Easy listening

The other day I met up with me ole mate Gary up on the tailings dam at work, which is a bit of an odd place to meet up, but we tend to cross each other's path up there quite often. It's almost like a regularly scheduled meeting. Gary is old school Waihi and has been around Waihi since Christ was a corporal. I met him in the stores firstly and the most important thing that you need to know about Gary is that he whispers. I've known him for almost four years now and I've probably only ever understood about half of everything he has ever said to me. In person, it's not so bad because you can infer things from non-verbal communication, just like when you travel to a foreign country and you don't speak the language, but over the phone it's absolutely hopeless trying to understand anything he's saying! Mostly, you try and pick up key words, such as, "rugby" "last night" "good" "computer" "requisition" "Ph" "pick up" "soon". That last sentence is just a bit of insider stores humor but that's really the way it goes.
Anyways, Gary plays in a band (bass, not the singer) and he's downloaded one of their songs to youtube which can be found to here. He's hoping to appeal to the masses of Finndego readers out there (all 25 of you!) in hopes of becoming the next Justin Bieber. He assures me that of the 20 hits that he's received that 18 of them are of him checking if their are any more hits. I have feeling that I know some of the people in his band through Keri Ann's Waihi Art School connections but I'll have to wait until our next meeting up on the dam.
For those of you wondering what's happening with the radio thing. It is happening and I'll keep you up to date as things progress. In honor of that, and the fact that Gary has never beaten me at virtual rugby, here is my own little playlist of things that I have been listening to lately. Enjoy!

To Union or not to Union

When I got my job in the Mill I had to decide whether or not I would join the Union. Even though the whole work force are members of the Union, I still felt as if I needed to do my home work and have a good ole' think about it. To be honest, prior to this, I was neither for nor against unions, in general, so it was kind of hard for me. In the end I decided that in this case it was easier to swim downstream and that in the end, I had no objections that would overrule that idea. (Aside: I have two uncles, where one of my lasting memories of them together, is their arguments over white and blue collar workers. Neither of their arguments were very convincing so I was never convinced either way but I just remember their "discussions" about the subject.
Apropos to this, a while back, in this very blog, I started a series of posts called "Guess who's coming to dinner". My fifth and final guest was to be my personal hero Jon Stewart but I couldn't link to any of his shows because I was outside of the US. It was a bit of a bummer because I thought he could really bring the whole group together and act as a sort of MC for the evening, in my own little world. I mean really, the people who have missed out on an invite include among others Ali, Obama, Dave Groehl, Lou Reed, John Cusack and Queen Beatrix.
What do Jon Stewart and Unions have to do with each other, you ask? Well a few weeks back I saw this piece (I'll place the link at the end of this post) and I thought it was brilliant. In typical Jon Stewart fashion Stewart asks America, why are you so stupid? As usual America either doesn't understand the question or doesn't know the answer.
As America crawls further and further into the fetal position, Stewarts's show has actually become more and more important. I don't know if any of you watch but it is starting to fill what I find to be an important role in American society as a "bullshit detector".
I'm reading Richard Dawkins "Greatest Show on Earth" right now which is his argument for evolution. Why should he feel the need to even write this book now. Well, because in the latest polls 44% of Americans believe that the world was created by God in the last 10,000 years. Actually, that number has been steady for the last 10 years and I think it's important that the likes of Stewart point out that during the last election, 3 of the 7 Republican nominees for President did not believe in evolution. I wonder if heaven has a union? Here is the link as promised.

My mate Brett and the Wildebeest?

The kids are getting old enough now that they are getting interested in watching things other than The Wiggles, Little Einsteins and Special Agent Oso. We've been watching more Discovery and National Geographic lately, which is great because I love Discovery and National Geographic! Almost as much as I like Nina from Imagination Movers! You dads know what I'm talking about! Anyways, Fletcher was way enthusiastic about telling his mom about the "giant crocodile that ate the wildebeest in the river!" He's only three and can get quite excited about these things. It got me thinking about the victimization of the poor wildebeest. Fletcher only knows what a wildebeest is because they get eaten by crocodiles, whom he thinks are really cool. Little does he know that basically the whole animal world likes to eat wildebeest. Personally, I've never tried it, but I'm sure it's quite nice. Lions,leopards,hyenas,cheetahs and crocodiles all love wildebeests. I'm almost sure that if one ever made it to the ocean, a giant orca would come right out of the ocean and grab one and pull it back in and play a game with it, flipping it around and kicking it with it's tail like one of those toys at a seaquarium. My point is, I'm sure that the wildebeest is a noble animal and I'm sure they try to do the right thing in their life, like being a good herd member, procreating, wandering thousands of miles on their annual migration across the savanna, crossing rivers that aren't meant to be crossed and running the gauntlet every time they want to get a friggin' drink. We all love watching the wildebeest giving birth and the miracle of nature as this little calf, within 20 minutes of being born, struggles to it's feet and takes it's first wobbly steps and soon is strong enough to join it's mother in returning to the herd. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it, as it is set upon by a pack of African hunting dogs and is torn to shreds so that the hunting dogs can feed their own newly born pups. And so we justify the loss of the wildebeest calf for the gain of the hunting dog pack. For that is truly the lot of the wildebeest isn't it? Birth,run, eat grass and be eaten.
This brings me to my old mate Brett. Brett, was for about 9 months, my roommate in Korea. You know how you sometimes have relationships with other people and it's not quite even. Like how, sometimes, the other person isn't really good for you or your not really good for that person. Well, Brett was like that but I still haven't figured out whether he was good for me or I was bad for for him or vice versa. We really were quite toxic for each other but only in the way that "something" always seem to happen. We got along great and never fell out at all, but there was always this feeling that the sum of our mischief was always greater than it's parts, if you know what I mean.
It's a bit weird, but most of the followers of this blog know someone else who follows this blog. It's mostly all friends and family and there is a lot of crossover as to who reads this but no one here has ever met Brett. Brett was tall and skinny and wore those big ugly "John Hughes" glasses. He was geeky and clean cut with a hair cut only an evangelist could love. He was also morally and ethically degenerate which totally belied his exterior appearance. He had, and I'm not making this up, a hole in his chest. In the middle of your chest where your breast bone is he had a hole large enough to fit your fist into. It is, to this day, the most singular weird thing that I have personally ever seen on a human being. Just weird.
I forget where he was from or what he did but we were roommates and we were good friends. It's not always like that in the military. Sometimes you have good friends and sometimes you get people that you barely talk to because you have absolutely nothing in common and it just doesn't click.
Anyways, Brett and I used go out a lot and we would hit a few of the regular spots in town. Invariably though, "something" would happen and after a while it would happen too often to be a coincidence. I can't go into detail of too many of the "somethings" but I can give a brief summary of a few:

Entering a hotel where we weren't guests at. Going into a room, deciding we didn't want to stay. Threw a sink out of the window(as you do) and trying to escape down the fire escape. Losing my wallet as I tried jump a fence and getting caught going back to get it.

Inciting a riot at a Korean baseball game by mooning the opposing fans. Apparently they don't appreciate that sort of carry-on there.

Brett got a master key (long story) that worked on every GMC vehicle on the base. The NCO bar was WAY on the other side of the base and we would "commandeer" vehicles to get us home and leave them in the neighboring dormitory for someone to find.

Getting kicked out of a charity fun run for taking a taxi.

Scaring new arrivals (him and I would pick them up at the airport) by running through toll booths and speeding past cops. (Local cops weren't allowed to stop military vehicles, but the new guys didn't know that.)

Wearing statutes that we bought at the market as necklaces. What we didn't know was that they represented fertility and we wondered why ladies were coming up the whole night wanting to rub our statutes.

We used to go to Seoul (pop. 15 million) and get on the subway and get off at a random stop and go exploring. Normally, we would bribe a local with booze and cigarettes to show us around. One time, we met a student, who we took out to a restaurant. When we came out the street was lined with riot police and at the adjacent park an anti-american rally was going on. We stood quietly at the back until Brett yelled "Yankees go home!" and then we had to run like hell to get out of there. Bad vibe.

Osan (the base) would often hold joint exercise with the South Korean Army to simulate an attack from the North. During certain phases we would be confined to quarters and with nothing to do we would go up on the roof to watch the boys play their games. When that got boring we would start water bombing the "invading forces" if they got within reach of our range. The dorms were officially off limits but if those special forces could have got a hold of us we were dead men.

These are just a few examples, none of which I am exactly proud of, but are only really the tip of the iceberg. Brett and I had a mutual friend Joe, who after enough of our antics said that in the future he would go out with one of us but not both of us (this was after the riot at the baseball). And that was it really. Apart things were generally pretty tame but when we were together it was just unusual how weird things would get. I'm not proud of these things, but they did happen, and they are part of the story. The only thing I'm trying to figure out, is if I was the friggin' wildebeest in this whole story or if we were just two old crocodiles. I'm not quite sure yet nor how I'll tell that story to Fletcher just yet.

10 Things I think I think.

To borrow a skit from my 43th favorite columnist, Peter King, I'm just going to throw some things out there and see what sticks. Here are 10 things I think I think:
1. Just when exactly did peanut butter become so deadly to children? I don't remember any of this when I was a kid. Was it there then and my parents were just trying to protect me by not telling me? Did they perform secret tests on me just to make sure. Or more sinister, has the peanut butter industry changed what goes into peanut butter making it cheaper to produce (the conspiracy theorist will be thinking GM peanuts) but more toxic to kids. Nevermind all the warning labels e.g. "May contain nuts". Mrs Finndego freaked on me when I went to put a muesli bar in the kids lunchbox. "You can't do that! It's not allowed!" It's just crazy

2. You know, I go to the deli at my supermarket and I get my 200g of ham. They weigh it, throw it in the bag and plop a barcode sticker on the bag. I get it home and I want to make myself a sandwich. Do you think I can get that fucking sticker off without tearing the bag to shreds? Not a chance. Can't we make a sticker that I can open the bag, get my ham out and reseal the bag. Is it that hard? Really?

3. Speaking of that, I'm a dirty filthy smoker and I like to roll my own cigarettes. I get those papers that have two dispensers, so to speak. I try my hardest to balance which side I take a paper from. I take one from the top and then I'll take one from the bottom etc. Anyways, at some stage before I get anywhere near the last paper either the paper from the top or bottom disappears into a black hole somewhere only to be found again after great strife and struggle. You smoke to relax and having to struggle pulling a paper out like that is frustrating. It's 2010 for christs sake. Can we not sort this out? It really chaps my hide!

4. Can we please stop hero worshipping people who can kick/throw/hit a ball really far. I'm imposing a new "Hero" rule. It's really simple.If you are a sports star you have to do something ELSE completely different really well too. I know Alex Rodriguez just hit his 600th steroid induced homerun recently but if I'm truly going to acknowledge that achievement I'd like to know that he also has his sights set on completing his Phd in Linguistics in the offseason or that he will be spending that time competing at the World Rowing Championships. I'd like to see him spending some time in southern Sudan sorting out their needs with the help of his 10 year US$275 million dollar contract. Guys like Ted Williams who was one of the 5 best baseball players of all-time spent 6 years of his prime years flying fighter planes in two different wars. Not only that, he went on to become a world class fisherman. Edmund Hilary, after conquering Everest went onto driving a tractor across Antarctica and then spent the rest of his life raising funds and building schools for Sherpas in Nepal. Something like that I'm thinking.

5. Never underestimate the value of a warm, dry house. That's all.

6. I know they recommend an aspirin and a glass of water before you go to bed as a cure for hangovers. My only problem is that I am always too drunk to remember that before I go to bed! So I'm not really sure if it really works at all.

7. I love it when my kids try to be helpful. It's never always convenient at the time but it's still cute all the same. Fletcher likes to get my work clothes before I leave for work and put them by the front door. He'll get my lunch too and bring it to me. Then he'll want to zip up my jacket. He'll give me a big hug and ask me what I'm doing that day. He loves it when I have to drive the loader! Now, if I could just get him to be so enthusiastic about cleaning up after himself.

8. New Zealand played a test match against someone tonight in Netball. I can't tell you who it was because I didn't watch it, because Netball is boring. There, I said it. There is a sport out there that features really attractive women wearing short skirts and lots of jumping around that I find really boring. I do, however, have a few ideas on how to improve the sport:
a. Three words: Randomly placed landmines
b. Make goal defence and goal attack switch position every quarter. Make these girls play defence too. (Note: the netball courts in town are by my house and in New Zealand netball is a winter sport. I see these poor girls outside in the pouring rain freezing their bums off and half of them are just standing around waiting for play to come their way.
c. Similar to above. I'd eliminate the zoning where certain players are limited to only certain parts of the court. Make it a bit more basketballish.
d.I'd establish a ice hockey-like penalty box where teams would have play a girl down for constant infringement. Because I've taken the court zones away, if you lose your goal defence some one else would have to come in and defend goal attack, probably a midfielder opening up the whole court.
e. All shots from behind the line are worth three points but only in the last three minutes of each quarter.
f. I'm still not really sure how the possession rule works in netball because sometimes the team that makes a goal gets the ball back to start the next play and sometimes the don't. I would eliminate this and alternate possession to the team that just got scored against.

9. Just been thinking about energy and power companies. Everyone knows that we pay for our power at peak rates and off-peak rates depending on our usage during certain times of the day but from what I understand there is a huge disparity between peak and off-peak pricing. Couldn't someone invent some sort of power accumulator or battery pack that I can charge up with off peak power at the lower rate and then have it kick in during peak rates and replace the expensive power or at least supplement some of it. It would also be nice if it could act as a surrogate generator too if the power went out for a few hours. Just an idea. The power companies would probably just increase off peak power pricing if there was too much uptake of the idea so nevermind. Can't beat "the Man".

10. Been reading a lot of science related books lately. I found Stephen Hawkings "Brief History of Time" for sale at the library for 50 cents! I've thinking about things on the large and very small scale lately. I've saved this last one because it may be hard to get your head around and I didn't want to blow your mind right at the start. Here's the question, just don't ask me for the answer. Atoms are, at the center, made up of a nucleus right. Around that nucleus orbits an electron. In drawings, the scale of this relationship is always wrong, as it is always too close. In reality, if we were to enlarge the nucleus to the size of a marble the orbit of that electron would be more than 2 miles! from the nucleus. That's a long way. There is a question in here, I'm getting to it. Now atoms combine to form molecules and these become the building block for everything around us including you and I. If on the atomic scale there is so much space between the nucleus and the electron why do I have to open a door instead of just walking through it. With all that space between my atoms and the door's atoms surely there is plenty off room for us to glide pass each other? Have think about it and I'll give special recognition to whomever gets me close to an answer.

What the hell! Let's do some links.

1. Because, it's never to early to start thinking about Christmas shopping.

2. Has anything really changed in the last 48 years? Nope.

3. You know, I'm fairly desperate for one of my hometown teams to win a championship but I'm not sure I'm this desperate yet.

4. And here's me thinking he was the God of Love.

5. Need more proof?

6. Wanna "Get what's yours!"? Call this guy.

7. Dreams can come true. Even for embalmers.

Looking Forward

I spoke in an earlier post about having two projects that I had in mind and I've had no luck with one but tremendous luck with the other. The first was to be an art/science piece that is turning out to be a bit more work than I planned on. I'll have to put it on the back burner for now. I'll keep the idea under wraps for now because I think it will happen at a later date and I am still enthusiastic about the idea but I'll need more technical help. Maybe I can go to the Smallest Art School in the World.
The second idea might be a winner though. I have approached the local radio station "Gold FM" with an idea for a show that I had in mind. I got the word from them last Friday that I could go ahead with development of the idea and at this point I hope to have my own radio show up and running within a few weeks/months(not sure at this stage). It will be an interview show where the guests will bring a playlists of songs that are special to them and we'll discuss the meaning behind some of the songs and hopefully inspire other people to remember special times and places through music.Luckily the shows will be pre-recorded just in case I start dropping F-bombs as I'm prone to do when I get excited! It was inspired by Finndego's Greatest Hits post that I did a while back. It would just be really helpful if I knew anything about radio, but I don't, but I think Glenis and Brian from Waihi Gold are the perfect people for this. They are old hands at this sort of things and still seem open to new ideas and I'm really looking forward to it.
In honour of the occasion, I've done another playlist. This playlist can be served with either beef or lamb with a green salad and a strong red wine (I recommend either merlot or pinot noir) to wash it down.

Top 100 best magazine articles ever

I've been getting a bit of reading in lately which has been great. I've finished Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion", which I found fascinating. Sadly, the effectiveness of this book is probably nil in regards to convincing people that organised religions are a sham. I don't want to discuss it too much but it has been my experience that no amount of "evidence" from either side of this argument is sufficient to convince a significant amount of people to cross over. He makes good arguments and I do recommend it to anyone but really it didn't change much about the why I feel.
Before that I had read "E=MC2, The biography of the worlds greatest equation" by David Bodanis which is great. I love science books that can break things down into ways I can understand it without dumbing it down too much. The bits I liked were the stories of the people before Einstein that led to his equation like Emilie Du Chatelet, Micheal Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, Fred Hoyle etc etc.
I've almost finished "Bad Science" from Ben Goldacre which is about the way science is perverted to suit either "Big Pharma", the media or snake oil salesmen. It's good but only read it if your into it.
The other bit of reading that I've been getting is from the magazines but namely the big three when it comes to good articles and writers. The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Esquire. I like it because it's usually great writing, I can cherry pick topics that interest me and it only takes me about half hour and when I finish I feel smarter!
Well some people over at kk.org have put together an unofficial in no particular order Top 100 list of the best magazine articles ever written. Good on them! I plan on working my way through them over the next few months. My plan is to print a few of them off at a time and get through them where I get most of my reading done these days. The toilet or as I like to call it "My panic room" whenever it gets too much.
While I'm on the subject. Some but not all of you will be familiar with the debacle that was Lebron James decision on his future team( Google "Lebron James The Decision") if you do want to get up to speed. His announcement culminated in the now famous line "I've decided to take my talents to South Beach". Apparently, in the states this is now the most popular way of saying you need to go to the toilet. That got me thinking of my own monikers for having to go and whether it gets into my top 5. My current top 5 is:
5. "Gotta see a man about a horse." (old favourite, everyone in the world knows what your talking about)
4. "Need to drop a deuce." (somewhat "urban" in a rapper sort of way. I use this one when I'm trying to appear hip with the young kids of today.)
3. "Going fishing for some brown trout." (doesn't actually make sense in any way and can be confusing but whatever)
2. "Need to pinch a loaf" (Downright rude. Good for the shock effect. Just too visual really)
1. "Going to drop the kids off at the pool" (not really funny now that I have kids but it was always my favourite and still makes me chuckle. I know, I know I'm a horrible person.
Where does "Taking my talents to South Beach" stand in this group. Personally, I love it. It's new and now and has a great flow to it. My only problem is that it's only funny in America. Here, no one would have a clue what I was talking about. I'll put it in at 3 and I'll try it out and see what sort of reaction I get. It could fall quite rapidly but I'll see if it gets any traction. You never know, I might start a new trend here.