Morgan Avery

Poor Claire is still feeling under the weather, so I dropped her off at work this morning, then on the way home George was whining some crap about

wanting to go play with his friends, so we went up to the Big King to see who was around, just in time for the hail to start, followed closely (as you’ll know if you’re in Auckland) by squalling winds, lightning, and thunder some really nice sharp rolling thunder.

Lovely. I stood under a tree with my windblown umbrella and shivered while watching George run around playing in the rain with a collie.

Came home to find the lovely sight of hail all over the lawn, so… photos. This is about the closest we get to snow in sunny Auckland, so I have to make the most of it, I guess. Forgive my crazy thumbnail image map, I’m not sure what I was thinking.

I’m thinking about getting another car. (Claire is as well, but she wants a hot little European thing, whereas I’m more interested in a Japanese station wagon sort of thing.) So far, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a wagon, probably an automatic — while I enjoy the extra control I get with a manual transmission, I’m sick of driving a manual in Auckland traffic — and ideally not a white car, silver or black or a dark green or blue.

Anyway, to this end I’ve been looking at a few different makes and models:

Subaru Legacy GT or Legacy 250T

Pros: Good looking. Quite high performance. All wheel drive. Crazy-good road-holding. By far the best photo of all the cars I’m discussing today. 😉

Cons: These complete pieces of shit make mechanics rub their hands with glee.

When I first started thinking about getting another car, it was the Subaru Legacy that really made me think of getting a wagon, managing to be both practical, and sporty. Which is a nice combination. A wagon makes good sense when you have a horrible little brat of a dog.

After doing a lot of reading, and talking to my mechanic, I was basically put off Subaru’s for life.

It turns out they’re incredibly expensive to maintain, and some of them are extremely unreliable, leading to endless trips to the mechanic. When your mechanic gives you advice like this, against his own best interests, you should probably take it.

It only compounded the feeling I was getting from review sites and owner forums of people crying about their fucked cars.

Toyota Camry

Pros: Exceptional build quality. Smooth engine (esp. the 3l v6). "Executive" good looks. Reliable. Comfortable.

Cons: Can be pricey. Not very sporty, handling and steering are for comfort, not precision and fun.

Toyota is pretty well known for making long-lived reliable cars, which has lead, in no small part, to their being reliably ranked amongst the most popular marques in NZ. The Toyota Camry is rated as a very smooth comfortable and quiet ride, with a lovely smooth engine. But not very exciting.

Toyota Caldina

Pros: Toyota reliability. Good looking. Some models can be quite sporty (The GT-T for example), though admittedly I’ll probably be avoiding anything with a turbo (or as David prefers "torbo").

Cons: Smaller range of options than in the Camry.

By this point, I’m starting to get really dejected, to begin with (several weeks ago) I was just thinking, "Oh yeah, I’ll just get a Subaru Legacy in the colour I prefer, and away I’ll go as a happy camper." but then reality had to kick in, and now after looking through my thousandth spec list, or user forum, or classified listing, I’m thinking about a completely different manufacturer. And now I’m all worried about how many airbags it has, and what sort of side impact protection does it have, &c.

Anyway. I quite like the looks of the Caldina’s, I haven’t test driven any yet, but I’ve had a nice up close and personal look at one, and depending on how my test drive experience works out, I’ve got a feeling there’ll either be a Camry or a Caldina in my future.

Sorry about the car talk today.

Neat, I just discovered that if you have enough whisky you hardly miss your soul at all.

Woosh, while claiming that the market is presently competitive, and that there is no need for regulators to step in, forget to mention that their product is only doing well thanks to the fact that the market can’t effectively compete because practically everyone have to get their pipes from Telecom, who take a fat cut, and that Telecom has effectively set the DSL prices for everyone with their death grip on the local loop & the southern cross cable, not in spite of this.

The boys at Woosh clearly realise that if there actually was genuine competition in the broadband market, their offering would well and truly fall by the wayside, fast flat rate DSL would fuck their crappy wireless product in the ear hole.

Also, they’ll have a much harder time of it in Wellington, I’d almost go as far as saying that they’ll get their arse handed to them. Our fair capital already has damn fine wireless — and fat-ass pipes running all over the place. It’s one of the few things I find compelling about Wellington, that and the noodles, shame about everything else in the place, especially that "museum," what a joke.

I hope they decide to do something truly innovative, they might manage to hook us if they went for a bit more speed at the same price point. As it is, I’ll stick with my ADSL.

People who actually are being cool and innovative: Wired Country. With plans available through their resellers at only around $65 per month, and speeds at about 1000kbps, this is some good looking stuff – also, unlimited national, as many people are currently enjoying on Jetstream Starter, and a reasonably generous 8 gigs of international traffic.

Big drawback: they’re not available in the city yet, and horrible leach file traders will no doubt ruin the whole thing for everyone.

Went out for Yum Cha with David, Laura, Donna, and Claire for David’s birthday lunch. It was good fun. As always, my favourite was the roast pork, and my most least not not not favourite was red bean jelly. So horrible.

I’d also like to pass on the good news that I’ve finally gotten my arse into gear and put up some new photo galleries, since I last put up a gallery I’ve taken something over 2,000 photos, but I’ll be fucked if I’m going to put them all up, no, I’ve limited myself to just 5 galleries, one of which super sucks (the Big King one) but which represents something we’ve been doing a hell of a lot of (hanging out up Big King with George) so, you get to see those in all their blurry glory. Oh, the hammock one is pretty boring as well, buy it was good fun digging the hole and pouring concrete and stuff to put it up (not that I show any of that, oh well).

Enjoy.

• David’s birthday.
• Big King with some Doggies.
• Claire’s hammock and hijinks with George.
• Bethel’s with Claire’s brothers and a park with my mum.
• Christmas 2003.

So I’m pretty much freaked out by most people’s behaviour, I’d like everyone to stop being such scum, and just learn to get along.

Thankfully there are still a few people around who don’t leave me feeling pity (or fear, or revulsion, &c.), and it’s quite easy to occupy myself with simple moments of entertainment instead of dwelling.

Here are a few rough outlines of things I’m not finding cool, in no particular order, just as they occur to me:

• The Hikoi of Hatred. Sit down and shut up, 15,000 people on completely the wrong tack. Maybe a couple of hundred who are completely batshit insane (who the hell do you think you are, I was born here just like you, so why should I ask your permission to go to the beach?), and the rest who haven’t figured out that they’re following batshit insane people. Oh, and when I go for a walk, I don’t do it in a car, a bus, a train or a plane. That’s not walking. Lazy bloody maoris.
• Media beatup of Helen Clark & Labor, just what the hell is going on? How can anyone possibly think that Brash is fit for the job? He’s a fuck-knuckle. How can people be buying his bullshit? Tariana Turei is a cowardly traitor, her weakness is not justification for scuttling the closest thing to a rational government we’ve had in 15 years.
• Faith (religion, really). If you want to believe in a sky bully, whoopdy doo, I don’t, and I don’t want to hear about your invisible friend, it makes me squirm in embarrasment for you. You’ve been sucked into a scam, and it’s tragic. Please, whatever you do, don’t try to hoist your scam on anyyone else. You have no right to impose your beliefs, let along your ‘morals’ on me or anyone else. Oh, and take responsibility for your own life, it wasn’t the power of the lord on your side that helped you give up smoking, it was will power (or possibly a bit of willpower mixed with a helping of pharmacology). God didn’t save your life in that car accident, physics helped, and later a skilled surgeon. Which leads me to the whole anti-science, non-progressive elements of some religions, stem cell research will save lives, and who knows how many. Get over your "pro life" bullshit, no one likes abortion, everyone in the world hates it, but wouldn’t it be nice for something good to come from it?
• America, so far down the wrong track, still think they’re a bastion of freedom and democracy, all they really are is a carefully coddled media manipulated power house of greed & stupidity. How can any of them support their ‘president’, don’t they see what he’s been doing? Don’t they noticed all of this lies? Anyone who saw Gore on Letterman a year or two ago must have realised what a terrible horrible injustice it was that Bush stole the election. People that support Bush support: war, hatred, and ignorance.
• Linda Clark on National Radio. It was a real struggle to find a radio station that didn’t make me want to puke, if it wasn’t the ignorant redneck pig lovers calling in to Radio Pacific, or Leighton ‘big fat conceited fool’ Smith on ZB, it was Mikey ‘let’s pretend I’m not a drug fiend’ Havoc… Finally found a morning show with a smart host, and smart guests, but why does she have to be such a nasty mean bitch? Even just her tone of voice, attacking your guests isn’t the same as being a hard-hitting interviewer. Take 3 deep breaths. Oh God, and the music on National is so terrible!
• Auckland City Council. What is your goal in increasing the fine for having a dog off the lead to $500? How is this helping anyone? What makes you think you have the mandate to behave like you do? $200 was already $200 too much. Increasing parking costs, increasing parking offense tickets, charging for parking on Sunday, this is also all bullshit, there wasn’t a problem with parking on Sundays in the city, so it wasn’t about making room for people, it was about revenue generation, but you’re generating the revenue from the people you’re meant to be *SERVING*. Justify your self — you’ll still be smashed into a thousand pieces in the coming revolution — but I’m interested to know just who the hell you think you are.
• Gay marriage. Why is this even an issue? Why can’t a couple of guys marry? Why do we even need to debate over "civil union," why don’t we just realise that what we’ve currently got is an unjust system, let’s get a little equality back into our system. (Oh, but filthy seperatist lesbians, I’m not on your side, you’re still scum – I’m only on the side of nice honest non-man-hating lesbians.)

There you go, a little bile to lighten your day. Disagree?

It’s hard being a conflicted leftist, technophile, libertarian.

Oh boy, over a month without a single update. I’d like to get back to updating more regularly, I really enjoy gouging little chunks from my soul and putting them on display so you can momentarily distract yourself from your empty life.

I’m an artist damnit, mediums I’ve been working with lately include: anger, pain, fear, and aggression.

Anyway, I’ve put together another stupid food page (Make My Lunch : Reloaded).

Broke up with my partner again (last time was April 14, 2002). This time I’m pretty sure it’s for real. I’m sure a lot of you aren’t surprised. Oh, and yay, so I get to move house again. For the 3rd time in a year. I’m really fucking angry about this.

Please be nice to me. All my friends, who I’ve been neglecting lately, I’d like to hear from you.

Okay, so I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe it isn’t so bad after all. I’ll let you know what happens.