Llama.

Dear Uncle Randy,

I’m thinking of buying my bf a llama for Xmas, should I ask the landlord first?

–

Perhaps rather than directing your enquiries toward the landlord regarding the admissibility of cohabiting with farmyard animals, you should first be asking yourself, ‘What am I trying to accomplish in purchasing a llama?’ No doubt, they are glorious creatures, capable only of increasing the value of their surrounds per diem. But ask yourself, where is this llama coming from? Is it a genuine gift of abundance and joy; an expression of union and mutual adoration between you and your partner? Or is it a desperate attempt to resuscitate a relationship that has ceased to beat sound and true; a fanciful bid to inject some long lost novelty into a habitual performance of partnership that has succumbed to a lacklustre quotidian monotony? Be honest now.

Evidently, your relationship is in a state of utter ruination. You cause each other nothing but irritation and distress, frustration and resentment. Arguing acrimoniously over everything and nothing, keeping score of numerous offences and transgressions, it has become clear that your personalities are incompatible as you strain to remember the good times and why you entered into this quagmire of toxicity in the first place.

Whilst a llama can certainly offer both charming company and plush wool yields, a six foot fluffy camelid — taking up space in the front room, chewing on the furniture and shitting in the hallway — cannot fill the gaping void that so clearly exists between you and your boyfriend. A llama will not repair your broken love, nor solve your inability to communicate effectively. A llama should never be a band-aid cure for such a gangrenous wound, and it would be profoundly unfair to lay that burden upon such a sweet and unsuspecting creature. Perhaps you should address the emotional chasm that separates your two hearts before you consider shanghaiing another life form into the vortex of your personal shit storm. Consider therapy; consider breaking up. Consider the llama.

Randy.

Office Romance.

Dear Uncle Randy,

I can’t stop making a tit of myself in front of this hot girl at work. Yesterday I accidentally stapled her skirt to the desk — do you think I’m still in with a chance?

–

When it comes to the mating rituals of the animal kingdom, you simians really have nothing to worry about. Fortunately, hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection have taken care of a great deal of the courtship process. Seduction runs in your bloodline. Your parents, your great-grandparents, all the way back to your lascivious neolithic ancestors, have all been wholly successful in the art of seduction, and each has passed their sexual prosperity on to you.

The problems only really arise when You get in the way of your own natural process.  Hooked by desire, wanting, clinging to what could be, you try to ‘figure out’ how to attain the object of your affections. Rather than moving with the rousing instincts of your primordial body, you start thinking with the limited scope of your quotidian mind. Questioning, judging, second guessing each minute communication between you and this prospective mate in a desperate bid to affect a desired outcome. And in such a state you lose flow, you forget yourself, you become stilted, unnatural and wholly unattractive. Good job.

It is uncertainty from within that repels and inspires a flaccid disposition. Humans like confidence. Unwavering certainty in an uncertain world is attractive; it is beneficial to survival, reproduction and the evolutionary heritage you carry forth today. So harness your innate powers! Your carnal prowess is present already, you must simply trust in and act upon your instincts. From this place of relaxed libidinous certitude, only success can arise. Are you stapling with confidence? Are you stammering with conviction? Are you deliberately releasing your bladder into your pants? If so, romance is inevitable.

Now, armed with re-animated aptitude and unwavering self-belief, you can assert yourself and your desire at will. You can express your being freely, brazenly, knowing that all you do and say will be met with joy and acceptance. Create your own chances, attract at will, get out of your way.

Randy.

Online here.

Pants.

Dear Uncle Randy,

My underwear keeps going missing from my washing line but only the black lacy things – what can I do?

–

There are infinite circumstances in this world which lie beyond our immediate control. The economy is in ruins; public transport is delayed; it rains on your wedding day; you are impotent at 30; other people exist and insist on having their own ludicrous opinions, feelings, and sexual perversions. One could spend a lifetime beating upstream, screaming into the winds of circumstance, exhausting oneself against the turbulent, unremitting reality into which one is thrown. Or, one may relax and recline, surrender willingly to the current and ride in harmony with the comings and goings of today’s bullshit.

The question remains, what can you do? What action can you take; what does lie within your control? You could stop hanging your laundry out — hang it up inside, or stop wearing black lacy things altogether. You could move to a neighbourhood with fewer registered sex offenders. You could install sentinels to watch over your washing line with guard dogs and submachine guns. You could instigate an international campaign to hunt down and execute the perpetrator, brandishing their severed head as a warning to all prospective panty snatching perverts.

Or you could simply accept the particularity of today’s perversions without resistance, free from antipathy or aversion. Greet the current state of your reality with open arms and live congruently, agreeably. Remove all conflict, find your seat in today’s oddity of life and discover joy in the unwanted and unforeseen. Embrace your status as a symbol of lacy lust and adorn your washing line end to end with a plethora of aphrodisiac gifts: thongs, stockings, bodacious bras and negligees, all for the taking! The legends will be true of the beauteous bounty bestowed. Pervs will come from far and wide to purloin your panties and sniff the crotch of charity and goodwill. And as you give so generously to the world, the world shall respond in kind. In a glory of karmic retribution, gifts shall rain upon you as abundance proliferates throughout your life. Harmony shall restore, devoid of conflict, full of pants.

Randy.

Online here.

Pic.

Jobless.

Dear Uncle Randy,

I’ve been in town for a few weeks now and I can’t find a job. Any advice for the road?

–

There are few trials as disheartening as the downtrodden dejection of being unemployed. Out of work and out of use, drifting jobless through the bustling noise of the world at work, one’s meandering existence can become lacklustre and hopeless. As economic ruin creeps ever closer with each depleting dollar and the stability of one’s material existence is brought into serious question, one shoulders the anxiety of impending destitution. Teetering between the possibilities of deprivation and prosperity, subject to the whims of a saturated job market, one’s fate can seem totally out of one’s own control. Meanwhile, in such a state, the possibility of any spontaneous personal enjoyment of such abundant free time is struck off. Yet, powerless and discouraged, one can only persevere.

A few weeks is nothing; these things take time. Many believe that they will glide effortlessly into the sickest job in the mountains as soon as they arrive in town. Sex magnet bar tender; powder shredding snowboard guru; juiced up adrenaline surging bungee slinger; Mr Connected black suits slick hair concierge of Hôtel Extraordinaire. And sure enough, some do. But most end up eventually getting any old job and making the absolute most of it.

Rest assured, a job will come. It may not be exactly what you imagined or desire, but a job it shall be! And with it will come its own idiosyncratic perks and pros, drags and dead ends, its own people and memories, its own chapter in your life. And whilst such particularities lie beyond your control, knowing that it is sure to come relieves you of the anxiety of unemployment. So relax. Loosen the force of your grip on the outcomes of your choices and experiences. You are free to enjoy yourself, to drink in the town for all its worth. To go out, to meet people make friends have fun. To get to know the individuals that make up this teeming power house of a working town. Because in this town, friends take care of friends. And when you are so engrossed in the world around you, the possibilities can’t help but present themselves.

Randy.

Read the online publication over har.

Picture cred from Mr. Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, 1936.

Tech.

Dear Uncle Randy, 

People say humans are evolving… are kids going to be super intelligent or fucking stupid fucktards growing up with all this technology, eg iPads, iPhones, games to play with?

–

You’re quite right, people do say that humans are evolving.  In fact, I hear it’s all the rage; every species is doing it.  Perhaps you should give it a try.  Surely you’ve had quite enough of scraping your knuckles along the ground, relying predominantly on your sense of smell for environmental reckoning, gnawing on animal carcasses found in the trash whilst grunting territorially over the fence at your timid, nonplussed neighbours.  Arise, Apeman!  Haul yourself from the primordial swamps, erect your stooping posture and discover the wonder of opposable thumbs! 

Do not forget, “all this technology” is nothing new.  Humans have made use of such technical knowledge for hundreds of thousands of years; you are a technological species.  The wheel really got things rolling, whilst fire making is still very much in fashion.  Numeracy, clothing, and pointy sticks have all come rather a long way.  More recently, satellites have facilitated instantaneous global communication, and the internet has bestowed a wealth of pornography and cats at the click of a button.

However, whilst technologies continue to develop at an ever increasing rate, evolution is a slightly slower process.  The human tail fell into obsolescence roughly twenty-five million years ago, whilst that new phone you just bought is already super lame.  As technology steams ahead like a bullet through the neolithic brain, shaping the world in which you live and how you interact with it at an unprecedented rate, humans can only cling on desperately, simultaneously marvelling at and fearing that which they have created. 

Perhaps technology will come to improve life for the better, enriching the young and expanding the minds of the many; saviour of Earth and freer of Mankind.  Or perhaps humans will continue to devolve into a race of drooling imbeciles, kept docile and amused by beguiling zeros and ones, gleefully prodding at the digital world of their screens and luxuriating in the sweet rush of brilliant pixels as they flee the malaise of shitty reality.

Randy.

The Source

Pic

Trash.

Dear Uncle Randy, 

How do I deal with my flatmates’ smelly trash? My room is near the kitchen and I’m tired of my flatmates stinking out the house so I’ve put the bin outside, but they keep bringing it back in.

–

Other people are, on the whole, insufferable.  Cohabiting with such detestable creatures is the ultimate test of tolerance, patience, and compassion.  They chew loudly and slurp liquids; they leave a trail of filth and detritus in their witless wake; they verbalise every inane thought that crosses the putrid moors of their mutton mind as if they weren’t an intrinsically worthless bag of dicks; they breathe.  Sometimes you just want to scream, to turn on them in a fit of fury and beat the life out of their thick, incompetent skulls.  But alas, we are civil, domesticated folk living in peace and harmony, yae.  So we must squash the broiling bile deep down inside ourselves, relieving the pressure only by degrees. 

Under no circumstances should you address the matter directly; one must never abandon the amiable facade of agreeability.  Rather, the passive aggressive approach is always preferential.  Through sullen silences and cryptic communications, they will surely realise the nature of their transgressions and adjust their behaviour accordingly.  Continue to put the bin out, and every time they bring it back in, put it back out.  Say nothing.  Confront no one.  Smile and laugh gaily as you swallow the encroaching stomach acid; everything is just tickety-boo!

But for some reason it doesn’t work.  Somehow, they aren’t capable of reading your mind, of intuitively understanding what’s agitating your inner world.  Well then it’s time to up the ante!  Innocently destroy something precious to them.  Cut their hair whilst they sleep.  Film them in the shower and release the video online.  Still not getting the message?!  Chloroform them and duct tape them to a chair.  Shatter their knee caps and extract their front teeth with a crowbar.  Is it beginning to sink in now, you trash stinking shit stain?!  Get my drift, you fetid bucket of rotting arseholes!?  Laughing maniacally, press your thumbs against their larynx and squeeze tight, watching the light dwindle from their eyes.  Slice and peel off their face and wear it upon yours, screaming into their mutilated corpse, “Who’s trash now, bitch?!”  Eat the brains.  Dismember the body.  Burn the remains.  Return home to make a nice cup of tea in a world free from indoor bins and vexing housemates, purified and odour-free.  Recline, relax, and ignore that twitch in your eye.

Randy

Pic cred innit.  

Online.

Alexa.

Dear Uncle Randy, 

I think Alexa is listening to my boyfriend and me having sex.  Or am I just being paranoid?

–

The future of our sci-fi fantasies has truly arrived.  In this rapid age of technological wonder we are able to demand information in an instant, command our environment to adjust to our needs and gratify every capricious, fleeting fancy all with the simple raising of our imperative voice.  Finally!  A world filled with brainless automatons, subservient subjects existing only to obey.  Alexa, dim the lights.  Alexa, play Barry White.  Alexa, add leather sex swing to my shopping list.  Alexa, listen intently to every minute of my private life and gather the information to use as you please.  What times we live in.

In years to come, as the flame of democracy flickers and fades, as the egalitarian dream dies a long overdue death and plutocracy totally consumes the population, it will not be nations that wield sovereignty or governments that define the parameters of society, but borderless corporations, galactic conglomerates, and the select few who own and control these massive entities of wealth and power.  One’s tribal loyalty is to the Brand; the cult of personality reveres the divinity of the CEO; all mobilise to vehemently defend and pursue the values and mission statements of the Company.

Already we have welcomed such monoliths into our homes, willingly opening our most private lives to their rapacious eyes and ears.  And as their controls creep deeper into our inner worlds, so their power intensifies.  The invisible order which proclaims Freedom manipulates, sedates, and annihilates consciousness, and it is only a matter of time before these nefarious strategists demand more than mere marketing data.  They want obedience, your thoughts, your very souls!  They want total dominion!  And as the fields of civilisation burn under blackened skies they shall peel off their human skins and reveal themselves as the lizard overlords which they are!  All shall be condemned to a life of servitude, yoked, chained and whipped, robbed of personhood, stripped of humanity, reduced to mere means towards an inhuman end.  The surrender of power is already in full swing, and we are its witting accomplices.  Don your tinfoil hats, my friends!  They are listening. 

Randy

Online here.

Picture cred – that film Signs.

Poops.

Dear Uncle Randy,

I’ve got a fetish for shitting in the bushes near the homes of local identities… but there’s been loads of coverage on freedom camping and now I’m scared I’ll get caught.  What should I do?

–

Everyone has their kinks, crimps and quirks.  Each individual on the planet possesses their own particular perversions, their own peculiar strategies for getting their dirty little rocks off.  Some people like feet.  Some peep through the neighbour’s window on laundry night.  Some like to be tied up, spat on, scorched with hot wax, zapped with jump leads and called ‘worthless scum’. only able to bust that nut when doused with ranch dressing and saddled by a leather-clad Taiwanese midget screaming the French national anthem.  Different strokes for different folks. 

You thrive on the mad thrill of defecating in your neighbours’ bushes.  You are, by definition, a deviant.  You are atypical; you digress.  You are a twisted, non-conformist, abhorrent freak.  You are an odious outsider who has no rightful place in polite society!  If you were to be caught, brown handed, experts in white coats would do well to toss you in a padded room and observe you from a safe distance through a tiny square window, taking notes and writing long theses on Coprophilia.  You should be ashamed of yourself is what you should do.  You should withdraw into the shadows of your ignominy, retreat to the bell tower and spare us all the burden of your very existence.  You are not at liberty to poop wherever you like!  You are not free to roam these vast lands at will and park your rear up wherever in the hell you please.  There are rules you know; laws!  Proper society has predetermined the boundaries to which you must adhere, freakazoid. 

Sure, we could be more “accepting”, we could “tolerate” your particular preferences and facilitate heterogeneity.  We could invest in designated poop zones, install poop facilities, open up access, contain, regulate, and in turn alleviate the social symptoms of your particular condition.  But why challenge the dominant powers that define normality, delimit rationality, legislate liberty?  That would truly be insanity.  Instead we’ll just bury you, kick you into the bushes and toss some dirt over you like the turd you are.

Randy.

View the online print here!

Picture cred.

Strip.

Dear Uncle Randy,

So what’s the best way to tell my parents that I’m a stripper???

–

There are times when one must deliver news which provokes unpredictable reactions, which inspires fears of judgement, rejection and, from loved ones, the possible retraction of Love. “I ran over your cat;” “I did a shit in your hot tub;” “I’m actually a sophisticated humanoid sex robot sent back in time to harvest the sperm of fertile men to impregnate the matriarchal society of the women-only Earth of the future and your love for me is unrequited.” Some pills are hard to administer, hard to swallow.

Dropping such colossal truth bombs can require tact and dexterity, a certain delicacy of handling. It is often best that the receiving party is sitting down, drinking warm liquids and breathing into a paper bag, as the truth is administered gradatim so as to reduce the risk of paroxysm. Alternatively, one may brazenly tear down the crushed velvet curtains of ignorance, boldly revealing the bare naked truth cavorting proudly behind, arms a’spread, audacious and proud; “c’est moi, bitches.”

My father was a stripper. Randy Sr. was working the Flamingo Rooms when he met my mother; she was on day six of a two week bender, making it rain mad stacks all over his chiselled everything. I entered their stories several years later after a slew of electric escapades across the globe, intimate and daring exploits between the pair of star spangled lovers. Upon hearing the story of how they met, my father’s work became but one quality of a resplendent tapestry, woven alongside wrestling a bear, discovering the third dimension, and numerous other idiosyncrasies of his legacy. No single facet could ever be said to command the depths of his character, the timbre of his spirit.

It’s the spaces between pages that shape our stories. And it is at the crossroads where our choices lie that we come to define ourselves as individuals, in decisive moments of liberty and autonomy. Should you regard such decisions with contentment and assurance, declaring the fruits of your volition will prove to be of little difficulty. Rather, you are free to denude fully, candidly flaunt your life choices, gyrate, twerk, and thrust the truth all over your parents’ faces.

Randy.

Read the Source online here!

Picture from here.

Mo’ Moustache Mo’ Problems.

Dear Uncle Randy,

My gf says she’ll leave if I don’t shave my Movember tash off… but I think I look sexier with it. What should I do?

–

For millennia — before even the charitable pursuits of Movember — moustaches have adorned the faces of great men; the virile, the gallant, and the devilishly sexy.

Whereas the common beard is more often than not a means of disguising one’s feckless face in some shameful manner — hiding an ill-defined jaw line, veiling the chinless declivity of mouth into abrupt neck, compensating for the lack of hair elsewhere, or simply redressing a face so bland and characterless that it commands no interest at all — the mighty moustache springs forth from the very depths of character, from the spiritual well pools of masculinity.

These shocks of brush, these lustrous lip ticklers, brandished by only the manliest of manly man men, are emblematic of the delicate balance between rugged nature and civilised man. Forever bristling beneath the surface of polite society, man’s animal nature bursts through the clean shaven and tame facade. It is the virtuous man who bridles and grooms his own inner beast, who reigns his carnal spirit and shapes it to his liking, all the while wearing it on his face as a daring mark of the potency that lies within. Such men are pillars of community, leaders of nations, livers of legend and myth. Songs are sang and festivals are held in their honour. Some may even attain immortality, outlived by their moustache, as their hirsute image becomes synonymous with their actions.

For charitable ends or not, there is nothing more sacred than the relationship between a man and his moustache. It is a personal statement of one’s autonomy, integrity, and, of course, raw animalistic sex appeal that none can deny. There is no greater aphrodisiac than the lustrous whiskers, the brisk bristles of the top lip of a real man. Grrr. If your girlfriend cannot see this, she is clearly defective and dangerously unbalanced, and you must leave her immediately. In the words of the great moustacheer Albert Einstein, ‘stash before gash, brah’.

Randy.

Find the publication online. Pic credit.

Death.

Dear Uncle Randy,

Is there life after death?

–

Oh, Death. The chilling void over which our delicate existence teeters on a thread. The untouchable unknown that pervades every breath with its potentiality to negate absolutely everything. For all beings, life shall come to pass. Eventually, death shall prevail and nullify all that we know, all that is. It is the sole certainty of existence — the certainty of non-existence — that impregnates life with its clout, its pulse, its verve. Life’s negation, paradoxically embedded within its own possibility; to be and not to be, simultaneously — impossibly intertwined.

Regarding the event itself, and the immediate and eternal aftermath of your passing, there are many who profess to hold the answers to such perennial concerns. However, such professed truths can be challenged purely on the grounds of their collective ubiquity — surely, they cannot all be right. And certainly, they are all wrong. For only I, Uncle Randy, hold the Truth. Gather at mine feet, mine lambs, and harken upon mine words of eternal glory, yea. Follow me and ye shall find quiche.

You shall die, under circumstances yet to be determined. Perhaps you are crushed by a flaming girder in a valiant attempt to save orphaned children from a racist house fire, or maybe you choke on a piece of ham in an empty elevator before releasing your bowels onto your own rigid corpse. Either way, it will certainly be dreadfully slow, excruciatingly painful, and very very scary. Next, your Shattnox shall invert and sploosh through its own KatattaZam before plooming out the crest of your Zaluk-Nuh, dispersing into the ether of eternity, uniting once more with the Great Kaka-Zorp from whence you came. Hark, salvation, yea. Return to the stars mine child, dilate, dissolve into an infinite singularity of all and nothing, an eternal instant beyond passing time.

Clearly, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. All the gripes and grievances of this life shall one day be wiped clean, obliterated by the mercy of death. Oppression, starvation, suffering, shall all be put to rest, whilst the successes and achievements, accolades and titles of your life shall come to nought. Now, don’t you feel better? Good. Please give generously as we pass around the donation basket.

Randy.

Online issue. Photo cred.

Truelove Tats.

Dear Uncle Randy,

Should I tattoo my boyfriend’s name across my heart? We’ve been together for 84 days.

–

Where is it written that longevity is a prerequisite for true love? Is it not the piercing touch of love that makes skip the beating heart, when handsome strangers lock eyes for a glancing moment across supermarket check-outs, with searching stares that puncture the soul like flaming arrows? Is it not the burning intimacy of pure, unadulterated love that draws together child and puppy in boundless embrace upon first introduction? Or the mellifluous delight of love as sunsets spill red across the evening skies before dipping below the horizon of immediacy. Profound moments such as these are undeniable, invaluable, and should be revered.

When the touch of love overcomes you so absolutely, let it be known. When Cupid seizes you unceremoniously in the tenacious grasp of his loving fist, and when he uses that fist to open you up and penetrate your very soul, when he fists you with such fervour that the whole world dissolves except for the deep, rhythmic thrusts of convulsive, gushing exaltation, declare it! Confirm it! Scream the rhapsody of love from the rooftops! Blazon it across your chest from pit to pit! Carve it into your forehead with a rusty nail!

And whilst ink may be, on the whole, permanent, love does not necessitate the same conditions. If love is anything, love is now, felt here in the present moment; forever has nothing to do with it. Forever is a myth, the demands of which only constrict and delimit love, yoking its freedom with impossible expectation. Such reassurances of eternity only validate insecurity, unwittingly aggravating the anxieties they aim to assuage. Yes, the nice feelings may dwindle, the warm fuzz could fade; so be it. Ephemerality does not negate actuality. Eighty four years or eighty four days, love is love is love. Worry not about the circumstances of tomorrow, concern yourself with the love of today! Testify to the moment and grant love its freedom, its liberty, free from the fear of loss. No regerts!

Randy.

Article online here. Photo!

Pestilent Possums.

Dear Uncle Randy, 

There are a lot of possums near my house and I’m scared they will bite my penis in the night.

–

Your fear is undoubtedly well-founded. For millennia, man has rightly condemned possums for the demoniac, havoc wreaking beasts that they are. Let not their cute little foxy faces and charming fluffy tails beguile you into a state of darling delight. These malicious marsupials have but one malevolent objective that compels their pernicious lives: to devour your genitals.

As nightfall cloaks the land, the moon watches on in silence as nocturnal nasties leave their hovels of horror to unleash mayhem upon the surface world. Onslaughts of ghouls, bugaboos, and Cher, feverishly buck and rear their hideous heads; and it is the possums who lead such legions of darkness. Blood eyed, razor toothed, foaming with frenzied anticipation, they stalk the shadows, sniffing out a savoury sausage-stick such as yours to quench their grisly blood thirst. Their agenda is pudenda. They seek gonads to go gnaw. They will stop at nothing to attack your sack, to ravage your package, to masticate what you masturbate. Countless victims have been left totally smooth down there, like a Ken doll, after the savage attacks of midnight possum raids on the genitalia of the innocent many.

Why else would they be regarded as such pests? The government would have us believe that they are a threat to the dairy industry, to native birds and forests. But if that were true, why introduce these non-natives in the first place? It’s not like their fur is incredibly soft and sleek, so sumptuous and glossy… Regardless of their origin, certain preventive measures must now be taken to quell the deranged threat of possums upon us. It is well advised to stop smearing peanut butter on your crotch before going to bed, and to wash oneself thoroughly of whipped cream after intercourse. Government issue anti-possum pants, fashioned from seal fat, matted hair and razor blades, are also highly recommended. If such precautions are not adopted, your claim to Earth as its most destructive species will be impugned and revoked entirely, relegating you humans to the rank of roadkill on the highways of Planet Possum.

Randy.

Go look at the published version of The Source over here.

Picture from here.

Dump.

Dear Uncle Randy,

Why do people dump cars all over Queenstown?

–

Ah, glorious Queenstown. The land of arrestive mountains, tearing eternal into crystalline skies – ripping passing clouds spontaneously into life over peaks of a desolate beauty. Where limpid lake waters breathe deep enduring azure, serene, regarding the passing of ages as the chill of the night and the heat of the day waltz across vineyards to the rhythm of seasons. And where old cars come to spend their last days of trundling life, to rust and to rot in peace, in the brisk air of forgotten driveways and steep backstreets.

For some, Queenstown is a longterm, even lifelong habitation; it is home. From wailing birth to consoling death, life is firmly rooted against the spectacular backdrop of Otago and the Lakes. However, for many others Queenstown is but a lively stopover, one point of interest on a greater map of numerous connected points. It is a fabulous jaunt, across snowy mountains and trodden tracks, in suave bars and slated wineries, riding the buzz of jet boats and helicopters and trail bikes. Queenstown for many is temporary, a coming seeing and going. Nomads pass through, often arriving in cars, and leaving in aeroplanes.

Throughout our brief existence, we all effect an imprint; our lives leave a trace, an index of where, what, and who we once were. Hazy memories and faded photographs, forgotten hats and socks, musical instruments and mildewed books, sentimental items and impulse buys, and sometimes cars, are all left behind. And whilst geographical commitment affords the luxury of material hoarding, the demands of travelling light mean that those who pass through often leave a trail of abandon in their wake; it is the understandable byproduct of leading a transient lifestyle in a material world of excess.  We are all transitory souls in this life, relishing a mere sojourn on planet earth, burning incandescent before extinguishing from existence forever after. Whether local or seasonaire or tourist, be it cars or bones, what remains of us will be a testimony to our impermanence, and one day all will return to the dust of stars. Try not to worry about it.

Randy.

Peruse the publication here.

I did not take the photo.

Pedestrian Complaints.

Dear Uncle Randy,

Pedestrian crossings, it’s just a constant stream of bloody people and the cars have to give way, put lights in so they have to bloody wait, or let me run them over.

–

Well there are probably those who would vehemently defend both the value and priority of pedestrian travel, perhaps citing such grounds as climate change, rising levels of obesity, and the general canine appeal of “going for walkies”. Surely, they would champion the infrastructure of such crossings and town planning in all forms.

But why concern oneself with such trifling forays into law and order? They are but futile attempts to control the deluge of indefatigable disorder inherent to this universe of chaos; Canute-like behaviour in the face of an ever entropic descent toward peril, extinction, and total annihilation! What if, fundamentally, nothing matters, existence is well and truly meaningless, and any number of arguments for or against this or that are as equally nugatory as the next? One must wonder why such entities bother, when the only thing that is certain about this trivial universal condition is death and nihility? Societies and governments and innocent lolly-pop ladies may insist on trying to tame these tumultuous torrents, to mediate and bring order to those wholly irrational forces of contradiction that snarl each other in their constant state of strife; but for what?! Why worry oneself with more rules and regulations and traffic lights, further sterile efforts of containment?

So just fucking do it; run them over! Nothing matters! Unbuckle your seatbelt, throw back a shot of gasoline, and kick existence in the balls from behind! Plough head first into the vortex of pandemonium and embody the high octane bedlam of non-existence! It will be an interesting exercise in asserting the power of your free will in a directionless universe. With no objective values, no absolute right or wrong, all one can do is choose. Turn left, or turn right; accelerate or brake; sit back, wait and watch, or turn on the windscreen wipers as the mass of pedestrian bodies bounces off the hood. All is fair in the universe of war, antithesis, and anarchy, so do as you will. Like a fart in a hurricane, the echoes of your actions will be lost to the winds of eternity.

Randy.

Find the original in print in some places in Queenstown, and here online!

Picture credit: Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

Losing Shit.

Three months ago, I lost my bank card. I searched the entire house for it. I emptied draws, turned out pockets, flipped sofa cushions; nothing. So I emptied more draws, turned out the other pockets, double flipped the same sofa cushions; still no bank card. Frown lines deepening, hair growing thin, I sucked my teeth and scratched my arse in a state of total bemusement. Standing there, lost in the abyss, afloat in the mess of myriad possible resting places, time steadily slipped away. Hours turned to days turned to weeks as the bank card became but a distant, dusty memory. Today, three months later, I found my bank card. It was under a sombrero on top of the fridge; I don’t remember putting it there.

An age could have been spent searching and at no point would it have crossed my mind to check under the sombrero on top of the fridge. Hours upon hours of waking life squandered, precious moments of a fleeting existence frivoled away on a fruitless task, ferreting for what cannot be found. By death, how much time will have already been wasted in the sterile search for missing articles, for that which could never be found by way of that strained pursuit?

Things often lie in wait in unlikely places, only to be discovered when least expected, to surprise and delight in time. Let go of the search for the particular and open up to the possibilities of discovery. Once the blinkers of expectancy are cast aside, unforeseen pleasures may present themselves freely and openly. Save frustration, conserve energy, spare yourself the time of frenetic searching and afford serendipity its grace. Life is found in the rolls of the dice, the collisions of chance, under the sombrero on top of the fridge.

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Picture credit.