Posts by Rob Hosking
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Sometimes, I like to have a cup of tea.
Which takes me back to a mock celebrity vox-pops, early 80s: various famous Brits were asked how they felt about sex. Boy George was quoted as saying he preferred a nice cup of hot tea, "but it doesn't half make your willy sore."
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though I imagine Moses wasn't averse to the odd 'f bomb' himself. "These tablets are fucking heavy. Stop being so fucking lazy and carry them down the fucking mountain yourself!"
My favourite Moses-related routine - can't recall from where - has him looking at the tablets containing the Commandments, looking up at the Big J and saying "Look, this is a bit of a tall order - how about I take down the first 10 and see how we go from there?"
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Ah, Mr Connolly..
I saw him do a routine where he reckoned swearing was invented by St Paul.
The thrust of it was that if you were beetling along the road to Damascus on your donkey, and God hit you over the head with a thunderbolt, then F***** H***!!! is the only possible reaction.
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Re:Blood tests - I became a donor specifically to get over my 'thing' about needles. I've never actually fainted - apart from one test when I was already very ill, and that was after they'd taken the blood: I got up to walk away and woke up with a face full of carpet.
It is a very good way to get over it if you have a needle thing. As someone said, don't look at the needles. I always find a spot on the ceiling and concentrate really hard on it.
And Steve: they need common blood type donors because a lot of blood donees have common types of blood. I once wrote a feature on the blood bank and they said they tend to have more of a problem getting common types than the rare ones.
Other thing about that feature: when I was interviewing the blood guy he showed me the fridge full of plastic sachets of blood - about the same size and shape as those ones you can buy soup in at the supermarket. They'd already been centrifuged so the red cells were on the bottom and the white on the top in each sachet.
One was quite yellowy/murky and I asked about it . The blood bloke said the donor must have had a meal of fish and chips or something equally fatty a few hours before giving blood.
It looked ghastly - you could practically see streaks of lard in it.
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I have my (Dutch) great grandfather's pre World War II great coat, which I wore for three years of high school but abandoned it in Wellington when I moved to Auckland for uni because it weighs like a metric ton due to its horsehair stuffing. Man I love that coat,..
Given the age of that coat, and what my Dutch in-laws have told me about what it was like under the German occupation, that coat should definitely be treasured. The Germans took most of the fuel and the winters were bitter. That coat probably saved lives.
Best coat I've had was a classic long navy overcoat I bought at the second hand market they used to have on the corner of K Rd and Ponsonby Road (there's a service station there now). Cost me $15 in winter 1985. I always thought of it as my 'writers coat' - I had Aspirations in that direction at the time - and wore it for 10 years. When I moved to Wellington I gave it to my flatmate, who also had Aspirations in that direction.
He's since also moved to Wellington, done the Manhire course, won the prize that year, and published 3 novels. I'm certain my coat helped.
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Recomended listening for this activity, Winter Coat by Paul Kelly.
...been going round my head as well. It's either that or 'Fired our guns and the British kept a-coming...'
Two of the times I've seen Kelly in Wellington he's opened with that song, accompanied by comments on the Welly weather. Soft Aussies....
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in my new incarnation as a postmodern hippy dungbeetle,
Fantastic band name, The Postmodern Hippy Dungbeetles.
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So go on, make your life meaningful.
(I know this sounds like annoying hippy drivel, but I do actually believe this.)Well, then....
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but I think that one of the reasons that most species use sexual reproduction is because this isn't so.
I prefer to think it is because (a) its more fun and (b) the Cosmic Ironist in the Sky thought it would be a good way to both give us some light relief from existence and also to mess with our heads.
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Last time I looked in here the topic was eczema: I come back and its Neil Diamond. Only on PA...
Re eczema: I've lately discovered myrrh is useful treating my eczema. I have it on the legs - as a kid it was all over my feet and legs, especially in the spring and early summer. The main ointment I recall being used was betnovate – buckets of the slimy stuff. I now see it has a host of side effects listed. Oh well.
I also used to get it on the scalp but that doesn’t happen so much since my scalp became less of a sweaty rainforest and more like a fairly sparse savannah.
I’d only ever heard of myrrh in the Bible – and in a Peter Cook sketch about Christmas – but a masseuse recommeonded it to me. She also slipped a bit in the oil she was using on me and didn’t tell me about it until the next visit. It had worked. So no placebo effect there.
You can either rub it on or stick it in a bath (I do the bath thing, along with Epsom salts, which also help. Its also very relaxing. Deep sleeps.) You can get it in health shops etc. It smells like someone squeezed the juice out of some particuarly soggy bark.
The benefit wears off after about a week – which is the same as happens with the steroid cream my doc has given me. But the myrrh of course has the advantage of not being a steroid cream.
On the science/alternative medicne theme – I’m a natural skeptic on most of the alternative stuff but hey, if it works in practice I don’t care that it doesn’t work in theory.
My other half, who has a first class degree in biochemistry and can’t really be said to have an unscientific outlook on life, sees an osteopath for her fybromyalgia. It helps better than anything else we’ve tried.
On evolution being proved or not: a biologist friend once explained to me, in great and lengthy detail, that evolution is a theory but natural selection isn’t – it’s a solid scientific fact.
...although it may have been the other way round. Not sure now.
I saw Neil Diamond! At the Houston Rodeo. He was actually kind of great, with a knowing cheesiness. And leather pants.
This made me (a) laugh and (b) think of Graham Brazier.
Neil Diamond did some classic 3 minute pop singles until about 1970. Then he tried to be a…not a prog rocker, perhaps a prog popper. Only without the whimsy. And it was never going to work without whimsy.
I'm guessing someone had been told to include popular songs and so be relevant to the kids but hadn't really thought the whole thing through.
My primary school supplemented the official song book (‘King of the Road’ was big, I seem to recall) with whatever last year’s ’20 Solid Gold Hits Vol xxx’ was. Which meant ‘Delta Dawnn, wots that flau-wa you have on…’ and ‘Down ba the banks/ of the Oh- High – Oh..’
Along with selections from Joseph and His Amazing whosamy wotsit.
We never had to sing 'Sounds of Silence' but in 4th Form we had to study it as a poem, along with 'Eleanor Rigby'. I think some teacher or curriculum setter had a thing for music from 1966.