Diary About Nothing Much - 8

First diary, and disclaimer.

Whadda you lookin’ ad?
Id had do habben. Afder dwo mondths of cold winds, grey rainy wedder and drying not do slip on der black slimy sduff growingk on der driveway, I’ve bin doo long dodgingk the bulled and I’ve caughd a cold.
Bugder.
Now I’ve god a sduffed dose, blocked sinuses and a sore throad, and I’m cranky as hell. Bud I’m a… soldier - I was gonna say drooper, bud thad doesn’d look so good in prind – and I’m gonna ged dis diary wridden, come hell or high warder. I’m gonna do it, you’ll see… I’m gonna… I’m gonna…
Der heck wid dis. I’m gonna dake some pills and go sdraid back do bed.  I’ll ged back do you when I can dalk, and wride, proberly.

Question: How do you know when Winter is getting warmer in New Zealand?
Answer: When it stops freezing and it starts flooding.

You know there will be no sunning yourself by the pool when the weather report uses phrases like “wind flow from the polar ice-shelf”. Auckland didn’t escape unscathed either. When the Sky Tower is closed due to excessive swaying in the high winds, it’s probably better just to stay indoors and keep your head down. I also suspect that, looking at the number of felled trees hereabouts, the bottom will have fallen out of the retail firewood market for the next six months. Add to this the tornadoes down in Taranaki, and very soon simply enduring an Enzed winter looks likely to be featured in Adventure Sports Quarterly.

The net result at our house however, was that I discovered the fastest way yet to cook chicken, in order to eat before the power got cut – it didn’t, and dinner was delicious though I may pay for it today. The wind also kept the opossums off our roof during the night. My Darling Beloved, who is not a fan of opossums, was happy with this but I missed them. I don’t know where they are now. Probably been blown halfway back to Australia.
Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. It seems that we have no hot water, and no prospect of any, for at least the next three days. So I guess that means sub 10 degree showers in sub 10 degree weather all weekend. Can anybody say “masculine shrinkage”?

Thanks for the info… I think.
Transit New Zealand’s latest effort to curb Auckland’s traffic woes has been the introduction over the past year or so, of electronic motorway information signs, of the sort that has been a fixture for decades in other parts of the world - don’t say we aren’t at the cutting edge here in Enzed. I don’t know how effective they are elsewhere, but here the results are rather mixed, and range from:

• the Not Quite As Helpful As You’d Think “Accident Ahead. One Lane Closed” without actually telling you which lane. This is followed by an attention-taxing lane-changing version of three-card monte which ensures that, if there wasn’t an accident already, there bleedin’ well will be now.
  
• to the Rather Mysterious “Caution. Surface Water” when the motorway is shimmering in a heat haze.
• to the Somewhat Redundant “Fog” which appears mysteriously fifty feet in front of the driver, who is cautiously negotiating a fog bank and is far too busy to be reading electronic signs.
• to the Surely You’re Taking The Piss “Queues Ahead” helpfully placed just after the last practical off ramp, so the driver can now contemplate his next hour of first-gear crawl.
• to the Strangely Cryptic “@#$%^&*"    which means, I think, the guy manning the traffic cameras has fallen asleep at the keyboard.
• 
  

Mark Twain was right about fools and their mouths.
Just when I thought I was out of people to ridicule, along comes a little gem from the halls of academe. Otago University emeritus professor Dr Jim Flynn has a problem with the fact that Enzed women without a university education apparently have an average of about 2.6 children before the age of 40, versus 1.8 children for those with an education. This apparently will lead to the “dumbing down” of our population. As reported by the Sunday Star Times, he believes that those who remained uneducated had poorer genetic material in terms of IQ. Over time poorer genes would take their toll, leading to a "decay" in genetic quality.

Well, re-he-he-he-eally....

Not content with merely bringing this to our attention, Dr Flynn also has a solution: lace all of Enzed’s drinking water with a contraceptive. Then, in order for women to conceive, they can take a pill to reverse the effects. “This way,” Dr Flynn opines, “every child in the country will be a wanted child.”
Go on. Read that again. See if it sounds any less ridiculous the second time round.

I suspect that, after such a public display of empathy for our distaff population, contraception is not going to be a big personal concern for Dr Flynn.