In praise of the awfully unhip Don McGlashan.

As I was battling my way to work this morning, late, through sun and rain (at the same time), belting out whatever came on the unPod (I am a sing-alonger, always), the Muttonbirds' 'Giant Friend' popped up. You know what's delightful? How aggressively Don insists on singing in a Kiwi accent. Always. And you know it's a deliberate artistic decision, because the accent of a pop singer is always, by default, American. The Beatles changed all that for the UK, of course, but it's not as if every artist hailing from there uses their own provincial accent. And for us it's worse, because we have two layers of pop-culture colonialism, two layers of artifice to get through. Not only do we have to reject the default accent, we have to reject the British alternative (just listen to some NZ punk bands from the 70s, all glottal stops) too. It's really weird, and also liberating, to sing a song with all of our weird vowels. Dorky but true.

It's also liberating to not have Ice Cube's 'Put Your Ass Into It' come up on my Friday commute. I swear, 5000 songs on that machine, set to random, and every single Friday I'm there, driving and singing along with 'I've got dick for days, you've got ass for weeks!' I mean, I love that song, but what are the odds?

Brent has been here nearly four years, long enough to use local idioms. Now when he wants to get the attention of his students or our pets, he shouts 'oi!'

It's cute.

Oh, and happy Anzac Day, team. I made the appropriate biscuits for the day this morning. You can see why that recipe's lasted the best part of a century - it's fast and simple to make, sweet, high in protein, yummy, and keeps for ages. I imagine if I was a soldier in the trenches in World War I, an Anzac biscuit would be just the ticket. Here's to you blokes. Especially the poor bastards still over there. Never again.

Today, I discovered that our house has the same square footage/metrage as the average American house in 1950 - 1001 square feet, or 93 square metres. The average American house is now over twice that size.