Shelling Out At McDonald's

Yesterday I did the fast food breakfast thing.
Technically, the only time you should visit a fast food joint for breakfast is if your previous night’s dinner came in a fifth-of-a-gallon bottle. I’ve always liked the way Americans can talk about “a fifth” of some spirit or other.
Here in New Zealand we don’t have fifths. We have wholes. We’ve metricised ourselves, I’m thinking it was a way to save money.
Years ago we had fifths, except because we’re metricised they were 1125 millilitre bottles. Then at some point the liquor stores decided to abandon 1125ml bottles and just go with 1 litre bottles ... for the same price. I mean, who’s going to quibble over 125 mls? That’s half a cup. Except that you’ve now effectively put your price up about 10 per cent. I dunno. The math on that one is a bit beyond me and I’ve wandered off on a tangent.
So, anyway, I wasn’t hungover, but I did have a hankering for a McMuffin. I pulled into the drivethru and noticed something strange on the McMenu.
A sausage and egg McMuffin would set me back $4.20. But a sausage McMuffin, sans egg, was only $2. Which, through process of elimination, means that at McDonald’s an egg costs $2.20.
WTF? What are these eggs made of? Are they especially talented eggs? Do they cure cancer or something?
“New, at McDonald’s: the SuperEgg, each one individually laid and blessed by the God of Commerce.”
McDonald’s pricing amuses me anyway. When petrol companies put their prices up it’s like this big national news story. “Petrol’s just gone up three cents a litre!” But McDonald’s keeps quietly shifting its prices up with no mention at all.
I reckon, 10 years ago, that egg would have only cost 50 cents. That’s 50 cents shelled, cooked and blessed by the Queen of Good Karma. And even then we would have been “Fifty cents for an egg? Are you crazy?”
And now we’re paying $2.20 for an egg.
Except we’re not.Because the day I pay McDonald’s $2.20 for an egg is the day I don’t buy an egg at McDonald’s.

Brilliantly Bizarre

It was raining, so I popped open my social umbrella and attended the opening night of Sarah Harpur’s first solo act, “Life. Death. Pets.” at the Fringe Bar in Wellington.

If you live in Wellington, or are rich and within flying distance, I strongly encourage you to see the show as it only runs for a few days.

To be honest, I didn’t know much about Sarah beforehand. She has a popular blog, Harpur’s Bizarre, which Google thinks was ripped off, corrupted and used as the name of a magazine somewhere.

Sarah is quite amazing. Who else could simultaneously convey a sense of nervousness and confidence? All while delivering some fantastic material about her life, her insights into death and quite a lot about how, when growing up, she viewed her pets as her children. Her cute, delicious children. Who ate each other (extreme sibling rivalry) and taught her graphic lessons about procreation.

How many people could get the joint rocking to a song about her dad’s death? Yes, Sarah, I want to join the Dead Dad’s Club too. My own old man went in a way not totally dissimilar to yours. I really related.

To demonstrate her inherent weirdness Sarah interrupted the show with an audio-visual presentation from her youth, where she presented her own hilarious interpretation of the Bain Family slayings in Dunedin. Complete with action figures with Bain faces pasted on. See it here (but later because I haven't worked out how to do one of those "open in a new window" link thingies).

It was opening night, so most of the front row was Sarah's family and friends. Which, mixed with the cosy venue, meant it felt like we were all in Sarah’s living room, being treated to an hour of an intelligently unhinged person's brilliant stream-of-consciousness rant.

I sat at the back and recalled attending the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal in 1996. And wished many of the acts there could have been half as good as Sarah.

Finding A Park For Your Satellite

Anyone who lives in a city knows how hard it is to find a good parking spot. We take this for granted.

What you probably don’t realise is that satellite parking spaces are filling fast too.

I discovered this after an interesting Saturday night. I have an alert on Twitter which lets me know when the International Space Station will be crossing over in sight of Wellington. Despite having had this service for at least six months, I have seen the ISS precisely twice. And one of those was sheer fluke.

So on Saturday I was out at Tawa having dinner with my friend Steve and his family. I thought it would be fun to take out some binoculars and watch the ISS fly over at about 6.50pm. I set an alarm on my cellphone to remind me.

It was a beautiful night; cloudless with just a hint of a breeze. The whole family (there were nine of us) piled out of the house with three minutes to spare. I pointed to the south-west and said: “It’ll be quite bright and will appear down there somewhere.”

The binoculars were passed around. The first candidate turned out to be a low-flying plane. Then somebody said: “I see it!” and pointed straight up to a bright star glinting above.

The person with the binoculars said: “Yes, it’s definitely a satellite. It’s moving a little bit and I can see it’s in two parts.”

This made sense, because at that time the ISS had a space shuttle attached. Yet I had seen the ISS before, and it was motoring. It wasn’t just sitting there.

Steve helpfully suggested: “Maybe it’s not the ISS. Maybe it’s a geostationary satellite?”

Well, that sounded logical. But then I noticed that what I first thought was a plane was in fact the ISS. Which seemed fair because I’d previously seen a plane that we thought was the ISS.

But it started me thinking: are there any geostationary satellites sitting above Wellington? Well, I investigated yesterday, and discovered that, no, there are no satellites sitting permanently over the city in which I live.

That’s because apparently a geostationary satellite can only remain effectively stationary if it is directly above the equator. It has something to do with inclination and “eccentricity”.

I’d found a list of commercial satellites in geostationary orbit dated December 2009 and it totalled 287 (an abnormal amount owned by Boeing).

Now, for a satellite to remain in geostationary orbit it must be at an altitude of 35,786km. Adding in the Earth’s diameter we’re looking at an orbiting circumference of 264,924km. So, at this point, in theory, there’s 923km available for each satellite. Which is a pretty big parking spot.

But the owners of any satellites will want to ensure it remains over a certain point of the Earth to get the best signal. This means that even though each satellite “sees” more than 40 per cent of the planet’s surface, there are an ever-decreasing number of parking spots over any particular city.

I wonder how long before somebody starts putting in parking meters up there.

It Just Gets My Goat

Criminal behaviour has raised its ugly head in New Zealand again this week.

Geordie, a beloved old goat who quietly munches on grass on the outskirts of New Plymouth, was spray-painted by … well, morons.

On one side of Geordie’s flanks the letters “FTP” now appear in bright orange. When I first saw this I thought: “Wow, internet geeks are getting serious. They’re promoting File Transfer Protocols through guerrilla tactics.”

But this was not a real-world attack by hackers. No, apparently, this was an anti-police slogan meaning Fuck The Pigs.

Did your mind just jump where mine did? If you want to write “Fuck The Pigs” then why the fuck do you do it on a goat? Did you fail animal identification 101? Did duck goes quack, sheep goes baa, cow goes moo, and pig goes oink confuse you?

I can picture the scene:
“Is that a pig?”
“I dunno. I think so.”
“Wait, aren’t pigs supposed to be pink or something?”
“Pink? Are you gay or something? What animals are pink?”
“Shut up. OK, now, `fuck the pigs’… how do you spell `fuck’?”
“Um, F-um-U-um-Q?”
“No, it’s F-U-K isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t sound right. Isn't it meant to be a four-letter word?”
“Well FUK has four letters, doesn't it?”
“Look just put FTP.”
“Yeah, everyone will know what it means.”

And how did they expect this sort of act to help their cause? If they wanted to make a statement, paint it on the side of a police patrol car, not the side of an innocent 20-year-old goat. All the people of New Plymouth now want more pigs in town to tackle illiterate morons with spray cans.

I’d actually love to find out who did it. Because then I’d go out to buy my own can of spray paint, and little Bertie Brown would wake up one morning with the words “Once Fucked A Goat” painted across his face.

Two Questions For You

I like that my blog gets a reasonable number of hits, and that a few friends post comments. But I’m hoping to get a big response to this one, because the subject really interests me.

What was your first memory? And what was your most magical dream?

Most people I talk to say they cannot remember anything before five. But my first memory – and yes, it is very vague – is of actually being in my crib. It was one of those with the sides that slide up and down, and I can remember it being down. And I looked out into my parents’ bedroom.

I can’t recall exact chronology, but I remember various things before I turned five. I can remember reaching for a door handle and finally, aged four, being able to reach it. I remember my mother teaching me the alphabet so that I’d have a head start before starting at (then) primer one (strangely, it was pronounced “primmer”). I remember my fun toy car. I remember being spanked for wetting my pants – which was vastly unfair because it was the fright of seeing the woman who spanked me that caused me to wet my pants in the first place!

And I remember my most magical dream. This was around age four and I was in my own bed. I dreamt of a witch coming to get me, but she was on the other side of a pond. The fright of thinking she might get me caused me to wake up and seek the security of my parents’ bed.

They had a small window in the wall just behind their bed. A streetlight outside shone vividly through the curtainless window and onto the big mirror on the vanity unit. I remember lying there, awake, afraid to go to sleep because the witch might be there waiting for me.

I can only assume what happened next was a dream. Yet it was so real I remember it in detail to this day. Above the bed a circle of golden dust appeared and began circling clockwise. Then all these great toys – I particularly recall a red firetruck – appeared in the golden dust.

Like Damocles Jnr, I knew that if I reached for them the whole thing would disappear. So I just watched for a while, and then they faded back into nothingness. Sad that the firetruck got away. I never wanted or had a red firetruck in my toy collection – but that one would have been nice.

So, what was your first memory? What was your most magical dream?

Super Awesome Mega Battle Tank

Between about 1982 and 1986 a young photolithographer at The Evening Post newspaper in Wellington muddled through a strictly amateur film-making project.

Five days a week he would work with chemicals that would make a modern health and safety officer faint, and on the weekends he’d head out with mates and workmates to make his movie.

OK, it was badly acted and the script was… well… the script was… well, never quite actually written. But that didn’t stop this determined young man from ensuring his workmates kept the exact same haircut for four years and didn’t stop him from getting government assistance to finish the project off.

The film ended up being shown at Cannes. The film-maker, a lad named Peter Jackson.

Now, 20-odd years later, in the same place where Sir Peter toiled preparing newspaper page negatives for the platemakers, another film-making project is taking place.

This is nothing new for the building. The Dominion Post building is huge, but really only the top six floors (ie, those above ground) are used. But if you take the stairs you discover they go down. And keep going down, into like a labyrinth of strange nooks and crannies. This large empty space has been home to various TV ads and at least one feature film (Stickmen).

In one particular area, my mate and workmate, Bill, has built his intergalactic space tank. Well, the interior at least. It has flashing lights and old car seats and ancient joysticks and a dodgy wooden wall that might fall either forward (and flatten the actors) or backwards (and screw up the take) at any moment, and some cheap computers for added technology.

There’s also a sofa and a ukulele for when Bill gets bored.

For the past couple of years he and a few mates (alas, not me, though I’ve dropped several unsubtle hints) have been involved with putting Bill’s sci-fi series together. Bill’s written the script and they’re churning through the 13 or so three-to-five minute episodes.

They’re incredibly badly acted, and the sound-effects are over-the-top, and the exterior shots are obviously a plastic toy tank sitting on a rock, and the script is absolutely brilliant. OK, maybe the editing is in league with the acting, but you can’t expect perfection – or anything close – on a zero budget.

Anyway, the first episode went up on Monday (after a long wait). You should definitely check it out … and encourage your friends to, too.

http://www.kiwispacepatrol.co.nz/

Mockery Time!

A photographer at work took this picture and offered it to me for this blog (thanks, Steve!). It’s a piece – piece being the operative word – by a Chinese artist, but other than that, I know nothing about it.

I have no comment about its artistic merit and do not mean to belittle the artist's work. But I'm going to. I feel irresistibly obliged to mock it, and invite you to join me in doing so. Unless you're the artist, in which case, I'm really very sorry for making fun of your work and truly hope that some day you'll get around to finishing it.

Now, to get started:

* You’re not half the child your brother Greg is.

* Um, Mrs Johnson, we’re not sure if it’s a boy or a girl, and we might have to go back in.

* Oh, I didn’t notice the lower half was missing; I was busy doing my nails.

* Mrs Wilson, just what DID you smoke during pregnancy?

* She put the “mid” in midwife.

* We’re afraid the child might have some bladder control issues later in life.

* There you are, Mrs Jones. You get the other half when you’ve paid the bill.

* Mrs Evans, exactly how much drywall were you eating each day?