Let's Get to Know Our Hill

Sometimes when you're in a room full of people smoking instead of talking your eyes start to redden and hurt. Sometimes when you drive home and lie awake in bed at 4:30am it can make your stomach a bit sick. At times like those I put all my clothes into the washing machine and take a shower and thoroughly scrub myself to get rid of the cigarette smoke and the empty conversation. In the morning I vacuum the carpet and scour my sheets for pubic hairs. I do the dishes. Yet even after these penitent rituals you can still feel a bit grotty. That grottiness is a grottiness that can almost be sweated out, alone or with friends, on a walk on the Port Hills. Not quite, but close to it. We owe it to Harry Ell, the original mastermind behind the Summit Road who hired unemployed workers during the Great Depression to dig the road. Thanks Harry Ell.

The hill isn't just for theatrical songwriters Jonathan Phillips and Dudley Benson to sing songs about. It's also a roosting spot for bona-fide hipsters to hang:

A The Sign of the Kiwi regular

Where can we start? The Port Hills are pretty intimidating, if not intimidating in altitude (300-500m) then certainly intimidating in terms of number of walks. There are literally billions of walks on the Port Hills. A day walking on the Port Hills is pretty much like a game of Russian Roulette where an empty cartridge is a swell view and a full cartridge is an unmemorable day. Avoid the deathly full cartridge by planning your walk carefully and choosing a track suitable to your personality.

Port Hills Walks:

VICTORIA PARK

Only for hardened walkers. This is a pretty scary track. Not only does it pass the scene of the Parker-Hulme murder ... woah, I think the Parker-Hulme murder deserves a section on its own.

THE PARKER-HULME MURDER
Still trying to find this magnificent property. Taylor's Mistake? On the way to Diamond Harbour? Devauchelles?

pauline parker and juliet hulme walk down the track
pauline is sixteen and juliet is fifteen
they stop walking to listen to the bell bird
they stop walking to listen to the litter padding
it's a party, pauline thought
it's like before christmas
pauline's mum, honara, comes around the corner
pauline holds a brick in a stocking
juliet hugs honara and pulls honara's arm back
pauline pushes the brick against honara's skull
juliet pushes the brick against honara's skull
honara's skull cracks
honara still isn't dead
pauline pushes the brick against honara's skull
juliet pushes the brick against honara's skull
honara grounded, not fighting nor moving
the stocking torn, stocking ladders
the sticky stocking's blood and bone and hair
pauline throws the brick into the bush

Another cheerful day in court: This writer likes how Juliet and Pauline are referred to as 'characters'

Anyway, back to the sentence I abruptly cut off without precedent. The Victoria Park track not only passes the scene of this bludgeoning, but contains scary warning signs. The following is a genuine extract from the welcome sign:

Warning Poison
Cholecalciferol
DO NOT touch bait
DO NOT EAT animals from this area
PLEASE ENJOY YOUR VISIT

As long as you don't have begrudging teenage daughters and don't eat the animals you pass along the way, you should be okay. Catch the number 10 or 67 bus.

MOUNT VERNON

The easiest way to get to this gentle valley is to take the 18 bus to Huntsbury. While Mount Vernon doesn't contain much apart from a view, a car park, and a map board, it does link to the Rapaki track and the Crater Rim.

BRIDLE PATH

Still drunk: the only way to walk home from the Wunderbar

Catch the number 28 and get off at the gondola car park. Then it's about three hours to walk over to Lyttelton.

GODLEY HEAD

Totally rad

Godley Head contains military sites, mountain bike tracks and frogs for hunting.

SIGN OF THE BELLBIRD

HALSWELL QUARRY


MYSTERIOUS CASHMERE LAKE

Google Maps exposes a dark circular patch. This indicates a lake that a lady maintains on her property. It's quite impressive. Of course, to view it in person you'll be trespassing. There's a little dinghy for floating on. The lady says that James K Baxter once wrote poems on this dinghy on this hillside lake.

HEY WHERE'S THE GOSSIP

Can yrgoldenage maintain its hits with innocuous posts about hill walks? Probably not. Here's a concise and obscured guide to the gossip that yrgoldenage learnt first-hand over the weekend:

• Prominent scenester getting punched
• Prominent scenester getting too drunk to get into Goodbye Blue Monday ("HEY I JUST WANT MY JERSEY DO YOU WANT ME TO GET HYPOTHERMIA WALKING HOME!")
• Prominent scenester exposing lusty tales of wanderlust
• Scene Femme Fatale emerging from Goodbye Blue Monday toilets followed by another girl
• Up-and-coming scenester's bulimia (or just too drunk, not sure)
  

LET'S EMBED OURSELVES IN THE FOLDS OF OUR HERITAGE: SEND ME A TXT AND WE'LL WALK TOGETHER

Proof.

Proof that scene-ness/cool-ness has moved to Auckland.

Stop being dumb Christchurch. Follow the lead of lead blogger and leading man J. Phillips. Leave your flat and the flat. Move yourself into some big smoke.

Follow the GATZ

Possible agony aunt comeback in 2k9

Q. "Dear Simone,

Are you still agony aunting? Those like, 2 whole agony aunt posts were amazing and I feel as though all of us need help, we're just too afraid to admit it Please, please, PLEASE make agony aunting a weekly thing. Just make sure heaps of people write in with their issues. If they don't, just go on Yahoo! answers.

Love, your mysterious fan"

I don't know how to feel about this. Am I really that helpful? I don't really feel that I can quite get to the "core" of anyones emotional issues and "figure them out". I didn't enroll in psychology y'all. All I am is a bored, lonely chickybabe with a nana shawl, a macbook and a room with nice vibes.

Hey maybe that does warrant me to help you with all your problems. Write me: simone.jade@gmail.com I can't wait to hear from you! Together, we can all come together and be one and maybe hold hands and lie on each others floors and cry together. It's what we're all into, pretty much.

ANYWAY I hope everybody can help me with my current dilemma. It's pretty much killing me inside. I lie awake all night thinking, "what the fuck am I going to do". I think you all know what I am talking about. It's this:

I AM TURNING 21 AND DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CELEBRATE

My family constantly asks "what are you going to do, you have to do something" and I am all, guys, were you at Jonathan Phillips 21st? Don't even want to try and make something amazing when it's already been done y'all.

Just wish I had a billionaire relation who would understand my expensive/physically impossible tastes and set this up for me:

Big dreams for somebody "born/bread" in Woolston y'allz. Should I print off this amazing collage and show it to my parents? I think all I would end up with is a party bus with Paul Simon playing non-stop driving to Diamond Harbour to watch dolphins. Actually, that wouldn't be so bad. A lot safer than getting on a plane. WHOA WHOA I think I just solved my own problem.

All I want to know is:

When are you coming back to Christchurch?

It was lonely for an hour or so until upon leaving the national express coachline some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me.

“Where are we?” he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

ross brighton essays yrgoldenage

almost two months ago i wrote how i felt at the time about an inanimate object (a room).
what i thought was a satirically cynical, new-sincerity turn of prose turned out to be one of our most controversial posts in recent months. (though not as controversial as the recent showdown between ross and scene poster-designer/capitalism-h8er, jared davidson.) i got a txt which said:

'id like to speak with you' - some guy

yrgoldenjacket: o, farinaceous sagacity eschewing candor!

we were really flattered when local critic/poet/university-of-canterbury-registry-admin-guy, ross brighton, offered to critique our work. ross has an english degree; i don't even have a degree. he's practically trained in analysing stuff like this.

(note the avante-garde rejection of traditional spelling and grammar conventions):

ross: 1 youre asking too much, 2 missing the point (far more kurt vonnegut , it's called "goodby [sic] blue monday and full of his drawings for chrissake)than (i would say pastiche of a pastiche) speakeasy - the whole concept is tongue in cheek - you're taking this shit far too seriously. and it's a business not a vanity project- the idea is to get people to come and spend money, rather than have some elitist hideaway for a select creww [sic] - "and only serve gritty moonshine and play real blues—real blues, mind you: none of this 12-bar covers shit. grimy delta blues and a big black door with a big black doorman who won't let anyone in. yeah, that's a real speakeasy" - how the fuck do you make enough money to pay rent doing that shit?

the review is not a review is [sic] a conceptual critique, reported bitching about said concept, nothing to do with the bar realy [sic] at all, just saying poeples [sic] ideas are shit without looking at them properly. i think at l;east [sic]

darian: thanks for reading the blog. i agree it's not a review really. not at all. maybe i'd call it 'my thoughts when i walked into a bar to go to the toilet'.

i like goodbye blue monday. i think everyone involved has done their best to make a lovely venue. i look forward to seeing bands there.

i was there for about two minutes in total. One minute and forty-five seconds of this was spent in the toilet. so i wrote about fifteen seconds. so of course it was always going to be unbalanced, polemic and silly. i didn't even know what the bar was called when i wrote the post. i don't write with much discretion. usually if i think something i write it.

when i walked into goodbye blue monday for the first time, i didn't know anybody. when i walk into bars and don't know anybody i feel like holden caulfield and i like to use the word 'phoney'. i like the word phoney.

WHY I LIKE THE WORD PHONEY:

1. it sounds funny and outdated

2. i can pretend i'm holden caulfield and jerk off to 'fetishising the outsider'

3. it's a synonym for 'not real'.

goodbye blue monday is 'not a real' speakeasy. i think that's a true statement. it has emotive connotations and of course it can't be a real speakeasy because we'd have to ban alcohol for that to happen and i think everyone who reads me accusing goodbye blue monday as being 'phoney' knows that i know that of course goodbye blue monday is 'not real' and this is a really silly and unproductive adjective but in the context of a silly and unproductive website it makes sense

i think you are giving us huge and unprecedented compliment to think that we kid ourselves that we are 'looking at' ideas 'properly'.

has anyone else read catcher in the rye? are our pop-cultural references too erudite for our readership? is holden caulfield really saudi-arabian? is yrgoldenage racist?

ross: people say crazy shit and take themselves very seriously, especially on the net.

perjorative [sic] ... inevitibly [sic] ... be conflated, his opinions even lend you to imlicily [sic] agree on at least some level

narrative trajectory ... your narrator elaborates ... the final comment i think clinches it ... implies ... doubt, that the bar was
lacking hope prior to this moment.

I'M SORRY GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY - embattled blogger darian james' new-new-sincerity statement issued following local intellectual ross brighton's incisive analysis

this feuding would never have erupted had i instead chosen to write frankly about bar antonio's:

What's happened to you, Oosaka?! Once cheap but yummy, now cheap but cool. - some blogger called spronkey

antonio: still smiling even after mild internet shit-talking

i'm a loner/sorry entertainer

starting to really relate to hipster poets on the internet.



brandon scott gorrell (top left) says:

kept feeling unsure about whether or not i was going to leave my apt to get coffee

was unable to sarcastically perceive myself

things felt 'not ok' - B.S.G.

i think human beings are designed to feel compelled towards other human beings

this is so that babies are made

and the circle of life/suffering can continue

or something like that

what do you do if you are compelled towards a girl on the internet? what do you do if you are compelled towards a girl who already has a boyfriend? [i know rugged says that's no obstacle, especially if intoxicated, but i'm skeptical of their 'sense of right and wrong']

lost in the woods: just want a girl who knows how to light a fire/coordinate jacket and socks

she says she is whiteapple. [hot tip: don't type whiteapple into google image search]

i feel like the only positive steps i can make towards getting to know this girl is to comment on her pictures lots.

what impresses girls and makes girls want to get to know oneself?

feelin' inspired by the comments left by indian fans at this dragonball z website

I THINK DRAGONBALL Z IS THE BEST SHOW THAT EVER HAVE BEEN MAID. BUT I M NOT SATISFY BY THE LANGUAGE IT IS BEING TELECAST. IT SHOULD BE IN A COMMON LANGUAGE OF INDIA LIKE HINDI OR ENGLISH BUT NOT IN TELUGU OR TAMIL - md viquar ahmed siddiqui

i know that these impulses are just an evolutionarily acquired trait or something, but i can't help it. sometimes it's like i'm being pulled by a string, you know.

I LIKE GOKU,VEGITA,TRUNKS,PICLO BUT GOHAN IS THE BEST.IT IS PROVED WHEN HE EVOLVED TO SUPER SAYAIN's NEXT LEVEL WHITOUT REDUCING HIS SPEED LIKE TRUNKS. - parthandshivam

super-sayans are never lonely

ETHICAL DILEMMAS

Is eating meat "wrong"? Are you a "fag" if you don't eat meat? What about veganism, in the words of David Klein, is it "all or nothing man"?



What are you going to do Eamonn! I am sorry that the "world of warble" blog draft doesn't really exist. Is it ethical to eat a Burger King salad burger?

Is this guy right or wrong?

Back to ethical dilemmas:

You would think that as a satirical collaborative website, this blog would have no/a tiny carbon footprint. You'd be wrong. If you only knew about all the car rides that have taken place in order for blogs to happen. Darian's Volkswagen Golf, assuming it is a V8, probably 2 litres plus. And what about Jonathan Phillips flying half across the world, just for repose? Assuming he flew in a Boeing 747, we're pretty much fucked.

"yrgoldenage = totz unethical" - Quote Ross "the poet" Brighton outside Lawcafe. (sidenote alert: best or worst cafe on campus? Personally, I prefer cafe 101, but, you know, so subjective. Cultural preferences are totes relative? I mean, not everybody enjoys a vegetarian samosa or a ham-and-cheese pinwheel...)


Is relaying gossip about people on a website unethical? Can one person suffering mild embarassment be justified if the website has a lot of hits/makes a lot of people happy? Are popular blogs more morally acceptable? Are blogs with few followers and not many hits immoral?

So many questions for the ages. Not really that "philosophical" though so can't really get that deep. I'm just a blogger y'all. I probably have more answers than chickybabes though:


And more answers than this bebo blogger:


But then again, I'm sick of the YGA team all having similar views. Lets shake things up with a new blogger, somebody to really "get you thinking". It could work really well or it could work out really horribly with the blog becoming too "political" and would totz loose touch with the gossip.

Just want to post "funny vids".








OH WELL, better "hit the hay" since I have work in 8 hours. Hate working for "the man", ust wish blogging was way more lucrative. Don't keep yourself awake at night with ethical dilemmas. Just get a Big Mac and relax with your girl/boy and put on a movie.