Props Boy and the Day I Learnt I am not Cool

   During the 90's in New Zealand, there was a children's television programme called What Now. Technically, it's still going, but I haven't watched it since 2004-ish so as not to spoil my wonderful nostalgic memories. (Also my cousin was talking to me about it about a month ago and told me it has changed considerably from the format I remember.)

   As a kiddie, I loved that show. It had wacky presenters (Caro, Jase, Shavaughn, Props Boy etc) awesome cartoons (I remember it was where I was first introduced to Courage the Cowardly Dog) and a bizarre serial acted by Barbies called Serial Stuff which I loved for some reason.

I always wanted to know what Props Boy looked like with the hat off. Well now I know. Also while researching this, I learnt he's in a fairly mediocre band. Well, I lie. I always thought "Ways to Run" was an alright song.

   Anyway, only some of this is relevant to the traumatic childhood story I'm about to tell you.

   One segment they had on What Now was reading out the super cool letters that kids had sent into them. It was my absolute life goal as a six year old to write them a letter and have it read it out on the show. It would be almost like being New Zealand famous, to my six year old mind at least. So every Sunday morning while watching the show, I'd get out my half-dried up felt pens and my crummy Rose Art Crayons and try to write them a decent letter.

   I wasn't stupid. Well, not entirely. I knew in order to make my letter stand out, it had to have cool things like glitter and colour and stickers. I didn't have any of those and Rose Art was not going to cut it. I decided all I could do was try to draw the presenters of the show and hope my pathetic portrait would at least gain sympathy points. Well, that and some nice "decorations". I decided, in order to show how super cool I was, I'd draw awesome symbols in the margins like stars, hearts, and this really awesome spiral-looking thing I'd seen scrawled in permanent marker on one of the desks at my primary school. My mum looked over my shoulder to see what I was drawing, and immediately snatched up the letter, demanding to know why I was drawing swastikas all over it.

   Six year old me was wonderfully sheltered, and had no idea what a swastika was, or Nazis, or Hitler, or any of that. I just thought it was a cool square-ish spiral- and to be fair, for thousands of years it was, in many cultures, before Nazis adopted it as theirs. Regardless, my mother was well aware that it was not appropriate for children's television, and sat me down and explained to me in excrutiating detail about what the holocaust was.

   That was the last time I ever tried to write to What Now. I wonder if I could send them a letter now, and maybe win some stickers or a tshirt. I don't think they let adults enter though. What a shame.

Bonus: I found a small part of Serial Stuff and none of it makes sense.

Gay Marriage: We've come so far (except those of us who haven't)

   Recently New Zealand achieved something we should all be proud of. For once, it wasn't even anything to do with our sporting prowess, or Flight of the Concords, or Peter Jackson, or sheep, or whatever it is we're famous for now.

   Recently New Zealand made gay marriage legal. Fuck yeah indeed. It makes us only the 12th country in the world to recognise same sex marriages (along with other forward thinking countries as Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands) and the only bad thing about it is that it's not legal in most other countries. Oh, and the people here opposed to it.

Warning: rant time.

   Yes, while the rest of the country was celebrating the awesome progress we've made in giving gays the same rights as every other kiwi, there were a small minority horrified that the country, in their opinion, is going to hell in a handcart, starting with the destruction of marriage, families, and moral standards.

"GOOD HEAVENS, WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?"

   One of the opponents was Colin Craig, of New Zealand's Conservative Party. While it is one thing for him to have his own (bigoted, intolerant) opinions on gay marriage, it baffled me how he was able to say with a straight face that this is a "failure of democracy" and not something most New Zealanders wish to allow. A Facebook friend of mine suggested his ability to keep a straight face while saying all this was probably due to the "massive black dildo" he had shoved up his backside at the time. I'll let you make your own decision on that one.

   On top of that, there's now Protect Marriage NZ urging kiwis to pledge not to vote for politicians who voted in favour of gay marriage. Is this democracy in action? Absolutely. Is it still ignorant? Heck yeah. Do heterosexual marriages in New Zealand really need "protecting"? From what, exactly? How will gay marriage threaten the sanctity of heterosexual marriage? One time, about a year ago, I was in a bar with some friends when a man thirty years (ish) my senior came up to me and asked if I wanted to be his fourth wife. I'm telling you, there's nothing sacred or special about that.

   Are you opposed to gay marriage because of your religious beliefs? I don't mean to frighten you, but people of any religion can get married. Even atheists. Marriage does not belong exclusively to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans or Pastafarians. If you want a religious marriage following your spiritual beliefs, go right ahead. The fact that two people of the same sex can have a marriage based on their values does not affect you at all.

   Are you opposed to gay marriage because gays squick you out because whenever you think about gay relationships, all you can picture is ew, bumsex? You should probably stop picturing it. Unless you want to picture it. I'm not one to judge. (On a side note, you do realise that straight couples can engage in anal intercourse too, right? Are you going to picture that every time you think about heterosexual relationships?)

Anyway. I'm sorry, that was a massive rant. I'm done now, almost. I just want to leave you with this final point. I don't know if I will ever get married in the future. And most likely not to the drunk guy who offered to let me be his fourth wife. But I certainly won't try to stop anyone else in this country from their right to get married. Love is love, whether you're gay, straight, bisexual.... and everyone should have equal rights to love.

   Even  Colin Craig, who is in love with his possibly delusional view of New Zealanders' views.

Adventures of a Single Girl

   Yeah so, in the last post I wrote about how excited I was for Valentines Day and then there were lots of pretty pictures of Scott and I and the cupcakes he made me and... well it's been a couple of months since and we just broke up. Even cupcakes can't save your relationship is the lesson to take away from that folks. But seriously. It was a mutual decision and it ended amicably. By amicably, I mean actually amicably, the sort of break up where you txt each other every few days to see how the other is coping and still have nice conversations where you gossip about the Dunedin music scene, as opposed to "amicably" which is when you tell all your friends that you aren't cut up about it in the slightest yet you still marinate yourself in rum and cheap wine and Facebook stalk him while sobbing to yourself and sending him angry messages about how he was so selfish to leave you.

   No. This genuinely ended amicably. And he doesn't see a huge future for himself in the Dunedin music scene, just so you know. Which is fair enough, the music industry here is a bit of a joke if you actually want to be successful.

   Anyway, I decided it was time to get back into blogging now I have something to write about and document my experiences of being single. Why? Well first of all, I intend to stay single for a while. I started dating Scott not long after getting out of another relationship, so it's been a while since I've done this. (I don't know what I'm doing.) Also because, let's be honest, what else am I doing with my life right now?

Certainly not this. At all. Especially not at three in the morning.

   Anyway, expect updates on this.