Posts by Rob Hosking
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See, I've never heard of datura. It sounds like a Japanese car or something.
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Felix wrote:
Let me hasten to point out it was not me. My injury moments are much more mundane.
Yeah, but its the way you tell 'em, as that pommie comedian used to say.
Your description of the ball popping had me wimpering with a mix of horrified laughter and sympathy pain.
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Isn't 'What a friend we have in Jesus' the song that's sung at the start of Heavenly Creatures?
Not quite.
It's 'Just a Closer Walk with Thee'. I think its originally a Negro Spiritual which got taken over. I remember my parents had a late 50s country version of it.I find it disturbing, or something, that the only thing I can really contribute to a discussion about drugs is info about a religious song.
I took a couple of blueys once, at a party, and was very silly and then very paranoid, and vowed never again: marijuana makes me giggle a lot, which is OK, but it also badly aggravates my asthma, so that's out.
I shall stick to the lager and the single malts, and a few nice wines, but you folk have your fun in your own way...
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Felix,
YOOWWW!
That one gets my vote for best/worst.
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Zip/scrotum is for softies.
Zip/foreskin, now _there's_ a real eye-waterer...
I speak from experience: was about 16, I think, the only person in the house was Mum and, come on, no 16 year old male is going to invite his mum to look at that department, even if, as in my case, she is a nurse.
So it was close eyes, grit teeth, 1,2,3 ZIPP!
Didn't bleed as much as I'd have thought, but walked funny for a few days.
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My first vaguely significant injury was when I was 3. We were staying at a very basic rented house on Waiheke (this is 1967, well before it was trendy). No bathroom - wash in a tub, long drop outside, you get the idea.
Its at the top of a hill: the lawn goes down this steep grass with a blackerry bush at the bottom.
I woke early even then: I toddle outside to play on my own at about 6am and there's a pushchair, which I decide to pretend is a truck. I hop into it, start making brmm brmm noises and move the only lever on the thing, which happens to be the brake...Oh, did I say I only had shorts on? Anyway, down the hill, caterpaulted into the blackberry, my yells woke the house. Cuts and scratches and bruises all over chest.
the other memorable one was when I was 18, on my first job on a newspaper. We wrote on Imperial 70 typewriters with very basic newsprint copy paper: we were also allowed to smoke in the office in those days, in fact it was encouraged.
We were short of ashtrays. I used to stub my cigs out on the edge of my tin rubbish bin. One afternoon I failed to do this properly, I turn around and the bin is on fire.
Thinking quickly, I stand on the fire. My foot gets wedged in the bin and next thing I'm leaping around the office with a burning bin stuck to my foot and the flames leaping up my trouser legs. Burns to the lower calf eventuated.
A third one....17, journo school field trip, Blue Anchor motor in, Picton. Much Blenheimer had been consumed. I suddenly think it would be really fun to play on the trampoline. Run out, take flying leap onto tramp. I sort of thought I could just bounce up and down but momentum is a bastard. I remember rising up from the bounce and looking down - and this is the important bit - BACK, as the trampoline disappeared behind me. badly damaged knee as I hit the hard earth.
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Damian,
Of course they're running with dogs as the cause of the week for their own reasons. I've long since stopped expecting pure motives from newspapers (or anyone else, pretty much)
Let's not forget what starteed this round of concern was someone got killed. And its 'raised awareness' of the issue. As it should have done.
If its a good outcome I don't care about the motives of the Herald On Sunday for running the stories.
It still won't make me buy that paper, mind you. I've given up on the Sundays.
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Yeah, I know rural dogs go bad (I'm a farm boy origianally). But they tend to attack animals. Farm dogs seldom, in my experience, attack people.
But I do wonder whether keeping - for example - a large Alsatian on a small urban section isn't just asking for trouble.
And I actually like Alsatians, once I get to know them. I found, when I was a postie, that if the owner introduced me to the Alsatian, that dog would not usually worry about me delivering the mail. They'd usually keep a wary eye on me: there would be this 'Oh, well, the boss says you're ok, I suppose, but I'm watching you' attitude.
There was one section on the corner of Cowan St and a small side road which had two Rottweillers behind a high fence. They would always kick up a huge row when they heard the mail shoved in the box. One Saturday the owner was home and had left the gate open...they heard/smelt me coming across the middle of the crossroad and came barrelling out the gate in full fury.
You know that saying 'my bowels turned to water'? Not just a saying.
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[deep breath, reminder to self not to rant]
Strong feelings on this one, partly because I was a postie for two years; partly because I visited a family friend in one of the less-well-off parts of Manurewa last year and had to fight my way past three very menacing dogs. He's an old man in poor health and they have had some real problems with the local dogs. Local council doesn't seem to have been able to do very much about it.
Menacing uncontrolled dogs with the power to kill as a problem though is at its worst in areas where I suspect most bloggers don't normally go.
Enforcement is a big issue. I live on the edge of Wellington's town belt and a few months before the last big panic about this there I reported two rottweillers running around an area a lot of kids play in. They were strays - no people supervising them at all. I rang the council who said unless I knew where the dogs were from they would not send anyone out.
The next dog complaint I made, about a year later and after that 'dog attack summer' - there was a much more interested response.
So I don't have a problem with the media making a big issue of this. It has already had a big impact on how councils enforce the laws.
This is one of the jobs we have the media for.
Attitude of owners defintily a huge problem, and this is independent of registration or not. A lot have an animal owner version of 'my little johnny would never do that' when little johnny is a little horror.
I was assured by one dog owner in Lincoln Street her dog attacked me because "he's been under a lot of stress" I said "I suppose he had a fucking deprived childhood as well" which resulted in a complaint to the postmaster about my language.
At the same time: dogs who attack do not necessarily have bad owners. Firstly, good pets do go bad. I often wonder if its just a city thing: the problem dogs are large energetic animals and really should not be confined to a small sections in cities.
The other thing is packs. If even a normally well-behaved dog gets in a pack all bets are off.
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The Budget will have significant tax cuts, probably, I suspect, greater than those already signalled. You'll get them if you sign up to KiwiSaver.
Cullen said yesterday the surplus is even higher than earlier trends, which, given that it was $1.5 billion above forecasts in December - after the bottom of the economic cycle last year - means big big bucks.
And his comment on National Radio that large surpluses are 'no logner politically sustainable' is an extraordinary admission and means he has given up fighting this battle.