Why of course – it's the annual onslaught of "A year in review!" Or "Best of ... things I know about!"
And why not?! As my pal and beer bro Don over at Brew-Ha-Ha says: "It's like shooting fish in a barrel!"
And indeed it is! But it's fun for all involved. Bloggers get to shake off the mothballed cobwebs ... or, cheat and do a frantic Google search about things that happened in 2015 (*quickly deletes my surfing history*).
And, folks enjoy a trip down recent-memory-lane. Everyone likes a bit of a wobble down those hallowed halls!
Absurdly, I didn't write much this year. This anomaly has already been covered in my last three-part magnum opus about going back to Canada in June – it boils down to one word. LAZY.
 |
| This is also a "Magnum Opus" concept. But only wily folks of a certain vintage who may have been paying attention to 80s TV shows, and 80s cartoon strips, might totally get this. Maybe. |
But I was paying attention. Hard not too – I had a lot of free time on my hands.
Where to start? Well it was difficult not to notice the USA has been ramping up for another election.
And it was really REALLY difficult to ignore that the "circus clown" aspect of complete mental cases throwing their hats into the ring early in the game was "on fleek", as the kids are saying these days. (There's another odd thing ... slang has become almost too weird for me to understand. And when you stop 'getting' slang, that means you're old. And/or busted. So yeah, I get it ... *does another quick peek at Urban Dictionary*)
So! Here we have Primo Assclown Number One. The photos are all we really need here to illustrate the absurdity – an insane, racist, homophobic, lying doofus who somehow got rich*, then suddenly decided to run for President of the USA. Who knows why? Maybe he got bored.
 |
| These two gestures are, respectively, Trump's Foreign Policy, and Big Donnie's Domestic Economics Plan. And, *(someone did the math!), if The Amazing Blowhard and his Dead Gopher Hairpiece had just taken the money his dad gave him to go play in the traffic (back when Ol' Crazy Pants was merely a young crazy bastard), and immediately just put it into basic, safe investments – or, a savings account – he'd have exactly the amount of money he's credited to actually be worth now ... following a lifetime of failed investments, multiple bankruptcy claims, a series of imported non-American wives, and other lunatic media-centric adventures. So he's not even a good businessman – never mind a sane prospect to be leading the USA. |
And here are the rest of the GOP basket cases – the bunch who've been lying, obfuscating, making shit up, and generally being nutbar poison trolls. Somehow, they got on TV a few times to prove all this in what was passed off as "debates".
Never mind who's in the three-legged race from the Democratic camp. It's an old guy (FEEL THE BERN!) who actually makes sense and speaks the truth (so he'll never make the nut – Americans need wacky, sparkly, shouty, racist, lying, cheating bastards to pick from!)
And there a slightly younger person ... the wife of a former President.
Hilary's going to have a rough slog of it, because she's not young, hot, and doesn't have an Instagram account full of barely-legal bikini photos ... which of course is how women are judged for their legit-ness by the voting American public.
And, speaking of other vermin and pesky critters who exist just to steal your stuff – two other interesting characters emerged as media sensations in 2015! There was "Pizza Rat", and "Donut Raccoon". Really, it was just a rat that found a slice of pizza (so of course he's gonna take it back to the rat's nest and eat it), and a raccoon who was being ... well, a raccoon ... and snuck into a donut shop and swiped one.
I'm surprised some Hipster didn't try to prop up a half can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for the Pizza Rat – it would have suited as a clarion call to all Hipsters that yes, indeed, it is cool to have a day-old slice of 'za, and an absolutely appalling mass-produced beer for lunch.
But don't forget to ride away on your unicycle, wearing your Jughead Jones hat, your Golden Girls t-shirt, and neatly trimmed Hipster beard, after you're done!
In other shocking news ... many people used Facebook to announce to the world they wanted more attention.
The usual flailing around from bygone years went down, of course – 'Vagueposting', and feigned outbursts of being upset over some damn thing or other (really – outrage over Starbucks' lack of proper Xmas colours on their cups?)
Then there was the completely misguided and totally unrealistic outrage over any number of other things that were either completely not things at all, or so insignificant that only perhaps three people thought they cared about it.
I particularly enjoyed the usual whinging about the weather. It didn't matter if the weather had gone from lots of sunny days to a rainy day, or vice versa. And this year, there was something new in the mix!
In Canada, many folks stampeded to 'OutrageBook' to
claim they were upset and confused that it wasn't cold and snowy before Xmas.
Lack of an original idea in their heads, coupled with years of being brutally beaten and tortured by the usual heinous weather at Xmas, brought folks out of the un-snowed-in woodwork to blast away on the keyboard:
"It's not snowing. What am I supposed to do?! It's warm! How in the hell can we have Xmas without snow or heinously cold weather!?"
Well I'll tell you how. Comfortably, and warm, without wearing 9 layers of clothes. And without being exhausted and bent into knots from shovelling your driveway. A warm Xmas means you do just like I do down here in New Zealand every year! Or as many folks who live in warm places will also say:
Facebook was also a collecting point for people who suddenly stumbled on the miraculous and never-before-discovered concept of cooking.
I'm not talking about proper chefs who were displaying their awesome creations to lure people on down to their swell restaurants and cafés.
Nope. I'm on about the people who, for whatever reason, found themselves in the kitchen and magically discovering that bread + peanut butter + jam = a tasty sandwich! Or that chopping up veggies and arranging them haphazardly into a bowl, with some salad dressing, makes for a hella-good taste treat! Never mind the novel idea of turing on the stove and preparing something that isn't microwaved left-over pizza ... holy fuck! Combining 3 or 4 ingredients, and heat, can often result in something GOOD!
Makes me wonder what these adults were doing between the ages of 0 and 18 ...
... other than sitting at the table with mouths open, squawking like starving baby birds, waiting for their parents to feed them.
Sticking with the food idea for a moment, there was yet another wacky diet concept foisted on a gullible and ready-for-anything public: the paleo diet.
Yep. Eat like a cave man, and all your health, diet and weight/fitness problems will magically disappear! Hey, never mind eating right from the vast selection of amazingly nutricious and healthy food we have available now!
And also forget about just doing some fun exercise or sport between meals to keep that flab at bay! That's a fools' game!
What YOU need to do is eat like that mega healthy species of human we evolved from – you know, the guy who was lucky if he lived to the age of 30, providing some accident, infection, natural disaster, beast or other human didn't kill him?
Let's see what other snake-oil was being snapped up like $100 bills laying on the sidewalk ... oh yes, a couple of brothers decided to make themselves over into looking like Concerned Hipsters (beards, retro clothing, kooky glasses) and market what they claimed was "artisanal chocolate" ...
... just the thing for the wanna-be Hipster on the go, dying to eat some chocolate, but it had to be GOOD, HEALTHY chocolate. And of course, the lineups formed bigtime ... folks looking to spend some of that Hipster money they had laying around on The Next Big Hipster Thing.
The brothers – Rick and Michael Mast (photo below) - whipped up what they claimed was totally legit, for real, awesomely-expensive-to-make chocolate. The healthy kind, of course. Which of course was going to cost YOU a butt-load of money for every artisanal-looking, Hipsterishly-wrapped bar!
Except, it wasn't that. At all. They faked it.
They took some cheap-as-chips chocolate. And put a fancy wrapper on it. They also made sure their Hipster costumes were "on fleek"! Then they stood back and raked in the mad stacks of Duped Hipster cheddar!
So, yeah. Snake oil salesmen were still around in 2015. As PT Barnam said: "There's a sucker born every minute!" I suspect I will be reporting on another similar sort of scheme in January 2017 ... but who knows WHAT it'll be?!
We'll take a bit of a break from food and things here for a moment, and revel in a selection of the MANY mugshots from the 2015 crop of criminals, scofflaws, rapscallions, and ne'er-do-wells!
The well is a deep one for these kinds of photos. Lots of crime to be doing out there, and loads of folks willing to fall on that grenade and take one for the Absurdity Train Team. Here's an annotated lineup of some of the better ones I found. Click here to see a larger version of this pic, below to read and enjoy!
Criminals abound, of course, as they always do. There was this merry band of masterminds in Germany who decided that making off with a condom machine to take into the woods, and open it via explosives (yep, there's a get-rich-quick scheme if there ever was one!), was an excellent plan ...
 |
| Ship of fools, carload of idiots, or wagon full of buffoons? Doesn't matter. Take your pick. Also, you don't need to know their names. They're pretty much all the same. |
Never mind who's in the three-legged race from the Democratic camp. It's an old guy (FEEL THE BERN!) who actually makes sense and speaks the truth (so he'll never make the nut – Americans need wacky, sparkly, shouty, racist, lying, cheating bastards to pick from!)
And there a slightly younger person ... the wife of a former President.
Hilary's going to have a rough slog of it, because she's not young, hot, and doesn't have an Instagram account full of barely-legal bikini photos ... which of course is how women are judged for their legit-ness by the voting American public.
And, speaking of other vermin and pesky critters who exist just to steal your stuff – two other interesting characters emerged as media sensations in 2015! There was "Pizza Rat", and "Donut Raccoon". Really, it was just a rat that found a slice of pizza (so of course he's gonna take it back to the rat's nest and eat it), and a raccoon who was being ... well, a raccoon ... and snuck into a donut shop and swiped one.
 |
| Pizza Rat was photographed bogarting the last slice in NYC. Good on you, Pizza Rat. It's not even stale and covered in oozing, festering blisters of blue mold yet! Chow down you magnificent bastard! |
 |
| This sneaky raccoon was just obeying his inner voice (aka, doing what raccoons do), and swiping a donut. Good on him, too! |
But don't forget to ride away on your unicycle, wearing your Jughead Jones hat, your Golden Girls t-shirt, and neatly trimmed Hipster beard, after you're done!
In other shocking news ... many people used Facebook to announce to the world they wanted more attention.
The usual flailing around from bygone years went down, of course – 'Vagueposting', and feigned outbursts of being upset over some damn thing or other (really – outrage over Starbucks' lack of proper Xmas colours on their cups?)
Then there was the completely misguided and totally unrealistic outrage over any number of other things that were either completely not things at all, or so insignificant that only perhaps three people thought they cared about it.
I particularly enjoyed the usual whinging about the weather. It didn't matter if the weather had gone from lots of sunny days to a rainy day, or vice versa. And this year, there was something new in the mix!
In Canada, many folks stampeded to 'OutrageBook' to
 |
| It all boiled down to a reason to make whining noises, when really there was nothing wrong at all happening. |
Lack of an original idea in their heads, coupled with years of being brutally beaten and tortured by the usual heinous weather at Xmas, brought folks out of the un-snowed-in woodwork to blast away on the keyboard:
"It's not snowing. What am I supposed to do?! It's warm! How in the hell can we have Xmas without snow or heinously cold weather!?"
Well I'll tell you how. Comfortably, and warm, without wearing 9 layers of clothes. And without being exhausted and bent into knots from shovelling your driveway. A warm Xmas means you do just like I do down here in New Zealand every year! Or as many folks who live in warm places will also say:
 |
| Oddly I couldn't find any photos of guys asking this question. They were probably off getting another bag of ice for the chilly bin/cooler, to keep those tasty Xmas beers cold in the hot Xmas sun! Or maybe BBQing some fine tasty Xmas burgers. |
I'm not talking about proper chefs who were displaying their awesome creations to lure people on down to their swell restaurants and cafés.
Nope. I'm on about the people who, for whatever reason, found themselves in the kitchen and magically discovering that bread + peanut butter + jam = a tasty sandwich! Or that chopping up veggies and arranging them haphazardly into a bowl, with some salad dressing, makes for a hella-good taste treat! Never mind the novel idea of turing on the stove and preparing something that isn't microwaved left-over pizza ... holy fuck! Combining 3 or 4 ingredients, and heat, can often result in something GOOD!
 |
| It's always fun to read about when folks figure out how to amass ingredients into something even MORE tasty than any one thing! |
Makes me wonder what these adults were doing between the ages of 0 and 18 ...
... other than sitting at the table with mouths open, squawking like starving baby birds, waiting for their parents to feed them.
Sticking with the food idea for a moment, there was yet another wacky diet concept foisted on a gullible and ready-for-anything public: the paleo diet.
Yep. Eat like a cave man, and all your health, diet and weight/fitness problems will magically disappear! Hey, never mind eating right from the vast selection of amazingly nutricious and healthy food we have available now!
 |
| Paleo Dude, returning home with a healthy platter of Paleo Diet, in hopes he can evolve and eat some other interesting things – that aren't trying to kill him. |
What YOU need to do is eat like that mega healthy species of human we evolved from – you know, the guy who was lucky if he lived to the age of 30, providing some accident, infection, natural disaster, beast or other human didn't kill him?
Let's see what other snake-oil was being snapped up like $100 bills laying on the sidewalk ... oh yes, a couple of brothers decided to make themselves over into looking like Concerned Hipsters (beards, retro clothing, kooky glasses) and market what they claimed was "artisanal chocolate" ...
... just the thing for the wanna-be Hipster on the go, dying to eat some chocolate, but it had to be GOOD, HEALTHY chocolate. And of course, the lineups formed bigtime ... folks looking to spend some of that Hipster money they had laying around on The Next Big Hipster Thing.
The brothers – Rick and Michael Mast (photo below) - whipped up what they claimed was totally legit, for real, awesomely-expensive-to-make chocolate. The healthy kind, of course. Which of course was going to cost YOU a butt-load of money for every artisanal-looking, Hipsterishly-wrapped bar!
Except, it wasn't that. At all. They faked it.
They took some cheap-as-chips chocolate. And put a fancy wrapper on it. They also made sure their Hipster costumes were "on fleek"! Then they stood back and raked in the mad stacks of Duped Hipster cheddar!
 |
| The Mast Bros. A recipe for success! Grow out those Hipster beards, dress like you really mean to be a Hipster, put on those Hipster glasses (but only ONE of you – both would be over-kill). Then sell the rubes the shitty, basic, regular chocolate all wrapped up in your well-designed Hipsterly-iconic wrapping. Then don't forget to flee the scene with your big bank before anyone catches on! |
So, yeah. Snake oil salesmen were still around in 2015. As PT Barnam said: "There's a sucker born every minute!" I suspect I will be reporting on another similar sort of scheme in January 2017 ... but who knows WHAT it'll be?!
We'll take a bit of a break from food and things here for a moment, and revel in a selection of the MANY mugshots from the 2015 crop of criminals, scofflaws, rapscallions, and ne'er-do-wells!
The well is a deep one for these kinds of photos. Lots of crime to be doing out there, and loads of folks willing to fall on that grenade and take one for the Absurdity Train Team. Here's an annotated lineup of some of the better ones I found. Click here to see a larger version of this pic, below to read and enjoy!
 |
| Lots of fun people on parade here! Maybe you met someone like them doing a crime to you this past year! |
 |
| ... only problem was, one of them was killed in the explosion ... Not a very good ad for practising safe sex! |
Naturally, just like always, many crimes happen where the criminals in question somehow don't get pinned to the wall and tossed in the slammer, with any sort of punishment.
One of the biggest stories this year was the killing of Cecil the Lion. The fellow who did it was of course a down on his luck, poor fellow who needed to fly to Africa and kill Cecil to feed his starving family, because he couldn't afford groceries ...
Oh hang on. Ha ha. That's silly. A flight to Africa, a really top-notch high-tech gun with laser scope to be able to shoot animals from a mile away, and hiring a crew of safari guides to take him to where Cecil was hanging out costs just a bit more than buying groceries!
And it turns out the fellow in question was a white, rich, entitled, American dentist ... who seemed to be compensating for a lack of sufficient size in other appendages, by spending up huge to go around the world and shoot big, rare animals – the sorts of beasts that aren't ever killed by the locals to eat.
Meanwhile, closer to home (and not nearly as seriously heinous), we had folks investing in something else that was new – Drones. Technology has bounded along helter-skelter on many fronts. We still don't have flying cars (oh, wait – we do. They're called "helicopters").
Or hover-boards (um, well, hang on ... we sorta do – except they don't really hover. More on this in a sec). But we do have our own personal drones! And they're cheap!
And you can rig them up with a camera. Or, if you're really the industrious kind of psycho who can't be bothered to run right up to crowds to shoot people, you can strap a gun to a Drone and do your mass murdering that way!
Turns out, there's another fun use for Drones! Remember a few years back, that wacky thing that inbred, backwards-ass hillbilly country-fucks liked to do was to get hold of cheap-as, hand-held laser lights, and shine the beam into cockpits of planes taking off and landing? This of course resulted in no end of mental-patient-level fun. But sadly for the deranged, it was illegal – as the pilots got temporarily blinded, and then easily drive their planes full of passengers into things ... like buildings, mountains, or the ground.
Now anyone with a few extra bucks can pilot their own person drones right into the flight paths of planes as they land or take off! This is even more of a fun idea for the maniac-about-town – instead of pretending you're an alien with a laser gun shooting at a plane, the fruitcakes and nutbars can pretend they're the actual alien ship attacking the planes!
Governments around the world are already on the case, whipping up some laws and regulations to keep morons and cretins from doing this ... but as we well know, often such laws and regulation are un-policeable. Because hey, the skies are vast, and we don't have a lot of Sky Cops hovering around looking for lunatics and psychos who do these sorts of things ... AND, morons and cretins often possess an innate skill (and a real strong hankering!) for skirting such things as laws. So watch for lots of news on this front in the coming year!
Ah, yes – I mentioned hoverboards back there. Some clever wag managed to foist a thing on the gullible public that wasn't a hoverboard. There was no hovering. It was a sideways skateboard with just TWO big fat wheels. Oh and some cool lights. But people bought them anyway, because hey: the word "hoverboard" was there!
Which was a harmless concept. Spend up, suckers! No one's getting hurt! ... well, except, they were. The damn things started to suddenly ignite and burn.
And, just in time for Xmas! Seems there's been a bit of an investigation under way ...
Back to politics again just for a sec. You'd think a tiny nation like New Zealand wouldn't feature the Prime Minister getting into the news for anything less than a full-blown spectacle of a scandal. But our man Prime Minister John Key has not only been on the acclaimed comedy show Last Week Tonight with masterful comedian host John Oliver once ... he made it on there TWICE in 2015!
Yep, Mr. Key was featured on Oliver's show for his penchant ... nay, his real hankering ... for touching, caressing and fondling women's hair. (And here). Specifically, their pony tails. While this isn't exactly a case of jumping out of dark alleys and waggling his penis at people ... or having sex with a dead pig, as the UK's PM David Cameron has allegedly done ... it's still not the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a sitting Prime Minister. Or even a lurking, prowling, drooling, panting one.
Well besides that issue, Oliver's show again featured Key – this time, Oliver found an interview (which I heard, first-hand) on a hilarious morning radio show on NZ's Radio Hauraki, where the PM was run through a regular feature on the show that every guest has to endure. It's called "Thank You For Your Honesty", and the questions are cheeky and risqué. Oliver couldn't BELIEVE Key went through with it!
Oliver said: ""I don't know what I love the most there. The fact he felt qualified to weigh in on the Virgin Mary, the fact he confessed to theft and shower urination, or the admission that he does not trim his pubic hair." (The entire clip from Last Week Tonight, here.)
The saying goes: there's no such thing as BAD publicity. And this was ... weird. And it was pretty damn funny, in the "Point your finger and mock and jeer and say: 'Dude! You admitted, in public, on air, to stealing AND shower pissing!" kind of funny way.
Now in other political news! Pretty much every world leader has had a camera stuck in his/her face after they right-royally fucked up. However, there seems to be the concept of "Fuck-up in progress ... please stand by". This was made painfully, absurdly apparent, with the fairly recent scenario, where Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet for flying too close to its ... well ... general vicinity? ...
... and where we have a clearcut case of: "Hmm, when is the other, (heavily-armed, totally-psychotic, I-have-almost-as-many-guns-planes-and-tanks, and-other-fun-toys as-the-Americans) shoe gonna drop?"
And back to news about Things People Willingly Bought Into ... there was another incident that made me simultaneously think: "Really? People are that gullible?" and "Oh boy, ANOTHER absurd thing to write about!" this past year too.
It was ... colouring books. For adults.
Yeah. Some sort of New Therapy (I didn't check if it was the same guy who did the Paleo Diet thing ... ) and I didn't read that much about it. Seemed fairly clear. People – adult people – were willingly buying colouring books.
I can't even ... there is ... I just ... hmm ... (I made up the dollar amount, because I'm too lazy to see how much it did actually cost).
Right.
We had one more thing happening here in New Zealand (and it's still under way, as we haven't voted for a new one yet) ...
I'm talking about a new flag.
Perhaps in a kind of "method of misdirection", once again PM John Key set aside other pressing issues, and instead decided NZ needed its own flag. I initially thought: "Great idea! Look at Canada's flag for a prime example – it came along (coincidentally, on my birthday!) to replace the old one, which was the UK's one.
And I'm sure, during that process, there was a lot of debate, hand-wringing and bellyaching (from royalists) over that whole idea ... but Canada ended up with an excellent example of what a great flag is – it's simple, yet elegant and strong.
It reflects what the country is all about. It's instantly recognisable. And you cannot confuse it with ANY other country's flag ...
... like you can with New Zealand's current one. I've lived here 15 years and I still have to stare at an image of the thing before I decide if it's Aussie's, or NZ's. And half the time, I guess wrong. This is not a good feature of a country's flag.
Even PM Key said he is sometimes embarrassed at international functions, when he sees his official chair for the meeting, and someone has suspended the Aussie flag over his seat.
So they had a contest. They threw it out there to see who, among the general public, might come up with a great new design that fits all the proper parameters. And while some of the designs have some elements of greatness, and are OK from a beginner's thumbnail idea – with elements that suit what we're after here – so far nothing has emerged that says what the Maple Leaf does for Canada. They all still look ... like preliminary sketches. Or company logos. Or dream-like symbolism.
Incorporating the iconic 'Silver Fern' into the flag seems like it would be an excellent idea right now – the All Blacks are a strong team and they keep on winning and staying on top. But what would happen if, down the track, suddenly the All Blacks *gasp* started to suck ... and stopped winning all the time?
Stranger things can happen. We don't want a flag that, say, 50 years from now, is the symbol of a bunch of stumble-bums who can't even beat a minor team on a bad day.
For example: the Toronto Maple Leafs logo, which, 50 years past once-greatness, has sunk to the level of a cartoon focal point for ceaseless mockery, jeering and laughter!
That last bit I included just to see if my Canadian pals make it all the way to the end of this blog! (Well, not really. I normally make a special effort to dump mockery on the Leafs. They are, after all, the red-headed stepchild in the attic, who owes me money.).
Righty-ho, let's get busy with the getting-on with this new year! Lots to do ... fun to be had ... and for the sorts of people who can't help themselves but step on rakes and smash themselves in the nose, there's 12 whole months of prime time to get out there and screw up again!
I'll return soon in a sequel that might answer the burning question:
"Can you write ONE thing where you don't put the boots to the Leafs?"
Likely not. Because I'm
One of the biggest stories this year was the killing of Cecil the Lion. The fellow who did it was of course a down on his luck, poor fellow who needed to fly to Africa and kill Cecil to feed his starving family, because he couldn't afford groceries ...
Oh hang on. Ha ha. That's silly. A flight to Africa, a really top-notch high-tech gun with laser scope to be able to shoot animals from a mile away, and hiring a crew of safari guides to take him to where Cecil was hanging out costs just a bit more than buying groceries!
And it turns out the fellow in question was a white, rich, entitled, American dentist ... who seemed to be compensating for a lack of sufficient size in other appendages, by spending up huge to go around the world and shoot big, rare animals – the sorts of beasts that aren't ever killed by the locals to eat.
 |
| Arguments pro and con about this shit-stain of a dentist (top right) doing this sort of thing (see, I'm kind of against it) burned hot with the intensity of 1,000 suns on the net, and for some time. This insane act also helped shed light on other 'trophy hunting' assholes who also took the time to post up evidence of their assholery on the web. Lots of magnificent (and often, endangered) animals getting killed out there, and not to feed starving families. It's more to feed and placate a gigantic, festering, oozing puddle of insecurity and sociopathy in these fuckwits, who think they're proving something by murdering animals, from a safe distance away, using top-shelf technology and advanced weaponry to do so. |
 |
| It's a long leap from paper airplanes! And, hiding in trees to spy on the sexy neighbour next door out by her swimming pool. (Or so I hear). We now have cheap Drones – which you can affix a camera to. And then fly them remotely to be a high-tech Peeping Tom! Or even, into the flight path of actual planes! Hey, cool! |
And you can rig them up with a camera. Or, if you're really the industrious kind of psycho who can't be bothered to run right up to crowds to shoot people, you can strap a gun to a Drone and do your mass murdering that way!
Turns out, there's another fun use for Drones! Remember a few years back, that wacky thing that inbred, backwards-ass hillbilly country-fucks liked to do was to get hold of cheap-as, hand-held laser lights, and shine the beam into cockpits of planes taking off and landing? This of course resulted in no end of mental-patient-level fun. But sadly for the deranged, it was illegal – as the pilots got temporarily blinded, and then easily drive their planes full of passengers into things ... like buildings, mountains, or the ground.
Now anyone with a few extra bucks can pilot their own person drones right into the flight paths of planes as they land or take off! This is even more of a fun idea for the maniac-about-town – instead of pretending you're an alien with a laser gun shooting at a plane, the fruitcakes and nutbars can pretend they're the actual alien ship attacking the planes!
Governments around the world are already on the case, whipping up some laws and regulations to keep morons and cretins from doing this ... but as we well know, often such laws and regulation are un-policeable. Because hey, the skies are vast, and we don't have a lot of Sky Cops hovering around looking for lunatics and psychos who do these sorts of things ... AND, morons and cretins often possess an innate skill (and a real strong hankering!) for skirting such things as laws. So watch for lots of news on this front in the coming year!
 |
| No! Not hovering. At all. Michael J Fox would be very disappointed in you for buying this! |
 |
| Oopsie! Besides not hovering, the pesky things tended to catch on fire. That's no way to have fun. |
Which was a harmless concept. Spend up, suckers! No one's getting hurt! ... well, except, they were. The damn things started to suddenly ignite and burn.
And, just in time for Xmas! Seems there's been a bit of an investigation under way ...
Back to politics again just for a sec. You'd think a tiny nation like New Zealand wouldn't feature the Prime Minister getting into the news for anything less than a full-blown spectacle of a scandal. But our man Prime Minister John Key has not only been on the acclaimed comedy show Last Week Tonight with masterful comedian host John Oliver once ... he made it on there TWICE in 2015!
Yep, Mr. Key was featured on Oliver's show for his penchant ... nay, his real hankering ... for touching, caressing and fondling women's hair. (And here). Specifically, their pony tails. While this isn't exactly a case of jumping out of dark alleys and waggling his penis at people ... or having sex with a dead pig, as the UK's PM David Cameron has allegedly done ... it's still not the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a sitting Prime Minister. Or even a lurking, prowling, drooling, panting one.
Well besides that issue, Oliver's show again featured Key – this time, Oliver found an interview (which I heard, first-hand) on a hilarious morning radio show on NZ's Radio Hauraki, where the PM was run through a regular feature on the show that every guest has to endure. It's called "Thank You For Your Honesty", and the questions are cheeky and risqué. Oliver couldn't BELIEVE Key went through with it!
 |
| John Oliver (top left) was agog and amazed that the morning breakfast crew at NZ's Radio Hauraki (top right) put Prime Minister John Key through the cheeky paces with their regular feature: "Thank You For Your Honesty". |
The saying goes: there's no such thing as BAD publicity. And this was ... weird. And it was pretty damn funny, in the "Point your finger and mock and jeer and say: 'Dude! You admitted, in public, on air, to stealing AND shower pissing!" kind of funny way.
Now in other political news! Pretty much every world leader has had a camera stuck in his/her face after they right-royally fucked up. However, there seems to be the concept of "Fuck-up in progress ... please stand by". This was made painfully, absurdly apparent, with the fairly recent scenario, where Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet for flying too close to its ... well ... general vicinity? ...
... and where we have a clearcut case of: "Hmm, when is the other, (heavily-armed, totally-psychotic, I-have-almost-as-many-guns-planes-and-tanks, and-other-fun-toys as-the-Americans) shoe gonna drop?"
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| Yeah, Turkey did that ... shot down a Russian jet fighter. There's "David and Goliath" sorts of fights, where people cheer on the "little guy" for having the guts to hit the "big guy" with a lucky shot and making him fall down and die. Then there's the "HOLY SHIT ... we're backing off and pretending we don't KNOW you, you crazy suicidal bastard!" that everyone said to Turkey for doing this. Putin may be a lot of things, but he isn't the kind of guy who has to worry about answering to any sort of UN group, or a Congress, or media in his own country, or even voters. He's the guy who the phrase: "It's GOOD to be king!" was tailor-made for. He can do whatever he wants. |
It was ... colouring books. For adults.
Yeah. Some sort of New Therapy (I didn't check if it was the same guy who did the Paleo Diet thing ... ) and I didn't read that much about it. Seemed fairly clear. People – adult people – were willingly buying colouring books.
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| "So ... *giggle* you buy these colouring books, right? And then *snort* you colour in them, a few times a day *guffaw* and that will make you all better, from whatever *hee hee* it is that ails you! That'll be .. *ha ha* $500!" |
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| Every so often, there's an absurdity even I find ... speech-arresting. |
Right.
We had one more thing happening here in New Zealand (and it's still under way, as we haven't voted for a new one yet) ...
I'm talking about a new flag.
Perhaps in a kind of "method of misdirection", once again PM John Key set aside other pressing issues, and instead decided NZ needed its own flag. I initially thought: "Great idea! Look at Canada's flag for a prime example – it came along (coincidentally, on my birthday!) to replace the old one, which was the UK's one.
And I'm sure, during that process, there was a lot of debate, hand-wringing and bellyaching (from royalists) over that whole idea ... but Canada ended up with an excellent example of what a great flag is – it's simple, yet elegant and strong.
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| Canada's flag. Instantly recognisable. It can't be confused for any other country's banner. It's a strong, proper flag design, reflecting what Canada's about. This is the sort of concept New Zealand needs in the design of its new flag. |
It reflects what the country is all about. It's instantly recognisable. And you cannot confuse it with ANY other country's flag ...
... like you can with New Zealand's current one. I've lived here 15 years and I still have to stare at an image of the thing before I decide if it's Aussie's, or NZ's. And half the time, I guess wrong. This is not a good feature of a country's flag.
Even PM Key said he is sometimes embarrassed at international functions, when he sees his official chair for the meeting, and someone has suspended the Aussie flag over his seat.
So they had a contest. They threw it out there to see who, among the general public, might come up with a great new design that fits all the proper parameters. And while some of the designs have some elements of greatness, and are OK from a beginner's thumbnail idea – with elements that suit what we're after here – so far nothing has emerged that says what the Maple Leaf does for Canada. They all still look ... like preliminary sketches. Or company logos. Or dream-like symbolism.
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| There are elements of a strong flag in all of these designs. But no single design is hitting the mark, or ticking all the boxes. I like to design things, but I know I don't have what it takes to come up with a proper country flag. I can't resist including some nonsensical element to it ... oh, what am I saying. It WOULD be TOTALLY silly. |
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| We sure as hell DON'T want THIS to happen! |
For example: the Toronto Maple Leafs logo, which, 50 years past once-greatness, has sunk to the level of a cartoon focal point for ceaseless mockery, jeering and laughter!
That last bit I included just to see if my Canadian pals make it all the way to the end of this blog! (Well, not really. I normally make a special effort to dump mockery on the Leafs. They are, after all, the red-headed stepchild in the attic, who owes me money.).
Righty-ho, let's get busy with the getting-on with this new year! Lots to do ... fun to be had ... and for the sorts of people who can't help themselves but step on rakes and smash themselves in the nose, there's 12 whole months of prime time to get out there and screw up again!
I'll return soon in a sequel that might answer the burning question:
"Can you write ONE thing where you don't put the boots to the Leafs?"
Likely not. Because I'm
