KAPAI: Sorting truth from fiction in a crazy world

Some weeks there are so many serious issues served up for a media lunch that it makes it hard to consider what storyline to run with for a column. Then some weeks the headlines are so starkish a columnist has to wade through a lot of rubbish to sift out a story.
And there certainly was a lot of rubbish around this week, some of it recyclable, some organic but most of it hardly worthy of wrapping up a feed of fish and chips in. And fish'n chips is where the rubbish stories started.
Scientific research has revealed that by the year 2040 all of the fish species on the planet will be wiped out and fish'n chips will become extinct like a squeegee bottle on a Mark 1 Zephyr car aerial in the sixties or the smurfs of the seventies.
Scare mongering you ask? Not so. And if that makes you want to head down to Bobby Palmer's Seafood shop then you might want to consider what rubbish is doing to the rest of our environment, not just the Moana. Again, documented scientific research just out is telling us that water, not oil, will be the global currency most sought after in our lifetime. Already it is more expensive per litre than petrol at your local bowser and no one would have predicted this 20 years ago.
Hell's Kitchen served up a bit of rubbish this week to its loyal lovers of primo pizza, with a promotion offering condoms with its new Lust Crust special. What next, a free straitjacket with every Crazy Crust?
Still, the subliminal marketing messages are filling our kids with rubbish and the cynic in me still holds a question mark over Frosty Boy ice cream: "Often licked _ never beaten".
And the Pommie Professor really got his rubbish wrong when he tried to take on FurryBop and his kiwifruit cousins. Talk about not doing your home work. Kiwifruit travels to the taste buds of the world on a refrigerated, fuel-efficient, low carbon-emitting cargo ship, not on a carbon-flatulating, gas guzzling big Boeing jumbo jet. Talk about an Inconvenient Truth. And on that subject, have you seen the film yet? Be brave and front up at the Rialto theatre to find out for yourself the who, what and where of the rubbishing our planet is getting.
The kava kingdom got their share of rubbish this week with Commodore Barney Rubble and his Fijian Flintstones wanting to turn their Pacific Paradise into a Bainimarama Republic.
The man's obviously suffered from too many head high tackles, I don't know but he is a dead set starter for the free jacket offered with every Crazy Pizza.
So what will get us first, icebergs, tsunami, global warming, bird flu, the fanatical Fijian or the fishless feeds? Whatever is or is not, like Van Morrison said:
"When that foghorn whistle blows, you know I will be coming home."
But until then, it's almost summer and the living is easy, if you want it that way. Go looking for that lost feed of Kaituna whitebait that you promise yourself each year. Dust off the old dunga and take on that perfect tube peeling off the new reef and most of all, go looking for an excuse to commit a random act of kindness on a fellow human being who could do with a few stitches to a wounded soul. Why not and why wait? It could all turn to custard tomorrow and end up as headlines on tomorrow's fish'n chips.
If you want to look at something really real and totally talented far removed from the rubbish we have been fed lately, then have a `jack nohe' at the raranga (weaving) exhibition starting next Monday, November 13th _ until November 17 at Te Wananga O Aotearoa, on the corner of Spring and Durham streets. Sometimes the answers to tomorrow's problems can be found in the wisdom and cultures of the indigenous peoples of the planet.
For me the renaissance of this artform is something to be celebrated by all New Zealanders. The feedback from the 1000 visitors to the exhibition last year was brilliant.
And to the companies, corporations, committed citizens and fellow believers in the taiaha of knowledge, who have come on as sponsors for my children's book BroBop and The Ancient Touchstones of Aotearoa a big Kia ora to you all.
Our target goal of getting a free book for every one of the 18,000 children of the Western Bay is more than just a dream. If you want to help us make that dream come true please put your hand up and phone Brian Bluck on 576 7770.
Your sponsorship can make a big difference to what our kids are reading.
Pai marire tommy@indigenius.org