The alternative Kiwipedia
Scroggin is the Kiwi word for Trail Mix: a combination of fruits, nuts and chocolate eaten by trampers for rapid sustenance.
Easy to make, it is popular with children and wiry, bearded old men – the sort who spend many days at a time in the forest, trapping possums and disposing of bodies, and are therefore unlikely to have wives at home to make them sandwiches.
The bridal party went for an informal, sporting look.
New Zealanders like to paint it black; whether it’s the angry hairdos of the heavily-lesbianed Auckland media set, farmer’s woollen vests, over-barbequed sausages, or even entire fasion labels.
But nowhere is this more important than in the uniforms and names of our national sports teams. Adhering to this naming convention, with it’s limited vocabulary, has led to an inventive, if largely slapstick branch of New Zealand humour. Read more…
You're going the wrong way!
Per Capita, New Zealand is officially one of the fittest countries in the world. But Kiwis don’t just like to exercise. Oh, no. They like to be ‘competition-ready’.
'Ow do you like ze taste of zat Rainbow Warrior, losers?
Kiwis are really, really good at a small range of minority sports. So good, in fact, that the weight of the entire nation’s expectation rests on the hope that these sports might firmly, and finally, put New Zealand on the map.
It is a heavy burden to bear by our national sports stars who, lets face it, are not altogether the smartest, most well-rounded cookies in the jar.
Which inevitably leads to the one sport in which New Zealand truly leads the international field…Choking.
Pie chart of a typical New Zealand statistic
With the exception of New Years Day on the Millennium, and the climbing of Mount Everest, New Zealand has never really been the first at anything. In fact, it’s unlikely we’ve ever even been in the top ten. We simply lack the population to, say, win all the gold medals at the Olympics, or become the worlds biggest consumer of pitted olives.
But, by a clever manipulation of the statistics, we can put ourselves firmly at (or near) the top of any international pissing contest. The importance of this, towards alleviating our deep national fear of being ‘basically irrelevant’ to the rest of the world, should not be underestimated.
Do they know who we are yet?
Few phrases, uttered by respected international media pundits, excite Kiwis more than; “This will really put New Zealand on the map…”
Long hiding in the geographical and cultural shadow of Australia (the 1980s, at the peak of ‘Crocodile Dundee-mania’, was a particularly dark time for New Zealand), Kiwis are forever searching for people, ideas or events to support – sometimes to the point of scary, national obsession – which might truly focus the eyes of the world onto our fledgling, self-conscious islands.
Other People’s Shit