PAULINE LETTERS TO CHURCHES

Dear Catholic Churches

I'm not entirely sure which one of you that I need to address so please accept my apology for contacting you all.

As you may know I frequent your establishments on a regular basis, usually on a Sunday.
I dress my best for these little outings and always wear a hat and carry a handbag. Occasionally, not always, I wear gloves. This is the reason that I am contacting you. I was just looking for my favourite gloves - the white ones in soft calfskin - and cannot find them. I have only ever taken them out when visiting Church so I can only think that I left them in one of the Churches on an earlier visit. The only problem is that I cannot remember which one. If you have found a pair of white calfskin gloves can you please let me know and I will call in to collect them. I always try and sit on the left hand side at the rear so this is where they may have been found.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Pauline.

THE TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY

Saint Anthony* had a problem. Actually he had a few problems that all added up to one big problem. Saint Anthony was of an addictive personality. He liked to gamble, drink and to fornicate.

He was forever tempted.

So what? You might ask. Isn't that what keeps casinos going and is the raison d'etre for John Key's (yet to be proved disastrous) collaboration with Skycity in Auckland. How else are they going to recoup their investment unless the punters gamble drink and fornicate there?

Well, yes but this is supposed to be a saint we're talking about here.

Anthony was born in Portugal but spent a lot of time in Italy where he found society less restrictive. He was able to satisfy his peccadillos in the various Italian city states, moving from one to the other until he settled in Padua.

To be fair to Tony he tried to lead a straight life but was forever tempted by city nightlife and the temptations of the flesh.

Various bishops and popes would send him letters admonishing him on his behaviour and slipping little reminder notices into the letters which he would conveniently lose (he later was awarded the title 'Patron Saint of Lost Things').

After Tony's death in 1231as the Church was a bit short of role models he was canonised and his 'temptations' were rewritten as actual temptations from the Devil and his cohorts (it was the Middle Ages after all)

* The title 'Saint' was bestowed after Antony's death as a way of the Catholic Church perpetuating the myth that its ambassadors were special and free of the sins that the rest of us have.

HYPOCHONDRIA

Now I know that I'm bad enough  - and The Old Girl has banned me from consulting our big medical book and the internet when I think that there's something wrong with me. I usually self-diagnose that I have Chikungunya fever, Chagas disease or West Nile virus when it's really a cold, sunburn or cramp- but friend and neighbour Rod is even worse.

He wasn't at tennis this morning so I sent him a text to ask what was up.
"I'm a bit crook mate" he said and later texted "I might have to write my will I think I'm dying"

'I'M DYING"

Of course I ignored this but did call around to see him after tennis and he did look like shit.

Later in the afternoon he sent me a text saying that he thought he had Leptospirosis and he was getting a bit wound up about it.
I called him and established that his wife was at work so I offered to drive him to the White Cross Emergency clinic in town. I picked him up and we did that with me trying to keep as far as possible away from the sad looking sodden pile that he was. We waited around at the clinic until he was seen and he was checked over for about a half hour.

No Leptospirosis.

Maybe Flu - the doctor gave him a prescription for something but said don't have it filled yet - see how you are in a couple of days first.

More likely a cold aka 'Man Flu'



And I thought that I was bad.

THE TIMES ARE STILL A - CHANGIN'

I went to Auckland for the weekend. The Old Girl arrived home from Canada on Saturday morning so I went down to meet her.

We had a nice early evening meal at our favourite Mezze on Saturday night - Marrakesh chicken salad for her and Spanish Tuna Dip for me - both yummy -

 ........   before watching the rugby on live TV in the apartment.

"I reckon you only come to visit me in Auckland on the weekends now because we get Sky Sport in the new apartment" she accused me.

"Not fair!" I said. "Bob Dylan's also playing tomorrow night".

And, sure enough we'd booked for Dylan on Sunday night at The Arena.

This was a stunning performance with Dylan deconstructing and then reconstructing a cross section of his songs to create something new and excitingly different. Some of the audience slow on the uptake only recognized songs when they were more than half-way through and then burst out in applause.

It appealed to us with chunky phrasing and different key changes sprinkled with some recognisable phrases. Magic.

The band were outstanding. You got the feel that they really love getting in and putting their stamp on these Dylan 'recreations' and not just replicating the songs as heard on the albums.

I hope that you can find some recordings on YouTube of his current show circuit.

For a pathetic review of the Auckland concert read this prat Jacques Steenkamp:


PRAT REVIEW


No, on second thoughts don't read that but try and find a review written by someone who really knows their music - maybe like  this guy Bob Gordon:

BOB GORDON

SILLY AND UNENGAGING

No not mine or Richard's posts - I mean the fillim (to quote Kim Hill) I saw yesterday.

I know that I should have known better and have never watched any films in this series before as I can't stand Tom Cruise but a friend recommended seeing it. She'd seen it twice already! Admittedly the attraction for her were the mountain scenes set in the Mackinnon Pass area of Milford Sound which were spectacular.

The only problem was that these were at the very, very end of a long and unengaging film. Crap in fact. Fiordland (and Norway) was substituting for Kashmir. It's just a pity that this wasn't at the start of the film so that I could have walked out after the sequences were finished.

Still, I admit the New Zealand scenery bits were great and the helicopter stunts special.

FIORDLAND BY AIR

I liked the Jason Bourne series. The films were snappy and riveting and the plots sort of made sense. This ponderous pap from Cruise though is nowhere near riveting even though it's filmed in vibrant cities (Berlin, Paris, London) and has any amount of car and motorbike action. Dull.

ENEMY ACTION

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”

- Goldfinger

*****************

I saw the James Bond film GOLDFINGER in about 1965 with my brother. We both had a newspaper stand down town on Saturday afternoons in what was once Grey Street. Downtown newspaper stands were very sought after as with 6 O'Clock closing of the pubs, the drunks would buy newspapers (The Evening Post) and tip generously - sometimes a 2 bob piece or a half a crown for a 4-penny paper. Great. We used to have pockets bulging with coin.

We lived in Vogeltown so on this evening we took the Brooklyn bus up to the Brooklyn picture theatre (I can't remember the name of it but it's not the more recent trendy one there). I remember where we caught the bus - the corner of Willis Street and Manners Street and what we had for tea - a crappy fish 'n' chip meal from a Chinese takeaway there by the bus stop. Chinese takeaways didn't make fish and chips as well as the Italian and Greek shops did.

We were going to see the new Bond film - Goldfinger which seemed pretty good at the time and we walked home which was a lot safer then for kids with pockets full of money to do at night.

*******************

Anyway - enemy action!

We've had our credit cards hacked again.

This happened first a few months ago when we had a lot of hotel charges from Amsterdam put on our account - about $12,000 worth. After a couple of months of hassle we had all charges reversed and the credit cards changed. We had to change all automatic payments registered on the card and set up new accounts for any occasional purchases like Uber, Netflix etc - a real hassle.

Today I saw a phishing email purportedly from Apple announcing a withdrawal - I didn't click on it for either confirmation or to unsubscribe and instead went to the bank's website to check transactions. Sure enough there were many transactions to Apple in multiples of $51.99 and $103.98 that totalled about $5000. Bastards! I immediately contacted the bank and have had the cards cancelled again.

I'm going to have to go through the dispute process again and hopefully will get all the charges reversed. I've cancelled the Apple account - we've had $1.49 a month paying Apple for iCloud storage. I think this is a rort so I've dumped it .... but ..... get this. The last time this happened and we had to cancel our credit cards we had to reinstate the new credit card details with suppliers we wanted to continue with - energy company, Lotto, Airlines etc but didn't change it for Apple. Surprise surprise - Apple got the new details anyway and the $1.49 per month storage payment went on regardless. I should have done something about this.

Checking it out today I discovered that Apple (Apps, iTunes etc) have, via Apple Pay, an arrangement with banks whereby they get automatically updated of any credit card changes. WTF! I contacted the bank again and asked them to delete any connection between our cards and Apple Pay and to also drastically reduce the credit limit on our cards - something that I should have done before.

I'm going to wean myself off using credit cards as far as I'm able and have removed all automatic payment arrangements already. I'll have to see about paying for casual purchases (tickets, Lotto etc) via internet banking ior revert to cash.

I think that THE CURMUDGEONLY LUDDITE has a point don't you?

MEGAPROJECT

I went to see THE MEG yesterday - basically just filling in time.

I'd heard about it on National Radio yesterday morning and was interested in the fact that it had largely been filmed in New Zealand with the inside set and underwater shots made at Kumeu in Auckland.

The film set is a partnership between New Zealand Film Commission, Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development. Warner Brothers and Gravity Pictures. It was developed for filming MEG which has just been released this month and hopefully will be used for other films in the future and includes the first two film studio water tanks ever built in New Zealand.

THE MEG is about an undersea observation program sponsored by a silly billionaire (think Elon Musk)  - that gets attacked by a prehistoric shark which they foolishly bring to the surface from the deepest parts of the ocean. Why of course it didn't  explode given the extreme pressure and temperature changes isn't explained but of course, in silly disaster films like this they never let facts get in the way of a 'good' story. Richard will love it.

It stars another of Richard's movie heroes - Jason Statham, UK's version of Nicolas Cage a one expression actor ........

...... usually surprise. The guy can't act but, to be fair in this film it doesn't matter. There's lots of shots of submersibles and control panels and things getting eaten by a shark. It's chock-a-block full of allusions to JAWS in the same way that Quentin Tarantino steals things from earlier films and pretends to be 'giving homage'. See HERE

The film cost about 150 million dollars to make seems to be a worldwide success already so look out for many sequels to this one.


I won't be going to see any more.

POLITENESS ISN'T DEAD IN NUOVA LAZIO

We decided to inundate Richard with birthday wishes this morning and were pleasantly surprised that he took time to reply to each of them.

I know, I know, at his age he doesn't have a lot to do but still - he could have ignored them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RICHARD (OF RBB)

Well his birthday is tomorrow, Monday 20th August but I'm off to bed soon and know I won't be up as early in the morning as the silly old bugger so wish him birthday wishes tonight.

Hope you have a good one Richard  ....... and also a happy birthday!

Some core members of CURMUDGEONS INC.ⓒ also want to wish you well.


Cheers.

NEW POST - THE WINE GUY

HERE

NEW POST - THE DARKER CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE PHILOSOPHICAL CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE CULTURED CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE CURMUDGEONLY LUDDITE

HERE

NEW POST - THE FOOD CURMUDGEON

HERE

NEW POST - THE MUNDANE CURMUDGEON

HERE

CULICIDAE

What's annoying, makes a continuing droning noise and after contact with it leaves you feeling irritated and itchy?




No, not Richard (of RBB) .......


 it's a ......

MOSQUITO.

NOT THIS

BUT THIS

********************

So, why are we talking about mosquitos?

It's because tomorrow is the 20th of August and it's:

WORLD MOSQUITO DAY

.

MAYBE I REALLY AM GOING CRAZY ..........

..... because in my previous posts I forgot to mention one of my most favourite songs of all time.

This song is definitely one of my 'funeral songs' - you know, one of the pieces of music that you'd select before you die to be played at your funeral.

And the song?

Van Morrison's 'Cyprus Avenue' from the Astral Weeks album (1968).

CYPRUS AVENUE

For me, this is a perfect song that's been part of my life experience for now 50 years.

To my regret, old Van didn't sing this at the Dublin concert we saw a couple of years ago.

Well, I'm caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
Caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
And I'm conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do
I may go crazy
Before that mansion on the hill
I may go crazy
Before that mansion on the hill
But my heart keeps beating faster
And my feet can't keep still
And all the little girls rhyme something
On the way back home from school
And all the little girls rhyme something
On the way back home from school
And the leaves fall one by one
And call the autumn time a fool
Yeah, my t-tongue gets tied
Every, every, every time I try to speak
My tongue gets tied
Every time I try to speak
And my inside shakes just like a leaf on a tree
I think I'll go on by the river with my cherry, cherry wine
I believe…

******************* 

This post has been brought to you with the assistance of Noval 20 y.o. port
(not cherry wine -sorry)

NEW POST - THE WINE GUY

THE WINE GUY wrote a new post:

AGEING GRACEFULLY

MY CAT

I was reminiscing with my cat yesterday about the houses we've lived in.
She's eighteen going on nineteen and we've lived in a few places

She first lived in number 4 Harbour View Road Point Chevalier until she adopted us living at number 2 Harbour View Road.

We then moved briefly to number 5 Harbour View Road  before buying a house in St Michaels Avenue Point Chevalier.

While renovating this house we bought another in Wainui Avenue Point Chevalier before returning to St Michaels Avenue.

We then moved from there to our present McLeod Bay residence.

Willow tells me then that she's lived in six different houses.

I'm not really convinced that she does remember but won't be able to put it to the test. When she moved from number 4 Harbour view Drive to number 2, as there were no boundary fences I guess she just assumed that all of the garden and lawn areas and access to the beach was all her domain.



When we moved to number 5 which was across the road and down about 50 metres she used to trot back down to numbers 2 and 4 during the day for a couple of hours before returning. She never stayed away long.

"I told you that I'd be back"

Rosie the dog used to alert me to the fact that Willow was trotting down the road. She would anxiously keep an eye on her travel from the end of the driveway and bark to me.

"That damned cat's gone again"

When we had the holiday house in McLeod Bay we brought Willow up for weekends and holiday periods and she happily settled down for the stay without fretting.

Willow on holiday

This made it easier when we finally relocated to McLeod Bay (different house) and we had no concerns about Willow trying to head off back to Auckland.

She settled in well and it's been her home for nine years now.

SO IT'S NOT JUST ME THEN?

In the previous post I put two versions of Gnarls Barkley's song 'Crazy' which make for great listening.

I promised to do a quick search of other 'Crazy' songs and here are a few from a pretty big pool.

NIGHTMARE

FIRE

REST CURE


Yes, old Arthur Brown had lots of 'Crazy' songs. I was looking for his excellent 'Crazy (For My Baby) which is on his DANCE album but couldn't find it.



Here's a selection of 'Crazy' songs some superb and some diabolical rubbish.

Enjoy?


CRAZY SHE CALLS ME

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE

CRAZY 'BOUT MY BABY

UNWELL

SHE DRIVES ME CRAZY

PSYCHO KILLER

AEOROSMITH - CRAZY

CRAZY TRAIN

CRAZY IN LOVE

LUST FOR KICKS

CRAZY GIRL

FIRE AND RAIN

PEOPLE ARE CRAZY

I WANNA BE SEDATED

CRAZY BITCH

LET'S GO CRAZY

NE-YO - CRAZY

KAT DAHLIA - CRAZY

SEAL - CRAZY

JEEZY - RAZY WORLD



And of course the great Patsy Cline

CRAZY - PATSY CLINE

CRAZY

Am I going crazy?

I don't really know the answer to that. It's one of those things I guess only other people can speculate on. You don't really know it yourself as you are 'too close to it".

I rattle about this place on my own most of the time with the unusual circumstance of The Old Girl living and working in Auckland during the week and spending weekends up here. She's in Canada at the moment and was supposed to return this weekend but the project she's involved with needs her for another week so will be returning next weekend.

She's flying in late on Saturday - I hope, as we have tickets to the Bob Dylan concert on Sunday night. Meanwhile .....

I'M GOING CRAZY!

Here's  GNARLS BARKLEY'S song 'Crazy'

CRAZY

Although I think I prefer this version that really shows CeeLo Green's voice:

CRAZY

This is sublime. What a performance - one that sends shivers up your spine and making you wish you'd been there. I don't know what speed setting is normal or not - whether this version is slowed down or the album version is speeded up . Both are great but I prefer the 'live' version.

**********************

So, what led me to the song 'Crazy' today other than the fact that I'm probably losing my marbles?

Well, I was listening to National Radio this afternoon and heard WHITE CHAPEL JAK doing a live version of Crazy. It was a pretty good version.

The interview and performance can be heard:  HERE

NEW POST - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

Richard's latest post spurred the Religious Curmudgeon into writing a new post of his own using The Bible as his theme:

THE BIBLE

NEW POST - THE CURMUDGEON'S AGONY AUNT

The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt has been  absent for a while and of course the agony letters have been piling up (good for lighting the fire though).

I gave TCAA a rev up and she selected a letter to reply to:

IMPATIENT

RECYCLING

I've been recycling my posts recently.

I do this by creating links to previous posts to underscore a point that I wish to make.

Unfair people* might suggest that this is puffery to pad out posts but I just ignore them.

******************

I'm fortunate - and of course my readers are fortunate in that I haven't deleted my entire blog and a decade of post history like Richard (of RBB) did last year. Remarkably, old Richard had written some pretty smart stuff over the years - kind of like finding gold in a slag heap but now it's all floating about in 'the ether' somewhere.

Readers in the blog community, in another way are also fortunate that Robert frequently deletes his posts and sometimes his entire blogs. Who knows where these go to - maybe there's an 'ether' version of the toilet somewhere.

In addition to this blog, readers are fortunate that THE CURMUDGEONS INC.ⓒ has several other connected Curmudgeon blogs including some Wine Guy blogs and a couple of others. This creates endless possibilities of linking back and forth not unlike that M.C. Escher image at the top.

Happy reading!

















* Unfair people: