by Paul Henry
When schools start adapting references to Christmas and Easter in fear of disturbing those who don’t believe, it is time to shift your children to a nice Christian house of education.
If you are non-Christian and migrate to this country, suck it up or leave.
We are spectacularly tolerant, and, as a result of the large and vocal number of PC wowsers here, it is often at our expense.
God save us all!
SUPPLEMENTARY:
We are not happy to permit female genital circumcision. We are uncomfortable allowing foreigners to employ at slave rates. We require migrants to meet at least some minimum health standards in their food shops. But we seem willing to abandon much of our custom for fear we offend. What twats we are!
WRITING
I woke this morning in a very unusual state of calm. In those first few moments of consciousness I was almost completely void of outrage. Then it dawned on me: I had not finished this fuck’n book. My mind swung into the red. Fuck, I have no outrage — what I have is fuck’n writer’s block. Why did I ever agree to write this bastard book? What’s the point of it all? Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! (Three more words.) At this point I had been conscious for, at most, five minutes.
Now my mind was full of all the shit that people have written and had published in New Zealand. I am not just talking cookbooks, diet books, self-help books. So many words are published in this country, and, like using the internet, the skill is sifting through the chaff to find the wheat. Congratulations, you — on finding this piece of fuck’n genius.
All at once I realised the point of it all: Jesus has placed me here, at this time, to define first-rate informative communication, entertainment, and insight through writing. In this book I am truly doing God’s work. And perhaps through His divine, omnipotent guidance, He walks among us through these actual words. These actual pages! Jesus fuck’n Christ, this is bigger than I first thought. This is actually the new Bible. The word of God! Shit! We’re all healed.
Note to Random House:
Extend first print run by 10,000!
Note to other authors:
Really, do yourself and others the great service of calling it quits now.
Personal:
I now understand the light I see … Let me come upon your body and into your heart!
TERTIARY TIME-WASTERS
Nothing betrays your total lack of sound political perspective more than vocal condemnation of the need to charge students for part of their study costs, and the need to restrict access to tertiary studies on the basis that someone is a complete fuckwit or just a lazy no-hoper. The idea that hardworking people should be forced to pay for a system that encourages ‘students’, for want of a better word, to study themselves into adulthood, with no responsibility to fund themselves or meet an obligation to contribute, is mindless and fraught. In other words: the socialist dream.
Lecturers — in many cases themselves about as useful as something with no use at all — operate in an environment often with little bearing or relevance to the real world. Subjects are defended with vagaries such as ‘Anything that broadens the mind and stretches belief is beneficial.’ Wankery!
We need to train the eager and capable to be the best. We need to charge them so that they have a very real understanding of the cost and of their responsibility to contribute. We need to celebrate their achievements and reward them with opportunities that they in turn maximise for our mutual benefit. And the eager and capable need to be grateful for the sacrifices others make so that they may excel.
We also need to do a great service to the lazy and stupid, and stop them from racking up a bill at our expense that they will spend decades trying to avoid repaying. If you are lazy and stupid: grow up. Get a job. Or bugger off.
If you are eager and capable, understand this: you will need to work hard all your life to prop up the lazy and stupid.
I have witnessed first-hand the unbridled wankery of tertiary study. Groups of students taking odd notes as some befuddled duffer describes the emperor’s new clothes in their finest detail. As a country we just can’t afford to waste money on time-consuming dross like this!
Access to tertiary study should be based on ability and enthusiasm to learn. You should not be given priority on any other basis, with the exception of those who can pay a premium to study — and in doing so create more opportunity for others to study. Being of a particular race, sex, disability or sexual preference should have no bearing on your admission. If, for example, you are a partially-sighted Maori lesbian, you should not instantly be admitted to the bush skills course you applied for.
TOP NINE COURSES TO STUDY:
Socialism: how to recognise and destroy.
Medicine: fixing the rich.
Science: advancements in natural selection.
Engineering: building with opulence for a select few.
Teaching: primary and secondary only.
Making and spending money in the twenty-first century.
Art: weeding out the charlatans.
Law: protecting the rich.
Trades: working for the rich.
TOP NINE COURSES TO AVOID:
Socialism: how to promote and foster.
Bush skills.
Feminism in eighteenth-century Japanese poetry.
The relevance of Shortland Street to the modern-day eunuch.
Laughter as a tool in animal husbandry.
Psychology.
Wet-nursing for the homosexual.
Diabetes, depicted by impressionist art pertaining to the Treaty of Waitangi.
Anything pertaining to the Treaty of Waitangi.
DEFINITION: TERTIARY INSTITUTION:
Large structure inhabited by socialists with over-inflated opinions of their own importance. Place to promote the growth of academic snobbery and ill-founded political beliefs. Place to rest between doing little and doing nothing, while allowing others to fund your life.
ANECDOTE:
I had an acquaintance who left school and immediately started a small panel shop with borrowed money. He risked everything for a business that consumed all his time over several years. His eagerness and unfaltering hard work saw him employ two people and pay large sums in tax. He created wealth for himself, for his employees and their families, and for the country. He told me of his fury over a conversation with one of his schoolmates, who was bemoaning a student loan of around $80,000 that he had racked up getting a qualification in something he had decided did not suit him. The panel-beater told me that it was his $80,000, and he wanted it back.
FOOTNOTE:
I asked my literary assistant how she became such a good speller, as I bellowed ‘Is this how you spell “tertiary”?’ She replied, ‘University!’ (I think she hates me!)
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
I am mostly blind to others’ unfinished business. I am not of the opinion that ‘if it was worth starting, it is worth finishing’. Many things are started that were not worth starting, let alone finishing. Examples would be: MMP — more power to idiots, more idiots to power
the Alliance Party — what a bunch of no-hopers
the New Zealand Party — what a bunch of opportunists
rapid rail — like that’s ever going to happen
Hamilton — why?
reflexology — God give me strength
non-alcoholic beer — drinking it is just bloody ridiculous
Concert Radio — paying for it is just bloody ridiculous
However, when it is my unfinished business it is a crying shame not to see it through. Unfortunately, everything I do at some stage hits the heartbeat test: I only have so many heartbeats to spare, and when I feel something is taking too many of them, my enthusiasm for whatever it is dies.
Art. I am bloody good at it, but I just lose the will to live at the thought of picking up a tool to craft a masterpiece. Writing. I have written Earth-shattering literature in my head, but the thought of— No, I just can’t think of it!
At on
e point, I thought: children’s stories. Like modern art, how hard can that be?
Let me answer that for you now: not very hard at all. Just as you always suspected. So why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, for a start, too many people do. But mostly people don’t, because they can’t be bothered. I could be bothered, but only just.
So here it is:
1. A picture of a chunk of my modern art, part one of three (two yet to be completed), currently hanging in the mansion of a celebrity!
2. The beginning and end, with no middle, of my children’s story,
‘PYRMONT THE NOBLE PIGEON’.
BEGINNING: The town’s crumbling cenotaph remembering the war heroes of long ago is mostly avoided by people now. It is surrounded by cracked, uneven pavement, five large trees, and some seating for old people who can’t make it from the supermarket to the bus stop without collapsing into mad conversation with themselves on the poo-covered benches.
The poo is pigeon poo.
Pigeons live in this tired little area. They poo everywhere, and no one can be bothered to clean it up. Not the mad chatty old people. Not the homeless man who sometimes begs outside the supermarket near the cenotaph. (He may have his own poo problem going on. He can’t even get the food out of his beard.) Not the fat man with no legs who parks his wheelchair under one of the trees for hours every day so he can watch nothing happening, when so much is going on. Not even the town’s cleaners, who are almost never around. But especially not the hundreds of people who are too busy to even see the poo as they rush through this amazing place to get on with their very important lives.
MIDDLE: …
END: Sophie was very sad, but how wonderful was the truth.
After a long life of flying over the comings and goings of others, of being overlooked by so many, Pyrmont, the noble little pigeon knew that out of all the pigeons he alone had found his way into a little girl’s heart. And in Sophie’s heart he will live forever. And in her words, Pyrmont is a star. The End.
NOTE:
The above unfinished children’s story should be viewed as an extraordinary opportunity. And a challenge! I am giving it to you. No need to credit me. It is yours, free. I will even put you onto an excellent illustrator! Just pen a ‘middle’ and submit it to my publishers, Random House. They are quite rightly only interested in their own financial advancement, but will reject you respectfully if it is crap. If it is not, well good for you.
Now, to the illustration. My beloved and bewildered mother, Olive, has penned a range of pigeon pictures that, for your convenience, I have assigned a letter from A–F. Just pick your favourite from those on the following pages, and the cover’s done!
See. Not hard at all. The finer details can be negotiated now with your publishers, and my work is done.
TIPPING
We live in a comparatively safe haven of no tipping, but it’s creeping in. It’s something we must avoid at all cost. It’s insidious. And there is no going back.
In reality, what poses as tipping is often not tipping at all. It’s another tax.
If you ‘tip’ a server, you are gifting them money for providing you with service or entertainment that exceeds their duty, and in so doing improves your experience beyond the expectation of enjoyment you could reasonably have had. You don’t tip for a smile or friendly service. Why would you frequent an establishment where the staff were unpleasant? You don’t tip for nice food or product. That is your expectation. All of that should be the bare fare in any business you patronise.
I frequently embarrass those around me in the States when I refuse to tip for anything other than exceptional service. (To be honest, I do quite often get exceptional service in the States!) I explain, when glared at by servers, that I can’t possibly give a tip for substandard or even adequate service. Why would you? A reward for nothing? That’s not how life should work.
In America, they often print guides for tourists on tipping. Hello, tax rates! They say ‘15–20 per cent of the bill is typical’. Typical for fuck’n what?
The fact is that Americans have accepted the gratuity as a tax, of at least 15 per cent on most things. They have accepted that companies can pay staff well under the living wage on the basis that the customer will top up their pay to a satisfactory level. Tipping, my arse. Taxing. If you can’t afford to pay your staff satisfactorily, fuck off! I certainly don’t want to deal with you.
It is such a treat to be served spectacularly well by someone in New Zealand who has no expectation of being rewarded further. They are just great at their job. Let’s keep it that way.
SUPPLEMENTARY FACT:
Service in New Zealand is often substandard. I despise dealing with people in shops who are disinterested, ill-informed or can’t speak English. It speaks volumes about the business and its owners. If they don’t care enough about their customers to see them served professionally, they don’t deserve to have customers. If you put up with bad, disinterested service, you are a fool yourself and part of the problem.
ANECDOTE:
I used to eat often at the Harley Davidson Café in Vegas. The ribs were — and perhaps still are — great. The fit-out is fantastic, and the servers are very good. I would often leave a tip as a result of having had such a great time. While I am the sort of person who scrutinises the bill to ensure I am never the innocent victim of fraud or error, I don’t always scrutinise. So it was after the third or fifth visit to the café that I realised that they actually add a gratuity of 18 per cent to the bill before they give you the guide to tip. So in fact you are tipping in part based on the gratuity!
I’ll tip your tip and raise you. Fuckers.
I have never been back.
SUPPLEMENTARY ANECDOTE:
I was once chased out of an establishment, with my US manager frantically trying to avoid confrontation, when I loudly refused to tip an appalling Hispanic man, who had barely made eye contact while serving a shit meal. I had suggested anyone who offered a tip at their shit-hole needed their heads read. Such excitement!
TWEETING
I am not sure why Twitter outrages me, but it does. I understand it, but I don’t understand why you would bother with it. Perhaps I can see the mentally vulnerable becoming addicted for a short time, but surely no longer than a few days?
I have never tweeted, but people have posed as me and tweeted on my behalf. How do I know this? I have been told, by some of the many people who were apparently following ‘fake me’ on the tweet machine. The same people who had befriended another few ‘fake me’s on Facebook. Doesn’t that expose it for the sham it is?
Why are so many people so involved in social media? Every subtle nuance of life is painfully reported in real time. Why? Yes, it is a way to communicate, but there is so much of it that it is impossible to filter. It is impossible to verify everything. Who has the time with all the pressing things to tweet? Perhaps, though, verification is unnecessary. You just want to know where Kate Hawkesby is and what she is eating.
People will sing the praises of Twitter using examples of momentous events where tweets have been the fastest way to expose the truth. These same people bore the shit out of each other with minute-by-minute accounts of eventless bus trips. Fuck, we are so sophisticated.
Next time you interrupt a social encounter in the first person by focusing on your mobile, think: What the fuck have I become? Another mindless follower of a fad that is now controlling me. Twats.
SUPPLEMENTARY :
Kate Hawkesby is in Depot eating an iceberg wedge.
VANGUARDS FOR OUTRAGE
The vanguards for outrage are those who seek out outrage and promote it so that it might grow. They are the sort of people who create outrage by distorting something or taking it out of context and alerting people to it. They have little or no humour in them, and little or no capacity to recognise humour in others. If I gave a damn what others thought of me, these people would be the bane of my life.
If you are a vanguard for outrage, you will be ha
ving a fuck’n field day with this book. My advice to you: buy lots of copies and distribute them widely.
SUPPLEMENTARY :
If you are a vanguard for outrage posing as a journalist, you should be ashamed of yourself. My advice to you: stop misrepresenting the lives of others and get a life yourself.
THE ELDERLY
Old people are not nice just because they are old. Old people are just young people later in life. It is assumed by most that old people have a pleasant personality, but all too often, just like with people in other age groups, that is not true. In fact, automatically assuming old people are nice is quite condescending. I am not going to fall into that trap.
It seems to me that there are too many of them about — old people that is — but that may just be the circles I move in.
There should be no credit given for age when it comes to performing many tasks. Again, condescending. For instance, driving. If you can only drive safely at 30 kilometres an hour, you actually can’t drive safely at all and should be in a taxi. Or on the bus. Or locked indoors, for your safety and the sanity of others.