Dog Biting Men

Burning Beard

2005-08-25T07:23:00.000+12:45

Mr Neil Falloon writes...

I'm back for the general election, and not before time by the look of things. There have been so many false starts. People talk about phoney wars and campaigns proper; but according to National and Labour, their campaigns didn't even start until Sunday. It's not true, and I know this because I don't trust the mainstream media. I'm so underground I have to dig upwards to get to the hitch-hikers' bodies buried in Antarctic Lemur 's backyard.

There's only one sure way to tell if the campaign has started, and that's to watch that electoral ground-hog, Winston Peters. Once he sets off out of his tunnel towards the Tauranga RSA, it's on, and the outlook is always a long winter of discontent. He's not looking for his own shadow, though; he's checking the ground for vipers.

Labour thinks it's struck gold with its extension to working for families; the ones who have struck gold are the families that the childless are now working for. Labour seems to have found a bunch more money than it had in May, and perhaps that's just because Michael Cullen is eyeing up the tax-receipts for sales of my new co-authored book, Public Addresses: the Comprehensive New Zealand Paedophiles and Bloggers Register. I'm so tired of Cullen's greedy glances I'm suffering from sleep deprivation - just like a working for families recipient, because a family on $100,000 per year is only impoverished in its dreams.

So now the campaign has started, although it's hard to hear over the whining of the New Zealand Party ex-members retirement village, Sir Humpties (the sign at the gate says, "Warning: Some Mature Malcontent") and the teenage recriminations of the left-wing blogosphere who insist on playing in Humpties' yard. They're more hysterical than Michael Cullen's wife at a Radio New Zealand economic debate.

A word to you pretenders. Jordan Carter, you think you can play a joke on your readers by impersonating a shrill, over-sensitive hypocrite left-winger? The joke is on you, but it's on your commentors too – the joke is written over you all like you were the crepe paper in a Christmas cracker. And just like crepe paper, you tear up easily, you little cry-babies. Spend some time on the issues, chumps, like Neil Falloon does.

Some in the media say Don Brash was wrong not to hit Helen Clark when she spoke to him out of turn in the TVNZ debate, but he's a gentleman and he did the right thing. We're living in a police state where even the police get convicted to cover Helen Clark's tracks, which are burned on the road in tyre-rubber.

Do you like that line? Jam Hipkins helped me out with it, the same way he helped out Brent Todd with a few lines before going on-stage at the Nats' campaign launch and making fun of the way local politicians’ names sound. I'm kidding – Brent Todd wasn't at the launch, and Hopkins was only getting high on David P-dealer Farrar’s adulation.

Farrar was live-blogging the whole event and then backed it up by live-blogging Business NZ’s forum on Wednesday, and he thinks he’s ubiquitous. He’s a sell-out. Here at DogBitingMen over the next three weeks we’re live-blogging life. Live. And if I’m too absorbed in my work to notice the Conservative Underground media motorcade getting up past 170kmph, it’s too bad for anyone in our way, because Ian Wishart drives like a madman and he’s still only had half a glass of red wine over lunch.

Start the election.

Jury News

2005-07-20T06:17:00.000+12:45

Mr Neil Falloon writes...

I'm surprised by the repeated media opportunities afforded the wife of a convicted rapist to rail at her husband's jury. There's heaps of examples to choose from. The most recent was the Sunday Star Times front page: Wife of rape accused stands by her man.

It was followed by a strange feature article that used experts to guess at what the jury was thinking, despite the fact that some evidence remains suppressed.

Why is it that we're hearing so much from this woman? Why, a week after the trial ended, did one newspaper decide she was deserving of the front page? From their treatment of this woman's views, you would think that it was unusual for families of convicted criminals to continue to believe in their man (or woman).

Surely that's not the case. Isn't this woman responding to the conviction just as hundreds of other spouses do every year? She's angry and hurt. Therefore she questions the entire system that found this man and his peers guilty of pack rape.

To me, it would only be unusual, unexpected and newsworthy if the family member declared, "I once believed in this man's innocence, but the fact that he's been found guilty by his peers has changed my mind."

Everybody has the right to question the outcome of a trial. That's a right we should defend.

But should this woman's opinion in itself be news? Again and again? And on the front page? It seems almost like we're only hearing from her because she's media savvy. Most other spouses in her position are not competent at working with journalists. She's literate, eloquent and middle-class.

Some journalists apparently only attended the defence's summing up. It seems interesting that the reporters who did attend every day don't seem to have engaged in the same second-guessing of the jury's motives as other journalists.

This case is made more complicated by suppression orders. The wife's name can't even be revealed. There are key details none of us know.

The twelve members of the jury are not allowed to respond. They sat through weeks of evidence in a gruesome pack rape trial. They cannot tell us how they reached their conclusion.

Should we now expect that every single spouse of every single convicted criminal will be given front-page treatment to criticise the jury?

Somehow, I don't think so.

Where have the bears gone?

2005-07-11T06:35:00.000+12:45

One of those conversations...

Olivia: So, are we still bloggers or not?

Neil: Is David P Farrar still a member of the Young Nats?

David: He's nearly 40. I'd really hope not.

Neil: It was a rhetorical question, along the lines of bears shitting in woods. The answer is 'of course!'

Olivia: But bears just don't shit in our woods any more. Russell Brown hasn't linked to us in weeks. Even Damian Christie hasn't mentioned us.

Neil: And you know how slutty Damian is with his links.

David: For God's sake, Neil. I'm sure you made that exact same joke the last time we had a group conversation. If not, the time before.

Neil: But it's still funny. Because it's so true. Slutty, slutty Damian.

Olivia: I was crushed that none of us were on that informative Simon Dallow live tax debate. Instead they chose to include the glamorous David P Farrar, the erudite David Slack, and the hard hitting Man Who Wrote A Letter To The Editor.

Ben: Murmur

Olivia: I think Ben is choking.

Ben: Mumble

David: No, he's trying to say something...

Ben: ...well guys ... Actually, Simon Dallow's producer, weak-chinned gay TV icon Simon Pound, called. He, uhhh, invited me on to that debate.

Olivia: And you said no?!

Ben: Ummmmm... I'm not really sure. I might have said no. Or I might have been overlooked for the glamorous David P Farrar.

David: I have to admit - and I have a queer eye for style - Farrar does have quite a mesmerising look.

Olivia: I like it how he took a fake flipper with him to the studio. That showed great class and humour.

Neil: It was like a wink to Russell Brown's beard and middle-agedness - a "don't take me too seriously" message for the kids.

Olivia: Speaking of which, did you see the Metro article by David Cohen about Russell Brown? My favourite bit - by far - was Fiona Rae glancing over at Russell "with slighly narrowed eyes."

David: I always thought David Cohen might be MediaCow. Him or Deborah Coddington...

Olivia: Anyway, are we still bloggers?

Neil: I think we could be if we wrote something. Ben, what's the most interesting thing that's happened to you recently?

Ben: I've been reading a collection of writing in Landfall, including this particular essay that's -

Olivia: - Don't lie. People don't do that.

Ben: Okay, okay. I watched a surreal episode of Beverley Hills 90210 this morning. An escaped lab dog named Rocky was living with the gang, but it had cancer. The gang debated about whether to stay by his side and comfort him, or leave him to rest. I would have thought having the cancer-ridden dog put down might have been another option worth exploring. But anyway, there was a poignant scene where one of the actors put his face near the dog and exclaimed "he's stopped breathing."

(Silence)

Olivia: That's just soooooooooooo sad.

Ben: Uhh, yeah.

Olivia: Ooooooooooooh! What about if we do one of those group conversation things again!

Ben: Those just descend into a list of bold names of people like Russell Brown, David P Farrar, Damian Christie, Simon Pound, and the Man Who Wrote A Letter to the Editor.

Olivia: Yes, and that's what I love about them! And let's remember to mention that Keith Ng. He's a star of morning television. Keith, the morning star. If we get it right, we can become a must-read of the congoscenti again - like Kevin List's "A Week of It" and David P Farrar's weblog.

Ben: I think you mean "cognoscenti".

Olivia: Perhaps.

Neil: So, we just say impolite things about other people.

Beautiful Olivia: It's important to also remember that we're trying to make ourselves sound good.

Ben: I worry we have a perception problem. The eight people who read our blog don't see the enormously constructive stuff we do. Like the column that we write for the NBR, our delightful emails to each other, or Olivia's volunteer work every Saturday morning. They may think all we do is snipe at other blogs. We used to be able to take the moral highground on account of how the rest of what we did was so good - but now we don't do anything else any more.

Neil: True. And at the risk of sounding as insightful as some of those we mock... much of what we now do is very self-referential.

Olivia: But this is really what having a weblog is all about, isn't it? We've cut the chaff, and now we're doing exactly what blogs are meant for. A blog is the safe refuge of the coward. It's the internet equivalent of looking at people "with slightly narrowed eyes."

Neil: Still, I guess we could try to do something to improve our image.

Ben: Guys, guys! Help me carry this poor cancer-ridden dog inside!

Stacey Thwarted

2005-06-17T07:13:00.000+12:45

MediaCow writes...

Readers of our last post about creative, inventive and special Stacey will be devastated on his behalf to learn that the narrow-minded souls at Trademe have removed his auction for tickets to his flat-warming.

Apparently TradeMe claim this auction breached their terms and conditions. It's not immediately obvious which one - and they didn't say before deleting the auction. Which is rather shoddy of them.

Poor Stacey. Let's hope Shizzle the greyhound has a good race this weekend.

All About Stacey

2005-06-15T07:30:00.000+12:45

David W Young writes...

Stacey is special. And not just because he has a girl's name, or because he's a morange.

I first met Special Stace in 1998 when we were neighbours in a dodgy set of apartments above MP Tukuroirangi Morgan's party offices in Frankton, Hamilton. Good times were had by all, especially Tuku.

In recent years, after escaping Hamilton and travelling the world, Stace has developed an interest in money.

First there was Shizzle. Shizzle is a greyhound. Stace controls the syndicate that owns and races Shizzle. This was his email looking for co-owners:

"Forget horse racing and the Melbourne cup. Hutt Park dog track and Shizzle on Trackside in the 6th is where the true excitement lies. Do your bit for the community and be the first dog racing supporter who isn't a problem gambler!"

Then Stacey discovered TradeMe. This was like Suzanne Paul discovering the formula to Natural Glow: he knew he would make (and probably lose) a fortune.

Stacey's first advertisement appeared designed to test the gullibility of his audience:

My house and surrounding shrubbery are infested with a particularly large and scary type of spider. I have a paranoid fear of spiders.

Also surrounding my house live a selection of native NZ skinks and geckos and a small kiwi named Jasper. I had heard Jasper at night and hoped he and the geckos would delivery a timely death to the hoard of arachnids about the property.

This has not occurred so drastic steps are needed. I need to purchase a very very large quantity of bug bombs. These aren't cheap and I'm broke.

Therefore I have captured Jasper and am offering him for sale. Reserve starts at $30 (3 bug bombs) and the final purchaser can also have a few gecko's thrown in. Purchase will have to be by pickup as I'm not too sure NZ Couriers deal in small flightless birds.

For those of you interested in Jasper's welfare, no I am not going to eat him (as damn good as roast as he looks like he'd make) and he is currently roaming free in the land around my property. He is easy to catch.

The advertisement was accompanied by a cute photograph of a kiwi.

Several thousand people looked at the auction during the four hours it was up. He received over 200 emails. Some were from taxidermists.

In the end a woman from Auckland clicked the "buy-now" price of $200 and said she would drive to Wellington the following day to collect Jasper. Stacey takes over the story-telling:

Due to the rampant gullibility and insanity of these people I altered the auction. I didn't want to sell a kiwi, merely the amusing idea, so needed a different approach. So I reposted the auction as not selling Jasper but selling "bags of kiwi feathers" harvested from Jasper, who would remain unharmed and happily living in my shrubbery, until I could come up with a better idea.

The auction was removed within an hour by Trademe, and resulted in a near-prosecution from DoC - who actually searched Stacey's apartment looking for Jasper.

So Stacey came up with "The Winston Peters Night Out"

The Auction was for an all-expenses-paid night in Wellington for two. The highlight was dinner at the Green Parrot, and transport would be provided by the same Somaili taxi driver Winston Peters once had an altercation with. (Resourceful Stacey actually tracked down the driver's company.)

This auction was removed by Trademe after about 30 minutes. Two other auctions - "an alibi valid for one year" and "the world's largest collection of stubbies" - sadly failed to reach their reserve.

Finally, Stacey has come up with an idea that DoC and Trademe aren't anxious to stamp upon.

He is auctioning off tickets to his flat-warming. It's this Saturday.

Stacey claims to have "a sophisticated and styley bunch of friends around the 22-32 age mark". I personally suspect this is false advertising. He says there will be 60-100 people attending. It will be, says Stacey, "FANTASTIC." He doesn't break out the capital letters for any old thing.

The theme is "Famous NZ'ers". Stacey would like to see people arrive as:

Precious Mckenzie
The Ingham twins
Tim Shadbolt
Mark Todd
True Bliss
Hudson and Hall
Lorraine Downs
Peter Plumley-Walker
Count Homogenised
Chloe from Wainuiomata
Tim Mckimm Big Save Furniture.

Stacey offers the Trademe winner:

Confidentiality on who you are and why you're there.This is perfect for lonely farmers or those with too little time and too much money.Perhaps you just need a weekend away in Wellington. Accomodation will be provided if you need it.

I promised Stace I'd link to his auction. So, go bid your way in. It'll be like old times. Except without Tuku.

Stacey's Auction of Tickets to His Flatwarming

Corrections and Clarifications, and all that that implies

2005-06-07T08:00:00.000+12:45

Ben Thomas writes…

Student reporter and internet diarist Keith Ng demands "satisfaction" after a mention of his weblog, Poll Dancer, in this week's Hive Mentality in the NBR (available now, not online).

As strange as it may seem from his two blog entries referring to us, the mention didn't refer to his dress sense, the publication he works for, or even his appearance. We like reading Poll Dancer. Sometimes we agree with Ng. Sometimes we don't.

Ng objects to our description of his tale of a specific instance of homosexuality in the National party as having "the odour of an urban legend". He had ostensibly recounted the story to argue that some topics should stay off limits from media speculation.

That some National MPs in the past, present and in the future may be, have been and will be gay is, as Ng acknowledges, banal (the word he was presumably searching for with when he said 'mundane'). But to use this as some kind of revelation in an online diary entry about suppression of information makes its use (Reporter Reveals Tory is Homo!) overblown and, like most banalities, cliched.

As we noted, this particular story can't be corroborated by parliamentary staffing records: No male National MP has had a male secretary for a considerable time. Ng responds: "The story of the MP with the secretary is rather dated". I first heard a similar story in 1998 as a University undergraduate in Auckland. Maybe it is the same story about the same MP. Or maybe these rumours are ubiquitous in every age. But an aspiring journalist like Ng might want a better source for his news than 'everyone just, like, knows'.

Particularly when using the alleged episode to illustrate how responsibly the Gallery wields its insider knowledge.

Ng states he needs to defend his honour, in light of his belief that "[Hive Mentality was] counting my words towards a 'vicious whispering campaign', with all that that implies."

The words "vicious whispering campaign" referred to a separate incident. However, if Ng's reportage was intended to illustrate a point rather than merely titillate, it seemed jarring to us that he chose to name the political party concerned. If salaciousness was not part of the piece's agenda, why even mention that the alleged secretary was male? (No National Party member opposed the CUB on the grounds that homosexuality per se was wrong, so the 'hypocrisy' argument seems odd. I'm straight and I supported the CUB; David's gay and he opposed it. That doesn't make us 'hypocritical').

Ng's claim that I dress poorly is at least verifiable and accurate. But he got scooped on that story years ago by Olivia Kember and David W Young.

The Big Apple

2005-06-03T07:36:00.000+12:45

Olivia Kember has just returned from New York...

There’s no point describing New York because it’s been done already already, over and over, in print, paint, film, pixels, for the delectation not just of all the poor barbarians who don’t have the fortune to live there but also for the New Yorkers themselves, who are obsessed with their own city.

All that attention, I think, must be to blame for a common Gothamist characteristic: everyone in the city who isn’t famous has to tell you about all the famous people they know. Immediately.

This is possibly a great big lie, because I was there for only five days (this was after I lost my boogie board bag) and I did only leave Manhattan once for lunch in a part of Brooklyn where the artists are being replaced by account managers... so I guess I may have failed to meet with a representative sample of the highly diverse population of eight million.

But still. Everyone I spoke to was terribly eager to reveal their close personal relationship with an MTV host, a designer of clothes for celebrity slappers, a pre-millennial newsreader, or Kylie Minogue. One man was so desperate to prove his connections he walked me round a bar and told me where all the celebrities usually sat, even though none of them was there. I have seen the imprint of B-list celebrities' rears.

The closest I got to celebrity (not counting pretending to be one by latching on to somebody prepared to pay entry to the VIP bar... in the darkness all VI bar-goers could easily pass as having a small role on a daytime soap, and they also have sufficient “complimentary” drinks and food to delude anyone into believing they’re important) was watching the paparazzi waiting for Gwyneth Paltrow. Sort of meta-celeb spotting.

And in respect to the great citizens of that great city, I’m going to tell you about it.

So, we were having lunch at a café across the road from her house, and there were about twenty cameramen (they were all men) lurking, eight on each side of the road with a few more amongst the traffic. While we tried to spin out small expensive salads, a limo arrived and all the photographers twitched. Some of them even stood up and took aim.
Oh, yeah, I know where she lives. Uh-huh.

Alas, it was only Gwyneth’s sister. She got out, crossed the road and went into the house. The photographers returned to the stoop, but with an added alertness. They even sat up straighter. We sat up straighter too, to be ready for whatever it was that was about to happen.

Passers by paused.

The traffic, intimidated by the cameras, slowed respectfully.

A cameraman edged out into the centre of the intersection, to get a prime view of Gwyneth’s front door. Then the door opened.

Gwyneth’s sister came out of the house again, and this time the paparazzi shot up, because she was carrying.. could it be? – baby Apple! At least I suppose it was baby Apple. It could have been a bag of fabric, but the photographers showed great interest in it, though they snapped and clicked with a slightly tragic air, since it wasn’t being held by Gwyneth.

The guy in the middle of the road ran right up to the pair to get his shot, and backed away again. Another person (perhaps a nanny, we deduced from our vantagepoint) came out. They crossed the road and got into the limousine. And then they drove away, with a few paparazzi trailing behind. And everyone went back to their normal lives, having almost seen Gwyneth Paltrow.

My other New York story involves fish in a bar, so I’ll save it for later.

Dr Cullen Kills An African Child

2005-05-20T07:44:00.000+12:45

I apologise sincerely to our readers for the fact that absolutely nothing has happened on this site for many weeks.

MediaCow is recovering from rectal examinations during an unfortunate-timed holiday to Waiheke Island.

David W Young and Ben Thomas have been busy writing their weekly column for the NBR. (This week's one is a good 'un. It's not online, so go spend $8.50 on a paper and then go to page 13).

Olivia Kember is on holiday in China with David P Farrar.

Speaking of which, while Farrar was engaged in nude snorkelling this morning, Olivia was staring at murky corners of the internet. She discovered a poll at some pinko blog called Aboutown. The poll asks "Who is the most annoying blogger?"

Unfortunately the Aboutown people mucked up the potential answers (just as they omitted the second T in their title). They forgot to put their own names under the question.

Seriously. The only thing worse than a blog that fails to update (like us) is one that updates far too often with absolute shite.

Since the Budget was read out in a monotone yesterday, we have been busy writing a letter to the child that DogBitingMen sponsors in Africa. We're trying to explain why we are not able to afford to sponsor his little brother until April 2008.

However, we are addicted to polls, and because we like using the word "Cresswell", we have taken time out to write a pundit's guide to the pointless Aboutown poll.

(To those of you who suspect this is self-indulgent and uninteresting: congratulations. You've finally worked out what blogs are about. Or at least ours.)

David Farrah

Reasons he is the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
The "cork counting" competition.
The quality of people who leave him comments.
His evil and dark moods in which he blogs as "Antarctic Lemur" (ostensibly Rodney Hide's illiterate little brother).
That photograph of the top of his head with devil's horns, and the unspoken but heavily implied meaning: he is a horny devil.
The inexplicable addictiveness of the site: we waste hours cramming our wee narrow minds with pointless stories about fictitious women named Miss Ten.

Reasons he is not the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
He is a better writer than Matt Nippert.
The "cork counting" competition was somehow compelling.
He is everybody's best friend.
Some people go to sleep with his blog loaded, just to feel like someone loves them.

Aaron Bhatnagar

Reasons he is the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
He keeps on picking on those poor Nigerians.
He won't quit banging on about the time the car drove into the house.
How is it that he was all ACT ACT ACT and then his friend Rodney became leader and now he's all National? Does he just like underdogs?
Those large vanity photographs are a bit much.

Reasons he is not the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
He sometimes changes his mind - he's less dogmatic than some.
He often changes his photograph. (This provides many of us with fresh material for the Spank Bank.)
Another reason? This anonymous comment, posted after Bhatnagar complained about boy racers: "I hardly think that Aaron is able to make a critical judgement... considering he was the most prolific "Boy Racer" at St Kentigern College in 1990's and was seen on numerous occasions speeding down Remuera road in his yellow Ferrari..." Weeee.

Peter Cresswell
Reasons he is the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
It's just his general... vibe.

Reasons he is not the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
We've never actually heard of him.

Ben Thomas
Reasons he is the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
He's such a perfect human being. That can be irksome for those of us who are not.

Reasons he is not the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
Nobody could vote for him. Could they?

Damian Christie:

Reasons he is the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
Have you met him? His chin is even weaker than Simon Pound's. And that's saying something.
He has been annointed by King Russell Brown.
Sometimes his 'blogs' are just copy-and-pastes from his newspaper column. We know this because they have "copyright" written at the bottom.
He is seemingly allergic to anybody with the same initials as him.

Reasons he is not the most annoying blogger in New Zealand:
He doesn't allow comments.
He is a self-described "media whore" which probably means has the clap, and we don't like to pick on sick people.
His opening gambit at school ("The name's Damian. But they call me 'Ice'. Because I'm cool. Like ice.") is so naff it is endearing.
He really, really wants to be the most annoying blogger in New Zealand. Or at least more annoying than David P Farrar.

There you go, folks. Go vote. Anything... to keep your minds off the little boy in Africa whom Dr Cullen has made to wait... and wait.

Anybody for Fish?

2005-05-13T06:28:00.000+12:45

Mr David Benson Pope

Mr Gormsby

From Radio New Zealand:
The Associate Education Minister, David Benson-Pope says allegations that he threw tennis balls at students when he was a teacher are ridiculous, and he refutes them. National's Judith Collins and ACT's Rodney Hide have used parliamentary privilige to make a series of claims about Mr Benson-Pope's behaviour when he taught at Dunedin's Bayfield High School. They included the claim that he tied a student's hands and jammed a tennis ball in his mouth as a punishment, and that he once smacked a pupil hard enough to make his nose bleed. Mr Benson Pope is describing the allegations as disgraceful.

From TVNZ’s webpage on 7 Periods With Mr Gormsby:
"Mr Gormsby is an out-dated, reactionary, racist, sexist teacher completely out of touch with educational theory in the second millennium. He defies the curriculum in every subject and is a disgrace to the profession.

From the Act party website:
David Benson-Pope is proving to be a disgrace as Associate Education Minister and should go back to trying to regulate fish.

Pictures by Hello

Foes of the World

2005-05-11T07:00:00.000+12:45

Ben Thomas writes…

Government departments have spent thousands since the early 1990s educating staff on proper terms of address for minorities. No longer was it acceptable to use traditional forms such as dwarves (“little people”), the disabled (“differently abled”) or even so obvious a fact as blindness (“vision impaired”).

This project has been derided by some as “political correctness” and defended by others as civility or politeness. Yet a new guide to youth language from the Ministry of Youth Development encourages us to refer to redheaded individuals as “gingas” or “moranges”. About bloody time, if you ask me. I hate those freaks.

A curious aesthetic fact is that, at the highest levels of their expression, it is impossible to tell the difference between beauty and virtue. Similarly, in their basest forms ginga-vitis and albinism become indistinguishable. Their washed out orangey-pink hues suggest equally gingas raised in an underground cave, or albinos left in the sun too long.

Still, I needn’t go on about my dislike of humanity’s carotein-enriched foes, or the despised sub-race of ging-binos. We now have an entire Ministry for that, apparently.

Although, ironically, before it took to codifying flame-haired unfortunates, the Ministry of Youth Development’s theme for Youth Awareness Week was ‘breaking down negative stereotypes’.

Ahem.

So Many of You, So Few of Us

2005-04-28T07:44:00.000+12:45

MediaCow writes to our dear readers…

We have had a posting hiatus at DogBitingMen. But we’ve not been idle. Nor have we done a Lindsay and stormed out of the “braindead” blogosphere.

We have actually been enjoying reading your own blog. No, really. We have.

Besides that, this is what we’ve been up to…

Olivia Kember has been involved in an all-consuming email discourse that started when she mentioned a celebrity’s name in passing during a former weblog posting. We’d link to it, but the emails are scary. Send more.

She has also been busy writing beautiful columns like this.

Ben Thomas has been falling down and getting up.

David W Young has been doing some odds and ends for this week’s New Zealand Listener (interview with Radio NZ political editor Kathryn Ryan and business column online, feature article on gay-parented families offline).

Mr Neil Falloon has been researching and writing a 22,000 word expose for Investigate Magazine on Russell Brown’s punk kid brother David Slack. Falloon, a widely-respected conservative blogger who recently found God, promises “nothing that you didn’t already know about Slack from his own columns and the revelations of the New Testament, but framed in a fresh, more offensive way.”

On Wednesday, Parenting Guru and Father To Everyone David W Young was a guest on Russell Brown’s Wednesday Wire radio show (95bFM), discussing gay-parented families.

Today Radio Personalities Ben Thomas and David W Young will appear with gay television icon, Simon Weak Chin Pound on bFM’s Thursday Wire, at around 12.15 (95FM for Auckland listeners, or live streaming on www.95bfm.co.nz).

(No, we don’t really expect you to listen. But it’s polite to tell you of these things.)

Tomorrow is a big day in the DogBitingMen calendar. Political columnist Ben Thomas and sidekick David W Young’s weekly column about politics will debut in the National Business Review.

On Saturday, television panelist David W Young will sit Eye to Eye with Willie Jackson (9 am TV One).

One day soon we will write something that is not crap. For you. Our dear readers. We would have done it today but we were obviously too busy blowing our own trumpets.

Trumpet.

Finally, an Explanation

2005-04-14T16:11:00.000+12:45

Olivia Kember realises...

So that's why our most senior policemen, working to protect the most important citizen in the country, with, presumably, the best technology available, have truncheons.

You’re Bored Because You’re Boring

2005-04-13T06:49:00.000+12:45

The writers of DogBitingMen take a long hard look at themselves…

Olivia: We seem to have gained the internerd equivalent of hate mail from last week’s flurry of postings where we attempted to emulate “ϋber-bloggers” by posting multiple times each day.

David: What’s “hate mail”?

Ben: It’s like fan mail but less accurate. Falloon, get ready to pen some angry correspondence to one Stephen Thomas Cooper.

David: What’s Stephen Thomas Cooper?

Neil: More importantly, what shall I skewer him on - his crappy journalism awards? The tabloid he works for?

Ben: Neither. This one is a Labour Party rube – a circus side-show frontbum of no consequence in the social democratic movement, let alone wider society.

David: Like Clayton Cosgrove?

Ben: Worse. I’m not sure Stephen Thomas Cooper is even an MP.

Olivia: We can hardly waste the fragile, unspoilt bandwidth of the internet on such a person.

Neil: If we were to go after nobodies, Cosgrove would start his telephone harassment campaign against us again.

David: I liked the time he called us to ask if our fridge was running.

Olivia: Anyway, who is everyone else criticising at the moment?

Neil: The Jewish community gets a lot of abuse.

David: When I was editor of a student rag, I wrote a story that exposed a Holocaust denier on campus.

Neil: Therefore your credentials for a volte face are impeccable. That's what you like doing, isn't it David?

David: That is the most amoral and unprincipled thing you have ever typed into a pretend-conversation. Using the poncy term “volte face” in italics does not make it any better.

Ben: Besides Neil, didn’t you learn from John Tamihere’s disgusting comments? Even Rodney Hide is apoplectic about them. On his vote-winning blog Rodney says Tamihere’s comments were “beyond the pale” and “a form of Holocaust denial”. Rodney says “he must resign now”. He’s even dredged up those “Maori Holocaust” comments Tariana Turia made in 2000.

Neil: At least he didn’t let it ruin his enjoyment of the Arms Fair the weekend before last. He was very chirpy holding a semi-automatic weapon in that photograph.

Ben: ACT exhibited at the Arms Fair in October last year, too – in fact, their table was opposite a prominent display of privately-owned Nazi memorabilia including flags, helmets and payslip books. I’ll bet that if that stand was there this year, or if Rodney was at the gun show in 2004, he would have given the stallholders a fiery piece of his mind.

Neil: Most certainly. A latter-day Simon Wiesenthal like Rodney would never stand for that sort of carry-on.

David: Although this is all very interesting in a mean-spirited and crude “guilt by association” sort of way, it doesn’t solve the problem of who we lash out toward.

Ben: What about the inscrutable Stephen Ching? What do we know about him?

Neil: Nothing that’s not potentially defamatory. The smart money says to wait for Keith Ng’s interview with him to be published. Or maybe the third part of Ian Wishart’s interview with Tamihere, if it exists – Ching is not popular with the Labour Party’s grass-roots organisation.

Ben: Or perhaps conservative blogger Aaron Bhatnagar will become the new Wishart and get the goods.

Neil: Is now a good time to mention the new weekly column about politics that debuts on Friday 29 April in the National Business Review?

Olivia: Do you mean the new weekly column about politics that debuts on Friday 29 April in the National Business Review with the double-banger byline of “David W Young and Ben Thomas”?

Neil: Why yes, that’s the exact new weekly column about politics that debuts on Friday 29 April in the National Business Review that I was talking about.

David: Ooh! That’s super. And rather handy, what with me leaving my day job and all that. So should I withdraw my application for an artist’s benefit then? Or do we do this one for free like blogging?

Olivia: Some people do blogging for free?

(Silence)

Ben: I liked writing book reviews. Maybe we don’t have to savage anyone.

Neil: We could review David Slack’s new book, and kill two birds with one stone.

Another one for the list

2005-04-06T07:59:00.000+12:45

Olivia Kember writes:

And another thing. Aja Rock should be banned. And if you know who she is, be very ashamed.

No More Gaps

2005-04-06T07:04:00.000+12:45

MediaCow writes:

Trawling around New Zealand blogs, we came upon this entry by Jordan Carter on his website 'Just Left':

I won't be commenting on the John Tamihere situation. Just in case you were wondering.
Like the Pope, Jordan Carter has delivered a cruel and distressing end to a period of intense concern and turmoil, during which we couldn't sleep through wondering What Would JC Say? At this difficult time, we wish to make clear seven ennumerated points:

1. We are bitterly disappointed that Jordan has chosen not to share with the world his views about John Tamihere. Because there's nothing more incisive than the analysis of a party hack.

2. We won't be blogging about it either. Just in case you were wondering.

3. Therefore we will not be referring to the rumour put about by some that says that Tamihere posed for 15 photographs after he took part in an interview that he wasn't sure was on the record. (We also won't acknowledge that we are confused by this story because the photographs in Investigate are credited to Fotopress.)

4. We will not be mentioning our visceral dislike of Investigate magazine which is revivalist crap apart from its book reviews.

5. We will not be saying "JT has been telling us these exact things off the record for years". Too many other people are doing that; it lacks originality.

6. We will not be passing judgment on the triumphant glee with which many in the right greet the downfall of someone who really is their ideological friend. And we'll refrain from pointing out that no party in parliament is likely to gain any votes from this debacle (other than, perhaps, the Maori Party).

7. But wasn't Muriel Newman hilarious on Eating Media Lunch?

I've Got Your Capill Right Here

2005-04-05T07:58:00.000+12:45

Mr Neil Falloon writes...

I think it is odd that many of the same people who complain about hate crime legislation (because a murderer being a bigot doesn’t make his crime any worse than that of a non-bigot murderer) seem to think that Graham Capill being a dickhead preacher makes his child abuse worse than garden variety child abuse.

“You do reap what you sow. Failure to take decisive steps while children are young and the consequences of their wrong doing are small, can lead to the ruin of that child's life. Children are too important to allow social engineers to "experiment" on the way children are brought up” – Reverend Graham Capill, leader of the Christian Heritage Party.

Reverend Capill's long-held (and oft-proclaimed) stance on moral issues makes his subsequent fall from grace not any worse, merely more bitterly funny.

He is a Presbyterian by conviction who attended an Anglican church because the Presbyterian Church had become too lax on moral issues. At the time he moved churches, a newspaper article shows that he rhetorically asked, “how is it possible for a Christian political party to uphold standards of morality in society, when the church stands by, and even promotes, false teachers and those who are sexually permissive?"

… the Christian politician must adopt the very highest ethical behaviour. The moment inconsistency is discovered, that will be the end of one’s impact. Actions speak louder than words. It is imperative that our message to the nations is backed up with a life that testifies to that. The politician’s life is under a microscope. Political opponents are looking for a mistake. Think what would happen if the Hon. Rev. Fred Nile was found engaged in some fraudulent practise, or caught in some immorality. His opponents would have a field day; the journalists would consider it a scoop! – Speech by Reverend Graham Capill.

Salty Liquorice

2005-04-05T07:33:00.000+12:45

The second in our series of literary-themed articles was written by David W Young during a brief stint in Copenhagen last year:

The people I'm staying with were kind enough to fill the bookshelves of my bedroom with their eclectic collection of books in English. I'm not a big fan of Danish television. After I get home on my bicycle in the evenings, whether its from work or a hygge Danish cafe, I like to read - accompanied, of course, by salty Danish liqourice.

I started by reading Christopher Isherwood's 'Tales from Berlin', which form the basis of the musical Cabaret. Wasn't everybody so polite in the 1920s? It's really quite lovely. It's just a pity they had to live through the 1930s next.

I then read 'The Great Gatsby' - F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel based upon the premise that the American dream had been corrupted by the desire for materialism. This was educational: I wasn't aware the American dream ever had any other components other than a desire for materialism.

Next up were the Harry Potter books and a collected volume of 'Lord of the Rings'. (Mr Neil Falloon, a self-proclaimed "book snob", insists that I include the following: "The only thing worse than adults reading fantasy novels written for children is the same people reading fantasy novels written for grown-ups. The term 'book' is technically incorrect for this medium - the fact that Harry Potter stories have many pages and professional binding does not mean they are 'books' any more than dressing a monkey in a tuxedo means it is a man.")

Now I'm running out of choices on the bookshelf. There's one intriguing little self-help book called 'If Life is a Game, These are the Rules', which I've steered clear of.

So I'm reading a complete compendium of Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherlock really is a most annoying bugger.

Every bloody time he meets somebody, he immediately says something like: "I note that you came from the East in a buggy, and that you spent a lot of time typing today, although it is hard on your eyesight."

There is a pause, and then the person says, "why yes, you're exactly right, but however did you know that?"

And Sherlock explains how the three symmetrical dots of mud on the subject's trouser legs, the pinched nose and shiny shirt cuffs tell the whole story. (And when there's absolutely no human way he could know something, Sherlock resorts to: "As you know, Watson, I just wrote a paper on the shape of hats/the ashes of differentcigars/the paw prints of mongooses/the callouses on workmens' hands".)

I wish, just once, the person being examined would tell him to piss off. Sherlock is just a show off. He's a coke-addicted, closeted homosexual with one little party trick.

If Sherlock met me today, I have no doubt that he would say: "You come to Denmark from the Southern Hemisphere and you're getting used to riding a bike, although you're not excellent at it yet. You live in a house with a young child and three cats. You have poor lighting in your bedroom, your office chair does not meet OSH standards, and you do not find me amusing."

Watson, the dumb bugger, would say (despite having spent the majority of his post-soldier life tagging along with Sherlock): "Ho!" (He always says 'Ho.') "Ho! Holmes, what is your reasoning?"

And Sherlock would say: "Elementary, my dear Watson. You see it all before you, yet you do not understand." (He's an arrogant tosser, too). "Look at the big pores on his skin and his frizzy hair - he's obviously adapting to a new climate. I deduce that he therefore comes from the Southern Hemisphere. The wear on his jeans shows that he has started riding a bike recently, and the three mud splatters on his shoes shows that he hurtles through puddles - not something an established rider would do. His eyes show signs of tiredness - there must be a child where he dwells that wakes him each day at 5.30am (I have recently conducted a study on the bags under mens' eyes). And there are clearly three different types of cat-hair on his Robyn Matheson jersey."

"His eyes are reddened, so clearly he reads each night in poor light, and theway he stretches his neck shows that he spends a lot of time sitting in an uncomfortable seat."

And Watson will say: But how do you know he doesn't find you amusing?

"Coz he just punched me in the mouth."

Ho.

Please Ban the Following

2005-04-04T07:55:00.000+12:45

The 27 true authors of DogBitingMen write:

Hello Fu*kface.

We know that our elaborate pseudonyms of "Olivia Kember", "David W Young", "Neil Falloon" and "Ben Thomas" fool nobody. It is no secret that we are in truth a cabal of 27 socially and economically liberal homosexual men striving to create a more morally permissible environment for sin. That is our agenda.

Sometimes, though, we forget our principles and advocate the use of the state's monopoly to stop people from doing things we disapprove of. (We call these our Muriel Phases. Named after nobody in particular). This urge to ban certain activities comes to us particularly during election years, when our influence in national affairs peaks (we are after all "opinion leaders" and an organised block of swinging voters in the highest income bracket.)

Here is a suggested platform for politicians desperate for votes.

We will vote for you if you ban the following:

- use of the term 'MSM' to mean 'mainstream media'.

- digs at Australia.

- young people at bowling clubs. (Includes people who are young at heart. Which, incidentally, is how we delicately refer to Russell Brown.)

- references to women loving shoes. Especially by women who proclaim to love shoes.

- monosyllabic Auckland restaurants - Red, Live, White, Rice, Fish (although it must be acknowledged that this is a slight improvement on single Italian word Auckland restaurants - Rocco, Bella, Andiamo, Prego, Aquamatta, Estasi, etc.

- anyone in the media using the word 'bling'.

- "irony" - not actual irony but 99% of the things that people think are "ironic". Summed up in the painfully try-hard little brother ad on bfm for the painfully ironically named kidswear line called "little shit". In the ad, the kid says to his father, "dad, can't you be more ironic?". There are also little shit posters which should be banned. Not because showing a young kid smoking is immoral, but because they're so self-consciously smartarse they make us spew.

- references to the Pope's urinary tract. These produce a difficult mental image.

- the entire town of Wanganui, including mayor Michael Laws. We've had enough of all of you. Just piss off and get out of our newspapers.

- moral panic about a child stealing a bottle of Coke from a dairy. What do the politicians expect - that the Armed Offenders' Squad will beat the kid to a pulp?

- the word "shrill" to describe the quality of debate against the position you hold yourself. It's so last week.

- bloggers thinking they are media. The gossipy old woman in our staff lunch room doesn't consider herself media, even though she reaches as many people as half the bloggers in New Zealand and also addresses interesting subjects ranging from what the government is doing wrong to what she plans on having for dinner (she is almost as prolific as New Zealand's uber-bloggers).

- slutty outfits on children. One primary school-aged girl was seen with a teeshirt that said, "I've lost my keys. Can I borrow yours?" That child's parent has failed as a human being. When we were growing up, "inappropriate childrens' clothes" meant that they had been made out of curtains by Julie Andrews. Now it means your daughter dresses like a streetwalker.

Please note that we have not finished banning things yet. We will be back later with more things to ban. Banning things is fun.

Fresh Tendrils

2005-04-04T07:31:00.000+12:45

Ben Thomas writes the first part of a supposed DBM series (soon to be forgotten) of literary reviews...

I have been reading books from the Library. This is a magnificent building in the middle of Auckland that gives you books which you do not pay for, so long as you undertake to return them once their purpose is used and spent. Freed from the confines of ownership and its attendant responsibilities, I brought home a stack of texts on Saturday and spent much of the weekend juggling them and hurling them into walls to see what sound they would make. It was a true tragedy of the commons type situation.

Thomas Pynchon is a great and mysterious writer. He has won various prizes for his mammoth, impenetrable post-modern novels such as Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49. He has never, over the course of a 40 year publishing career, given an interview or been photographed. An article in Time in 1978 says one self-proclaimed college colleague of Pynchon's, 20 years previous, recalls that he was a lean man who ate spaghetti and soda pop for breakfast, and may have majored in physics or literature.

Anyhoo, I picked up a short story collection, Slow Learner, from 1984 (the stories were written much earlier) which has the only introduction ever written by Pynchon for his work. In it, he reflects:

"I will spare everybody a detailed discussion of all the overwriting that occurs in these stories, except to mention how distressed I am at the number of tendrils that keep showing up. I still don't know for sure what a tendril is. I think I took the word from T S Eliot.... My specific piece of wrong procedure back then was, incredibly, to browse through the thesaurus and note words that sounded cool, hip, or likely to produce an effect, usually that of making me look good, without then taking the trouble to go and find out in the dictionary what they meant."

How can we parody this?

2005-03-31T07:24:00.000+12:45

Mr Neil Falloon simply retypes something a reader emailed us...

At Kiwiblog, David P Farrar has published his 10 "lessons of life". Lesson number eight is:

Be careful of how you label names in your cellphone: Twice I have rung what I thought was a friend inviting her out, and only after I finished the invite had I realized I had phoned my ex girlfriend of the same first name who now thought I wanted to get back together with her

Let's see if we have got this straight.

David P Farrar (see image) has so many female friends and exes that many of them share the same small pool of names.

Owing to the popularity of certain names, on at least two occasions he goes to call a friend and accidentally calls an ex.

Somehow he doesn't recognize the ex's voice.

Even during the requisite chitchat (asking after her health, etc) he still doesn't recognize her voice.

He asks her out. She presumably accepts.

Then the penny drops!

So he has to cancel.

Is she worried?

No, of course not. She wants to get back together with the man who works 130-hour weeks and has five hours free for his girlfriend.

Now we understand.

Do Not Feed

2005-03-30T18:26:00.000+12:45

Olivia Kember proclaims...

I lose pieces of paper, so this seems the safest option: I hereby declare that should I be reduced to a persistent vegetative state I want my feeding tube taken out. Swelpmegod.

Good God

2005-03-21T06:27:00.000+12:45

Olivia Kember crosses herself and then writes...

Brace yourselves – I’ve decided to get chummy with God. If you’re intentionally reading this – rather than coming to the page by mistake looking for dogs or men or Jim Hopkins - there’s a good chance you’re an urban agnostic who finds serious mention of a deity in rather bad taste. But after watching yet another sideshow from our local greasy televangelist I’m finding the Destiny brand of Christianity worse than tasteless; I think it’s disturbing. A Powerpoint presentation that draws a line from God to Brian Tamaki via Jesus is funny. But 7000 people believing it – that’s dangerous. So I’ve decided not to let God get claimed by the fringes. It’s bad enough that family values, most of which we can all agree on, has become a rallying cry for the bigoted and the fearful. They’re not getting God too.

Even if I don’t believe in him terribly much, I don’t want him on their side. I want him somewhere in the middle, reclining divinely in the middle of the road or hovering above the fence. I want him neutralized.

Some time when I was in school I realized that among my friends the only people who could be safely mocked were fat people and Christians. We weren’t racist, we weren’t really sexist, we were vaguely into Buddhists and Ba’hais and anything exotic, but we found the idea of believing in God - particularly one who required acts of obedience we saw as nothing more than inconvenient - ridiculous. We lumped all shades of Christianity together, demonstrating the same simplistic view that we accused them of. It was of course the 1990s, when ironic self-consciousness was the desired pose, and Christians, with their unfashionable sincerity and humourless principles, seemed as dated as telephones with dials and similarly doomed to the rubbishpile.

Well, we got that one wrong. The Destiny gang are still a small minority, and some of them look as if it’s as much as they can do to walk and chant at the same time. But you have only to look at the United States to see how a fringe movement can take over the mainstream. The religious Right is setting the agenda - from persuading Bush voters that the entire US election was about gay marriage to curricula supporting “intelligent design” instead of evolution. Anyone who disagrees is stigmatized as the “liberal elite”.

If Hillary Clinton now finds it necessary to tell everyone at every opportunity how she is “a praying person” - and the Clintons’ ability to sniff the winds of political change is positively rodentlike – we can safely assume God isn’t getting out of politics any time soon.

Democrats have realized too late that to have any chance of winning in the future they need to close what’s been catchily termed the “God gap”. They need to get onside with Jesus. After all, they’re supposed to be about poor people and so was he. But Jesus was an eloquent iconoclast with humble transport, doubtful company and a message of love – not really ministerial material. Especially when political Christianity equates to little more than simplistic rants about how we’re all going to hell in a handcart.

By the way, a Google search of “Destiny Church” and “poverty” (which I admit has all the scientific value of the Stuff poll) produces a cassette tape called “Poverty a satanic viper” (lack of punctuation theirs), available at www.destinychurch.org.nz for $NZ7 alongside similar items with titles like “Exposing the spirit of whoredom” and “Identifying demons”. The only times “Brian Tamaki” appears anywhere near “poor” are in descriptions of people getting rich through “the Tithe principle”.

If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. And if people are so ready to believe they’ll turn to Brian, or Kabbalah, or Scientology, I say, bugger the Enlightenment. Reason is so last century. If you really want to make your point, if you are that keen to win followers and influence people, either get God or start your own religion.