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.

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.

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.

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"

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)

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.

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.

Antics

Ah, the vacant stare as we wait for the caffeine to re-awaken our synapses after a night of too much red wine and too little sleep. But the coffee was good and the french toast was better so it wasn't long before our spirits were free and the cold air of Hamilton finally registered on our noses and back to Auckland we went.

The night was fantastic, Mexican food provided for us by Nat and Mexican beers provided by my good husband. It was like a mini holiday. I love getting out of Auckland for a bit, even if its just for a night of best of the "X-files" and beer and red wine. What could be better?

On Passing

On Saturday, Popsie died.
I will remember all the things he did for us. The blocks, the trains, the diggers and planes.
The beautiful wooden keepsafe box with lock and key made just for me.
And I will try not to remember the look in his eyes at the hospice. Though I doubt I ever will.
I will remember watching the Two Ronnies and the Great Escape and Top Secret on video over and over again when we went to visit, wondering how he managed to laugh and not drop his roll ya own.
I will remember cups of tea with two sugars to get me hooked on tea from an early age (still addicted) , and more butter than marmite on my toast. And even when I was in my twenties still having these things made for me when I stayed.
I will remember the hand crank telephone, and ringing down to the garden shed to say that lunch was ready. The best smoked fish ever. And eating whole flounders which I've never done again.
I will remember sitting in the back seat of the Peugot 404 with the hot sticky red vinyl seats driving from Kaikohe to Kerikeri through the "darkies" and it feeling like a trip to somewhere magic.

And I will never forget how often I didn't visit.