A bunch of stuff:

Apathy Jack writes:

Four things. Feel free to read only that which interests you.

...

Chaotic

Scene: The new Algonquin Round Table of the digital age, populated by the New Media commentators. Which is to say: A pack of homepage-jockeys sitting around watching TV.

Ben: Hang on, I’m confused. Was Kevin Federline a dancer for Britney on this tour, or was he just tagging along?

Nick: I think he was a dancer on one of her old tours and she just brought him along on this one.

Ben: See, where was that on Careers Day? They were all like; here’s how to get a career in accounting, here’s a business course you could do. Where was the course to spend all day fucking Britney Spears and not working and getting your own TV show out of it?

Jack: There was a course for that. It was Scrub 101, and I distinctly remember that we were all enrolled.

I don’t think I can describe the beauty of Britney and Kevin:Chaotic. Of course, being an American show, it is hugely sanitised, with naughty words and non-sponsored t-shirt logos edited out of the couple’s increasingly incoherent conversations. However, one thing the censors seemed to have missed is the burning rice paper of the cigarettes they are both endlessly smoking every night. Surely someone as rich as Britney can afford tailors?

My flatmates are generally disappointed that Britney is as trashy and low class as the grungy trailer-spawned Federline. I disagree with them for reasons of my own. Let’s just say I have a vested interest in millionaire nymphomaniacs who look like Barbie falling in love with crap hillbillies with terrible hair, and I think there should be more of it.

...

Bending under it’s own weight

See, I’ve been living in the suburbs for a few weeks now, and there are still the odd birth pains. The sheer distance from town (ie not within walking of the CBD) still provokes the occasional desire to put on my straw hat and sit on the rocking chair on the porch with a shotgun. Of course, I don’t have a shotgun, but one of my flatmates has a samurai sword. If only I could get Clutch’s A Shogun Named Marcus out of my head, I’m sure the neighbours would be in for less of a shock in upcoming weeks.

I’ve seen a surprisingly large number of police in the last fortnight: Two, at the local bakery after what looked like an attempted shoplifting. I saw police at street level in my old neighbourhood exactly three times in five years; all of which involved murders. Is it wrong that I lost some respect for the baker for calling in the constabulary for an offence so small as to not have a body count?

The number of car alarms I’ve heard recently started to make me think these suburbanites were paranoid, but then I just realised – The people here are simply less resigned to the inevitability of larceny than were my old neighbours.

Takes all kinds, I guess...

...

Just One Fix

Yesterday my kids offered to tell me the names of the naughty cokehead celebrities.

My kids know.

Remember when name suppression used to mean something?

...

There was some singing, then some praying, then some more singing, then some more praying, then Grant Morgan turned up and lowered the tone entirely...

Over the school holidays, I ended up at three protests, mostly by accident. Firstly, the tail end of the demonstration against the Black Caps going to Zimbabwe. I hate Zimbabweans, not because of their politics, but because I’ve met a few, and they’re an easy people to dislike. All things being equal, I think we should punish them by forcing them to watch cricket, the one sport in the world more boring than Curling. But you know I was in town, I was bored, and I heard strains of “Whatta a want..?” over the horizon.

The protest brought back a lot of memories, not least of all because I recognised most of the beardos and hippies in attendance.

There were a pack of the little anarchists who live down the road from my old flat, resplendent in Dead Kennedys hoodies and scarves tied around their faces, like a Black Block pre-school. I doubt whether any of these kids could find Zimbabwe on a map, or pick Robert Mugabe out of a lineup, but they sure as hell knew they were angry at Phil Goff (once he was pointed out to them).

I remember that the last few protests I’ve been at have been hijacked by special interest groups. That’s why, as I came up on this rally I was pleased to see that on this demonstration against genocide in Zimbabwe, there was only one banner demanding freedom for Palestine. I commented to Ben on the apparent absence of Water Power, and he produced a handful of anti-Metrowater leaflets from his pockets, which had been given to him earlier in the march...

As some have pointed out; New Zealand has a basketball team touring China right now, and these tie-dyed-in-the-wool professional protestors haven’t made a sound.

Maybe if all of the Falun Dafas were white?

Anyhoo, the next protest I went to was the University staff protesting for more money, or better quality asses’ milk in the marble bathes we all know they have in that Ivory Clocktower of theirs, or something. I went marching with my old activist crony Johnny the Red, and listened to speeches with Span(ner) and sundry remnants of the Old Guard. Despite the fact that most on this protest were younger than the last (lecturers and bean counters having a lower average age than the Springbok Tour Reunion of the anti-Cricket demo), this one seemed a bit more grown up. No one shouted out slogans, there were no twelve-year-olds pretending this was the G8. Just a nice sunny day hanging out with old friends in familiar surrounds. Sure, that wasn’t the aim of the protest, but it was easily the most pleasant piece of activism I’ve tagged along with in a while.

Then I ended up at a rally for diversity, organised by the city’s Christian and Muslim communities. The place was too pregnant with the unrecognised irony that these two religions are among the least tolerant organisations in the history of the world. The baby anarchists were at this one as well. I couldn’t tell if they were fer or agin, but hell, they probably couldn’t either.

I didn’t stay for long.