Robbie / Робби

I thought I'd do a post about the podcasts I subscribe to in iTunes. I currently have too many and my cheap'n'nasty mp3 player is broke, so I can't listen to them on the bus or walking around the supermarket etc. That's why I have a backlog. Anyway, here goes. Ordered by country of origin, roughly.

I'm not linking to them, because that would take too long to code.

( Radio New Zealand )

( Other NZ )

( Overseas broadcasters )

( Other overseas )

Currently I have 44 unlistened-to episodes from all these feeds, and 11.62GB of them that I have accrued through just a year of subscribing. There's really not much need for me to keep that much.

I had the greatest day of progress.

Anna McGregor, a friend of mine who's performed a number of my compositions, offered me the use of her house in the hills of North Wellington as a composing getaway. I don't know what prompted her to do so - maybe because she's recently moved to Wellington from Auckland, and she's found the environment a lot more conducive to practice her instrument.

The day was amazingly productive.

I'm writing a 5-minute orchestral piece for the National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence Award. If I win, they fly me around to see it performed in four cities by the National Youth Orchestra (which is made up of Anna and many other of my friends from uni days), and possibly also on an overseas tour. If I don't win, I can submit it for either the SOUNZ Readings or the Todd Readings and have a likelihood of getting the piece played in workshop by the NZSO.

Over the course of today (from about 12:45pm to 6pm - I did have a sleep-in), I went from about 45% done to 75% done - knocked off the whole of the slower middle section, in an environment with plenty of natural light, and a harbour view to Maupuia, Somes Island and Eastbourne, and no traffic noise to speak of. And no readily-available internet connection.

This is in contrast to my flat in Newtown: it may be a convenient location, but there's always noise around - traffic in particular (it's on a main bus route), people (it's right opposite a church), and it's in Newtown so loud and vocal people come with the territory. I like it for that, but it's not easy to compose in such a place.

Tomorrow, I think I'll use the four-and-a-half open hours of the Victoria University Central Library to compose and hopefully get the last of the notes down in the file.

Then it's a long process of fixing up all the layout mistakes. Sibelius is such an ugly programme sometimes, especially when you're dealing with a lot of staves. I think I'll need to incorporate 33 staves on one page at one point.

I'm hoping to go back to the composing idyll for a day or two before the deadline (Monday 8 February). The week before the deadline I've got a few opportunities for work: Wednesday 4 is hopefully a day off, plus Friday 6 is Waitangi Day. The weekend is a write-off because of an improv workshop, but I'll have it all done by then. Of course I will.

I think the neutrality of this article is a thing of beauty.

A Bay of Plenty baby will always know where she comes from regardless of where she travels in the future.

The baby girl who was born at Tauranga Hospital on January 11 has been given the name Zealand-New by her grandmother Sharron Te Moni, the Bay of Plenty Times reported.

"I was fiddling around and it was something different to say it back to front," Ms Te Moni said.

The little girl's full name is Zealand-New Sharron Phyllis Atareta Davoren.

Her mother, Tomicina Davoren and her father Mana Te Moni from Merivale in the Western Bay said they had never heard anybody being called that name.

"It is unusual to name your child that," Ms Davoren said.

Zealand-New is the couple's fourth child. The others are named Rlexuz Toara Chantz Te Moni, Mikaere Morgan Te Moni and Korizma-Lake Vonnita Manaaki Te Moni.

- Dom Post

I know nobody gives a shit, but all I'm going to do is analyse the headline and first two paragraphs of an opinion piece from today's New Zealand Herald.

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From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10540015

Gladiator v Boadicea: No contest?
By Fran O'Sullivan

Helen Clark and John Key are now locked in a fight to the political death in which there can only be one winner.

The Herald's Mood of the Boardroom survey shows just over 90 per cent of the chief executives surveyed clearly believe Key will make the best Prime Minister.

Headline: Right, so Helen Clark is obviously Boadicea, if you insist on equating one strong woman leader with another because Helen Clark can only be defined by her gender. John Key as a gladiator? What the fuck? He'd get eaten alive... literally.

Headline: Odds are that a sub-editor added that question mark. Fran O'Sullivan probably just put a full stop there.

First paragraph: well no, I'd say Helen Clark will still come out a winner. If she loses this election, she'll get a good job at the UN or somewhere without too much trouble. John Key of course is fucked politically if he loses.

First paragraph: "there can only be one winner". Second paragraph: "Key will make the best Prime Minister". As subliminal messages go, that's pretty blatant.

Second paragraph: Well, isn't that stating the obvious? What about 90% of all voters? Oh wait...

Open letter to the Herald: LETTING FRAN O'SULLIVAN WRITE POLITICAL OPINION PIECES ISN'T FAIR AND BALANCED. Keep her on the business pages, please.

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In yesterday's Herald: "OMG! HERALD EXCLUSIVE@@!!! SHOCK EXPOZAY COMING TOMROROW WICH WILL TOPPLE TEH JOHN KEY!! OMG EXLOSIVE ALLEGATIONS FROM HIWS PASST!!!!"
In today's Herald: "'Neutron bomb' on Key proves fizzer for Govt."

So yesterday, you were hyping the story and today you blame it on Labour. Hmm... yep.

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Wasn't it Helen Clark who said it had been a Tory rag for 100 years? It was obvious enough in 1912...

There's some unnatural translation in here, but I'm proud of the rhymes, even if you have to be somewhat free with the meter. But then again, the original doesn't stick to an unchanging meter, so I feel I have licence. The chorus has a lot more syllables, but only where there's a bunch of quick syllables anyway.

Ironically, I think there are more rhymes in the translation than in the original...

En lo más profundo de tu ser
Una fuerza te tiene
Me aparta a un lado de ver
Extende por siempre

Coro:
Yo sé que tengo razón
Por la primera vez de mi vida
Es porque te digo
A volver temprano

Se deshacen las capas
Falsas y mentirosas
Es una vuelta a la nada
Como estar en el desierto

(Coro)

No me digas que nada no te pasa a ti
Que cuando volverás tal vez ya me fui

Me daría mucho dolor
Si lo termináramos (do Spanish-speakers actually use this tense?!)
Pero yo comenzaría de nuevo
Depende de eso

(Coro)

Course, now that I've listened to the original, it's hard for me to imagine it as salsa or reggaetón or whatever. But I have heard this done by an Irish band (in English).

There's a restaurant/bar in Newtown called Amigos. Owned and run by Chileans.

I worked from 10:30 to 7:30 today, then I checked my phone and got the bus home. Had a text from a guy I know who lives round the corner and has been organising Latin bands. He said "Pablo and Josué are playing at Amigos from 7:30". Sweet as.

I hopped off the bus, which is no more than 15 metres from Amigos. Popped in, got Joe to walk over to my place round the corner with me to get my bass guitar, my trumpet, and a PA speaker.

Jammed for 3-4 hours, got fed, got drinks on the house, had a massively fun time.

Pablo had a whole bunch of lyrics-and-chords sheets for Latino pop songs that I'd never heard. My knowledge isn't that extensive: I know Oye Como Va, Corazón Espinado, Guantanamera, Cielito Lindo, not much else. The room was full of Latinos who knew all these songs that Pablo was singing.

The chords were written as DO REm MI7 FAm7 SOLadd9 etc, instead of Anglo C D E F G. Sight-readable, but just. Almost everybody in the room knew the songs and was singing along, whereas I was sightreading on bass guitar. That was surreal.

Suggested we cover kiwi pop songs in Latin style.

Tengo un grupo de hombres y tocan para mí
Se viene todo el mundo para oírlos tocar una melodí(-a)
Abajo de las estrellas van a tocar mis diez guitarras una canción para tí
Y si estás con tu amado, eso es lo que haces

Oh, baila, baila, baila a mis diez guitarras
Y temprano vas a saber dónde estás
Con los ojos de amor vas a ver mil estrellas
Cuando bailas, bailas, bailas a mis diez guitarras

I'm flying to Christchurch tomorrow and spending 3 days in Akaroa with family. Yessssss. I fly back to Wellington at 2:30 on Monday afternoon and I'm on air at 6pm.

Go to http://www.stuff.co.nz/audioplayer/1335.html (on the site of The Marlborough Express).

That's the National Party's Immigration spokesman Lockwood Smith talking to a reporter.

The reporter asks a question:
"Do you find when you're talking to people now that you're careful about what you say? Has that changed the way that you campaign?"

The stammer and hesitation tells everything: I swear I could hear his brain telling his mouth, "Oh shit, you're about to make you've just made national headlines for dumbass racial generalisations". Like a good politician, he gamely carried on with the interview, as cool and as collected as he could reasonably make it.

Yet another reason I'm not voting for them...

If you want to know about what I do for a living, read this blogpost by Peter Hoar (it's a new blog).

Two things to remark upon in the news - or absent from the news, as the case may be:

( NZSO programme )

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( A new Māori dictionary and the fuckwits that are our media )

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=264&objectid=10529751:

Student band upset system
4:00AM Saturday August 30, 2008
By Joanna Hunkin

Vodafone will change the nomination system for the People's Choice Award at next year's music awards after a little known Dunedin band forged their way to the top of the nominee list.

Student band The DFenders, whose music has never featured in the New Zealand charts, are leading nominations for the award after campaigning vigorously, pleading for fans to vote repeatedly for them.

Vodafone music manager Morgan Donoghue admitted his team had made a mistake opening the nominations to all and sundry and they would look to change the system to prevent a similar upset next year.

"It's not what we were aiming for at all," he said of the result. "What we wanted to do was open it up. We may have gone too far that way. It's a little sad people have abused it."

The DFenders bandmember Adon Moskal said his band had lobbied fans, but denied they had manipulated the system.

"No one is more surprised than us," he said of their lead.

Nothing could be done to change the system this year but Mr Donoghue said they would place stricter controls next year. He said he appreciated the band's initiative but did not think it was what fans really wanted.

Voting for nominees closes on Monday, with the top five bands or artists becoming official finalists.

The People's Choice Award will be presented at the New Zealand Music Awards at Vector Arena, Auckland, on October 8.

O NOEZ TEH PUBLICZ HAS CHOSEN A BAND THAT ISN"T ACCEPTABLE TO OUR NARROW MAINSTREAM-MEDIA VIEW!

I particularly resent the Herald writer using the word "forged" in the first paragraph. There are two ways to read that (forge as in steel, or forge as in... well... steal), but when I saw it in print I read it as implying fraud. At least, that's the more appropriate meaning.

Fuck off Vodafone. You obviously valued driving traffic to your site more highly than actual democratic rigour (by allowing one vote per person every 24 hours). This is the result. Suck it up.

Is there a list of "acceptable" bands who could have come in the top five? Well, at least they haven't stricken The DFenders from the list... yet.

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In other news, I drove up to Auckland yesterday. I'm spending a week up here, living at home, catching up with friends, and working at the Auckland office.

Saw the uni German Play last night, had a family dinner tonight, seeing Bill Bailey at the Aotea Centre on Monday, going to an APO live broadcast on Thursday night (seeing the live broadcast side of things), playing for the Theatresports Schools Final on Friday night, going to an engagement party on Saturday night, and driving back to Wellington on Sunday for a gig at Circa Theatre that night.

In other news, I also acquired a bitching tooth-ache on the way up to Auckland. I think I might see a dentist while I'm up here. This tooth has been niggling me on and off for the last year, but the pain has got worse.

From nzherald.co.nz:

PM's blocking of disabled carpark 'unacceptable', says pensioner

Questions are being asked after the Prime Minister's motorcade blocked off disable parking bays in central Christchurch.

That caused an 81-year-old Parkinson's patient to struggle 200 metres down a wet street after attending a concert in the Town Hall.

Marshall Leaf's wife Elizabeth tried to use a disabled space but a young policeman demanded she move on, and threatened to arrest her if she did not get out the way.

She says getting to the car was a real battle for her frail husband, and she thinks the attitude of the security detail was unacceptable.

Elizabeth Leaf says if it had not been for kind ushers at the Town Hall who helped look after her husband, the night could have turned out much worse.

Ms Leaf says what annoyed her most was Helen Clark's cars were sitting around with no-one in them.

There was no indication if any [disabled space parking] fines would be issued over today's incident.

Elizabeth Leaf, you are not alone!

While I was an fully able-bodied 22-year-old at the time, I did have a similar experience.

From 6 April 2007:

Dear Miss Clark,

Please don't get up in front of a thousand-strong crowd at the Aotea Centre and crap on about New Zealand having an egalitarian society when your DPS goons won't let me park my car by the stage door to unload my keyboard shit. There was still room enough for my car even with the two of yours sitting there, and you still could have made a hurried getaway if some nutter had called in a bomb threat to kill a thousand school principals. But noooo, I had to park my car, lug my shit up the carpark ramp and then down the stage door stairs.

Yours inequitably,

Robbie

For the month of March, I didn't put any petrol in any car at all.

This is very likely the first month this has ever happened since I got my restricted in September 2001. Well... it MIGHT not have happened in June 2006 when I only spent 5 days in New Zealand. But it could have.

My flat and location are cool like that. Apart from one trip to Petone for a gig, the furthest trip north I made in my car was Kaiwharawhara to the courier depot.

His name is Steve McGill
From One Tree Hill
He's lookin' after and makin' pretty
The only urban farm in Auckland City
Steve McGill
From One Tree Hill



EweTube channel
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Hmm. If you're somewhere within a general Mexico City-San Diego-Vancouver-Edmonton-Montreal-Boston-Miami-Mexico City perimeter-shaped area, watch this space in a couple of years.

Auckland: So where do you live?
Wellington: So where do you work?
Christchurch: So what school did you go to?

So yeah, if I had a time machine, I could solve all (both) of New Zealand's recent aviation security dramas.

Friday 9 February: Witness: Airport drama 'like a Bruce Willis movie'
Tuesday 12 February: Machine-gun backfires on air traveller

In the first case, a woman threatened the pilot and first officer at knifepoint. This was in the middle of an Air New Zealand Link flight from Blenheim to Christchurch - while Christchurch has more rigorous security procedures (being an international airport), Blenheim is a small regional airport, and the plane in question was a tiny little thing. But anyway, crazy knife lady takes plane hostage, tells the pilot to send the plane to Australia (not like they had the fuel to fly there!). After a rather tense period, she lets her guard down, the first officer spots an opportunity and disarms her. All is well.

Now, in the latter case, there was a dude checking in for a Freedom Air flight from Hamilton to Sydney. He had a trumpet with him. When questioned by check-in staff as to what was in the case, he - drongo that he is - answered "a machine gun" as a joke. What a nong. Security was alerted, he was denied access to the flight, I think he was briefly arrested and faced charges and a ban from flying for the next forever. (Charges and a ban never resulted, and he's booked on a flight next week.)

I have an elegant solution to both of these problems.

SWAP THE TWO PEOPLE AROUND!

Now, bearing in mind that Hamilton is not Blenheim and Blenheim is not Hamilton and the two towns are nowhere near each other, I'm going to ignore that fact.

1) Crazy knife lady wanted to go to Australia. Stick her on the Freedom Air flight going to Sydney! Problem solved.
2) Retarded trumpet drongo wanted to make a machine gun joke. Stick him on the Air New Zealand Link service - a domestic flight going out of an airport with basically no security precautions whatsoever. They would have had no heightened sense of danger, therefore they would probably would have gone along with the joke! Problem solved.

**DISCLAIMER** The use of the word "homo" in the title of this blogpost is not directly intended to be used as a synonym for bad despite the content of the following blogpost not being directly related to homosexuality or homosexual issues. It is used because a) it fits nicely as a parody of the title of a well-known song, and b) it would annoy the red-blooded beer-gutted sort of Australian featured in the below article, about whom I will take a small liberty to assume to be a homophobe as well as a racist.

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NZ Herald - NZer fights drunk neighbour over 'nigger' comment

It's not the fact that a Queenslander called a New Zealander a nigger that makes this article noteworthy - any New Zealander should know that if (s)he doesn't want to be subjected to crude racial abuse, (s)he shouldn't move to Queensland. If you have to move to Australia, move to Melbourne instead - there's a much greater variety of cultures so the ethnic slurs are more creative.

Anyway, it's not the 'nigger' term, it's the description of the fight. This is straight out of How To Write A Funny Fight Into A Ben Stiller Movie.

The pair began having a fist-fight, which spilled out from the front yard into the street.

The court was told the neighbour ran inside and returned with a knife, which he started swinging at Henry.

Both men then ran inside for more weapons and returned for another fight on the street.

The court was told Henry returned with a BBQ fork, a knife and a pair of garden secateurs, while his neighbour's choice of weapon was a mop.

Police arrived soon after and arrested Henry, charging him with one count of going armed so as to cause fear.

The court was told the neighbour resisted arrest and had to be subdued with capsicum spray.

Congratulations has to go to the AAP for distributing this story. Well done.

So... you have to walk a distance more than 1km but less than 5km (an arbitrary upper limit). And you don't want to take frickin' ages, or pay for a taxi, and the buses aren't running this late. And it's fine weather. What do you do?

You walk it, but every so often you set short running targets for yourself - distances between 50 and 150 metres. You see and pick a starting point and an end point, then when you reach the start point you run/jog towards the end point, and once you reach the end you go back into walking. This way you cover the not-trivial distance quicker, but you don't get too tired, since you're not continuously running. Even though your walking speed becomes a bit slower than normal (since you're recovering from the running and your strides aren't as long as normal), your overall journey time is shorter because for a significant proportion of the distance you're running.

One must also be careful not to be so ridiculously pissed off one's nut as to trip one's sorry ass over. Which I did not do on my way back from Courtenay Place to Constable Street, because I had my wits about me.

And this might not work while going up a big fuck-off hill, but I live in Newtown, so that's not a problem for me! There is literally no change in altitude between town and my flat. Awesome to the max.

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My weekend has consisted of:
- Friday afternoon/evening/night: Heading to Tatum Park (between Otaki and Levin) for Toots & Grooves. Caught The 'Bones, Skaface Claw, The Offbeats and The Managers, among others.
- Friday night: Sleeping in my car in a semi-comfortable position.
- Saturday morning: Waking up not having parked my car in the shade of the morning sun, even though I thought I had. Dragging my sorry ass into the driver's seat to move the car two metres further forward to sleep in the shade for a couple more hours.
- Saturday afternoon: Catch Where's Gary's Duvet?. Win a prize in a skank-off. Get interviewed by one of the Weather Angels. Mention how being in a band is like being in a relationship, mention I was in an eight-piece band, suggest that said Weather Angel should try an eight-piece relationship. Syllojism to the max.
- Saturday night: Catch Hung Jury, a really awesome funk band called The Aviators, and Atsushi and the Moisties before hopping in the car, hooning it back to Wellington and going to a friend's 21st.

At this point I have to stop the story:
Earlier this evening (being Saturday night) a school friend texted me to ask what I was doing tonight. He is an Auckland resident but he's down in Wellington for a conference. I told him I was at a skafest and then off to a friend's 21st so I wouldn't be able to meet up tonight.

Lo and behold, he is at precisely the same establishment as my friend's 21st. He was in the public bar and her 21st was in the private function area. Of all the bars in Wellington, both were at The Big Kumara. Mean.

- Saturday late: Head to The Establishment on Courtenay Place. It's very clubby. The only other time I've been there was Thursday night happy hour, when it wasn't so clubby. Then I did the above-mentioned walk-run-walk-run-walk-run-walk-run-walk home.

Sir Edmund Hillary was the only New Zealander ever to have been permanently above controversy.

Think about that.