There are 156,000 New Zealanders looking for work. I am one of them. There is a fair bit of whakamā around this, especially when you were doing lush things for linear TV and your own long running column. I’d love to be a trad wife but I still need to earn enough coin to pay the struggling Australian banks my Auckland-sized mortgage.

But this is not a pity party, I have some work copywriting for a large corporate client, but I need more hours. So please DM me if you know of anyone who might need contract PR, content creation, copywriting or domestic graft. These are the things I can do very well. anajsamways@gmail.com

IRL Bert and Ernie and other links

Whoever smelt it, dealt it: The sneeze, the cough, and the hiccup have been embraced by society. Even the burp is excusable. But farts still get no respect. Despite permeating our culture and history.

The first audible fart in film was in the Blazing Saddles campfire scene in 1974, which paved the way for the overkill of Fat Bastard in Austin Powers Goldmember.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Bernard Clemmens of London has the longest official fart clocked in at 2 minutes, 42 seconds.

In 1607, British Member of Parliament Henry Ludlow farted during a debate about naturalizing the Scots. The farting nay-vote was probably an accident, but it passed into folklore. And the Secret Service will not only take a bullet for the president, and the blame for the POTUS petarde: Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States, would often fart and blame it on his Secret Service agents, loudly saying, “Jesus, was that you? Show some class.”

And still farts make headlines. A woman has alleged that her ex-boyfriend unwittingly delivered “the best possible breakup revenge anyone could ever get,” after a poorly timed fart aimed at her face, left her with a long-term sinus infection. Gross.

Life before WWII: Berlin 1930s in colour.

RIP stupid lemon VW Golf: My car died a few weeks ago and a friend loaned me the car she is saving for her teen. It’s a grey Toyota Yaris. I call it The Roller Skate. At the supermarket my son asked me to pop the boot…nah, mate it’s all DIY. He looked very perplexed.

Since freestyling it around West Auckland in this new set of wheels I’ve noticed a few close calls. A bus swiped off the casing to my wing mirror at a roundabout (I retrieved it from the middle of the road during school pick-up traffic) days later there a bloke merging into me at the lights and another incident, where I got honked at for entering the roundabout.

Now as a middle-aged woman I am used to being not seen, but this tiny road coloured car is like a cloak of invisibility. “Chat GPT Make yourself useful and tell me what colour cars is the most dangerous and why?” You are 12% more likely to have a prang in a black car and 11% in a grey car because it blends into road surfaces and cloudy surroundings. The safest colour? White.

Parody: If Influencers covered The End of the World…

Judith is outraged

How very dare they? Does New Zealand even make elegant dresses? Flashback to the use of that ‘dreadful word’. Somebody bring Judith a fan!

“The performance of civility, particularly by politicians enacting cruel policies against the working class, is a political tool,” writes Rebekah Graham in E-Tangata. “Deployed by white women who want to uphold the status quo…The recent political theatre by NACT women, including Brooke van Velden and Nicola Willis, taps into these notions of female fragility. They are entirely typical of the defensive moves women in power make when their privileges are challenged.”

Like her performative election prayer, Judith practises faux outrage, but deep down she loves a good bout of bitchiness.

You could argue she set the bar.

In 2013 after a speech by then Green co-leader Meturia Turei, Judith descended on Twitter to call it, ‘vile wrong and ugly, just like her jacket today.”

Collins had referred to Jacinda Ardern as 'My Little Pony' in emails with Cameron Slater, doubled down with “I am a woman of colour - the colour white" and once gave a hearty thumbs up to a tweet likened Labour to "a virus" and described the party as the home of "academics, gays and greens".

Meow.

Even singer Benee called Judith Collins a 'bitch' at Wellington gig. Got applause.

Remember Judith is not a victim; she the OG of bitchiness. Neither is Brook van Velden for having her cunty politics called out. Or Nicola Willis in that $1000 blue dress, sucking more from those who need it.

It’s the working women — teachers, nurses, social workers — especially wāhine Māori and Pacific women, who have historically been underpaid in female-dominated professions.

Roll Call

Last week I shared a few Tragedeighs, made up and misspelled names from parents wanting their kid to be unique and now I have stumbled across this list from The Society for the Verification and Enjoyment of Fascinating Names of Actual Persons, listed by curator Allan Fotheringham in 1991:

• Procter R. Hug

• Polly Wanda Crocker

• Sexious Boonjug

• Philander Philpott Pettibone

• Zilpher Spittle

• Petrus J.G. Prink

• Burke Uzzle

• Pansy Reamsbottom

• Dunwoody Zook

• Bastion Hello

• Fang W. Wang

• Montague Tyrwhitt-Drake

• Nimrod Spong

• Dulcie Pillage

• Jake Moak

• Sir Tufton Beamish

• Sir Basil Smallpiece

• Sir Malby Crofton

• St. Bodfan Grufydd

• Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax

• Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes

• Selmer Hafso

• Addylou Ebfisty Plunt

• Oscar U. Zerk

• Titus Cranny

• Noble Puffer

• J. Flipper Derricoate

• Ovid Parody

• J. Boxter Funderback

• Middlebrook Polly

• Lester Ouchmoody

• Spencer Hum

• A. Smerling Lecher
  

Safety net goneburger

At 18 you can vote, get married and sign up for a credit card. Legally you are fully responsible for your own actions under the law. You can get pissed in a bar… but now, your parents are paying.

The government is tightening eligibility for 18 and 19-year-olds to access income support with a parental assistance test. The income threshold of has yet to be decided.

Being 20 years-old is the new 18.

The financial independence of the youngest New Zealanders has been snatched away and the burden put back on their weary, broke parents.

This sanction also hits young people with an illness or disability too.

If our young adults are now financially dependent on us, surely they must be covered by Working for Families and Child Support criteria? Both entitlements currently end at 18.

But they can’t have it both ways? (Oh, yes they can)

I asked IRD if there were any changes to this rule. They said no the current rules stands and there’s been no whiff of a variation in the wings.

So even if you are shelling out for a 18 or 19-year-old, you will not be getting a Working for Families top up or be able to claim child support for those last two years.

Doesn’t seem fair or right, does it? A closer look at the legislation around this might be in order.

What I’m watching

Pike River: Robert Sarkies (Scarfies, Out of the Blue about Aramoana) new film is based on the 2010 Pike River Mine tragedy, where 29 men lost their lives in a series of explosions. It focuses on the years-long battle for justice led by Anna Osborne (Melanie Lynskey) and Sonya Rockhouse (Robyn Malcolm), who lost loved ones in the disaster and became prominent figures in the fight for accountability. The film premiers at the Sydney Film Festival in June and released here later in the year.

Les Norton (Netflix) is exactly the kind of escapism we desperately need right now. It’s 1985, and a fresh-faced country bloke from outback Queensland lands smack-bang in the middle of Sydney’s chaotic King Cross.

He scores a gig as a bouncer at an illegal casino, and you just know the fish-out-of-water laughs are gonna flow — all set to a banging 80s soundtrack and some brutally blunt Aussie humour. Bordello madam, Doreen Bognor (Rebel Wilson) with a perm and koala windcheater tells Les the services for sale include a “penile colada” and a “platypus twist”. I recognised David Wenham (Fake) the hilarious Kate Box (Rake) and a very young Milly Alcocks, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon. Based on a series of books written by pulp fiction writer Robert G. Barrett but without the racial, slurs and overt sexism.

This guy is rubbish

Littered Mvments by Shoji Yamasaki.

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