Why am I singing in a fish tank?

A good question, posed here in this literal version of Radiohead’s “No Surprises”:



More irreverence for Beatles fans here with a literal version of "Penny Lane":



and even if you aren’t a Beatles fan, this treatment of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” may amuse:

Why has NZX bought CPL?

I vaguely registered from this post at Home Paddock that some outfit called NZX had bought Feilding-based Countrywide Publications, which puts out seven titles aimed at farmers. They’re quite good and when my wife and I briefly considered moving to Feilding, CPL seemed a possible source of income for me. I did wonder who NZX were, and thought it odd that they had the same corporate initials as the NZ Stock Exchange.

Now all is revealed – it is the same NZX. Why on earth would Mark Weldon want to buy a rural publishing business? Cactus Kate has a very plausible theory, and it is a bit disturbing:

See now NZX own the editorial content of every publication that FOC (Father of Cactus) wades through and trusts as the primary trusted source of rural information. Watch for these publications to cement a firm pro-listing editorial view for Fonterra. The Fonterra Chairman is already on the NZX Board and a Fonterra listing is the NZX's wettest dream. The key to the future. And cashing out those share options that they all seem to have a hand in the pie with respect to as listed in great detail in the accounts.

Poetry Month

Home Paddock regularly posts poems – I do hope she has copyright clearance for them – and her latest points out that April is Poetry Month, which I didn’t know. There has been no sign of it here in Waipa. But as this is the last day of April and thus the last reason to post a poem, here is the only one I know by heart. It is by Denis Glover. I can’t remember the title, and can’t find my Glover Collected Poems, but it goes like this (punctuation probably inaccurate):

I’m an odd fish
A no-hoper
Among men, a snapper
Among women, a groper.

Come to think of it, I can remember another one by heart. It is by my old friend (and old law lecturer) Bernard Brown from his recent collection Sensible Sinning:

There was an old cove from Waipu
Whose limericks all stopped at line two.

In praise of Friedrich Engels

Many years ago I struggled through Stage II Political Philosophy, for which I had to read not only a lot of Marx but also some Engels. It was the most boring guff I have ever read, and that’s saying something. I assumed that they must have been crashing bores themselves. That probably is true of Marx, but a different picture of the co-author of The Communist Manifesto emerges from this piece in the Spectator by Tristram Hunt, author of The Frock-Coated Communist, a new biography of Engels to be published tomorrow (May Day, naturally). We learn that on his 70th birthday:

‘We kept it up till half past three in the morning,’ he boasted to Laura Lafargue, daughter of his old friend Karl Marx, ‘and drank, besides claret, sixteen bottles of champagne — that morning we had had 12 dozen oysters.’

This was not an isolated act of indulgence. During the 1870s his Primrose Hill home had become a popular venue for socialist excess. ‘On Sundays, Engels would throw open his house,’ recalled the communist August Bebel. ‘On those puritanical days when no merry men can bear life in London, Engels’s house was open to all, and no one left before 2 or 3 in the morning.’ Pilsner, claret, and vast bowls of Maitrank — a May wine flavoured with woodruff — were consumed while Engels sang German folk-songs or drunkenly recited ‘The Vicar of Bray’.

He was also a bit of a shagger:

‘If I had an income of 5,000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces,’ he wrote to the more monogamous Marx. ‘If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes, well and good!’

He was no chardonnay socialist – he was a champagne communist. Even Cactus Kate might have enjoyed his company.

Wankers I have met

They say: “I’m writing a book.”

I say: “No you’re not, you’re writing a manuscript.”

Sentence of the day

I almost wish I was back in the Mt Albert electorate to vote in the by-election, even though I wouldn’t be able to vote for Helen for the fourth time in a row. Dim-Post comments on Labour’s response to another David Farrar scoop of the MSM on Kiwiblog in his reporting of probable candidate David Shearer’s experience-based views of the utility value of mercenaries:

Watching the Labour Party match wits with Farrar is like watching a band of drunks try and play tennis against Serena Williams without racquets.

Paragraph of the day

‘It is the role of key staff within my office to dispense tequila and lime juice to the minister and visiting dignitaries as requested,’ McCully said. ‘Although it is not mandatory that they allow salt to be licked from their stomachs it is expected and will be noted in performance reviews.’

Dim-Post reveals what really goes on in the Foreign Affairs Minister’s office.

In search of the Golden Fang

It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

You know what this means - yes, just under three years since Against the Day there’s a new novel on its way from Thomas Pynchon. Inherent Vice will be published in the US on 4 August.

Climate Change Consensus Change

Alex Tabaroff recalls a post of his on Marginal Revolution from 20 October 2003. In it he describes taking his children to see the dinosaurs in the Smithsonian Institution the day before, and coming across an exhibit on the ice age that included this statement:

Initiation of glacial conditions may be triggered by surprisingly rapid climate changes. Therefore, the minor global cooling trend of recent decades. . . is being carefully watched and studied. Already the effects on food production are severe in many parts of the world.. . . We are now in a relatively warm period (“interglacial”) following one of several major glacial periods. It is not certain when the present interglacial period will end but. . . imagine the impact of another full scale glacial advance like that just a few thousand years ago!

He comments that “the ‘scientific consensus’ on global climate change has been much more variable than the climate”.

Sentence of the day

In case you didn’t already know, my former colleague Poneke is back blogging. To celebrate the occasion, here is a line from his latest post on climate change:

Selling “carbon offsets” is nothing more than a resurrection of the religious “indulgences” sold by churches in Europe 1000 years ago, whereby those who had “sinned” could buy an “indulgence” from the church to cleanse the sin.