Paeroa as food mecca

Bruce Holloway reports in yesterday’s Waikato Times (not online):

Paeroa has long been world-famous in New Zealand for the fizzy L & P drink it gave its name to – but now it is poised to get the burgers, fries and shakes as well.

A new McDonald’s franchise is to open next month in Paeroa’s main street on the site of the old Criterion Hotel, which was demolished in June.

Meanwhile, mayor John Tregidga said rival brand Burger King had “made inquiries and was possibly looking” at a Paeroa site, and also recently opened in the town have been The Bakehouse café and a Chinese restaurant.

Sitting in the belly of Hauraki, Paeroa was ideally positioned to develop as a food mecca for people heading to and from Thames and Coromandel, Mr Tregidga said.

Headline of the week

The Economist introduces China’s new vice-president and leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping:

Xi who must be obeyed

Misadventures in newspaper publishing

More evidence for the Stratford Theory of Numbers. The Herald reports that:  

Drinking water flowing to almost one in six New Zealanders either failed to reach Ministry of Health (MOH) standards or escaped testing during 2007/08, the ministry says.

It has released its annual drinking water quality review , conducted by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research.  

So I did what I do and went to the source, the Ministry of Health website, and downloaded the full report, a 2MB PDF. Cambridge gets a tick, as does the children’s school which, being a country school, is probably on its own supply. Phew. The report was published in June (the file was created on 10 May and last modified on 17 June) so why it is suddenly news?

But the evidence for my theory is this: the report is not for 2007/08, but for 2008/09. Herald journalists can’t even cut and paste from a MOH press release without screwing up a number.

Stuff got the date right, printed a lot more data, and even added a comment from Labour’s water spokesman Brendon Burns who said the June report had been “buried”. Isn’t it his job to bring it to our attention?

Adventures in newspaper publishing

The Herald reports: A British newspaper launched its condensed and cheaper version today in hopes of luring back dwindling numbers of paper readers and resuscitating poor sales.

The Independent, owned by Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev, launched the spin-off called “i” – a daily tabloid that shares the main paper’s editorial staff, but focuses on news briefs and digested opinion pieces aimed at “time-poor newspaper readers” and younger people.

Fairfax could do something similar here with the Sunday Star-Times. They could produce a pygmy version and call it PSST.

Sentence of the day

I don’t know where she got it from but Home Paddock has this gem of a quote about the olden days when she and I were young:

Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn’t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.

As the parent who is privileged to make dinner five nights a week for two children with wildly divergent tastes, this approach to kid-wrangling appeals to me.

What I’m reading

Matthew Dentith has some Paul Henry-inspired apologetic syllogisms.

Eric Crampton has some JRR Tolkein-inspired Sharkeyisms:

Hobbits are known for their earthy pragmatism. Never interested in grand schemes or lofty ideals so much as in good beer and a good breakfast (and second breakfast, and elevenses, and lunch...). And so New Zealand seemed the right place for filming of The Hobbit.

But if you recall your Tolkien, you’ll remember also that Saruman came to Hobbiton, in disguise and calling himself Sharkey. Sharkey sold the hobbits on a grand scheme – a scheme to share the wealth and make everyone better off. Except the only ones that did well out of it were Sharkey and his gang.

Which leads us to Laurie Anderson and her Sharkeyisms, from her 1984 album Mister Heartbreak:



Chad Taylor too has been reading the Hobbit news and is dismayed to find himself agreeing with Fran O’Sullivan. Chad, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It happens to many men as they get older.

Simon Hoggart reminisces about English PMs. Margaret Thatcher, he says, was a mistress of the innocent double-entendre:

I recall Thatcher being asked in the Commons about pacifists handing out leaflets outside an army barracks. “I’m sure soldiers will know exactly what they can do with those leaflets!” she said, to outright laughter from the Labour side and surreptitious giggles from the Tories.

At a training centre in Putney, she was introduced to an extremely large youth who was working with a giant wrench. “Goodness,” she said, “I’ve never seen a tool as big as that!”

But Thatcher saved the best of all for her victory tour of the Falkland Islands. She was taken to inspect a large field gun, basically a ride-on lawnmower with a barrel several feet long. It was on a bluff, overlooking a plain on which another Argentine invasion might one day materialise. She admired the weapon, and the soldier manning it asked if she would like to fire a round.

“But mightn’t it jerk me off?” she replied.

Nick Cave outs himself as a fan of King Crimson:

Oh yeah, I love that stuff. They’re a strange group, because they go to places that I don’t really understand. I love the guitar work on Larks Tongues in Aspic, the first three quarters of that album is just blissful.

Hence the blistering guitar solo by Robert Fripp on “Super Heathen Child” on Cave’s new album, Grinderman 2.

Finally, the saddest sentence of the month:

Cindy Crawford takes pole-dancing classes to keep her marriage alive.

Competitive gardening

Danyl from Dim-Post writes:

Yes, I planted tomatoes. An heirloom tomato and a cherry tomato, surrounded by basil, marigolds and mustard. We shall see.

Stephen from Quote Unquote rises to the bait:

You say tomahto, I say what sort of tomayto?

I’m planting Black Krim from last year’s seed – yes, I am awesome – and some sort of cherry tom for the children. Basil seeds will go in tomorrow, plus Thai eggplant and some more broad beans as it’s probably not too late. Chillies (saved seeds, three varieties of size and thus hotness, awesomely) and spring onions, and no need to mention the varieties of lettuce cos that would just embarrass Danyl. And you.

Potatoes always go in at Labour Weekend so I planted a bunch of Jersey Bennes for Christmas, obviously, plus a couple of sports that have sportingly sprouted: probably Agrias. More of them will go in later. The baby Red Rascals that sported will make potato-salad lunch tomorrow. Wedges issues, baby!

I was too polite to mention in my comment at Dim-Post the passionfruit vines, grapevine (possibly not ideal time to plant but it was the only window open) and pumpkin.

Yes, pumpkin. Last year my wife’s farmer/scientist workplace had a pumpkin-growing challenge so she tried to grow some. Epic fail. I had a sport in the vegetable garden and delivered about a tonne (slight exaggeration). I have kept some seeds from the biggest specimens so I think I shall take on the farmers/scientists of the district for this year’s challenge. My wife may cheat by growing hers at our friend Jane’s dairy farm which has a vegetable-garden wilderness with all-day sun and, like, totally organic fertiliser. As Danyl says, we shall see.

Deep thought of the day

I’ve been assessing a thriller manuscript for a client. It’s good – it has legs. But every conversation is presented simply as dialogue, as in a playscript. I have been trying to explain why that’s not enough, why you have occasionally to show one or other character moving about, scratching their head, pulling a face, whatever – something the reader can see so they can picture the characters in the setting reacting to each other. In short:

Fiction is a visual medium.

Speaking of legs:

Dairy farming gets a bad rap

So here’s a good dairy rap from Yeo Valley in Somerset, one of the nicer parts of England:



Sample lyrics:

Yo I’m rolling in my Massey on a summer’s day
Chugging cold milk while I’m baling hay
Yeo Valley’s approach is common sense
Harmony in nature takes precedence
My ride’s my pride
That’s why you’ll never see it dirty
And I love it here man
That’s why I’m never leaving early.

Heterosexual males may – look, this is a wild guess, a total stab in the dark – enjoy the bit at 1:54:

Big up your chest and represent the West

Channelling Chad Taylor

New York novelist Jay Caspian Kang has a gambling problem and writes at length about it in the excellent internet magazine The Morning News:

Twelve thousand dollars lay wadded up in the glove compartment. I was trying to decide if I had what it took to drive home. To help delay a decision, I remember turning the radio to a Dodgers game. I don’t know how long I sat there listening to Vin Scully sing his nasally song of balls and strikes, which, even in the age of digital radio, still sounds as if it is being transmitted through a tin of victory cabbage. I remember thinking some nostalgic, self-pitying thoughts about my younger days. I forced myself to say out loud, “You are a degenerate gambler,” but doing so only made me giggle. I opened the glove box, pocketed the cash, and walked back through the sliding doors of the Commerce Casino, back to my table in the Crazy Asian 400 No-Limit Game and to the eight friends at my table who had kindly managed to save my seat.

Some time later, I drove home. All the money, of course, was gone. As I drove home through the network of highways that tie up a concrete bow just east of downtown Los Angeles, I felt no compulsion to slam the Outback into a guardrail. In fact, losing almost all the money I had in the world in six hours stirred up only a cold, scraped-out feeling of knowing-the calm that freezes out your brain when you watch someone younger make the same mistakes you made at their age. Staring out at the empty skyscrapers, I tried to figure out what might be the right reaction to losing $12,000. At the 7-Eleven on Venice and Sepulveda, I bought a bottle of Nyquil, drank half of it in the parking lot and drove the rest of the way home in a warm, creeping fog.

Don’t know about you but – apart from the setting – that sounds to me like something from a  Chad Taylor novel.

Monitor: Kottke.org