation and despair just for instance.
The notion of Ms Grigg righteously refusing to pay for an overpriced piece of baggage makes me chortle; because trust me, if she won't pay for it, some other fool will only be too happy to be parted from their money. At least, I hope it's her money she is notionally going to retain. After all if the only money That Sporting Company can spare to invest in New Zealand in the next year is the profit it is making off New Zealand rugby supporters, I'd prefer to see it funnelled into rugby than overpriced toys for overgrown spoilt teenage girls.

FACEPALM

From the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang:

phenom

 Home > Library > Literature & Language > Oxford Slang

noun, US

Something remarkable or 'phenomenal', esp. an unusually gifted person, prodigy. (1881 —) .

New Yorker : He has a series of run-ins with a militant black rookie phenom (1986).

[Shortened from phenomenon.]

Please note that last sentence. There was already a perfectly good word to describe this sportsman, but Americans have chosen to shorten it and as always, the rest of the English-speaking world is following like wiggly puppies.

Dansk (Danish) n. - fænomen

Nederlands (Dutch) zeer begaafd en veelbelovend iemand, fenomeen

Français (French) n. - phénomène

Deutsch (German) n. - (ugs.) sehr begabte Person

Italiano (Italian) fenomeno

Português (Portuguese) n. - fenômeno (m)

Nobody else feels the need to shorten the word. What, does it concentrate the meaning? Are celebrities more famous because they’re celebs, and can you fit more into 24/7 than you can into all the time?

And this brings me to the shoe-in.

It’s a SHOO-IN, dammit!

Michael Quinione puts this much better and more politely than I can.

“SHOO-IN

This one is spelled wrongly so often that it’s likely it will eventually end up that way. The correct form is shoo-in, usually with a hyphen. It has been known in that spelling and with the meaning of a certain winner from the 1930s. It came from horse racing, where a shoo-in was the winner of a rigged race.

In turn that seems to have come from the verb shoo, meaning to drive a person or an animal in a given direction by making noises or gestures, which in turn comes from the noise people often make when they do it.”

THANK YOU!

Common Sense and Spell Checks

                Back when I was looking for the sort of career I could combine with childcare (this was before I had children, which is hands-down the best time to have theories about combining careers with childcare) I did a copy-editing course and applied to several publishers. One of them wrote back to say that they already had a full complement of excellent copy-editing staff and doubted the ability of a computer nerd to find any errors in one of their books. As it happened, they were the publishers of “The Witches’ Hammer” so I wrote back to them pointing out the scene in which the heroine is in bed with one of the red shirts strong male characters, where they are sharing a glass of red wine and smoking. The heroine crushes out her cigarette in the wineglass EEW EEW EEW EEW!!!!. Two paragraphs later she raises the wine glass to her mouth and takes a deep drink. Now personally I really hope she got a bad dose of nicotine poisoning and spent the afternoon talking to God on the great white china telephone, and the author merely covered for her by saying she travelled back home with a new awareness of the vulnerability of trusting humans; but on a less personal  level  there’s a copy editor there who needs to have their knuckles rapped and a motivational SPELL CHECKS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR COMMON SENSE sign nailed to their forehead.

I still didn’t get the job.

I’m probably getting old and crabby – oh, scratch the probably. But I am intensely irritated by sloppiness in writing. I’m reading True Evil now, and the engaging story is starting to suffer severe interruption from the careless errors. Our heroine recalls her father, a police detective, whose two unforgettable characteristics are his impeccable police work and his habit of saying exactly what he thinks to whoever is listening. A page later she compares him to the hero doctor, because apparently they are both quiet men. And a few pages later she recalls the amount of time he spent with his only grandson; more than he had spent with herself and her sister, because back then when they were young he was building a business. Honey, these three men you call Daddy may well be admirable characters, but only one of them is biological. And all this was before a species of cobra was described as one of the ‘shiest’ of his genus. Maybe use the spell check and the common sense?

And that applies to the papers in double measure. Although  maybe common sense is unto paparazzi as Pluto is to an ant. Take this lovely statement from the Daily Mail regarding Emma Watson modelling some improbably expensive stuff:

“The 21-year-old is dripping in the latest designer creations from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent to Emilio Pucci in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.”

Well, is she dripping, or is she wearing?

Wearing.       Dripping.    Which is it?

And then there’s this faithfully reported gem from none other than that modest humanitarian, Paris Hilton :  'All girls worry about their weight and I’m no different, except for the fact that when I gain a pound the whole world thinks I’m fat.'

Cheer up. I can assure you that the families of 11000 dead and missing Japanese tsunami victims, 147 Christchurch earthquake victims and 35 victims of the Afghanistan suicide bomb attack are not glued to their televisions and radios waiting with bated breath for the Paris Hilton Weight Gain Report.

Perhaps common sense is not as common as one would assume

False Alarm

                                                                Worried Citizen
        Panic Station
        At My Wits End
        1 July 2011

Miller PR
(Publicist for Paris Hilton)
8322 Beverly Blvd.
Suite 201
Los Angeles, CA 90048
USA

Dear Miller PR

I have just been reading the UK Daily Mail and was devastated when I saw the following statement by Miss Hilton:

"She added: 'All girls worry about their weight and I’m no different, except for the fact that when I gain a pound the whole world thinks I’m fat.'"

I immediately let the paper fly  into the morning breeze, ran to the nearest Internet café and flung the incumbent teenager off his chair so that I could locate your address and urge you to communicate to Miss Hilton that she is mistaken.

I personally never think of Miss Hilton, except when such attention-grabbing nuggets of her wisdom quoted by the press impel me to open the associated article in the full expectation that she had suddenly discovered the link between proper nutrition and the ability to make two brain cells communicate with each other :

Disappointed as I was to conclude that this was not in fact the case, I nonetheless urge you to reassure Miss Hilton that when she gains a pound it is in fact the whole world – 1 that thinks she is fat.

Yours sincerely

Gobsmacked.

Just the Way You Are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk

The song above is the one Shani is currently working on. It requires some weird tuning that I have never in my guitar-loving life heard of. Luckily, her guitar tutor has; and also luckily, he is happy to (a) let her learn it and (b) tune her guitar for her.

Which leads us to a problem. Once her guitar is tuned for that, she can't play anything else on it. She CAN tune her guitar back to normal, but then, obviously, she can't play Just The Way You Are.

So we came up with a plan.

She has an accoustic guitar, and an electric guitar. The accoustic guitar is a 3/4 size one; it's the one on which she learned to play; and though she still loves it, the electric one is getting more air time at the moment, and that's the one her guitar teacher tuned for her.

So we sat down and she played string for string on her electric guitar while I listened and tuned her accoustic guitar for her; then I tuned her electric guitar back to normal. So now she can practice Just The Way You Are on her accoustic guitar and everything else on her electric guitar.

This still leaves us with the problem that there are songs that need to be practised on the accoustic guitar and now can't be, without losing the special tuning.

However, she's 13 now, and grown enough that she could in fact use a full-size accoustic guitar; and what do you know, there's one of those upstairs. Mine, unused for some 25 years now. That being the case, the strings are so tense that if they snap they'll have her eye out. So, I restrung it last night.

And, inevitably, remembered one of the last times I played it. It was at my Mum's place, and we had had a visit from Uncle Piet and Aunt Bunny; and as he loved music himself, he asked me to play, and I did.
So the last time those strings were played, two people that I loved and have lost were listening to them. My Mum and Uncle Piet are no longer with us. 

Sentimental fool that I am, I couldn't throw the bent strings away afterwards.

Two nice men

The first one is called Devi, and he works for technical support. Somewhere; he wasn't specific about it; what he was specific about was that Support had detected a malicious virus on my computer and he was ringing me to talk me through evacuating it.
Since my jaw had dropped I was unable to reply, so he clarified by adding, "Your Microsoft Office computer. We are monitoring it and detected this virus."
"Which one?" I asked.
"The Mi-cro-soft-Off-ice one." He had obviously concluded he was talking to an idiot.
"I see, " I said, "but which Mi-cro-soft-Off-ice one?"
"Do you have more than one? How many are there?"
"Tell you what, you tell me the IP address of the Mi-cro-soft-Off-ice com-pu-ter that has the virus and we'll work from there."
"We don't have that information."
"Then how the hell are you monitoring it?"
Click.
And then this morning there was an email from Eric - I used to go to school with Eric and he and I are Facebook friends - asking me to join Netlog because it would make picture-sharing easier, so I did. And not long after there was an email from Netlog with a message from the second nice man - one Denzel, who is clearly so head over heels in love with me that he has totally lost his grip on grammar.

The angel on my eyes is clearly wearing jackboots, since it has given me a headache. What I do find funny though is the fact that the profile he mentions - my Facebook one - has this photo:

Kiwi biltong

No, seriously. NO, SERIOUSLY!!!!

Now, where I come from (South Africa, for anyone confused about that), when you call it beef biltong, it comes from a cow, and when you call it ostrich biltong - you have a fit and possibly demented butcher. (Ostriches can run 62 mph and disembowel humans with their claws; this may be one of the reasons ostrich biltong is so highly prized).
So I have to say the product pictured above seems illegal, immoral or just plain unfair, given the kiwi is a small, flightless, protected bird.
Also, they are going to run out of supplies fast.

Sir! Drop the offensive weapons and put your hands on your head NOW!

Neil Gaiman is a genius

Okay, I'm sure everyone already knows that; but I am here to tell you Neil Gaiman's take on Dr Who and the Tardis really, really, takes him into another dimension of genius.
Spoiler alert.
Humans. So much bigger on the inside than the outside.
And that's ALL I'm saying. Watch it, folks. Your brains may hurt, but in a pleasurable way.

Plank-tonne

Rapture Zombies!

Report follows in the wake of the postponement of the end of the world to October 21st.

Upcoming rapture to include zombies! the Christian Post reports: "Doomsday preacher Harold Camping predicted Monday that corpses of the 'unsaved', which includes those in the US armed services, will be flung out of their graves and on the ground like 'manure' on October 21 ...
But then again, he also thinks sheep are the way forward: "Our job right now is to feed the sheep," Camping said on his radio show. "Millions have become saved and many of them ... know very little about the word of God. And now we have a tremendous task to nurture them."
And now we know where Harold the Flying Sheep got his ideas….

June 1st; and that's all Im saying about that.

Pippa Middleton and the photo epidemic

Oh SNAP, TWO Middleton girls were pictured looking rather lovely last weekend, and out came the vultures.

LET US IMMEDIATELY HAVE A WITCH-HUNT!

Yes, I know a wedding was involved; this is probably a legitimate excuse for at least one of them. I am not good at blogging that stuff; I'll leave it to those who are, and stick to the bits that annoy me.

"At least seven U.S. websites are running the photos showing Miss Middleton stripped to a purple push up bra and flimsy white slip with an half-naked unknown companion doing a 'bump and grind' dance behind her. " We're talking the Not-Duchess-of-Cambridge here.
Wow, a whole seven? Can we do an Osama comparison now, or would that just be too disheartening?
Now, let's just examine the newsworthy items enumerated in that sentence.
A purple push up bra. That wicked girl, why did she not do the respectable thing and purchase immediately upon puberty a drag-down bra? Possibly not in purple? Total proof of degeneracy, if you ask me. Frankly, the damn bra looks much like every one I wore up till pregnancy; except not purple. Also, I think the fashion industry might have something to say about PURPLE. Amethyst, Antique Fuschia, Bright Lavender, Bright Ube, Byzantine, Ceil, Dark Orchid, Dark Pastel Purple...we could be here all night.
Flimsy white slip. Well, there you go! Why not an unflimsyone? News for you, people - they only come in flimsy; that's the point of the damn things. They are meant to shield modesty invisibly, as opposed to being stronger and thicker than the garments they are assisting, thus rendering them superfluous. The garments, I mean.
Half-naked unknown companion - hmm, there are two ways to read this and the photo seems to indicate that the half that was naked was the legal half, so to speak. The fact that he is unknown to the DM is probably a blessing for the poor bugger. Seems he was not unknown to his dance companion, nor was he forcing himself upon her, nor was she actually forcing him to be half-naked at the time, so I can't see any real cause for anyone beside the two clearly responsible (well, OK LEGALLY responsible adults) to get upset, but - ah, now we come to it, the BUMP and GRIND dance behind her.
Now, all I've seen (and I can't claim I've done an exhaustive search, because I have a life) is a PHOTO. Repeat after me, PHOTO.  Essentially this involves NO MOVEMENT. The author of the article infers a bump-and-grind dance; and I am happy for that author that they had a youth adventurous enough to imagine such a scenario, but mmmmmmm, projection?
But I guess "Holiday photograph of Miss Middleton relaxing in beach wear dance contest" is hardly likely to sell many papers.
I feel a Bah Humbug coming on.

Cross Country

Literally. We live on the sticky-out bit (as my daughter describes it) on the East Coast of New Zealand marked A, and the golf course she was playing today is on the West Coast, marked by B. It takes an hour. New Zealand is a *very* tiny country.

Differences? WAVES! Whenever we want to have fun belly-boarding, we cross country to Piha or Muriwai for the purpose. Muriwai is a famous black-sand beach. This is where Bruce McLaren of Team McLaren raced for practice. However, I have never been to Muriwai Golf Course; and such was my purpose today.
Beloved Daughter has done rather well at golf of late. Last week she spent three days up in Whangerei, having been selected for the Northland Quadrangular Girls golf tournament; this week came word that she was playing in the North Harbour foursomes, which feature six player per round in three pairs; thereby clearly demonstrating nothing at all to do with the number four.
Rained all the way and rained on us at setup time, thus ensuring that my hair would resemble a badly-washed paintbrush for the duration of the game. Then it cleared up and we had sunshine for holes 10-18 and a bit of 1 and 2, before the skies dimmed and the rain and wind returned for the remainder.
Beloved Daughter did rather well, ending fourth Stableford (don't ask. I have it on good authority).

Change of plan. Write bestseller, retire to this part of country.

Funky Gibbons

So, ballet concert night. One that could put my lot to shame, mind you. Admittedly the focus of the school is on stagecraft; and if that was what I was after this place would have my hands-down vote. They make a promise that your child "WILL be in the next full stage production", and by God, if someone has to suit the brat up in a full-body fur cover and kick them onto the stage to skid into position, so your kid WILL be in the next production.
OK, I exaggerate. But not by a lot.
Anyway; all very spectacular and full of showmanship, and my Beloved Daughter's friend should be proud of herself; she has clearly put in a lot of hard work and performed brilliantly. The Riverdance sequence was amazing, truly amazing; and the one en-pointe dance was spectacularly professional; I actually got to my feet to applaud that girl. Which is more than I did during the Funky Gibbon.
I. Do. Not. Pay. To. Attend. Ballet. Concerts. Where. I. Am. Expected. To. Stand. Up. And. Do. The. Funky. Gibbon. Especially to cover a major backstage scenery shift. Imagine the audience being told to hop up and do the hokey-pokey while the stagehands shift the castle so Odette can perch on a windowsill and watch Odile do thirty-two fouettes, I do not bloody think so.
Okay, technically I did not pay to attend this ballet concert. Beloved Daughters' friends' parents did (have I lost any orphan apostrophes there?) in much the same way as we buy tickets for them for Shani's ballet school concerts (please God not an empty auditorium) but the principle remains. Either way, I found myself sitting next to the Glowering Russian Mother, who is (happily) no longer glowering. This may have to do with New Man at her side. I'm happy for her. Russian Mum is Russian, and also in computers. She Mums one of Beloved Daughters' former classmates, a breathtakingly good swimmer, allowed to squeeze in a little dancing when swimming does not require her. I have never seen her do anything but glower, whether at school functions or her daughters' incredibly elaborate and expensive 11th birthday party. Tonight she was happy, communicative; even gave a pleasant little finger-wave to Eugene (estranged father of swimmer daughter) and that's the chummiest I've seen them. She's still pretty forthright (when adorable baby Dumbo appeared she asked loudly, "Is rat or elephant?" ) .
They're thinking of going to Dubai. Because she can't get the pay increase she needs here.
Damn, I thought I was drastic.

You're doing it wrong

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10717366

Bullying is set to become a crime for the first time in Australia as concern grows at the rise of abuse that has destroyed lives and driven workers and teenagers to suicide.

(Wrong. Bullying has always been a crime. Just not a punishable one.)

Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark is expected to introduce amendments to stalking laws in the state Parliament tomorrow, placing workplace and cyber bullying under the Crimes Act.

The new legislation will provide penalties of up to 10 years' jail.

It follows the 2006 suicide of 19-year-old cafe worker Brodie Panlock, who was subjected to "merciless" bullying by four colleagues at Melbourne's Cafe Vamp.

She was abused, spat upon, had fish oil poured over her and, after one failed suicide attempt, was laughed at and advised to try rat poison before jumping from a multi-storey carpark.

Her abusers, head waiter Nicholas Smallwood and waiter Rhys MacAlpine, with chef Gabriel Toomey and cafe owner Marc Da Cruz, were fined A$337,000 ($432,337) under occupational health and safety laws in what the dead woman's father, Damian Panlock, described as a "slap on the wrist".

No criminal charges were brought because bullying is not a crime anywhere in Australia, and is instead covered by workplace, compensation, discrimination and similar legislation.

Last year a Sydney security guard was awarded a record A$1.9 million in damages after bullying that included threats of violence, financial penalties, racial and sexual abuse, and excessive and unpaid working hours.

But until Victoria's new move, governments have been reluctant to include serious bullying in criminal law, despite research estimating that one in four employees is likely to suffer from it at some stage.

(Is casual bullying OK? Or comic bullying? Wake UP! Bullying is bullying, and trying to fence off serious bullying is a mistake.)

Workplace bullying is also estimated to cost Australia between A$17 billion and A$36 billion a year in lost productivity, damage to mental health and staff turnover.

The new Victorian legislation will also cover cyber-bullying, another area of increasing concern, especially among teenage students.

(And you're going to police this how? A recent attempt to introduce software enabling parents to monitor their kids mobile phone communications was greeted with howls of horror and cries of 'controlling behaviour', 'invasion of privacy' and 'violation of civil liberties' by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties spokesman Batch Hales - see http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10714812)

Last year Victorian police used stalking laws to convict a 21-year-old man who hounded a teenager to suicide - but the cyber-bully was sentenced only to community service.

(Isn't that the teeniest bit like sentencing a paedophile to working in a nursery? Isn't the point that the bully has HARMED the community?)

A three-year survey of 16,000 children by Edith Cowan University found that during the period of the study the number of victims grew from 15 to 25 per cent of respondents.

(No. The number hasn't grown. The children have just learned that there are no repercussions, so they're willing to talk)

Clark said yesterday that under the new legislation - already known as "Brodie's law" - serious bullying would be treated as a crime if it could cause someone physical or mental harm.

(OK. Now just HOW are you going to go about defining serious bullying. Is there non-serious bullying? Where's the line?)

Mr Panlock told a press conference yesterday that the new law was better late than never.

"If someone else can be protected from scum like these people, and they know that they are going to be charged, and they are going to have jail time, they might think twice," said Mr Panlock.

(Yes, because that deters SO many murders in the States and so many child abusers and killers in New Zealand. Grow UP!)

And on a sadly related note:

Hail-Sage McClutchie

??/11/07 - 27/09/09

RIP

You Called Her What?

So, rummaging through a database, I came across the following wonderful moniker :
Mai Bich
I'm serious. And when my 15-year old collapsed ungraciously howling with laughter and whooping, "He should get that on a T-shirt!" I was reminded of the sad story of Fuka.
I'm still serious.
Fuka went to North Cross, which is an intermediate school on the North Shore. It is big, so big that the kids have their first names embroidered on their sweatshirts.
By intermediate I mean kids aged 11 through about 13/14.
So you can imagine the gusto with which Fuka was welcomed on the first day of school.
She's from the islands (yes, sorry, she is indeed a she; which makes the next part of the story worse) where her name is very traditional.
She explained that Fuka is actually pronounced differently than it is spelt, which you would imagine was a relief.
The F is pronounced H and the U is pronounced as a long O.
Meaning that Fuka is actually pronounced as Hooker.
You would have thought that at least the person taking the order for the sweatshirt might have taken a bit of time and gently explained to the parents that perhaps it was time to consider calling the child by her second name or something in light of the hilarity that was bound to ensue.
Unless perhaps that is where Mai Bich works.

Boys who play with dolls

Lizardmen.

If you're still reading, you probably already know where this is going.

My son plays with dolls. Not just any old dolls; the variety that have to be assembled SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY, and whose body parts' refusal to adhere correctly at the psychological moment will bring forth language that I may later have to ask my daughter to translate. After this they have to be painted, in paints whose shades go by names like Skull White, Vomit Brown (not to be confused with Bubonic Brown) , Rotting Flesh, Tentacle Pink and Graveyard Earth.

Hand to God.

In case Hand isn't enough

They play at tournaments, involving dices that have too many sides for Cluedo, templates that look considerably more complicated than the little perspex triangles and semicircles that are vital to their education, codexes that contain more clauses than some treaties I have studied, and rules that would cause the Inland Revenue to cry for death or mercy. There is an entire mythology behind this; I dimly remember him saying that the High Elves were the second eldest race (I think I fastened on them because they didn't do things like spawning - did I mention that reproduction for most species in this game is something you don't want to dwell on over coughing up phlegm?) and then he described the Lizardmen (his favourites) as being "rather literal".

"As in, they like to read?" I said, hopefully.

"Ah, no. It's just, they can be literal, but different, in how they interpret orders.".

He thought for a while.

"Like, see, a Skink priest (I'm too afraid to ask) might ask for water.  And one troop of Lizardmen might think he means he'd like a glass of water, so they'll bowl off and attack a palace and bring him back a goblet of water from the palace spring.."

"Along with the heads of the inhabitants?"

He's too busy explaining.

"...whereas another troop might think he means he needs the borders of the ocean to be where he is, so they'll reshape the landscape so he's got a beach in front of him."

I so love the understatedness of 'reshape the landscape".

This is a photo of a Stegodon, with a Skink priest wielding a spear under the arch on his back. Some of the model is not yet painted; we'll get back to you just as soon as we can get enough Rotting  Flesh to do the job properly.

Why Lizardmen?

"Dinosaurs are awesome. Dinosaurs with spears and shields are uber-awesome. Dinosaurs riding dinosaurs with spears and shields AND capable of inflicting skull-splitting madness are ..beyond awesome. "

I cannot actually top that.

Rearranging Geography at Sparrowfart

So, it's that time of year again. BattleCry - which is The annual wargamers tournament commences at 7 (!) in Kohimarama; I was out of bed at 4.45, showering and making bacon butties for a 5.45 wake-up call for the kids. On the road by 6; I think both boys were out by 6.15 or as long as it took to inhale a bacon buttie. We were there by 7 before 7; and the geeks were arriving in force. So we cleared out, and, honouring another tradition, drove back to the Westfield Mall for a coffee. Alone. At the Coffee Club. Overlooking the empty parking lot.

Note the balloon in the sky above the hills.

We were too early for the Coffee Club.

So we went for a stroll, pausing to note the following well-constructed advertisment.

I don't know what to be more worried about; the disappearance of Sicily, England rejoining mainland Africa, or the fact that New Zealand amounts to four coffee beans. 

Spam, spam, spam, spam...

So, in my inbox this morning along with several offers of a certain manhood-enhancing product and the delightful news that I have won USD 9 million for having the right Vodafone number, was my unasked-for horoscope. I swear, they must use random word generators.

Hi Wilna,

Hey – give her credit – she doesn’t even know me and she spelt my name right! This is more than can be said for an awful lot of people I deal with on a daily basis!

Sadly, from here it’s all downhill.

I am Gloria, I am a medium from the site www.astrovidencia.com in Spain. This site is very famous on the other side of the Pyrenees.

Going by my map of the world, Spain is south of the Pyrenees, as am I, albeit considerably  further south.  Think penguins. Okay, just short of the penguins.

I have been initiated to the meduimnity

..okay, that's a first. Maybe she meant mediocrity?

first by my grand-mother, and then, I have learned the taralogy

...the what? Is that meant to be the  ability to read Tarot cards?  I didn’t know it was an ology.

and astrology with well-known teachers. Today, it became my only activity

...meaning she gave up on meduimnity and taralogy, but not spamming? I can understand why she gave up on the geography, anyway.

and at the beginning of the year, I wanted to let you enjoy for free my predictions for the following month.

Last time I checked, Spain was still celebrating New Year at the same time as us, which was kinda six weeks ago. Predictions after the event are called reflections.

Here is what you can expect:

On the affective level, on the second fifteen of January,

The rugby second fifteen I understand. The second fifteen of January is not connecting with any known concept in my mind.

you will be strongly influenced by your circle, so much that you will start doubting about yourself. A need of independence brings you a  feeling of beeing unuseful.

I've never met an unuseful bee.

It’s in beeing more flexible

..a flexible bee, maybe...

that you will improve your affective life. Some decisions will have to be taken and these decisions will have consequences on your future.

About work, your situation is evoluating

..is doing what? Darwin is puzzled somewhere.

positively, but very slowly. I can see in your profil a curb,

Yep, that's where I catch the bus every day

someone is trying to slow you down. This situation has last for a while now and begins to irritate you seriously.

Okay, she’s  a  year too late for that

Financially you are stable for now,

I get why you gave up on the meduimnity now.

but you are waiting for an amount of money that is taken more time to arrive than it was planed

Yes, I was planing on being born into it.

Unfortunately, I think that you can’t count on that before the second part of the year. It is not possible for me to tell you exactly when siince I don’t have all the elements on you yet. Call me to give me the elements I’m missing concerning your situation and I’ll be able to give you a exact date.

I want to show you the way of success, rather it is on the affective, professional or financial plan. I can bring you all the clarifications you need. Don’t wait, call me.

Talk to you soon, Gloria.

It's a good thing you gave up on the  meduimnity. I suspect we will not be talking, soon or any other time.

Dawn Treader time

Today was Beloved Daughters' 13th birthday. So that was scary enough. End of the school holidays (an unfortunate consideration, one we did not take into account in England) and as always we had chocolate cake for breakfast and a movie for dinner, with haircuts between times. This time I bribed Beloved Son into the haircut with a promise that I would allow him to read Cleolindas' TrueBlood recaps (you can find the most excellent Cleolinda here) so for those of you who have already read those recaps, please try to imagine a kid fresh from Southern vampire hilarity going in to see....The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  At least it gave his ribs a break. He laughs so much when he reads Cleos' Twilight material that I am reassured he has not inherited my asthma. I have seen him roll helpless on the floor, but never yet turn blue.
Anyway. So, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Visual death-by-chocolate as always, but I am hugely cheered by the irritating cousin Eustace, and set my internal clock to check for the first time someone calls him Useless. At this rate, I give it five minutes. I also wonder why the camera focuses on his noticeably blue eyes so often. I mean, do blue eyes even look that blue? We learn that Edmund and Lucie are living with their irritating cousin Eustace and his family while the rest of the Pevensie family are off finding a rich American husband for Susan; and assume there are adults involved in this although you never actually see them (well, you do see the uncle from the newspaper down, but I've seen horror movies that started like that) and after a short and fierce encounter between Edmund and Eustace that made me sympathise deeply with the makeup artist who had to deal with Skandar Hughes five-o-clock shadow, we find ourselves on the Dawn Treader.  A lot.
It's not in my nature to tell the movie; I leave it to those who have a gift for it, but here are a few overheard exclamations that kind of made the movie for me.
"Gah!  Bloody lion stalker!" (he did in fairness spill his popcorn when the voice popped up unexpectedly)
"Excellent. Pirates of the CariNarnia" (hint : cough*SEASERPENT*cough).
Nobody ever calls Eustace Useless. .
And the characters end with their now-usual roll-call of who-to-expect-next-Narnia-movie. I like it; we get used to our traditions, like waiting for the Unexpected Plot Twist Scene at the end of the Pirates movies, which you only get if you stay till the end of the credits (and I have to say I would have cracked up so bad at the end of Pirates 3 if Will had come ashore to find Elisabeth accompanied by a staggering gold-toothed dreadlocked 10 year old) so we know that's it for Edmund and Lucy.
But not Useless!!!

Cyclones and eavesreaders

Not that I wish to complain, people.
But I've only just lived down Hurricane Wilma, and now I've got to deal with Cyclone Wilma; and this time it is not simply trying to hunt down and kill my management structure off in Mexico somewhere, it's coming to where I live and looking for me.
This complicates my life on several levels., some of them obvious. One of them is this : I like to do my writing on the ferry - to work and from work. This is obviously a creatively ambient atmosphere and all, but more importantly, you get a lot of elbow room. When the ferry gets cancelled - this happens in high wind; and only happens to the Gulf Harbour ferry, because it is the only one whose route is not protected by Rangitoto (yes, in this part of the world we are protected BY volcanoes rather than FROM volcanoes) the ferry company puts on a bus. Which is fine, but there goes the elbow room, and, it seems, the personal bubble. There is a certain lady who seems to seek me out on the bus and sits next to me and reads whatever I'm writing.
Anyone else find that offputting? I tilt the book at an impossible angle and she actually cranes her neck to carry on. I find myself so off track after a few minutes of this that I start writing werewolf p0rn.
She seems to like reading that, too.

How Not to Meet Your Neighbour

We have a new neighbour. She has a huge deck, which overlooks our house, and two dogs complete the package. One is large and deep of woof, the other is smaller than our cat. I know this for a fact, as we emerged from our house last week on Saturday to find said cat arching his back in readiness for dog shredding, nose to nose with small dog, who obviously doesn't understand the Cat for I-will-floss-my-teeth-with-your-innards. I dived on the cat, Daughter dived on the dog, who beat it back whence he came - which, as it turns out, is through an extremely small hole in the fence behind the garage. The owner-lady emerged and we agreed we would put Something over the hole - she already has the gates blocked so that the dog can't get out, since he also doesn't understand the Car for You-Are-Roadkill.
We nailed netting over the gap, and she subsequently wandered up with a large plank which we used to reinforce the barrier; Small Dog has not returned, so I assume he is Minding The Gap.
He has developed an annoying yapping habit, which she is slowly bringing under control.
Last Friday, a friend, Martin, popped by with his drill, to help Son and me get a biltong box constructed. We worked on our deck, to the drill-WOOF-drill-WOOF symphony. Engaged in explaining to Martin exactly how the box needs to be ventilated, when the neighbour hushed the dog and called out something to me, I gaily called back, "Yes, but don't worry, the barking doesn't bother us that much!" Sons' open-mouthed expression alerted me to the fact that something was Not Quite Right about that statement, so I looked back at her to see her staring at me with a backing-off-now look on her face.
Apparently what she had shouted was "I have a huge rat in the kitchen - do you have problems with rats over there?"

7th January MeMe

It’s January 7^th 2011. I’m remembering January 7^th 1980. It was the last holiday I had with my Mum. Aunty Nancy came too. We went to Amanzimtoti, on the South Coast of South Africa, by train; my Mum was no longer up for the drive even if I did it. It was an eventful trip; you left at night – always – and arrived at Durban by 8, in time for a hurried change for ‘Toti. We’d brought sandwiches and all that to save money; and we picked up a stray.  You always picked up a stray with Aunty Nancy. She was carrying an awkward bundle and wearing a thick jacket in the heat; and she seemed almost hunched. We muscled our way into a compartment – OK, Aunt Nancy did that – and then she finally relaxed. Her name was Alexis; I told her that was so exotic, and she asked me what ‘exotic’ meant. She took off her coat once the ticket inspector had gone. She had a pet budgie under her arm, and she was carrying a sewing-machine, it belonged to her dead mother.

As always, Aunt Nancy knew exactly what to say.

“Did you want a ham sandwich or a chicken one?”  

I remember thinking it was all vaguely like a war movie;  there were lots of ‘troopies’ (South African National Servicemen) on the train; and Aunt Nancy definitely received and enhanced the flirtatious gene in the family. We had left the door open for air and soon the passing soldiers were yelling, “Hey, Nancy!” as they passed back and forth. Alexis,  having opened up enough to accept sandwiches and salad,  had closed back up again, and was staring at nothing much. One of the troopies dared my mothers’ glare enough to ask me, “Are you going to play that thing, or is it just for brags?” and Alexis looked up at my guitar and said, “I’ll sing if you do.”

Aunt Nancy never stopped talking about that night.

Alexis had a lovely singing voice, and we learned to harmonise really quickly. Eventually there were troopies gathered all down the corridor of our compartment and into the doors of any left open by families who realised that they were just boys away from their families, wanting to concentrate on something else than being away from home, for a while. Some sang, some clapped in time; we never had trouble making ourselves heard. It’s the biggest audience I’ve ever played to and I didn’t need a microphone.

By two, the conductor was making polite but suggestive noises, and the party wound down quietly. Well, aside from Aunt Nancy’s standing ovation. Mum and Aunt Nancy were out pretty quickly. I heard Alexis talking to her budgie and we both knew he couldn’t answer. We kept our voices down.

She lived in Durban. She had been through a difficult time since the family divorce; she loved her parents and found it difficult to divide her love as they seemed to expect her to do, especially given her Dad was in Durban and her Mum was in Johannesburg; so she found a boyfriend to act as one target for all the concentric circles of her love, and we all know how well that works out.

Then her Mum died, so suddenly. While her Dad was making practical arrangements that drove her mad with their slowness and apparent lack of grieving, she picked an epic fight with him, and ran out into the night where her willing boyfriend drove her straight north. Shock takes a while to catch up with you and grief closes off other senses, so by the time she figured out that there was actually a price tag attached to that drive there was only just enough time to seize the nearest mementos – the sewing machine and the budgie – before running to the stranger neighbours and throwing herself on their mercy.

They phoned her Dad; they made the travel arrangements, they got her to the station; all while we were packing and making sandwiches.

She cried less after the sewing-machine-heist section of the story.

So, okay, I slept with a girl in adult form. Also, a budgie.

When we were getting ready for – detraining? – the next morning, Alexis warned me that she would not hug goodbye, as she was going to have to hold tight to herself to face her Dad after what she had done to him. I said that was all good; I’d written our address down and given it to her so she could write if she wanted. She frowned hard, and said that she thought if she was going to get to be a grown-up she would need to cut a few things off. Like pruning flowers.

A note to my younger readers. 1980. A lot of people still used the term grown-up for adult. And a lot of people in Durban are brilliant gardeners, given the climate.

She stepped off the train into her Dad’s arms the next day; but none of us thought it would be any other way. I don’t think she could see any of us through her tears; and my Afrikaner upbringing dictates that you move away in those moments.

Also, we had a train to catch.

As the Facebook Turns

Intrigued to find one Stefan Salvatore on my daughters’ Facebook friends list (yes, I stalk my daughter to make sure she’s talking to people I know about)  I clicked on his picture. This solved the mystery; he is apparently married to my daughters’ school friend. So that’s all right then, so long as he isn’t a stranger. And he has a brother, which is reassuring, particularly as the brother is a billionaire who apparently studied at Harvard. Ah, Facebook, where would we be without you?

Since my coffee was by now cold, I typed the name Stefan Salvatore into Google, which led me to IMDB, which  in turn revealed that the two brothers in question are characters in a TV series, called The Vampire Diaries. What with the title being a bit of a spoiler and all, I read the provided storyline, and fell over dead.

“Carlisle Cullen and his coven Two vampire brothers, eternal adolescents, have been leading 'normal' lives, hiding their bloodthirsty condition, for centuries, moving on to Forks before their non-aging is noticed. They are back in the Virginia town where they became vampires, as high school students. Edward Angel Stefan is noble, denying himself blood to avoid killing, and tries to control his evil brother Spike Jasper Damon. Edward Angel Stefan falls in love with schoolgirl Buffy Bella Elena, whose best friend Willow is a witch, like her grandma.”

I swear,  my ribs are aching. The possibilities are just endless. The Corner Lurking Loss Support Society! The Spell and Study Glee Club!

I had to do it. I had to go and read the episode guide, and it improved the already-surreal quality of my life tremendously.

“We meet the orphans, Sookie and Jason Elena and Jeremy Gilbert who are living with their grandmother aunt Jenna in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Elena is adjusting to her new life by taking lessons from Buffy making entries in her journal in the local cemetery and hanging out with her friends Bonnie and Caroline. Jason Jeremy, on the other hand, enjoys dealing drugs, getting high and chasing after anything in a skirt Vicki Donovan who is more into Jeremy's friend Tyler.”

Bless them, there’s a Tyler. Please tell me he has a crushable van?

“The episode ends with Bill Angel Stefan going over to Sookie’s Buffy’s Elena's house and getting invited in!”

Edward could FIX this for you, guys. You could totally bypass the inviting stuff! Edward, remember the oil for the window!

I started to read Episode 2 and I gave up because my mascara is now all over my desk and I don’t think I can stand very much more. I leave you with this :

“We are then brought to see Edward and Bella Stefan and Elena writing about liking each other in Twilight and Midnight Sun their diaries and being busted in English History class for staring at each other.”

I have found a new cure for depression.