Another thing, in case everyone has forgotten, Fletcher already had a go as mayor, and she was wet. Remember this when you’re voting. Do your business or get off the pot!
The Bruce, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Ok, that was almost completely incoherant, let me try again.
Bruce Hucker is running for Mayor of Auckland, I like like him and I’ve met him a couple of times, Christine Fletcher is also running for Mayor, I like her better than I like Banks, but frankly I don’t think she’s especially wonderful in and of herself. Banks is also running for re-election, I think he’s a little shit, and I’d rather have Adolf Hitler in the post than him, at least Hitler would do something about our Jew problem in Auckland (they literally throng the streets, and leave dreydles everywhere, and they don’t eat bacon, so their lives can’t be worth living anyway, am I right?).
Wait, no, I mis-spoke, I didn’t mean Adolf Hitler, I mean Kim Jong Il, I think that Kim would be a great mayor of Auckland, what with all the oppression and lies and starvation and isolation and stuff, and plus, then we’d have someone to take care of all our Japanese, Kim could just kidnap ’em, then trade them for rice and fireworks.
Anyway, neither Adolf nor Kim are in the race, but Christine Fletcher, Bruce Hucker, and John Banks are. Fletcher is currently polling a bit higher than Hucker, but as we saw last time, two relatively strong centre/left candidates can easily split the vote and hand a tiny majority to whatever idiot the right are prepared to support, even though a large majority of voters actually can’t stand the snivelling little nutter (not naming anyone here).
So we know what happens with a split left vote, and indeed Fletcher has now come out asking for Hucker to abandon the race, but what would she do if the shoe was on the other foot?
Anyway, it’s impossible to know until it actually happens.
Whatever though, Hucker has to pull his finger out if he wants to have any chance at all. And unlike that little fucker McCarten, which ever one of them is trailling when it comes time for the election had better stand aside.
Does that make any more sense?
Plummet to your doom!
The last thing I’m going to say today is completely non-political, just the way you like it.
On Friday, as I mentioned, we took a couple of young boys out to Rainbow’s End for an evening of fun, and we got it, aside from all the usual suspects we all already know and love (the corkscrew rollercoaster, the bumper boats, gold rush, log flume, etc.) they’ve got a new ride (well, relatively new)… The Fear Fall, and I’ve gotta tell you, it lives up to it’s name, you get strapped into a little seat, then get cranked straight up the outside of a tower, higher and higher, wondering how much higher this bloody thing can go, and god damn but we’re up high, and, uh, we’re still going up, I can almost see my house from here, oh, we’ve stopped going up, oh no, that means now we go down… Then they just let go of you, and you free fall.
This is scary!
You imagine that jumping out of a building you’d sort of just glide down to your death on the ground, the truth is gravity grabs a hold of you and violently pulls on your body, physically dragging you screaming to the ground. Thankfully in the case of the Fear Fall you don’t plummet to your doom, but it sure feels like you might when you’re in the middle of your ride.
Damn it was a good ride. You should try it. It’ll freak the hell out of you. This is a good thing, I think.
It’ll also mean you never ever contemplate suicide by jumping off anything high. (I don’t think you should contemplate suicide by any means, but you get my point, I hope.)
Rincebonce End.
So, hopefully we’ll have a new mayor soon… But only if either Bruce Hucker is Christine Fletcher dop out of the race, judging by past performance, Fletcher would rather split the vote and hand the city to the ignorant right than do the honourable thing and stand aside, but at the moment, judging by popularity, I’d say that Hucker would be more likely to stand aside, which is a big shame as I have enourmous respect for the man, though I’ve only met him on a hanfdul of occasions.
His profile is so low, if he doesn’t have some seriously clever tricks up his PR sleeve, he’ll be just enough to keep Banks in the chains.
Who would I prefer out of Fletcher and Hucker? Hucker, no doubt about it. But if the choice is between Banks and Fletcher, well… I think that’s obvious, isn’t it?
Anyway, we’re taking a couple of boys off to a special function at Rainbows End, if I throw up after riding the rollercoaster, I’ll be sure to think of you.
Ski Trip!
Such a long time since my last update. I was kind of intimidated by the amount of work required to put the ski trip page together, so I guess I just did nothing. So, now, I’ve decided to put no page together, and just dump some photos on here, then pretend like nothing ever happened. Even the flash movies I spent hours encoding and which you can’t even see. Sorry.
Anyway. Skiing was good fun. It was super nice to have someone else drive for a change, that’s for sure.
Here are the things:
 General Stuff |
 Whakapapa |
 Frozen Stream & Hardy Alpine Flora |
The general stuff gallery features such exciting things as indoor climbing walls, mercer cheese, car tail lights.
The Whakapapa gallery features snow, snow, Claire, and snow.
The last gallery is a stream we found down a snow bank, the bed was completely frozen, it was really cool. The photos don’t come even remotely close to doing it justice.
Erdinger Kristallklar
Another beer, Erdinger Kristallklar. (Es ist gut.)
Skol Super. Skifun.
Another beer, Skol Super.
Also, I’m very excited about skiing, possibly going next weekend, though I hadn’t been planning on going until I got my new car. Seems we might go with a couple of our friends. This is going to force me out of my National Park comfort zone and all the way over to Ohakune. I’ve stayed there a few times before, of course, but I’ve found that National Park is simply a better place, and being close to Whakapapa — which is of course the best field on the mountain — makes it even better. Ahh well, I guess I’ll just have to re-learn the runs on Turoa. This is probably a good thing. Hope the weather is good.
It’s going to be good fun, especially the ‘teaching Hot how to skiboard’ bit.
Speaking of Red, she wanted to do something today, so we headed out to sunny Huia to check out the dam, then took a nice cruise along Scenic Drive and down to Te Henga where George had a great time running in the surf and playing with all the other happy little doggies.
w00t.
Up for it. If you know what I mean.
I couldn’t help but enjoy the movie (Spider Man 2), even the schmaltzy bit on the train. Hated the whole justification for Ock’s arms, though… That whole fusion thing was just awful "yes, I push the ‘solar flares’ back into the sun with my hands, it’s the best way, we couldn’t possibly have just built a fucking shell made out of the material the arms are made of, don’t be fucking ridiculous, look, exactly which one of us is a pretend physicist, and who is just a small business owner?"
Also, I don’t think they should let that awful soft hack Stan Lee have any more cameos. It’s annoying, even if this time he’s kept to just a fraction of a second.
Oh, and two things that occurred to me watching the trailers for Catwoman & Hellboy. Firstly, Hellboy actually looks almost good compared to previous impressions I’d gotten, though Hellboy’s makeup doesn’t look like it could possibly be attached to anything real, it looks hollow… Entirely insubstantial. And Catwoman just looks simply awful, didn’t they learn any lessons from Batman? Big animal ears on a characters cowl look fucking stupid.
Finally, Peter should have tapped that hot (okay, gangly and a bit too skinny, but you know, she had personality) tall blonde chick, she was totally up for it. If you know what I mean.
All Wagons, all the time.
After all my brave talk about starting to settle on a Toyota model for my next car, I just knew something had to jumble things up even further, Mitsubishi and Mazda have now come to the party. At this rate I’m going to give up and invest my money in a bus pass.
Mazda Capella (aka Mazda 626)
Pros: Very reliable, good engines. Some models are reasonably sporty.
Cons: If they haven’t been maintained properly the transmissions can give trouble.
Dual airbags, ABS, traction control on some models. They actually seem even closer to what I want than the Caldina or the Camry.
Mitsubishi Magna
Pros: The only real distinguishing factor here is the price, they don’t hold their value at all, this is great for the buyer, not so great for the seller.
Cons: ??
My last car was a Mitsubishi, and it went on strong well over 300k, but having had a Mitsi for so long, I don’t know, my experience was good, but I just can’t help but think of the last days of that car whenever I think about a Mitsi.
If I can have a convenient test drive, I guess I’ll consider them, but as it is they’re probably not going to be high on my list — but only for the frankly not very good reason I mentioned.
This is getting difficult.
A nice playing doggy, and old photos of Vanuatu.
A couple of things for you today, once again I took Claire to work this morning, and decided to go play in the park with George, this time I had a camera and took lots of lovely boring photos for you to endure enjoy.
The George playing in the Big King reserve photo gallery is here.
I also put together a page about a trip I took to Vanuatu many years ago (1998!), the photos are pretty crappy, and what I haven’t plain forgotten I’ve left out for fear it will incriminate me. Regardless, the Vanuatu photo gallery is here, and the rest of the Vanuatu stuff is here. (This evolved from an email I sent to a friend a couple of days ago, hence the awful horrible style.)