The Mock Funeral: A Novel of the Irish Riots on the Goldfields of New Zealand

MCGILL, DAVID

Silver Owl Press

Early in the new millennium terrorists threaten to trigger an eruption in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. The last big Taupo caldera explosion blew a chunk of debris the size of Auckland into the stratosphere. Advice to New Zealand – and the world’s – first Green Government is to pray it is a small eruption like Tarawera in 1886, which only killed 105 people. The Honorable Wiremu Waka, Minister of Financial Development in the new Green Government of New Zealand, is in Edinburgh seeking an eight billion dollar load for tourist development of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. His aim is to change New Zealand's image from clean, green and boring to hot, red and exciting. The main part of his pitch is a state-of-the-art holovideo recreation of Maori volcan myth. On the night of his presentation to the Scotch Table he dies violently in a Scottish sauna. His reluctant companion Neil Munro returns to New Zealand pursued by the killer he is determined to unmask. He scarcely recognizes the country he grew up in. Maori radicals and fascist Pakeha youth clash at the Minister’s bicultural state funeral and secret state video surveillance manipulates a country that on the surface appears to be leading the world once more in innovative legislation. Munro is an unheroic man in his early forties, balding, paunchy, too short for his own self esteem, suffering from PFD – Post-Fame Depression – following the collapse of his television career and his marriage. Gourmet tastes on a budget deficit require him to take the only job going, a Fire Tour Video through the Taupo volcanic region from Taranaki to White Island in company with dyspeptic scientist who loathes the late Minister and the Minister’s father, who blames Munro for his son’s death. This satirical eco-thriller goes beyond tomorrow’s headlines into Taranaki oil production sabotage, Ruapehu ski resort bombing, the firing of the world-famous Rotorua Pink and White Terraces theme park, a terrorist threat to reprise the Tarawera hydrothermal eruption of 1886. Maori fire myth, scientific research and high-tech developments are necessary elements of a future shock fable about the extremes of politically correct Maori and Pakeha positions, the possibilities for electronic manipulation of public opinion and the coming tourist exploitation of our mightiest unspoiled mountain reaches.

Whakaari

The companion volume to the author’s A Dictionary of Kiwi Slang, 25,000 sold. This collection expands into catchphrases, commentaries, jokes, ditties and characters contributing to Kiwi English as we use it, and includes a revised an updated version of The Dinkum Kiwi Dictionary, which has been out of print in the nineties. 
New slang like lomu-ed, the Otahu sidestep, Ruthanasia, shark biscuit. 
Why would you stop a Presbyterian? 
How could Frank Bunce play piano while pouring concrete? 
What is the Australian haka? Who is the Screaming Skull? Where is Dorkalofa? 
Do you know the difference between a goneburger, a turboburger and a wallyburger? Who are Les Miserables Bastards and why don’t they like kiwifruit? All is revealed in this double-value sequel to the first slang collection Harry Orsman in the Evening Post called ‘a delight’ and Professor Gordon in the Sunday Times said was ‘a real bewdy’.

McGill's dictionary of Kiwi slang, catchphrases, characters and kiwiosities

Reference

Dictionaries & Thesauruses

Betwixt and between these soft covers read the raunchy story of how an uptight Kiwi lad fled home to seek fame and fortune in Dick Whittington’s London town. Instead, he learned to let his hair down and find peace, love and velvet gear and good reasons for going back home.

The Dolly Lolly Diaries; Tales of a Tame Kiwi Lad Transformed by Tempting London Lasses

The Rockies: New Zealand Minesweepers At War

Jack S. Harker

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