Poets Day US

It is not often that I start one of my posts with a disclaimer this week I will, sort of. This weeks posts has been fermenting/stagnating in my mind for a while, it was based on a comment I made to The English Major Aug/Sept last year and is no way related to the current going ons in the world. Although it seems pretty damn pertinent for some odd reason - maybe these posts are a bit like The Simpsons - 2 dimensional and a bit hit or miss :) I am sure most of y'all recall the short tale by Hans Christian Anderson (and no he is not the lead singer in Aqua for you Millennials) about the Emperor who was so fond of new clothes he spent all his money buying new outfits - I used to date a girl like that. A couple of con-artists turned up and convinced him they could weave him the most amazing outfit, so amazing in fact that only a person as suitable (oh that was bad) as him would be able to see the patterns and colors, stupid people were not worthy of appreciating the beauty of his n...

So this weeks I was going to write something completely different - a post that originally came to mind around August/September last year and one that seems particularly relevant now however a man in a hood changed all that on Sunday so you will have to wait on that one, sorry to The English Major. Instead this week we look at the greatest coach in all professional sports and the person who has benefited from his genius. The man in the hoodie, the grumpy professor, the cheat (according to some/many) and the ball slinger that has benefited from his genius. There can be no denying the greatness of the New England Patriots over the last 16 years. As much as I used to hate the team (due to a personal dislike of an individual) I have to admire and respect what they have done, and based on that I am a fan of the New England Patriots, it is hard not to be. They have been in 7 SuperBowls, won 5 and lost 2 (both to the NY Giants) with Tom Brady now the winningest quarterback in Super Bowl hi...

Time to make a resolution Ok, so I may be a month late and a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but January is an odd month on a good day. What with the hangover from Christmas and New Years then a bout of the cold followed by a work trip to Hawaii (yes it was work damn it) and a day in San Francisco on the way back the month was not as productive as it should have been - apart from the work bit which I guess makes my bosses Jean Claude (the famous fight pilot and lover extraordinaire) and Mr Cloud happy - somewhat important I guess as I haven't won Powerball yet and selling my body on the back streets of North Hills, Raleigh is not going that well for me. So here we go 2017, bring it :) As some of all y'all might know I finished the Austin TriRock Olympic distance triathlon in September 2016 and raised almost $3000 for Make-A-Wish. Not long after I brilliantly tore my hamstring (and I really tore it up) and I that has been quite the painful experience - not something I r...

There is this very large prison colony off the West Coast of New Zealand, some of y’all might know of it as Australia, we know it as the thieving mongrel colony. There is an intense amount of dislike between New Zealand and Penal Colony Dingoland, especially when it comes to sport. Probably the apex of this happened in the gentleman’s sport of cricket when the Australian captain and his brother lowered the standards for bad sportsmanship with the Underarm delivery in 1981. They are the people we love to hate, the ones we love to beat, the ones that haven’t yet supported gay marriage and their race policy towards the Aboriginals has been, quite frankly, horrendous – and let’s not mention the snakes, spiders, deadly jellyfish and dingoes eating babies. They are quite frankly a giant bag of dicks, and we have fought side by side with them forever and we always will. The ANZAC spirit (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) is a legacy that will never pass and as much as we love to hate them, ...

No time to talk. Sometimes I have a brilliant idea of what I want to pontificate on and then the whiteboard downstairs in the foyer messes it all up by announcing that today is the day that *Saturday Night Fever first appeared in theatres back in 1977 and all preconceived ideas jump out the window and I am stuck with ‘that’ song in my head. Music loud and women warm, I’ve been kicked around since I was born Then I realize that there is a whole group/gang/gaggle/clusterfuck of people that probably don’t even know what Saturday Night Fever is and what it did for a weird Scientologist who doesn’t want to come out of the closet, never mind the cultural significance of bell bottom pants and disco in general. Those of us who were around at the time sincerely want to forget the dress code but still, guiltily, enjoy the music.  And now it’s all right. It’s OK. And you make look the other way. We can try to understand The New York Times’ effect on man Some of you...

Yes I know it has been a few weeks since I last wrote here in my ultra secret personal diary of a madman but it's not like I haven't had things to do, places to go, people to say. Actually, in all honesty I haven't had people to do, things to say and places to go and I have known what I have wanted to write here in my ultra secret personal diary but I just haven't done it. Sometimes life is like that, and sometimes you just gotta say "what the heck". So my buddy Tdom (with the silent and ineffective 'd' - I do love that joke) was talking to me the other week about not attending an event in Starbucksville as the flight back meant he might be late or miss the end of year company shindig. The event in Starbucksville was actually a pretty big deal, well at least it seemed like it to me. I cannot recall exactly what it was called but essentially it involved underwater people carriers with big nasty fireworks and the last time his brother would be command...

Sometimes these blogs are amusing, sometimes they have a little too much swearing (according to Mum) and sometimes these blogs may give you something to think about – this week I am hoping to combine all three to provide a thinky amusing sweary blog. Of course, as per usual, there is no guarantee that this week’s blog will be anything apart from a word jumble with a minor semblance of coherency but that is par for the course – and if you have ever seen me play golf, Par and I are not friends. It was a pretty well known fact back in 1988 in Dunedin that the cheapest beer in town was at the Army Territorial Mess but unfortunately the only way to be able to get in there on a regular basis was to sign a piece of paper committing to serve as a weekend warrior for a country with an incredibly proud military history for such a small nation. It was a tough choice but the price differential was pretty substantial for a student with limited access to funding and the chance to run around oc...