Hello friends,
It’s been a while since I sent you a missive. Apologies. Things have been busy. Jess and I welcomed our son into the world and have been hecticly wrapping our heads around being parents to a living child. He’s awesome. Doing all the things a baby should be doing: pissing, shitting, spewing, sleeping, smiling, screaming.
It is all a beautiful blur and I love every moment of it.
We’ve decided to keep the little one off The Internet for as long as possible, so if you feel the need to see what he looks like, just imagine a teeny tiny JJW sans beard.
But you know me: I find it hard to sit still. My brain is a small child with a paintball gun swivelling away on an office chair firing pot shots onto the inside of my skull.
So here are, for your amusement and in no particular order, a couple of the things I have been up to.
JJW’s chilli oil
I bloody love chilli oil.
The IGA near my place has approx 693 different types and I’ve slowly been making my way through them. But the thought occurred: spending a small fortune on tiny jars of chilli oil is uneconomical and I decided to make my own.
It just so happens friend of the pod Andrew has reached a similar conclusion and had been playing around with his own brew. I based my oil off his tips + this recipe.
I used olive oil instead of canola — mainly because Canola isn’t that great and I feel like if it’s olive I can at least pretend it’s vaguely healthy. I also chucked the fried sichuan peppers in with the chillis because that numbing electric current mouth feel of hydroxy-alpha sanshool is so good. I think the black cardamom is what makes it though.
Gunzel
It officially became a word in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Here is a photo I took of some trains.
Annoying New Zealand politicians
The rest of these are going to be very New Zealand politics focussed, so if that’s not your jam please feel free to delete this email now.
Annoying Winston Peters
Winston Peters has been in (and out) of parliament longer than I have been alive.
His recent unhinged and bizarre comments, regarding Chris Hipkins being a “sausage eater” really got me worried for the state of our democracy.
Despite his mildly amusing response to my Official Information Act (OIA) request, his comments could be construed as homophobic and I wanted to see if he had thought about that or if there was any reasonable response to calling someone a “sausage eater” in 2025.
Turns out he hadn’t and there isn’t and he prefers to hide behind deniability and bluster rather than just apologising and saying his comments were out of order.
I’d like to also point out Mr Peters was in Parliament when the Homosexual Law Reform Act was passed in 1986.
The world has moved on since then, but it appears Mr Peters hasn’t. Maybe it is time for him to retire and stop tapping into populist and divisive politics to cling on to the baubles of office.
Lloyd Burr from stuff dot co dot en zed saw my OIA and wrote a story about it where Peters again denied his comment was homophobic, despite the video literally showing him saying Hipkins “doesn’t know what a woman is”.
Annoying David Seymour
David Seymour leads a death cult. Everything ACT does is aimed to bring about the end of humanity sooner and more painfully. The most contemporary example of this is the school lunches fiasco in New Zealand, where David has been slowly poisoning children with dishes served in burnt plastic and meat only barely fit for human consumption. The list of problems grows longer and longer and anyone would think that a party that rejects the basic concept of the social contract probably isn’t the best folk to put in charge of anything let alone feeding children.
Bemused by David’s actual incompetence and reluctance to take any responsibility for being the most fuck muppet of all fuck muppets, I put in another OIA to ask him what he had for lunch while he serves up larvae to kids.
His response was to decline my request.
I’d argue with it, but I truly think the guy runs on diesel fuel and rat poison.
Annoying Christopher Luxon
The Prime Minister of New Zealand (and thumb cos-player) recently attended a bunch of international pow-wows, meeting folks like Xi Jinping and leaders from NATO countries.
As the photos were published on various news outlets, I couldn’t help noticing that Luxon can’t for the life of him stand up straight. I’m pretty sure he has never been erect in his life.
You can see the whole thread here on bluesky dot com or don’t, I really don’t care.
But if you happen to know Christopher perhaps mention to him that he needs to see an orthopedic doctor sooner rather than later.
I have some more content for this planned soon, including a follow up to my reforesting Taranaki story, which would see passenger trains using the track between Ngāmotu/New Plymouth and Whanganui.
Until then…
Stay safe, stay sane,
<3
JJW
