It must come as a shame to Bill Cosby’s friends and family that his life now besieged by historic allegations of sexual misconduct.

This 77-year-old African-American devoted his life to making people laugh and now, from the twilight of said life, Mr Cosby is facing multiple accusations of sexual abuse from women who claim to have had past dealings with him. The first serious allegation was made in 2002 with another in 2005, then several more in 2006 until now, in 2014, where the accusations just keep on coming; with all alleged victims demanding similar settlements in the form of…

Who remembers a few years back when the world basically drove its very own King of Pop, Mr Michael Jackson, to suicide? Granted, he didn’t actually kill himself but it was the pills he needed to take in order to deal with his chronic anxiety that did – anxiety brought about largely by accusations of sexual misconduct against children; then years later, after a number of complainants had been paid off in out of court settlements – urging more mothers to come forward with claims that Mr Jackson molested their sons as well – one such mother was heard to confess, but only once her story had come under scrutiny, that her sequence of events was utterly false; in fact her child had greatly enjoyed his time at Mr Jackson’s ranch and all she really wanted from the ordeal was…

Here I was, of the impression that rape or molestation left permanent scars on a soul but apparently all it takes to heal these wounds is…

Forgive my apparent flippancy but as I see it, sexual abuse accusations lose much of their clout when the accusers are manifestly rapacious opportunists.

…Money. That seems to be the theme. All supposed victims, of both cases, believe their solace can be found amid the folds of The Almighty Dollar.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Rudy N Theodore

Photography by Almidi Du Lar

Most people strive to display the most favourable representation of themselves; it’s only later that their other side, or sides, are revealed.

I’m fortunate in that nowadays, I don’t have to waste time conjuring a scintillating guise to impress the masses – I have accepted that even my so called ‘good side’ is pretty poor so as a rule, I just go with it.

As usual though, there is an exception to the rule.

The truth is I am hopelessly compassionate. I always have been. Reckon I get it from my mother, which is never good. Females passing down attributes to developing males will only ever result in the recipient’s hardship. You see, among the greater chauvinistic population compassion is considered a largely effeminate attribute; excesses of such, moreover.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a 16-year-old male but the pressure to be ‘one of the guys’, is rather intense. Turns out I was able to fit in with this clique well enough and I don’t know quite how it happened, but I seem to have also picked up a great many female friends along the way. Not girlfriends – never girlfriends – these were simply female friends. I now realise this co-ed magnetism was on account of my innate excess of compassion; in fact at the time I left school, I had more female than male friends…

Then shit happened.

In the years immediately following shit happening, this excess of compassion caused me a great deal of anxiety. Never having been one to worry much about image, at that time, nursing severe brain trauma and an incipient post traumatic rubral tremor, compassion took over and suddenly it became of paramount importance to not place any more stress on the minds of those who cared about, and indeed who had spent so many months supporting, me.

As the tremor became increasingly dominant, my task became that much more difficult. I made it my duty to go about my new life and still do whatever had to be done while, for the benefit of onlookers, disguising my inherent issues. If ever I was unable to do this and perhaps let loose a thrashing left arm or frantically jiggling head, the typical onlooker reaction would comprise a reflexive, almost micro-expression, look of horror, followed quickly by confusion giving way to surprise which usually tapered off as they realised that they were making this medley of facial expressions and realised furthermore that for the benefit of the clearly broken lad before them they would do well to be portraying a more lachrymose gaze of sorrow, melancholy or better yet, pity.

It was this look of pity that tore me up inside. It afforded me the knowledge that I had been the cause of somebody else’s discomfort; here it is – I felt bad for them for making them feel bad for me, despite the cause of the discomfort being something over which I had no, or at least limited, control.

Gosh, what a world. What a life.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Cam Posh-Yin

Photography by Lou Goob Brius

Interesting, but do we really think lowering the legal blood-alcohol tolerance will result in a reduction of drunk drivers on New Zealand roads?

It’s a little bit like bringing back the death penalty for murderers and expecting that it will make a difference to the nation’s homicide statistics; just as murder is generally an impetuous crime of passion, neither is there a great deal of logical forethought running through the mind of a prospective drunk driver.

The most likely thing to come from the lowering of this threshold will be the penalising of those typically conscientious social drinkers who never intended to flout the law and who never would have done any harm on the roads either but who have underestimated these new restrictions and although their 320 breath-alcohol reading is still below the old limit it’s above the amended version so…

Then there are those hardened drinkers who make a habit of imbibing over half their bodyweight in booze before driving home – they were over the limit then and you can be damn sure they’ll be over the limit now. The difference is that these wily veterans know how to avoid being caught.

Ultimately, the frequency of drunk driving might come down a little as good folk who might have occasionally slipped up turn abstemious but the recidivist drunks, those guys are going to get behind the wheel no matter the consequences.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Wai Bovver

Photography by Way Starr Thyme

I am all too familiar with the exorbitant price of alcohol at on-licensed as opposed off-licensed liquor outlets.

I accept that although I can enter a bottle store and purchase a 1 Litre bottle of Scotch whisky for $33, from which I can then pour myself approximately 32 standard drinks, averaging a little over $1 a drink, if I choose to go on-licence, at around $4 a nip, that same bottle of liquor would cost me $130. That’s almost a $100 profit they make on every bottle of Scotch.

As previously stated, I accept that. Apparently what you’re really paying for is the social environment, you know, the ambiance; the atmosphere…

In city bars and nightclubs I can go along with this. I understand that when I enter a nightclub and order a glass of lemon lime and bitters – a non-alcoholic beverage – they charge me over $5. I’m paying for the experience. Right. Makes sense. So the following weekend, when I venture out in my little rural ghost town and embark on the local tavern there, with its cramped layout that makes the usual Friday night patronage of seven drunken locals and one or two passers-through appear bustling, along with sub standard facilities, a malodour that has been present ever since the prohibition of indoor smoking, dated décor and threadbare carpet, how the hell do they justify charging similar prices?

The week after the Christchurch show was my hometown’s annual A&P show. This always promises a big night at the local. Typically bound by financial restraints however, I downed a large drink at home then made my way to the pub, calculating how much they would have charged me over the bar for that same beverage – if a pint of Scotch and ginger ale mixed at half/half ratio is equal to 12 standard drinks and they’re charging $4 a drink…

After wrestling my way to the bar I ordered my usual non-alcoholic alternative of lemon lime and bitters. They didn’t have any. I ordered a Coke. I watched with impatience as the dowdy middle-aged woman filled the 12 ounce tumbler with a feeble stream of cola syrup and carbonated water. She then looked up and with an uninterested gaze squawked, “That’ll be four dollars.” I handed over a five, took my drink, also my dollar, and absconded.

Turns out a pint glass filled with a similar liquid was $5.

A pint of beer that night would cost a punter $6.

That made me chuckle.

With such little incentive to abstain from alcohol it’s no wonder that rural roads are overrun with intoxicated drivers; given the recent reduction in the legal blood-alcohol limit rural alcohol distribution establishments must start offering cheaper non-alcoholic alternatives or simply, people are going to drink at home.

Like me.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Moe Szyslak

Photography by Barney Gumble

Following less than agreeable feedback regarding the original Energy Spit, I am beholden to make the following clarifications.

Firstly, no.

At no time did I encourage people to disregard the environment. I was merely claiming that Jared Turner was full of shit and that the shit he was pushing was largely bullshit for the shitty purpose of bolstering our callous, compassionless and indeed faceless energy companies along with their increasingly gargantuan profit margins. Are we clear? Shit.

Secondly, perhaps.

Admittedly when I sat down to write last week’s latter post I was a little tired, rather strung out and very angry. To be fair I had been choking back the aforementioned outburst for some time but then there are times when it just seems that the world is out to screw you, and by ‘world’ I really mean ‘nation’s utilities’; by ‘screw you’ I mean ‘have their filthy way with you’.

Thirdly, come on..?

I thought I made some pretty good points. The majority of my content was meaningful, I toned back the grandiloquence, I feel that I ought to have been commended on the way I avoided generalisations, I wasn’t overtly offensive nor did I harangue Mr Turner personally; ultimately, I reckon it was some of my best, or at least better, work.

Finally, to anybody else who took offence at my thoughts, you can get knotted.

Honestly, you are a dick-bag for taking this kind of shit seriously. It is an opinion. That’s all. Too many people place too much merit on the written word. If it’s not physical it can’t hurt you. Realistically, words mean nothing. This means nothing. The post before this meant nothing. This kind of crap is meaningless. It will change nothing. It doesn’t matter. It has no business upsetting anybody.

Don’t forget, you have the power to turn away.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Stan Dip

Photography by B Coonted

Let’s have a cheer of gratitude for the nation’s son, Jared Turner. Such a lovely lad; handsome, clean cut, affable, well spoken…

In truth my sarcastic slander is not directed at Mr Turner at all, it’s hardly his fault the script he is paid to read is fraught with inaccurate condescension that makes him the target of so much ridicule; it’s hardly his fault that the researchers who provide the writers who in turn provide him with the information he has to read as though he knows what the hell he’s talking about when in reality he’s probably born and bred in the city of Auckland thus has limited understanding of all things conservation and is likely the last person who ought to be preaching “here’s a tip” regarding prudent energy usage.

The further truth is that while it is always desirable to be able to say you’re an energy skinflint, unless you are more of a skinflint than other skinflints, being an energy skinflint will have no benefit at all. If New Zealand makes a collective effort to lower its energy consumption, simply, the price of energy will increase. That’s the most basic law of supply and demand.

What, you think if NZ as a whole uses fewer units of electricity from one year to the next power companies are going to sit back and quietly absorb the shortfall? Not a bloody chance. They’ll pass their losses onto you, the consumer, in the form of higher electricity prices – the only area of benefit might be to the energy company’s multi-million dollar CEO, as his load is lightened somewhat.

Same theory goes for petrol. Why do you think that at a time where the price of a barrel of oil is the cheapest it’s been since December 2010, we’re still paying such exorbitant fuel prices? People have finally learned to operate their vehicles in a more fuel-conscious manner therefore, with less being bought, fuel companies cannot afford to lower their prices.

Those Energy Spot advertisements are essentially intended to fool you into helping those companies which have been trying to screw you over all your life. So by all means, live conservatively. Just don’t expect it to reap you any short term benefits.

This is a consumer world; it’s our reckless consuming that keeps the economy from crashing.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Ian Doug Nant

Photography by Jared Turner

366 days ago I smoked a cigarette. I didn’t much care for the way it tasted at the time, the aftertaste it left in my mouth, or the way it left me feeling.

This provided the perfect impetus for the decision that was to become an irrepressible fixture of my mind over the coming hours. Curious, I still had half a 50 gram pouch of Port Royal on the sofa behind me and more curious still, out in the lounge, in my secret hiding place, my cache of untouched duty-free totalled another 100 grams.

I can recall, 366 days ago, dropping the king-sized, super-slim butt into the makeshift ashtray which incidentally, I can recall some years earlier, consuming the baked beans that used to call the tin home.

I can recall, 365 days ago, feeling a little lost but assured by the knowledge that to break a promise to myself would engender a greater feeling of self-loathing than anything this world could do to me.

I can recall, 364 days ago, wondering if the mild inclination that I was currently feeling would ever grow into the juggernaut of compulsion that is reported by so many quitters.

I can recall 363 days, 362 days, 361 days, 360 days, 359 days, 358 days – it’s at about this point that not smoking became the routine.

That was it. No profound cravings, no withdrawals, no irrational rationalisation, no deals with the Devil…

Just no more smoking.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by John Player

Photography by John Brandon

There’s been a lot of talk of harassment of late – problem is we live in a time where the term ‘harassment’ is so very open to interpretation.

The other problem is, regarding Roger Sutton’s CERA fiasco at least, often the only people who know the full story behind the aforementioned calamity are those directly involved in the scandal; so while us regular folk take that classic third party stance of casting premature judgments, aspersions, and veritable buttloads of excrement at whichever party we believe is most deserving of our derision, those people whose voices actually matter – those who know what went on – end up the least vociferous.

As will happen from time to time, once our media network climbs on board, the facts of a story become lost amid a pulsating sea of hyperbole and sensationalism.

As I understand it, sexual harassment is the persistent unwelcome directing of sexual remarks and looks, and unnecessary physical contact at a person, usually a woman, especially in the workplace. Yeah. That’s a pretty verbose definition and in fact my understanding is much more straightforward: it’s doing stuff that makes girls feel uncomfortable. In saying that, making a girl feel uncomfortable once is one thing, that can be construed as a mistake and one would hope that in this case the aggrieved would speak up before things became more serious; after which one would hope increasingly that the offender would have sorted himself out.

Of course if an employer or colleague’s actions are perceived as untoward yet no complaint is made then suddenly the victim decides to hit him with a ‘Sexual Harassment’ allegation, it might seem a little unfair to the accused. Conversely if this employer or colleague has been notified that their actions are unacceptable yet they continue to act in the same way, in my opinion the allegation is justified.

On the topic of ‘My Opinion’, I now hear this ‘victim’ might be entitled to compensation for grievances faced. That revelation made me chuckle. Thing is, when this supposed scandal first came to light, that was my exact thinking.

The truth is I don’t know what actually happened inside that Government funded office. What I do know is that working inside any variety of Government funded office must be powerfully tedious; moreover if this office space is devoid of affection or humour.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Prudence Ironbox

Photography by I La Scream

Small feet, eh? You know what they say about men with small feet, don’t you?

Yeah, small slippers.

Alright, what about dudes with small hands then?

Small mittens.

Well there’s no denying this one – how do you explain middle aged men with big, flashy cars?

Those same men with similarly big and flashy bank balances, I guess.

Striving to maintain a ripped physique well into your sixties – overcompensating perhaps?

Sure, with an excess of dedication and self respect.

Come on, clinging to one’s youth even though they’re clearly over the hill..?

Over the hill by whose standards?

Gee, let’s see – maybe life’s.

Interesting, so who decides when a person has crossed that threshold?

How about a little number called age?

Fair enough, so at what age is a person deemed ‘over the hill’?

Try retirement age, smart guy.

Tried it, not buying it.

No?

Certainly not.

What, is 65 years’ old not old enough for you?

In fact it’s plenty old enough for me, but not for some.

What, you mean those sad old buggers who are too pathetic to grow old with dignity?

No, those who don’t feel they’re ready to grow old; therefore don’t.

Right, so they cling to their youth like pathetic old men – just like I said.

No, they simply act, dress and behave, as old as they feel.

Still reckon it’s sad.

Seriously? You think all people should turn ‘old’ at the age of 65..?

Not at, by 65.

What if they still feel vibrant – are they supposed to suppress their natural ebullience?

For the sake of their dignity, yes.

You’re a dick.

Takes one to know one.

Did you just make that up then? That was brilliant.

Ha, joke’s on you, sarcasm and facetiousness are virtually indistinguishable though text.

How old are you?

Same age as you, I suppose.

Right, and we both know that if we make it to 40, we’re going to feel mightily exhausted, yes?

I try not to think about it.

Right, but that’s us, we’ve had a tough life; some haven’t and for that reason, small slippers and mittens driving in their fast sports cars notwithstanding, they’ll likely reach 65 and still feel like they’re 31…

Like us.

Yes, but we are 31.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Tim Walker

Photography by Tim Walker

Whether this 31-year-old frame has simply had enough of its conductor and is staging a subtle revolt or is genuinely feeling the rigours of life as the embodiment of ‘hard slog’, it appears rather more disposed now than it was then to malingering.

Yes, one’s brain accusing one’s body of being a malingerer is indeed a peculiar thing; moreover when the accused is frequently in acute pain which, as a dutiful third party, I am pretty sure the brain can feel.

Seemingly at my late stage in childhood this mineral deficient, worn out and frighteningly unstable body is no longer so keen on all things physical; calling into reference a regime that used to be ‘all day everyday’ but on account of growing indoor commitments has been squeezed into ‘a couple of hours, everyday’, including a few dozen press-ups before breakfast, a few dozen press-ups during breakfast, a few dozen chin-ups with ab-curls after breakfast then if there’s still energy or strength or better yet both, there’s a dozen or so extremely awkward and physically demanding triceps/trapezoid/abdominal lifts to be done; this is followed by the morning’s workload of mowing, pruning, cutting, trimming, and/or mulching.

Somewhere in the midst of all that excitement, a few weeks ago, I seem to have upset the muscle that lies over my right shoulder blade. In fact I have experienced this kind of injury in the past which, given the disproportionate usage of my right arm, also the contorted poses into which I force this unfortunate limb, is unsurprising but going by this past knowledge, I knew that with the right amount of mineral supplementation and a less strenuous workload, it shouldn’t have taken more than a few days to come right.

Weeks on, I am now starting to believe that perhaps the damage was something more severe than first thought – my first indication could have been the way that one aggrieved muscle was affecting my entire right hand side…

Day one, the area was outwardly tender and moving the arm into a particular position caused a sharp, stabbing sensation very much akin to an electric shock, in what I could only assume was the pinching of a nerve – I dropped a few dozen reps but continued life otherwise unabated. By day two it was much worse – I dropped more reps, upped my magnesium dosage, and carried on. By day three the pain had moved up to my shoulder/upper arm and it could be excruciating – I partook in no exercise that day. By day four, the shoulder blade inflammation had all but subsided, and despite resting it the previous day my right triceps now felt strained, making it impossible to tense thus lock the arm for increased steadiness, rendering the quest for dexterity a debacle, thereby limiting overall production.

Therefore, I see fit to expel allegations of malingering; the body is clearly in disrepair and yet, is doing the best it can with what little wherewithal is still at its disposal. As for the brain, I suggest that you, Sir, learn to be a little more accommodating towards your body’s needs, stop being so demanding of its constant high level of performance; so expecting of its continual esprit when you know as well as I do that it’s getting on in years. The body in question was, after all, not put on this earth for the sole purpose of serving you.

Court dismissed.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Judge Roy Schneider

Photography by NO CAMERAS WERE PERMITTED INSIDE THIS COURTROOM