Plainly painful Palin

After watching a few Palin interviews I am gob-smacked at how much she is in denial about. Seriously! Who would want this person to be in charge?

This blogger is capturing with brutal honesty the embarrassing moments that will hopefully lead to the end of Sarah Palin's bid for the White House.

I hate to say this but she's evidence why there should be a glass ceiling!!

Am waiting to see if some clips of the Thurs night debate appear - hoping she really f***s it up.

There must be scope for a joke about a Palindrome but I haven't thought of the punch line yet. Maybe - "If you want to go backwards as well as forwards...Vote McCain Palin-drome"

Tell Tale Signs - live stream

NPR has a live stream of the new Dylan CD - I think its for the next few days, until the official release. Listen here.

I managed to go to my class tonight without losing my keys!

Weds evening update.

What I've heard so far sounds Amazing. Can't wait for my CD to arrive.

Talkin Gibberish Blues has a detailed thought-blog on the tracks. He points out that Huck's Tune - a "seemingly beautiful song throws a couple of absurdist lyrics in it to show he's not getting soft." ... "all the merry little elves can go hang themselves" - great!!

Money's getting shallow and weak...

Dylan the prophet wrote this in 2006...

The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak
....
Now I'm down on my luck and I'm black and blue
Gonna give you another chance
I'm all alone and I'm expecting you
To lead me off in a cheerful dance
Got a brand new suit and a brand new wife
I can live on rice and beans
Some people never worked a day in their life
Don't know what work even means

"Workingman's Blues #2" from 'Modern Times' LP

A gorgeous song for the times we live in.

"Seen from a fair garden, everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau, and you'll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I tried to stop figuring everything out a long time ago." - Jack Fate, 'Masked and Anonymous'

Little red pills (may) cure all known ills

The Polypill trial just launched after many problems and delays made the front page of the Guardian today. Known here as 'PILL' (Programme to Improve Life and Longevity) - it is an international study designed and managed by the Clinical Trials Research Unit where I work here in Auckland. Today's launch is the pilot phase.

The tablets we know as "Anthony's little red pills".

Photo: Professor Simon Thom

The polypill combines aspirin, a statin to lower cholesterol and an ACE inhibitor and a thiazide to counter high blood pressure in one tablet. If this is shown to work it could save millions of lives particularly in developing countries - and without making megabucks for big Pharma!

Lets face it, if the choice was taking individual swigs of vodka, bacardi, tequila and grenadine or having them ready mixed and shaken, I know which I'd prefer!!

Note! Do not contact me for medical information or advice, I only look after the database & website side of these research projects. Besides, I am liable to tell you blatant lies or propaganda.


Note! Yes I do listen to Dylan while working.

No other excitement today. It would have been daylight until 7pm but for the dark rain clouds that dulled the sky before that.

You talk to her. She's your lover now!

Dylan is using his smooth and ironic voice here. Recorded with 'The Band' during the 1966 'Blonde on Blonde' sessions, "She's Your Lover Now" wasn't officially available until The Bootleg Series 1-3 in 1991. A theory is that Dylan had exorcised his hurt over breaking-up with the crazy woman in the song by writing this and was no longer interested in releasing it or that it still held too much personal pain for him to do so.

Dylan said of those sessions: "It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold.."

Amazing song. Brilliant lyrics. I love this.

Yes, you, you just sit around and ask for ashtrays, can't you reach?
I see you kiss her on the cheek ev'rytime she gives a speech
With her picture books of the pyramid
And her postcards of Billy the Kid
(Why must everybody bow?)
You better talk to her 'bout it
You're her lover now.

His voice is brilliant. It's a shame the session ended before he'd finished. There is a solo piano version, recorded around the same time that has the complete lyrics for the fourth verse here.

Blackbird, three jabs, one vibrating lobster

Blackbird, the play we saw last night at the Maidment theatre was good but not the gripping psycho-drama the reviewers hinted it to be. Maybe I've been 'gripped' by too many great Berkoff plays like East, West, Greek, Kvetch and Decadence. I'm looking forward to seeing Mr Berkoff perform his two short plays Dog and One Man next month.

This morning I wasn't looking forward to getting vaccinated for Vietnam. Three jabs later I was protected against Hepatitis, Tetanus and Typhoid. A slightly sore arm but no other side effects noted. We also stocked up in the travel shop with handy items like compression socks, self filtering drinking bottles, 'Armed Forces' strength mosquito repellent and compact spindle-less toilet rolls. You never know when they'll be needed.

Feeling hungry after the puncturing, we sped to nearby Takapuna to the new(ish) beach cafe imaginatively called The Takapuna Beach Cafe. They have great food, and million dollar views so are always busy. Today we tried out their novel booking system. You turn up and tell them you want a table, they give you a red plastic lobster the size of a large banana and tell you to go for a walk. After a few minutes, halfway along the beach, the lobster in your hand vibrates and red lights flash to tell you that your table is ready. Great fun. You then march into the bustling cafe, wave the flashing lobster and get taken to a table by the window with the best views. Top notch food & coffee too.

Our clocks go forward tonight - Summertime is here!!

Happy Birthday Bert!

My father, Albert William Oatley known to most as Bert, would be 103 this week.

Despite being an older Dad to me (he was 56 when I came along and Mum was 40), he was always full of fun and mischief and tall tales. I'm pretty sure I get my sense of humour from him, at least I think I have a 'GSOH' but maybe my friends just think I am weird.

Dad never travelled outside the U.K., although I took him to South Wales for a weekend once. His family bought him a car when he was quite young. I think it was before he was 20. It would have been quite abnormal in 1925 to own a vehicle. He'd had polio as a child which left him with a 'gammy leg' (his description). Cars were his life.

In the 1930's he ran a "High Class Car Hire Company" from Cecil Ave., Wembley (he was the Chauffeur). I have some letter head paper stating the phone number "Wembley 2346 Day & Night". In the 1970's I went to school in the same street.

He must have enjoyed driving the hoi polloi to the races and suchlike - he was full of tales of those times. His stories include carefully following the tram tracks home one night in a thick 'pea-souper'. Close to home he was surprised by people shouting and hollering at him. He had followed a branch line into the depot building and was driving over the tram inspection pit!

During WWII he was an air raid warden and ambulance driver in the Wembley/Harrow area of North West London. Some members of his family (aunts and cousins) died in a direct hit on their house in Sudbury Town. He worked until his seventies, the last job as Supervisor of a maintenance depot that looked after a fleet of those little blue-green invalid vehicles that you used to see around England.

He had a remarkable skill - he could diagnose most car engine problems simply by listening and smelling. People would leave their engine running and Dad would poke his head out the kitchen door and tell them which spark plug to change!

I remember as a little girl bouncing up & down on the sofa under the front-room window of our council house trying to catch sight of his 1950's pale green Ford Popular arriving home from work. Then I would bother him all evening with unanswerable questions like "why is water wet?" which he always tried to answer. One time we drove past a field with cows in and he said "Look at the pussycats" and we had a big discussion about what they were called which kept me entertained.

I think about him, and his life from 1905-1987 lived solely in one part of the country, with no knowledge of the strange new world to come - his high-tech pride and joy was a record player that would lift it's own arm up at the end of the side - and I wonder if he's paying attention to this blog or even if they have broadband where he is....

Unusual hobbies

The Guardian has a section of photos showing death-defying stunts - this one amused me.

Jeffrey R Werner uses a special Hulcher camera that takes 65 frames per second to catch a bullet shot by John Richmond, just as it pulverises a watermelon on top of his brother Ken's head Photograph: Jeffrey R Werner/Barcroft Media

A song that you don't so much listen to as feel in your bones - probably much the same as having a watermelon explode on your skull.

'I Want You' from live at Budokan (1978).

Marmite is Our Mate

Mmmm marmite! I grew up on it, so a cheese sandwich is incomplete without a smear of the black gold.

But whats that little fella doing lurking behind the real Mcoy.....

In this country, the brand 'Marmite' belongs to 'Sanitarium' - an Australasian food company that is owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They sell something they have the cheek to call Marmite (albeit in a charmless straight sided plastic pot) but their brown goo doesn't look, smell or taste like real Marmite. It is foul and bland with the consistency of mud. Here's their ad - with a kiwi twist.

This sad situation led me for many years to cajole friends and family into stashing jars of the real product in their suitcases for me and once I came back from London with a huge Costco family size bucket which lasted close to a year.

Now a new development.... lurking at the very top of our supermarket shelves, almost in the heavens we spied this little fella called 'Our Mate', dressed in the manner we know and love - the podgy, round black suit with a yellow hat. I know not how or why this happened but as you can see, the little one has a good role model to live up to in our kitchen.

For the uninitiated.

Interesting footnote: In 1923 an enterprising Australian merchant, Fred Walker, decided to provide Marmite with some competition. He developed a new product which he called Parwill, on the basis that if "Ma might", "Pa will". This didn't work but resulted in the Kraft product now known as Vegemite.

I once was lost and now I'm found...

It was one of those "faith in humanity" moments. I'd gone back to the classroom I was in last night, inspected the sofa in the foyer at close range (pulled all the cushions off), spoken to several receptionists and security guards, rang the police station and the gym. No luck.

At 2pm I stuck up several signs in the street, in the building and on the parking meter where I had parked - making sure to keep my cellphone within reach just in case it rang.

At 5pm I took a call from a friendly security guard who had been handed a set of keys. I described mine to him to make sure. The most remarkable feature is a plastic head of a smiling buddha that I bought in Taipei 10 years ago when I was visiting Mari. Needless to say this sealed the deal. The plastic buddha is obviously a lucky thing to attach to your keys, I can recommend it.

I reckon that’s about $300 saved as the bunch has 18 keys and an expensive Mitsubishi transponder thingymajig. I'm so chuffed that I am rewarding myself with a tall gin and tonic, the first for months... and a prawn and vege stir fry for dinner.