Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Mudslinging?

Lately politics has plummeted to the depths of mudslinging. Or so some political commentators would like us to believe. But is it really mudslinging when the mud is actually Truths with the tiniest bit of dirt round the edges.

John Key used to support the war in Iraq, quite vocally too. This is something voters need to know. John Key can speak all sorts of double talk now, but if elected perhaps he would send troops to support foreign military actions.

John Key has been commercially linked to many people who have committed fraud. This is quite careless of John Key. But again, something I need to know. I don't want to elect a prime minister with dubious morals.

Now Mike Moore comparing Helen Clark to Rob Muldoon because of "Personal attacks" on John Key is closer to mudslinging. Perhaps he's still bitter about being replaced by Helen in 1993. Surely not after all these years and as Mr Anderton pointed out, Mr. Moore was involved in a smear campaign against Jim McLay back in the day.

Sometimes you have to dig, to get facts, and they are going to have a little dirt on them. Its necessary and I expect it to get worse before the election.

But hey If you're up for a laugh in the meantime check out John Key's website. He has an absolutely hilariously boring video blog. The high point is when he is in the elavator and compares its movement to that of the polls. How astute of him.

( I couldn't bare to watch the whole thing, but if you can make it to the elevator comment you can see why I'll never vote for him.And I thought Jenny Shipley was patronising!)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ask a Ninja

If you haven't seen "ask a ninja" yet, you have been living under a rock with no broadband access. But lucky for you scientician is here to save the day. The jist is this...People email "ask a ninja" with question and the answers are turned into video and can be found all over the internet but mainly on the "ask a ninja" website and youtube.

This one of my favourite episodes.




If you like it I recommend paying me back by purchasing one of the t-shirts and posting it to me for christmas.

I like this a lot and I'm not sure why. I actually find the earnest ninja quite endearing. The theme song, genius. Commitment to character is probably the big appeal here for me. In the same way that Napoleon dynamite is funny so is ask a ninja. I like character driven comedy, abhor slapstick, dumber and dumber butt comedy and any movie with "movie" in the title i.e. date movie, scary movie 3, epic movie etc.

Comedy is like food though. Your tastes change with age. As I become more cynical and bitter with age......

Oh hang on! my wandering blog has been interrupted by an URGENT email alert from Thunderbird. Apparently the late Caldwell Warwick (who ran a mining company in Togo) has DIED leaving no heir. The money is just going to go to the government if I don't do something! sorry I've got to email my back account details to claim the "twenty seven millions" I must hurry as they are urgently waiting for my "repsond".

Scientician out.

Monday, August 27, 2007

The Pain of Kiwisaver

I already had a retirement savings scheme going on, $50 a fortnight tucked away into a unit trust with the National Bank. So why on earth would a sane rational person sign up for kiwisaver too?

Quite frankly I'm not sure why anyone on a medium type income hasn't already. My unit trust was returning a fairy crap 3% or less return most years, my martini drinking aspirations of my retirement were looking grim and I was having to develope a taste for meths in anticipation. However with kiwisaver I can get an almost %100 return in the first year. My %4 deductions come close to $2000. I also get the $1000 kick start and the $1040 government subsidy in the first year. In later years I will have the employer subsidy to make up the government carrot being taken away. (The subsidy will eventually be %4, essentially matching dollar for dollar my own contributions, so still a %100 percent return on investment)

Of course who knows what National will do to the scheme. It could end up with the same pathetic return as my old unit trust. But thats precisely why I signed up before the next election. I'm trying to get as much free money as I can before John Key ruins everything.


There has been some debate around the office. Some of the older set, having been burned by governments before on super believe that National plans to take all the subsidies back. This sounds ridiculous to me but who knows what kind of power the government really has in such matters. I cannot find anything in the paperwork about it. I still think the outrage levels would be to high if the ever attempted such a thing. National wouldn't be in power very long and would lose my vote (not that they ever had it).

My only problem is that I miss that $74. Our mortgage repayments are pretty high (we switched from a 30 year mortgage to a 20 year repayment framework) and I had little disposable income left after paying all the bills. Plus theres still the pain of my student loan repayments. My only hope for salvation is the pay rise I'm supposed to get this week. I don't think it'll be much after everyone takes their cut (and by everyone I mean the IRD) but it should be enough to dull the pain of saving for retirement.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Casino Royale

Ok so I only just got around to seeing it. I am a bit behind the times.
It was good, one of the more enjoyable Bond flicks I've seen in a while. Its strikes me as a little more mature. The characters, especially Bond, slightly more complex. I did enjoy the hints at James Bonds upbringing. You could almost say they added a few chick flick elements while still keeping Bond boyishly arrogant enough to still satisfy the men folk.
Of course the eye candy element is hard to ignore, Bond gets nicely scarred up and reveals a bit of leg. The shoe was definitly on the other foot in this movie, with the bond girl rarely naked.
I give it 4/5.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Actually excited about a CD

Its been years since I was excited about a CD release. In fact I may be of a generation that barely raises an eyebrow to the latest Green day or Best of U2 offering. After all, I have the internet.

"Radio 1. Established 1967" is a compilation of radio 1 hits spanning 1967 till now. What makes is special is that each song is covered by a modern day artist.

The Streets are covering Elton John, Franz Ferdinand is doing David Bowie (not literally) and Amy Wine house is covering Johnny Cash. Very Brilliant. Trust the BBC to come up with a great spin on the typical hits of the ages album. The choice of artists is interesting at least.
(oh yeah and Foo Fighters playing Band on the Run ZOMG no way!!!!!!11!!1!!!!!!one!one)

As per usual though, my excitement about a product is inversely proportional to its availability in New Zealand. But thanks to the British postal service I am sure amazon.co.uk will fling one my way in October.

The Style Files


Or as I like to call it "tour of pretty things I cannot have".

The style files is a daily weblog about stylish beautiful things. Its a feast for the eyes with the desire centre of your brain being sent into overload every few entries.

Mostly I want the pretty fish tea cups, but then there's the lamps, the chairs and the Scandinavian summer house! (oh yes and of course the means to transport all of these things to New Zealand).

I'm sure there are importers bringing fantastic things into New Zealand, but I'm not about to find them at my local mall. So if anyone knows of a shop with beautiful things at moderate price, please let me know.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I'm a Sucker For T-shirts.

I love T-shirts, I really do. And I have found yet another website to excise my cravings on.
Jinx make all kinds of nerd shirts and they have a great range of gaming shirts (and warcraft t-shirts!.)
I really must have this one. I imagine I will have to endure the taunts of my co-workers, but what do they know, they don't even understanding taking a day off work to go raiding in World of Warcraft. Its hard enough to level a priest and fit in an eight hour working day.

Monday, August 20, 2007

More on the saga of home ownership.

Home ownership causes Zed a lot of joy. It causes me mostly worry. I worry about ever getting that dodgy deck corner replaced, the bog that is the back yard, that weird hole in the wall, I worry I need to buy a ladder and why the dishwasher leaked just that one time and now I have to check on it everytime. I worry when it rains and about the non standard light fittings. Its a raging paranoia.

But slowly I am discovering small joys. Like I can actually do weird stuff to my walls if I want too. I have recently rediscovered the thrilling website of Blik. Its decals for you walls. Standard designs and now, oh the excitement, thrill apon thrill, THREADLESS designs.

Oh they are American and the cost is moderate with shipping probably expensive, but I want want want!

Another cool feature is the prose decals. Pick a poem and the font and they will custom print it for you. It doesn't even have to be a crappy poem, you could use the opening lines from star trek even! "space....the final frontier...etc" stuck to your living room wall in a classy italic font of course.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

I love sort of owning my own home.

The truth is the bank still owns my house. But for the net 22 years I'm just going to pretend its all mine already.

Naturally as a modern young woman I hate doing any house work of any kind. I work a 40 hour week and the last thing I want to do is spend my free time cleaning things. But alas, it must be done.

The garden has been bugging me for weeks..... not the back garden, that can go to hell till spring. But the front garden was a nightmare. The roses looked like they had never been pruned and the weeds were overflowing on to the driveway. So I dug out all the weeds and cut my hand up to shreds pruning the roses, finally caved and went to Mitre Ten to buy gardening gloves. Bought some more bark too. Planted some bulbs and laid down the bark.

Now it just looks like someone will get round to doing the gardening soon, rather than OMG they haven't touched that garden in years. For someone with no gardening talents at all though, I am kind of proud. I just hope I haven't killed the roses.

So it was a nice way to round off an otherwise decadent weekend, Nina's birthday party was a trainload of fun and I did spend almost a whole day playing world of warcraft.

"Nina enjoying a birthday cocktail"

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Our Esteemed Leader

Remember that phallic sculpture we had installed at the hospital, well here is the prime minister giving her official opening speech. She's also minister for the arts y'know. Actually, she is an interesting speaker and more charismatic in real life than in any photo or tv news sound bite. As you can see in the following photo. So for now I am definitely a labour supporter. I haven't heard a single policy leave John Key's mouth yet, only a bunch of ranting in parliament.



And now a stirring image of the flag and the new sculpture to rouse that latent patriotism I know we all have hiding deep down inside us. (Very very deep down)


Thursday, August 09, 2007

When is a quota not a quota?

Apparently the police don't have a traffic ticket quota that they are expected to achieve. No Sir. They deny it via the media all day long. In fact even the Minister denies it for them.Even though it looks like a quota and walks like a quota its definitely a duck.

But thanks to a leaked memo, we now know the truth (again, seriously, we didn't really need another leaked memo to know these things to be true).What they do have is KRA's (key result areas). These KRA's include specific ticketing targets and performance in KRA's is linked to their salaries. If you ask me it looks less like a duck all the time.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

3 minutes, for what?

So the three minute silence today, that impassioned some people enough that they felt compelled to come to a complete stop on the harbor bridge is yet another wailing, wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth gesture that achieves little.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but hasn't this happened many times in the past few years? An innocent is killed, murdered, and we all are horrified, for a week. Then we get back to our daily lives.

I'm sick of politicians and the Christina Rankins making a lot of noise, but not coming up with anything constructive. There isn't a brave enough politician out there to put forward a bill that might do any good for the innocent children of this country.

We could fix this problem but it would either....

a) Cost a lot of money

or

b) Infringe on our rights.

Schemes like compulsary weekly plunket visits would cost a lot to implement but put an independent observer into the house. This would cost a lot of money. Or we could restrict the right to breed, but that takes away a basic human right (should it be anyway?).

And while I'm on the subject, can TV3 please stop giving air time to the funeral and to the 200 extended family members of this little girl. 200 people who for 3 years did not notice anything was wrong, speak up, or help. Now they gather to sing songs and grieve, well grief isn't what they should be feeling, its guilt.