Category: Reckons

I did my first hit-and-run carpentry on Sunday night, it was good fun. I sneaked onto someone’s property and fixed some things while they weren’t looking. Be interesting to see if my work is noticed.

This election is seriously giving me the shits, just what the fuck is up with all these polls? I think in some ways we’d be better off with no polls. Especially if the accusations of super-sketchiness on the part of the Sunday Star-Times prove to be true.

We have to be honest now, the swings we’ve been seeing are all simply too great to be even remotely credible. In the space of three days, it beggars belief that the population would throw their weight behind the nats to the tune of 44 odd %, then change their mind the next day and drop them back to 37%, then the next day decide they were right the first time.

It just doesn’t have any credibility, so what is the truth? Are our pollsters fuckwits? Or is there just something suss about the method?

Enough! We’ll all find out exactly what everyone thinks in just a few days.

And I hope enough people agree with me to put the right people in power. But even with the wrong government in power, there’s still no better country in the world to live in, so I’m hardly about to pull that sad cock-blocked Democrat trick and claim to be leaving for Canada or Belgium if the wrong guy ends up on the throne.

Oh, on the weekend we had a couple of dinners with friends, and a few games of Rummikub, which I’d never played before. Friday night found us at Dylan’s where I cooked a pretty average carbonara. The game ended up with 2 rounds to Mel, 1 to me, 1 to Claire, and 0 to Dylan. Saturday night had Francois & Kate over, had a close first game, which I won, then a completely ridiculous second game – I couldn’t beld for over 10 rounds, then won in a turn with manipulations totalling something in the order of 22 pieces. That’s right, I put down 22 pieces in a single turn.

It was unbelievable.

(Kate is really good, even when distrcted by having to nurse Matteo, and the end result doesn’t effectively show the actual game play, which was really close – except for me, I was completely out of it except for that one lucky play.)

Other news…

Nothing on the Atlantis front yet, season 2 episode 8 wasn’t available until a day or two ago, and I’ve been having a hell of a time getting it down.

My mother has moved back from Thailand into Laos, I’m not sure when she’s going to be back in NZ.

I’ve got a list of 7 potential business ideas, 3 or 4 of which look really promising, but I’m thinking really seriously about taking a break from being entirely self-employed for a while, I’m getting a bit tired of chasing work and waiting for cheques. Doing it all yourself can be pretty stressfull. Perhaps I just need a business partner. (This is not a request for statements of interest.)

We spent the weeked in Wellington and had a great time. I’ve put up a gallery of a selection of the photos we took in and around Wellington, including such obvious choices as Parliament & The Beehive, and The Botanic Gardens, and so forth.

I’ve also added a bunch of Wellington stencils and graffiti to the street art page.

One word of advice, if you’re taking a taxi anywhere in our capital, make sure you get a Combined taxi, they’re nice and reliable, they don’t rip you the fuck off, and they actually seem to know where they’re going.

The renovation of The Embassy is officially awesome, this is what they should have done with the civic, it’s super comfortable (especially the super plush leather seats we chose in the platinum section), and the screen is great. We watched Crash and enjoyed it in a depressing sort of a way – if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I mean.

On the good front, and just look at me, obviously I like to eat – and we went back to a couple of our old favourites, but also tried a couple of new places. I’ll add them to my restaurants page later.

Teen admits kicking puppy to death

A Kaitaia teenager who kicked a six-week-old puppy so hard it died of its injuries could face up to three years in jail.

Halen Joseph Heemi, 17, a road worker, has pleaded guilty in the Manukau District Court to ill-treating a doberman-type puppy.

The court heard that Heemi, who had owned the puppy for less than half an hour, threw it 10m into the air and when it landed on the ground he booted it like a football, killing it.

– New Zealand Herald. 02/09/05.

Some people will never amount to anything, but I get the feeling, and I think I’m right, but I reckon Halen has a shining future as one of the biggest scumbags in the far north, and that’s a hell of an achievment.

I hope they throw the fucking book at him.

After listening to Harvey Jackson on on the radio, relating his experience, and the loss of his wife, in the floods to a crying reporter, I absolutely take back what I said yesterday.

While I’m delighted that little baby Katrina isn’t gonna be called Ka’Niyah (well, so I hope) it’s not worth anyone experiencing the heartbreaking loss that Harvey has.

My thoughts are with everybody who has a lost a loved one in the floods.

Today on USAToday.com:

"If you had told me that I was going to have my baby while I was evacuating from a hurricane on the side of a road in a city I had never been to before, I would have told you that you were crazy," Doucett said late Sunday at Hattiesburg’s Forrest General Hospital.

"I have waited for this day for so long. I just never imagined it would be a day like this."

Doucett had planned to call the baby Ka’Niyah. "But now I am not so sure," she smiled. "I may have to go with Katrina."

If it takes category 5 hurricanes, killing dozens of people, and destroying vast numbers of homes and property to stop people from giving their children completely fucked names, I say "bring ’em on."

When your mother is away in Laos for who knows how long, it’s really mean for spammers to start sending a bunch of mail with her first name in the from.

Oh, we had a quick rematch on the Pictionary, we’re now all tied up in our little pro-league. That’s right, we went from the first round, where we won two of two games, to our return to the field of pencillish battle, where we LOST both games.

Terrible, terrible performance. Misleadingly terrible, I think we were scuppered by our superior play on All Play contests, where we’d beat their asses to the punch, but they, using their naughty skinny skeevy little sneak styles would listen for our awesome guesses, and put them together to win.

This is tantamount to cheating.

Except when we do the same thing, then it’s simply very clever tactics indeed.

In other news, this weeks Stargate Atlantis (season 2 episode 5, for those keeping count) was weird, strange and weird. Cannons can NOT shoot down space ships. You just can’t do it. Anti-aircraft guns, since World War II, have been radar guided, they work in arrays, and they fire huge numbers of rounds per minute, so stick your stupid cannon up your arse next time, ok?

I still like the hardness of Reed, shot through the leg with an arrow? Snap it off and pull it out, what the hell do you care about piffling arrows?

The look of the administrator at the end, though, that was good. I think that actor was too good to waste on a one time bit part.

They need to do some serious work on the makeup of the Wraith, they look like a guy in heavy heavy make-up.

Oh, and that stupid electronic voice modification they do? The same stupid trick they did with the G’ould? They need to not do that either.

On the food front, I’ve been eating too much Chinese food. Last night, while walking George, I went past a place (on Sandringham Rd, across from whatever that little primary school is) with a nice lady who tricked me into ordering a ‘special’ chowmein (but hold the prawns) with crispy noodles, a banana fritter, and half a dozen (surprisingly good) wontons. That was to follow on from the previous nights beef & blackbean sauce, steamed rice, and, errrr, 20 fried dumplings, from the place on Dominion Rd next to Sierra Cafe (not the empty one, the one that’s always full, and has a little $8 sign on the window).