Oh Great, It’s like Trainspotting Except Begby Lives Next To Me

Well that’s fucking great. The guy across the street has moved to India on a contract and has let his house out to the worst bunch of low life drug dealers you could imagine. It’s been a month and we have had (in chronological order) a neighbour threatened with a beating, a dead-fish overdose on the front lawn, a high speed chase followed by a police takedown and a 3AM attempted beating with an iron bar. Fucking nice.

Of course that sack sucker house owner doesn’t give a shit, he’s in fucking India, eating japatis and counting the cocaine tainted bills those criminals send him every month. Makes me want to throw a gallon of gas against their door. Fuck I hate living next to criminals.

Book reviewed: A Voyage Long and Strange, On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America by Tony Horwitz

This one took a while to get through, not because of any weakness in the book but because I insisted on leaving it in the bathroom (where I do my best reading), so it was read 4 or 5 pages at a time over a month or so. I am trying to read more North American history, especially American history so I can understand our cousins south of the border a little better.

Tony didn’t start out trying to write a comprehensive history of pre-Mayflower, he left out quite a few of the well known ones, including the frozen explorer on a stick Hudson after whom Hudson Bay is named. Also the Portugese got left out which was a little bit of a disappointment. But he did hit the highlights, De Soto (crazed indian killer), Coronado (a small spanish boatman adrift on an ocean of prairie grass), Columbus (so poor a navigator that he once suspected that the Earth was in fact pear shaped), John Smith (famous Disney character) and of course the Inquisition (nobody expected that).

Horowitz has done a great job of making history accessible. I enjoy history written in this way, designed for folks to wade through instead of drowning in. He has a great sense of humour and tries his best to laugh his way through some pretty heavy material, syphillis, genocide, rape, plunder, mo’ rape and slavery. One thing that I did find rather odd was the fact that English explorers met Indians in New England who were well acquainted with Europeans due to Basque fishermen fishing the cod fisheries for generations before the Pilgrims staggered across the Atlantic. The author only touches briefly on this factoid, I wish I knew more. I believe Google is my friend here.

You poor bastard

This was a little unsettling to read in the non-paper. Since there is basically only one family of us he’s a cousin many times removed. Poor bastard, killed for nowt in a failed nation that hated his guts.

New Zealand, judged most peaceful nation in the world

Okay, in the great propaganda wars it appears New Zealand has a great PR team. It has been announced by some bloody Australian think tank that Godzone is the most peaceful nation in the world.

I would make some observations…

1. It was an Australian think tank. That’s like an Irish temperance society.

2. I am a New Zealander and I am definitely not peaceful. Therefore it may be entirely due to the fact that I emigrated that pushed New Zealand to number 1.

3. We are now ranked with little tosser nations such as Denmark on lists such as greenest, weakest, invadable-ist, oil-less-ist and likely-to-sleep-with-ungulate-ist.

Can I point out here that the 10 least peaceful countries are either Muslim, oil rich, or next door to same. Do yourself a favour, hire a tug and tow your country next to a oil poor, secular state. I hear Iceland has berths going cheap.