Tuesdays in Godzone celebrates the idea that in these fair but somewhat
shaky isles, journalists wake up on a Tuesday morning, deplete of anything worthwhile
reporting on. This Tuesday was no exception with only one Page one story screaming for immediate attention.
“Flasher causes bus to collide with police station” proclaimed the somewhat intriguing headline.
The essence of the story was that a 111 call was somewhat unnecessary when a bus collided with a police station after a man on-‐board allegedly flashed another passenger.
A woman on the bus screamed after the man exposed himself and the enterprising driver, assessing the situation with alacrity, locked all doors and headed to the nearest police station. But, not being overly cunning and thinking that the bus had been put in neutral when it was actually in gear it ended up colliding into the police station.
Naturally the offender was arrested...in an instant!
I hesitate to illuminate you with such distracting meanderings when in fact important things had in fact been happening in the world (even if not in ours).
New Zilland (as we like to call it) is the only place on this planet I would hazard, where the word parochial is linked directly to the word pride as opposed to words such as buffoon or bigot. Our news broadcasts pay little to no attention to international matters.
A famous piece of advertising here bemoans the fact that anytime anything or anyone good makes it on the world stage, that thing or one is immediately snapped up by Australia as one of theirs.
As helicopters and nets swoop one by one, our iconic figureheads are knocked off by those Jingoes across the ditch on our Western Island. It started with Phar Lap (a famous racehorse who after his death was stuffed, and then more ignominiously stuffed into a museum). Thrice stuffed as the Ozzies then claimed him to be one of theirs and he wasn’t likely to answer back given his state and that he was a horse.
On through our great bands (I hesitate here for a moment as you try to recall who I might be referring to). But of course you’d all remember the Muttonbirds, Split Enz and no less the Crowded House. All claimed to be good ozzie blokes.
Jane Campion does one dark movie about the wilderness of New Zealand and woops – she’s an Ozzie too. Then we get to the finer niceties of life and we bemoan the loss of one of our key icons – the Pavlova. A sugary concoction of meringue and cream and kiwi fruit (which they are now trying to call Chinese) – it too becomes a dinky di Aussie Pie. Rugby players by the dozen land up playing for them and often beating the crap out of us.
“Flasher causes bus to collide with police station” proclaimed the somewhat intriguing headline.
The essence of the story was that a 111 call was somewhat unnecessary when a bus collided with a police station after a man on-‐board allegedly flashed another passenger.
A woman on the bus screamed after the man exposed himself and the enterprising driver, assessing the situation with alacrity, locked all doors and headed to the nearest police station. But, not being overly cunning and thinking that the bus had been put in neutral when it was actually in gear it ended up colliding into the police station.
Naturally the offender was arrested...in an instant!
I hesitate to illuminate you with such distracting meanderings when in fact important things had in fact been happening in the world (even if not in ours).
New Zilland (as we like to call it) is the only place on this planet I would hazard, where the word parochial is linked directly to the word pride as opposed to words such as buffoon or bigot. Our news broadcasts pay little to no attention to international matters.
A famous piece of advertising here bemoans the fact that anytime anything or anyone good makes it on the world stage, that thing or one is immediately snapped up by Australia as one of theirs.
As helicopters and nets swoop one by one, our iconic figureheads are knocked off by those Jingoes across the ditch on our Western Island. It started with Phar Lap (a famous racehorse who after his death was stuffed, and then more ignominiously stuffed into a museum). Thrice stuffed as the Ozzies then claimed him to be one of theirs and he wasn’t likely to answer back given his state and that he was a horse.
On through our great bands (I hesitate here for a moment as you try to recall who I might be referring to). But of course you’d all remember the Muttonbirds, Split Enz and no less the Crowded House. All claimed to be good ozzie blokes.
Jane Campion does one dark movie about the wilderness of New Zealand and woops – she’s an Ozzie too. Then we get to the finer niceties of life and we bemoan the loss of one of our key icons – the Pavlova. A sugary concoction of meringue and cream and kiwi fruit (which they are now trying to call Chinese) – it too becomes a dinky di Aussie Pie. Rugby players by the dozen land up playing for them and often beating the crap out of us.
Only one person seems to have remained above being claimed by either side. Russel Crowe who quite frankly, they can keep. In fact the only person going in the opposite direction is a right wing nutter of a Queensland politican who has spent most of her life in a fish shop and the rest in Jail named Pauline Hanson of the One Nation Party. She is coming to live here to be one of us (thus reducing the IQ of both places). And she will never ever be blessed with an electorate of the nature of the one she stood in, known as Oxley in Brisbane. It helped coin the famous moniker of their Pauline as the Oxley Moron.
This has been a long and somewhat indirect way to the point I had always intended to reach in a day where the truly glorious news was that we all finally learnt the words to Whohoo Canada as Canada whipped their more illustrious neighbors at Ice Hockey - a game clearly stolen from their northern neighbors.
You would think that New Zilland would understand what it is like to be constantly treated as the poor and slightly inbred cousin. You would think that we would understand how infuriating it is when they simply adopt your best as their own. That we would understand how rare and how splendid a thing it is, to beat the buggers. But nary a word was spent on the subject the day after in our news.
Put simply -‐ Parochialism has no boundaries.
