Serenity Now

Ahh. That's just what I was in need of: my friend L.H. surprised me with a visit while he's on holiday from Uni in Otago, and came for dinner.

Good company, good food: these are what life is all about!

The Muppet Show

I have been feeling a bit weary of late. A lot of things have sapped my strength. I feel disappointed with the modern world and the people who populate it.

Just today I read an article in The Press about how Kiwi schoolkids are failing to acquire a second language, and what repercussions this might have for them and this country. Second language? Kiwis seem to have enough trouble mastering their first language, let alone a second.

While I was in town, I managed to avoid a young man wandering around asking people if they "had any spare change, bro"—he was dressed in what I can only assume (given his supposed lack of money) were designer knock-off jeans, trainers and hoodie that I would struggle to afford.

All last week seemed riddled with amateurs, idiots, people with no clue whatsoever; fools wallowing in their consumer culture.

How much money has been squandered on pointless bullshit films like "Spiderman III" and "Pirates of The Caribbean III"? Could that extensive resourse not have been put to better use?

What is to be done about it all?

The Answer is Blowin' in The Wind

Grrrrrrrrrrrr! If I hear one more person tell me that wind farms are a bad idea because they "are a blot on the landscape", I. Am. Going. To. Freak. Out.

I mean, people go on holiday to Holland especially to see windmills. Nobody makes pilgrimages half-way around the globe to see ugly, ugly coal-fired power stations.

Here are your choices, people:

• Clean, majestic wind farms
• Dirty great coal-fired plant

Both put out electrical power, which is what you all want so that you can continue wasting your time playing Playstation.

Oh, but wait! What's that? We could have nuclear power?

Er, no. For the following reasons:

• We have no raw nuclear materials
• We have no capability to process the nuclear materials that we have none of
• Nor transport or store them
• It would take 5 - 10 years to commision the appropriate sites, by which time half the country will be underwater because of global warming because the likes of the USA and China continue to generate their power by using dirty great coal-fired plants
• We have no money to build any of this with (except the $7bn surplus sitting in the government's coffers)
• It's rather un-PC
• New Zealand is one big earthquake/volcanic eruption waiting to happen
• Are you going to be happy about your new next-door neighbour - a nuclear power plant?

People are dying on hospital waiting lists - do you think the government is going to spend it on such frivolous things as power stations? Of course not. They're giving us Digital TV instead.

History Repeats Itself?

Ponder the following:

• 1962
• Castro had recently declared Cuba a Socialist State
• The USSR deploys nuclear weapons in Cuba
• Right next door to the USA
• Who aren't impressed
• The tension mounts
• Diplomacy prevails
• The Soviets thankfully withdraw

Now ponder this:

• 2007
• Eastern Europe is recently democratised
• The USA wishes to deploy a 'missile defence system' (a first-strike weapon) in Europe
• Right next door to Russia
• Who aren't impressed
• Tension mounts...