Gunpowder, treason, and plot

Well, Germany was getting along just fine thank you very much, dealing with being surrounded on all sides, holding out pretty well, coming together nicely with it's good buddy Britain, maintaining its every agreement, and what happens? Bam! Britain double-crosses poor, innocent 'No, it's OK, we've quite enough lebenstraum right here thanks' Germany in league with the dirty, lecherous, onion-swilling Frenchmen, and is subsequently torn to pieces, much like a cute 5 year old child thrown to 27 hungry rotweillers. Another blow to the fragile remnants of Ben's doe-eyed innocence. And how bad was it? I quote (or paraphrase) Bhumi from last night: "Ben, I heard what happened, and you don't have to be Warwick's friend anymore." He's just lucky I'm so stupidly forgiving as well as so stupidly trusting.
Bloody Diplomacy. Still, mustn't grumble. I think next time we must take the 'everyone versus James M.' approach though, lest Turkey get all uppity again. Hmmm, perhaps marriage will somehow diminish his strategic board game playing powers, maybe if Penny cuts his hair off when he's asleep or something? (No, nooooo, the source of all my cunning, arrrgghh!) We can only hope.

Went to Hanmer yesterday with a cousin and some supermarket employees. Was again struck by the silliness of a 2 hour drive and a $10 charge to sit in an overcrowded bath. The day was nice though so swimming was good. But now that I have been hooked three times this year, I vow to not give my money to the hot pools again until at least 2003. There are other things in the world and indeed in Hanmer I feel are a better use of my not-so-hard earned dollars. On the way home we went to the historic Hurunui pub for tea, which was indeed historic, and pretty cool in general, but for the strange attitude of a couple of its 50 year old stereotype redneck patrons. You know the ones, you see them sometimes at one-day cricket, holding a beer and wearing their oilskin and farmy-type hat, despite the fact it's 28 degrees, and yelling boisterously: 'Hit it for six! Hit it for six! (Batsman blocks good delivery) 'Bloody hopeless! Why didn't you hit that for six! My sister could have hit that for six!' (At the rugby it's 'Score a try!' Score a try! etc.) Anyway, they didn't seem to like 'our type' in their pub and we got a lot of this sort of thing:

'Up from the smoke, eh? Got some flash car no doubt.' (Er, no.)
'You students then?' (yes, most of us.) 'Total waste of money, you should all be in the army doing some real hard yakka. Why should I support you with my taxes?' (Um...)
'Do you normally walk around looking like that (we had t-shirts and shorts on), or is it because you're on a holiday?' (No. In the city we all wear checked shirts and brown wooly jersies, like round here.)

Actually I didn't say that. I could have done, but my face has only just recovered from looking like it's been in a fight and I didn't want to go back to stage one all over again. I have to wonder if these guys were taking the piss though. Surely no-one is actually like that? I suppose we can think back to a certain Armourguard event in Hawarden where we were questioned along similar lines by ruddy-cheeked good ol' farming boys - why do you all have beards? What do you mean, you don't play rugby? But these people could be out of a cartoon, I mean really. I suppose someone has to have been voting for Act. Luckily the staff were really friendly, and only 2 of the people we talked to seemed so caveman conservative.

In other news, today my bank contacted me to tell me that I must follow more procedures and go in tomorrow and fill out some kind of 'fraudulent transaction' form in the attempt to get some money back out of them. At this point I appear due for a refund of about 37 cents in April 2012. Banks. What a bunch of arse. I'm going for enormous piles of cash under the bed in jars from now on.

You should be able to link to Teena's page now. Aren't we a happy little blogging community? Oh dear, we're a self-referencing insular clique of blogs. The academics were right. But to hell with them. Ignore the question marks, the problem is that I can't think of a suitable adjective for you of the top of my head right now Teens, but I'll sort that out later. Also don't ask me to pronounce that alias.

'Rollerball' the remake sucks, sucks so much that Tim and I decided it was almost at the 'Legionnaire' level. In fact IMDB users rate it even worse. Dear God.) However, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is still hot. No-one else takes any kind of credit for the enterprise, except possibly LL Cool J for making silly comments on the DVD, and the sound effects guy for using a comdedy 'boooingggg!!!' noise at a totally inappropriate moment.
Despite these, save your money. It is too late for me, my son...

Right, home for food. Food good. Mmmmm.