PM Denies Not Not Un-Endorsing Oravida

The PM John Key today hastily convened a press conference outside the Number One Men’s Toilet facility in Shanghai to address reporters’ questions concerning his involvement in the Milkgate Scandal.

The PM began with a few words addressed to the throng of reporters: ‘Mumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumble’ he said, which I believe were words something to the effect of, ‘Look, why don’t you all just p*ss off and leave me alone, I’m so over this bullsh*t, I should’ve just stayed making tons of money’. Not dissuaded, however, one of the three reporters present then put it to the PM that he was clearly implicated in what looked like corruption of the highest order, despite which he did not seem to be taking the matter very seriously. To this the PM replied, ‘Mumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumble’, after which he suddenly twisted his facial features into a most alarming grotesquery, leading me to believe he had eaten something especially pungent for lunch while dining unexpectedly with senior executives from Oravida and several high-ranking officials of the Communist Party at one of Shanghai's swankiest restaurants, the Good Luck To You Sir. One of my fellows, however, disabused me of this misapprehension, explaining that what he had in fact just said was, ‘Hey, check this out, have you seen how I can pull a derp-face and look like a complete retard?’

John Key explaining his involvement with Oravida.

And at that, the news conference was abruptly terminated as the PM turned and headed into the men’s. ‘The PM did ask me to tell you all before you leave,’ said an aide, ‘that he neither endorses nor does not endorse Oravida milk products, although he also wanted me to say that he drinks Oravida milk every day and counts himself among the blessed of this earth to be able to do so. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.’ With that, we were all given our very own little goody-bags, each containing Oravida milk powder, Oravida milk supplement, the Oravida-patented milk laxative, an Oravida cap, an ‘I YOravida’ t-shirt and an Oravida coffee mug. With so much spilt milk around, however, there's surely more to come on this story.

Players suspended after taking wrong drugs: NZRFU revelation

A senior official with the NZRFU has today told me that the two All Blacks suspended after reportedly going on a drinking-binge prior to the World Cup quarter-final with Argentina were in fact suspended for taking the wrong drugs. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the senior official explained that Israel Dagg and Cory Jane had in fact spent the night in question knocking back sleeping pills. 'We have no problem,' said the official, 'with players using the drugs - don't get me wrong - but where we get upset is when they use the wrong drugs.' Conceding that they were dealing with rugby players, the official, a former All Black himself, then went on to say, 'Look, they're not rocket surgeons, and sometimes they make mistakes, but this is the kind of mistake you don't want to see repeated'.


At this stage I asked him if he might clarify the matter a little further - I must confess I was struggling to get the gist. 'Here's how it is,' he sighed, clearly a touch exasperated, 'we need our players to be at the top of their game, week in, week out, and there are some great drugs out there that will help them to be sharp as tacks. But honestly, sleeping pills? I mean half the time we're not sure these guys are awake as it is, the last thing we need is for them to be taking sleeping pills!'



Jane and Dagg, in the middle of a crucial World Cup game, take time out to hallucinate after enjoying some especially good Flash.

'Oh I see,' I said, finally getting what he was saying, 'so basically, you didn't suspend them because they took drugs, you suspended them because they took the wrong drugs!' 'Exactly!' he exclaimed. 'And,' he went on, now looking quite excited, 'we're not just leaving at that, we're being proactive about this. All our players will now be sent on a complete pharmaceutical course and will learn all the ins and out of uppers and downers, amphetamines, barbiturates, crack, adavans, agua de chango, aunt nora, aunti emma, aunt hazel, baby slits, Baby T and bump - you name it, they'll know what it is and when to use it!' 'By golly,' I said, 'no one can say the NZRFU isn't innovative!'

At that, the senior offical excused himself, saying he was off to have a good toke on some Donna Juanita.

An Easter Tale

And as Jesus was upon the cross, his disciples gathered before him and called unto him, ‘Lord, you are not alone, for we are with you.’

And Jesus replied unto them, ‘Oh come off it, you’re down there, all safe and sound, not a care in the world, while I’m up here, nailed to a cross – you’re hardly with me.’

And they spake thus, ‘Certainly, Lord, we see you have a point. But know then that from henceforth we shall remember this day as Good Friday.’

And Jesus replied unto them, ‘I’m sorry, what did you say? Good Friday? You’ll remember today as Good Friday? Exactly which part about today has been good, would you say? The flogging? The stabbing? Or perhaps the crucifixion itself – is that what you had in mind? Am I missing something here – is there something about this particular crucifixion that strikes you as especially good?!’

And his disciples replied, ‘Well ,sure, when you put it like that, Lord, we can see the day’s not been exactly ideal for you, but, well, we were sort of thinking about it from our point of view – you know, thanks to you, we’re cleansed of our sins and we’ll be going to heaven – so you see, Lord, it’s at least a reasonably good day.’

And Jesus replied unto them, ‘ You self-centred, self-absorbed, solipsistic little . . . oh forget it – sure, fine, whatever, it’s a great day, a wonderful day, actually, why not call it Fantastic Friday, I mean, why not really emphasise just what a fan-bloody-tastic day today really is . . .’

And his disciples did interrupt him, for they were sore on this point, feeling both rightly chastised and a little irritated, ‘It’s an interesting thought, Lord, but unfortunately we’ve already sent out word to everyone that the day’s to be Good Friday and so it’s a bit late. And speaking of being late, we really need to be off now – it’s dinner time.’

And so they departed hence and Jesus was alone upon the cross and he called unto God and said, ‘My Lord, why have you abandoned me?’ And the skies darkened and thunder did rumble and lightning flashed and Jesus did feel as if perhaps he had adopted the wrong tone.

And then did God speak unto Jesus, ‘For pity’s sake, would you stop your whining – you’re supposed to be the Son of God, a little dignity wouldn’t hurt, you know.’

And Jesus did reply, ‘But it really hurts up here, and there’s an itch between my shoulder blades that I can’t quite reach – funnily enough – and would you mind awfully?’

And God did reach down His mighty hand and lo, the itch was scratched. And Jesus gave thanks.

Some three days later, the disciples did enter unto the tomb into which Jesus had been placed, but Jesus was not (there) – instead, where his body had lain, was a single, dark chocolate Easter bunny, with a little jingly bell around its neck. And the disciples did take the Easter bunny and held it aloft, saying ‘Lo, a miracle, for our Father in Heaven hath taken his only Son and given us this dark chocolate Easter bunny with a little jingly bell. Amen.’


And the disciples did break the Easter bunny into little bits, although the portions were not even as it’s hard to get chocolate to break evenly, and they did give thanks and declared, ‘This is the body of Christ, who through the power of Our Father in Heaven hast become dark chocolate. Yum.’

And so it was done.

Pope Francis the Simple

With the election this week of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the giddy heights of Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, and Occasional Midfielder for the Vatican First XI, the Church of Rome took all manner of new and courageous steps. He is the first Jesuit - an order long considered suspicious by the Vatican for its emphasis on poverty and its refusal to have secret Swiss bank accounts - he is the first non-European to lead the church in over 1,000 years (although, God be praised, he more or less comes from Europe, so he's not altogether without culture) and he is the most simple man ever to sit on the Chair of St Peter.

Indeed, much has been made of how simple he is ever since he was named as Pope. The media has been beside itself to describe just how simple a man he is - he takes the bus, he doesn't wear the kind of bling jewellery other prelates wear, he washes people's feet. But, in breaking news, I can report a little more on just how simple a man he is. Curious to know more about this new papal father, I called up an old friend, Cardinal G. and he kindly offered to give me the inside word on this simple new Pope.

'Well, yes, it's true, he is simple,' began G., 'but if we're to be a bit more precise about things, we really ought to say that he's not just simple, but a simpleton.'

'What's that!' I cried. 'The Pope, a simpleton?'

'Yes, I mean, it's really quite simple, actually, much like the Pope. We were sitting around the big table in the Sistine Chapel, people were getting a bit scratchy because it had been over an hour since we'd last gorged oursel...I mean, had last had some bread and water, and someone, Cardinal L., I think, you know, that fool from America, said that we needed someone totally fresh, totally new, someone who could rebuild the Church's reputation which, I grant you, is a bit tatty at the minute.'

'So you went for a simpleton? That's the answer to the Church's problems?'

Pope Francis - all rather simple.

'Quite. You see, if you recall from the Book of Matthew, Christ once said, 'Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.' And so it seemed obvious, really - what we needed was a Pontiff as simple as a child. And Bergoglio was just the man, er, boy, for the job. You see, he may be 76, but he's actually got the mental ability of a four year old. Amazing, isn't it!'

'Quite,' I said, rather nonplussed by the news.

'For a while we considered getting an actual four year old, but then someone pointed out that the Tibetans had already done it with the Dalai Lama.'

'So what can we expect from this simple pope?' I enquired.

'Well, his routine will have to be a bit different - for instance, mornings will include playtime and a nap, so there won't be much papal business done then, but we think he might be able to concentrate for a half hour or so after lunch, sign a few papal bulls, that sort of thing. What's important is that people will see that the Church is good and pure and simple - I mean, obviously, the Church isn't any of those things - it's a festering sore of corruption and debauchery, thank goodness - but it will at least look like it is. We're all really thrilled.'

And there you have it, all rather simple, really.

In praise of Chandler

‘It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.’ – Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was born in Chicago, but his family left that city of thieves and vagabonds when he was still too young to notice. The family settled in a nowhere town in Nebraska for a while, before Chandler’s violent and unstable father decided he’d gone right off the whole family idea and left them to it, taking with him the only thing to which he had ever made a genuine commitment – a bottle of booze. With a mother’s perspicacity, Mrs Chandler decided that there was no future for her boy in that small town, so they upped sticks again and made for England. Here they were supported by a well-to-do uncle, a Quaker who, like so many of those of that particular persuasion, combined his unwavering faith with a robust engagement with the seamier side of life (he was a lawyer). Educated at the celebrated Dulwich College, Chandler the young man gave university a miss in favour of experiencing life at first hand, imbibing deeply from the cup of culture on the Continent. Returning to England, he took English citizenship and settled down to a life of the dullest conformity as a public servant. He remained settled in this way for precisely one year. Fleeing this death-in-life existence, Chandler then began a career of many things: journalism (unsuccessfully), writing romantic verse (the folly of youth), reviewing books, stringing tennis racquets, picking fruit, and shooting at Germans in WWI. Back in the United States after the War, he married a woman eighteen years his senior, with whom he would happily spend the remainder of her days (the remainder of his days were less happy). By 1931, he had inadvertently become a senior executive, well remunerated, of an oil company. But this was to be his last moment as a man of business: his own commitment to alcohol, a related failure to turn up to work every day, his rather too forward manner with the secretaries, and his entirely unsettling habit of threatening to commit suicide led to his being let go just a year later. And so he turned to what he loved best, writing.

In Philip Marlowe, Chandler created the perfect alter ego for his own view of the circus of life. Marlowe is a man of few words, but those he speaks are like an assassin’s stiletto that pierces to the quiddity of being. He sees through the light to the darkness, while his wisdom is that of one who has suffered and expects nothing more. He drinks alone and he plays chess against dead men. And he’s surprised by nothing that people will do to themselves and to others.

His books teem with drunks and adulterers and hard men and women of the kind of beauty that makes those hard men suddenly very weak. And they teem with lines of startling originality so apt you have to pause to wonder at the genius that could create them seemingly without end. Everything is like something else, and yet like nothing else. It’s obvious once Chandler has shown it to you, but you’d never have thought of it yourself in a million years of floundering in the dark.

Those seeking to imitate Chandler face two hurdles, each as intractable as an heiress on her third martini. The first was his ability, which seemingly never ran dry, to find that perfect likeness between two things no one had ever previously thought to bring together. It’s easier enough to say the clouds look like cotton-wool, or that the tough guy who’s just walked into the bar looks like he could tear doors off hinges; it’s not so simple to see that dead men are heavier than broken hearts. And the cumulative effect of all this is to create a literary vision that hits you harder than any right-hook from the heavyweight champ.

Chandler - a sharp-eyed alcoholic.

The second problem for would-be imitators is that Chandler’s noir is not merely noir, and anyone who writes a book like that isn’t coming close to doing what Chandler was doing. The noir in Chandler is the vehicle with which he delivers the goods; it’s essential, but it’s far from everything. The goods which Chandler delivers are nothing less than his sharped-eyed alcoholic’s take on the human condition, the frailties and weaknesses and foibles and aches and lost dreams which beset anyone who breathes. But the imitators don’t see this, they see only the noir, and they think that the secret is there, that all you need is a laconic shamus chasing up dead-beats and wasters and the idle rich who have enough money to buy the time they need to be truly miserable. And so all they achieve is the weakest verisimilitude, if that (I say ‘if that’ because most can’t even fashion a reasonable simile or metaphor, so there’s not even that to commend them).

We can read Chandler merely to be entertained by the sort of intoxicating yarn with which the best storytellers have been captivating audiences since humankind began telling itself stories. And we can read him to be astonished and surprised and beguiled by his verbal dexterity. And, finally, we can read him because he tells us so vividly and humanely about life and what it means to be human, with all the concomitant suffering and failure and disappointment which that kind of being entails.

Secret New Government Initiative Announced Unintentionally

While recently attending yet another function held by the government designed to pointlessly spend taxpayers’ money, I found myself unexpectedly in deep conversation with the Minister for the Generation of Revenue. After a few glasses of the Château Margaux, the Minister let slip that the government is poised to implement an initiative more cunning than the time it tried to sell Antarctica to a passing American billionaire.

'This plan,' gabbled the Minister, 'can't fail. Even we won't be able to stuff this one up!'

Indeed, so excited was the Minister there were disgusting flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth which I was hoping he might wipe off but which he instead just played at with his tongue.

As I was no doubt aware, the Minister chortled on, Australia had recently passed a law requiring all cigarettes to be sold in plain packages.

'If the Australians are stupid enough to be first up against the tobacco companies, it's hardly our fault, is it?' he chirped. 'Still, good on them for taking it on, and at the same time opening the door to us to make a whole lot of money!'

'What's that,' I said, 'a whole lot of money? Howso?'

'Well,' the Minister giggled, 'we've just secretly created a company that will serve as a front for the New Zealand government—no one will ever know that we actually own it!—and can you guess what this company is going to produce, on the cheap, in China?'

'Houses?' I suggested, thinking it would be a real vote-winner, although I couldn't see its immediate connection to cigarettes.

'Don't be stupid,' yelped the Minister, 'who needs cheap housing? No, no, this company will produce'—and here he paused for what I think was supposed to be dramatic effect, but became instead a chance for him to belch—'lots and lots and lots of bling bling cigarette cases!'

'Cigarette cases?' I cried, 'but who can live in a cigarette case?'

An early prototype of the cigarette cases to be produced by the NZ government

'Fool, they're not for living in, they're for people to express their individuality, to say, this is me, I'm incredibly interesting and clever and creative and have lots of money and whatever! Do you think people are going to stop smoking because cigarettes come in plain brown packages? Of course not! But don't  you also think they might like to be able to choose their very own cigarette cases—they'll even be able to personalise them if they want—and they can even have one for every occasion—it can't fail!'

By this time the Minister was more or less screaming at me in his breathless excitement and it was all I could do to avoid the flying bits of voulevant hurtling from his mouth.

'Do you mean to tell me,' I said, 'that the New Zealand government's contribution to reducing smoking will be to sell personalised cigarette cases so that consumers will be able to enjoy the sweet and soothing deliciousness of their favourite tobacco while also being able to express their individuality and personal style?'

'Yes!' thundered the Minister, 'brilliant, isn't it!'

'Rather!', I said. 

 

 

Arsenal and Cologne Cathedral

He is the studious, professorial manager of the English Premier League. His cold, steely eyes are forever weighing, calculating, analysing—nothing is missed and everything is gathered for dissection by his penetrating intellect. But he is not merely a scholar of the beautiful game, for as he paces the touchline, occasionally throwing and kicking unfortunate bottles of water, we can see, too, the frenzied passion that storms within his breast. He is Arsene Wenger and he is building something, something great, something magnificent, something that will stand forever. 'I am building something,' he recently commented to no one in particular. 'It will be great.'

And so what is this mysterious thing he is building, this thing that will be so magnificent? It is none other than an Arsenal team that will win. Something. And when it is unveiled, the waters will be stilled, no dogs will bark, no birds will sing, and the stars will shine in the daylight hours.

Doubters there are who say that the scholar's head is too far gone into the clouds, but at a recent news conference he made clear just how grounded are both his perfectly well-heeled shoes. Before a select gathering of journalists, he revealed the true magesty of his vision. 'The edifice I am constructing'—his voice was hushed as if in reverence for the awesome thing of which he spoke—'will be greater than the Tower of London, it will be greater than the Empire State Building, it will be greater even than the Cologne Cathedral.' A collective intake of breath from the assembled journalists—greater even than the cathedral at Cologne!

This historic moment, it is true, was almost tarnished when, from the back of the room, a whiny little voice piped up: 'But didn't the cathedral take over 700 years to build, Arsene?' A fearsome silence! Minutes ticked audibly by as Wenger looked over the heads of those before him, gazing into a magical future only he could see: 'Precisely,' he replied. From the back of the room came that same, whining voice: 'I don't mean to be difficult, but won't you be dead by then, Arsene?' Wenger's expression did not change, only a slight twitch just below the left eye betrayed the contempt he had for such a question: 'Yes, it is possible. Death, after all, excuses no one'—at this point his face suddenly began to look like that of the Buddha as he spoke of life's verities—'but I do not think I will be dead just then, for I feel I have a few good years left in me yet.' 'Seven hundred good years, Arsene?' 'Precisely.'

In Arsene do the Arsenal fans trust, and they have shown remarkable faith in his wisdom and his promise to build a team like nothing before seen. While other teams have seen managers come and then go, Arsene has been there steadily at Arsenal's helm, his presence as predictable as the rising of the sun, the coming in of the tide, or Arsenal's fifth (or third or fourth or sixth) place finish in the premiership. His vision is immense, his wisdom boundless, and in just 700 years he will reveal the greatest football team ever assembled. I, for one, can't wait.

Arsene's Arsenal - it really is great!