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The awfulness of the previous period of time

In my iTunes library, I have songs that mention the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, either looking back in anger or forward in excitement. “Goodbye, ’70s!” sneers Alison Moyet; “Heading for the ’90s, living in the ’80s,” notes one-hit wonders the Escape Club.

But what happened to the ’00s? Where were the songs from the late ’90s [...]

The Masonic Colossal Family Fun Book of Puzzles and Adventure Stories

The power cable for my iBook stopped working, and because my iBook is old and broken down, it took 10 days to order in a new power supply. Ten long days. So with no internet, no way of playing DVDs and not even that crappy game with the Incan marbles, I had to find other [...]

Things to do in Hamilton when it’s dead

Hamilton’s spent a lot of time and money trying to convince the country that it is quite interesting and not boring. In the ’90s its city motto was “Where it’s happening”, then later “More than you’d expect”. Then, due to not being able to come up with a decent replacement slogan, they just went with [...]

Happier times

I’ve been thinking a bit about memory. I recently had a conversation where I’d roughly described what I’d been doing for the last 10 years. And the next day I thought, well, that’s sort of how that decade went but it also didn’t go like that.

I could have retold the story of those years – [...]

I wanna hex you up

In lieu of actually properly writing something, here are some recent tweets:

My Sunday exploration has revealed that Karori has two supermarkets and not much else.
2:01 PM Jul 26th

I love that Color Me Badd’s Wikipedia entry has a subsection titled “Downhill Slide“.
1:38 PM Jul 27th

A #nzff poster taunts me with its image of the good-times train [...]

Every day is Big Wednesday

So, the jackpot for the Big Wednesday lottery is up to $35 million tonight. Whatever that means.

I’ve never bought a Big Wednesday ticket, but (googlegooglegoogle) it costs $5 minimum, and one of the things you have to decide is a heads or tails option for a cyber coin toss.

And then if you win (because you [...]

Notes on Zombies

Hallowe’en; I was having dinner with my brother in a Malaysian restaurant on Cuba Street. As the evening went on, various people dressed in Halloween costumes walked along Cuba Street. But then I realised something: virtually all of them were dressed as zombies.

Some of the zombies banged on the front window of the restaurant, attempting [...]

Put down the semi-colon and let the participle dangle

When I started my old job working in the production of closed captions for the telly, I was fairly confident of my knowledge of the English language. I knew the difference between it’s and its, who’s and whose, and other sorts of things that Lynn Truss wailed about in “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”.

And I knew [...]

OMG, it’s a massive bag!

People get a bit excited and/or freaked out when they see someone walking around with a large bag from a shop.

A few months ago I bought a couple of new duvets. They were pretty bulky and the lady at Farmers put them in one big bag each. I got the bus home and it took [...]

Nostalgia for the future

I’m a fan of the future. No, not the one beyond the present. I mean the future as seen from the 1950s – 1980s. When the year 2000 was going to be all flying cars and food pills. Whatever happened to that future?

One of my favourite relics of The Future is The Usborne Book of [...]