Christchurch Celebrates 150 Years Of Gluttony And Minority-Bashing July 31, 2006
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(Christchurch NZ – Press) Christchurch turned 150 today, and celebrated at the weekend with a huge novelty cake and an ethnic round-up.
On 31 July 1856, Queen Victoria signed the Royal Charter enabling Christchurch to host a bishop and obtain city status, and 150 years later Cathedral Square has marked the occasion with a 150m, 2.6 tonne birthday carrot cake given away to party-goers.
According to Mayor Gary Moore, the turn-out at the event was excellent, and included almost all of the city’s immigrant population of 260. He put this record attendance down to Saturday’s early morning raids on numerous homes in the city.
“I wanted to show the rest of the country that we’re not just a bunch of near-sighted white supremacists down here,” said Moore. “So we forcefully invited all our ethnic friends to come and eat some cake with us and smile for the national media.”
City resident Mohammed Omar was woken by armed Council staff at 5am and bundled into a truck to be taken to the festivities.
“It’s been okay,” Omar said. “I’m lactose-intolerant, so I asked if I could skip the cake, but Gary said no, and they beat me, so now I’m eating this delicious cake. Yum, the gastric cramps aren’t even that painful.”
Other attendees noted how pleased they were to celebrate Christchurch as a “city of the future” with its tram, big band, town crier, wizard, and religious and racial intolerance.
“We’ve got thousands of black and red balloons to invigorate the inner city,” said Moore, “and later on I’m going to get all our black and red friends here to show us some of their native customs. I can’t wait.”
The festivities for the 150th are due to continue into this week, with a debate on whether women should get the vote, a celebration of gray stone buildings, and a sesqui-centennial lecture series “Once you’ve gone flat, you’ll never go back.”
Trade Me Increases Market Share With New ‘No Friends’ Website July 31, 2006
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Brash Draws Obvious Cheap-Shot With ‘Bedrock Values’ Speech July 30, 2006
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Computers In Classrooms Making Kids Geekier July 26, 2006
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(Wellington NZ – Press) Pupils at Brooklyn School are trialling tablet PCs in an e-learning initiative some are labelling the uncoolest thing since brown bread.
Twenty-eight year 5 and year 6 pupils have been using the hand-held computers for about 80 per cent of their classwork - including writing, drawing, and surfing the Internet. The pilot now plans for them to take the tablets home.
Some parents are worried. A group has petitioned for an end to the programme, saying their children are becoming unbearable know-it-alls, and that dinner-table conversation is now more likely to turn to ADSL latency and Moore’s Law, rather than well-loved parental topics such as ‘isn’t Daddy a funny Daddy’ and the relative merits of mouth-open versus mouth-closed eating.
“We find it hard enough that they’re even using computers at school,” said parent representative Natalie Franks. “My daughter now knows more about partitioning a networked server than I do, and she’s always talking to me like I’m a stupid. So, imagine if they bring it home, well, then it’s just a few steps to sci-fi club and clothes from Postie Plus. Jorga used to like dress-ups and gossip… I just want my cool little girl back.”
Eleven year-old Callum Worth says that he and his classmates now have better things to do than playground chatter, ball sports and pretending they’re not brainier than everyone else.
“I’ve got to reorgnanise my del.icio.us favourites, then I’ve got virtual chess club, then I’ve got to watch the bids on some thumb-drives. I’m sorry but I have no time for your earth questions… winking emoticon!”
New ‘Poetic Justice’ Legislation Sees ‘Fluffy Friend’ Pet Shampoo Tested On Human Children July 26, 2006
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78 Per Cent Of Doctors Confirmed ‘Not Real’ July 25, 2006
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(Christchurch NZ – Press) A shocking restaurant incident has revealed large numbers of ‘unreal’ doctors are living among us.
Yesterday afternoon Marty Sheffield was eating at an inner-city KFC when he started choking. According to an eyewitness, management asked whether any patrons were doctors. “So this one smug woman said yes, but it turned out she only had a doctorate in history or something. She wasn’t a real doctor at all!”
When the ruse was revealed the imposter alledgedly “just faded away”. Sheffield recovered, but remains fearful of the medical establishment.
Research from the World Health Organisation shows this is an increasingly common occurence, with thousands of unreal doctors pouring out of universities every year, prompting some to suggest tertiary institutitions are conducting experiments in unreality, possibly using tricky physics, logic, or even a ouija board.
Real doctors are promising to help authorities fight these phantoms. Medical Council spokesperson Hillary Johns said that bands of vigilante MDs were already patrolling secondhand bookshops, dimly-lit cafes and free evening seminars – known haunts of unreal doctors.
“We’ll catch them,” promised Johns. ”We’ll catch them and make them see the unreality of their ways. No more queue-hopping and posturing at parties. They can just fade into the ether and leave the doctoring to us ‘Doctor’ doctors.”
Bee’s Knees Not Doing As Well As You’d Think July 25, 2006
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Record Low Unemployment Leads To Epidemic Of Work/Life Balance Bitching July 24, 2006
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(Wellington NZ – Press) Faced with a record 40 per cent of workers complaining about working hours, the Government and business groups are calling for enforced unemployment, ‘just to show the bastards what they’re missing’.
Workers surveyed in a Department of Labour report released last week said they wanted more flexible start and finish times, with additional leave to spend time with their families and friends.
Business New Zealand spokesperson Phil Martin said that workers should all ’shut the hell up’ and be glad they’ve even got a job.
“Hell, I started working in ‘94 and I can assure there was no boo-hooing about 50-hour weeks and bleeding fingers back then – we were glad of the chance to stack chairs or hock fudge or hose shit,” said Martin.
Labour Minister Ruth Dyson agrees, saying the Government’s two-year old Work-Life Balance Project is “just an opportunity for all the whiners to come out of the woodwork”.
“The report says people find work interferes with their quality time,” Ms Dyson said.
“Well of course it does. That’s what work is – hard, boring graft as far away from your loved-ones as you can get. Believe us, if you had to be around those people any more than two hours a day, you’d grow to hate them pretty quickly.”
Dyson is supporting a Business New Zealand plan offering compulsory unemployment to anyone who tries to leave work early, as well as anyone complaining about missing their families, or displaying gratuitous photos of their families or pets on their desks or computer screen-savers.
“You like home so much, then go - we don’t need you. There are still 40,000 unemployed people gagging for your job. See how much you like balance once we’ve tipped the scales the other way for a change. You’ll be back… you’ll be back.”
World-Record ‘Mexican Yawn’ Passes Round Office Two Full Times July 16, 2006
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New 10-Cent Piece Won’t Kill You If Dropped From The Top Of A Building, But I Guess I’ll Still Give It A Go July 13, 2006
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