This blog is closed and archived
It's time to face facts and put up a final post to officially close this blog.
It seems a long time ago, but it is really only three years since we
launched this blog outta Bingsland. Despite the Sid Snot-like attitude in the first post, the aim was to give us somewhere to continue and extend conversations we had in our car pool, during the long drive out to the Company in the country.
So where has everyone gone?
- Well, Auntay has become a Mum-ay ('on yer!) but will back to the crayons again soon.
- Wordgirl has had a little full-stop (bewty mate!) and intends to mince words in other areas.
- Mapguy is off the map (rumour has it he fights fires now) and has recently built a new abode.
- Bramblerose Sandybanks is still rambling out to the Company (look for her in the stacks) but we have no idea how.
- And I'm working to ease discomfort in the depths of local government knowledge (and maybe causing some too).
So that's it. This blog is now officially closed. We'll leave it here for posterity, and a warning to others, for as long as Blogger exists.
Apparently around 40% of blogs on the web are no longer being updated. Having achieved so much, our blog has now become a statistic and joins the world-wide archive of random remarks.
Our thanks go to the fuel companies, Blogger, the Company, and the music industry. Thanks for the ride.
Maybe we'll see you on different road somewhere...
This blog...is coming like a ghost-town
Meanwhile...
World Pinhole Camera Day
Phew!
It's been and gone, the last sunday of April every year is
World Pinhole Camera DayBarking Mad?
Maybe, the lowest of low tech simplicity is the appeal
Just light + film = image
After last years abortive effort I'd got my shit together, sussed out what went wrong and had another crack at it. I'm trying to use the multi-shot capacity of a disposable camera rather than having to arse around changing film in a darkened closet.
Films being developed now, all will be revealed......................
In the mean time check out the
world wide gallery
Things in the building have reached an all time low
Yes folks after a long period of time some of us decided enough was enough- this email was recently sent around the officeThe ladies' toilet:
I'm surprised that there is a need to even contemplate sending an email like this, but things have come to a head in the ladies toilets!!!
**** kindly provided us with a nice toilet brush for each cubicle, and today I was warned against going into the window side cubicle, chiefly due to a mysterious person's dislike of using such an implement. It's scarey - be afraid; be very afraid.
It is not the first time that this has happened, but is the frightening. If it was the men's loo, I would be less surprised!!!
That's it - hope you're not offended, but felt that matters had to be taken in hand. It's not fair on your colleagues, or the poor cleaner.
More cartoon tomfoolery
It's nice to see the Aussies are prepared to publish
cartoons taking the piss out of themselves.
In a similar way the muslim cartoon debacle could have been deflated by taking ownership to the offending items.
Oh, what's that - the aussies aren't owning up to it?
Oops!
So long and good riddance
The world will be a safer place with the
announcement of the death of Caspar Whine-and-cheese-burger, the out of control defence secretary of the Reagan administration.
To call this man a megalomaniac would be a gross understatement, the man was in charge of
$US6 Billion A WEEK of defence expenditure
during peacetime while he was US Defence secretary, a grand total of more than $US 1 Trillion!
The architect of the potentially apocalyptic Star Wars program SDI, $US 50 Billion later still not operational, could well have brought about the end of our planet as we know it. To credit him with helping to bring about the end of the Soviet Bloc is simply bollocks, he would much rather have blown it apart.
One thing to come out of all this is the Global Positioning System (GPS) the positional framework of Star Wars that has changed to way we navigate inside our world. The Mapguy is surprised that geospatial people have not blogged about the significance of this already.
Is that worth 1 Trillion? Maybe
Good riddance to one of the world's most dangerous men.
Auntay sells out
Auntay has sold her soul to Richard Hammond. Yes, he of Top Gear fame.
Rumours are that Richard turned up in Lincoln in his new Porsche 911 Carrera and Auntay promptly through away her engagement ring and leapt over the side of the vehicle, into the driver's seat, shoving poor Richard into the passenger seat.
Away in the hills at last
At last I've got away into the hills.
Away at the crack of 8am Barry and I did the now familiar trip across the great gravelly plain of the Waimakariri. We met Mark in Springfield, left his car at Claire and Jim's house and continued on to a layby through a rickety gate next to the Taipo.
Griffin creek hut from the Remote Huts website; photo: Mark Buckley 2004A short roadbash of a couple of km's and then up Harrington Creek for the 800m grunt up to the scrubline. The track was thin in places but that set the standard for the enire trip.
There's a drought going on right now on the West Coast, all weekend we crunched rata leaves underfoot. A curious sound for west Coast trips. Nearing the top we surprised ourselves by catching up to a couple also sweating their way up the hill. They seemed particularly interested in how far we were from the top.
Barry's GPS didn't seem to want to talk to more than one satellite, I have no time for the things myself. I go to the hills to rely on my skill and instinct, not to depend on the trappings of technology that pervade my life, my profession makes sure of that. I assured them they were nearly at the top, but strangely we never saw them again.
If you weren't paying attention it would be easy to miss the turn off to Griffin Creek, maybe they got waylaid on the tops. The turn off is right on the scrubline so a quick detour is in order to get a view from a nearby knob. Ah, the view down the Taramakau is grand. The ocean looks inviting as there's no water up here to drink, unless you count the scoty old water barrel at the turn off.
As we started down a
karearea Falco novaeseelandiae silently assumed position on a dead spar above us. And then a plunge down to the cool clear sparkling Griffin creek. Water, the best beveridge of all.
Pohangina Pete takes a way better Whio photo than I ever could, so we were content to just sit and watch a pair of them glide through the rapids. A little further up the river and this time three whio hopped up on a rock and watched us. Five in one trip is not a bad talley at all.
"I thought" Mark said "that blue ducks were supposed to be rare. How come we see them every time we go tramping?"
"Ah that's because we go places that other people rarely visit" I replied.
Griffin Creek hut is an easy boulder hop upstream, a standard four bunk forest service hut that has been adopted, strangely, by hippies at some point recently. Dream catchers hang by the window, an inflatable kiwi (!) sits on the bench and various hippy musings fill the hut book.
Sadly the hut book is only a couple of years old, a victim of that curious DoC policy of removing old hut books from their home of origin. I believe that their own hut is the best archive af all. The last visitors were three months ago.
The new Titanium gas stove ran like a dream. It's a 9000 BTU flamethrower i got from
Bryan Dudley and it's a doozy. Because of my gross lack of fitness (pathetically) attributable to selling houses and owning a small child, I've adopted a lightweight tramping regime to be able to get away with it. My base pack weight is down to about 4.5 kg, with a weekend worth of food that's still way below the 10kg+ I'd usually carry. And what a differance it makes! Shoes instead of boots, a daybag size instead of a large sac. Many breaks I wouldn't bother to take my pack off, it's weight seems insignificant.
Mark had a bottle of Brew Moon lager, chilled in the Creek it made a superb apertif before a big feed of pasta and an early night.
Up and away at the crack of 9 the next day, so much for going to Scotty's biv (my orginal intention) and back down the track to the turn off to Rocky Creek. Again a thin trail, but not to hard to follow all the same. We seemed to fairly skip down to Rocky Creek Hut, and then we lunched in the river bed just downstream. Follow the river down till multiple permolats on two trees signal the start of the track and then away and out to the Taipo again. Cross the Taipo and up to the car, easy.
Soon we're gliding along at 100km/h, effortlessly climbing the Otira gorge to Arthur's Pass for a ice cream.
After another perfect weekend in the hills, the smell of a hot day fills the air at springfield.
Lactic legs, a head full of green, birds and rushing water.
It was the Pope!
I mighta known! We (my wife and I) watched the SouthPark cartoon last night, and, as I expected, rumours of the rampant slaughter of Catholicism and women-kind were highly exaggerated.
Jesus and various other religious figures have appeared on the show before, only to be ridiculed completely. I don't recall such a fuss about those episodes.
As seems common nowdays, a lot of people have been making a fuss about something they have never seen. There's an irony about religious faith in there somewhere.
For a start, alcoholics would have far more reason to be "offended", especially Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a very funny piss-take of the whole "Hi I'm Fred, and I'm an alcoholic", the 12 steps thing, and convincing people they have a "disease" that can be cured.
For the benefit of those who didn't watch it, Stan's Dad is convinced by AA that he is an alcoholic, and hears that a statue of Mary has a stigmata - yep, that's right. The bleeding was a stigmata. And it was, quote, "from her arse" not from the front of the statue, which is where we expected to see it based on all the hype in the media. Stuff coming out of people's bottoms is a standard SouthPark joke, and yes it is juvenile, but if you don't like it, don't tune in.
Stan is not convinced his Dad is an alcoholic and tells him it is just a matter of willpower and all he needs to do is reduce his drinking a little. His Dad is brain-washed by the AA, and believing only a miracle will cure him, visits the statue and is blessed by a priest with the stigmata blood.
He is instantly cured, but it all turns to custard when the Pope arrives to check out the new miracle. He examines the arse blood and promptly declares, "Chicks don't bleed from the arse, it is menstrual blood, and therefore IS NOT A MIRACLE!" The fact it was still coming from the back of a statue escaped him.
So, it was a stigmata until the Pope declared it wasn't. And no-one thought it was menstrual blood, except him.
I mighta known!
Actually, what angers me the most about all this is Catholics making a fuss about something like this, when they should be out there helping the downtrodden and the poor, as Jesus told them to! If South Park was just ignored, as most people do, this would hardly have registered a glimer on the media rainbow. And yes I know one can't ignore everything supposedly bad or evil in the world, but SouthPark has pretty much had a full-on tilt at many things racial, sexual, and cultural in the world since it started, and the world would appear to be unharmed.
Most "church-going" Catholics I've met wouldn't know a poor person if they passed them in the street, but then most middle-class Catholics wouldn't be on that street. In my 41 years, I've only met a few who actually lived the message of Jesus, and show it through their actions, not their words. In fact, from my observations, most Christians do not get the message of Christ at all. If they did, there would be a whole lot less misery in the world.
One person told me recently that the Muslim cartoon thing has just raised the goal posts for every interest group now, and Catholics want their right to be offended too. Just what we need; another group of people out looking for a windmill to tilt at, instead of doing what their founding members would be doing if they were here - working to help the person in trouble next to them and improve the world for everyone.
What this all tells me is that the desire of Catholicism Inc. to control the way we think and express ourselves is really not a thing of the past century, and is only just beneath the rather thin skin of the Church.
I've got a message for all Catholics: stop being offended by stuff and go OUT THERE and HELP PEOPLE. That is the message of Christ.
