Now they Tell Us!

According to Telecom NZ needs to spend one and a half billion dollars if internet broadband targets set by the government are to be met.

Apparently they can only foot a third of the bill.

A decade and a half as a monopoly with a virtual license to print money yet they never got round to doing much in the way of infrastructure investment.

I wonder why?

Maybe it slipped their mind. Or was it the fact that, with a largely captive market in their pocket, they simply didn't give a fuck.

Making Money Out of Misery

This is why I'll never work in PR. There are the constant jests about PR practitioners having no soul but in this case they prove it.

What am I on about you ask?

Let me refer you to this story which ran in the papers today. The poor bastard dies from anaphylactic shock after having an allergic reaction to something in his food. Pretty tragic, and one can imagine his family are having a pretty rough time at the moment.

So what do the people at Addenda Publishing do?

They put out this press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: 26 April 2007

Tragic Allergy Death Should Not Deter Allergy Sufferers from Eating Out – Author

Allergy sufferers should take a lesson from this week’s tragic death of Auckland man Grant Freeman from a suspected allergic reaction to a restaurant meal, says Kim Koeller, author of Let’s Eat Out: Your Passport to Living Gluten and Allergy Free.

“But that lesson should be to take care and be thoroughly prepared, not to give up eating out from fear,” she says.

Koeller and co-author Robert La France have produced an award-winning book series that shows allergy suffers how to eat out safely. Through their consulting practice, they also educate the restaurant trade in safe food practices that will prevent the sort of tragedy that happened this week.

Koeller and La France will be back in New Zealand in August to address a major conference on the subject of allergies and dining out.

Koeller and La France are available to New Zealand media for comment. For more information or to arrange an interview or review copy, contact the New Zealand distributor Addenda Publishing

There's nothing like trying to make a quick buck out of the illfortune of others is there. I hope some journo' gives them a right royal rocket for trying to pull this shameless and scurrilous plug.

No Respect

While many of my peers have been out and about today doing their patriotic duty at ANZAC Day commemorations I, as usual, have ignored it completely.

For those readers not of Antipodean origin ANZAC Day is a public holiday in NZ and Australia to remember those that have died fighting for their country. Originally it was more centred around World War One and the Gallipoli Campaign.

The official line is that Gallipoli was where New Zealand started to develop a sense of nationhood. Unfortunately in reality it was thousands of young men's lives being profligately thrown away by incompetent British Generals in a war that had little relevance to New Zealand. The bonds of mother England have a lot to answer for really.

Anyway instead of honouring the dead I wen mountainbiking in a new area I've just discovered - Belmont Forest Park.

I knew I was onto a good thing when I found this gem of a single trail winding its way out of a narrow wee valley.



While it's not exactly an easy incline to ride up it turned out to be pretty manageable. Getting to the top the track branched out onto a farm 4wd track and was pretty cruisy.

The view wasn't bad either.



You can't really see it too clearly in this picture, but that's actually Wellington off in the distance at the top centre. Lower Hutt would be off to the left out of sight (and bloody good riddance too!) over a ridgeline.

The farm roads go for absolutely miles. I spent a couple of hours trundling along ridgelines and dipping into hidden valleys and I've barely scratched the surface off the place.

Oh and in keeping with the whole ANZAC Day motif I took this shot especially for the occasion.


Those indistinct gray blodges to the upper right are actually old ammunition bunkers left over from World War Two. The place is riddled with them.

Dogs that Survived Paris

In the world of truly ugly dogs here are always those that stand out from the rest.

Here is the reigning world champion.



Though it's fair to say that had the previous champion (3 years in a row in fact) still been alive there'd have been no contest.

Heeeres fugly!



Seriously, who in their right mind would want to own one of these pint size abortions?

Posting

Sometimes I wonder whether I should write a little more stuff connected to my work. After all I am in a rather unique position being relatively close to the Parliamentary action.

But then I realize, who gives a fat rats arse if another political blogger adds his squeals to the cacophony - probably nobody.

So I don't bother.

Much.

View From the Top

And that's why I love Makara.

Pity about the bone shattering descent though as I seem to have hurt my back. I'm now perambulating around the house like a gerontological disaster zone.

Oh and in light of my last post about the ER it seems the nurses are into the same sort of thing. Not quite as graphic but they do have their moments.

Here are a few examples:

From the disgusting.

Female caller asks- "Is dog semen harmful if swallowed?

To the purely foul.

Caller: Can you get STD's from a sheep?
Nurse: Excuse me (OMG did I really hear this right)
Caller: Can you get STD's from a sheep?
Nurse: I think that you should call the local vet!

And the truly bizarre.

When I worked in OB, I had someone call and she was masturbating to the answers that I was giving about breast-feeding questions - the situation didn't actually get weird and suspicious until she asked if I had ever breast-fed a baby - I currently had a 4 month old that I was nursing and, unfortunately, I was sort of punchy (it was 3 am and I didn't tolerate nights that well) and answered yes - the breathing got harder and faster and I could hear lots of rustling and such (it was actually a woman) and I said I was going to hang up and they said "No, not yet, I'm not there yet..." - I blurted out "What the heck are you doing?" - they managed to answer between pants "What do you think?" - then, I hung up.......

Y'know I'm truly glad I don't work in medicine.

The Real ER

This is the thread that will not die. I pop in every few months just to see the latest outrageous story.

Such as:

If the cops are chasing you, your ear is not a proper place to hide your weed stash. What's worse, don't tell us that it's some random girl's phone number you stuffed in your ear to hide from your girlfriend.

and,

Feeding your weed stash to your dog is not a good idea either. Apparently in high doses it can cause what can best described as an acute psychotic break in said dog, putting multiple dog bites with avulsions and arterial bleeding on your growing list of problems.

even better,

We all know that smoking with O2 is bad but today I learned that its worse with a full beard. Oh the smell.

and finally,

Be careful when squatting 800+ lbs in competition - your quads might explode.

'Nuff said.

Dumped!

Sometimes I wonder if technology is altogether too much of a good thing.

A case in point an experience a friend of mine had the other day. To put it in a nutshell he was dumped.

Now I know many of you will be saying well so what, people get dumped all the time. However he was dumped via text message.

i.e. "Im sry bt itz al ovr"

Am I alone in thinking that this is slightly off?

I mean what's wrong with the good old fashioned way of breaking up with people. You know what I mean - not answering their calls, being perpetually busy/unavailable, or by being incredibly incommunicative on the rare occasions that you are together.

Methinks cellphones have a lot to answer for.

The News

I was going to write something deep, meaningful, and insightful about the quality of our broadcast news.

And then I found this.

What We Call the News | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

Says it all really.

However at some stage in the not too distant future I will write something about how well, and how poorly, we are served by our news outlets.