Just Kidding

"Oh" the New Zild tax department might say, "there is that Another Kiwi pulling himself up by his own, and others, bootstraps and getting paid income and such. Surely the free markets, MGBTN, have no finer example of rewarding the fecklessness of some people."
And it is true, paid income and such has been happening in frightening amounts of hours if not in terms of your actual money. One finds oneself in the forefront of the New Economy and having 3, yes, THREE, zero hours contracts! Unheard of amounts of coins are falling down the edges of the New Zild societal couch.
One must also make a strong recommendation for accepting any offers of Steamed Potato tasting work. A nice little earner and free steamed potato. I kid you not. Also milkshake lollies, for free, what a time to be alive!
In an attempt to spread the new found wealth of nations throughout the nation I sallied forth to a coffee kiosk which is cunningly situated right alongside the pathway from the carpark to the lecture theatres at the university where I am triply blessed.
 Noticing that there was no one else waiting there and with the same spirit of daring-do that inspired me to pull my straps up through my boots I vouchsafed to the kiosk inmate that I would like some coffee.
"Certainly, good sir" that unfortunate replied "and may I say that you have the scruffy old geezer look down good and proper"
"Why thank you" I answered "I have been tasting steamed potatoes"
"Ah hah" he said and stepped behind the safety shield provided to all who have to deal with uncaffeinated students.
Whilst he unlocked the bean safe and filled out the forms for the sugar dispensing unit my mind resumed it's usual flibbertigibbet motion around various projects that I am involved in now..
How had the 19 rabbits got into the -20C freezer during 2009? No one remembers putting them in there and the rabbits would not have been able to write "2009 Rabbits" on the side of the bag. And why did they all decide to hop in there? 2009 was not a great year but hardly bad enough for a mass rabbit "Bugger this, we are all going to freeze ourselves". Or was it? I confess to being somewhat out of the loop in Leporidae current affairs.
Maybe 2009 was a bad year for rabbits being one year after the Global Financial Crisis which may have impacted on the price of carrots.
Or was it some rabbit equivalent of Charles Manson "Look if we all hop in the bag and throw ourselves in the freezer, the pigs will all just go away". I just don't know. Maybe the unexplained Stoat at the other end of the freezer could tell us.
Also I was pleased to see plenty of Taq Polymerase in there and a "Cloning Kit"
Then my mind was sharply interrupted by a message on the Coffee kiosk radio. Apparently 50,000 Kiwis had gone missing in the last 10 years! I was surprised having heard nothing of the loss of a provincial centre amount of people. You would think someone would say something i.e. "Oh look Taupo has gone. That's unusual". And not such a bad thing, maybe some people, not me, would say.
But no, the Deep Voiced Radio Person assured me it was not an actual place but BEEBIES!
This, I thought, was really bad. People get quite attached to their children and marauding Vikings stealing them would lead to societal problems down the line.
Where would they keep them I wondered, in big camps?  Wouldn't someone say something.? Perhaps, and this is entirely possible, it is some new society thing I don't know about such as Pokemon Go.
 I know that Scandinavian countries have good child-care provisions but does that run to marauded babies?
Deep Voice Radio person then told me the whole story. IT WAS ABORTIONS!! Stealing away potential kiwis and causing irreparable damage to something or another. If I felt strongly enough about this I should send money to them because it is very expensive to have Deep Voiced Radio People telling me about the loss of potential kiwis.
I wanted to ask DVRP about how the extra 50,000 would fit in given that we don't have enough houses for those that didn't get stolen by marauding abortionists.
Is there an empty town somewhere in NZ with bitter town planners still waiting, waiting.
This is when I started to laugh, of course, since the grift is always amusing and in terms of effectiveness the action it takes is similar to farting at a hurricane. NZ has moved on a bit, in general while, of course, there are always some rubes to be fleeced.
I wondered how the radio for the kiosk is chosen, noting that the inmate had earphones on and was crouched over a laptop when I arrived and making disc spinning DJ motions with his hands. Certainly he did not say "Here's your coffee, how about those 50,000 potential children then?" "Buy them a potential coffee" I would have cheerfully replied.

Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out

"What?!" exclaim the readers who were paying attention, both of you. "Has not Another Kiwi already covered the story of your Pry Mincer hobnobbing with unsavoury types like that plausibly-deniable dirt-conduit and widely-loathed shitweasel Roncame Isopod* ?" Well, yes, AK did that, but the word "hobnob" set him off on one of his turns, and right now he is engrossed in writing sternly-worded memos for the smoko-room notice-board about the Chocolate Biscuit Replacement Roster, so he will not notice if we revisit the imbroglio.

Let us approach it, this time, from the direction of Freud's Kettle. This is the poor country relative in the domain of Philosophical Kitchen Utensils, with Russell's Teapot and Wittgenstein's Poker hogging all the attention.

it was not a pot of which one could
say, Pot, Pot, and be comforted

It is a special case of the Rule of Three governing narrative enumerations and itemisations. Freud held that the optimal number of mutually-contradictory accusations or excuses is three. Just as with breasts, or pints of Viper Heavily-Fortified Cider, two are unsatisfying while four are over-egging the lily.
Our own Pry Mincer was able to oblige with an example (thanks to the vast reserves of Narrativium lying beneath the Central Plateau of NZ's North Island).* The underlying political scandal is hard to encapsulate, nor is it something you want to know too much about, due to the unedifying nature of the personalities involved. Suffice to say that his operatives were found to have colluded with Mr Isopod in the release of incorrect but politically-damaging claims about the Leader of the Opposition, just prior to the 2011 election. NZ journamalists, having taken part in that smear campaign at the time, are now looking for someone else to be responsible for it, so they keep asking awkward questions of the Right Hon. JohnKey.

So we get these weird parallel-universe interviews, in which the Right-Hon insists that the Gwyn Report actually vindicated himself and his staff, because

1. His staff didn't send any information to Mr Isopod.
2. What they did was not illegal because the information had been declassified just before they sent it.
3. He himself was overseas at the time.

This is not the first appearance of Mr Isopod at Riddled.

----------------------------------------------

* False name, used on the advice of Trahison & Clerisy, Riddled legal advisors.
** The Rule of Three demands that two other examples of Freud's Kettle should follow. Here is one from the anti-vaccination oeuvre of Christina England, a bodily-fluid-purity obsessive who is sadly excluded through accident of birth from admission into the Encyclopedia of American Loons. And here she is again.

The Spring of discontent has it's water pooped in by more discontented poopers.

"Oh" people will be saying "that New Zild is a stand-up-for-truth-justice-and-the-Macaroon-way sort of place". And so we are except in an actually doing that sort of way as opposed to a saying that sort of way.
Our Pry Mincer (Hoban 1982) leads the way, of course, in the being transparent and accountable and such like, going on about it at the drop of a hat or the suggestion of the possibility of hat dropping occurring

Mr. Key about to drop a hat

.
      He is currently embroiled in a brouhaha, yes a brouhaha, about his texting with reptilian blogger Cameron Slater.

Artists Impression of Mr Slater

 Mr Key has variously claimed to not know Mr. Slater, to know Mr.Slater, to be Mr. Slaters godparent and finally, after several glasses of Old Rasmussens Gold Fire Rum to have had 3 children by Mr. Slater. All of this has been denied, repeated and then announced on radio after inhaling Helium.
This has all been overshadowed by the affair of Mr Slater texting Mr Key and revealing that the opposition Labour party had tried to have Mr. Slater killed.

What gun has he been smoking?

All of this is to say that politics in New Zild has taken a very healthy Watusi out towards the fruitbat section of popular democracies and certain unkind persons, who usually go by the name Old Entomologists Zoonotic Disease Appreciation Group, are positing that this may be a diversion created by the Pry Mincer for the express purpose of taking the populace's minds (thems that  may have one) off the Tyrell Corporation endorsed changes to the Security and Citizen Harrasment Laws being rammed down our throats this very week. No longer will swarthy types be able to launch themselves upon an unsuspecting world from the very centrally placed New Zild. No longer will carnage rain down upon the world from lovingly restored Beehcraft SD 17S Staggerwing Floatplanes. And there will be no watching of "Get Smart" re-runs either because it is disrespectful to security services.

Vote Tyrell, people and semi-peoples

Beechcraft SD17S Staggerwing floatplane being used for peaceful purposes,  just flying around, what's your problem, man?

Which brings us, in a masterful example of randomised writing, to the latest outrage (furrows brow, looks up inrage, only finds enrage and picture of Sarah Palin wearing Stars and Stripes bikini and firing AR15) which again takes the human form of a government minister, Mr Chris Finlayson. In a twist of fate more twistier than a very twisty thing, Finlayson has very recently been made the Minister of the very folks whose arms the new laws  are made to strengthen.
He was asked a question while he was in Parliament doing that thing called "Question Time" when the opposition gets to ask questions of the government out loud, where everyone can see and hear. Which is how, unfortunately, they did actually hear Mr Finlayson call the asker of the question "A filthy creature". Oops, not really a stellar start to ones new job an hour into it, and all.
One could hope for an early dissolution of Parliament but as Smut Cyde vouchsafed to me the other night at Radiolabeling of DNA with 3' terminal transferase and button soccer night "It's a funny old game".

Hey! Hey! White people's feelings are being hurt over here!

Remember the good old days, my friends when New Zilders could walk around secure in the knowledge that brown people were funny, played the guitar and were good at rugby? Most importantly, they knew their place and it wasn't at the front of the line IYKWIM.
Then the blooming 1970's, 80's and so on happened and NZ got all PC and brown people took over the country and it's a cryin' shame.
Now, of course in the ebb and flo (the second album was wack, dudes) of history we have a right thinking Gubblement what has got it in for the poors and good show, we all say. Teach them for the pooring and the like. But some namby pamby socialimist Teevee folks got all bent out of shape because of poor people's idle and feckless children starving. They said the gubblement should give them breakfast at school. In the usual corporatist, product placement, under-the-table deal, manner in which this government works, this has been done.
Luckily a noble cartoonist has taken up the fight for poor oppressed tax -payers and had published two extremely racist and generally nasty cartoons about how the poors will waste their money on beer, cigarettes and gambling. Did you need me to say that most of the people in the cartoons have brown skins?
Google Al Nisbett racist cartoons iffen you want to see them in all their glory.
This has caused an outpouring of wailing and gnashing of teeth like we haven't seen since the Governor-General's tractor, Dennis, was found to be a girl tractor. Mrs. Cat was off her Mackerel Gnocchi in a White Wine Sauce for an hour!
Many, many words have been written on the intertron all about how terrible it is just because a bloke makes a stupid, racist, ignorant and largely pathetic couple of cartoons about how lazy and stupid poor folks are, he gets criticised.
As is my practise I sailed over all of this pretty serenely thinking that if there was anything important I would be informed by the proper authorities. But then, just this very morning we have a piece of shit  resistance by noted scribbler Colin Espiner  who proves beyond reasonable doubt that 1) Cartoons are allowed to be awful and 2) Maoris are awful and the real racists and 3) he's a plonker.
I particularly enjoyed these bonne mots:

But I reckon there was something else at play, too. A little bit of reverse racism,

You know, white people got feelings too and so there!
And I took to my fainting couch at news of:

Al's view - at least how he explained it to Duncan Garner - was that there are plenty of people in this country of all ethnicities who cry poor but actually aren't, at least not by world standards. "A lot of them are overweight and have wide-screen TVs,'' Al told Duncan. 

I'm an unemployed, overweight person with a wide screen TeeVee. Oh Noes!  Do I have to be all reverse racism too? You'd need a special licence for that I guess because you have to use the rear vision mirror. A man sent me an email saying that he could get me one for cheap from Nigeria (still waiting actually Alonso Bryant III).
But the snot on the icing of the cake is the comments on the article. Letter after letter of white butt hurt about "Maoris are being mean"  and "You are SO right, Colin, poors are awful."
 And all we have to do is look at the health figures, the incarceration numbers and the education numbers and we can see what a load of self-pitying wankers these people are; sitting in their white privilege, scolding brown people from behind their nylon lace curtains.
Not for nothing did noted NZ poet J.K.Baxter refer to this as The Pig Islands.

A shower of dicks

A useful metaphor for so many occasions.

New Year's Eve

" I suppose that decent sausage rolls would be too much to hope for" observed Smut Clyde morosely.
"They will be all old and stale" predicted tigris " what else can you expect on NYE".
They both looked at me.
"Heh, heh, chums" I vouchsafed "not to worry, I have Christmas crackers here with party hats and riddles in them" I read from the packet "Guaranteed to raise a smile"
"Guaranteed to raise stale sausage rolls from my stomach" gloomed Smut.
"Unkind!" I observed "look they are made in Bangladesh, the Christmas cracker capital of the world".
The Riddled talking clock ticked  "It is now 11.30pm" it announced "putting things in the clock mechanism and drawing on the clock face are not funny."
"Shut up, Hitler clock" said tigris putting the finishing touches onto the toothbrush moustache "or Tom Friedman clock. Which is worse? At least Hitler built autobahns."
"I'll just go and check the mail" I said and walked over to the mail desk "still nothing". I walked back and sat at my desk.
"AK" said Smut "what time did the infernal clock say it was? Do you think that any mail will be coming in now aside from amusing photos of peoples bottoms? Do you think that anyone else will be working now?"
"Who knows" I said "what thrilling messages may wing their way here. Who knows what amazing secrets!"
"The secret of how to work the staff roster for NYE might be a good start" suggested tigris "it is  not robust software"
"Well yes" I said "I did think about that when we took it back to help with the Stonehenge work roster".
Smut laughed "Those guys are funny. Physical humour but with an impish overtone."
"I felt we could have done more with them comically if it hadn't been for those meddling priests. 'Eat At Joes' was a good sign to make with the stones" said tigris. 
"Why did you get the Marketing people in on it, AK?" asked Smut.
"They had done some good work on the demongraphics and felt that with a good supplier, namely Mrs. Miggins, they could have had a solid merchandising opportunity. That was before the priests got all nasty on it, with the antlers and the holly up the jacksy and such" I replied "Arthur says that he only limps on cold mornings, now."
"Well" said tigris, "for my money the last meeting of the Secondary Structure of the Foraminiferal SSU 3′ Major Domain and Space Guns made from Pinecones Society was the highlight of the year."
"Yes, well, things did get rather heated" said Smut with a mixture of pride and embarrassment.
"Heated?' I said "We still haven't found all the Meringue Surprise bowls."
"I found a slice of garlic bread on the ceiling of the meeting room, two weeks after the affray" said tigris, "behind the extractor fan that had Professor Dingus' wig in it."
"I know nothing about that" Smut said, a little too quickly.
"Gravity is quite weak at that end of the hall and his wig got sucked up" I ventured "or so I heard".
"My highlight" I said as the other two began to pack up " was the proper organisation of the clipboard cupboard, what a bleedin' mess it was."
"The time is 11.50pm" said the talking clock "no time to slack off n-"
""Oh the poor thing fell down" said tigris "I think it's time for us to go home"
"Yes' said Smut "legend tells that if you catch Evangeline van Holsterin under mistletoe at midnight on NYE, she can't ask you about your bar tab for an unspecified time"
"Worth a go then" I said "I'll distract the idiot boyfriend with King Lear by finger puppets"
"This legend" asked tigris "I never heard of it"
"Is that the time?" said Smut "we better go"
"The taim oz twlvety zornin" said the talking clock. 

Look what the cat sicked up

Iffen you go 19.50 of this link's audio and listen for a little bit you will actually hear New Zild Right-wing hack, Matthew Hooton say "liberal, elite, anti-western pro-taliban people".  Thus we see the emptiness of new Zealand politics exposed, as it were, to the harsh light of WTF.
Who is Matthew Hooton? You might say in a perfectly reasonable case of never having being exposed to his verbal slurpees before. Why, he is the tactical genius who was outed by investigative journalist (I assume that is some sort of journalist, who knows?) Nicky Hagar in his book "The Hollow Men" which detailed the perfidy at the top of the NZ National Party in 2006. Hagar deals to his whining about that episode here
But, of course Hooton is a rightwing hack so he gets to keep ranting on national radio and, Lord save me, can make interesting points.
But get him onto the usual list of Climate change, welfare, education, overseas war or islamocommiefacsism and he taxis up the runway to wingnut take off zone.
What is it with these bozos that they are unable to see the laughing stock they make of themselves? Does he really think that they are cells of Liberal elitist, pro Taliban personages living false lives (in the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn, he specifically says in the audio FFS) whilst they scheme for the downfall of Western Civilisation. Well obviously, he does or else why say it on national radio? Pissing off liberals? Making them laugh more likely.
But really, PRO_TALIBAN!!!??? WHO THE FUCK WOULD THEY KILL FIRST? THE FUCKING LIBERALS THAT"S WHO! YOU FUCKING MORON HOOTON. Your right wing arsehole friends would join them to oppress anyone that wasn't like them too.
Ooh that felt good. I shall share it on Facebook.

The Wisdom of Children

Daughter Kiwi: I want to wear runners to school but I can't
AK: Why not?
DK: If I do they will say "Oh no DK has made us sad, we have to go and drink Gin".
That's my girl.

A birthday present to you

Another year ticks over and I thank you all. It was not the best year but made me appreciate family and friends. Back to the basics

Tim Minchin's "Storm"

Tim Minchin, an Australian, is a fecking genius,

Invisible market hands

 

You will notice here how no one is actually moving anything or doing any actual work. Well that is where you are wrong!!

Yes wrong! Invisible hands of the free market are at work here moving and sorting out spices and salted pineapple as the Riddled Commodity Floor and Party Cushions Making Emporium swings into another day of high octane action. "Oh" people might say "It is just the Riddled people faffing around with fancy goods trying to look important, again" But it is not all beer and skittles in the cut and thrust of the international salted pineapple trade or the Decorative Turnip trade (very nasty trade at times).

Speaking of incomprehensible

No, not my "humour" it's Chris Muir and the wretched Day by Day cartoon. I think the speech bubbles from some other cartoon series got mixed up with whatever Muir sent to Korea on that day.
Suggested Replacement dialogue:
Her "So Artichokes are on special this week?'
Him:" You don't want to eat them they'll go straight to your shoulders"
Him:"Get fat and I'll leave you"
Her: "Get me the Twinkies"

Rose-Garden Funeral of Sores

Dennis hated long weekends. "We should do something as a family," Uncle Bill would inevitably say. "Let's all go camping together, that'll be fun," Janice would say. And they'd meet at the camping site, and EVERY SODDING TIME they'd find out that Ken had forgotten half the supplies, and everyone would get shitfaced on gin during the ensuing family argument. Leaving him to stand outside the locked gate of the walled garden of alchemical secrets hoping to borrow some tea-bags, while they lay around on Mount Parnassus reciting The Ball of Kirriemuir.

And he never knew whether he had no feet -- which would make him a liminal, transcendental figure on a par with Oedipus -- or he was just ankle-deep in mud.

The gardeners really should fix that leak.

Another Kiwi witters on

That's a warning title, to say that I am indulging myself and it might not be terribly amusing.
I am 50 now. Just this week the wheel clicked over and there I am-old. Because, to me, after 50 the process starts and in 10 years I will be old. This is OK, eyes, ears and knees could do with a refurbishment but generally, one is OK.  I got my blood analysed and it seems to be remarkably humanoid.
But 50 years is a long time. I have been looking at a series of photo albums of my home town and the differences in 50 years are immense.From horses and carts in the main street to sleek kings of the sky, DC-3's, crashing onto people's greenhouses.
I have a lot to be thankful for: Family, friends and doors on the living room to stop Mrs. Cat getting out and   killing us all in the night. I have met some fascinating people and seen pretty amazing animals (Tusked weta).
 I am happy and proud to have helped to do some things that mean that we might have them around for a bit longer.
But, of course, life shows no mercy, and  this year is not shaping up as real flash hot. My FIL died and my job is probably going the same way. At the time when I wanted to be able to stand back and re-asses it all and change my job, it is going to forced on me and I'll probably have to take whatever comes up. Certainly that is how it worked last time this happened. For there is one thing my generation knows, there's never a good job market.
The difference between the last time though is The Interwebs. If I have to stay home I will have more time to plague you all (assuming anyone has read this far). I will also have more time for writing which is a good thing. And the writing is connected with The Interwebs because this is where I took my first faltering (oh the pain) steps into the sea. Thanks to the Merconauts I tips my lid to them all. 
Also, one could not ask for a better blog partner than Smut. A prince among men and funnier than Mrs Miggin's Narwhal and Walnut Date Surprise pie.
Well that's enough blather, thanks for coming and commenting, it has been a privilege to get to know youse all.
Birthday treats: 
NSFW Bad Language