January - the world is on hold

It’s a weird time of year in New Zealand in January, traditionally the country goes on holiday, once upon a time it seemed at least. These days however we've subscribed to the 24/7 culture that dictates stores are open, business's function and life in most corners of our little space down here goes on. Yet tradition seems to be maintained in some bastions of the workplace.

I personally am all for some traditions, the ones that celebrate our culture, our history and the positive aspects of ourselves are all good. Them that are just slack and stupid I'd like to see the back of. One of these is our media's way of only trying to serve up the bare bones of news around this period, I know in the rest of the world things are happening, life is indeed going on – how do I know this, I have the internet and it confirms as much.

In our newspapers, much space is currently devoted to the printing of large summer themed photos - kids in pools, beautiful sunsets, a child on a horse, some beach scenes and other life enhancing moments captured and displayed where sometimes there are stories, the written word and opinion pieces.

Our television news ain't much better, this week TV3 has been running a daily segment on Love In The 21st Century, last night it was some old hag going on about her two failed marriages and how she is looking for some new man, finishing with the revelation she's getting a facelift. For fucks sake, I thought I was in infomercial land and somewhere I knew there was real news being overlooked for this woman’s magazine posing as news bullshit. Didn’t help that the bulk of the rest of the stories were equally inane, all being dished up by the holiday presenters looking dead serious, come on people we’re not all lemmings awaiting the order to run and jump.

I will await February perhaps to learn of what is happening in the world – minus the disasters of that we’re getting all and sundry, I know about the Ice Skating Rink roof collapse in Germany, I know about the miners trapped somewhere in the USA and I know about a little boy who lost his pet cat in deepest Russia, what I want to know is this really the best our news services can do, in its national broadcast, especially considering how little time they have for actual news anyway, as half the show is sport, a quarter weather and another good chunk is them telling me what’s coming up or just been, so at a guess there’s what 6 minutes in the given hour for actual fresh content. Bitter me, hell yeah!

I’m also over reading newspaper columnists proclaiming that the Blog is history and only the domain of them that write the things, well thanks for your input, I now know no one reads these outpourings of mine and worse I now know its not cool for me to be doing this at all.

It may seem a bit self serving for me to suggest that I don’t want to read from these people. Why you wonder, is Bob a bit sensitive? Is he not using the luxury three ply bog rolls that are liberally littering TV advertising right now, has his exercise machine not given him the body he desires in less than three minutes a day, did the pills that he cheerfully brought of the charming person who emailed him not given him the penis of a elephant? Well actually they did and now I gotta get new pants.

In short am I taking my bitterness that Santa didn’t bring me a bike out on our newspaper columnists and news types who after all are only giving their opinion and reading from a teleprompter. Perhaps I am bitter – I didn’t get that bike.

No actually my frustration at these hacks, is they don’t like people like me, cause I offer opinion and manly advice for free. They do exactly the same (minus the manly bit) for a living, so whilst they proclaim my uncoolness and the death of the blog they do so with a very strong vested interest at heart – their livelihood. For after all who wants to read that column every one of them drops (at least once a year) about how hard it is to write a column, that inane gushing of words about how they have nothing to say that week, that waffling crapfest on how their pet has fleas or some shite or their blogs are dead article. Hell if someone wants to give me money to do the same, bring it on. I’m not proud. Columnists, your days are numbered unless you can outsmart and out write us bloggers you’re the ones who face redundancy. Worse for your sleeping patterns you have to be ahead of the pack, not dragging ya heels some kilometres behind….

And as a final word to you bastions of thoughts and taste, us bloggers know we ain’t cool – you think we’d be doing this if we could be wearing our designer shorts, snorting lines of coke off naked prostitutes backs whilst partying hard with them society types we would like to hang out with. Hell no - well maybe some of that don’t appeal to the lady bloggers… not everyone wears shorts.

Crikey, this is a grumpy pants start to the year, perhaps next post I shall discuss my tips on dating or reveal all about my self face lift experiment.

Maybe I’m in this mood cause my holidays are coming to a end and it’ll soon be time to head home and get really stuck into 2006

Perhaps like the news readers and compilers, the columnists and other types I have nothing really to say