Let's Spend a Million Bucks.

I can think of a million ways of spending a million bucks, but today's suggestion from the Super City Powers That Be is one that I would never in a million years contemplated. That's three millions in one sentence, which is really, really bad writing. But when it's stood up against the total badness of the SCPTB's idea, it's Shakespearian.

Let's, they cry, get up a public competition for a logo for the new, shiney, Super City.

Let's not, I cry in return.

I really don't understand why the new Super City needs a logo. Why doies a city need a logo? To brand itself overseas? Well, tell me what the London, Helsinki, Toronto, Rio, New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, and Athens logoes are. Go on. Dares you.

Why does Auckland need a logo? All that will happen is that it'll go onto the Mayor's letterhead, sp he'll feel good for a minute, and then forget about it. A new logo won't make ratepayers feel any better when they see it at the top of their rates bill, or their water bill.

Actually, I've just realised I've been presumptuous. Is the new Souper City (I put the "o" there to reflect the soup kitchens we'll need for the families of the down-sized council-workers) actually going to be named "Auckland"? Has this actually been settled by anyone... or is it just going to be what it is because we can't think of a better name? Naming our largest city after some port and sherry-soaked English aristocrat makes a certain amount of sense, I guess...

I digress. The logo. They don't want it to be volcanic in shape, because people identify Auckland with volcanoes. I thought that was what a logo... oh, never mind. It also loses us Rangitoto, which is a shape all New Zealanders associate with Auckland. Which is kind of what... oh, never mind. Again.

Anyway. I just hope that the new Auckland logo is as accurate as Telecom's new logo at describing their business. It's a honey of thing, the new Telecom logo is. The moment I saw it I said "That's a logo that screams broken connections, and connections that can't be made."

Apparently, one of the promoters of this idea says the new logo should be as famous and distinctive as Nike's swoosh. Well, he said "tick", but they call it a swoosh. I'm sure that Mrs Ngamoki of Smart Street can come up with something that'll meet that criteria. As long as we have a half-billion in US dollars to throw at it over the next couple of years... And can get Tiger Woods and his ilk to wear it on their tee-shirts.

But here's a slogan that could work: Auckland. It's hot.

READING: Still on the Ambrose book.
LISTENING TO: Um. I'm almost blushing as I hit the keys. "Watermark". Enya.
TODAY'S WORD: Dismay. I felt total dismay today, as I was chatting to one of my old ladies. She's feeling despair, because her husband ( a fine old man, who I like a great deal ) is falling into dementia. Bugger old age.

RATS:

They were exactly as he had left them, carrying the imprints of his rifle and elbows. He could lie here, motionless, for hours, waiting for that moment when he spied a careless victim.
The church also helped in that it disguised the sound of his rifle fire. There was always sporadic gunfire at the Front. An enterprising Australian had, back in the blood-soaked days of the Gallipoli campaign, designed a periscope rifle. It was a solid frame that supported a rifle, with a simple periscope that enabled the soldier to stay behind the parapets and ramparts while sighting the rifle and triggering its mechanism to send a bullet sizzling across No Man's Land.
The vast majority of these shots were random, and unsuccessful. But the irregular crackle of musketry meant that Arthur's occasional shots were simply a part of the background noise. He slipped five rounds of his carefully polished and sanded ammunition into the magazine of his rifle, and slipped the lens caps off the Williams & Robson telescopic sight. With this piece of equipment, it was almost impossible for Arthur to miss what he was firing at. He could place a shot with god-like precision, and did so, twenty times a day.
Although the phrase “one shot, one kill” hadn't yet been coined, it could, with some accuracy, apply to Arthur Tomlinson in his crusade against the enemies of the trenches.
The Eastern horizon was a smear of grey and pick when Arthur made his first shot, and he sighed with gratitude as the heavy grey body of his victim tumbled over. The rats on the lines were huge, they size of cats. They fed well on the torn and broken flesh of the men who had to be left on the field of carnage between the lines, and they made up the majority of Arthur's chosen targets.