look over this way

I've gone back

Probability.

Taste the weirdness of this: my flatmate Robbie has this thing on his computer called Stumble, an application that selects random internet sites that it thinks you might get a kick out of, refining its choices as you tell it yea or nay. If you like sites that feature fluffy kittens in baskets, or violent sodomy, or unsettling/illegal combinations of the two then this puppy will unearth them for you. It's a good way of wasting a couple of hours of your life, and since I'm skiving off work today that's what I'm all about. So I click the button and the first thing it offers me, from all the squidillions of pges on the net, is this page - a dancehall/dub mix track by none other than Dub Boy, AKA Tim Rayner, AKA my mate Tim from Bristol. I used to go to Ruffnek Diskotek, his club night. Well occasionally anyway, because I'm not that into Dub music. Still... what are the fucking odds, eh?

I can't think that that's hygienic.

I think I might have been let in on a secret. A huge, terrible secret know only to women, girls, ladies, females, wenches and their ilk. Apparently this is common knowledge to many girls and it's the kind of thing that boys don't get let in on, which sounds about right. And the secret is this:

In emergency situations macrobiotic yoghurt can be inserted vaginally as a cheap and effective method of curing thrush.

Anyone care to confirm or deny?

Are You There, God? It's me, Pete.

I never ask you for anything - mainly because I have grave doubts about your actual existence - but if you could see your way clear, in your possibly fictional omnipotence, to making the new Batman movie as good as it's cracked up to be and not a heartbreakingly awful piece of bobbins I would be eternally grateful. I am prepared to give up kebabs, Battlestar Galactica and internet pornography for this to happen, which might give you some idea of how much I'm invested in this movie. Thank you.

It's out on Friday and I'm as excited as a kitten in a cotton wool store. The last time this happened, with Batman Begins, and the finished product turned out not to be the greatest superhero movie ever committed to celluloid I was crushed. Gutted. Devastated. I've watched it many times since and now like it fine, but after that first viewing I was bereft. I swore then that I would never again become so het up over a comic book movie because it's just not healthy... but here I am again, three years later, in exactly the same position. Mr Nolan, Mr Bale, poor dead Mr Ledger, please don't let me down. I couldn't take the strain. I beg of you.

Answer The Question!

Hooray, says I, for New Zealand TV. If you want my full, unvarnished opinion I'd have to say it was shit - the very first time I turned on a television in New Zealand I was confronted by Jack Duckworth's glum, pug like visage, staring at me across the oceans from the snug of the Rover's Return - but with one little silver lining, namely their news, which is great. News reportage is New Zealand is an object lesson in how to make a very -a veeeeeeerrrry - little go an extremely long way. Since life in New Zealand is largely free of the wars, terrorism, disease and government corruption that is such a feature of life in other parts of the world the hard working news hounds of the land have to extract the maximum amount of dramatic news coverage from the bare minimum of interesting events.

Take today, for example; I watched the New Zealand Minister for Education (possibly. I think) get comprehensively savaged by a Kiwi Jeremy Paxman, a verbal mauling that ended with a glorious ten to fifteen second shot of the minister struck dumb in front of the camera - sweating, shaking, jowls a-tremble - and completely unable to answer the question put to him. The director must have been loving it, and Kiwi Paxman almost definitely had a boner squirrelled away there under his desk. Luckily the interiew was being conducted via satellite, otherwise Kiwi Paxman would most likely have vaulted said desk, ripped his fly open and started teabagging the minister live on air. It was masterful stuff, great to watch for those of us who like to see governments discomifted in any way possible.

And why? What had the minster done to deserve being disembowelled on national TV? Nothing much, really. There's a school somewhere that's been allowed to fall into a pretty shocking state of disrepair. That's it. Not good, but the 45 minute dossier it is not. But I like that, especially compared to Britain where the people cower in their hovels lest bombs and bird flu strike them and their families dead. I think it makes for a happier populace.

And Now, Sports.

NZ Farcelona 2 - Doddering Old Geezers - 17.


The Wellington Indoor Five-a-Side football league witnessed a clash of titanic proportions last night as NZ Farcelona, the ANZ bank collections team, took on a group of senior citizens only inches away from the cold embrace of the grave. And lost. Badly. It was only the Farce's second game and by God did it show - we were less of a football side than a men's synchronised running in circles team. To make a bad situation worse our opponents, who - as the scoreline suggests - beat us pretty fucking comprehensively - had a combined age of approximately 463. Some of them had white hair, actual white hair, and their immense victory was soundtracked by the gentle squelch of half a dozen colostomy bags. Despite their venerability, however, they were very much a force to be reckoned with, pinging in goals from all angles and distances while we of the Farce ran about aimlessly, collided with each other and, in one extreme case, started to cry.

I haven't played football in any capacity since before the heady days of Britpop and had only volunteered on the proviso that I'd get to be in goal, which at least involves less running about. Unfortunately, after the first three minutes saw me fish the ball out of the back of the net four times it was decided that someone with a bit more hand/eye co-ordination should replace me. Fair enough; I'm man enough to admit when I'm absolutely bleeding useless. And so I spent the remainder of the game attempting to win the ball off these soccer playing pensioners, only to have them nip round me with the panache of a young Georgie Best, hare off down the pitch and score another goal or two.

My personal high point: bodychecking someone's grandad and having him bounce off me like a pea off a drum. I'm sure I heard the gentle crackle of a splintering hip as he hit the floor but then he was up and away, seemingly unhurt. Golden generation, my arse.

The Fun of Bulls

A couple of hundred K out of Wellington, halfway to Wanganui, lies the sleepy hamlet of Bulls. Yes, you heard me right. Bulls is a small place, claustrophobically so, the kind of place where you might initially receive a warm welcome before finding yourself mysteriously disappeared and reduced to cutlets on the town barbecue, soaked in special sauce. Maybe you might be the next donor to the mayor's special Belt of Nipples. Who knows?

We didn't stop, only passed through. But the fun of Bulls comes in spotting the pun-based japery the good townsfolk have indulged in to pass the long, lonely days out there in the middle of fuck all. To whit:

On the town gift shop: Collecta-bull.
On the police station: Consta-bull.
On the local branch of Subway: Submersi-bull.
And my personal favourite, the church: Forgiva-bull.

And many more. You've got to admire a town prepared to extract that much mileage from a pun, the dedication required to really get the most out of that sucker. Bulls, I salute you. From a safe distance, because Christ knows I'm not stopping there.