This is unpolished and was never going to work for the Herald on Sunday or anywhere else. And now it's dated by the iPad release
We all know it’s been a long cold winter. The surprise this week is that there's probably ood reason. According to NIWA, the New, um, International Weather Authority or something, Hell has possibly frozen over. Well NIWA says they don’t know. Some El Diablo or something from South America creating, unusual, isobaric, influences…. Actually it doesn’t matter what exactly it is in weather terms. The discussions have turned to the place where science meets Women’s Magazines: it’s a religious omen.
Seeking sense I decided to see what New Zealand’s main religions could offer to explain the phenomena. What I sought ways to stop the cold or at least keep warm. The first religion I turned to was Rugby; New Zealand’s orthodox church. Bishop Henry believes it is because people have lost faith. Apparently the worship of false Gods; Netball, league and, apparently soccer has caused severe upsets in the heavens. Now fully a third of the population are not worshippers any more and unless we return to being rugby-fearing the weather will only get worse. His answer was to watch more rugby, buy tickets to the world cup and wear black.
The devotees of Apple and things beginning with small ‘i’ s have a strong code; the problem is personal, Nirvana will be achieved when we all have Apple everything. Currently awaiting their next major religious festival – the arrival of the iPad – the AppleMac-ites aren’t eating, sleeping let alone thinking about the weather. I tried to question one disciple but had to let him talk for 37 minutes about the arrival of the iPad, the models and their capabilities, which store he’s going to camp outside, and how early he thinks he’ll need to be to get one before Bevan. Breaking his religious euphoria by asking whether it was a virus on a Mac that stopped the aliens in Independence Day, I asked about hell freezing over. It seems in Mac worship the idea of buying a PC and hell freezing over are linked.
The new religion on the block and one that will be interesting to track in the 2011 Census results is Social Media. While there are many sects in Social media the three largest; Facebook, LinkedIn, and the Tweeps have very few shared views on anything. The key tenet of faith is that social media is the future, it’s all about social media and the rest of us don’t get it. I put the question of Hell freezing over to a range of congregation members and all I got back was some virtual crops; a connection to a marketing manager in Tucson; and a 140 character rave about how stupid I was for not having full time staff on Twitter. I did get some responses on hell freezing over but the messages went back to comments about what’s for dinner and a quote from Shirley Maclaine.
I did also look at web pages devoted to the Holdens and the Fords, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Westie-based religions. Both worship declining quality Gods which apparently both handle better than the other in bad weather, so more a religion to cope with, rather than address, the cold.
The Homeopaths, a religion devoted to medicine not working, believe the way to freeze hell over is to drop a lighted match in it. Conversely if it is cooling dropping a splinter of an ice cube will keep it as a blistering inferno. Didn’t seem right to me but then I’m not a believer.
In the final analysis there should be signs that confirm that hell has frozen over.
The signs I’d be looking for are, for example, Rodney Hide being in Cabinet, New Zealand beating the world champions in the Football World Cup, TVNZ admitting they were wrong and rehiring Mike Hosking, and the Coach who lost the last Rugby World Cup coaching the All Blacks in the next one.
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