Saddam the porn star
This cannot be true. Or can it? Either way, fun reading...

"Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been caught with his pants down -- literally. A shocking 1968 porn film has surfaced, in which the flamboyant strongman appears performing raunchy homosexual acts!"

(Love the exclamation mark, by the way.)

"Saddam's acting in the picture is actually quite good," al-Sabah notes. "One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you almost can forget you're watching a low-budget sexploitation film."

Link to the full story

It seems now the worst of the hostilities are over, people are starting to find humour in the whole Iraq situation. A bit like those situations where you nearly fall off a cliff, and then laugh with the relief at how close you nearly came to dying. The figure of fun most people seem to be getting their laughs out of (and this was true even when the shooting was still going on, admittedly), is the erstwhile Iraqi Minister of Information -- Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf -- who now has his own fansite, but also turned up on our NZ TV show 'Spin Doctors' last night (played by Mark Wright, not too badly to tell the truth, although someone should give Elizabeth Hawthorne some sort of award for her impersenation of Helen Clark's voice), and even a parodic news release issued by a wag at the Canadian Meteorological Service (which, unfortunately, I can't share with you). Quotable quotes? He had a bucketful of them...

"Yes, the american troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them"
# |

blog main page

Birthday
Ahh, birthdays. I was 31 yesterday. A nice low-key affair after last year's drama off rolling out of the 20something league with all the associated soul-searching and life stock-taking that that entailed (which worked out pretty well in the end: married to a honey, 2 kids, nice house, nice suburb, been involved with five album releases, another solo one on the way, lots of nice websites whipped up...)

Anyway, scored some nice winter woolies and a couple of CDs -- (Coldplay's A Sudden Rush of Blood, and The White Stripe's Elephant), and Milo drew me a fantastic picture of a birthday party scene which now hangs pride of place on my wall at work.

Doing the NZ Music Show on Radio Active the night before, my co-host Ju slid me an unmarked CDR and told me to cue it up 'without listening to it!' -- a tricky request, but something I managed through careful use of the PDF monitor levels (god that desk freaks me out. A quick side note: when the show was about 30 seconds away from starting, I put on my headphones to cue up track #1 for the night, and heard...nothing. No noise in my cans. Panic. PANIC. PANIC. After about 20 seconds of flailing about, pushing buttons and no doubt creating an absolutely hellish racket on the live signal leaving the building, I spotted another set of headphones across the desk, behind the turntables. I traced the 10 foot lead of my headphones to their plug -- aha! They were plugged into the turntables, and the headphones sitting by the turntable were the ones plugged into the desk. Fuuuuck!). It was a plinky-plonky casiotone version of Happy Birthday that Ju had whipped up at home and burned onto CD, over which she did a live, monotone Julian Clary-style rendition of the said song. What a nice thing to do.
# |

blog main page

Wasted
Another post from nzmusic.com that I thought I'd drop into my blog proper (nzmusic.com being something of my 'secondary' blog, as it is -- problem is, you can't edit, so the terrible typos and spelling mistakes I make there are frozen for all eternity). Anyway, the context behind this one was that one of the more rambunctious nzmusic characters -- SychoGrandpa -- was complaining about the lack of dirty drunken rock'n'roll stories on the site, so I took it upon myself to start a new thread, on, yes, your best getting wasted story. And, at this point, mine's still the best...

When I was living in chch, I was the weekend rubbish-boy at the Arts Centre. It basically meant getting up at 5.30ish on a saturday and sunday morning, heading over the road (I lived across the carpark from the Centre), getting the bins out, strategically putting them around the various paths and lawns around the complex, sweeping here and there, and then keeping an eye on the place during the course of the day to make sure the bins didn't overflow, that any major spillage got dealt to ... that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was pretty much on my own doing that job, but there was a crew of lads who put together the market stalls each morning, and we'd usually meet up for a coffee and a pinwheel at the bakehouse after setting up, and then head down to the botanic gardens for a smoke and a hackey/frisbee session. Today was no different: as per usual, totally high by 8am.

A wee top up before the lunch-time saw me through the early afternoon rubbish-rush, after which I decided it was such a nice day that a couple (or three) beers at the Dux might set me in good stead for packdown at 5ish (for which another wee smoke was required to help dull the pain of sweeping yet more sticky brown rice up from around the food stalls).

The market stall crew announced it was drinks at my place to celebrate someone's birthday, so we trundled back there and cracked into the beers. Elephant beer, it transpired. And more smoke. And then more beer, and a couple of tequila shots to keep things going.

The lads headed off about 7ish to go and do their things, and I should have actually taken the opportunity to put some food into my system, but I was well into socialising mode by that point, so I walked over to my friends' house where there was a small party going on. Drinking games! And more smoke! And the drinking games were being played using Ngauhere Gold -- a super-strong (and nasty) lager that came in flagons from the nearby Harrington's Brewery. I was handed one (1.5 litres), and, perhaps because my brain was already slightly dulled by the previous events of the day, was far and away the big loser in whatever game it was that we were playing at the time (Boggle, I recall), and ended up drinking the whole thing in about half and hour. After that it was gin and tonics to cleanse the palate.

And then the 'special' cake came out. Yum. Food. Being the only solids that had passed my lips that day, I partook in more than my fair share.

And then we hit town: Mainstreet -- our regular bar, to be exact, where I was actually starting to feel the effects of the day, and slipped myself up onto one of the establishment's tall leaden bar-stools and quietly ordered a water.

Fucking hell, I thought, I am fucking wasted. I started chatting to the girlfriend about, well, god knows what at this point, and I clearly recall myself watching her lips and concentrating on the sound coming out of them so, as, to not, uh, forget, ummm... and then this wash of red swept up from my feet, enveloped my head, and then I'm in the land of blissful narcotic dreams, soaring over the landscape with a smile on my face and not a care in the world. Then, of course, someone's slapping me awake and people are shouting my name and I'm all 'I'm ok, I'm ok, just a wee faint, bloody hell,' but when I open my eyes, everyone's gone all pixilated -- they've transformed into moving blocks of colour like some on-the-fly photoshop effect has been grafted onto my eyeball, and the girlfriend is looking at me with immense concern, and looking about as pale as I probably was. Someone got me a strong cup of very sugary tea, which was much appreciated, but, wouldn't you know it, I could feel the red wash swelling up from my feet again, and, I'd actually like to think this was quite stylish, I handed my tea to the girlfriend before saying 'I'm going again', and passed out for a second time.

All this was taking place on the floor of Mainstreet, by the way. When I'd passed out the first time, I'd apparently slumped forward onto the table banging my head, spilling drinks and dislodging my glasses, and then jerked backwards, which had the effect of smashing the back of my head against the solid iron framework of the stool, before finally falling sideways(about a 3 foot drop -- they were high seats) into the wall (banging the side of my head) and then, finally, the floor (more head damage).

Awakening from my second pass-out, there were various rescue attempts in progress. Warm things were being thrown on top of me, more sugary drinks were emerging, and, then, finally, the ambulance arrived to haul me off to A&E. At this point, I developed some weird giggly obsession with naming things (I think I must have wanted to reassure people that, despite the head knocks, and the pixilated vision, that I hadn't burnt out a major mental fuse). 'You're an ambulance officer!' I proclaimed, and 'this is an ambulance!' 'There's some cars!' 'This is Colombo Street!' ... and so on, all the way to the hospital, where they plonked me on a trolley in a hallway somewhere, advised me to just keep still, and I got to listen to the inner workings of a hospital on a saturday night with my now hyper-sensitive ears relaying every distant grimace, groan or scream with hi-fidelity directly my to brain. Of course, by the time a doctor got around to seeing me, and combined with the sobering shock of having actually been dragged off to hospital, I'd pretty much straightened out to a 'normal' drunken state. He sent me home with a 'don't overdo in the future' warning, and I got a good two hours sleep before having to get up and go to work to put the bins out.

Really should have skipped the gin and tonics, in hindsight...
# |

blog main page

Whale Rider, and some rock'n'roll
Well, for the first time since the Brunettes a few months back, the wife and I headed out with the express purpose of seeing some live music together. My mum was in town with her younger man, so with the younger generation tucked in, and in the elder generation ensconced in front of the telly, we headed off for one of our rare nights out.

We hit the films first, tossing up over whether to see Punch Drunk Love, or Whale Rider. The latter won. In fact, when we were talking about our last five movies we'd gone to see at the theatre (always a good one for the brain: can you remember the last five?), and we figured out that we'd seen more locally made films (Two Towers, Rain, Whale Rider) than foreign (The Hours -- good how I wish I'd skipped it, and, much much better, Bowling for Columbine).

So yes, enjoyed it. Not immensely, and I kept waiting for the tear-jerking moment (a la Rain) that people had alluded to here and there, but it never came. Interesting from the perspective that it somewhat fucks with traditional Maori gender politics (ie. a girl battling the male dominated system), and, really, there needs to be more of that sort of attitude in NZ.

Then off to the music: Rawer (say it, go on), Slavetrader and Xanadu at Indigo. The Shrugs were advertised on the poster, but the word was they'd broken up (later refuted over at nzmusic.com -- just lost their drummer apparently). Either way, we were pleased, as the first band, Rawer, were just kicking off their set as we walked in the door at 11pm. They played a 4 song noise set that played around with the whole HDU sonic assault aesthetic, which I wasn't really into on this particular evening, so the wife and I retreated to the comfy couches and caught up with a couple of NZMers (Blink & JJ). The wife discovered that JJ had turned 17 last week, and that -- horror! -- she was old enough to be his mother (technically). Something of an eye-opener.

Slavetrader came on and did their best Datsuns impersonation, which was at its best when the guitar player just let rip with his guitar playing. Other than that, they were mostly pretty crap.

And Xanadu, who I'd been all psyched up to see for ages, came on at 1am, and then promptly blew their synth amp up 10 seconds into their first song. It took about 15 minutes to sort that out (during which we got a rendition of Devo's mongoloid, performed by some random female punter from the crowd who just grabbed the mic and launched into it unaccompanied -- the bassist and drummer joined in, and, for me, it was nearly the high point of the night), and after an the interminable fucking about with leads and amps, they gave up the synth idea, and launched into their guitar set. Which was good (tight, punchy, nice riffs), but nothing outrageously special. I bought the EP though, so maybe some listening of that will give me a bit more insight into their sound. They may well have resurrected the synth later in the set, but we were too knackered to find out, and bailed out at about 1.45am.

# |

blog main page

Smacking your kids

My post that appeared on the boards over at nzmusic.com, where these sorts of discussions turn up from time to time. Thought I'd record it here for posterity as well.

I've always thought it was a case-by-case basis. I recall seeing a doco once about some hyper kids that would only calm down and start acting in a remotely responsible manner with a stiff smack from their mum. And it wasn't like she was violent -- it actually upset her a lot more than the kids, in fact -- it was just the only thing they responded to.

So, yes, I think a smack or two is something of a last resort for particularly out-of-control kids. And only a bottom smack (not sure about this smacking the hand business). And I'm always amazed when they talk about the law reform and a) it always comes up that some parents smack their kids with spoons or straps or bits of wood, and b) no-one thinks this is in anyway unusual. I personally think that's archaic: "...and after your strapping, it'll be back down the mines for you!".

Naturally, being a softy liberal myself, I vowed never to hit my kids when I had any, and now I have two, I've been able to live up to my word so far (three years into it). I'd have to say though, from experience with friends' kids, and looking back at my own childhood, that I've been lucky enough to have two little sprogglets with incredibly well-adjusted personalities. Milo's yet to get into any serious mischief, and Cosmo, well, yes, he's too busy pondering whatever he ponders to need any sort of discipline yet. I can imagine it'd be a lot different if either of them was a runaway ADD terror like the sort I mentioned in the doco above.

I was smacked growing up as a kid, but only very occasionally, and usually when I'd been quite naughty (fighting with siblings was the main way to get a quick botty-spank, I recall). Didn't do me no harm, as they say, but I reckon my parents would have got the same disciplinary results using a bit of time-out or privileges denial. Probably just lazy, having four kids all aged within four years of each other running around and causing havoc -- a quick smack was a speedier resolution to any trouble than any other option available I suppose. I'm not sure what would get my goat up enough to have me smack one of my kids. It would actually take a systematic series of naughtiness by one of them for which no reasoning or discussion would work out of their system. If Milo decided he was going to maliciously smash a glass on the floor every time he had a drink of milk, for example, and he kept it up for a couple of weeks, I can imagine I'd be getting pretty irate. Although, can't imagine it happening.

The other thing is, if you take a softly softly approach like the wife and I have, the moments you do pull out the heavy firepower, the point is made hard. I very rarely raise my voice to the kids, but on the occasions I have let rip with, for example -- "NO! NEVER push your brother over like that!" -- the effect has been pretty devastating (tears, usually, but also an instant lesson learnt).

So, uh, yes, a typically wishy-washy approach from me. Judge each case on its merits. And if you have to resort to a smack, a quick botty-smack is the best way.
# |

blog main page