Category: General

So we’ve started to watch Lost season 2, and it’s as weird-ass as you’d expect.  I sure am glad they’ve finally gotten into the bloody hatch, but I’m not sure what to think about the whole Desmond thing, brother.

I’m waiting to see more about the guys on the raft, was a bit surprised that they didn’t say anything about them at all – I want to know what’s going on with Jin, I love that guy.

Right, to the election. Wasn’t that fun? Maybe not, but something of a relief, that it was over, that no one got an enourmous landslide.

Any party, from whatever part of the spectrum, that got too much of a mandate would just be dangerous, how ever much of a lefty I am, I’m also a lot of a libertarian (no ‘z’ on the end there, I must note) and parties which think they’ve been put there by God (or a large majority) will feel fine about smothering the populace in their own special blend of ideology.

Too much of anything, whether you like it or not, is a bad thing. Even cheeseburgers.

Now, the coverage on the night, we watched TV3 most of the evening, but we bounced around a little bit, I thought the TV3 panel format was great, and the speakers were pretty interesting (maybe not Deborah Coddington, who I find to be equal measures of hot and disagreeable) I especially liked the poli.sci woman from Canterbury University, I don’t recall her name, and Michael Laws is always good value – but I don’t listen to him on Radio Live, so maybe everything he was saying he’s already said endlessly to the embitterment of everyone who doesn’t have the taste or intelligence to find their way all the way up the dial to National Radio.

What wasn’t so good about the coverage on TV3, was the graphics, no colour coding, sometimes full screen, but even then just charts rather than nice diagrams or overlays of parliament, or whatever – One had it all over them with the graphics.

But do you know who REALLY dropped the graphics ball? Triangle. Yes, their Elect! presentation, produced and directed and such by none other than my mate Dylan, had onscreen displays in the form of a felt tip pen hastily scrawled on torn out sheets of refill, and a stick up chart of the seats in the house with bits of coloured paper on them. But the worst thing about the presentation, and incredible as it might seem, was elsewhere, indeed the lighting was rubbish – the lighting on Ryan Sproull(presenter) was okay, but on the guests it was shocking, but you can live with that, the next thing on the list of oopsies was the sound, Dylan had to provide a bunch of his own gear (it sounds like Triangle really need to pick their game up a bit) including sound mixing desks and such like, and the sound was fuzzy and boomy, not nice. But that’s still not the worst thing, the worst thing, ignoring the quality of the quests, was the camera work. If it wasn’t out of focus (which it very often was) it was pointing in the wrong direction (cutting between cameras to find the hosts face half cut off, right at the bottom of the screen, for example), which is simply unacceptable for a television broadcast.

Lessons learned, I’d suggest:

1. Get someone who has a fucking clue about framing a shot to operate the cameras, also eyes (to check for focus).
2. Better microphones.
3. Give your guests something to lean on / put their notes on. Ideally a table or desk with a covered front.
4. Computer graphics, they’re not just a good idea, they’re the law. (I understand that this was the intention, but the software providing the graphics wasn’t behaving properly on the night.)
5. Guests should include some more mainstream journalists, who are comfortable with speaking about current events / politics.
6. The hosts suit should fit properly. Also, probably helps to be able to express yourself really quickly – good writer != good live interviewer. (I for example, would be a completely rubbish live interviewer.)
7. If you’re thinking that a piece of paper with writing on it is a good idea, think again.

On the whole, I thought it was a great idea, but needed a couple more days of preperation, and maybe a couple of dollars spent on the set (alternatively, add another day to the preperation and get a SPONSOR.)

Back to the election though, and the result. Now, what do I think about it? Well, I already said I was relieved, let me just say it again – I’m really relieved that enough people ignored their greed and tried to vote for a better future for New Zealand.

I know I did.

Take it from me, one of many business owning, productive, mainstream voters – that also happens to be a lefty – Oh, if you think it’s amazing that there are lefties that aren’t gay / maori / bludgers: you’re a moron, and you should be banned from voting.

In other news:

• Edward has a cold, which we’re pretty sure she got when she had her ovaries out – incidentally, stitches came out today, and she’s doing great.
• Furikake still rocks my world (nearly every day for lunch.)
• I’ve been reading some Peter Hamilton lately, and I’m liking the third book of the Reality Dysfunction trilogy muchly. (So far.)
• I like that we drive past the Prime Minister’s house almost every time we go to get Wendy’s. The rocks. I love New Zealand.
• When I mentioned Hit-and-Run Carpentry, I didn’t mean I’d been messing with political billboards.
• I know, I was especially mean about my friends efforts on their little election night TV show, I didn’t really mean it. Now let me include another little diatribe here, I doubt anyone will read this copy here, and just skip to the list, so with that in mind, I kissed your mum, it was hot, she wanted to get into my pants, but I got cold feet and said we’d have to limit it to a dry hump:
  • They obviously needed more help, and I offered help a good week before things where put together and was ignored.
  • They’re clearly just bitter in the simple knowledge that I’m smarter & more creative than 75% of them.
    • Smarter than 94%.
    • More creative than 92%.
    • Better at maths than 14%.
  • I could have gotten a couple of legitimate journalists to go on the show – that is, not student journalists for Craccum.
  • I have roughly 100 * more business experience than 87.5% of them, and would probably have been able to get sponsorship for a better set (read:desks) given just a few days.
• Bitter? Me? Fuck no.
• Stop looking at me like that.
• Fucking ants.
• And here are a few words to mess up my rankings:
  • As you know, todays unseasonably bad weather included a strong wind – you could say it was a nasty blow job – and accompanied by an icey rain that seemed to squirt from the sky in bucket loads, splashing on the roof and dribbling over the gutters, spraying all over our faces and chests, penetrating right through our rubber coats and wet weather pants and gumboots, through our clothes soaking our damp underwear, we might as well have done it bareback or even completely naked, for all the use our raincoats proved, but we probably would have collapsed if we’d tried, so perhaps not. It was a longer and harder day than it should have been, and it’s my fault, I fucked up the pump installation last week and it was running really hot and steamy, so we had to tug the old one out and put an even bigger one in, in fact we were worried the new one wouldn’t fit into the tight hole, but we managed to shove it in there. Once we’d solved the pumping problem, we still had to straighten up the bent over supporting shafts for the gazebo we’re erecting around the hot tub, the gaping holes we bored into the firm, yet yielding, wet earth last weekend had filled up with a messy hot-chocolate looking sucking mud, so this week we rebored them, then filled each hole full of a load of hot, wet easicrete (and the post held upright in the middle of each hole by a supporting frame) – we thought of hiring one of those vibrator compactor things, but it turned out that it was a matter of only a few moments with a long rod to do it by hand and once the handjob was done you’d never know we hadn’t used the machine! We decided we’d done enough for the day, and after taking a hot golden shower to wash off all the sticky filth, we lay around in the tub until later in the evening when we used the money we’d saved on renting the hardcore machinery rental to order up a delivery of roast beef and potatoes – we were surprised when it was delivered by a bare breasted street prostitute wearing a ball gag, but didn’t complain – she really delivered, in fact it was so good we got her to deliver a nice hot lunch to us the next day!

Following on in the strangely muted and hidden footsteps of that mockumentary political satire The Pretender on TV3, last night saw the introduction of Liberation Force to TV2, and with it an extremely low budget poke at US foreign policy / oil fever.

The premise is that vast oil reserves have been discovered off the West Coast of New Zealand, the U.S. does the only thing it realistically can and decides to implement regime change in New Zealand and bring us Democracy™ and Freedom™, and free us from the shackles of Terra™.

To do this, they send in the troops, an infantry division is dispatched from Hawaii, and spend the episode engaged in bringing a Christchurch suburb to Liberation™.

Liberation force is another mockumentary (which is why I mentioned The Pretender), we follow the lives of Corporal Eric Johnson and Private Beau Baker.

The acting is rough, these guys might be actors, but they don’t have a lot of polish – well done for unknown (to me at least) new guys though. The budget is obviously tiny, all the troops are wearing what looks like army surplus stuff – and doesn’t look anything like U.S. Army camoflage. Oh and they seem to be driving 70’s era Landrovers, not the ever present Humvee.

But, to me at least, the point isn’t the acting or the props or the jokes, the point is that it’s a brutal savaging of U.S. foreign policy. And I really like that.

I want to see some more of Private Beau Baker (aka the White Ninja) and his Wong Po Fist of Fury, it really scares the hell out of little girls skipping rope in their driveways.

I also want to see these guys get their asses handed to them by the locals, but that really wouldn’t fit – the locals just want them to "piss off," and tell them so in no uncertain terms ("get the fuck off my driveway!"), but otherwise just tolerate them with quiet sneers.

Standout performances: the little boy in the dairy and the girl skipping ripe, what a pair of little cuties; the bewildered looking maori guy at the checkpoint; and the older guy in the supermarket that called the Corporal a cock – "this is the express lane, cock."

I’ve got a feeling, from the TV2 website, that this was a one shot wonder. So if you didn’t see it, you won’t see it again. Sorry.

Keee-Ay-Orra.

Oh, Atlantis season 2 episode 8 finally made its way down the lines, it’s ok. They do need to lift their writing , and if you’re going to have weird aliens, you should think about putting some money into your makeup budget.

But it’s still better than any of the SF that’s actually on New Zealand TV right now. Do you know why? Oh, yeah – SF would get in the way of Garden Patrol, Painting Disasters and NZSing Your Way to Servitude.