LOCAL NEWS
A New Zealand man died in Thailand while visiting to commemorate the death of a friend four years ago. I can see a nasty cycle starting there. Then it turned out he wasn't a New Zealander but Brazilian and had lived here for some time. Same thing.
Then an New Zealand woman in US was murdered by her boyfriend. And another was shot dead in Vanuatu.
A man died when his ride on mower became a ride under mower.
Meanwhile the carnage with the road toll just went up and up. Despite this, we had the lowest total in 50 years for the year.
Rain, yet more of it, was forecast for Nelson, hitting Thursday, how did we get there when it wasn't raining? It used to be it always rained where we went on holiday.
The attack on a 5yo girl by a 16yo male in Turangi got masses of coverage. Sounds pretty nasty, at least they caught the bugger but nobody in court is identified to protect the victim, etc.
I really take offence at yearly statistics that come out before the end of the year, they inherently lack credibility even more than regular statistics. There was a record number of prescriptions, but a record low number of suicides during the RWC (WTF?).
The rain came down pretty hard over new year, and caused mayhem with celebrations and music festivals. Slips blocked the exit for 29,000 at one event.
That container ship was still leaking oil and breaking up more, can't believe how long that has taken, must be nearly two months and every time the weather gets a bit crappy we hear about it.
TelstraClear got some bad coverage after a customer reckoned their credit card got used fraudulently after giving their details to a call centre person in the Philippines. You would think that is a bit of a nightmare scenario for companies using call centres like that.
With all the fools dying on the roads, you can't help but wonder how come the percentage of retards out there seems to be increasing. We had photos this morning of a couple that thought that flooding was holographic and wouldn't affect them.
WORLD NEWS
Sinead O'Connor's fourth marriage lasted 16 days, is that longer or shorter than that Kardashyan nutjob?
Meanwhile, Russell Brand and Katy Perry lasted less than two years. TBH, the kind of people they seem to be, it is a little amazing they lasted that long.
Some of the best news out there at this time of year is the pisstake stuff. Like the American Gay war hero being awarded a posthumous dishonourable discharge, and MIT Mad Scientists telling us that corpse reanimation technology is still ten years off.
Keeping with that theme, Helena Bonham-Carter was awarded the CBE for her contribution to women getting cast in their partner's films. There were many other New Year's honours here and in the UK, all utterly meaningless.
Louis CK's little experiment continued to confound pundits and the take hit $1m in 12 days.
The meme proposal by "Tim" to "Audrey" got the attention of the internet, it wasn't bad, and she said yes which helps.
A survey off the coast of Scotland found a few things that were interesting including giant mussels with shells over 18 inches wide and a star fish with 10 feathery arms. Best find was an "Amphixious" (which does sound like the name of a medical condition, rather than a creature), a faceless, brainless fish with a very basic spine, certainly an interesting species. No sign of Nessie, though.
Some winner in the US tried to buy $500 worth of stuff with a $1 million note, which he insisted was real. I didn’t know the largest note in the US was $100.
Two Australians made it to the South Pole and ran around the world a couple of times to celebrate. Turns out there is a pole there now, who knew.
SPORT
Man Utd lost 2-3 to Blackburn, Blackburn! At home. Good grief. Arsenal beat QPR 1-0. Chelsea lost to Villa 1-3, silver lining there. Liverpool scored four goals to beat Newcastle 3-1.
Australia beat India in the Boxing Day test, what is going on with their wickets in Australia? The tests don't seem to last very long, very low scoring.
MY SAD LIFE
It really hasn't been a very productive week, I suppose we are on holiday, but even so were haven't achieved very much.
I may have mentioned reddit.com now and again, Rory spends a lot of time on it looking at meaningless crap. Anyway, he started a subreddit this week for a game called League of Legends, aka LOL. He got about 500 subscribers within a day and recruited others to help moderate it from Spain and the US. He was pretty pleased with himself.
We went to Devonport on Tuesday with Joe and Rose, and then popped in on the Goodins on the way home.
On Friday, Joe went home. We had dinner at his parents house with the family on Wednesday night. Rose made gumbo, a little spicy but not at all bad.
On New Year's Eve, we all went to see Tin Tin with the Goodins, we had dinner first then occupied much of gold class in Albany. We were among the last to leave the theatre, I think 7pm was about the last showing so people to go off to parties. Some restaurants were closed but others were reasonably busy. Hannah and Rory went off to things afterwards, and the old people just went home. The movie itself was very good, worth seeing.
Diana and I spent a fair amount of downtime watching "The Wire", which has proved to be a good show.
Rory isn't happy with me using his computer to play Skyrim, so he installed a batman game on mine, which I didn't want. So I haven't played it.
On New Year's Day, the Christmas tree got "retired", which was a little bit sad in a way. I am really not sure why, perhaps it was the way I unceremoniously dismembered it to fit it into the garden bin. I did do some other judicious pruning, also. And the lawn needs mowing again, I only did it on Christmas Eve Eve.
I had to fart about on the phone for ages with Vodafone to get things set up so I could check my balance on my mobile wifi thing. I had 1984Mb left out of 2048Mb, which means I used bugger all. I used it to post a photo on facebook from the theatre while we watched Tin Tin.
Apparently I don't tell anybody anything, so I am telling you all that we are going to somewhere near Whangarei Heads for five days, we leave tomorrow and return on Sunday. The dog is going with us and the kids are coming up after and leaving before we do.
I haven't come up with any resolutions for the New Year, I did consider inventing a new obscene word each day but that just seemed like too much bother.
Happy New Year, etc.
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