Intercollegiate Quidditch

I chucked this on the facebook a while ago when I wasn't bothering posting on here.

But anyway, did you know there is an Intercollegiate Quidditch league in the US? How awesome/dorky is that? It's a whole step up from US Civil War re-enactments and medieval jousting contests... at Manakau.


That's some logo huh? But the best bit has to be running around with a broom like a six year old. I think you know you've hit rock bottom when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, dressed up in your quidditch gears holding your broom - you would just think to yourself; 'what the fuck is wrong with me? what the hell am I doing?'

Anyway, check it out, I'm sure it will catch on...

Warm fuzzy time

It's a small world after all

So I somehow ended up with two spare tickets to the Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge) show tomorrow night and I decided to chuck them on Trade Me. Now I had never actually bought or sold anything on Trade me so I wasn't entirely sure of what I was up to.

Anyway, so the auction happened, reserve was met etc etc and then I get an email telling me what the successful bidder's email is and how to contact her...

Turns out I recognise the name of the bidder... she's only my cousin who lives about 5 minutes away from my place.

Honestly, what are the chances?

On the plus side - at least since I had never bought or sold anything prior to this, there were no dodgy purchases to be seen by said family member in my purchase history...

All kinds of awesome in one

Hat tip to Gizmodo/via Pat for this - there is a new Japanese show called, Engine Oh G12, that basically combines Voltron with Power Rangers - watch the video below. Guaranteed to blow your freakin socks off.



From the Gizmodo write up -
"What's so wonderful about Engine Oh G12 is that it's literally ballooned the genre beyond parody. The show has upped the ante of the giant vehicle-assembled robot television so immensely that it's beyond the scope of humorous exaggeration, its components refined to such a point where every individual element is, in itself, too pure to be tainted by sophomoric prop humor. To fully appreciate this the clip, look beyond the obvious and examine the subtleties of presentation. For instance, two vehicles are there only to serve as covers for the robot's shoes."

Walk the Line... the Johnsonville Line

Ahhh infrastructure investment...mmmmmm. You will remember that two years ago Labour invested a carriage load of cash into rail which included upgrading the crappy Johnsonville Line in Wellington.

Well now its almost done and OnTrack are having an open day (well open afternoon) this Wednesday (4 Feb) from 3pm to 7pm allowing Wellingtonians to literally walk-the-line between the Crofton Downs Station and the Wadestown crossing loop.

Should be a good opportunity to walk through rail tunnels like a madman and avoid the hefty fines and being mashed into tracks all at the same time!

Check out all the details on the OnTrack site.

Twit tweets

Agriculture Minister David Carter has a twitter and it's really, really... uh insightful?!

It's filled with gems including my favourite:

Hon David Carter is in the Christchurch electorate office today having important meetings.

I'm sure you were David... I'm sure you were.

Male librarians

I got forwarded this very funny link today - 30 guys who look like lesbian women

Below are some of my favourites - Jack Osbourne, Chief Joseph and Johnny Rotten

You what?

I thought I would share a couple of moments of work place insanity I have experienced in the last week or two where senior colleagues have almost gone out of their way to mangle the english language. Today we had the word 'solution' used as a verb:

"Can you solution this issue?"

Maybe I'm being old fashioned, but I'm still quite a fan of the word 'solve' and even 'fix'. Also, I did wonder for a second whether they were actually referring to a 'topical solution' - as in can you apply a topical solution - but then that doesn't make sense either.

The other classic one was when one of our HR people said "I haven't got an optic on that." What? I think you mean - I haven't seen that.

The Heart Attack Grill

Well at least they can't be criticised for pretending they're anything other than shocking for you.

The Heart Attack Grill in Arizona - "Taste worth dying for" - check out their menu here (pictured below is the Quadruple Bypass) it features a whole lot of meat patties, 'flatliner' fries and cigarettes. Nice.

Fire up bitch!

What a weekend that was for NZ sport! Everything seemed to fall into place nicely.

Now if you're one of those who think sports events help political fortunes, you have to ask -are we heading towards a perfect storm? Its probably still too early to tell, but think about it - we've got interest rates dropping, petrol prices dropping, tax cuts roughly two weeks away, the All Blacks winning the Bledisloe and Tri Nations, the Warriors creating history by beating the minor-premiers, the Winston thing ricocheting off for the loss of 1 or 2 points at best and probably most importantly, dialogue reopening between Labour and the minor parties of the left.

I would also mention the Phoenix - they didnt lose tonight at least - but they gave it a decent shunt with their consistently shakey defence trying really hard to snatch another defeat.

But anyway, the grit and tenacity shown by Henry and his All Blacks last night was incredible. Henry is so similar to Clark its uncanny - dominant and successful for so long, yet widely panned for their arrogant demeanor and questionable methods. They also both face flash-harry opponents who originally hailed from Canterbury - so surely the All Blacks winning at one of the hardest venues (Suncorp) is a good omen?!?

Finally, just like Mark Gasnier's infamous phone message that the headline refers to, the Warriors sent an unwelcome but emphatic message to the other NRL finalists and Rugby League establishment - doing something no other side has done in the history of the competition - defeating the favourites and top ranked side in the first round of the finals.

So maybe the stars are moving into alignment - and it might just be on. So as Gasnier might say - Fire up bitch!

'That' Jim Hickey video

A classic moment from the TVNZ archives - The rain is a goneburger. But the showers and a bit of frost well they're ah...

Where did they find these people?

Has anyone else noticed the savvy-high-calibre individuals the electoral commission have out enrolling people to vote?

Until I saw their ashtray, I was wondering whether the two outside the ANZ on Lambton Quay were of 'no fixed abode' - I mean the matted hair? Really?

The guy with the van in Manners Mall looked like some sort of serial offender who was just waiting to nab someone and I was really surprised that Westfield's were allowing a couple of tattooed ex-cons to man the stall at Queensgate.

I'm hoping that this crack squad of go-getters is all part of some incredible strategy to reach out to people - but it does look like a tory-esque Make-Work scheme gone bad!

The 20 Male Poses of Facebook

I have to say I'm guilty of some of these poses myself.

So so accurate - 2 bird, 1 blog has examples of the 20 poses guys use in their pics on the Facebook.

These include the "Just Hanging with my Bros" shot, the "high contrast photoshop" shot, "the wacky fun guy" shot. the "throwin a hand signal" shot and my favourite - the webcam or "future paedofile of America shot".

So funny - check it out here.

Jasper!

Last night son of One Moment Caller arrived up in the Naki and his name is Jasper.

Jasper is apparently the Dutch/German version of Casper and the first one was one of the kings that gave Christ gifts at his birth - he gave gold (quietly showing up the other lot - I wonder what that Mary and Joseph did with the gold?).

So anyway, I thought I would mark the occasion by finding other Jasper's!

Like Jasper Engines and Transmissions!


Or Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada - It has a glacier! Plus there's a town.


Then there is the University of Victoria's JasPer Project - an open-source initiative to provide a free software-based reference implementation of the codec specified in the JPEG-2000 Part-1 standard (i.e., ISO/IEC 15444-1). Of course it is. Doesn't really lend itself to a pic unfortunately.

Jasper, Texas looks like a gas...


... and Jasper, Indiana, claims to be one of the 25 best small towns in the US! Meanwhile, Jasper, Alabama's Special Olympic swim team is called the Aquanauts! The mayor has a great name too - Sonny Posey. You will also find US Jasper's in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Sunday brunch at Jasper's Restaurants "in the spirit of fun!" looks like something out of the Naki too!


Jasper (on the right below) was also the name of one of Cruella de Vil's henchmen in 101 Dalmatians.


It also turns out that "Jasperware" is a type of pottery, and you can find this fine example at the V&A in London.


There have also been quite a few other famous people named Jasper.

But my favourite one has to be Jasper Vinall - the first recorded Cricket fatality in 1624. He was fielding and was about to catch the ball, but the batsmen tried to hit the ball a second time (away from Vinall) but instead smacked his head in! Stranger still - it happened again in 1647!

So there you have it - at the very least he has quite a road trip of US towns ahead of him!

Some links

Some links from my lazy surfing today:

Why own a car - when you can borrow one? This was in the weekend papers - City Hop, you pay $75 registration for the year and then $13.50 per hour (including petrol) to borrow a car. Great idea and apparently its coming to Wellington soon - site here

At least I was able to keep together when Beckham was in Wellington. Lovestruck fan goes crazy - site here

The 50 best pun store names here. Unfortunately they missed the hair salon cracker in Levin - Hair Say - although Merchant of Tennis does rule huh?

Down Syndrome Dolls. Not a lot else to say really is there? site here

PC Gone Mad?? Darth Sussudio himself, Phil Collins, apparently retired from making his earth shattering music a month or so ago - who noticed? This followed his 2003 announcement when he came out as boring, ending years of speculation.

And to finish, Skunk Anansie's kick ass video from the excellent mid 90s sci-fi flick Strange Days. Directed by Point Break's Kathryn Bigelow, Strange Days was all about people in the future kinda getting high off virtual reality vids - check it out if you haven't seen it, but in the meantime have a watch of Skin's badass performance in their anti-church epic, Selling Jesus.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

In case you hadn't see this - an un-contacted Brazilian tribe was discovered the other day. Imagine that, they've never had contact with any outsiders - they must have shit themselves - some huge object flies over with flashing lights.

This Boston paper has really big images of them so you can have a good gawk (nobody says Gawk anymore do they? - note to self use gawk more - bring it back). I wonder what the significance is of the different pigments... kind of reminds me of that bit in King Kong at the start (well by start I mean an hour in when they actually get to the island).

I do hope we leave them to it and don't try to bring democracy or TV to them. Mind you as one hillarious commenter said - throw them an empty Coke bottle! Classic.

You abide too??

We were having a fairly ordinary discussion on the political polls this morning following yesterdays Budget and I said something like - Yeah but Labour still need to get 10 points from somewhere - to which one of my colleagues replied: You want 10 points? Oh I can get you 10 points. There are ways.

I then gave a knowing nod, laughed and said: I can get you 10 points, you don't wanna know about it, believe me. There are ways. I can get you 10 points by 3 o'clock this afternoon.

As you can tell I had found a brother seamus and fellow fan of the Big Lebowski and so we spent the rest of the day quoting almost whole scenes. Classic.

For those who don't remember the bit - here is the actual quote from when the Dude and Walter cause a scene in the diner.

Walter Sobchak: You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.
The Dude: Yeah, but Walter...
Walter Sobchak: Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish. These fucking amateurs...

Too easy

You know I could start making sarky comments but when you've got a news day like today... it kind of speaks for itself.

First up is the age old lesson of living by the sword/dying by the sword... or in this case the lightsaber. To be fair to Lord Vader - they were asking for it - pesky rebel scum.

Second we have the fattest guy in the world who is planning to go walkabout... by walkabout he means be loaded by a forklift on to the back of the ute - but hey full credit to him he has lost 235kgs.

Thirdly (Stuff was on fire today) its none other than the friendly Hindu family from Mt Roskill who didnt realise painting a huge fuck off swastika on their roof would cause offence. Yeah I realise its a hindu symbol, and Hitler stole it and turned it and all that shit - but really? Is there nothing else you could use? And I'm not sure how you could miss World War II?

Fourth is poor little Fanta-pants himself, Mick Hucknall, getting all upset (i bet he went red in the face - they do that) about being called a Ginger - its as bad as racism says Hucknall. What amused me was his assertion that he's slept with "loads of women"... really? Did that actually happen Mick? If so, how many of them were gingas? The only women the article lists are Zeta-Jones and ex-Eastender, Martine McCutcheon - both brunettes, so is he in ginge-denial?

And finally, possibly the headline of the year from the BBC - Great tits cope well with warming. No more cold-fronts?

Communication Breakdown

Just watched a Wolfmother track on Alt, and it reminded me of how much they can sound like Led Zep. So what better way to demonstrate this than to post a vid of Wolfmother covering Communication Breakdown - crank it!

And it's about time too!

You know some scientists are confronting the great battles of our time - finding cures for awful diseases etc... but not all of them.

Apparently some Austrian scientist has come up with a laser that can make a female fly act like a male fly. Brilliant.

I've been wondering when someone was going to do that. This has to be up there with the hairless kiwifruit and the seedless watermelon.