Harpur's Bizarre

Ladies and gentlefellow, my Comedy Festival show starts next week- here is the pitch…

My name is Sarah Harpur. I am 29 years old. I am 5’3” and have feet that are wider than they are long. Like a Welsh-Mountain Pony, I am stable on rough terrain. Unlike a Welsh Mountain Pony, I can not carry a 16 stone man on my back over said rough terrain.

Once upon a time, I had a website named after me. It was named after me because I paid for the site and bought it with my own pocket money. I loved this site. It was the place where my half formed, embryonic thoughts developed and grew into beautiful two-headed babies with facial hair and a penchant for cheap vodka. Yes, my children were abominable to some, but they had a right to exist. Some people loved my freakish kids as much as I did.

One day, two years later, I could no longer use my email address that was attached to my domain. To cut a long story short, I did not receive forewarning of my domain’s expiry and it was purchased legally by one, Yoshio Kanazawa.

My website was now written entirely in Japanese. It looks lame as. See?

What has become of my website!

Perhaps the most irritating thing is my old domain is valuable only to me. I would understand the desire to purchase my domain if it was ‘freep0rn.c0m’ or ‘buyonlinecrapforcheap.com’; but my site was based on my name and identity as a human and writer.

Maybe Yoshio Kanazawa incorrectly thought my site got a lot of traffic. Yoshio was wrong. Yoshio could not be more wrong. If Yoshio dressed up like a baby, wore giant nappies and was raised by a house cow, he could not be more wrong. The most traffic my site got was the day it was mentioned in the Sunday Star Times in July 2010. That day, the high point of my online publishing career, saw the site receive a whopping 232 hits. That’s right. THREE figures. Yoshio, you ass, you are barking up the wrong tree.

WordPress suggested I purchase ‘myownwebsite.org’ or ‘myownwebsite.net’, but the confusion that would create would be astronomical. It would only serve to divert traffic to the legal-stealer of my domain, while I got the honour of owning the inferior version of my own domain. WordPress, my friends, you underestimate the level of revenge I seek.

Yoshio Kanazawa did not respond to my polite and heartfelt requests to buy back my site. Yoshio Kanazawa may not even exist.

Yoshio Kanazawa may have purchased my site legally, but there are many things in life that are perfectly legal. It does not make them moral, fair or even good. That domain was a product of MY idea, my intellectual property. And it has not been protected. It pisses me off. Yoshio Kanazawa took something of mine, and it is causing me headaches and eye-twitches.

Yoshio has now forced me to buy the narcissistic domain of http://sarahhharpur.com . I didn’t want to do that. He has left me with no option than be a cheap, self-promoting, self-promoter. He has taken my name, and made it a star of a SHIT website.

Well Yoshio. I have many plans for legal revenge. The first starts here. You purchased my identity. Now I have purchased yours. www.yoshiokanazawa.com is now MINE. It is going to be the crappest website in the world. Dedicated to all things legal, but shit. Just like you, Yoshio Kanazawa, you evil mastermind.

I am determined to cause Yoshio some seriously mild inconvenience. The shit website will be a tribute to Yoshio Kanazawa and other shit things in life.

How can you, as a friend, kind stranger or human help my situation?

1. Please don’t visit my old website.  I have posted a picture of it.  It really is that crap.
2. If you have kindly placed links to my old website, please edit this link so it now points to http://sarahharpur.com 
3. If you could click on my site a couple of times, that would be great.  Google is yet to acknowledge its existence, and I would appreciate some help getting my identity back.
4. Send in any pictures/stories of things that will help make www.yoshiokanazawa.com the crappest website on the planet.  I am going to get the ball rolling with a picture of Celine Dion.  Send them to sarah@yoshiokanazawa.com

Thank you very much for your support.  Love from Sarah, AKA, DJ Big Sez

Gandalf appeases a local chap regarding the Rena Disaster

I found this short story I wrote a couple of months and it made me smile.  Here is the epic saga of ‘Doug’s Hole’.

Douglas sat on the front step, and held his sunken chin with his finger and thumb.  He looked at the puddle on the lawn and wondered if last night was just a dream.  Did Genghis Khan really sit on the edge of his bed last night?  Did the Mongolian warrior, with his modern hair-cut, gently touch the side of his clammy face and demand that a tunnel be dug from his lawn through to China?

Normally, Douglaswould have discounted such ridiculous memories as manufactured, but the angry rash on his left cheek very specifically indicated that someone with poor hygiene from the past had been in contact with it. 

Douglaswas a logical man, his thoughts tumbled forward with ease, never diverting off his linear brain-staircase.  He worked in computer programming.  He believed in cause and effect, he believed in gravity; now, he believed in the words of a dead ancient warrior. Douglas reasoned that his mind did not have the capability to imagine such an event, therefore, it was fact.

The sweat in Douglas’ hands was sucked into the wooden handle before it had a chance to exit his pores.  He was stuck to the spade.  He had never done any ‘man jobs’ before.  Digging a hole to China would definitely be categorised as a ‘man job’.  He was nervous, but surprisingly exhilarated by the brute masculine force and strength that would be required to complete his order. 

A track was forming in Douglas’ sodden front lawn. Douglas was prowling back and forth in his black leather work shoes.  The tread in the rubber soles filled up with mud.  Traction was no longer a feature of these shoes. Douglas slipped.  His arms were pre-occupied with the spade.  They were not there to break his fall.  He landed heavily on his rear.  “Rhythm!”  he yelled, forDouglas did not swear.  He theorised that the cathartic release others felt when swearing had nothing to do with the inflammatory word itself, but the vowel-to-consonant-ratio.  He saw no point in swearing and substituted cuss-words for words with minimal vowels.  Douglas was a logical man, but logic can not be applied to all things, especially the euphoric high that follows the over announced use of the words ‘fuck’, ‘shit’ and ‘cunt’.  The smugness Douglas felt was intense, but was merely a nicotine patch compared to the head rush of smoking a four letter word.  ButDouglaswas a logical man.  To him, feelings and emotions were as manufactured as Windows Vista.  He was logical, but had a lot to learn about humans in general.

Douglas slowly peeled himself from the Douglas-shaped crater in the earth, still grasping the spade.  He let go of it with his right hand to answer the phone ringing in his back pocket.  The phone was dirty. Douglas was more disappointed than he would ever admit. 
“Hello,Douglas speaking?”
“Douglas! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh good.  But you are not at work.  We were worried.”
“I will not be at work this week.  Or next week.  Something came up.”
“Is everything OK?”
“Yeah, I just need to dig a big hole.”
“OK.  I’ll tell Simon you are sick…”
“Not sick.  Digging a hole.”
“Yeah, but you have never used a sick day…”
“I’m not sick.”
“OK Doug.  Good luck with the hole?”
“Thanks Chris.”

Douglastucked his tummy, then his phone, back into his pinstriped pants.  He looked at the puddle in his lawn.  He began to dig.

Doug dug.

Douglasthought of the wonderful globe in his lounge that sat quietly next to his dusty book shelf.  At 4.01am that morning, he had placed a pin into his current location. Fiji.  At 4.02am, he placed another pin in his destination. China.  He calculated the angle in which he should be digging.  He was delighted to see that he would not have to tunnel through the core of the Earth.  He had read reviews of the Earth’s core on Lonely Planet and he did not care to visit.  He was also delighted to see the just how bigChinawas.  Though he had no intention of making a mistake, there quite a large margin of error.  This made the onerous task seem slightly more friendly.  The task did not seem so friendly in it’s actual execution.

A spade, when in motion, is heavier than Doug predicted .  The prickling in his arms was foreign to him.  His brain was the only muscle he had used in excess since he was twelve.  He grunted and was surprised by the animalistic noise that escaped the throat of such a logical man.  Looking down, he saw a hole.  Looking up, he saw a row of children that had accumulated.  They were sand dumped by ocean currents on a coastal spit.  He did not care for their attitude.  He did not care for the way in which they encroached his fence’s personal space.  He did not care for the way they taunted “Ginger!  You digging to China?”

He was digging to China.  Modern Genghis would reward him.  That was logic.  He dug until the growing deposits of humans on the edge of the earths crust were out of view.  Good. 

He dug for seven days and seven nights.  He did not stop.  He did question this quest, but he did not stop.  His muscles grew stronger with each dig.  His muscles did not tire, so this was not logic. 

He stopped. 

He looked at his sweaty biceps, they bulged obscenely. They had ripped through his computer programmer’s shirt.  No shirt could contain muscles this size.  That was physics.  They shone in the moonlight.  Doug had never cast a shadow like this before.  His silhouette was magnificent.  His pinstripe pants hung loosely off him.  In seven days, he had developed the physique of a super hero.

China suddenly seemed less appealing.  Modern Genghis suddenly seemed less abominable.  Doug wondered if a ginger man with the body of a God and the mind of a calculator would ever truly fit inChina. 

He started to climb the walls of his self-made ravine.  The sounds from the human deposits grew louder.  He could hear helicopters and film crews.  Lights flashed.  He kept on climbing.  He pierced new layers of sound.  More details emerged.  He could feel the rumble of anticipation as he was borne from the sodden ground.  The crowd cheered.  Women gasped.  Men watched the women gasping.  They would have resented the effect he had on the ladies if they did not wish to be him so badly.

Douglas threw his sodden clothes into the crowd.  He threw his business card to the most attractive of his lady friends.  He strutted inside his house.  He left the media to battle for story angles.

That night, Modern Genghis sat on the edge of his bed.  Doug was not afraid. 
“Genghis.  I am not digging toChina.”
“I know man.  You weren’t meant to.”
“Then why?”
“You know why.  Look at your sweet abs.  The world is yours.  The destination was irrelevant.”
“I get it, Genghis.  Thanks.

The next week Doug went on 6 dates with fiercely attractive women.  To this day he is still a computer programmer, but maintains a strict exercise regime.

No matter what happened in his life from then on, Doug had dug that hole.  It did not go all the way to China, but it was still pretty impressive.

The long and winding road to Edinburgh 2011 has turned out to be a cul de sac. At this stage last year, things were still very much up in the air but I had many sponsorship irons in the fire. There were many variables, some known unknowns and even some unknown unknowns. But alas! This is not the case for Sarahtron 4million this time around. This year I was super organised, ahead of schedule and on top of my many proposals, synergies and begging letters. Which means, last year I had no idea what good fortune/dividends lay ahead. But this year, I know my goose is cooked. And it’s a pet goose, so it’s even more sad. Poor Jonathan Goose. My solo one-hour shows are off the beaten track. I am not based on or creatively inspired by any other comic. I don’t pick up the overflow of a sold out Ricky Gervais gig or the straggling late-comers to an already started Sarah Silverman performance. My new show, Immortal Combat, takes you on a surreal, sometimes creepy, always good-natured, multi-media journey through my thoughts on Immortality vs Legacy. This sort of comedy does not sell itself. I have consistently been met with either wide-eyed confusion or enthralled, engaged macabre-loving rapture. This means the walk up appeal to these shows can be less than others. I am careful not to sell or advertise my shows as something they are not. So if a Hen party of 20 drunken women/beasts roll up to a comedy club with two shows billed: One promising tales of debauchery and jokes about people from Lower Hutt OR some smug hot yoga enthusiast asking you to enter into a “Willing Suspension Of Disbelief” whilst speaking to you from the future, dancing to Kate Bush and singing about her dead Dad; I don’t see that $300 coming her way. The people who like and support my live shows do so with huge enthusiasm and massive encouragement. I am aware, however, that it is not everybody’s cup of tea. And that is absolutely fine. But I will not change what I like to do and how I like to write. I like my material. I have faith in it. But being different costs. Festivals are a struggle for all acts. I have heard of wonderful performers selling out their run at festivals and STILL losing money due to inflated venue hire, marketing costs, travel (especially if it is outside of NZ), accommodation and living expenses, registration fees and time away from the inescapable ‘day-job’. Edinburgh was to be my fourth festival for 2011. Adelaide Fringe was in March, Dunedin Fringe (where I won Best Comedy) again in March, NZ Comedy Festival in May; and then Edinburgh in August. That’s a new marketing run for each festival. Travel, accommodation, living expense etc. x 4 and we are only half way through the year. This is why sponsorship, Creative NZ funding and corporate support (thank you Mojo Coffee) are so integral to getting shows seen. The industry is filled with capable, talented and brilliant performers, but not necessarily the spending power of a public who can support them monetarily. Janet Jackson said “The best things in life are free.” Thanks for that, Janny (we are pretty good mates, I can get away with calling her that); A good laugh is free. A joke. That’s free. But getting your bloody show to a festival is not free. It costs, Janny. It costs money. And lots of it. It costs tears. And frustration. And self doubt. I have been cavalier in my comedy career since it was born just over three years ago, here, in Wellington. I have brought shows to every corner of NZ, to Australia and to the Daddy of all festivals, Edinburgh. But this year, after three wonderful, tearful and exhilarating festivals, I have run into a brick wall. And it hurts my face. I just can’t make Edinburgh work without sacrificing too much of later in the year. Time I have set aside for creating. Working on scripts, next years show, a book. Time that I would then have to spend temping in the Department of Labour paying off the four or five grand I could potentially lose by shutting my eyes and just boarding that plane to Edinburgh. I have made an executive decision. This Lion/Human hybrid will retire to the cave lick her wounds. This ‘lioman’ will come back stronger, safe in the knowledge that although she is missing the greatest festival on the planet, that although her award winning show will now not get it’s UK airing it deserves; she is not condemning herself to 8 months in admin to pay for one folly. I have done Edinburgh and it is wonderful. Am I disappointed to not be going this year? I am gutted. I am as gutted as Drew Barrymore when she was in the first Scream film and was hung from a tree, then actually gutted. But there comes a time when good sense must prevail. With a glossier mane and shinier teeth, I’ll be back.

This article is number 5 in a series of ten originally published on http://humorous.co.nz