Kiwiblog

Given we guest bloggers were bought back to help provide content when Mr Farrar was on holiday, has anyone noticed a reduction in his blogging frequency?

If Inga is really thinking about becoming a National MP, has he remembered to join the National Party?  (A surprising number of prospective National MPs leave this crucial step quite late…)

Given the University of Auckland “will not tolerate cheating” and that plagiarism is explicitly listed on their website as the main type of cheating, what action will it take in relation to a staff member who has admitted not acknowledging a number of passages in a new book?

Was Thierry Henry’s blatant handball even worse than Diego Maradona’s infamous ‘Hand of God’?

What do Sir Bob Jones and Hon Rodney Hide talk about when they meet at night in Jones’ office on Waring Taylor Street?

Is Shoaib Akhtar the first cricketer ever to miss cricket series’ because of genital warts and liposuction?

How can Will Ferrell, the man who bought us the genius of “More Cowbell”, now be (deservedly) ranked Hollywood’s most over-paid star?

Todd McLay’s members’ bill about Easter Trading Hours should sort this issue out once and for all, right?

Have you really invented a new chant about Rory Fallon being big and bad and better than his dad when you’ve just changed the name in the chant the Barmy Army have been singing at Stuart Broad for two years?

Has Tau Henare really bought a scooter or is Craig Foss fomenting his own happy mischief?

If Australia needs a cricket coach, why wouldn’t we?

How long can Roarprawn possibly hold to her pledge not to blog about Ngai Tahu politics?

Will the Libertarianz ever take Oswald’s advice to ‘softly, softly catchy monkey’?

Oh this is very very funny.

Artist Sam Mahon has created this sculpture of Nick Smith. He has made it from cow manure and it is up for auction on Trade Me. It is called “Nick Smith in the shit” and is currently going for $560.

Mahon explains:

The sculpture is light and hollow and highly polished. It sits on a steel stand slightly right of centre.

I wonder how much it will go for. Will Nick bid? Will any of his colleagues bid? Is it made of organic manure only?

Damien Christie from TVNZ7 models the new official t-shirt for Television New Zealand

Well since I blogged on Chris Carter’s deleted Mussolini blog post on Thursday night, the story got legs with it making One News last night, and the newspapers this morning. It even got Chris a bollocking from The Standard.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with Chris yelling out at John Key doing a photo op on a balcony, and joking that he looks like Mussolini at the Piazzo Navona. The problem is that Chris blogged it, or more to the point he blogged it in a way which didn’t convey much humour to it. Let’s start with the title:

Delusions of grandeur

That isn’t a very funny title. That looks like a snarky attack. Then we have his first line

Just saw the most awful sight.

Now again, that conveys that in fact Carter didn’t see it as much of a joke, but something awful. He then blogged the exchange, and Key’s response of “It worked”, and comments:

Says it all, really.

So Carter might have been able to pass it off as a funny exchange, except he didn’t. He turned it into a snide attack on Key. And even worse he took the time to upload an actual picture of Mussolini.

I have some experience of using humour and dictators, such as the wonderful anti-EFA billboards. What is the difference between those and what Carter did? Well firstly the number one difference is I’m an effing blogger, not the Shadow Foreign Minister. Seriously.

The second is we made the humour clear. We had the Commodore congratulating Helen on her “coup” with the EFA. We had Kim Il Sung congratulating Winston on being a great leader. We even had one (originally) with Mao praising Peter Dunne (originally an EFA supporter). We were not doing literal comparisons, but using humour and the dictators to make the case the the EFA was something you expect from an authoritarian Government. And you know the fact the Electoral Commission concluded it did have a chilling effect on political participation, and that Labour’s first post-election move was to apologise for it, and vote for its repeal, leaves me 100% comfortable with the campaign. Others may disagree, but I remind them the original EFB would have made it illegal for them to state their view in public on a policy issue, without signing multiple statutory declarations etc.

Anyway back to Mussolini. Here’s how I would have done it.

“Just saw John Key being forced onto his balcony to do a photo op. The things us politicans must endure. I joked to John that I thought the photo looked like Mussolini at the Piazzo Navona, and John joked back that at least it worked for Mussolini. Heh. Nice that he can take a joke and a hassle.”

I doubt that would have got much attention (sure still a bit bad taste). But the original post wasn’t funny – it was snarky.

Personally I would have grabbed a photo myself and done a caption contest

No this blog post does not cme from The Standard, but from the Dunedin School Blog. Their ten proofs are:

1. He has been to the south and east as prophesied in Daniel 8:9-12
2. He has spoken arrogant words
3. He has risen to the top quickly
4. He has spoken against God with the anti-smacking law
5. The merchants from the Earth will prosper from the Anti-Christ and he is a former merchant banker
6. He joined the National Party in 1998, and 1998 is 666×3.
7. The Anti-Christ will be different from his predecessors
8. He will be called the Messiah, which means he must have Jewish blood – which he does have.
9. He will be miraculously healed – and didn’t his arm heal quickly
10. His video blog is erecting a living image of him

They conclude that the chance of this all happening randomly is 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, so John Key is definitely the Anti-Christ.

This would also explain why he is beating Goff so badly in the polls.

Was at the Green Parrot having some drinks and food with a few good folks. They were celebrating a political victory that day.

One lass felt the need to share with the table that she has had a shag in the bathroom at the said establishment. The conversation went like this:

Lass: You know I’ve had a shag in the toilets here
Everyone: God, why did you tell us that
DPF: Do you remember his name
Lass: Of course I do
DPF: Well does he remember your name
Lass: lost for words

Rest of the table high fives DPF.

Claire Trevett reveals the diary this week of Pita Sharples:

Whooo-eee – it’s not all flags and mana enhancements in here today, I tell you. I forgot to tell John Key that my ministry was giving Maori TV $3 million to help it get the rights to the Rugby World Cup. All the teko has hit the kowhiuwhiu (fan) now! He’s nearly as angry as he was when I “announced” the government would sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I sent a staffer to gauge his mood at his weekly press conference. Apparently his eyes were as hard as unpolished pounamu. …

Labour Party MPs and Rodney Hide are kicking it in the guts now. Shane Jones reckons it’s a World Cup for Emissions Trading contra scheme. He thinks the money would be better used helping young Maori. Trevor Mallard thinks it should be used for junkets for people in New Zealand to go to the United Kingdom now and encourage them to come to New Zealand in 2011. I can see what Tau means about him now.

I remember Chris Carter pulled the old “they’re picking on me cos I’m gay” line about his travel costs and decide to try a similar tactic.

Then I remember it didn’t work out so well for him, so I sent out the press release under Te Ururoa’s name accusing everyone of being racist.

Chris rings me to applaud my tactics – he agrees it’s nothing to do with spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and everything to do with institutionalised stereotypes. …

Luckily, Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia has come up with a new spin to help me out. It will be good for obesity because all those people who can’t get Maori TV won’t be sitting on their sofas watching rugby for weeks on end. The National Party’s communications team vetoes the press release – they say it belongs in the Melissa Lee Motorway Crime Prevention Theory file.

Very good.

The Herald reports:

Maori TV has accused its rival TV3 of racism after it broadcast an item lampooning what its coverage of the Rugby World Cup would look like.

The TV3 Nightline parody showed an All Black diving for the winning try in the final, with the broadcast interrupted by a public service announcement, saying: “Pakeha. It’s time to talk. There’s a few things we need to sort out and you won’t get to see the rest of the game until we have.”

The reporter for Tuesday night’s item was Ali Ikram, who is well-known for his satirical streak.

And this is key. Ali takes the piss out of everything and everyone. I’m reasonably supportive of the Maori TV bid, but really they need to lighten up.

But Maori TV spokeswoman Sonya Haggie said it was “basically racist” and it would be laying a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority. The item also showed a match referee calling on the video referee, which turned out to be the Waitangi Tribunal, with Ikram warning “this could take a while”. There was also a “compulsory haka” for which the French did the can-can.

You can watch the clip for yourself here. I don’t think anyone is really going to think that the Waitangi Tribunal will be the video referee!

Ikram ridiculed Maori TV presenter Julian Wilcox, saying he presented virtually every show on the channel. …

TV3 received a number of complaints, including from its own staff, including Campbell Live reporter Mihingarangi Forbes who told the Herald it was disappointing and embarrassing.

“Given that it was supposed to be satire I didn’t find anything funny about it at all,” she said. “I think Ali [Ikram] would have hoped it was funny and clever but unfortunately for him and everyone else it was not.”

Ms Forbes said the jibes against Wilcox were hurtful.

“We have the utmost respect for Julian and it was unfair to pick him out like that.”

If the item was having a go at Wilcox, that would be regrettable. Wilcox is highly respected. But I didn’t see the clip as that. I actually thought it was paying Wilcox a subtle compliment by mentioning the large number of shows he presents.

Humour is always a challenge. Almost all humour can offend someone. My preferred Southpark type humour offends almost everyone . There is a difference between humour for humour’s sake, and using humour to attack or ridicule someone. I didn’t see anything in Ali’s item that suggested it was anything beyond his normal humour for humour’s sake.

My advice to Maori TV. Do your own satirical response! Fight humour with humour.

From Murray.

Sadly while no bad effects in NZ, many Samoan New Zealanders will have lost loved ones, with 39 dead in Samoa.

The Dim-Post in fine form:

Monday Evening. My suite at the Breekman.

Cocktails with some of the old Wall St gang at Club 55 earlier. Good to see some familiar faces. Tense moment when someone asked me what I was doing for a job these days. I told them, there was a moments silence and they sprayed their drinks all over the table. I nervously joined in the laughter and when Dicky asked what I was really doing I told them I was COO at Deutsche. Feel slightly disloyal.

New poll back home. Slight dip but still riding high. It’s all a massive fraud, of course – we nose-dived after the budget and we’ve been in single digits for months, but what I got on Garner and the Espiners wouldn’t look very pretty on the front page. They know how to play ball.

Tuesday. Office at the UN.

Meeting with HC. The DPS boys led her into the room and assured me she was fine: ‘She was nervous this morning Sir but she’s eaten and she’s calm now.’ I knew better. She was still but her eyes were all white and she was breathing shallowly, her head low, scanning the room. I held back, greeted her cautiously and then she lunged: I’ve never seen anything move that fast! All I saw were flashing teeth and I felt the hot scent of English Breakfast tea against my throat but the DPS boys were quicker, forcing her back into the corner with their prods while she hissed and spat. Eventually she calmed and we discussed Copenhagen, Fiji and the MMP referendum. Also, she gave me a UNDP snow globe. Score!

Wednesday. Back at the Hotel.

Bad day today. No water at hotel, had to use Aussie faculties, had Rudd standing outside the door talking about a federated Pacific while I was trying to take a shit, then he stood outside the shower talking about something called ’social capitalism’. WFT? Was so distracted I forgot to rinse the conditioner out of my hair and spent all day at the UN with my scalp feeling oily and damp. Couldn’t use the basins in the washrooms to rinse – how would that look if someone saw me? Met Obama and I could see him looking at my hair. ‘He knows!‘ I thought. ‘He understands!‘ If anyone would have a private place to rinse their hair it’s him, but I couldn’t figure out how to ask and he moved on to talk to Erdogan.

Thursday. NBC Green Room.

Show went well. Pity we had to agree to three more years of SAS deployment to Afghanistan to get the slot but thems the breaks. Lindsay Lohan! Heh.

Picked up some nice ties and links at Bergdorf yesterday and this morning Soper liked the look of one of the club ties. He had a coffee and a danish and I hadn’t had breakfast so I offered to make a deal. He crowed: ‘I’ve been around a long time John, you’d have to get up early to get the best of me.’ Long story short I now own his house which I’m mortgaging back to him for sixty points above OCR.

Friday. Starbucks on Harrison Street.

Sent my body double Andy to deliver the speech to the UN (something about a seat on the Security Council in 6 years. BFD) while I went record shopping in Tribeca. Picked up some old Sugar Cubes on vinyl and a totally awesome Arbus print that I was going to give to Bill but decided to keep for myself. Checked my email and it sounds as though the speech went down well. All right. Hooked up with Bronagh and the kids and flew out to Disney World. So long New York – you’ve been good to me.

I’ll say this again. Someone really should hire Danyl.

The Herald has two sets of Top Tens for Key. First some possible Qs abotu NZ:

9: Even if you stand on a chair, you still can’t see Russia.

7: Apart from Michael Laws, we have no poisonous animals.

5: Good news girls, Simon Dallow’s available again.

3: We dislike the French too.

1: Our leaders are identical; they both have homes in Hawaii and neither is a Kenyan-born Muslim.

Heh. No 1 is good.

And some possible Qs to Key:

9: Can you ride a sheep in New Zealand?

8: Do all the women in New Zealand look like Rachel Hunter?

7: Could you beat the Prime Minister of Australia in a fight?

2: How does it feel to be more girly than the last prime minister?

1: Isn’t it about time you stepped aside and let the Bill and Ben Party run the country?

I’m not sure if No 2 is more offensive to Clark or Key – I suspect both equally

The Dim-Post has a list of things John Key should not say to the UN General Assembly. My favourites:

• Okey-dokey.
• It is vital that we all work together to combat the terrible threat to our global climax.
• Allah Akbar!
• We open with Lot #1 – Fiordland! What am I bid for this lush temperate rainforest?
• Ban Ki, Imma let you finish but I just want to say that Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the best Secretary General of ALL TIME!.

Heh.

Parent: How was the Harry Potter film

10 year old: It was fun but a bit unrealistic

Parent: What do you mean? Was it the magic?

10 year old: Nah, who has ever heard of a ginger kid, with two friends?

Frog Blog has this photo from Glenn Murdoch and has used it to twitter on about coal or mining or something.

I think a far better use for it, is a caption contest. As always go for funny, not nasty.

Went to the launch of Mashpit Comedy at Bats Theatre last night. It is going to be a TV show on Prime next year.

The concept is an Internet twist on a traditional idea – comedic videos. But instead of just being about submitting your own videos, it is about being able to mashup other videos.

It’s pretty simple. Just go to their website, and you can not only view videos, and upload them, but you can also (legally) download them. And you can mash up the videos you download, and then upload them back to the site.

That won’t replace the videos there, but people will be able to see the original video, as well as the mashups of them. And the best mashups will feature on the TV show next year.

So if you like mashing up videos, with a twist of humour, give it a go and you may make TV.

This 1983 photo comes from Michael Bassett and the Herald on Sunday. Those pictured are Bassett, Goff, Clark and Tizard.

As always, captions should be funny, not nasty.

A classic:

The National government is calling for a calm and reasoned debate after opposition MPs have raised fears about a recent Ministry of Health audit into the value of New Zealander’s body organs.

Health Minister Tony Ryall announced the stocktake of body parts last week, explaining that it was useful to know how much the total organ pool of New Zealand was worth. Some experts estimate that New Zealand is sitting on over $340 billion dollars in kidneys alone. …

The Prime Minister has reassured New Zealanders that they should not be concerned about the audit. ‘At this point we have virtually no plans to harvest any organs. We realise that peoples lungs and pancreas are important to them and you should feel confident that when you go to the dentist or the doctor for a checkup you have only a very small chance of being selected for the Ministry’s trial program and waking up in a tub of ice with an empty cavity where one of your kidneys used to be. I want to reassure people on that issue.’

Also to be checked out is the “Waiting for Voter: A tragi-comedy in two Acts” post. I won’t even quote from it as you really want to read the full thing.

Danyl obviously has far too much spare time on his hands, but we’re grateful of that.

Danyl has been leaked the proposed changes:

• Alter font of Section 59 amendment from Courier12 to Times New Roman.
• Establish designated ‘coffee houses’ in urban areas where children can be freely smacked without fear of police intimidation.
• Initiate second non-binding referendum to ask voters if they understood question in previous referendum.
• Key to meet with Sheryl Savill, the woman who initiated the referendum, listen to her talk for up to five minutes and look at no less than twenty of her cat pictures.
• Larry Baldock to negotiate law change with Sue Bradford on pre-condition that Bradford be confined within a pentagram and bound in a straitjacket and hockey mask throughout the talks.
• Key to address Families First meeting, stand at podium with shit-eating grin and demand to know who the fuck else they’re going to vote for.

Excellent satire, as usual.

While this website certainly covers a vast array of topics (from politics to lava formation and back), one glaring omission is sport.  Watching sport appears to play the same role in David P Farrar’s life as calculating the margin of error does in mine.  As a result, I have decided to pose a series of sporting questions:

Will Wellington rugby ever run out of ways to break the hearts of their long-suffering fans?

If Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott are the answer, what exactly is the question?

Are the Broncos really back or just teasing?

Is it so wrong to laugh at the fans booing Beckham – again?

Why is Murali still allowed to “bowl”?

Wouldn’t Wipeout be a better Olympic sport than women’s boxing?

Will the Phoenix ever be higher up the table this season?

Will Liverpool win another championship in my lifetime?

How many New Zealanders wearing Yankees caps could name two current players?

Did you know that joint highest one-day cricket score of 194* was just made by Charles Coventry?

Did you know that he plays for Zimbabwe and they still lost the game?

What exactly did the Perth Glory spend all their money on?

Would the sport of athletics survive if Bolt ever tested positive for drugs?

A tough one but is Scott Styris better-looking than Wayne Rooney?

Was the best call of the weekend the commentator who suggested that Auckland rugby players were not used to playing in front of crowds?

Why is Richard Boock getting more and more bitter each week?

Was Tiger always this whiny?

Do you believe in the new and improved “nice” Kobe?

Will Warney get Richie’s job?

AP reports:

Florida investigators say a man accused of downloading child pornography is blaming his cat.

Keith Griffin is charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after detectives found more than 1,000 images on his home computer.

According to a sheriff’s report Friday, Griffin told investigators that his cat jumped on the computer keyboard while he was downloading music.

He said he had left the room and found “strange things” on his computer when he returned.

You really have to laugh. That is either a very smart cat or a very depraved cat – or both!

The gift that keeps on giving for caption contests. From the Dominion Post. As always funny, not nasty.

One of the particular aspects of blogging which really sets it apart from more traditional forms of media is the instant feedback generated through reader comments.  I was delighted the first comment (FIRST!) on my first post (FIRST!) was a rather clever reference to the origins of my blog name.  Kudos to dog_eat_dog.

However, phil u felt obliged to imply that my first post was actually rather boring.  As a regular reader of quality political blogs, I naturally had no idea who he was.  Thanks to the wonders of Google I eventually found his site which appears to consist of him posting media articles seven times a day.  He doesn’t even make little editorial comments like David P Farrar does (“Pleased to see Lady Thatcher agrees with the post I made last week on this very subject…” or “I said the exact same thing to my good friend the Dalai Lama at the gym.”)

Burrowing through phil u’s archives, I came across one of his earliest posts entitled “apologies to readers.”  I expect he has produced a similarly-worded post every week since 2005 but I could not be bothered checking.  He wrote:

any readers(?) of this site should be aware that this is the bare bones/ first days of [this website].

Points for honesty on the readership levels if nothing else.

being technical luddites we are reliant on those who know how to do that stuff to do it for us.  they are otherwise engaged at the moment but i have been told i could get hopeful this weekend, or soon after.

Next on the technical to-do list – install a computer with a Shift key to enable use of capital letters.

so bells, whistles, and more links than you can shake a stick at, (all our stories/reports will link to our sources; this in the cultivation of a culture of transperancy), are just part of the upcoming menu.

It would seem that phil u, not Al Gore as previously thought, invented the concept of linking articles on the internet.  Spell-checking does not seem to have appeared at any stage on the upcoming menu.

whoar.co.nz will, among other things, become an apolitical (as in editorial stance) forum for (we hope) reasoned political/social debate, with lashings of humour. so, bear with us. all this and more, (as they say), will be revealed soon.

I guess the reference to being apolitical could broadly be considered humorous (if unintentionally) but the claims to “lashings of humour” surely need examined by the Advertising Standards Authority.  At least the ( and ) key work on his keyboard…

Given it is just the Internet after all, I have decided to simply continue to aggravate phil u in my own way by using capitals and punctuation appropriately.  I belief his unique writing style is based on a horribly misguided political philosophy – I think he honestly believes that you can’t have capitalism without capitals.

How can one resist this photo for a caption contest? Remember keep them funny, not nasty.

I blogged a few days ago the video of the wedding where the official party danced their way in. At the time it had been viewed 6.5 million times.

Anyway I saw on Twitter (Hat Tip: @GreerMcDonald) a link to this parody video of a dovorce where the lawyers, Judge and participants all dance their way in. Very good.