Wormtrooper
TSO and I were walking through the woods and there was one of these tiny worms hanging by a diaphanous silk thread. I've seen them before, they appear to be hanging suspended the air, so fine and invisible is the thread they hang by. The first time I saw one was in Japan, on Utatsuyama hill in Kanazawa, in fall. I stood there for ages, totally unable to see the thread, feeling hopelessly uncomprehending, my notion of gravity unable to compute what my eyes were seeing. This time, I had a camera.

A Wee Fight

Plop Boiling mud at Orakei Korako thermal area near Taupo, NZ.

Razzies The Oscar nomination release may be imminent, but the Razzies are already out. Nice to see Sharon Stone making a comeback. Nick Cage getting some long overdue attention. Don't forget to vote for your (least) favourites.

Big Bother Anyone who saw Big Brother 7 - at the start when it still contained the hilariously camp-as-knickers, Scottish, self-proclaimed "paki-poof" - Shahbaz will appreciate this. After such ignominious appearances (sent to Coventry by the whole house, nationally humilliated and finally booted out inside a week) the only avenue open, really, is the nightclub appearance. A small stage of trestle-tables is shoved in a corner somewhere and, when the crowd is adjudged warmed up (off its tits on vodka and energy drinks) the 'celebrity' is wheeled out. Sadly here, Shahbaz's crowd seemed a little too warmed over and it attacked! Were he in control of his faculties, he'd have spun himself into Wonder Woman and busted a cap up in there. Dearie me, those who persist past their allocated fifteen minutes run terrible risks indeed.

Lines I'm desperately waiting for some decent daylight to capture this field across the street from my home. Tired of wating today, I decided to cheat and this is the rather less than stunning result. The straightness of the tire tracks combined with the gentle rolls of the hillside are really sweet.

Painting with Pyrotechinics There's this fantastic ad on TV for the new Sony Bravia television that features fantastic fireworks that are actually cans of paint, exploding all over and above a drab houseing estate. Something about it really makes me look forward to it coming on. Maybe I'm getting soft or something - you can decide for yourself when you take a look here.

Flash Mob Horseplay, Chinese Stylee Check this out, man. If there's anyone in the Dumfries area interested in a similar enterprise and unafraid of having an ASBO levied on them, contact me. Choice laughs. Actually I had only watched it with no sound before - I now see that it's Japanese, not Chinese, and from the '80s or so, judging by the clobber on the guys

Nice Light
We're reckoned to be on the verge of the winter's worst storm right now which is something - there have been some dinger winds this year. anyway, the light was awesome at times today - went out on my lunch break and caught the cathedral on the campus my workplace is on. The whole estate used to be a huge mental asylum - one of the biggest in the world at one time, apparently. Gorgeous buildings though - quality victorian sandstone, man.

Just(Sling)Shoot Me These have got to be New Zealanders. What is it with some people always looking for new ways to nearly die? We went to Gravity Canyon at Mokai - just to watch and have lunch, and witnessed them testing the new Bridge Swing. The kids testing it were keen for us to watch a bag of sand being launched in the harness. We asked how they pick the first person to go in it and, giggling, they said they'd all been on it already. Barking. They probably get steaming at half eleven and strap each other on there in the buff and all sorts. The flying fox there, no, the very thought of the flying fox there makes me want to curl up into a wee ball and lie on the lowest ground I can find, in utter darkness.

Taupo Tip
I went on a walk one morning, still a little jet-lagged, leaving TSO in bed. I walked along the shore in Taupo - a lake town in the North Island. There was this little wall in the middle of nowhere with this on it. It's a cryptic one.

To The Conqueror Go The Spoils I've been watching some great documentaries this week on Channel 4 about the true state of things in Afghanistan. Fighting The Taliban on Monday was by Sean Langan - a documentary journalist - who spent time with a front line unit of British soldiers that, whilst he was with it, was pinned down for several days under really quite substantial and organised opposition. Their mission was, really, to observe and assist a unit of Afghani soldiers but really, the Brits were fighting the battle with the Afghanis holding their jackets, when it came down to it. It was eye-opening to say the least. As I've always suspected - the opposition is not the towel-headed, frothing religious lunatic our government would like us to believe he is. The most frightening thing about them is that they seem to have 'right' on their side. It's hard to find fault with their logic - if it was my country and my religion being invaded and trampled all over, I'd be among them in a heartbeat. Tonight 'Meeting The Taliban' by the same man, has interview footage of young Talibani fighters, some with explosives strapped to their person. I can;t wait. I'm utterly fascinated to see the mess we've created for ourselves turned belly-up for inspection. Our chickens are truly coming home to roost. You can check out a really great photo and audio report in the Guardian here. However, if you havce any kind of savvy and don't mind breaking rules a little - see what you can do about finding these two documentaries in torrent land somewhere.

Quoted, Noted

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the american people. the situation in Iraq is unacceptable to me."

Thus saith George W. Bush today of his decision to send another 20,000 troops into the stramash. As opposed to the people of Iraq, then, one supposes, loving every minute of it. I know it's hard for the residents of Georgia or Maryland or New Mexico - all that carrying on and insurgency eight thousand miles away but don't worry - your leader is taking care of it for you. What a fucking idiot.

Some Gothic Archies While on the topic of sites of which we wholly approve, I LOVE this photo on ODD's Big Book Of Piccys site, to which you will find a link on your right.

Whaling It I note with a smile that Photosushi has kicked off '07 with a bang and a lovely underwater shot - check it out.

Corrugated Dreams
Another thing that struck me about central north island New Zealand was the wholly staggering amount of uses they've found for corrugated iron. The former building material of choice for the down-at-heel has become the material of choice for folk art. The picture is the very first shot taken with my new Nikon D40, on the hop, hurriedly, from the car window. The main highway from Auckland to Wellington is littered with countless life sized animal sculptures, buildings made to look like animals, (this big dog is actually a nissen hut serving as a store or something)giant men and flowers - all of crinkle-cut tin. The town of Tirau, in fact, is somewhat of a self-styled Lourdes to the rumpled sheeting world with a local company offering professional pieces. You can see the big dog in my photo on their site in fact. Whilst visiting some friends of TSO in fact, I noticed some 125% scale chickens pecking about his patio in very realistic poses - all of recycled corrugated iron. I love a good ole-fashioned roadside attraction, man - as you are probably gathering here...

While We're On The Topic....
I never got to taste a Cookie Time Cookie in New Zealand, though I'm reliably informed they are nothing if not......gigantic. However, driving down the main national highway at Mangaweka, we came upon a genuine DC10 (I reckon) inside of which there is a Cookie Time shop where one might eat a cookie. Apparently the Cookie Time factory in Christchurch, at one time, held the record for baking the world's largest cookie at 25 yards in diameter. From what I hear about the dryness of them, you'd have needed one 'hoor' of a glass of milk to go after that puppy.
Anyway, in the window of the gas station beside the biscuit plane was this notice from some local chap advertising his talents. Ladies, form a queue. You can't help but wonder where his 'experience" lies though. It conjured up sexual images in my mind but then again, sexual images, for me, are not all that hard to conjure.

The Little Lamington When I visited Australia last year, I noticed after being in a few different bakeries, a small, red cake covered in coconut. I didn’t fancy it much, you understand, it was just its name that tickled me. A Lamington. I’m a bit of a lover of the everyday item with a majestic and distinguished-sounding name anyway, you see, so this little red devil grabbed my attention. I managed to avoid going after a Lamington before leaving Queensland but as soon as I landed in New Zealand, it became apparent that perhaps Abel Tasman may have had a little something red and coconutty in the hold all those years ago. Lamingtons were all over the place in New Zealand as well. I had a conversation with a Kiwi in the first few days who outlined what makes a good Lamington, including “maximum red dye penetration of 3 to 4 mil” and that they were, unappealingly, made of “day old sponge”.

Well, I did manage to get my laughing gear on a Lamington – the one pictured above. It was an anticlimactic experience, I won’t lie. Still, I was honoured to shake hands with such a haughtily-named morsel at last. I did some reading up and it turns out there is some disharmony between New Zealand and Australia over the origins of the Lammie, as there is over most things, it seems.

I would have to say that my finest discovery in the bakeries of New Zealand – which were uniformly old-skool and utterly fantastic, was named not grandly but nonetheless quirkily: The Sally Lunn. This was a lovely, sticky bun topped with icing (pink in the North Island – white in the south, curiously) containing a lashing of buttercream in the middle. However, some research revealed that the Sally L is an often-bastardised bun that comes in as many different formats as you could fancy. The south island includes a scattering of raisins also and is often called a “Boston Bun” by all accounts.


She gives good bakery, New Zealand. I won't even get into the matter of The Afghan.

Hughcumber
This is a shot I took of TSO's nephew, Hugh. The shores of Lake Wanaka two days before Christmas. He's a bit of a ham in front of the camera so you have to be fly to snap him when he's not mugging. However I think I captured him pretty well - and I'm proud of the shot.
Note: Like all shots in the body of the blog, it's clickable - you can see a bigger version by clicking over it.

Injustice "They can take our taxes but they cannot take our hearts, they cannot take our tongues and they cannot take our freedom"...BNP leader Nick Griffin I note with utter disgust this evening that this guy got the sentence I fully expexcted he would. If you're brown and bigoted, you're a terror suspect. If, on the other hand, you're a fat, pink, redneck bigot wearing a suit and ridiculous tie, court day is a champagne occasion. I'm disgusted and ashamed to belong to a country that discriminates so gleefully and with so little compunction. I'm not for anyone stirring up any kind of racial hatred, no matter what words they speak, but i'd like to think that if I ever did it, i'd get the same result in the eyes of the law as anyone else, regardless of colour.

Avalanche
Christmas Eve 2006 - a hike up the Matukituki river to the Robroy Glacier. Just short of the top of the valley, a rumble like mighty thunder. A fumbling and grabbbing for camera and two clicks. A huge slice just fell off the front of the glacier crown and thundered down into the valley.

Happy New Year
Well, then, back from Aotearoa hale and hearty. What a place, man, what a place. I've met many a man over the years, fresh back from New Zealand and singing its praises as their personal Shangri-La. Now I see I was harsh in adjudging them starry-eyed, less than well travelled innocents. New Zealand is an absolutely amazing place - the landscape, the attitude, the people - all beautiful and all utterly enchanting. Along with The Special One - I took a three week roadie covering most of the country save the southernmost south island and the top third of the north. The cities of Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown were all encompassed as well as the beautiful resort town of Wanaka for five days at Christmas and three days at Auntsfield Winery near Blenheim.
At Auntsfield, we enjoyed three days as guests of the peerlessly hospitable owners, Ben and Dierdra with their two rangy lads Oliver and Austin-Suede. I had a shot at driving their new 1928 Model A Ford truck around the vineyard then the family took us out in the Marlborough Sounds to fish and eat fresh scallops right out of the water. It was idyllic. We hiked up to the Rob Roy Glacier near Wanaka on Christmas Eve and watched an avalanche before being harassed by a big green parroty Kea. We played Christmas day games of cricket and croquet at TSO's family 'Batch' with her brother, nephews and friends. We spent the night in Taupo at a gorgeous lakeside apartment with a hot tub that had a view of the mountains, drinking champagne with a strawberry the size of an apple stuck in it. We drank lots and lots of NZ bubblystuff. We watched the new year's fireworks being shot off the top of the Auckand Skytower. We rode the Shotover Jet near Queenstown too - which is where the shot above was taken. We decided to adopt looks for the pictures - mine 'Blue Steel' and TSO's 'African Jungle Queen', which we then kept up even for the action shots of the boat spinning 360's. That's some trip - doing about 80mph in a 500hp jet boat through a tight canyon with a mad bastard at the helm who cackles with obvious glee as he takes your bonce within a millimetre of the canyon walls. It was great fun.

Yes, New Zealand is lovely. Ooh - I also picked up a few rudiments on the Ukelele whilst driving, enough chords to get me and TSO singing a few songs. Not quite here yet (thanks for the link, Ben) but enough to put a smile on two faces.

I also took tons of pictures, some of which are quite nice. They will follow over the next while, sporadically.