The Adlington Post

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to the PHAB studio in Takapuna to help the folks make fridge magnets. We all had a great time, and the guys made some fun things to take home....   PHAB provides opportunity for people both disabled and non-disabled to come together for social activities, with 16 groups that meet weekly throughout the greater Auckland area. They have a main focus of young people 16 - 25.  PHAB strives to break down the barriers that result in social isolation.

"The number of pokie machines in Auckland will continue to drop even if Sky City casino is allowed to have more of them, Prime Minister John Key says." http://news.msn.co.nz/nationalnews/8446024/auckland-pokie-numbers-falling-key-says

The new iphone 5 proudly brought to you by Apple - now available in white!

What most of us internet users don't realize or fully appreciate is the extent to which our on-line activities are being monitored, recorded, stored, bundled and sold to advertisers (& other interested, and even more sinister, parties). We may be vaguely aware that "cookies" (activity trackers) are stored on our computers (which can & should be deleted in your browser's daily. I have recently enabled which, in real time, notifies you of other "trackers" of your activity & data -& will block such moles on request. For example, I searched for this evening.  Ghostery informed me that it had blocked nine (yes 9) trackers on the page I found. Among them was this entity: How's that for jargon?? They are saying that they are tracking visitors to sites and selling the ISP addresses as well as other relevant information ( ie our other web searches, physical address, contacts age, sex, sexual preferences. income, race, location, sites, ...

My buddy Laurie & I enjoyed a meal of crispy-skin duck on a bed of rice at Tai Ping Supermarket last week - this Saturday 22 Sept Tai Ping is holding an Asian Food Festival - stalls, classes, good food!!

The New World supermarket here in Brown's Bay is now selling 1/2 pig's heads for $3. Roasted (unbasted) for an hour and a half @ 180C makes for delicious crackling! I have been looking at some brawn recipies which use boiled pig's heads - coming up folks.  See my youtube video on how to make this roast: .....and my food blog for further cooking adventures: http://sexybachelor.blogspot.co.nz/

Today Laurie & I went foraging in our local neighbourhood & found some wild edibles. Read more @ www.trash-zilla.blogspot.com

I took a brief roadtrip to Hamilton with my friend Laurie Santell. We took a walk around the botanical gardens. There three loungers were in the American Garden...

The annual inorganic roadside trash collection has begun in my area. I cruised around in the van on Sunday & scored a 25kg bag of cement. This year there are even more people trawling through the kerbside offerings - most of them after scrap metal, but there are lots of other goodies and freebees out there as well.

A recent freeganing trip netted a 350grm tub of (still chilled) chicken livers.  A while ago while trash trawling I found a well-used copy of Leah W. Leonard's 1951 book of "Jewish Cookery" on p. 301 is the recipie for molded chicken liver ( a firm favourite with my Jewish friends): "Combine broiled chicken livers,hard cooked eggs and greben. Run through food chopper, season to taste with salt, pepper, celery salt or garlic salt, add chicken or goose fat, or salad oil. Use as a canape spread.Top with tiny bits of pimento or green pepper, minced parsley or water cress, or stuffed olive. Or press into a well-greased mold. Unmold on shredded greens and garnish." OR on p. 382 Leah gives the recipie for "Chopped Liver and Peanut Butter"!: "Two parts chopped liver to 1 part peanut butter makes a delicious spread".

A friend has groceries delivered weekly from the supermarket. When the delivery arrives, last week's veges get thrown away. We brought these home last night: mushrooms, apricots, an avocado, a pack of celery, & some spring onions. For more of my dumpster diving, freeganing & trash trawling adventures see my blog trashzilla

Yesterday I was privileged to address  Room 16 pupils at Owairaka School in Mt Albert on the subject of making sculptures from pieces of bicycles. Bicycle parts were kindly supplied by Marissa Oakley Browne from the Waitakere Recycling Station in Henderson. Watch this space for the results.

Let the Hunger Games Begin Celsias.co.nz reports: "The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions.  This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains. This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict. In 2008 a similar scenario led to “food riots” in more than two dozen countries, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Senegal, and Yemen. In 2010 a surge in food prices resulted in widespread social unrest, t...

Last November I visited the Waitakere Refuse and recycling Transfer Station to see what happens with the stuff from our recycling bins. I went with my chum Alan, and Marissa Oakley Browne showed us around. Marissa is the Waste Minimisation Educator- Solid Waste Business Unit (Infrastructure & Environmental Services) at Auckland Council, in Mt Albert. Many thanks Marissa.

Another three minutes of fame!! The skilled folks from Whitebait TV made a short doco on my dumpster diving and upcycling activities which screened on June 8 2012. Watch by clicking on the image:

Here are some electrical bits'n'pieces I found in the trash the other day. The analogue phone will be handy for use when the power goes out. I will use some of the other bits for upcycled art projects. The rest will go into my scrap-metal box. I get some $30 for a banana box of electrical wiring from the scrap yard - half a tank of diesel for the van!

On one of my foraging expeditions I found this packaged food dumped in my locality. Judging by evidence from the other trash at the site, some students had moved out & saw fit to dump their "rubbish" in a car park. We have 12 x soy sauce, a Hershey's chocolate sauce, 10x miso soups, noodles, and three packets of noodle soups - lunches for me for several days...thanks guys.

The other night I found these two fresh and entirely edible loaves of bread in a skip. It is interesting to note that some 30% of the food produced in NZ goes to waste/landfill - this when many people in this country are going hungry. Let's call a spade a xxxing shovel here - the major food retailers are not interested in anything else but their "bottom line" and the interests of their shareholders. Shame on them.

Today I had great fun doing a show and tell with my recycled artworks for an attentive audience from PHAB Assn. Inc. (PHysically Disabled and Able-bodied) who came over from Takapuna. Many thanks to Sarah and the support crew, as well as to the young folks themselves. "PHAB is a ‘constructive support network’ not a service organization. We mentor and foster leadership among all our members. We have people, disabled and non-disabled, working together at every level of the organization. Building Dreams...Building Hopes...Building Lives...Building Futures...Building Friendships...Building Me..." www.phab.org.nz

As told to Paula Trubshaw & photographed by Kristina Rapley - thanks guys for a great job! The amended text reads:  Sneaking under the cover of the fence, I raced across to the Hobsonville Air force base rubbish dump. "Wow, check out this old ammunition box!" I exclaimed, hauling it out of the pile and showing it to my five-year old friends. Growing up close to the base in Auckland in the 1950's we were strictly forbidden to go near the dump - so of course we visited it as often as we could. It was full of the kind of treasures boys of my age dreamed about, and was the start of my lifelong interest in other people's junk. Moving to Wellington when I was 20, I got a job driving a rubbish truck. Within three months I'd outfitted my flat from floor to ceiling with the things other people tossed away: goat-skin rugs, a full set of cast-iron frying pans, and an old-fashioned typewriter were just some of the useful items that I rescued from the trash....

A collage I did for my cultural studies paper...

NZ Weekend Herald March 31 2012    

At present we are witnessing the wharfies at the Port of Auckland in a bitter fight against casualisation of their jobs. The National Government term for "casualisation" is "flexible" - they put a spin on the concept making out that it will benefit the workers, when in fact this is the thin end of the casualisation wedge - what it will mean is that this system will give the employer the right to tell people when they can work. Workers will no longer be assured of a 40-hour a week job. This in the NZ Herald today....you gotta admire the spin the Nats put on it - but it's bullshit no matter which way you read it. "A law allowing some workers the right to request flexible working hours is to be extended to all employees. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Act, which came into force in 2008, gave employees who also had caregiving responsibilities the right to request flexible working arrangements, including changes ...

Fairfax bought into social media in a big way - they are now finding out that the beast bites as well as feeds. This from the NZ Herald: "The $92 tickets for the three April shows in Auckland and Wellington sold out in minutes but within hours some had been listed on Trade Me. The bids have sky-rocketed as more tickets were listed. Last night there were almost 40 listings, with pairs of tickets costing as much as $735. In the last week, 224 auctions for One Direction tickets have been listed on Trade Me. The One Direction concerts weren't one of the Ministry of Economic Development's events under the Major Events Management Act so it was legal to on-sell tickets" - Trade Me spokesman Mr Ford said. May I suggest that if just one of the disaffected teenagers makes a video of their problem re this issue & posts it to youtube, it will go viral - & cause Fairfax one hell of a problem....that's all it takes....I've tried it with LG & Orcon when I h...

 Sunday Star Times 11 Dec 2011:  Those touting increased business links with China and the sale of NZ farmland to Chinese businessmen may find this article an interesting read. Dubious business schemes in China have evidently "seen many people flee". "A decade of soaring economic growth has also fuelled a fraud boom that Chinese academics say has seen more than US$130 billion spirited out of the country by corrupt officials....foreign governments had been asked to help repatriate some company owners, preferably with the money they took......A Bank of China report recently found that almost half of the country's millionaires were considering leaving." NZ seems to be a destination of choice. I had planned to post a link to the article, but at   www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx the Star Times wants readers to pay to read last year's news online - somehow I don't think so. Where I come from it's an old custom to use even yesterd...

Many of you writing essays will be as annoyed as I am to find that previous readers of library books have underlined or highlighted text. To facilitate the taking of notes for essay-writing, I have devised the following strategy: as I read the book, I make notes on a sheet of paper of relevant quotes/sections which I wish to use, in brief form eg in the pictured example: "xiii/2" means "page xiii paragraph two". The "6" below the line indicates that the words begin on the sixth line from the bottom of the paragraph (a number above the line = the # of lines from the beginning of the paragraph). I add a few keywords here: "moves from serious, silly, grotesque-pathetic" tell me that this passage is to do with the form of the film. The quotes are from a book by Kezich.  Using this method means that I can read all day & take notes, then sit down at the keyboard and type them out. I can sort the notes from different books int...

 There are an increasing number of media reports pointing out the perils of online activities. Basically everything we do online is logged, and the information is sold to the highest bidder. The notion of "privacy" is fast-becoming a quaint,  old-fashioned 20th century notion. Weekend Herald Sat March 3 2012: "Smartphone apps can gain access to your phone contacts, quietly make calls, read and send text messages, record your exact location and take photos. And many of your actions are tracked and analysed for advertisers or app developers - even a game of Angry Birds....... Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said".......' all too often we are very quick to give [up] all kinds of data without really thinking of the implications, about where the company is based and about just what is happening with your data once you hand it over'..." read the full article here

If you have faith in computers & IT devices have a look at this photo - taken at the local branch of my bank last week:

Steve Robs Kids: despite all the hype, & the jokes ("there's an app for that") - apps are basically revenue-gathering, data-collating moles...ie in old hippie terms: bullshit. Remember - there is no app for imagination. Steve has robbed an entire generation of their imaginations...we see not gen-y nor gen-z...we experience gen-Dumbed-down .. ..we thought Disney was bad - this Apple is rotten . "Apple customers downloaded more than 15 billion applications in the past three years, the company said on Thursday, releasing figures that suggest the rate of downloads is sharply accelerating. The latest figures from Apple show that customers have downloaded around 5 billion apps so far this year, considering the company said in January that it had just passed the 10 billion download mark. It took roughly two and a half years to reach 10 billion downloads - but much of the period was spent without the popular iPad tablet, which has d...

 google is taking a very high-handed approach to its "customer service" - ie there ain't any. They keep changing the "look"of gmail & youtube - all to their advantage & as per their agenda:  sucking up our personal data so they can "monetize" our use of their services. I guess there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. hahahahahahah - don't even bother to try The good thing on the horizon is that even the Roman Empire didn't last 1,000 years. My prediction is that google won't even make it till the middle of this century - some smart folks will have figured that out & a truely user-friendly net model is about to be launched sometime soon.

Just what do the letters "ACT" stand for? I suggest: "Apocolyptic Conspiratorial Tendencies" "Absolute Complete Twats" "Appallingly Craven Turds" "All Cxxxs Together" ..any ideas readers?

"The motto is reduce, reuse and recycle but nobody's reducing" - martin adlington "Members of a fringe group known as dumpster divers are enjoying fancy meals – for free. On an average evening they can be found knee-deep in supermarket skips collecting food, despite most being able to pay for it off the shelves. Former rubbish truck driver and self-proclaimed professor of garbology Martin Adlington says people like him are dumpster divers out of principle. "On the Shore what is thrown out by supermarkets, veggie shops and restaurants you can live off very well. I've found stuff where the expiry date isn't for another month." One of his most successful yields includes bacon, salami, yoghurt, cream cheese dip and blue vein cheese barely past the use-by date and still cold from the chiller. "If you know the right times and places to go you do pretty well." see the rest of the article, plus some intern...

"Computer gamers a bigger risk on roads" NZ Herald Computer geeks who play driving games are more likely to crash on a real-life road, a study says. It found that motorists who play games such as Need for Speed and Gran Turismo are also 44 per cent more likely to take risks on the roads such as running a red light, and are less successful at carrying out everyday manoeuvres. Continental Tyres commissioned the study of 2000 British motorists. Safety experts agreed that driving games gave motorists more bravado. But they said driving games should not be confused with computer simulators which are driver education tools that teach motorists to be aware of dangers on the roads. The British study found computer gamers were more likely to speed, suffer from road rage, be stopped by police and make insurance claims. They are also considered over-confident by non-gamers and a potential risk because they might repeat their virtual driving approach in the real world. Co...

Everything from my local fruit & vege shop comes wrapped in plastic & in these black trays. For those who get bugged by this kind of thing there is an annual competition for the best & worst packaging in NZ. Here is the link at "Good Magazine" - I get a weekly email from them updating environmental/food/green issues. www.good.net.nz/blog/siobhan-leathley/unpackit-awards

My freganing buddy Laurie arrived for lunch the other day with her contribution - 3 bags of pita bread she found at the back of a local store. We fried some diced lamb pieces (from the supermarket pet food section @ $2.50 a kg) and added raw onion, mayonnaise, mustard, & tomato....delicious!

Last week a reporter from our local North Shore Times came to my home to interview me on matters regarding freganing & dumpster diving. Between 30-40% of the food produced in NZ is wasted at some point on the food chain. The reporter asked me if a family of four could live from the food disposed of in local dumpsters - "easily" I replied - they would probably even thrive on all the fruit & vegetables disposed of because of a slight blemish or (horror!) odd shape.