Double standards, weather wise, and Hannah is going to shave her head for cancer.

LOCAL NEWS

Local man Bret McKenzie won an Oscar, so there was no escaping that news. I still disagree with awards in sport and show business. Until we have dentists, teachers, and panel beaters on the red carpet then I think we should boycott such things. Someone edited his Wikipedia entry and every time his name was mentioned it said "Bret Oscar Winning McKenzie", but they fixed it.

That tosser Kim Dotcom wanted to have $220,000 released per month for living expenses. That would pay for a charter plane out of the country, pretty easily, I suspect.

February 29th upset EFTPOS machines in New Zealand and Australia, pathetic.

There was a fuss because five kids were locked in a van while their parents were gambling. If they were in a queue at the bank, nobody would care. Good thing they weren't filming porn or something. What if they locked their kids in the van while they were delivering food parcels to the poor or doling out soup in a soup kitchen? Bet nobody would care then.

There seems to be increasing amounts of industrial action. The Auckland port is still largely shut and the Australians are threatening to mistreat any vessel that does business in Auckland with scabs. Affco locked out meatworker and had people standing around doing very little (so, a normal day, with slightly less risk of personal injury).

It was announced that Christchurch Cathedral is officially knackered.

Nasty weather that drenched NSW came to the North Island for a change of scenery, pretty windy and wet on Saturday. Apparently "weather bomb" is an actual measurable phrase in weatherology (meteorology is the study of meteors, how could it be anything to do with weather?).

Some crazy woman that secretly was pregnant, gave birth on her own, and then smothered the baby and kept it in a wardrobe until it was discovered 40 days later turned out to have done pretty much the same thing a couple of years before. These kind of people need to be sterilised. She also should become a midwife, sounds like she knows what she is doing in the delivery department, as long as she can not smother them afterward.

A skydiver that was part of the half time entertainment at Eden Park injured his leg in one of a number of rough landings due to swirling winds.

Some wine swilling snobs are whinging about an ad for beer that suggests in the 80's men had to drink wine because the beer wasn't very sophisticated until DB Export Dry was invented. Pathetic.

The Raspberry Pi computer made the news here. It's been around a while, it kind of surprised me in that a computer that small has been around for a long time, just not as connectable or cheap, I suppose.

The Auckland Mayor is doing an incredibly good job of getting himself voted out very bloody fast. Every view he takes seems to be the opposite of common sense. I just hope we find a clear candidate to take over that is not certifiably insane.

An 8 year old boy was driving around Wellington in an SUV this morning, wearing pyjamas. He hit a few cars and walls, which isn't really atypical of the average incompetent SUV driver if you ask me. Not sure if the clothing makes a lot of difference, but adds some colour to the whole thing. (Blue, in case you are wondering).

WORLD NEWS

There was a fire on a sister ship of the dreaded Costa Concordia, not a promising trend. Sounded pretty grim for a couple of days without power or water. Very Lord of the Flies.

There was a low volume shooting at a school in Cleveland. Isn't it oddly inconsistent that America seems to be the home of the bully and yet it is also a place where handguns are reasonably accessible. It got me thinking though, in places like Sierra Leone, do they have random shootings at schools and stuff (if they actually have schools) given that it feels like kids are born with AK-47s or RPGs in their hand…

Auto-correct on an iPhone caused an emergency at an American school when "gunna" was changed to "gunman" in a text from a student there.

Monkee Davy Jones has died, I think that means they need to lose one more before they are in the same position as the Beatles. On the good side, it was better having their music on the radio that Whitney's. I think it was coincidence that the episode of Modern Family this week that screened in the US included the lines:
Man A - Hey
Man B - Hey
Man A&B together - We're the monkeys.
(they were dressing up as Wizard of Oz flying monkeys). It made me laugh, anyway. So did the speculation as to whether he would be buried in his own locker.

Gavin noted that the New Zealand press was all about weather bombs and "it was like a war zone, trees were snapping like twigs" {news flash, trees ARE big twigs}. Meanwhile, 30 odd people died in the US from twisters and stuff and nobody really cared here.

Nice bit from NewsThump - a dress wearing 73 year old unmarried celibate man spoke out against gay marriage. Just because the Cardinal has no clue what he's talking about doesn't stop him. Plenty of people on that particular train, friend.

Legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie died over the weekend, at 82. To be fair, I kind of thought he was dead already so I won't pretend I am particularly sad. He designed a lot of the Star Wars characters, weapons, and people (like Vader) and a ton of other stuff.

REAL SPORT

My junior boys lost 4-7 to St Peters B on Friday night. Hannah's volleyball team lost both games this week, but one very narrowly.

SPORT

Jamaica beat the All Whites 3-2 on Wednesday night. I did consider going, but didn't. Only 15,000 actually did.

The Black Caps kept losing to the South Africans, no real surprises to any sane intelligent people. This, of course, means the media didn't expect it at all.

Fulham smacked Wolves 5-0, Man Utd managed a 3-1 away win over Spurs, Sunderland had a draw against Newcastle, Liverpool lost 1-2 to Arsenal, Man City beat Bolton 2-0, Chelsea lost 0-1 to West Bromich Albion, so Roman Abramovich bought them with the change he had in his car's ashtray.

The Warriors lost their first game of the season, the Blues lost their second. In fact, there were three games at Eden Park in three days and the home team lost each time. The Highlanders beat the Crusaders, I think.

MY SAD LIFE

I didn't get billed for any excess consumption from my ISP, I was pretty surprised, but what the heck. I got another four days free this week. While my IP phone continues to occasionally cut out mid conversation, I will take everything I can get. I also discovered my call waiting functionality has been disabled. I am not happy.

So, a few days back we gave Diana heaps for clicking on something on Facebook from Jackie, who had clearly been somewhere dodgy. Rory did especially. So then on Wednesday, we all got emails from "Rory". Turns out that a while back he changed his hotmail password because of the same problem, but he decided to change it back to the old password and BANG, all the spam started flying again. Who's the noob now?

Tuesday night I went to a manspace meeting, it was pretty scary, but I met a couple of guys who were fiddling with their own version of a reprap 3d printer, was vaguely useful and relatively interesting.

Friday was a pretty big day for me, went to Hamilton, tooted meaningless fake support to the locked out workers at Horotiu, meeting at 9am, back home by about 2:30pm, then went to polo, home by about 5pm, saw a P-lab bust going down on Meola Road on the way home.

Hannah did a lot of cooking this week. A birthday cake for someone, some cookies, éclairs, and two lots of bread. Not sure whether it was stress baking or procrastibaking. Either way, there was plenty of mess.

As I noted on Facebook on Saturday, I really have to stop putting my dirty laundry in the rubbish bin. A) it makes the rubbish bin smell bad, B) it creates concern and worry for anyone who observes the behaviour, and often that includes me, and C) I am running out of socks....

I redeemed myself later in the day by fixing Hannah's computer. With a vacuum cleaner…FTW!

Then a bit later still, I forgot where I left my gherkin. I think on balance I didn't win on Saturday.

Diana and I went out on Saturday, because despite not being home much on Friday, I just needed to get out for a while. We went to Bluebird Café for some serenity, and that boosted my levels considerably. Then we went in to the city, and fought with a parking meter. This time, my tool of choice was a pocket knife, and I won, sort of. We managed to force enough change into it to get just over an hour parking, but more would have been nice. We walked past the new art gallery, and would have gone in if the parking meter hadn't been so uncooperative. We went to a shoe store, Pat Menzies, my favourite shoe store for some considerable time (I seriously wonder if I own any shoes that didn't come from there now, I think one dead pair of crocs and my dog walking shoes would be all). Diana ended up assisting an Indian guy who needed shoes to match his suit for a wedding (turned out it was his wedding, later on). I got some new plastic shoes for poolside. On the way back, I got some new jeans, two pairs, and nearly bought a suit but we ran out of time (so, council, your fascist parking machinery prevented me from visiting the $120m art gallery upgrade and one of your retailers missed out on selling a suit, how's that working out for you?).

The whole parking experience helped inspire me, alongside Diana's $100 battle with the insurance company, and I think I have resolved to start fighting back. I intend to start shit stirring very soon (after I hit send on this).

Rory's first week at Uni was decorated with contrasting visits to Sciences and Arts faculties to change things. Science is particularly fast and efficient, and Arts requires all forms to have a photo of a rainbow attached. He has stolen Diana's ebook reader, she seems remarkably okay with it so far.

My friend Matt, plus Kristy and Michaela were supposed to be doing a run thing for cancer on Saturday night but it was cancelled due to the weather, which actually wasn't that bad, and by Sunday we had a very crisp clear day (with a good bit of wind, but who's complaining).

On Sunday, Diana and I went to Devonport, visited the craft market (which was mostly pretty gay and feeble) and had lunch in the sun by the water.

Hannah is shaving her head on March 27th. She is selling her hair and donating the proceeds to Shave for a Cure, a cancer charity. She is selling the hair, which is pretty damn long, and donating that also. I don't think hair is worth very much, you can't really make a living growing it. If you wish to donate you can here (you can leave a message and your name, even a $1 gets you that (maybe even less), would be awesome if some of you could) http://www.shaveforacure.co.nz/view_event_profile/5792
It would be really cool if you could leave messages, especially where in the world you are from, that would be neat.

I am hoping to score some matching beanies from Lothlorian, once I know how many at her school are doing it, so far I think about ten.

Oh well, I can't think of who I haven't managed to offend, so I will stop anyway with the thought that if I haven't offended you by now, it's probably because you're not very important.