Back at Toast Masters

My return to TM today makes me a little nervous, but in a good way. This is, after all, one reason I joined to get out if my comfort zone. I wonder what I will be asked to speak about today? My next challenge is to prepare my second speech, but this time, only SIX minutes long!

Below is a family distraught and angry after a car crash killed one boy and maimed another for life. The drunken driver, a teenager, shows no remorse. This is a salutary reminder that all things are not good in these often spoiled islands.

And here, a sporting accident, a hunstman shoots another hunter, not guilty, is that OK?

What's there to say, this is getting to be somewhat common....

Below the cannibal culture of the early tribes. These were sacrifices to show the power of the priests. Look what it has led to today, the powerful priests are very often no better, just assert power in a different and more insidious way. 

And another grisley murder....

..and below an elderly Kiwi laments...

...on a silly mistake by a friend leading to his yacht crashing on the rocks.

Above, Maori academic cries for true reality in Maori History - where was the 'privilege'?

In Australia, racism rears its ugly head where legendary singer Gurrumul is nearly lost by terrible hospital procedures in Darwin. There is so much more work to be done in Aboriginal liberation and on their own health care.

At least Homer Simpson is with the times.....although it is unrequited gay love and it does exist as some of us well know!

Lydia touted by Reason to be on the way to golf immortality.

Tonight is the HU Song and Scottish Dancing, with a lot more of the latter to come later this year. 

Btw, I saw a classic Kiwi scene the other day of a homeless man lying asleep on a bench, or on the footpath I forget. The only difference was his eyes were covered by an open book...I wonder what he was reading before he fell asleep, Homer's Odessey perhaps? The Kiwis are avid readers, even the out-of-work ones it seems.