The Reader's Digest Trust Survey

Who constructs these lists and how the hell do they do it? There are so many problems with it I can barely control myself. Luckily for this post, the article on the survey says nothing about how the survey is done. You can view the article and the ranked list here.

According to the online Oxford English Dictionary, to trust is to "believe in the reliability, truth or ability of" an entity, in this case, a person. (Yes, the survey ranks professions as well but I'm gonna stick to commenting on the list of people.) I'm not entirely sure what these one hundred people have done to earn the trust of the readers that voted for them.

I don't wish to take anything away from many of the people on the list. They didn't ask you to vote for them. They did their jobs and some of them stand amongst the greatest in their fields in the whole world. Credit where credit's due.

But what has made Bret McKenzie more trustworthy than Jemaine Clement? What has made either of them trustworthy enough for the top ten? Could it be that people voted for them because they recognised them and liked their work? If anything, Jemaine is the more reliable. After all, he only has one facial expression and one tone of voice. Then again, I'm quite willing to let Bret be tainted by his association with The Black Seeds.

Why are there only two women in the top ten? Is it cos they have sick problems once a month? Probably, selfish bitches. Why is the highest ranked woman someone I've never heard of and why is the second highest ranked woman a bloody fashion designer? I guess contributing to the low self esteem of young women makes a person pretty trustworthy. After all, that's all catwalk fashion is. Stuff that looks ridiculous and most of us can't afford even though we're told we should want it. Good grief.

What has Richie McCaw done to fall from 11th place in 2010 to 55th in 2011? I would say nothing. That guy goes out on the field and gives it everything he's got, every time. What has Daniel Vettori done to fall 40 places from 18 to 58? Lead New Zealand to a surprisingly good World Cup result? Wow, what a bastard. Dave Dobbyn has dropped 41 places too. Why? God only knows.

Let's go to the other end of the list. Why is John Key ranked higher than Hone Harawira? Key is extremely reluctant to comment on lots of stuff and reluctant to stick to his word on the rest. The 'Smiling Assassin' said he wouldn't fuck with GST and he did. Check out his view on The Springbok Tour...he doesn't feel strongly about anything. As Steve Braunias said of "Mr Flip-flop" before Key's election in 2008, "you can't call Key two-faced cos he hasn't even shown one face yet."

Harawira on the other hand has never been anything other than perfectly clear on where he stands on anything. He left the Maori Party because they changed, not because he did. They think they can work with Don Brash post election for goodness sake! New Zealand may not like Harawira's views but at least he has views and at least they've been consistent for decades.

So what the fuck New Zealand? Who the hell came up with this list, why, and what does it mean? You did, to fill Reader's Digest column inches and nothing. You can bank on that.

And P.S. - If you're still reading that bloody magazine you should get an internet connection.

Alasdair Thompson

When you write a blog like ours, this is a half volley on leg stump. This is the fast ball over the plate. This is the candy in the feeble grasp of a baby. This the excuse I need to use a string of shitty clichés.

For those of you who aren't up with New Zealand's current events, Alasdair Thompson is the head of the Employers and Manufacturers Association. He represents our bosses and did a pretty lousy job of it on June 23, 2011 when he basically said women should get paid less than men because they take more sick days due to "women's monthly sick problems." Dude, it's called menstruation. Say it with me: men-strua-tion. Not that hard, huh? Thompson claims the evidence supports his statement. He can't produce it though. There's kind of a theme here: Andy Haden couldn't produce any evidence to support his theory that the Crusaders had a quota for "darkies." Hmmm, funny that. It's almost like these guys pull this rubbish out of their asses. Political incorrectness gone mad. Thompson has also made some piss-poor effort at an apology but it was piss (or even Tui) weak, poorly delivered and more or less the definition of "too little, too late."

Now at this point you'd expect me to rip this munter to shreds. That would be fun but, quite frankly, that's too easy and is being done for me by far wittier and more eloquent people in the media. The Council of Trade Unions has called for him to be sacked and they have the support of prominent politicians and countless Facebookers. Green MP, Catherine Delahunty tried to introduce a member's bill that would allow women an easier method to investigate pay discrepancies with their male counterparts. It was blocked by the government, despite the fact that National's MPs have widely condemned Thompson's statements.

Nope, I will only take the guy's statements down tangentially. Primarily, I wish to make some other points.

Firstly, check out this image (hat-tip to your Twitterfeed, Moth):

How out of touch with social convention is this dickhead that he goes on Facebook to vote in favour of keeping his job after saying something that daft? Pretty out of touch, I would say. He should go back to the stone age when dinosaurs couldn't talk - or use social media.

Secondly, whilst it's obviously reasonable to jump on the guy, some pinko libbers have been so "holier-than-though" with their criticism that it's excruciating. Dissing the easily dissable is just that: easy. Whilst sexism still manifests in society in ways that should embarrass some of us, opposing the views of an outspoken dipshit doesn't make a person into the heroic freedom fighter they might think they are. Opposing this twat is like opposing cancer. This guy thinks a hysterectomy is a career move for goodness sake! He should be banished to an earlier period of time, well spotted, but don't try and act like you're a genius or a hero for saying what everyone with even the smallest shred of common sense is thinking. Don't do the right thing so you can get high off your own altruism.

What I'm trying to say is that this guy should get bitch-slapped - by a fucking big gorilla - but don't use the same hand to pat yourself on the back for expressing the, ahem, bleeding obvious.

John Mayer

I hate John Mayer. I considered ranting about him myself. I would've mentioned his woefully outdated faux-neo-Clapton guitar bollocks. I would've mentioned the way he sings like a twat. I definitely would've responded to his line, "who says I can't get stoned?" by offering to bury him up to his neck and....well you can imagine the rest.... In fact, I hate John Mayer so much that writing about him made me so angry I had to delegate the task of destroying him to a fabulous guest blogger. Thereby, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the sophisticated writing of Richard 'THE MAYER SLAYER' Flanagan....

Before I start I should make one thing clear. As far as people go, I'm not the biggest John Mayer critic there is. There are times when his smooth, empty music really hits the spot. I like his commitment to his own independence and of course what red blooded male wouldn't appreciate the who's-who of America's most beautiful women that he seems to churn through.

I just can't figure out why he's famous. Surely it can't be for his ability to bring us revelations like that romantic relationships can be nuanced and complicated. Maybe its the rollercoaster of gritty emotional realism he depicts in his music. One moment, "I wanna scream at the top of my lungs!," the next "2am, I swear I might propose" (sounds like a good night). But then all that proposing at 2am takes its toll and there's a tantrum. "One more thing - why is it my fault? I just wanna be loved, just want to be funny". Tears before bedtime.

Maybe his popularity can be ascribed to the fact us conservative white people need a rebel too. I mean "who says I can't get stoned?" Well, no one actually. So probably not that then. All in all John's songs have all the characteristics of something by an 8 year old being taught creative writing. Similes involving colourful objects ("she's always buzzing like neon"), metaphors involving fun parks ("your body is a wonderland"), and a world view that shows he's yet to understand personal responsibility ("waiting on the world to change" = it's not my fault, I found it like that).

So unfortunately, the reason I'm being inextricably drawn to is that there are a lot of stupid people out there who buy music. And in this case, by stupid people, I mean stupid women whom I suspect wouldn't be interested in hearing the self-indulgent musings of a man in his early thirties if he wasn't six foot three and good looking. I, for example, am also self-indulgent and flawed but hardly anyone is reading this. It seems that when men reach for FHM, women reach for John Mayer. But in the same way that FHM isn't Hemingway, John Mayer isn't music. So please folks, push your tastes a little further afield. You'll still get to hear John's music any time you're in an elevator or waiting on hold at the bank. Maybe then the poor guy can live his tortured life in happy anonymity.

Clichéd Responses to any Mention of Feminism

People, mostly males funnily enough, need to get over their fear of feminism. True enough, it is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of perspectives including some fairly extreme positions. However, let's be realistic. The feminists I know are not "man-hating lesbians." Most of them shave their legs (and it's hardly your problem if they don't). None of them want to enslave you after confiscating your barbeque, asking for those bloody directions and chopping your balls off and wearing them around their necks so other blokes don't get any ideas. All the feminists I know stand for the not-so-outrageous things like pay parity, equality in distribution of domestic duties and the end to the ridiculous notion that women in miniskirts are at fault if they get raped by predatory rugby league teams. In fact, feminism is such a large umbrella that you might find - and I hope you're sitting down - that you're effectively a feminist under a mainstream conception of the word. Welcome to the club and see you at the next meeting.

As an example of a woefully construed take on an aspect of feminism, let's examine this letter to the editor in the May 19 edition of The Wellingtonian:

Advice for Slutwalkers

I write regarding the May 12 issue, and those two young ladies quoted and pictured, specimens of people upset by the recent commonsense advice of a Canuck policeman.

Why don't they all put it to the test by not dressing like sluts? That way we would soon see whether this would result in a significant reduction in the number of actual or attempted rapes and indecent assaults by males on females.

H Westfold
Miramar (abridged)

In other words, according to H Westfold (who has cowardly hidden their gender by providing only a first initial) if you dress like a slut, it's your fault if you get raped. By wearing a short skirt, you've consensually waived your right to not get raped. Seems a little unfair to us. If I wear a bone carving, have I waived my right not to be called a n****r? In other words, get with the fucking program.

Then again, since we gave women the vote we've had two world wars, a holocaust, the rise of numerous dictatorships and the emergence of several economic downturns. Coincidence? No way! Think how many lives and how much grief women could've saved if they weren't such selfish feminists....

Linguistic Annoyances

This is the first of what will probably be multiple posts on linguistic devices that annoy us. Do these things sound familiar? Do they annoy you too or are you guilty of using them?

1. "Actually," misuse of.

'Actually' should only be used when correcting someone. If I ask you if you had a good night, I am not implying anything about the quality of your past 24 hours. I am not passing any judgement as to whether the night was good or bad. In other words, I am not saying anything that could be corrected so don't reply, "yes I did, actually." It actually makes you sound like a bitch. See what I mean?


2. "In terms of," misuse of

No, using 'in terms of' to join every word to every other word in a sentence doesn't make you sound cool or smart, it just means I can't understand a damn thing you say. "We need to synergise in terms of our top-line deliverables to maximize our output in terms of success." That is not English, that is a terrible language called management-speak where only one word in a hundred means anything. I don't know what terms the top-line deliverables are measured in, so how can I synergise in terms of these vague, probably non-existent terms? How are we measuring success when it has no terms in and of itself? Just to clarify, 'in terms of' is a completely legitimate phrase in plenty of circumstances. For example, from Bartleby.com: "We measured sales in terms of the number of units sold per year, rather than in dollars taken in per year." Spot on. The rest of you: if you can't use 'in terms of' in terms of correct use of in terms off, sod off and get a new catchphrase like 'neato'.


3. Marking anything as a scandal by adding '-gate' to the end of it.

From a friend of UUJM:

I saw a nice joke on The Mitchell and Webb Show on BBC -- "This is the biggest scandal since Watergategate", because David Mitchell points out it was a scandal about the Watergate Hotel and not water, and everyone knows that to label something a scandal we merely add "gate" as a suffix."

It's a wonder that September 11 isn't referred to as "Boardinggate."

Self-Pigeon-Holing Through Vocational In-Jokes

Here at UUJM, we love a good pun but only when it DOES NOT relate to your job.

If you are a woodwind player, you do not need to wear a t-shirt that says "bassoner the better" and point at it with a big smile on your face whilst nodding your head slightly to show you get the joke and you believe I can too if I put my mind to it. If you are a scientist and your friends are scientists, you don't need to call your pub quiz team, "Particle Physics Gives me a Hadron" and then tell the neighbouring pub quiz teams that you're all scientists, in case they don't understand how funny you are. If you're an accountant, please don't describe your work as "taxing" before looking at me expectantly, waiting for the onslaught of milk-out-the-nose laughter (and thereby reinforcing everything society thinks it knows about accountants).

Let's run through some more likely suspects. Teachers are not "all class." I don't want to hear about geographers' "cleavage." Journos, don't tell me your work is "press-ing." When cricket players don't know the answer to a question they shouldn't tell me they're "stumped." The list could go on but these things are not funny. They're tragic and they make it obvious that you have no identity outside of a small box you've put yourself in cos you don't dare to expand your horizons and thoughts. Shame, really. By using these puns you've labelled yourself by nothing but your job title. That's sad, man.

Just to prove we love a good pun, I told Shaun a joke every year for a decade. Do you know how many made him laugh?

No pun in ten did.

Yeah, well fuck you too. Don't look at me like that.

Your taste in music

People who like "anything with a good beat really"

What constitutes a good beat exactly? Do you like Joy Division? There are some great beats on Joy Division songs. What? You don't like Joy Division? OK, how about The National? You've never heard of them? You'd like them, their drummer is great. I'll play some right now. What? You don't like them either? African tribal music? Pow-wow music from a reservation? Traditional Korean polyrhythmic drumming? The guys who used to hit drums at Warriors games? No? No? No? No? OK, I get it now. You like The Rolling Stones' Greatest Hits album. True enough, the Stones have great beats but they aren't the only ones. Broaden your horizons and stop trying to look so widely informed. This is the kind of thing John Key would say and that should tell you all you need to know.

People who like every kind of music, "especially Jazz and anything groovy"

People who like every kind of music, especially Jazz and anything groovy, invariably know precisely nothing about Jazz (Kenny G, right?) or anything groovy (Groove Armada, right?). NEVER let them near any kind of publicly-audible sound device.

Anyone who thinks their taste in music is "eclectic" (including us)

Much like bands describing themselves, you have no right to this term. "Eclectic" doesn't mean you like top 40 rap AND top 40 rock AND, just to blow my mind, your parent's copy of Billy Joel's Greatest Hits. It means you dabble, knowledgeably and passionately, in pretty much every genre under the sun. Does your country selection stack up with your classical selection? Your afro-beat with your Americana? Your folk with your funk? Your rap with your roots and your reggae and your rockabilly? Your speed metal with your Scandanavian death metal with your thrash metal with your rap-metal? See what I mean? Your definition of "eclectic" is my definition of "you're a dick".