Getting your shits sorted for budget day

Dogshit - very poor quality

Bullshit - not true

Horseshit - nonsense

Apeshit - rambunctious

Batshit - insane

Chickenshit - coward

Ratshit - poor quality

No shit - obviously

Holy shit - mindfblowing

Hot shit - very good

Dipshit - dumbass

Tough shit - take it or leave it

Jack shit - nothing

The shit - perfection

A chav-tastic romantic gesture and other news

Husband decided to mark wife’s birthday with an evening out in Blackpool, Lancashire. In a bid to surprise his crisps-mad wife, Johnnie secretly asked the hotel staff to scatter 30 assorted packets of crisps on the bed as a surprise while they were away.

This is what they returned to.

Staff misunderstood the request and instead opened the bags and sprinkled the crisps on the sheets like salty confetti, reports The Manchester Evening News.

Venal and callous: The worst response to news of Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis came, unsurprisingly from a Trump: Don Jnr: "What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup?" As Dave Pell points out, she’s a doctor of Education. Duh. And aren’t there only 4 stages of cancer?

Bardcore: Lorde’s Royals cover in Old English.

Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness:
This theory works when applied cars in particular and it struck a chord as I look out at the dead VW in my drive and ponder my next mode of transport, which is limited by financial limitation.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

From Terry Pratchett’s 1993, Men at Arms, the fifteenth book in his Discworld series.

A glimpse into the future: The Chicago Sun-Times “Summer Reading List for 2025” gave glowing reviews to 10 books that don’t exist. Because? A reviewer on LSD? No. AI wrote the article. The fictional works of fiction include Isabel Allende’s Tidewater Dreams, (Her ”first climate fiction novel” where “magical realism meets environmental activism.”), and The Last Algorithm from Andy Weir, the synopsis is hard to read with a straight face: “The story follows a programmer who discovers that an AI system has developed consciousness — and has been secretly influencing global events for years,” it reads.

Say my name, say my name

Parents have often opted for unusual names in order to avoid the mortification of their child having the same name as someone in their class.

This led to some pretentiousness in the 70s — the occasional Tarquin or Tiffany at birthday parties in a sea of Jason’s and Joanne’s.

But has this daring to be different has morphed into a nightmare of names that are impossible to spell, pronounce and make kids fodder for ridicule?

Maybe kids with popular names grew up wanting original names for their offspring. A name to remember. Or gender neutral names.

Or a cult of individuality?

Friends of mine went with Floyd, Arlo, Romeo, Hypatia and Jupiter. Helluva bunch of kids who wear their names well.

But seeking that uniqueness has snowballed into names that has been deliberately misspelled or deviate wildly from standard spelling, adding extra letters, or using completely different spellings based on phonetics.

Thanks to the internet they too have been given a name. They’re called Tragedeighs.

Jennifer, spelled Giniphyr or Crimsyn (You see Crimson, I see Crime Scene). Naming your baby Cooper but spelling it Cuuper. Confusion and a slap in the face of expected vowel sounds.

“My mum loved watching Dynasty while pregnant with me,” shares Dayna and wanted to name her after Dana Carrington. But the letter Y was inadvertently added by her highly dyslexic father in error. “The only other Dana anyone had heard of was Dana Scully, from The X-Files. I had the theme tune hummed at me a lot.”

This one doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. A portmanteau of Chad and Chode (slang for a short thick penis) or a Hindi verb meaning ‘to fuck’. Maybe short for Choden - a Tibetan name meaning "devout, righteous, pious". Who knows.

And there is a woman named Dickc. All the horror of Dixie, but with a big ol' dick in it.

“My sister decided she wanted to use my mother's maiden name (Rafferty) as her daughter's name. to make it unique wants to spell it Raefarty. The family had an intervention.”

The parents who couldn’t decide between Katrina and Larissa so went with Latrina. Ashton and Rae became Ashtrae.

“My brother just announced they’re naming their daughter Areola. They plan to spell it Ariolla, and want it pronounced with a bogan Aussie accent, Air-ee-oh-la.”

You get the idea.

Here in New Zealand there were 60,000 registered births last year and rejected 38 proposed names.

Most of New Zealand’s rejected names had royal links. Ten applications for Prince were rejected, followed by four for Princess. Names like Kingi, Kingz, Prinz, Prynce, and Royalty were also banned. Officials also consider community perceptions of the proposed name. That may be why Sativa and Indica, both strains of cannabis, were also rejected.

Ice is on the list because it’s slang for Meth. And NZ has a massive Meth problem.

Fanny, once a popular first name, was also declined for the whole vagina connotations here. Rogue and Mighty are banned as they are in relation to monikers for one of the most populous gang in NZ, The Mongrel Mob

“In my high school in NZ (which is a small one mind you, wasn't even 500 students) we had three different people called Ecstasy and all of them spelt differently.”

In 2008 a nine-year-old girl whose parents named her Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii was put into court guardianship in New Zealand so that her name could be changed. The judge said gave her an unnecessary social disability and questioned the parent’s judgement.

Historically banned names here include Stallion, Yeah Detroit, Fish and Chips, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit but other children were allowed to be called Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter (yes!). The name Violence also slipped through the net.

Siblings with unnecessarily matched names gives me the heebies; like the kiwi twins Benson and Hedges (after the cigarette brand). Or Calvin and his little brother Hobbes, making another human being his forever accessory. The Caucasian triplets named Moana, Pocahontas, and Elsa. Or rhyming names Bryan and Ryan.

Jaysus, Mari and Joesef.

No matter what you name your kid, ridicule will find a way. I thought my angelic son Gabriel would be safe from torment, then that Cyclone hit.

Every story on the economy you’ve ever seen

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