According to Google people who end up at my site are usually searching for “Chatroulette boobs” and I hope those people find what they are looking for.

The people who spend the longest time on my site (on average 15 minutes!) are usually looking for cats. So below is a picture of a kitten I had called Maebe, so all you cat people don’t have to look so hard:

Pretty soon I will be getting on a plane to Europe so the regular service may be somewhat disrupted. But never fear I will schedule some themed blogs for while I am gone. I have also compiled a list of very talented New Zealanders who write about the kinds of things you find here.

For advertising lols I recommend a peek at the hashtag #overheardinthecreativedept created by the very lovely miss @bexrad.

If you want the latest breaking news, I don’t know why you would be looking here. Nevertheless may I suggest following journalist @jonohutchison, who’s stories you can find on New Zealand’s TV3.

If you’re a nerd you will enjoy David Chambers Design, where my friend painstakingly writes beautiful code.

For everything and anything in any way awesome you must subscribe to Frivolity by my favourite Poppy Gallico.

(Tip:  her boyfriend is also a fantastic tweeter.)

For music listen to Dear Time’s Waste, for arts & craft check out Craft-D, and there’s even a site to cover off the most obscure of the things I blog about weddings.

via if this is a blog then what is christmas? >

Yay for the resurrected (or zombie depending on your beliefs) Jesus!

And thank you God for inventing chocolate, of which I have been given so much this year, mostly in animal form.

The best thing about this Easter is I got to meet the real life versions of all the chocolate animals I got! We saw a duck at #gardenpicnic on Friday and a wombat, bunny and bilby at Featherdale Wildlife Park on Saturday.

The excitement continues with Wicked tonight and the Easter show on Thursday. I am really looking forward to seeing Robosaurus!

Hope you’ve had a happy Easter and feel free to come round if you are missing out on chocolate, there is plenty to share!

(Andy in Lake Karipiro, Christian Camp 2007)

A hipster I know once decorated a makeshift cafe by putting goldfish on all the tables. They were barely alive in small jars filled with dirty tap water.

None of the city kids with their modern allergies and soy hot chocolates cared. After enduring twice daily Church services with haybales instead of chairs, they had bigger concerns than God’s small creatures. Andy was the king of these city kids, a true Church celebrity. He would lighten the mood of the Church services with his Jackass stunts.

New Years Day 2007 Andy announced he was going to swallow some of the goldfish.

The crowd cheered him on as he brought three fish out. I sat anxiously behind 500 people waiting for someone to stop him. As he lowered the first goldfish into his mouth I sprinted up the hay aisle and snatched the jar containing the other two.

After camp my friends left with Andy to go to a beach house. They neglected to invite me. I was left to drive home alone, with the twenty goldfish I adopted still in their jars.

One of the goldfish died almost immediately after I left the camping grounds. I pulled over and gave him a funeral, not sure what to do I threw him into Lake Karipiro. For the next kilometre I drove with tears gushing as I watched all but two of these creatures float to the tops of their jars. I felt lonelier every time I pulled over to throw a small orange body into the lake.

I prayed the last two would survive the trip home, but shortly after Lake Karipiro turned into Waikato River both had glazed eyes and their bellies sticking up. They too were returned to the water.

A month would go past before either Andy or I would go back there, and in that time we became friends.

It was a short lived friendship.

28 January 2007 Andy did a back flip into the Waikato River and broke his neck on the way down. His body was found upstream from where I had thrown the dead goldfish. It put things into perspective, but three years on I don’t particularly like goldfish anymore because they remind me of Andy’s death.

James’ dad runs one of the big race courses in Auckland so when we were there I got to go in and pat the horses. It was damn awesome. I always thought horse racing was cruel, because vegans always tell you it is and compare it to dog fighting.  But equines are actually very competitive and they love running really fast and getting the praise of being the best. Gambling is still bad in my books as well as whipping horses or putting them down just because they make no money for you. The horses I met were well looked after and while happy to be petted were looking forward to getting out on the tracks.

Also according to PETA idealism, it’s cruel to cage birds, well the little tweeters hate being anywhere else. Outside there is the threat of giant crows and the neightbours cat so who wants to be there when you are safe in your nest? Admittedly their cage is longer than they care to fly and having them in something smaller may be mean. Even Andrew Bird who we have had since he was a baby will fly straight back to the cage everytime we take him out.

So if some birds are happy to be in cages and some horses happy to race, what is cruel? Clubbing Seals?

Research has shown that when the hakapik is used correctly the seals die quickly and painlessly and we’re not running out of seals like we are whales. So what’s the problem? One issue is people who are not educated in how to use the hakapik correctly which causes prolonged pain for the animals. But instead of educating, animal rights groups rally against fur wearers >

There is one explanation to why seal clubbing is a prominent cruelty issue. I mean seriously who would you rather have on your poster?

There certainly are instances of animal cruelty which need to be dealt to, but try and look at it from another perceptive. My mother used to pity the Polar bears in the Auckland zoo, because it surely isn’t cold enough for them, and yet scientists are now predicting the north pole to be gone in summer 2013 > which means the only polar bears left will be those in a zoo.

I honestly wish we’d kept some mammoths in a zoo to breed!

- I can’t remember who said that to me recently, but it was either Don Draper or Cameron Hoelter, the CD of Campaign Palace at 31 things. Probably the later.

Either way, I’ve found an ad which proves why. Everyone is raving about this ad today, but too be honest it took me seeing it on several blogs I respect for me to watch it the whole way through. And when I got to the end there was no reward.

It reminds me of this ad, where the product shot half way through completely gives away the whole gag.

As a house warming gift James got me a book called The Classic Era of American Comics which I used to have on permanent loan from the public library when I was in 7th form. There is a really cool comic in it which was the muse for my painting class. The book was an awesome present, but what he gave me for our anniversary was even better:

(The comic from the book painted by the guy who also did this > and the photo doesn’t really do it justice it’s huge!).

My gift for him was a whale watching cruise in Port Stephens, there were Humpbacks, dolphins and we got to feed giant pelicans as well as going to this place where you stand in a pool with sharks and sting rays and feed them shrimps. It was a good weekend and it’s been a good year.

Welcome to our home Andrew Bird (pictured on the right)!

We came home from our anniversary trip last night (details of all the cool animals we saw to come…) and this morning woke to discover there were three birds in the cage! It seems Starkey and Larry have finally nested one of their eggs to birth. He must be about three weeks old now, and there may even be more babies in the nest. It was a very pleasant surprise.

via AverageCats >

from passive-aggressive notes dot com >

Oh no! Don’t eat the cute animals!

This reminds me of the yellow chocolate campaign site where “chicks” is an option of what tastes like yellow >

I was reminded today of how much I adore Berkley Illustrations, and seeing as we are looking for a new home at the moment thought maybe I should give myself an early house warming gift (or two).

Which ones do you think I should get? Other suggestions from the store are most encouraged.

Doing some research for a new project of mine and found this amazing photo.

from http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/zoo/ >

Today I met this weird creature, half bottle nose dolphin + half false killer whale aptly named a “wholphin”. I honestly didn’t know what to think when I saw it… how does something like this come into being?

Most hybrid animals are sterile but this girl gave birth to three pups, the latest of which is the only one to have survived. I got to jump in a pool and play with her, even ride on her tummy around the pool (holding onto her flippers). James wanted to do that as well but she wouldn’t pick him up until she got a kiss from me. It was pretty awesome. She chuckled heaps in a weird deeper than usual dolphin voice when James tried to give her a kiss. Apparently she’s a bit shy around boys.

This poster has boogled me for the months and months in has been up near my work.

Fie months have gone past and I don’t think Flip is still a half sized baby, but I have spotted hundreds of honeyeaters around the area in varying sizes. Every single one of them looks like the bird in the photo.

So what makes this one bird stand out? She’s friendly the poster claims, which is definitely true of most hand reared birds. Unfortunately for Flip’s owners it also seems to be true of wild honeyeaters I’ve encountered in Sydney, especially the ones which sit outside my window at work and gawk at me.

Until tonight I thought this poster was a joke, some art school kid setting up a massive honeyeater conspiracy where every bird could be “Flip”. People frantically trying to catch birds as they swoop too close so they can be returned to their owner.

However curisoty + the internet has killed my imagination. I hope Flip is safe and has found her way home by now. I would be very sad if Starkey and Larry had left.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Goat’s Horn with Red”

I’m thinking it probably wasn’t – given that firefox is a fox not a goat and all. But it is always interesting seeing comparisons from art to logos.
from ArtsJournal >

From the people who taught us how to herd cats. If only their business solutions were as good as the commercials.

My friend Poppy Gallico’s cross-eyed cat, Gus. Who might not like plants, but always wants to eat me when I see him.

This had me in LOLs via ibelieveinadv

But he’s blind, so he doesn’t identify with this visual only ad.

There are three more in the campaign from Prola Y&R Santiago check them out at ibelieveinadv

In NZ possums are gross but in
aus they are cute as. I ran up to this little guy in covinent garderns and gave him a little stroke before he climbed up a tree. There were so many of them in the trees there.

Today on the way to work I saw a dead one at the bottom of a tree like he had fallen and covered his face as he fell. It was a lot sadder than roadkill usually is.