Furry heartthrob

=^..^=

I'm in a video making mood lately. Casper is always a good subject :D




Pics taken by V & B, video arranged by moi, August 2009

Sluggish love

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Ever wondered if it is possible for a slug to bitchslap another slug?
Well, wonder no more!
Without further ado, I present you ...

*drumroll, please*

...Brüno and Rosita del Flores!!!1!!!eleventy!!



Video taken and arranged by moi, August, 2009

Introducing Brüno's personfriend!

:)

I present you Brüno's girl/boy friend. And she needs a name! I will stick to calling her she for the time being, but I am willing to consider more masculine names as well.

Here are the current suggestions:
- Sweet Potato Jesus (SPJ for short)
- James
- Daisy
- Detour
- Jinxy
- Brünette

Any new suggestion you make will be rewarded with 100 virtual gold coins.

About the video: I suggest you put the headphones on and listen VERY CAREFULLY as you can hear the cutest teeniest nomming and crunching sounds as she feast upon the lettuce. Enjoy!



For those of you who haven't got the faintest idea what this is about, here are the links to the original Brüno posts:

Meet Bruno: http://danuskapotepuska.blogspot.com/2009/07/bruno.html

Update: http://danuskapotepuska.blogspot.com/2009/08/update-on-bruno.html

Let's wrap it up for today. Make sure you tune in tomorrow as I present you Brüno's first date and first the first time he gets bitchslapped!

Video taken by moi, August 2009

Winter still life

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Pic taken by moi, 2009

Forest romp

=^..^=

We finally got some much needed break from all the winter rain, so JS and I went to explore the forest near the house.

I took the opportunity to take pictures of NZ clouds - they usually look like they were painted on by a sloppy, inexperienced beginner who wanted to use up some leftover darkly shade of blue:

Click on the images to view larger size.

I can paint more realistic clouds than these!

"There's a hole in the sky that can only be filled by you..."

If you ever romp around the countryside here, DO NOT walk into a field of gorse bush. Very very prickly shrubs, gorse, and any contact stings like a sonofabitch. There's plenty in the forest to avoid, too. But that's about the only inconvenience there is, as sandflies stick to, well, certain places with sand and you don't have to worry about effin' ticks (yay for no ticks!). I present you the gorse bush:

Owchie! I kill you!!!

Vegetation in Waitakere is a bit special and different from the rest of the North Island. The prevailing type of tree is the tea tree, there's heaps of ponga trees (silver tree fern), kauri trees, pines, etc. Let's have a closer look then:

Tall tea trees, my main squeeze, gorse on the far left and right.

Baldly walking in...

...fighting off bears, volves and ticks gorse...

... and getting rather intimate with ponga trees.

Ponga tree tops

Dead ponga tree branch - light and almost hollow inside

Young ponga tree branch - looks fuzzy and cuddly, almost alive...

...but the fuzz peels off very easily and reveals a young light green shoot.

As an experienced Kiwi tracker, I can trail possums.
This animal has been here withing the last 12 hours,
and its yesterday's dinner was peanut butter sandwich.
Erm.. With chilli.

To the open field again.
Through the pine branch you can see a long row of tea trees...

...I love rubbing tea tree leaves between my fingers and smelling them - they smell kinda like pine, but less heavily so and there's just a hint of resin. Most wonderful. I also recommend putting your cheek against tea tree bark, it gives you the feeling of intensely strong connection with your natural surroundings, but without the back pain and squashed bugs associated with camping.

Alrighty then, I hope you enjoyed my attempt at walking you through the forest. Lemme know how your cheek-to-tree-rubbing experience went, if I inspired you to go outside and do so.

XOX, D.

All pics taken by JS and moi in August, 2009

Turn where?!

=^..^=

If you know me personally, you also know that
1) I am an awesome driver,
2) I am an awesome driver with no sense of direction whatsoever.

So far I've learned how to get to the nearest shopping centre by myself, but that's about it. I couldn't find my way to or out of Auckland central if my life depended on it. My husband says I couldn't find my way out of a wet paper bag and I must admit he's not far from the truth.

I also get confused over the signs Kiwis put up.

Is there a left from right hand through lane? A right from left hand through lane? WHAT IS A RIGHT FROM RIGHT HAND THROUGH LANE?! AM I IN THE RIGHT LANE??? AM I TURNING LEFT OR RIGHT AND WHY AM I HERE? IS THERE A BUS ABOUT TO RUN OVER ME?????? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!1!!!!!!!!1111!

No sign should take a University educated person more than a couple of seconds to figure out!

This one had me puzzled a little when I first came to Auckland, you can see it at any major intersection:

Say whaaa...? You... you can tell just by looking at them?
Oh, you mean PEDESTRIANS! Silly me, I thought... Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk

Pics taken by moi in July, 2009

Weekend trip to Wellington: sea and sun sacrilege and black metal

=^..^=

It takes more than nine hours to drive from Auckland to Wellington, which is the same amount of time you need to drive AROUND Slovenia twice, or swim the whole Slovene coast six times, or walk the path around Ljubljana, the capital AND stop for some beer... you get the idea.

Let me start by saying what the trip was not. It was NOT what I'd expected.

What I expected was a typical major-city-to-capital-like-drive-a la-Ljubljana-Maribor, with loads of really bad traffic, heaps of trucks, maybe even some snow, erratic Italian and Swiss drivers, stressful, gut-wrenching, non-coherent, Michael Douglas jumping out of his car pointing an Uzi at you style, but, whoo boy, was I in for a surprise:

Cue wind swooshing music, roll in some tumbleweed and pass the bong, kthnx.

Please excuse the quality of the photos as most were taken from the front passenger seat at over 100 kmph. Click on any of the photos to see larger version.

Incidentally, this part of the road to Wellington is called Desert road. Very imaginative when it comes to naming places, them Kiwis (I will return to this subject later).

On Saturday, we didn't stop to look around much because we didn't wanna be late for Pierre's gig with Exordium Mors (the reason we headed to Wellington in the first place). The trip was rather uneventful, with occasional bursts of Jean cranking up the radio volume. It took me a couple of hours to realize he did it every time he farted, Homer Simpson style.

PhD in applied Simpsonology

New Zealand has a lot of hills and most of them contain a certain amount of sheep.


I noticed sheep on very steep hills dangerously close to the road. I know what you're thinking, it's NEW ZEALAND, nothing new there, move on. But, please take a moment to consider this picture:

Not safe.

Now, let's presume one of the sheep loses its footing and rolls down the hill, basically dives straight onto the car. Do you think you'll live to tell the story? And, like Jean, you might claim that sheep don't just roll over, like ever, and then I have two things to say:

1. As Pierre pointed out, sheep die occasionally. And from what I've learned from Kiwis, they do not die of old age, sheep die because they wear their teeth down so much they starve to death. Now, I may have been told a lie new Kiwis get fed by the natives, but if it's true, I'm pretty sure a starving sheep might start feeling a bit light-headed, a bit feeble in the knees, lose its footing and end up on top of my car!

2. Ten minutes after the "what are the odds of a sheep landing on us" conversation I saw an actual sheep actually rolling on its back! Granted, it was more of a "happy puppy in a pile of poop" than a "losing battle with starvation" kind of roll, and the ground was flat, but still, SHEEP DO ROLL OCCASIONALLY.

Safe.

Moving towards the far South of the North Island, you come across warning signs that...

a) make you hear banjo music in your head,
b) introduce a bizarre little town where J.R. lives,
c) offer a grand view of a hotel clearly made for extraterrestrials to land on (yes, ON):

Mmmm...yummy! (for my Slovene friends: a teat is a cow's nipple)

Would you take some juice from J.R?

I wonder if this is where Martian hillbillies come to fornicate.

At this point Pierre mentioned something about J.R. forcefully offering him juice and commenting on his "mighty purdy lips". JS and I cracked up laughing, then quickly locked all the doors and got the hell out of this one horse utility truck town.

And now a few words about Wellington. As the rest of the trip, it was full of surprises. I've heard heaps of bad things about it, how's it's so windy it rains from the ground, blah blah blah, but the reality is, it's a very nice city.

Compared to Auckland:

- it smells better! Auckland central smells like an armpit, mostly due to smelly fast food restaurants,
- it's a lot cleaner! Store floors aren't covered in dirt and waste, I have seen shopkeeps VACUUMING the floor (!), restaurant floors aren't covered in fries and lettuce bits, the waitresses don't wear bio hazardous short sleeved shirts crusted all over with last years menu,
- the buildings give it a more European feel -some streets look like the old part of Ljubljana (see photo below),
- the night life blows Auckland straight out of the water; but then again the Vatican night life must be excessively colourful compared to Auckland's. Auckland night life is so boring even Lonely Planet describes it as funereal. I really miss having the option of visiting Metelkova, and having Trnfest right next to my house. (IMPORTANT SIDE-NOTE: NOETICS ARE PLAYING TRNFEST AGAIN THIS YEAR. I have seen them appr. 10 years ago, when they were still snot-nosed pimply kids, yet extremely good and tight! One of the best live shows I've ever seen in my life ever! The bass player was like 15 at the time and he was 100 times better than I was. For people back home - go see Noetics on the 14th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

But I digress.

Back to Wellington - Auckland:
on the flip side...

- people in general seem a tad less friendly in Wellington (excluding the metal crowd, but more on this subject later); in Auckland, you must be very careful not to make eye contact with people because they will smile RIGHT AT YOU! Coming from Europe, I found this very unnerving at first, but now I accept it, I like it and I try to muster up a smile myself :)))

- Wellington also feels more uppity, with heaps and heaps of pukey fashion stores where stuck up people shop,
- once you get used to having a lot of space around you, Wellington feel a bit squeezed in, and squeezed it is - between a rocky hill and the Tasman sea,
- Wellington's very "white" - I come from a country that's this white and I simply adore how Auckland's heart beat consist of every possible race, colour & cultural background.

Apparently they do more than pass new laws in Wellington...

...they go as far as passing new commandments!

Euro look with heaps of uppity stores

The lion strikes a very sensual pose that Pierre found irresistible.

Need to rest?

There are so many things wrong with this picture I need to give it special attention.

Bunny wha..?!

1. No matter what side you look at it, that's NOT a bunny!
2. It tickles my funny bone when Kiwis get overexcited explaining they invented this bee (you drag it behind you and its wings flap).
2. Who the hell names a street right next to the parliament Bunny street anyway? What did they do, conduct a public opinion poll in a kindergarten?

As I have mentioned before, Kiwis have most imaginative names for various places. Most of them are Maori and sound very exotic until you figure out papa means flat, and also very very funny once you learn to pronounce Wh as f (e.g. Papakura, Papatoetoe, Whangarei and - the one that takes the prize - Whakapapa).

And then there's Rodney. Yup.

There's a whole area up in the North called Rodney.

I presume this is how it happened. Picture, if you will, a group of bored and tired council men and women, with one more item on their Friday "to do" list, and that is to name a big area of the North.

"Soooo... any one got any ideas...?"
"Maybe something that starts with Papa something something?"
"Naaah, that's been done to death..."
"You're right."
"Yeah, yeah, nah, nah."

Twenty minutes of uncomfortable silence.

"How about... Rodney?"
"Yes, that's a GREAT idea."
"I second that."
"Me too."
"Sweet as. Here's a picture of my car."
"Let's get some Speights, mate."

Finally, we get to the main reason behind this trip, my little brother's last gig with Exordium Mors in the Hole In The Wall.

First off, I was really surprised to see many familiar faces from Hamilton and Auckland metal shows. Wellington IS very far away, and you'd have to be a really die-hard fan to follow a band this far. This leads me to conclude the NZ metal scene is very small, consisting mainly of people in actual metal bands, their significant others, family, best friends, a couple of connoisseurs and a fistful of drunk kids rebelling for all the wrong reasons.

Secondly, Exordium Mors is a band of some seriously talented and skilled musicians. As usually, they were in a league of their own. They are inspired and tight. In all honesty, the whole righteous metal idea is not my cup of tea, but I can appreciate the band for their level of musicianship. I am sad my little brother decided to leave the band.




I intended to let Otto, my alter ego, go crazy with the camera, but the show was very late and I was plenty tired, not to mention I didn't want to get really close because I got hurt in Hamilton as some douche pushed me against a pillar in the middle of the mosh pit.
So yeah, the pics are few and not very revealing , but I'm sure the guys won't mind if I post this link to their mighty purdy lips myspace where you can look up more photos if you so wish.

This brings me to Sunday trip back home. PALMERSTON NORTH. I wanted to visit it for a long time, mainly because I was curious what made John Cleese say:"If you ever want to kill yourself, but lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick." Needless to say, local Kiwis took the news hard and decided to strike back with a vengeace by naming a rubbish dump after him. You can read more about it here.

I was more than pleasantly surprised to discover Palmerston North is every country bumpkin's dream - a nice small town with just the right number of tall buildings to help me navigate my way around (four).

You can see all the tall buildings in these pictures, many times:

We had more time to stop and look around on our way back home and Otto took a few nice pics:

Pwetty scenery

Cowsies

Leaving Wellington

Lake Taupo

Something volcano

Lolchat Jean-Sebastien (that's French for lolcat, stop making me explain my jokes dammit) doing an impression of Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

I hope this blog was like my trip to Wellington -very long and not at all what you'd expect!
Tune in for more future rantings and drop me a comment every once in a while.

XOX, D.

All pics taken by JS and moi, August, 2009

A Perfect Winter Morning

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Pic taken by JS, August 2009

AI SEZ WUT WUT?

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IN DA BUTT ;)

It was very hard to decide on a caption for this tres bizarre photo, so I decided to write some more down for your reading pleasure.

Feel free to add your own captions in the comments!

***
Invisible buttsecks

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Worship teh butt!

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I like big butts and I cannot lie...

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My butt. Let me show you it.

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I haz a butt. Purhaps ud liek to kizz it?

***
What's up monkey butt? whoawhoawhoaaa (in the style of Tom Jones)


Pic taken by moi in May, 2009, captions inspired by ICHC.

And he can do all that...

...while wearing a Kiwi on his head! (July, 2009)