The week it rained...

This is Jed, our new cook. He joined the Gables family from Queenstown. The sad part of this photo is the fact that it was taken in the middle of the restaurant during normal trading hours. What it isn't showing is two things: 1) it rained from Tuesday to Monday (Dec. 4-10), seven days straight, non-stop. And it's supposed to continue raining for the next few days. No one told me I'd be living the life of a Bangladeshi here in New Zealand. I haven't see the sun in so long that I've come down with Rickets. My bones are so soft right now I'm thinking of trying out as a contortionist for the Chinese Cirque du Soleil.


Basically, the town looks like a morgue. No life. No tourists. No joy in Mudville. You know it's bad when the English start to complain. I want to feel bad for all of the tourists who are visiting the Bay of Islands during this two week stretch of rain. But then I remembered that they're mostly European. So, I won't. 2) For some unknown reason, this year's run-up to the summer season just hasn't been as busy as last year's, and even the locals can't explain why (rain notwithstanding). Many of the Kiwis are probably saving up for Christmas, but that doesn't explain the relative dearth of activity from tourists. The cruise ships have begun to dock in the bay and send people into town, though. Which just means more people that I have to fake like.


My favorite conversation with patrons thus far has happened a handful of times in some variation of this form:


Patron: "What brings you to New Zealand?"

Me: "Why not? I had heard good things about the country. I lived in Europe last year and enjoyed my experience there and wanted to continue living abroad. Plus, Aragorn called and asked if I could help destroy Sauron."

Patron: "Oh, is this all school related?"

Me: "I'm 34."


I stare at them, straight-faced, to see how they try to dig themselvses out of an awkward silence. Good times. That's when I get more "ums" and "ers" than a public speaking class at a school for the deaf.

On an unrelated note, we just added another Swedish cook for our soon-to-be-unveiled breakfast menu, but I'm not showing him because he pissed me off the other day. He wore a t-shirt with a band on it and beneath the group was written "The Killers." Thinking he was a fan of the Las Vegas rock group, I asked him about it. He walked closer to me to reveal Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Hitler, and George W. Bush on the front. Needless to day, that put me in a bad mood. Warning: tangent up ahead.

First, I don't care if you like Bush--my travels to Europe and now here have introduced me to a seeming endless supply of Bush-haters, some of whom I call friends. The ratio is probably somewhere on the order of 50 to 1 in numbers of people who express a condescending distaste for the "cowboy from Texas" and those who support the Administration's War on Terror (read: Iraq). Most overseas American expats are themselves very Liberal, and thus further perpetuate the myth in their respective countries that even Americans can see their nation has ignoble intentions aimed at enlarging their "empire." I call these people "Hugo loco" and check to see if they have a Venezuelan stamp in their passport. One Canadian ESL teacher in Prague even made a statement that she wouldn't mind seeing Bush assassinated. Is it a stretch to see why Canada graces the top of my "Ungracious Freeloaders" country list? (So, we pay for their national defense so that Canadians can have socialized healthcare and then cross the border to have their lives saved by American medicine? Huh?) ESL is famously very Liberal, so it should come as no surprise that its rank and file love to be around one another to reinforce their groupthink.

Listen, we can agree to disagree, and unless someone really wants to debate the issues, I usually just change the subject so as to avoid the unpleasant revelation of people's superficial knowledge of U.S. foreign policy and how it was affected by 9/11. Undoubtedly, Iraq, from the reasons given for the invasion to its rebuilding, was screwed up and the president deserves blame for much of it. However, to not finish the job at this point would be tantamount to conceding defeat, which is important for one very good reason: bin Laden has said in previous interviews on numerous occasions that the one enduring lesson he gleaned in 1993 concerned America's spongy resolve as a result of America's retreat from Somalia after the bodies of the Rangers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu during our brief involvement in Somalian politics. A repeat, albeit on a larger scale, would be crushing to the U.S.'s opportunity to change its image in the eyes of its enemies, which is almost as critical as the result in Iraq itself.

Bush himself hasn't helped America's image around the world, in so far as he has been unable to communicate the danger of Islam's "victim" mentality and what that means for the rest of the world. And, I think, he should have been working harder on an Israeli-Palestinian deal prior to his last year in office. It's also difficult to keep warning people of the instability caused by Islamic fundamentalism when America has, to a large extent, been successful in decimating the top management structure of al-Qa'ida and similarly fascist-minded groups. In a way, America is the public relations victim of its own success. People in Europe and the multitude of cliched rock groups and Hollywood "elite" who have expressed their abhorrence of Bush fail to understand this last point. Of course, one wonders how many books any of the Hollywood/rocker jetset have read about any of this.

I can understand people disagreeing with an American president, especially a European with a conservative Republican who hails from a state that leads the nation in sanctioned executions. However, this is where disagreement often crosses the line to propaganda (an irony in all of this is the discovery that the overwhelming majority of those who debate this with me more often than not are the most judgmental people I've encountered. Aren't the "lefties" always claiming to be "progressive" and "non-judgmental" in their approach to life? Another life lesson learned.)

To dishonor those who died at the hands of real mass murderers by making a moral equivalence between the likes of Hitler and Bush demonstrates a remarkable lack of knowledge about history. Aren't Europeans supposed to be sophisticated? Ha. The irony in a Swede wearing a t-shirt besmirching an American president and lumping him in with Hitler is apparently lost on the new cook. The Swedes aided Hitler in World War II by allowing him unimpeded access to Norway for the invasion there (to acquire ports for the German navy in their battle against England) and Finland (for their extreme northern front in their battle against the Soviets). Sweden was essentially a part of the Axis powers in WWII! They enabled the German conquering of Scandinavia! Read a book. As Kierkegaard said, "irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do."

And, as Oscar Wilde said, "quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."

In any case, the inability to distinguish the turpitude of Hussein/Hitler/bin Laden with that of well-intentioned, but flawed, U.S. foreign policy is reprehensible to me. I have no patience for the intellectual laziness involved in making such a judgment. Expressing one's disagreement is fine, so long as it's reasoned and consistent in structure. Hyperbole is for the intellectually feeble.

One wonders if Clinton's face would have graced the shirt's front were it made after repeated bombings of Iraq from the No Fly Zone during our Used Car Salesman's administration. Or the bombing of Serbia (it wasn't the Swedish Air Force doing that in their backyard). Of course not. Our Commander-in-Chief was too busy dipping the pen in the company ink, defiling the office, and lying to a federal judge about the whole thing. Europeans welcomed the president's criminal behavior with such an urbane and cosmopolitan approach: "it's only sex. What's the big deal?" Congratulations! European history adds a new chapter titled, "Ignorance is Bliss: Criminal Relativism in New Europe."

Welcome to "When Hippies Have Control," starring Billary Clinton. Look for the sequel, "At All Cost: An American Flirtation with Socialism," starring Hillabillary Clinton in theaters sometime in January 2009.

One final thought. The rest of the world can harp and criticize and bitch and moan all they want. Like I've said, we're not going to agree and people who wear those sorts of t-shirts aren't needed anyway. They probably have one with Che Guevara's likeness on the front, too. A civil disagreement is fine by me.

Just so long as the next time you need the U.S., its economy, its Air Force, Army, Navy or Marines, its political weight, its money, its status, its principles, its negotiation, its doctors, its researchers, its lawyers, its ingenuity, its universities, its business, its credit, its treasury, its stock market, its freedom, its agriculture, its "pursuit of happiness," its involvement...you go right ahead and skip our number.

On second thought, maybe you can have the lawyers.

In any event, we wouldn't want the world to be consigned to the ignominy of hypocrisy, a trait Abraham Lincoln likened to the man who murdered both his parents then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

This is Brooke, who is helping me (taking drink orders) in the restaurant. When I say "help," I really mean, "taking half of my tips." She's Cornish. Which is another way of saying "a really good drinker." She looks as if she's preparing for a board meeting here. But, she's really preparing for a bored meeting, as this photo was taken right after the one of Jed. Her hobbies include beginning every sentence with "I," promising to begin a workout program between cigarette breaks and tequila shots, and talking so fast that I have a 1 in 8 chance of understanding any of our conversations.

The office. The inside of Zee Gables, New Zealand's oldest restaurant, as many are fond of saying. Did you know that Zee Gables' foundations are made of whalebone? That there may be a ghost in the building? That at various parts in its life, the building served as a boardinghouse, a bakery, and a brothel? That there was a secret hiding room underneath the staircase to hide sailors and pirates wishing to escape the joys of homoeroticism during 19th century transoceanic transportation?

My best friends in Russell. I don't think I'm kidding. Always sad to see them chosen, weighed, and grilled, my buddies and I spend a lot of quality time together as I give each table the opportunity to smell like fish and win the staring contest these guys are so good at. Reactions to my appearance at a table with this tray generally fall into one of two categories: 1) eyes beaming, tongue licking lips, a patron rises in his/her seat and hears "fresh fish" to mean "30 minute orgasm," or 2) eyes squint, face shrivels up, a patron shrinks away from the tray and declares, "nothing with heads."

At that point, I'm reminded of the sign outside the shop, which reads "Fish Speciality Restaurant." Did you think you were getting turkey on the menu? It's not like I'm dragging out Mary's little lamb or Little Bo Peep's buddies and re-creating Passover's bloody door trick to show you who we were going to grill up that evening.

From the left: Gurnard (2), Snapper (2), Flounder (2), and Tarakihi (2).


"Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo."

H.G. Wells