November 2011
2 posts
Wisdom
Or notable lack of it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15536684
At the end of the day, in a Western Democracy, freedom of speech means freedom to offend.
It’s notable that France has already banned the chador in public places and seems to have pretty much the most contra-Islamic stance of any European nation.
I’m sure that it’s easy to say, “Let’s mock Islam” when you’re sitting in an...
October 2011
1 post
Legacy
It came to my attention this week that Lisa-Marie Presley is classified on Wikipedia as a “Singer-Songwriter”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Marie_Presley
However, she was already 35 at the time (married and divorced thrice) that she got round to making her debut album.
Bill Withers she is fucking not.
September 2011
1 post
Last Words
I’m feeling in a strangely reflective mood this morning.
It’s arguably rather morbid, but here’s a list of thought provoking and poignant last words:
“I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis”. - Humphrey Bogart, actor, d. 1957
“I’m bored with it all.” Before slipping into a coma. He died 9 days later. - Winston Churchill, statesman, d. 1965
“Let’s cool it...
June 2011
1 post
Tories?
A few months ago, the Labour party of the United Kingdom elected a new leader - the politically inexperienced, but authentically left wing Ed Milliband.
Up to the point of his election, the word round the campfire was actually that his more moderate brother David would get ‘the big job’.
This was a very interesting development. Former leader Tony Blair had created a massive centrist...
January 2011
9 posts
Yahoo
An organisation whom are evidently not in the running for the Plain English Awards this year.
“Part of our organizational streamlining involves shifting our investment with off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond,” Yahoo said in response to an AFP inquiry.*
...
Worry
I received an email from someone on my team recently saying this:
“meaning behind your doodle… :)
Squares: An expression that indicates the need to maintain order, structure and gain control. Squares within squares show an inherent need to hide secrets. “
I don’t know whether I’m more worried that I’ve never noticed that I did this, that she clearly has or that I do it literally all the time....
Leslie
After the recent death of Leslie Neilson, my chum Tony, whom I worked with about five years ago sent me a ‘compendium’ that I had compiled whilst we worked together.
The way that this worked was, when someone famous died – we’d all put forward our favourite celebrities whom share that firstname. I’d pick ten, then write sarcastic things about them.
I think this must have been written at the time...
Boredom
My girlfriend and I would both really like to be writers. We have however, unproven talent and share a curiously strong self-preservation instinct that has meant that we have developed pretty successful mainstream careers (although both are involved to lesser or greater extents with ‘writing’ – her: PR & Communications. Me: Sales & Marketing).
We recently had a particular...
Guacamole
I would have thought that everyone on earth knew how to make Guacamole, but someone at work asked me the other day, so I wrote out a recipe and here it is:
Guacamole a la Slabface -
2 decent sized avocados (must be well ripe) 2 regular sized cloves of garlic ½ a seeded red chilli The juice of 1½ fresh lemons (do NOT use bottled lemon juice) One or two chopped tomatoes (this is economy really) Salt...
Recession
Interesting editorial angle on the recent implosion of Ireland’s economy:
Apocalypse
When asked if she knew whom Germaine Greer is, my new team member said, “Is he that bloke off of ‘Flight of the Conchords?”.
Every western woman, without exception, should know who Germaine Greer is and what her generation did for women today.
I’ve asked the women in my office before. Worryingly, a lot of women under 25 don’t know who Germaine Greer is.
They always seem to know who Kim Kardashian...
Nuts
It’s that time of year again and I’ve watched the thing that they used to call cyberspace, as well as the physical press, go ape with the ubiquitous end of year polls.
Now, horrifyingly, one of the ones that has actually caught my eye is from the somewhat low brow, lowest common denominator, tits & football oriented UK lads mag ‘Nuts’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuts_(magazine)
Now, I’m...
Resolutions 2011
Weirdly, I’ve chosen the 11th of January to post my new years resolutions and have gone back to last years, which were similarly created - on the 11th January.
The 12 steps recovery programme says that you must give yourself a ‘fearless assessment of past wrongs’ (that’s where I’ve failed previously) but in the case of ones resolutions - here goes:
Achieved:
• Get teeth whitened and...
October 2010
1 post
Percentile
Here’s documentary proof that 35% of the general public* should be machine gunned in their beds.
Honestly, what kind of moron thinks Delia is better than River Cottage?
* When I say ‘general public’ I actually mean ‘the kind of fucktards whom complete MSN polls’.
September 2010
7 posts
Commerce
As I said, I originally came to New Zealand to do recruitment. It was a job I loved and did well at whilst I lived in the UK. On arrival in New Zealand, I found that the personality traits that matched the job best in the UK (thick skin, dogged determination and complete pessimism regarding the personal ethics of clients, candidates and my competitors) actually made me woefully unsuitable for the...
Salem
Many years before ‘Friends’ became rubbish, unfunny and sickeningly sentimental - I had a great idea about what they could do when it finished.
The idea was simply, ‘The Joey and Chandler Show’. They would basically remain unmarried and unsuccessful and the comedy would become more adult (they would have drunk beer and said f*ck and stuff).
But, (here’s the genius part) they...
Characteristics
So, there comes a time in ones life when you’re confident enough in your own skin to be totally and utterly inane. In my case, I think this really settled in when I turned 30. I realize now that I am deeply and happily uncool. I realize this especially when I look at my shoes. There is a certain happiness however in the realization that you can be happily inane and uncool in the company of...
Moules
It’s been a while since I put up a recipe and as the weekend looms, here’s a pretty good recipe for the perfect Friday night in.
Approx 1kg Small mussels – big ones are too chewy.
Butter
Garlic
Shallots
Italian/Flatleaf Parsley
Fresh Thyme
Bottle of white wine
Fresh cream
Potatoes
Sunflower oil
Zest of one lemon
Djion Mustard
One whole egg + 2 yolks
Pinch of salt
Pinch...
Twitter
It’s funny because it’s true.
Nomenclature
I’ve decided to give in to the inevitable and start posting the ‘Top 10’ lists of things that I impulsively create whenever confronted with five minutes with nothing to do at any given point of the day.
Today’s starter for ten (boom boom!) was recently created whilst I waited for my wholemeal (see ‘Resolutions’) toast to pop up.
In no particular order - Top 10 Band Names*:
The Afghan Whigs...
Jingoism
As a Brit abroad (living in a Commonwealth country, no less) I don’t often get an opportunity to display any sort of national pride. Britain has done so many awful things in the past that we’ve become a sort of cultural version of Milwall Football Club (a club only really notable in the English league by being universally loathed by everyone else). Indeed, as I get older I’m...
August 2010
2 posts
Recruitment
To everything there is a season. A few changes have occurred of late and recruitment consultants have re-entered my life.
It easy to knock recruitment consultants and many do. They’re a modern day bogey man in a life that’s full of disappointments. Didn’t get that job you wanted? - Blame the consultant, not yourself..
I won’t though, partly because I was one for three years. The first half of...
H8tred
There are a lot of people who get really funny about the word ‘hate’. I have nothing against it at all. I think that it’s a natural state for a human being to exist in. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hate at all. If you think about it, the old ying and yang thing comes into play – I’m not sure that you can really ever love, if you don’t hate as well. People in my life have got offended...
May 2010
1 post
Criminal Records
I lived in a place called Easton in Bristol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easton,_Bristol) for several years.
Easton’s a vibrant and multi-cultural community, with a great history of street parties, which generally involve a lot of very large soundsystems, as well as jerk chicken, curry goat, warm tins of Red Stripe, crackheads and a general undercurrent that a gun battle might might break...
April 2010
3 posts
Pastie Italiano
Autumn is on the way so I’m taking advantage of the sun whilst it still lasts and getting outdoors at every possible opportunity. With that in mind, I’ve just re-created an old recipe that I’d invented some years hence for a forthcoming workday picnic with a friend down at the waterfront. This is a little something called “Pastie Italiano”* that I came up with (ultimately...
Salad
So it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve got no idea what to make for dinner. I’m thus discussing the issue with my work chum Holly (a good sounding board for recipe selection and a fountain of knowledge regarding minor celebrities) and suddenly, I remember this great little warm salad. Holly wanted a recipe so I knocked one up for her tout suite. Here it is for you’s too.
Here’s...
Shame
Serious musicianship, a decent hook, a time in your life, a person you met, the girls dressed as odd job men in the video: there are a great many reasons to love a song, but some are intangible. Here’s a simple list: It’s a list of songs I absolutely love but know that I really shouldn’t.
• Spice Girls “Spice Up Your Life” - This came out in 1997 whilst I was doing...
March 2010
6 posts
Falafel
New Zealand doesn’t really do vegetarianism as a concept.
It’s not usually a massive problem if one eats out in a restaurant, but is particularly noticeable in the arena of grabbing a quick, possibly mobile, bite to eat when in a hurry. Your usual lazy vegetarian staples of a nasty Ginsters or Pork Farm Cheese & Onion pasty aren’t really available, and many places...
Musos
I, quite simply, love musos.
Despite having a very broad ranging music taste myself, which (on a good day) includes country rock, singer songwriters of various persuasions, jazz, funk, reggae, blues, house, hip-hop, dubstep, drum & bass, broken beat, UK Garage, stoner rock, punk and bleepy electronica, I loathe those people whom go, “Oh, I like a bit of everything really” and then, when...
Smut
I had an interesting conversation recently with my Mother regarding erotic scenes in literature.
As you do.
This came about as she had, at my recommendation, recently completed reading the Sebastian Faulkes novel, ‘Birdsong’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdsong_%28novel%29.
The book largely focuses on the work done by military engineers during the particularly bloody battles at Ypres and The...
Misery
Whilst ‘Greer 2.0’ (The Dominion Post’s god-awful dating blog) doesn’t really deserve ‘mad props’, I did rather like the idea of a recent post, (http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/entertainment/blogs/greer-2-0/3279716/When-the-musics-over) where the eponymous writer (or perhaps the pointless Second Life avatar in her homepage button) had created a list of her favourite break-up songs.
I’d...
WALL-E
- Postscript to my recent post http://slabface.tumblr.com/post/330341649/finding-nemo
Subsequent to writing the aforementioned post on the increasing maturity and emotional sophistication of the characters in childrens animated features, I recently watched the Pixar movie ‘Wall-E’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E) whilst in what could be classified as a ‘fairly...
Arrival
So, I understand that an unplanned and highly urgent flight back to the UK due to the death of a parent isn’t a wholly auspicious start to writing a journal of the first visit to ones country of origin in eighteen months (or additionally that neither the area immediately surrounding Heathrow nor the Piccadilly Line is Britain’s most aesthetically pleasing location) but after 25 hours of flights...
January 2010
7 posts
Commitment
drinks
dinner
meet friends
minibreak
pet names
meet parents
admit how many people that you’ve slept with
meet colleagues
nicknames for each others genitals
move in together
cat
shared car
mortgage
trial separation
reconcilliation
holiday
breed
divorce
return to 1)
death
Gender Battlefield
Like many men of my generation, I am confused by my gender.
After the ‘new man’ of the eighties and the ‘rise of new laddism’ of the nineties, men my age have fallen between two stools. We’re too old (and in my case heavily built) for all this ‘metrosexual’ business (H&M T-Shirts won’t go over my shoulders) and too young to carry our children in...
Autobiography
Today is my birthday. I hate birthdays.
I’ve decided to celebrate by penning the opening paragraphs of my autobiography.
“My name is Matthew R. (Surname). I’m not telling you what the R is for. I use the initial in tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. Sometimes, when people ask what my middle name is, I tell them that it’s Raoul, but it isn’t really. (That’s a Hunter S....
Zeitgeist (ii)
Another game that some chums and I had been playing in the run up to the new year was to create lists of our favourite songs of those same decades with a view to using them as playlists for a themed party that, needless to say, has never been organised. I also used the exercise to compile a list of my favourite ten songs of the noughties for reference. They are (in no particular order): Amerie –...
Zeitgeist
The American American Dialect Society (ADS) has just published it’s “Word Of The Decade” (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/11/google-beats-twitter-for-word-of-the-decade-2/). Their decision is apparently “Google”. (The word of the year was “Tweet”).
They specify, interestingly, that they refer to the verb of “Googling” rather than the...
Finding Nemo
Those that know me well would likely agree that I’m a great one for theories.
Having had a fairly scant degree of higher education and a prolonged history of smoking way too much pot (a long time ago, admittedly) I think I do a lot of what Rastafarians describe as ‘musing’.
I have a wide range of personal theories, encompassing topics as diverse as the origins of the species (and our symbiotic...
Resolutions
I arrived back at home after three weeks in a campervan in the early hours of this morning.
I have hitherto avoided making any new years resolutions, based on the fact that ‘giving up smoking’ would be unwise when sharing a 10’ x 6’ space with a sibling 24/7.
After five hours sleep, I arrived at work this morning to find 460 unread emails (I couldn’t login via VPN...
November 2009
10 posts
Half-Life Fajitas
A couple of weeks back, I had a request from a former girlfriend for my recipe for fajitas.
She was intending to use the recipe to impress (and one can only assume seduce) her new beau. We’re all good and grown up these days, so I was happily to oblige.
I think the rule of ‘relationship half-life’ comes into play here. My theory is that emotional closure on any relationhip will...
Incomplete Intinerary
19th December – Slabface departs Wellington at 07.25 on the Transcenic Train to Auckland. He arrives at 19.25pm and heads immediately for the pub to meet Mogsie, who he’s not seen since 2006.
20th December – Claire arrives from Sydney and picks up the wagon. She heads south into the city (Slabface isn’t going to meet her because the airport is an hour in the wrong direction from Auckland)....
“The hell of being among strangers was that nobody formed any expectation of how...”
– P.H Newby (1918–1997) in “Something To Answer For” on living in the colonies.
Big ups to Tiger for the reference.
How To Tie A Windsor Knot
A. A. Gill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Gill) defines vegetarians as “people who get pleasure from not eating things” and, being a long established non-carniverous sort (an ovo-vegetarian, if you’re interested) it seems that this pleasure in denial has extended to my sense of dress as well.
The passage of the last few years can be described as thus*:
* It’s...
John Peel
A couple of weeks ago, the fifth anniversary of the sudden death of British DJ and Broadcaster John Peel (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004) transpired. I wish that I’d had the foresight to put something up to commemorate his truly spectacular career and lifes work, but I guess that it’s better late than never.
Peelie held a very special place in the hearts of most British music...
Crazylegs' Lemon Cake
Some time ago, my friend Crazylegs asked me to email her the recipe for my favourite Lemon Drizzle cake. A cake which had been regarded as a hit when I’d made it for her previously, whilst we were both still living in the UK. I understand from her that this recipe has now been successfully reproduced by friends in Sydney, Bristol and London.
You will need:
2 x Lemons (unwaxed) Icing Sugar...
Kiwiana
My day job today brought me into contact with one of the most thoroughly Kiwi situations ever.
The gentleman (a friendly sort from a local hunting & fishing emporium), was keen to learn whether I was able to broker his regular and reliable source of possum fur and skins.
Now, the Kiwi view of possums (which are non-indiginous, and horrifically damaging to native flora and fauna) bears marked...
Haiku
Of late, a dearly trusted confidente and I have spent a great deal of time (that could have been spent in the great outdoors in some way bettering ourselves) having haiku battles via email.
I think haiku battling could be the new pub equivalent of the rap battle. Think of it in this way - you don’t need a DJ, ill fitting trousers or a particularly ‘up for it’ crowd. Just a corner or a...
Firework Night
Attended Wellington’s annual fireworks display down on the waterfront last night.
It was a beautiful clear night and enjoyable bar my feelings of worry over the environmental impact of igniting several tonnes of gunpowder over the harbour.
One assumes that there are some very stunned (and likely choking) fish out there.
I also realised half way through the preceedings that two of the dear...