Being Cameron Slater - By Giovanni Tiso

So I'm sitting in my pyjamas scratching my scalp this midday already on the fifth straight hour on Twitter. I mull over Juventus losing the Champions League final and wondering still why the peak of my career has been coming second to Whaleoil in the Canon Blog of the Year 2014. 

I mean I spent hours submitting a bilingual entry in English and my native Italian, Ciao Bello. DON’T THE JUDGES GET IT!  I am a minority. I've battled the lira and then the Euro and I can't beat a Whale?

My daughter even said I should have beaten that fat loathsome sloth. She's autistic don’t you know?  (yes we all do - Ed). She is much smarter than Whaleoil so I am teaching her all about Twitter to build up the family dynasty. I spend 19 hours a day on Twitter but don't tell my wife “the Italian's Bride”, she's more supportive than Whaleoil’s wife Spanish Bride. I'll take the money out of the mouths of her children. Evil Spaniards. 

Barcelona rely on Messi and Neymar and an Italian team would have won if they had both been injured, the game was played in Italy not Germany and Luis Suarez had been suspended for the season like we can rely on him usually to achieve. If only someone in Barcelona was as vigilant about Twitter campaigns as I am they could have demanded Spanish only players. These imports are a disgrace. My Italian heritage is pure and true even if we do now live in Wellington. We still have a duty to complain about the price of petrol on family holidays and abuse politicians. It is in our culture. It is what has brought me to the top of the Twitter tree in New Zealand. I am better at Twitter than Whaleoil.

My campaign against John Tamihere was the best. I slayed him. I performed some “Chaos and Mayhem” on his lying, cheating fraudulent backside. It was a perfect job and one that's established myself as New Zealand's most effective tool of corporate destruction.  Matthew Hooton noticed this and offered me a job so I must be good.  I frequently daydream about that moment; the attention, the set up, the support and thousands of people cheering me on backing feminism. It was powerful and strong.  I felt powerful and strong and adrenalin pumped through my body daily as I got up to prepare for another long hard day on Twitter. I have ruined more companies now than Rafa Benitez has ruined football clubs. For the seven of you reading my blog who need explanation, that is a lot. He's Spanish. I then roll quietly on the carpet by the couch dreaming of my time protesting the price of Pata Negra one dull afternoon outside the metro line in Battistini.

As I was looking through documents for Nicky Hager in Dirty Politics in an attempt to bring down my nemesis, I saw loving caring emails from Carrick Graham to Whaleoil and decided that my strategy would be simple. If I can ruin a career or a large corporate with a single Twitter campaign then I could monetise this. All I need is my own Carrick Graham and I can do this. I can sit at home all day pretending to be on the edge of the abyss as I caregive to my family, I am the nice guy defending the little guy and I have people and corporates pay me not to ruin their product or career online.   Surely no one else has thought of this before? 

I have already tweeted this morning Matt Nippert, Keith Ng and David Fisher. I encourage them with useful tips I picked up from my friend Russell Brown. He's not Italian but should be (yes - Ed). I speak with a new immigrant Marco I want to train to be like Pete. I know Pete writes Whaleoil's blog. I should have won that award as I was up against more than just Whaleoil. He lied. He cheated, the fat illiterate idiot. He had a team of writers filling his page. I need staff!  

I was asked to edit the Overland Journal recently.  It was a joy and one I spent thousands of hours perfecting (it might have been only 10 if you didn't spend all day on Twitter - Ed). It is a crowning achievement right up there with third in the Petone Italian speech contest in 2008. The Overland Journal is a real publication so not like that Truth. I don't know why I am not on radio as I performed magnificently with Kim Hill. A man of my influence and charisma they should be rolling over themselves to sign me up to broadcast in my pyjamas from the couch while I watch the fabulous Al Jazeera in the background. I am currently boycotting TV3 but lifted the boycott to watch that slug on The Nation because it is good current affairs. Don't tell anyone given we aren't meant to watch it after John Campbell's departure.

I re-read this column that should be published on Sunday to balance Rodney Hide's right wing garbage and the Italian's bride comes home and asks me what I have done all day. I tell her.

She scoffs and mutters something like she might as well go live with Whaleoil.

I get a Twitter notification. Whaleoil is receiving two cellphones from Spark. Wow. Let's see about that shall we..........

Editor - Sadly Giovanni Tiso did not win the Canon Best Blog Award in 2015. He did not mount a campaign against the eventual winner.  Yesterday after an intense day of campaigning Spark admitted they didn't actually sponsor Whaleoil but gave him two phones for free specifically because it would annoy Tiso.

It Is All About Me - by Cameron "Whaleoil" Slater

Last night was my 10th blog birthday. It was a big night for me. The Whale Army were out in force at $150 a head to march behind me as I strode forth as New Zealand's most read and with it popular blog.  I gave the audience what they wanted. An exclusive into Dirty Politics. I don't let on to anyone but that book was the BEST thing that's ever happened in my life. It has propelled me to prominence that I couldn't have arranged myself.

Rumours that I arranged the hack myself and sent the USB stick to Nicky Hager so he could do my PR are untrue. Trust me.  My Army does.

I wasn't sure what to write really on the blog today. What with Jason Ede now in hiding dying a slow pathetic death at a Telco, and those gay losers like Carrick, Cactus, Travis, Jordan and Lusk all running for cover it's just me and Pete. That's the way I like it however even if it means I have to do something that is way beyond my ant-like span of attention. Construct a blog post.

I go outside and have a stomp around. I have to channel the anger and have taken sage advice from my close friend and mentor John Banks that perhaps boxing isn't the best thing for me.  Banksie is a loyal friend.  He tells me he has watched the Ryder tape now seventeen times and it was clear to him I slipped into Ryder’s gloves.  He didn’t land a proper punch but explaining would be losing. My blog is nothing without the anger. The hits come from the anger. I just hate everything. Fisher and Nippert. Hate. Bradbury, Brown, Tiso, Blomfield, Prentice, Presland and Thompson. Hate.  Under the bus.

I hate John Key. That weasel won't send me any text messages anymore. He's cut me off. Ever since I sent one of his texts to a new left winger I was mentoring. I let him in to my life and he let me down. I hate him. He is now dead to me. So is the young homeless deaf man I tried to help with $500 here and there. Many men of my age would require oral sex for that sort of money but all I wanted was for him to join the Whale Army. He seemed confused. Not sexually, but just about life and I understood that.  I suffer from depression. (Yes everyone knows that – Ed).

One year I was confused too when Judith (Collins for those readers who have forgotten her already - Ed) asked me if I back up everything. I thought she meant she wanted me to so she could remember everything she ever sent to me. She's a wonderful woman Judith. My daughter wanted to name a stray cat she found after her. I wouldn't have that as stray cats are feral and everything feral is bad. So I told her to go inside and I threw the cat down on the concrete next to the latest sponsored Ute of mine and gave it a chance to run. It looked up into my eyes and meowed a sad pathetic Chris Trotter like howl, I shot it. I'm good with guns. I never miss.  The only good cat is a dead cat.

It wasn't my fault I was hacked. It was Kim Dotcom's. That fat German with the hooker wife. As I say you pay a hooker not for the sex but to leave afterwards and to prove it she eventually did. I hate him. He hates me.  The hate is good for both our ratings.  We are good for each other’s business and branding campaigns.  

I didn't enter the 2015 Canon Media Awards. Ede wasn't around to fill the form in. I am a benevolent Christian sort of guy and I wanted Giovanni Tiso to have a clear shot at winning. I ROFLMAO when he wasn't even a finalist.  That will teach him. I bet he uses an HP printer now anyway.

NFWAB.

Editor - Cameron Slater won the Canon Media Awards Best Blog 2014.  Even before Dirty Politics was published, the left united as one to attempt to have Cameron stripped of the coveted award we understand because he did not write the blog himself.  In 2015 much to the amusement of myself and the horror of the audience Steve Braunias didn't win the award.  The other guy did and was immediately offered a column in the NZ Herald. 

Selfless Journalism - by Deb H. Cone

Oopsie Daisie, I was wrong but hey dude, la-de-dah. Up in Hoki where I drive in my convertible 5000cc Mercedes and mix with the vulnerable, when I said life doesn’t get better than fleecy jammies, lighting vanilla candles and poking the potbelly, weeell that was then and this is now. Chur. Why? Because nowadays dying is the meme and I can’t stop crying is the theme. That rhymes by accident. My Dad liked that, shuffling, rhyming, and me channeling poets. (Grammatically that should be ‘my channeling’ but ‘me’ sounds cool and I’m a cool kinda gal.)

Selfie to Facebook.

Jerry Collins (isn't he an Irish politician?), Lecretia Seales, Peter Williams QC – I weep for these souls, but I also weep for my sensitive self, a requiem for a woman, a writer, a single mother of young children who has to suffer the indignity of shopping for cupcakes and be bullied by a shop assistant who glares and says, “You don’t look like a mother!”

So I stepped outside and took another selfie and posted it to Facebook.

I, too, know how it feels to be marginalized. When I was taking 375mg of Effexor (antidepressant) a day I couldn't cry. I couldn't risk it. Then, I needed a break from my emotions until I had enough distance to be able to feel them without toppling into the abyss. But as the great writer E.L. James said in Fifty Shades of Grey, “I can’t help feel a residual melancholy either from the music or his demeanor. Christian Grey has a sad side.”

We all have a sad side. Selfie to Facebook. Nothing brings out a sad side like Christians. Red Christian Louboutins bought in NYC – “The muscles inside the deepest, darkest part of me clench in the most delicious fashion.” E. L. James again. Which makes me wonder, as I gaze into my Negroni while sitting at my favourite restaurant (which also happens to be John Key’s – selfie to Facebook) is sad really happy? (I’m a graduate in philosophy, in case you are wondering how I know these things, and Daddy was a neurologist.

Louboutins, bling, Dries van Noten, bling, Cybelle, bling, leather pants who-cares-if-I’m-over-40, bling, Silk, satin, cotton, rags. Silk! I’m an expert on Silk. Selfie to Facebook. As little-known self-help therapist Mrs Beeton wrote, “Pure silk washes well; the water temperature should never be above lukewarm (around 100 degrees F)”. Look what happened to me when I didn’t follow these instructions. (Yes, we know, we fucking know, we read about it for 10 months - Ed.) My depression and intimated breakdown was caused by an unhappy love affair. Oh sorry it wasn't a love affair, it was "just a few bonks" as the woodland creature involved chivalrously informed me afterwards. Chur. But I was the one who was wrong. The fact I ended up having a major depressive episode I now realise was not caused by him. 

“Tact and loyalty towards husband….are constantly required; it is a great mistake to discuss the shortcomings of any member of one’s household with friends or neighbours.” Mrs Beeton again.

Selfie to Facebook.

Bully for me. What kind of journalism are we going to get if I don’t keep on writing these columns, keep my chin up and soldier on, Petal? Campbell has gone.  Meehee Forbes-with-the-crazy-voice too. I alone am left, I who was once a feared financial journalist, to carry the blazing torch of courageous, empathetic, spill-your-guts writing – paunching as my favourite therapist, Mrs Beeton in Cookery and Household Management writes: “cut through the skin of the belly from the chest to the legs and draw out the viscera”.

Selfie to (Ed - No!).


Editor - Deb H.Cone was the winner of the 2015 Canon Media Award - best Columnist humour and satire section. She lost out on the overall award to Michele Hewitson. We think Judges Long and Pankhurst got it horribly wrong and would have changed their minds if this column above was submitted.

The Lady Of The Manor - by Debo Coddington-Carruthers

I sit at my escritoire looking through the mansion window which my QC husband, whom I love so much, worked hard to pay the local builders to construct, and watch my darling black Labradors Hawk and Whetu bound through the flock of bantams which are shagging each other when they should be pecking the nasty green caterpillars off my newly planted lettuces.

Whetu, the younger Lab, gazes back as if to ask permission and I wave her on to chase fluffy golden rabbits through the Pinot Gris vines in the glittering morning sun. Delectable Doggy thinks I’m wagging my tail as her black tail wags back and off they go, into their happy day, leaving me to get on with wifely duties like folding socks, and the occasional writing task – back labels for the wine bottles - just for pocket money.

It wasn’t always thus. This rural bliss is far removed from those angry, lonely days of barking questions of attack in the House of Representatives; hating humans on the other side simply because their political philosophy differed slightly. Why must it be like this? I ask myself these days when my char lady accidently switches the telly to the Parliament channel during question time. Why all this testosterone and aggression, and just from Judith Collins?

Far above my lavender bed a hawk circles searching for prey – hawks and doves, National and Labour? No, more National and Greens, for the closer I settle into the peace of this tranquil life I find myself wishing to protect my patch of our Planet so as not to steal from our great-great-great-great-grandchildren-not-yet-born, and I find myself morphing into a Greenie, fending off the predatory dives of the capitalists with whom I once eagerly hunted. 

When tending and inhaling the fragrance of my roses – I have planted 85 including ‘Ali Mau’ and ‘Aotearoa’ as tribute to the tangata whenua who strode these hills before me - I look back at the Coddington who carried that card entitling her to membership of the Libertarian right and shudder. How could she have uttered those harsh words so easily, spilling out of her mouth damning the solo mothers who continue to have children through no fault of their own? How could she have turned on governments for spending taxpayers’ money on private companies which were could not help being so cavalier in their investments? What business was it of hers to poke her long nose in where not invited? When did she elevate and start referring to herself in the third person a la Helen Clark?

The answer to all these questions is in the grape. We all should just relax on our back verandas, look out over the sylvan vistas with the cows, and drink Champagne. There is no better salve for a man’s soul than growing, pruning, picking, stomping then drinking one’s own wine, preferably from the finest glasses washed in organic liquid thus not affecting the palate of forest floors, quince, blackberries, liquorice, burnt toffee if it’s Pinot Noir; of course if it is Syrah then you’re going to have horse manure palate combined with cock’s crow at dawn, pine needles, honey and maple. 

Haters will always hate. For instance, they won’t let go of that article I wrote about Asian Angst, dredging it up as if it were Mein Kampf even when recently I penned a memoir about my Good Life In Rural Wairarapa. Build a bridge, I tell them. I’ve said I’m sorry. What do they want? Me blowing my brains out on reality television? (There’s a thought, Ed.)  

Well, I forgive them, and that’s more powerful than the sword – er, gun. So wearing my puffer vest, jeans, knee-high boots, cashmere sweater, pearls and maybe a Hermes scarf for splash of colour, I eschew the ambitions of Global Women like Mai Chen and do my thing locally. I load up my racing green Range Rover 4WD with home-made chutneys, jams, marmalades and special crabapple jellies (recipes handed down over generations but I’m happy to send them to any readers who want to write in) and off I go, delivering alms to the church fair where the poor can buy at accessible prices. Yes, these toney wine tourist areas aren’t all book launches and tasting rooms, we too have our charities to support; our breakfast kitchens but you’ll always find ladies like me doing good works with simple gifts in Agee jars topped in red-and-white gingham.

Tonight in our overflowing-with-love home there’ll be Scotty’s beef fillet on the barbecue, set alight for effect. Free household hint from Debo - a good fire impresses the guests and delivers juicy, tender steaks but unless you’re a Domestic Goddess don’t try it at home.  Next week it might be Jugged Hare from the vineyard, torn apart by my darlings Hawk and Whetu. Did I mention my dogs, the black Labradors? (yes, you did mention the bloody dogs, Ed.) And did I tell about my very dear friend Sir Robert Jones introducing me to CCQC (oh shut up you old trout and stop name-dropping, you are well past your use-by date. Editor.)

Editor - Debo Coddington-Carruthers no longer has a column in the Dominion Post.  We want to know why she was replaced with Judith Collins' boring husband.

The First Post

It has come to my attention that the New Zealand media have a habit of taking themselves far too seriously.  They even think the public may just keep in their heads those potential Pulitzer prize winning pieces more than thirty seconds.

The recent Canon Awards were a pivotal example of the mediocrity and banal existence of the very few who feel they should have the power to inform the public.  John Campbell and the faux tears another example. He came and went and well, life goes on.  We still have Mike Hosking and if he dies from overexposure to hair dye - Jeremy Wells.

New Zealand media have so much become the news and in doing so forgotten their only role which is to report on it.

Here at "New Zealand's Got Talent - the Media Edition" I wish to shine a light on some of the finer works of well-known New Zealand columnists, bloggers and journalists that perhaps did not make the final cut of their Canon entries.  Goodness knows why, some of them were rather superb.  I cannot confirm or deny that they were received from hacked sources but there is a distinct waft of fish attached to some of them that have come into my inbox, or was it letterbox from a super untraceable USB stick.

So enjoy as I show you that the New Zealand media really does have talent.

They just didn't know where to look.