Avaunt

Oh, I am sick of this. More heavy rain on the way around Monday, 30 to 60 mm of rain an hour expected Monday night.

We had some medium rain day before yesterday, and the streets were instantly aflood, standing water everywhere, because the whole city is waterlogged.

I guess?

Are you really enjoying them, because 20 + sounds like an effort, is it "So bad it is good" territory ?.

I just read Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass. VERY interesting autobiographical work of literature, some evocative passages in there. I like how many things he says are probably suspect memories, arising from how often he has told the story and his own reflex "polishing" of stories, to make them more entertaining.

Really enjoyed that book, 10/10 would recommend.

In the course of surviving the end of WW2, he encounters a lance corporal who basically saves him and reeducates him in "surviving"  then gets horribly wounded/dies. And is SUCH a telling, alien-way-of-life off hand, he explains he never knew the guys name, probably was never told it even though they spent very intense hours scrabbling about together, because low rank Germans DID NOT ask non-coms personal questions.

Simply impossible in my part of the world, aside from the fact that British military custom is to address them as *rank* *Family name* , any soldier would have asked or been told, their comrades name. Officers were expected to know all the names, and men had to know the name and rank of a superior for their own record, you had to know it.

If you had answered "I don't know WHICH Sargent took command of us, Sir" you would have been bollocked about violently.

Average wind at the moment is only 40 knots, but it is really really gusty, and they are packing a whallop . . . wind is always hard to guess accurately but I think it is  probably hitting 85 KMH, from my limited experience riding motorbikes.

That is one good thing, with all this wind, the fly plague Auckland has suffered under for months, has abated.

Flood, flies, wind, . . . hmm. We are on an active volcanic field . . . ? fire?.

OH, I missed a funny thing when we had the flood 2 weeks ago. Our long time "Crazy Socialist Spendthrift" mayors of a decades standing, Len Brown and Phil Goff were replaced by this "Scumbag RIght-wing Ideologue" rich person tax break promising mayor Wayne Brown ( no relation ). Wayne campaigned on his standing as

"I am a successful businessman, I know how to run things, I am so smart and with-it that the previous mayors are going to look so SILLY, BUSINESS ! ! ! WE WORK 160 hour weeks us BUSINESSMEN ! ! ! WE KNOW EVERYTHING !   SO WISE ! ! ! !" and such like sh1t.

Huge floods happened, totally demolished the city, BUT NOT WHERE THE RICH LIVE.

The press ask the mayor for the plans, the response, his grasp on things, where he was during the 7 hours of the rain, and the 4 hours of flood . . .

Answers

No plan.

They are formulating a response, but as we said previously, we encourage our community to look after itself and be resiliant

Mayor : "I am not sure about . . . well, anything that has happened, or who is in charge, or why not ONE official communication, even a warning, has come from the mayors office or council staff.

Well, yes, I WAS asleep most of the day, actually, I had been to a party the night before, and I had a golf game planned for tomorrow. It's the weekend, after all".

Reporters " . . . why didn't the council staff wake you up . . . they do have your private number, right?".

Mayor : " . . . next question"

Tropical cyclone at the moment. Was out in it a couple of hours ago before it really got going, and it was interesting . . .

At one point it was raining sideways so hard that it felt like being drummed on from the legs upward.

I watched a bath-tubs worth of water run UP the side of a building, get to the over-hang and drop ALL IN ONE LUMP "splash" back down to the carpark.

120 000 thousand without power already, and the wind is picking up. Disastrously more to the point, they have canceled the rubbish and recycling collection this week, and told us "Oh, never mind, we will pick up your rubbish and recycling the next time we are supposed to, in a weeks time"

Our household, which already had full bins two days ago :

We got 250 mm of rain in 16 hours yesterday.

Auckland's storm water system gives up at 100 mm. Turns out the "rivers" in Auckland give up and run backwards at 200 mm.

People drowned in the city. 48 volcanic cones, one of the hilliest cities in the world, and the unprecedented volume of water flooding down off the high ground all over the city RUINED vast areas. Some of the TV footage is just unbelievable, places I know for a fact have never even seen water running 50 mms deep on the street, had water 2 METERS deep flowing through between the houses.

Hillsides fell off, roads washed away, the ferries stopped running, half the buses were canceled, and Uber just said "No vehicles available" all day long, was STILL saying it at 945.

Yeah, I have thought about that mate.

I have got my head around a few of the problems, as the year has gone on, and I am slowly working my way to a new balance. I guess it was hard last year, and not so bad this new year, to be honest. I have a few things going on, and , because I had one accident after another last year,  I finally had to admit I am 57 ( Today, actually ) and ought not have a job where I climb around with soap, on a slippery uneven surface.

So I am looking for a new job, working part time for a cleaning firm.

I have not really enjoyed it. First year of being an orphan. Which came with a huge disruption in my mental stability, because I had always had my parents emotional support, and importantly, I had the constant value of being useful to people I cared about. And I REALLY feel the lack of having X hours in the week where I do things that have  real utility to someone I care about.

I kinda feel like a ghost, wandering around unable to connect to the mundane world.

Merry Christmas, O my Electric friends.

Boney M "Mary's Boy Child". Always loved their harmonies.

I love classical music. I DO love violins, honest.

It is just that I always think to myself "This is awful squeaky and nerve-stabbing . . . am I wrongheaded?".

Our PM just got caught being normally exasperated with the MOST arrogant prick in our Parliament, and calling him that.

The guy was fairly restrained in his response, but proved that he doesn't recognise an opportunity when one passes by.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/such-an-arrogant-prick-pm-lashes-out-at-act-leader-david-seymour/X46N3OBWCFEYZKHBIW2TF7B52Y/

lol. He may have done the best thing that was in his power, by buying twitter.

Enough of them quit, thing may not run anymore, and musk has increased the joy in the world, not meaning to.

Sometimes when I read a book like that, I think Humans may have some few, transient, quibbling virtues.

Then I look at the days news.

But Kayne is mentally ill, he has an excuse that kind of default denies us the right to judge him.

Musk is just evil.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/return-of-the-anzac-xv-ra-pitch-for-wallabies-all-blacks-team-to-play-lions-20221102-p5buw9.html

Commentary team : "Well, this is one for the history books, a fight has broken out on the field . . . well, two fights actually. The Irish guys seem to have the upper hand over their British teammates so far, but the All Blacks and Wallabies . . . well they are making a red slaughter of each other . . .

OMG now the two Argentinean Linesmen are kicking ten shades of crap out of the French Ref".

The bloke has kept such a low profile so far, that he hasn't even turned up to any Council meetings . . .

This isn't just because he doesn't have a majority of the Councilors on his side, for as well as there being a narrow majority of "left" leaning members of the chamber, half the "right" leaning ones have hated the new Mayor for a decade or more.

Divisive  and conquer ?

Ella Fitzgerald.

Billie Holiday, for that matter.

(Also, Rum. And the Beautiful, deep, important English Language, bless it.)

The swelling has gone down, and I am mostly comfortable now. Solid aches in my shoulder and hip, but no heat to it.

Pretty sure the teeth are going to be OK, they are solid and stopped bleeding almost straight away. My ribs throb, of course, but that has been normal for half my life because it was always one of the accidents I would have, busting my ribs.

Man, that one was close, a very few inches to the left and I would have smashed my skull in on a stanchion, a foot to the right and I would have hit my head on the cap-rail and going over the side where I was, the guy with me was on the roof, I would have been gone before he could even have got through the hatch.

Just seconds before I fell I said to him "I am being dumb, I should leave this to you" because he had a harness on.

Only 4 mtrs, but it was close to enough.

Hey Selkie, I well in that I am still breathing.

Fell off another boat yesterday, can't understand how I got away so lightly. 7 stitches in my mouth, torn the skin on my chin a bit, five stitches under my chin and my shoulder and hip are really rough, torn some ligaments I guess. Seem to have popped the ligaments in my ribs in a place that I have done it twice before, got an xray, no broken bones.

Might have killed two of my teeth, got a dentist appointment later in the week to see, the hospital said they don't THINK there is any break in the  jaw or tooth sockets but the guy who is  kind of a dentist there was too busy to do more than look. He said there was no point just yet him doing more, until the swelling goes down, but he suspects I may have killed the roots of two teeth. Face looks like someone who smirked at Mike Tyson at the moment.

I think I need to go get an old-mans job finally.

Our City just changed hands, into the power of a long time "public servant" right wing ideologue who has played fast and loose with the rules in every position he has occupied, with the intent of harming the lives of the working class he had in his power, and rewarding the scum who "consult"  and  "conspire".

So NMWWVF,GAFIU as per usual.

Someone pointed out the structure of English sequence to me, and now "all I can see is it".

We can't say, for instance, idiot lazy Johnson, unless we use comma "Idiot, lazy Johnson" but why not?.

Lol. I can't remember any of them I would bum Uglies with.

Maybe Pitt the Younger?. He was a stylish chappie in his day. And hard-working, so you know he wouldn't take up all your days off.

She ought to console herself with the thought that everyone gets bad press. The right wing press simply does this to left wing pollies, regardless of the truth of the matter. The left wing press isn't as blatant, but they certainly don't go looking for ways to support their enemies.

The so-called "news channel"  sky news australia is a prime example.

Halo Jones in the little colour photo on its cork-board?.

I remember seeing that drawing, man, in a previous century !

Just reading your reviews made me anxious and unhappy. Tiggers are big scaredicats

Are these two things connected in some way?. It is probably the case here too but I could not say as I have not watched a TV for more than a year.

SPAIN MATE ! Health and Happiness to you.

Here in New Zealand many people today spoke to each other about their memories of our Queen, and then we stayed calm and carried on, but with a king. The nasty oiks who have always bleated about a "Republic" did that, and the rest of us ( the vast vast majority ) just sighed in disdain and ignored them.

Who in the world, having watched the four-yearly self-hate sessions of Republics trying to choose between lying politicians, would be so stupid as to want to get rid of their Professional, Foreign, Heads of State ?. My suspicion has always been that people pushing for a Republic want to use it as an opportunity for their own advantage. 

System not broken, don't be trying to fix it, imo.