A person with colour-coded bags is a person who will never forget their bags

Never before have I felt more like a plastic bag.

I feel I want a plastic bag every time I enter the supermarket now, and see the signs everywhere, screaming

REMEMBER YOUR BAGS

I imagine it’s being said in a chipper yet patronising voice.

By the time you’ve spotted the sign, you’re already halfway through the turnstiles and there’s a queue of people behind you. Other times, you’ve managed to turn around and fight the unnatural spikes out of the way, and traipse what seems like 1500 metres back to the car to get the bags.

You know there’s bags you can buy here, though, as you absent-mindlessly grab a basket, even though (given you’ve forgotten the bags) you’re a no-list graze-shopper who at some point will have to go back through the turnstile and get a trolley.

And off you go into a wonderland of plastic-covered everything, and you wonder at what point in civilisation did everything become about…plastic?  We’re doomed with it and without it and you are absolutely doomed if you turn up to Pak’nSave on a day where they’ve run out of saleable plastic bags.

I was there yesterday. A young couple, wide-eyed with innocence and the anticipation of being able to bag-up their 2000 metric tonnes of groceries, were met with the concrete wall of

“We’re out of bags.”

They stood there, bereft, silent. There was nothing to say. It was like death. There was nothing to negotiate, try as you might.

“But the groceries.”

said one of them. The cashier just stared, we all stared at the empty hooks where the bags should be. Certainly there were boxes, but at a time like this, boxes may as well be your own hands.

The devastation and enormity of the situation was so great, I thought of offering up my small alms of four plastic bags, recently purchased at Countdown because I’d forgotten them that day, but not today I hadn’t.

The Countdown plastic bags were so notoriously good, one day I overheard a lady ask for lots of them because they made amazing bin liners.

But back to our couple.

Off they went, slowly past the checkout area towards the sliding doors, to what fate we’ll never truly know. An archway of flames awaited them in the car park and they walked into the incendiary tunnel.

Locusts swarmed overhead as storm clouds gathered just above the bit where you can get the cheap fuel.

I imagined them picking up one or two items and putting them in the boot without bags, then having to get some bags from the house at the other end and bag up the groceries but in their own driveway like some sort of reverse weird torture ritual.

Every time I have a human interaction from now on, I’m going to say “Remember Your Bags”.

“Hi mum, I need a shower.”

 “Remember your bags.”

 “Hi, it’s Jason from Fisher Funds here. Have you                                 thought about changing your KiwiSaver plan?”

“I haven’t got time because I need to remember my bags.”

“What’s for dinner?”

 “Bags.”

A typical confused Internet Warrior offsetting negative ions with a peace lily

Sadly, this is not about that great The Smiths song, it’s about something we don’t talk about enough in society: Computer Illiteracy in the Third Age.

More than ever, the elderly (people over the age of 48) are turning to their computer machines to use applications such as the ASK toolbar, Yahoo as a search engine, and to unwittingly download the full version of AVG because it offers full protection from hackers, who are young men who wear hoodies and gloves while hacking in the dark while no-one else is looking.

Hackers always dress this way, it’s very common and even though they are alone in a room probably, wear masks and hoodies and also drink V

Print this out and give it to someone you love, someone who is wrestling with the Internet. I’ll increase the font to the largest that this here WordPress will allow.

1. Check you aren’t just writing a private message to a family member in your own status bar

2. Stop fucking installing the ASK toolbar. Once you have it, you can never get rid of it. Well, you can but I’ll have to do it next time I’m over

3. You can take a screenshot of your screen without using your phone

4. You do not need to switch the entire computer off every time you have finished using it

5. When Microsoft ring to talk about the breach of security on your computer, remember you have an “iPad” which is from a different company. But ffs don’t tell them this. It’s ok to not have a long conversation with someone who is scamming you. They won’t think you are not being polite. The Bridge group will not find out

6. Yahoo is now sponsored by Rich Dad. I know you like this idea but everything you type into the search area will lead you to Rich Dad

7. You can watch a YouTube clip of Nigel Kennedy for free, with the notes he’s playing at the bottom of the screen while you have a New World Graham Norton sav

8. I’ll do a full virus scan of your computer next time I’m around

9. I see you have put some favourites on your toolbar. I did not know you knew how to do that. I see you have Quotable Value, your local council and EzyBuy there

10. How come your printer is there? Next to the John Grisham novels? That poinsettia is doing well though even though it was moved. It seems that you might need to go to refill your ink cartridges quite soon, also

OMG this was exhausting to write. Next time on The Sane Companion: Existentialism: Fad or Something to really think about?

What do you reckon is the wackiest thing you can get from the Magnamail catalogue?

Is it the cat that you place on your lawn, with glowing eyes, that scares away birds?

Is it the hip-and-cool Mom tracksuits, polyester throughout?

Is it the food umbrella, wide enough to protect all of your cold-cuts from pesky bugs?

As I write this I’m tempted to buy all the paraphernalia that goes with lap-top based work. Surely there’s some sort of robot tray that will also hold my cup of Horlicks and my latest copy of Best Bets, perhaps there’s some kind of foot rest that’s on such an incredible angle, maybe made for people who also bought the Hobbit feet in the footwear section, what about a lumbar pillow to cure my sciatica…people, let’s find out!

1. Armrest organiser

M8 look at this! I’d swap out the Healthy Meals for Suduku, but apart from that, while I sit in my comfy lounger listening to Leighton Smith tearing a caller a new one, I can relax in the knowledge that my television can simultaneously be tuned into the ads about the oven that cooks with air.

2. Heater for ants

While I’m surfin’ up a storm using the ASK toolbar that somehow got there, I can plug this in—wow, so safe! I’m grateful it has two ‘on’ switches, for safety.

3. Reading Tray

The description is very specific.

“Now you can comfortably read, write or complete crosswords with this Reading Tray! Ideal to use on your bed or in your favourite chair, the sturdy design supports heavy books, while the bottom lip keeps magazines and iPads firmly in place…” (Source: Magnamail)

But I’m sure I can fit my Dell Inspiron on here too. Must look into the homewares section to get some of the hospital chic used in this photograph.

4. Support Cushion

This is going so well, I’m nearly there with my needs. This cushion will transfer to any seated situation, from coffee at BB’s Cafe, Meadowlands, to me driving errands in my Nissan Cube. I’ve just remembered I have the good seats for Celine Dion too! This cushion will be perfect to take and will not annoy the shit out of anyone at all.

5. Shower Rug

Ok, I may have got a bit sidetracked here, but this seems eminently sensible to me: a rug for the shower. They say it won’t get moldy, but it doesn’t matter because I’m a Life Member of the Shower Witch Society, and we members all have literally 80 litres of Shower Witch on standby at any given time.

So there we have it, what a glorious company, you should go there right now and get yourself an incredibly confusing set of Buddhas who are both laughing, but also not seeing, hearing or speaking evil.

Once upon a time, in Fifth Form (Year 11), I took some subjects at school.

I was asked to know my exact career path at age 15, and being from a fairly middle-class and therefore fortunate family, I simply answered with the first thing that came into my head:

Um I’ll take florist please.

With that over and done with I just randomly checked some boxes and ended up in French and Geography thinking they sounded nice.

The qualification was then School Certificate. I remember it being content-driven, meaning I’d be “taught” by my “teacher”. My teacher would do all of the talking, and would stand in front of the blackboard and draw diagrams with chalk.  We’d write down the content in our 1B5 hardcover books.

My geography teacher warned us about our exams from the minute we started class on the first day. We got used to hearing helpful reminders such as:

You think exams are in November, well they’re closer than you think

Oh, how we laughed at this nonsense, and went back to writing notes to our friends and planning what colour taffeta we’d wear for next year’s ball.

Suddenly it was term four and we’d done no work all year nor any study. My florist career was already in tatters and there were no Coles Notes for Geography or French.

There was only one thing for it, and that was to make it all up and hope for the best.

The English exam went ok. On the morning I packed a pretty tight plastic bag with things like protractors and a compass to make myself look more scholarly.

All of my transactional pieces ended with “Thank goodness it was all a dream”, because they were rubbish stories.  Possibly what got me through this exam was the helpful anecdote about Tennessee Williams’ sister being the first person in America to have a frontal lobotomy, the only thing I could remember about A Streetcar Named Desire.

French was tough. We were made to listen to some cassette tapes of scenarios. For example, Thierry getting told off by his mother.  I managed to work out that the whole family were going to the pool though, and that felt good.

On to Mathematics. Not my strength by any stretch but still the compass and protractor finally came into their own.

Geography was easy. I can still describe to you what orographic rain is, and that Auckland is an isthmus, and write a creative paragraph about California’s varied land forms and weather.

Science was ok, apart from the chemistry and physics parts, and by then, it was nearly holiday time and I no longer cared about my future.

In January the results came in. To my surprise, I had passed everything except French, only because everything was scaled up. Because of scaling, so that the education system could attain its all-important “bell curve”, three of my grades were in the late sixties. I passed mathematics. What a shitty cohort we must have been.

The following year, we were thrown into the first experimental year of Sixth Form Certificate and I spent a year mounting things onto thick cardboard for no good reason, and staring into the educational abyss, and wondering if I’d wear leg-of-mutton sleeves with my backless dress, and whether my date would be shorter than me because of the heels.

Everybody rock your body (Credit: ThreeNow)

Dancing With The Stars New Zealand can only be described as a good night out at the Cosmopolitan Club, the proviso being that you’ve pre-loaded at home with a few hundred chardonnays and one Snax topped with tasty cheese.

We’re watching it though, or thinking about it. Those of us who piously announce they are refusing to engage with it sit—furious they said this publicly—with the TV set tuned to something much more important at 7.30, such as a documentary on The Eagles or pretending to watch the one about the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, on TV3, 12 celebrities, ostensibly chosen because of their strong desire to raise money for charidee, strap on man-made fibres and Cuban heels and are rendered barely able to walk in a straight line let alone dance, for the next 10 weeks.

Let that sink in. Ten weeks is a school term. At the end of one school term, you will emerge from this fog of dancing. You won’t recognise your children any longer, and you’ll be tripping over the stack of Woman’s Day magazines that you hate-bought so you could read the exclusive inside story about how Zac has real feelings, and how David Seymour never gave up hope that his dance partner would finally say yes to a date.

In essence the premise of the show does work. That’s because there’s at least one or two half-decent personalities who viewers probably want to see do well, if not win.

And then there’s David Seymour. Seymour performed his first dance last night. My Sharona is a good song. Seymour emerged from the mists of time dressed “rocker styles”. Cut-away to the dressing room:

Just make me look cool. I missed my chance at Grammar. What does cool look like and make me that

There was one sequence where he danced alone. His body blurred into what looked like one of the more disturbing Francis Bacon portraits; a wash of purple surrounding a maniacally enthusiastic face.

He did ok. What can we expect from ACT?

Another character called Shav danced the previous night. People on Twitter were saying things like “You go girl” and “Shav is owning this show”. With names like Suzy, Shav, Robert and David, this show sounded increasingly like the workplace function of a small-to-medium accounting firm in Lower Hutt.

The exception was of course Marama Fox. Fox could actually dance. She can dance, and this is because she doesn’t care what people think of her.

Other contestants were wound up, rigor mortis styles. They were so stiff that the judges were really needing to dig deep for the good comments. One judge got around the poor dancing prowess of Zac Franich by sexually harassing him in front of the nation.

Over to the judges, we had the three main archetypes of humanity: the bitchy one, the voice of reason and the cool dad (who modelled in Milan for a few months once).

Dai Henwood is now just ringing it in and gutted he can’t say words like “fuckin’ ” and “cock”.

Who will go home first? Predictably it won’t be Suzy Cato. She really pulled out the big guns last night, mainly by having her children join her at the end. Ain’t no one going to vote her off.

David Seymour won’t last. People can’t take much more of this guy and his surrealist notions and outlook.

The text machine will decide, and New Zealand will, once again select the innocuous, honest broker from the bank of smiles, because the text machine has an unlimited text add-on and a penchant for Jude Dobson.

Drinking/wife swap (Photo credit: Nine)

Telv took one look at Sarah and thought she was a bit of a looker.

Troy has been trying to get his leg over his wife Ashley for weeks now.

Dean (nearly all the men have four-letter names) cried at the final commitment ceremony then ungraciously took a dumping from Tracey. He looked over a fence in shame.

Tracey has a signed Oprah photograph. Dean’s a Creative in a Creative Industry who can rap and skate.

John Aitken sat, blue-blazered, serious, and recapped the same old thing over and over for eight weeks.

Couples will have to decide whether there’s enough in this for the marriage to work.

Trish, hands folded together, nodded in agreement. The judges/psychologists have the sex appeal of Glad Wrap. They are also the experts.

Have I been watching this for eight weeks?

Each week, more or less, the same things happen. Dean and Tracey revisit Dean’s affair with Davina. The women, all desperate to stop their eye makeup running, dab at eye-corners with Kleenex while sitting on a couch. John’s couch, their sister’s couch, the couch in the shared tiny bridal apartment. Nobody does anything, really, except sit on a couch, drink, and cry. Sometimes Dean looks over the balcony holding a longneck.

Now and then a sound-effects technician pushes the gong or cymbals button on their computer. We’d never know this was a turning point in the plot without those cues. A salty Gabrielle to Nasser:

Bad luck, Donald Duck! (crash)

John and Melissa talk about their upcoming long-distance relationship, which John seems pretty excited about.

The week’s roller-coaster of tête-à-tête culminates in a group dinner that resembles a workplace Christmas do.

It’s a table in a studio somewhere littered with large wine glasses of Chardonnay and Lindauer. Nobody truly eats the food, just like a real work function.

The couples neck as much booze as possible in order to fuel an imagined slight by their partner. If nothing is lighting the touchpaper, the producers take the only two options left: fill up the glasses even more, or drag out a terrible game of I’m Going To Ask You Everything.

Such a sensible idea.

Can I trust you? It’s just a simple question. Yes or no.

Sometimes small groups break out into other rooms for private chats. Charlene invariably yells out “be a man” to both her own and others’ partners.

And the credits roll, but not before we’ve been previewed the entire contents of tomorrow’s episode. Trish’s face of concern, John’s hair, and Dean’s sweaty mug, all in varying states of either bewilderment or horror.

Married at First Sight is like terrible beauty. It’s hard to stop watching, once you’ve started.

It enables us to compare our own relationship experiences to something highly abnormal, and feel better.

A real chipmunk eating a spicy wedge

One of the great tests of parental strength is the inevitable trip to Chipmunks, an indoor play area for babies to 11 year olds, even though if you’re lucky, sometimes you might see a five-year-old knocked aside like a skittle on the giant bouncy slide by an 18-year-old who has nothing else to do in Pakuranga on a Sunday.

I’ve just got home, poured myself a glass of wine, looked out the window and said

Why?

into the late-afternoon abyss.

I get it, don’t get me wrong. Kids want birthday parties so they can share their special milestone with their friends and sit in an MDF throne for an hour whilst hair-netted servants bring them boxes of highly processed foods.

In the main hub, children are let loose to explore the well-worn boxing bags, and duck, dive and weave their way through plastic balls shot out of makeshift canons. I’m told that these balls house the kinds of bacteria that can survive a nuclear blast, and probably that’s what’s needed, given that they are stored in seven-year-old boys’ jeans for hours at a time, then carelessly re-entered into the next play session.

As the paper towel bins overflow with moist bacteria-sodden colonies, the regulars, the Chipmunks-professionals, sit at tables on their devices, oblivious to the fact that 11-year-old Tarquin is currently causing havoc on the preschool slide, and who cares, because you can sit there and drink flat whites until you are technically high, and if you’re feeling really adventurous, you can get the barista to slip you a shot of fake whiskey or—even better—take your own hip flask and get amongst.

You are then summonsed into an ante-room, laid out with boy or girl place-mats and eat-wear. Little eyes wait as the boxes of nourishment arrive and then WHAM. The biggest fucking Chipmunk you’ve ever seen materialises through the door, scaring the living shit out of small people, but ultimately it’s only benevolently there to dish out silent good vibes and perhaps a discount on your next visit.

The candles are lit, there’s one more chance to play in the heat and nausea and smell of Chipmunks, and then please proceed to the parents, now working in deficit, to collect your lovingly made goodie bag filled with gifts even better than what you bought for the birthday person.

And out you go onto Te Rakau Drive and through Panmure, surely the subject of another blog altogether with its multi-laned roundabout of death.

Next time on The Sane Companion: Panmure: The Roundabout of Death.

Those of us on a budget, who do not buy Hatchimals, attempt to save the $99 by buying the $2 shop Growing Pet. Sometimes we say things like:

Look, Tarquin. You can get five or six of these for only $10. Think how many pets you can hatch!

We say it enthusiastically enough that even the children know we are lying, but still, since delayed gratification isn’t a child’s strong point, they buy into the bullshit line and, after the Saturday afternoon trip to Countdown to buy the evening dinner and twelve dozen beers, they traipse after you into the 1 2 3 Dollar Store, eyes filled with wonder.

They’re over here!

you yell out, a little louder than you had intended. You look at the packaging, nothing more than a small box printed with some of the most misleading information, ever.

There is no marble in this toy, anywhere.

According to this box, you will hatch a real live dinosaur, one that will grow to love Tarquin so much, one that will never leave his side. Not only that, one that (as soon as he tires of its ways) can be replaced for a mere $2. What could possibly go wrong?

This little fella LOVES a bath and can be taken to school etc

He grips it in his little hope-filled hands and you leave the store, the bottles of booze rattling temptingly in the trolley as Tarquin turns the box over and over, trying to fathom (and rightly so) how such a massive T-Rex could live inside this chicken-sized egg, made of plastic, on a shelf, in Meadowbank, Auckland.

Once home, you and he excitedly fill a drinking glass with water, rip the box open and drop the egg in, all the while you explain that at some point according to the instructions, you’ll need to fill a bathtub for the creature to live in so it can continue to grow.

Even though your child insists that dinosaurs really don’t live in water, you refuse to listen.

The very next morning little Tarquin is up early, to see the results. He rushes in to where you are sleeping, or trying to complete your morning sex rituals, and shouts

Guys! Look! It’s hatched!

He thrusts the glass into your face, and indeed, through the gel-like murk something bright green seems to have emerged from the shell, much of which has either dissolved or cracked.

Sleepily, you promise to buy a huge enclosure for the pet, reassuring Tarquin that it’s best to put the dinosaur back in the water and let it thrive even more, within the primordial sludge of the gelatinous mass in the tumbler.

Later that day a disappointed Tarquin fronts. He holds it up to you, with a small object for context. Indeed, the dinosaur is around 3cm in length and looks like nothing more than a crudely modified rhinosauros. If that.

You realise that no longer can you draw out this pathetic farce and drag your pummeled credit card out, to buy a Hatchimal, a toy that lasts one day and costs $99.

You slug back another beer, knowing that Tarquin is now happily entrenched in rampant consumerism, and it’s all your fault.

Coz this is Thriller

I was an awkward teen, a late starter in every way possible.

I seemed to hit puberty later than everyone else. I lost my virginity at 18, way after everyone else.

All through school until I left, I was a virgin who, sadly, grew up in the awkward 80s, wearing shit fashions, awkwardly, flat-chestedly trying to find my niche.

I never really did.

I was happy though. Partly, it was because I didn’t know anything. I was an ignorant, awkward, non-sporting, only-just-in-the-upper-band plain girl. There wasn’t the height for netball, there wasn’t the speed for sprinting, there wasn’t the parental income for impressive Reeboks. My main talents were distracting classmates with notes with jokes on them and knowing all the lyrics to Seven and the Ragged Tiger.

I had the immense privilege of being ignorant.

Back then, as I now helpfully explain to my kids, we didn’t have the Internet. We had places to ‘hang out’; either friends’ bedrooms, or public spaces like Paradice and Skateaway, which were the two local roller- and ice-skating franchised emporiums.

I’d spend every weekend at Skateaway. They had sessions from 2–4pm, and the buildup was immense. Mum or dad were forced to drive us there, dropping us dutifully over the road from the venue, before speeding off into the afternoon of preparing the chicken thigh casserole and warming up Channel One for Stars on Sunday.

My friend and I would line up. The cool kids brought their own skates and had square cigarette packet bulges in their back pockets. We’d stand in the “To Hire” queue, a much less bespoke experience, but a chance to dial the adrenaline up to 11, while mentally ticking the roll: that’s Jason; he’s in Form Four at Pakuranga College. There’s Toby; he’s currently suspended because he walked over to the Paparoa Road dairy during social studies and stole a K-Bar. There’s Tanya, she has a roll-bag and does gymnastics.

Here’s me. I’m 14. I have a wallet with Good Times emblazoned on it. I’ve never kissed anyone, and I’m wearing baggy jeans and a fisherman’s rib jumper. No part of my body can be seen except my face, which is made-up with a rudimentary blue eye-shadow and a clear lip-gloss.

We are issued our skates and we’re off, inside this strange world for two hours. I daren’t look at my Swatch the whole time because I don’t want to miss a thing and I never want to go home.

Inside, the confident kids are already on the rink, skating backwards to Goody Two-Shoes by Adam and the Ants. It’s unbelievably intimidating, but in my mind it’s a life-goal. I twirl my souvenir shop gold necklace on my fingers and wait until there’s a song I love enough to get out there and shakily go anti-clockwise until the DJ booms breathily into the mic:

Chaaaaaannnnnggggeeeeeeee

The DJ has girlfriends plural and none of them care. They are all blondes. He is the youth pastor at Elim Church but still seems to be swinging his penis around like a windmill. Suddenly, without warning, he puts on Thriller.

We’re allowed to skate and watch the video on the big screen at the same time. It’s surreal watching Michael Jackson dancing so ably, juxtaposed with one hundred white teenagers, skating as if they are walking on comedy ball-bearings.

Soon, my friend meets a boy, and the couples skate takes off. They hold hands and skate at a different pace to each other to Turn Me Loose by Loverboy. Half an hour later, they are pashing violently on the reddy-orange carpet in front of everyone.

I’m alone, so I awkwardly buy an Icey from the kiosk but then it’s 4pm and time to wrap this gig up. I find my friend, who is virtually now married, and we sadly hand over our skates to the guy at the skate hire (who is wearing skates).

My friend’s mum is waiting for us in the carpark. She asks us if we met boys, and I inwardly eyeroll. If I’m honest, they didn’t play New Moon On Monday or Lovecats and I’m unfulfilled.

If I’m honest I hate the wistfulness of feeling alone, but I’m happy. I endeavor to try harder next week; perhaps I’ll wear mascara and tighter jeans.

Perhaps they’ll play In A Big Country.

If I had my own skates, I’d practise in the garage.

Now, I just wish 47-year-old me was there for 14-year-old me.

____

This blog post is dedicated to Paula.

I joined Twitter in 2012.

My first followers were Marcus Lush and Ali Ikram, only because I followed them first. But they were my first.

“What is this place?” I thought, so different from the Friends Reunited format of Facebook, where your pending friend request to your former lover/friend would sit unanswered for two months until you were shamefully forced to withdraw into the shadows, confused and crying.

It took me a while to understand the rules of engagement. I thought that because I followed someone they’d endlessly want me to answer their tweets. Strangely, they didn’t. Several incarnations of my Twitter account occurred as I tried to negotiate why I was even here.

Was it because Facebook had started to suck so badly? With its “Feed My Aquarium” ethos and “Share This, And If You Don’t I’ll See And Know” clientele, I was looking for something more dynamic and diverse. I’d exhausted my supply of old friends and relatives, and once we’d all caught up and done a silent head-count of how many humans we’d all created and who was the most financially successful, Facebook stopped being so interesting. But also, Facebook always felt a little like being under a glaring spotlight.

Twitter, on the other hand, felt more like an anonymous rampage; it was up to you who to follow, you could see into their every thought, every meal, every weird, angled photo of their cat. It was all very contrived, but then so was I. I loved it.

The pace was very fast, blink and you’d miss, or retweet someone you admired to show everyone what you were into, or that you admired their material. Or them.

Soon I had one hundred followers. Why? I was just saying my thoughts, somewhat sub-edited to an acceptable level. Sometimes my tweets went unnoticed, other times someone would “take the bait”.

After a while, I noticed there were groups. There was a cool group. There was a literature group. There was the group from Wellington. They were mostly males; a little tight clique throwing around great gags about New Zealand politics or pontificating about a thing, using Twitter to spray around their man-musk and show those lesser stags all about who were the bosses of a 140 word argument application.

Then I noticed the Twitter wars. Like rising dust, I’d see what I came to understand as a “subtweet”, and I learned to react like a fly on shit and locate the original tweet, as if I had nothing else better to do with my day. I’d read endlessly.

Someone used the wrong word for something, and someone came at them with a correction; and I began to understand that Twitter was not only the proofing facility for all your freedom-of-speech needs, but a place where all the hopes, dreams and mostly fears of people came out and were heaped upon a singular Twitter being at any given time.

A few times I glanced over to Facebook. It was like watching an episode of the Good Morning Show, the one that used to feature Rod Cheeseman, “The Cheese”. Every now and then, Rod would look at the camera with a naughty, sexy, eye and I’d eye him back, until Astar came crashing into the room with her horrible, shitty creations. But ultimately these actions were scheduled and predictable. Like Facebook.

Twitter wasn’t predictable. One night I stayed up watching a group tear apart a person for their political beliefs. The replies were vile, and yet this same group had consistently positioned itself as the beacon of acceptance. Other times I heard about the Twitterati. Who were they? What did they eat?

I came to understand that they were a group of friends and peripherals on Twitter with simply the most gigantic sense of entitlement in the known universe.

I saw people who were in a genuine struggle receive individual messages of support, and even crowdfunding. I really think that these are the good Twitter people. No subtweeting, no entitlement; they give a heart fave without having a policy on heart faving.

Did you know some people won’t heart-fave? Get a fucking grip.

I’ve never seen such a place. It’s a place. I’m very grateful for Twitter, inc.

Where else would I capture my thirst needs, want to make a slow-cooked mild butter chicken and share my ragged soul?

Next time on The Sane Companion: can’t get thyme growing in winter? Wait until you see this seaweed/Rheineck life hack

“Please release the vice-like grip that holds back the waters of the log flume ride” (repeat for eternity)

Survivor: Nicaragua begins tomorrow and I’m already laughing, because why do we think, in this country, that we have to go to “Nicaragua” to survive something?

It’s a bit old-hat now that we have a housing and poverty crisis here in our first-world cities, and those of us who are at the opposite end of that continuum spend an inordinate amount of money on survival-style boot camps and weird diets that now involve artisanal bugs from Farro.

Why did the producers not just hold it in New Zealand? It’s a no-brainer. The challenges could have included:

• An endurance challenge on the log flume ride at Rainbow’s End. The challenge is to try, individually, to stop the log flume around about just after the entrance-way through the waterfall. I’ve done this; everyone has. You then need to see how long you can last holding your log there, while enduring the vocal-fry of the angered staff member telling you to let go.

• Shopping at Countdown the day before a public holiday, using only the self-scanners. You need to factor in how much alcohol needs to be drunk over the 24-hour period that you will not have access to Countdown. The winner is the person who is still drinking at 9am on the actual public holiday, and still has enough piss to see them through to the family movie, Over The Hedge, at 7pm.

• A morning school-run challenge. Cars to choose from are a really large Audi, an MX-5, some kind of double-cab utility and a normal sedan. Who will win?

• A food challenge. Teams have to eat native bugs selected by Ray McVinnie, and while eating them, Ray will, in his best voice, talk you through the whole thing. The aim of the challenge is to make Ray stop.

• Listening to a two-hour loop of Mike’s Minute.

• Find the available rental property! On foot, using the Trade Me mobile app.

• Collect the most oil-column heaters from Auckland berms.

So many options! Sponsors could be Jetstar, The Property Press and My Food Bag.

And the grand prize? Why, $200,000, to put “as a deposit on a house”, the only possible choice for prize expenditure in New Zealand.