The most beautiful words in English

All Blacks
Richie McCaw's thighs
Daniel Carter's nipples

Fullers woes

Getting home yesterday from work was a real hard slog. First the bus was stuck in traffic - not an uncommon event in Auckland - but the thing was: it wasn't even raining! Where are the green bus lanes where you need them like on K Road and down Queen Street? Do these planning and council people ever take a bus to work?
I just got to the ferry on time, it's always a race against the clock, but really, should a 6km bus ride take 55 minutes?
The boat was, as usual, the decrepit Jetraider, a real 80s icon if ever there was one: all flashy and grunty, you half expect there would be flames painted on its sides like on less discerning boy racer cars, and I think when it was first put in service there actually were. Now it's just a sad shadow of its former self, a rusty, diesel smelly bucket, affectionately known (not!) by the Waiheke commuters who have to endure it daily as the Vomit Comet or Death Raider.
Being Friday night there was about half of New Zealand trying to get on the ferry, with everything, including the kitchen sink in some cases, for a nice weekend on the rock. Since the Fullers Ferry Company makes so much money out of these weekend visitors ($25.50 return, for a 40 minute, 17km trip - surely one of the most expensive stretches of water you can cross in the world) they say: to hell with the comfort of daily commuters, who fork out almost $3,000 a year in season tickets. It's a typical example of a captive audience held hostage and screwed to the max by a monopoly.
It wouldn't be so bad if only they maintained their boats to a reasonable safety standard, so we don't have to endanger our lives alongside our bank balances. In late August their flagship, the Superflyte, had an engine fire and rescue services had to assist in getting 300-odd passengers off the boat. It's been out ever since and there is currently not even a possible date of return to service. You really have to ask how a small fire in the engine causes it to be out for 4 months, except maybe past neglect that allowed so much crud to build up in the engines. Perhaps as a monopoly operator you don't need to take care of things like passenger safety, comfort or your capital stock. Just put prices up (they did in October), cut services, put on rustbuckets instead and our shareholders will be right.
So, all you free marketeers, give me your suggestions. Trying to get some serious competition on the Waiheke run has a sad and troublesome history, because any entrant in the market faces an enormous obstacle: a strategic alliance between Fullers and the bus company Stagecoach which allows them to offer integrated season tickets - something that is really, really long overdue in the whole of the city's public tranportation system. Waiheke commuters, due to their sheer numbers, also pay for the upkeep of all the wharves over the whole city's ferry system. This is in effect a "congestion charge" but applied on commuters who don't actually use any roads, but leave space for all you landlubbers to clog the motorways.
Back to the ferry trip last night. It was a breezy southwesterly gale which caused said rustbucket to lurch side to side and overflowing dustbins to be sent flying through the masses. Maybe it was a small mercy that no-one was actually seasick, but it was a close call: in the middle of the harbour Jetraider lost power in one of its engines and we chugged happily at half speed through the rolling waves to Matiatia, to arrive about 30 minutes late. Not an announcement, no apology, nada.

Coalition of the Circumcised II

It's good to see that I don't need to feel so lonely anymore in my thinking that the current world situation is not so much one of a clash of (religious) civilisations, a la Huntington, but one in which the very project of the Enlightenment in Europe and the USA is under siege from a wide range of "fundamentalists" from the desert religions. It just makes me want to go all Freudian and suggest all this moral values intolerance wowserism is just them being jealous we still have our foreskins to treasure.
Now Timothy Garton Ash, always very readable and knowledgeable, expressed it succinctly:

"Battle may soon be joined to preserve the strict separation of church and state that the founding fathers intended. Or, to put it another way, to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment. No wonder liberal Americans have been feeling so blue. But there is one silver lining to the cloud hanging over them. Overstated though the dichotomy is between red and blue America, it does mean that no one who is at all well informed can believe that America is Bush and Bush is America. If the west is divided, the dividing line runs slap-bang through the middle of America. And, on the other side of the pond, through Europe. We don't have so many Christian fundamentalists any more. Compared with the American religious right, Rocco Buttiglione, the withdrawn Italian Catholic candidate for European commissioner, is a dangerous liberal. But we do have Islamic fundamentalists, in growing numbers. And, I would say, we have secular fundamentalists: people who believe that to live by the tenets of Islam, or other religions, is incompatible with what it is to be fully human, and want citizens to be educated and the state to legislate accordingly. While I have been in America, the possible consequences have been played out on the streets of prosperous, pacific, tolerant Holland, with the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the counter-attack on an Islamic school. If America has its culture wars, its Kulturkampf, so do we. And ours could be bloodier. So the expressions of European solidarity after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks ( "Nous sommes tous Américains" ) should acquire a new meaning and a new context after the November 2 2004 elections. Hands need to be joined across the sea in an old cause: the defence of the Enlightenment. We are all blue Americans now."

If you had any doubts this is just a rant from a foreign visitor to a blue state, even Andrew Sullivan made it his quote of the day.

All Blacks in Europe

The Alpha Males of New Zealand, a.k.a. The All Blacks, are currently on a rugby tour of Europe. It's reported that their charter plane from Rome to Cardiff was too small to hold all their luggage, so they had to attend a charity dinner in tracksuit pants. Personally, I suspect the plane was too small to hold all Daniel Carter's underpants he got given for his fashion shoot. And I quite like the idea of the All Blacks playing commando-style. Might make rugby worth watching for a change.

Call me a closet cartographer (but call me)

I have always enjoyed seeing maps change: countries appear, merge, split up, change boundaries or simply vanish off the earth.
Historical maps are always great fun to look at. I come, after all, from the land that gave you Mercator.
The fun with maps will continue endlessly into the future, and one of the latest is of course the blue/red state division of the USA. I think the world would be better off if there were more than one United States (or whatever they would call their de-amalgamated bits: Jesusland, The Neo-Confederacy, We-Won-Now-Shut-Up-Land, Cascadia, Heaven/Hell's Waiting Room - my personal favourite - the United Cities of America), just like the world got better when the Soviet Union split up into more manageable areas, some of which even got to join EU civilisation. Admittedly Russia still has some carving up to do, but you get my drift.

My geographer's thesis would be: A small country is a better country, because since when was the last time you heard a small country - say Costa Rica, or Luxembourg, or Gambia, or New Zealand - make a nuisance of itself internationally (Israel doesn't rate because it counts completely on the USA, so it's really a big country in small vulnerable state drag).
Germany only really became a pain in the arse when after it was unified in the 19th Century. It was so much more fun when it had all those fairy-tale principalities rather than those dour Prussians taking over the lot. The same with Italy and France and Spain and Britain (and China). No, we could do with some proper decentralisation, a historic move away from empires and oversized states too big for their boots and too lethal for their neighbours.
But if you thought this was some neo-anarchist whining, now even some Jesusland people are getting in on the act. World o'crap linked a creamy wingnut column on the subject of expelling 12 blue states from the current Union. Remember, he wants to keep some blue states such as Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. Didn't he know that the largest US defence contractor, Boeing, has moved to Illinois from Washington State, why would he want to keep it? I call on all upstanding Seattleites and Waikiki surfbums to revolt!
But hey, the overall idea might get legs. As in the words of that famous 20th Century philosopher, Brian Ferry:

Nothing lasts forever

If you want to see a country fissuring live, here are the two sides: the sad and the scary.

Prediction Time

Now that Vice-President Dick Cheney is in hospital, it's time to speculate who should be next to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Since the American Imperial dynasty needs continuity, the best choice for the job of VP is Brother Jeb. That way it will be easier for him to run in 2008, and get some training done on the job when Brother George is on vacation. A pair of hands inside the whanau is always safer to continue ruling Jesusland.
Empirically speaking, a governor's career is far better suited than a senator seat to have a tilt at the presidency. The Bush family have taken that political life lesson to heart because how many Bush family members have legislative experience? Stay away from legislating, it involves too many compromises, nuances and actual policy wonking (a.k.a. flip-flopping) and Barbara made sure her boys were not going to go down that road.

Is there no end to their depravity?

American Senator Rick Santorum, the highest ranking athletic supporter of this 'Silver Ring Thing', has now his name linked to a delicate matter (warning: bad taste advisory, but spread it around liberally)

Arafat RIP

Now get on with the roadmap, you lot.

Rats leaving the Righteous Ship of Fools?

US Attorney General John Ascroft, and another minion, resigned today from the Bush Team. His parting shot was:

the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.

Sounds like he may have given up his real political post but is still living in his faith induced topor.
Ashcroft, of course, was the very memorable guy who sang his own hymn karaoke-style on Fahrenheit 9/11 - probably denounced as an anti-Bush hoax. But he also owed his political career to his President, who rescued him from oblivion after losing in a senate race in Missouri against a dead guy. Of course this was in a time when dead Democrats won elections over living Republicans. Things are a bit more upside down these days: taxpaying Democrats now lose against braindead Republicans on welfare.
Ashcroft, as an unelected official like all presidential cabinet appointees, presided over the infamous P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act, arguably the biggest attack on American civil liberties since King John ignored the Magna Carta.
The next rat that needs to go but should have much earlier: Donald Rumsfeld.

Four More Wars

One against Iran, one against North Korea, one against France and one against anyone who objects to the previous three.

All I want for Christmas

Now that the "red" and the "blue" states have been entrenched and showing no sign of changing much in the future, why don't they make it official and separate?
It would overturn the unsatisfactory outcome of 1865 achieved under another Republican President, so the Midwest/South can continue playing at empire-in-drag, and the coastal states can join the reality-based world again.
The new Confederacy could then establish their Taliban-like regime: run around in pyjamas, not having to shave, guns as a permanent accessory (who needs a draft when your boys are homeschooled and reared to shoot), the women-folk covered up and knowing their place, compulsory circumcision, all art replaced with the 10 Commandments hewn into slabs of rock.
In short "one red nation under GWB".
No need for any more elections - who has ever heard of a more ridiculous concept than a "democractic empire"?
The Bush family should easily become the new imperial family, W to be succeeded by Jeb and then by Jenna and Not-Jenna. I can see a special starring role for Barbara as the new Livia. GHB survived an earlier food poisoning. He may not get away so easily this time round!
On a more serious note: I expect all 18 to 30 year old Bush voters now to repay their Leader for their loyalty and enlist, so a draft will not have to happen.
And for all you would-be refugees from Bushland: be most welcome here in New Zealand. Check your immigration eligibility.
And here is a good impression of the map of the future.

The Economist comes out...

With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd.

They really could not have done anything else after the rather infamous frontpage and story on the Abu Ghraib scandal. Collective responsibility starts at the top.