by Paul Henry
It is criminal how Jesus rewards a hard-fought life with failing senses and, chances are, a stream of shit running down your legs. Thanks, Jesus. Something to look forward to. Thanks very fuck’n much.
PERSONAL:
When I am very old, I am going to call bad-mannered young people ‘fuckers’, and tell them to ‘stand aside or I will touch you with my pissy hands’.
ANECDOTE:
Several years ago I bumped into Sir Edmund Hillary at the front door of a bank quite close to his house in Auckland. I had interviewed Ed several times, and was about to speak to him when the span of his life stopped me in my tracks. It was only a year or so before his death, but neither of us knew that at the time. He was still a monster of a man with a craggy face like Everest itself. He was wearing sensible ‘old man’ clothes, which, like the man himself, belied his majesty.
I was leaving the bank just as the most recognisable New Zealander in the world was about to enter. What struck me was his obvious exhaustion as he paused midway up the four steps to the front door from the pavement; his huge hands grasping the metal handrail as though it were a lifeline slung between two mountaineers. I stopped and waited to greet him when he finally summited. We talked for a short time as he acclimatised to the thinner air at the bank’s front door, and then he went in to do his business. As I descended I thought, ‘These are the new Hillary Steps. Bastards to knock off for an elderly icon.’
VAGRANTS
There is no place for filthy vagrants living on our streets and under our motorways. They are antisocial and counterproductive. For the vast majority, their lifestyle is a personal choice. A lifestyle forged from dysfunction, mental illness, and bad decisions and relationships.
Let’s be honest. Vagrants are dirty, smelly and often rude, threatening and offensive. Businesses pay huge sums in tax one way or another, and they deserve protection from scum pissing in their alcoves, corridors and alleyways, putting off custom and generally detracting from the business at hand. Why do we put up with these vagrants? Why don’t they outrage society as much as the bastard gangs? I suppose people just feel sorry for them. Putting coins in their grubby hands so that they might perpetuate their disastrous lives.
This is New Zealand. We don’t have the space issues or financial problems of many other countries. We are in the position to move vagrants on, and councils need to find a backbone and tidy up this mess. I don’t care to answer any questions relating to what we might do with these smelly individuals, the options are endless. Namby-pamby do-gooders have had their chance. Just sort it — clean the streets.
SUPPLEMENTARY :
I have some sympathy for the agencies and volunteer workers who struggle to help vagrants. Give those mostly well-minded groups a break and ship these vagrants out now.
ANECDOTE:
I was leaving a supermarket in Balmain, Sydney, a city full of dirty vagrants. This one shitty mess inhabited the porch to Woolworths and essentially pissed people off with his awfulness.
As I was exiting in a line with other shoppers, there was a delay. Filthy man was confronting all the customers with his hand out and the imaginative line ‘Have you got any money to spare?’
Everyone in front of me whom I could hear said, ‘No, sorry.’ It came to my turn, and I said, ‘Yes, I have a large sum of money to spare, but giving any to you isn’t even remotely part of my agenda.’
He wisely moved on to hunt out another victim. The interesting thing was the reaction of these middle-class shoppers with no spare cash. They applauded me with their eyes.
PHILANTHROPY
Famous people like me often either support an existing charity by being an ambassador or spokesperson (not usually by actually giving their own money away), or alternatively start their own charity. Mostly they do this to keep themselves in the public eye during down-times in exposure. I have decided that it is time to enter the fray, partly as a result of a very long down-time in exposure. And as there was no charity to meet my key concern, I am honour-bound to start one of my own.
One thousand dollars a week is all it takes to reimburse boat owners out of pocket through ludicrous expenses and depreciation. Or, worse still — those who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars selling boats they can no longer afford or have grown tired of. Just a thousand dollars a week; that’s only a few coffees a day, a nice meal out, and a facial.
Somewhere, probably at a beach property in Omaha, an out-of-pocket boat owner waits. They wait for you! They wait for you to get off your lazy arse, put your hand in your pocket and contribute to their lives. They wait for you to offer them some relief from the vexing feeling deep inside all of them: that they have been swindled out of money by their own fuck’n stupidity.
The time is now … Don’t let a boatie spend a moment longer in remorse.
Remember: only a thousand dollars a week — that’s less than sixty thousand a year. Please give generously to SWH: Skippers Without Horizons.
ACCOUNTANTS
I have had the same accountant for decades. So long, in fact, that I have gotten to know his entire family. Loveliest people. The thing with accountants, though, is that they need to be above reproach. To be good, they need to be focused and serious and … well, boring! Mine is quite interesting for an accountant. Loveliest people. It’s just not so much Las Vegas as it is Palmerston North. Now there is nothing wrong with Palmerston North. Nothing that a fleet of bobcats couldn’t fix anyway. It is safer than Vegas. More fuel-efficient. Less chance of being accosted by a purveyor of prostitutes. It’s just that, all up, your Palmerston North is just so fuck’n boring.
Anyway, I have just received a letter from the company of chartered accountants that my accountant works alongside. They have very exciting news, they are pleased to announce. I know, I can almost feel the collective blood draining from our veins. So the thing is this: they are merging with another group, of— No, not acrobats. Not deep-sea divers. No, not caribou hunters or sled drivers. Now any of those could possibly justify the ‘exciting news’ claim. In fact, it is bad news in the excitement stakes, I’m afraid. They are, it seems, merging with another group of accountants.
Just before we slip into a coma, there is something else. It seems I have been invited to a ‘function’, which, if I accept, will give me a unique opportunity to ‘meet the team’. Light refreshments will be served. (Probably nothing too hot, or tricky to hold, or foreign.) As there is no mention of the on-site availability of a defibrillator, I have decided to stay away. The excitement caused by me slipping into unconsciousness would be too much.
ALCOHOLISM
Hello. My name is Paul, and I am an alcoholic.
I know this because my father, late in his life, announced that he was an alcoholic, and when I looked slightly surprised he gave me his definition of alcoholism, and said he clearly met the criteria. My father’s definition is ‘someone who needs a drink’. It doesn’t relate to the amount you drink. (He drank roughly a bottle of wine a night.) It is the need to drink. If ever you think, ‘Shit, I need a drink’, then you, in my father’s book, are an alcoholic.
So, as my father’s son I follow his definition and know myself to be an alcoholic.
There are other definitions, and, if you spend most of your life blind drunk and attend meetings with other slightly remorseful soaks the rest of the time, you might be offended by my statement. Well, take it up with my father — even dead he will give you a run for your money.
For me, it is a wonderful distraction from day-to-day life. And I am constantly looking for wonderful distractions for fear I might actually get something done.
I sit in the conversation area in my formal lounge and look over the rim of a wonderful glass of red wine. I stand in my garden, surveying all I have crafted in Nature, and sip a magnificent red. Or a shit one. The difference can be paper-thin. I just experience the moment with, at times, quite a cheap little number. It makes my magnificent moments a bit more … magnificent. What can be wrong with that?
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In fact, I love my alcoholism. It makes me a better man. It somewhat bothers some of those who love me, but that is only because they think it may overwhelm me one day. Well, it almost definitely won’t! On the comparatively odd occasion I pour a glass before 10am, it is only to finish a bothersome bottle that has found itself prematurely abandoned from the night before. I take the glass to the spa and remind myself how lucky everyone is that I am alive.
NOTE:
Although I have touched on this many times in this book, I feel it appropriate to reiterate here my complete disregard for the personal judgement of others. It is extraordinarily liberating to not actually give a shit. There will be those who criticise this book for God knows what. Actually, I can think of one or two things myself. Well, good for them. Their criticism says much about them, little about me. And if I am exposed as less than perfect, the liberator of that information has missed the whole point, as many will. It’s just me. And I pretty much don’t care. Try it if you can: I recommend it.
ATTRACTIVE PRICING
Am I the only person who still gets disappointed when I see the words ‘Up to’ or ‘on some stock’? It’s a problem created largely by font size. You approach a shop, attracted by a promise of ‘70% off sale’, only to find it is almost a whole sentence, but includes words in tiny type. ‘Up to 70% off sale on some stock.’ Bastards.
‘Oh, that’s nice. How much is that?’ ‘Well, sir, that is new stock, so it is not included in the sale.’ ’I see. So the good stuff that people might actually want is full price?’ Bastards.
Then there are the racks that say ‘All stock from $25’. What’s the point of that? You could have a sign on a car yard that said that. Nothing actually has to be $25, it just has to be above $25 on that rack. Oh, surprise — it is!
This kind of misrepresentation is sometimes so contradictory that you have to challenge it.
In Sydney, I took my youngest daughter, Bella, into a clothes shop emblazoned with signage that said ‘Everything in store $10 or less’. We went in with her last few holiday dollars, and she selected three items and presented them at the counter. One item was $10, one $12 and one $16. What the fuck? Impossible! From the outside, you were unable to see into the store for multiple signs boasting ‘Everything in store $10 or less’.
‘How can this be?’ I inquired. Look closely at some of the signs: ‘Some stock excluded!’ Sure enough. In small print on one of the many signs, the words ‘some stock excluded’. I pointed out that ‘everything’ is not an ambiguous word. You can’t exclude any stock, because there is no stock left to exclude as everything in store is $10 or less. Bella left two items behind. I flirted with the idea of a career in law. How could we live with ourselves supporting a lie? Illiterate bastards.
THE 99-CENT RUSE:
Can there be anyone left on Earth who is attracted to a price on the basis that it is well under the next dollar, due to the use of 99-cent pricing? So many businesses still use this old technique that dates back to the caveman. Mammoth steaks — $3.99 per kg. Sorry, ‘per lb’. Obviously cavemen were pre-metric. However, they did have access to the odd cent or two. No, premetric — they were pennies. Fuck!
Nowadays things are rounded, so, unless you are purchasing a lot of items at once, you are fucked.
I go to an Indian takeaway where everything ends in ‘99’. Sample menu: Butter Chicken $13.99; Lamb Rogan Josh $13.99; Lamb Saag $13.99; Chicken Tikka $13.99; Plain Naan $3.99 … They round up everything, always — even when you pay by card — thus rendering the whole thing completely pointless. But, I have asked myself, would I still go there if the curries were $14 each? Probably not.
ANECDOTE:
BevMo! is a liquor outfit in the States. And I love liquor! They always have sales for ClubBev! members. I am one of those. On my last trip to a BevMo! I couldn’t believe my eyes. A five-cent wine sale. Can it be? A bottle of wine for five cents? Well, almost. It was only some wines, and you had to purchase a full-priced bottle to go with every five-cent bottle. But a full-priced bottle at BevMo! is only about $4.50, so that means two bottles of wine for $4.55 plus tax. God bless America.
DISCLAIMER:
Historical currency references and prices relating to cavemen may be inaccurate at time of publishing.
BENEFICIARIES
One word for you: gratitude.
Countries are judged on how well they look after their most needy, and from where I stand New Zealand can be very proud. The only glaringly obvious problem with our social welfare policy, though, is that as a country we are a soft touch for those wanting a free ride. Many of them antisocial and counterproductive. Breeding zones for dysfunction and dissatisfaction.
Every New Zealander has a responsibility to be a good citizen and contribute. For some, it is hard to contribute and, through no fault of their own, they need the support of the greater community. That is perfectly acceptable, and in return for that support there should be a gratitude that the greater community is pulling together to prop up the individual. The beneficiary can be expected to meet certain criteria that must include being a good citizen — living responsibly and in accord with the best goals of our society. Beneficiaries should come under greater scrutiny than others as they live by the grace of others.
Why should any taxpayer be forced to facilitate the lives of those who take no responsibility for themselves and who care not for the hand that feeds them? Why should the children of hardworking parents go without because society is forced to support an increasing number of dysfunctional arseholes? Why should those who genuinely need support be cut short at times because too many bludgers are standing in front of them in the queue?
We need to be aware of the critical balance between those who support and those who are supported. You cannot grow the prosperity of a country and its people when too few are supporting too many. The current government is making steps in the right direction to toughen up on beneficiaries, but it always amuses me how many challenge the idea that any beneficiary should be expected to take responsibility for their own life. It belittles the goals of beneficiary advocates when they blindly suggest that these people are in some way special and untouchable.
So, what do you do? As a country we don’t accept drink-driving. We used to, but no longer. We have little tolerance for violent offenders, although there are still those who offer all the excuses for offenders they can. We need to ignore the apologists and grow a collective backbone when it comes to benefit abuse. It is not about a lack of compassion — it is about targeting those who need our compassion, and forcing scumbags and bludgers to step up. You do this by taking control of their lives and reducing their options. Bludgers should not be able to afford cars or luxuries of any kind. They are at best second-rate citizens, and should be treated as such. If your contribution is to live the life of a bludger off the back of hardworking citizens, your life should be miserable by comparison to the hard workers.
NOTE TO BENEFICIARY BLUDGERS:
You pay no tax. You contribute nothing but problems. You are stealing from genuinely needy beneficiaries, and from society in general. And don’t tell me you pay tax out of your benefit — that’s bollocks. You can’t pay tax with money you take from the taxpayer.
You know who you are. (Can you even read?) Get a job. Be a good parent. Show gratitude and be a positive contributor. I wish your free ride was coming to an end!
NOTE TO THE GENUINELY NEEDY:
By supporting the faux rights of bludgers you do yourselves a great disservice.
NOTE TO SOCIALISTS AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE COMPASSION COMES FROM THE BLIND SUPPORT OF ANYONE WHO WANTS IT:
Your low-rent attitude devalues our country. Let’s be aspirational. Cradle-to-grave is out-of-date, unaffordable and undesirable.
NOTE TO THE CHILDREN OF BLUDGERS:
There is a better life. Your options in life are truly exciting — take them. You have been set a very bad example, but surmount it and excel. Break the cycle! Don’t expect me to make exc
uses for you, and don’t make excuses for yourself.
CHILD ABUSE
It is perhaps the very worst crime it is possible to commit: child abuse.
Why would you ever bother trying to rehabilitate those responsible for the worst forms of child abuse? These animals and their apologists should be put to death. There should be no second chances. Children need love, care and energy, and if they are shown none of these, ship the children out. Then neuter the evil bastards that neglected their duty of care.
New Zealand has an abysmal record of abusive child-rearing, and one of the reasons for it is the bevy of apologists lining up to offer what they consider to be mitigating reasons for the abuse. That in itself is a form of child abuse. As a country we need to walk the talk on child abuse. No second chances. No mitigating factors. If you are guilty of this crime, you are done.
Some of the best parents had poor upbringings themselves. Some of the best parents can be found struggling with life in underprivileged households. Households they fill with love. These people still know the wonder of the opportunity to foster life. Their efforts are devalued when our society goes soft on abusers.