To firefighters throughout Australasia the terms ‘summertime’ and ‘wildfire’ go together like clichés and idioms – NSW recently faced one of its worst wildfire seasons on record…

At the moment though it’s not summer in Australasia at all; in fact the south has just experienced a rather severe winter.

…Currently wildfires are ravaging the USA. The state of California, which is enduring one of its worst droughts on record, was first stricken with a number of fierce bushfires until, by late August, there were a total of 76 large fires across the western portion of the United States: 14 in California, 17 in Idaho, 11 in Montana, 12 in Oregon, and 16 in Washington.

On receiving the call for assistance, these Washington wildfires have now become the focus of 71 New Zealand and Australian firefighters.

With no end in sight for the US’s drought conditions or these uncontrollable bushfires, on account of the invaluable work they are doing the Australasian firefighting contingent has been asked to stick it out for a little longer than initially expected.

Nice one guys, make the Southern Hemisphere proud.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Bernie West

Photography by Ferry Busch

Sunday nights have become that much more inane with the advent of two more American ‘reality’ game shows.

The first, Repeat After Me, is a weak show with a weak premise and even weaker comedic appeal. The loftiest heights in fact to which this show does reach, is the brilliance of presenter and star of genuinely hilarious show, The Goldbergs, Wendi McLendon-Covey.

McLendon-Covey’s task is to feed celebrities a script, to which they must rigorously adhere, as they undertake otherwise mundane tasks.

McLendon-Covey’s apparent wit and composure under pressure is remarkable and, in fairness, often unbelievable; as with most of today’s ‘reality’ shows, the authenticity of said realism is indeed questionable.

The second in the US’s recent reality bonanza is an even weaker show with an even weaker premise called, I Can Do That. This show sees four celebrities, the line-up of whom appears to remain unchanged but apparently do change, undertaking a week of professional training in the hope of re-creating a technical act, or, in short, carrying out amateurish renditions of generally lacklustre performances.

While this show’s host, Marlon Wayans, does provide the occasional flash of comic relief, in my opinion it is really only Nicole Scherzinger’s undeniable sex appeal that makes it at all worth watching.

Ultimately, the US has produced yet another pair of television abortions that, although they may have saved on the cost of genuine actors and writers, the cost of these ersatz productions will surely result in these pitiful game shows’ absence of a second season.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Un B Lee-Fable

Photography by A Bommy Neeshun

 

Five years since the earthquake that tore the earth asunder and shook my house almost to pieces.

My poor little home.

Five years on since the famously long and perfectly straight Telegraph Road was left with a dogleg.

Dead set ripped the countryside in two.

Exactly five years yesterday.

It was a Saturday morning.

It was.

So it was today.

No, today is the 5^th; it was five years ago on the 4^th.

But it was a Saturday.

It was a Saturday morning, five years ago with a leap year in between, which makes it a Friday this year – yesterday.

Was pretty massive though.

It was unbelievable; in fact I recall being thrown awake that morning and not believing it – thinking I was in the grips of a nightmare.

Wow, yeah, then you peed yourself.

Yeah, but only a little bit – I was busting for a leak but the room wouldn’t stop shaking, then when it finally did and I started making my way tentatively into the hall, it started again, threw me into the wall and yeah, I admit, a bit of pee came out.

That’s funny, the earthquake made you pee yourself.

Yeah alright, what wasn’t so funny though was just after that, having to step across the bathroom floor in bare feet and in absolute darkness, only to find the bathroom mirror had shattered on the floor, rendering my tender winter feet a bloody mess.

Heh, heh, bloody mess.

Yeah, so the dribble of urine was really nothing compared to the little spots of blood I left all over the carpet.

Wow, should’ve turned on the light.

Are you serious? The whole region was without power for days, man – substations throughout Mid-Canterbury sustained major damage.

Oh, so what’d you do for breakfast?

I barbecued.

Really – can you barbecue in winter?

No choice, once I’d dug out the barbecue from the mess in my garage I spent all day out there, cooking meats and other perishables, heating coffee – watching the house windows flex and bow with the frequent aftershocks.

So it was a good day then..?

It was tolerable, then came the night.

What happened in the night?

The tremors continued, another frost covered the land, there was no heat, no light – it was awful.

So what’d ya do?

I went to bed.

Was that better?

Not really, because aftershocks were coming what felt like every few minutes and it soon became such that I was trembling so much I could no longer even distinguish the earth tremors from my own.

Wow … You peed yourself.

Yeah.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Bro Ken House

Photography by Ura N Drabble

 

 

 

 

Thought it was going to stop at III but no, it needed a IV.

As I cast my eye around the mix of similarly aged men and women, that twenty-four-year-old sapient pearl frequently comes knocking at the threshold of my idle mind: “…Because women mature faster the men.”

I see thirty year old men who despite owning nothing of substance, still relieve the majority of their working wage at a pub urinal; I see women of a similar age and fiscal position who providing they have sufficient sexual partners to keep them occupied each weekend, feel they are maintaining prosperous lives…

To compare one to the other is impossible as ultimately, in the minds of both parties, they are doing fine.

…Perspective. As well as it being the name of my first ever post, this word appeared in the second ever Maturity instalment; as I recall a similar point was being made but without an accompanying example. It’ll be much better with an example.

Few years back, believe I was twenty-four at the time, I was friendly with a thirty-three-year-old, solo mother-of-six. I know, six. She had tumbled blindly into the aforementioned ‘sufficient sexual partners’ category sixteen years earlier and had maintained that position ever since. Of course at the time of meeting her I had owned my little house in the country for four years; something which this woman could simply not understand. “Argh, I’d never buy a house,” I remember her intoning one day, “too much stuff to go wrong.”

“I suppose,” I relied thoughtfully, “in a way that’s true – I mean, I guess your landlord would fix any problems in this place..?”

“Yeah,” she cleared her throat while leaning forward to extinguish a slender roll-your-own cigarette, “like, last month the hot water cylinder crapped out and he had to come and fix it for us.”

“Oh, that’s good, so, how much were you saying you guys pay to live here?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good, I only pay $450 – the landlord’s pretty good, eh.”

“Right,” having no real idea of what ought to be considered a ‘pretty good’ weekly price for a five bedroom, timber-clad home in northwest Christchurch, “so you pay him $450 each week to fix your hot water cylinder once..?”

“Yeah, oh and other stuff though…”

“But even if you wanted to, you’d have no chance of ever building up a deposit for your own place..?”

“Nah, but I wouldn’t want my own place eh, too much hassle.”

“Yeah, so you say, but I mean you’re slaving that tight little butt off to pay for this house as well as feeding, clothing and schooling six kids -”

“Yeah but the Government helps eh, so it’s not that bad.”

“It could be a lot better – I mean, you pay 450 a week, shit, I only pay 175, and at the end of that, I’ll own a house.”

“Yeah but you were lucky…”

“Lucky, how?”

“I dunno, like, you knew what you were doing, you started saving for a deposit young…”

Lucky..? I remember thinking with chagrin, really? You think because I didn’t spend my adolescence just living for the moment; you think because I had the sense to implement some teenaged foresight, you think I’m lucky?

I realise the above episode does not apply to all women, and given the six kids I can almost understand her desire for the apparent simplicity offered by rental properties but as a general rule, younger people’s unwillingness to accept any more responsibility in life than is absolutely necessary is a frighteningly common theme.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Seoul O Mum

Photography by O Lyv Year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems John Key is alone in his preference to not offer refuge to any more than the quota of 750 asylum seekers annually.

That’s certainly the way it appears anyway because everyone else, every other member of the Opposition at least, is claiming that if they had their way, oh yes, you’d better believe they’d open New Zealand’s gateway and allow stricken refugees to just flood in…

Curious that those maintaining these sentiments of nobility, are the same ones whose opinions ultimately mean nothing.

…Prime Minister John Key has undoubtedly done the math on the situation; given New Zealand’s meagre population he has seemingly decided that we are simply not fit to take any more than the original 750 quota – which per capita, is in fact a respectable number.

According to a recent News broadcast though, we should be doing more: apparently many of New Zealand’s public would happily take into their homes a few Syrian refugees; moreover they expect that we as a nation ought to be following this example.

In fairness to our great leader, while the Opposition is naturally objectionable and many of the public are venting their displeasure also – upholding the idealistic, fairy-tale belief that their nation’s goodwill will cost them nothing, through it all Mr Key must maintain his grip on realism.

The reality is that these asylum seekers would provide no immediate benefit to New Zealand’s economy. Realistically they would each require sizable financial handouts just to re-establish themselves and even then there is no guarantee that their skills – if any – would be transferable to our way of life – realistically.

That must be the main problem with running a country: all of your citizens constantly demand lower taxation then fall into uproar when unexpected phenomena result in tax rises, yet when it comes to providing aid to those less well off those very people seem to expect the country has an infinite source of funding.

The question therefore begs: do these people even know where the Government gets its money?

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by A Psalm

Photography by C Kerr

 

Regarding last week’s theory on television advertising, I am aware many of you will think me ignorant for missing the obvious fact: fewer people are watching television advertisements thus more advertising must be done to achieve the same result.

If you thought that, perhaps you’re the one who’s a little obtuse.

Sure, in this modern world of MySky, NetFlix, Spotify, and a whole lot more catchy names that you can be damn sure will never make their way into my home – in television or dictionary format – many people are effectively paying a fee to avoid advertising; or so they think.

One can never avoid the scourge that is advertising, for advertising is what makes the world go around…

Advertising pays the wages of professional sportspeople and in some cases it even pays for the sport itself. Advertising dictates what we see and how frequently we see it, also what we do and how frequently we do that. Through psychotically clever mental manipulation, through deceptively worded promotional displays; through seductive offers engendering a sensation of longing and provocative deals intended to arouse irrepressible desire, advertising ensures our lives follow a particular path of consumer decadence.

…In truth I am not certain of advertising’s ability to create a gravitational force resulting in a planet’s orbit but certainly, it is a controlling force spread liberally over our planet’s surface.

While it is a fact that more people are paying for unadulterated viewing, one need only take into account the increased viewer base from ten years ago giving strength to my theory that television advertising is as influential today as it ever was.

So there.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Con Sue Muir

Photography by Affar Ty Singh