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judy smith Jun 2015
Fashion, fun and entertainment will feature on August 1 when Hospice West Auckland and national business networking organisation BNI New Zealand partner to present the Absolutely Fabulous Fashion Show, proudly supported by major sponsor Douglas Pharmaceuticals.

Returning due to popular demand, the outrageous fashion fundraising event features upcycled outfits sourced from donations to West Auckland Hospice Shops. Included in the evening is a ‘Designer Clothes Sale’ featuring garments seen on the catwalk, which will be available to purchase on the night. Modelling the clothes will be celebrities, prominent Aucklanders, Hospice staff and professional models.

Award winning ‘Comedienne of the Decade’ and celebrity host for the evening Michele A’Court was delighted to be asked to MC the event. “It just sounds like tremendous fun and I am a sucker for Hospice fundraisers, so I jumped at the chance to be involved. Also, I am a massive fan of op shops, so how could I resist?”

CEO of Hospice West Auckland, Barbara Williams said, “We know the audience is in for a very special night for a great cause, with lots of laughs. We also want to showcase the fabulous range of designer clothing that donors so generously give us, and to highlight the quality of garments available from our Hospice Shops. Op shopping is good for your wallet, the planet and your community and we are keen to show that it can also be brilliant for your wardrobe.”

Barbara is delighted to welcome Douglas Pharmaceuticals as the major sponsor this event. “Douglas is a key supporter of Hospice West Auckland and Founder Sir Graeme Douglas has been our Patron since 1996. We are thrilled to have Jeff Douglas, Managing Director, continuing their support and appreciate his commitment to this event.”

Barbara acknowledges the support of long-time partner BNI NZ as a major asset for the event. “BNI’s networking groups up and down the country have supported Hospice for many years and raised over a million dollars for Hospice nationally.”

“Our long standing relationships with Douglas and BNI NZ and are very important to us, not only financially but also in terms of engaging with the communities their businesses operate in.”

Graham Southwell, National Director of BNI NZ, says BNI has a strong presence in West Auckland with a lot of local businesses participating in its networking groups. “Hospice West Auckland approached us because they know that we have active local business members in the community that could provide resources and help make this event even bigger and better this year,” Graham says. “It’s exciting to work with Hospice and use our expertise in BNI to help collaboratively put on the event. At BNI we are all about creating strong relationships in the community and Hospice have come to us because of our network and assistance with logistics as well as getting the word out about this fabulous event.”

Guests will be able to purchase some fabulous fashion, bid on a range of exciting auction items as well as enjoy wine, canapés and live music. All proceeds from the event will go to Hospice West Auckland, who provides free palliative care and support to patients and families living with terminal and life-limiting illness.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
civilisation abhors thought that it cannot vocalise,
and therefore monitise - it abhors it! it vilifies such
thinking as a form of mental  illness, or something akin
to such a statement; talk to any psychiatrist
and he'll tell you that psychiatry is, quiete frankly:
a variation of demonology - shadow people -
the "retards" everyone is quickly to defend
but easily strap into death-rollercoster rides
and the famous bon voyage adieu salute!
civilisation stamps it down, as i already said, abhors it,
whenever cancer is involved is a hellraising
fundraiser moment... come the sickness of the mind?
or the abstracted brain: we have parasite,
tapeworm people.
     and all because of our own cause in having created
the skivvy like residuals to brush under the
carpet of what's otherwise glitter:
   people who are without narrative:
                    without the marathon fundraiser public:
a macho personification of how to abuse
state authority but never wishing to do so:
but nonetheless being punished for it.

the central figure? fiction isn't written these days,
take a break, come back later.
        if you can't be honest now: you will never
be honest in a hundred years: forget it!
but you know what i find? sniffer dog that i am:
i find people like *Faustino Barrientos

a.k.a. not Pablo Neruda - and god i'm jealous,
there's this pristine exemplified variant of Adam
and i'm petrified with jealousy at
his 45 years of solitude in Chile -
               i'm mad by it,
why? because the so-called civilised world has
literally cut off all my limbs to embody such
a life: my grandfather and my father lived
under the laws of conscription auto-suggested
by the rubric of social preliminary bulletpoints:
i'm jealous of them too!
              i'm an Auschwitz shaven bearded
"thinker", no good to society that needs rigour
of appearing nice and selling bull's *******:
i wish i was (most of the time),
       i got a chemistry degree and was told to
work in a supermarket... there goes my love for
learning:
                i am, evidently, a pseudo-hermit,
self-imposed isolation but still seeing people:
or as i like to call them: ghosts - in close
proximity; now, if ever anti-social behaviour went
on unpunished, i'd be a gladdened example
of such feralness.
                    oddly enough, atheists are cultured
creatures,
                 but, not oddly enough: they have
nothing enabling them with self-preservation;
the argument goes along the lines of self- (hyphen
opening necessary)... as a prescribed form of
automation... in a variety of guises:
         this hermit from Chile has nothing of this
sort, he simply has a godly competence of
the environment, someone like Christopher Hitchens
can walk into a crowded space and give you
theological nausea -
              because could you find enough whiskey
metabolism while shearing sheep and
milking cows? no! atheism is a placebo of what
is otherwise an individualistic stance of
being an individual within a herd -
and what an almighty cold turkey experience we've
been given after Nietzsche killed god:
we're going cold turkey -
               we're theologically cold turkey -
we are still living in rehab, bad move to do it
so quickly: history on amphetamines sort of speak...
             a dichotomy of priestly attire
and politicians all suited tied and booted as
the grey matter: where are the ******* rainbows?
hence the persistence to relapse into hippy,
while adolescence succumbs to nothing more than
a medical circus frenzy: of nature's own:
                          getting rid of the weakest like
one might throw out an out-of-date yoghurt.
  all good and well with that montage of atheism
being the zeitgeist fashion statement -
    but there is no atheism outside of the civilised world:
there's the purity of the self-        automation:
or adaptability to the environment -
only once congregated there was the imposed:
the non-existence of.
                      because it was trendy to speak like that,
we established a cohabitating necessity as
a species and then tried to fake that necessity by
differentiating with enough intellectual sweat to
distance ourselves with a counter-argument:
i.e. not self-   as in automation because of the ever
changing weather and organic octopus auxiliary attachments
for the worth of grit:
                     but a self-    (unit of automation)
   to fill the world with an almost inaccessible
perpetuation of the narrative - but this civilised self-
                 as variant of automation
toward self-sufficiency and independence is completely
lacking in the civilised world!
     we treat people like ****! waiter! cashiers!
                     bus drivers!
         i endear you to think that in the collective of
what's known as the civilised world: the hermit does not,
exist! there is no self- to speak of,
               try milking a cow or lumbering along with Jack:
it ain't there! we're a bankruptcy in terms of limbs!
        well sure: i write, and immediately i'm
in a mess because i like to study -
     which means poetry or poetry aspiring to
philosophy is inherently useless... so is civilisation!
   tribalism has no need for money: because it
has community: cannibalistic or not... is still has
a collective need to survive - unless of course you
remember the civilised world and all those
experimental fetishes to get you starcast with a moovie.
so this Chilean guy, 40 years a hermit,
     and then this article in the Sunday Times
news review section: driven to distraction -
             and my notes as graffiti after reading it:
we are a second behind goldfish online (8 seconds
with cat videos) - goldfish are 9 seconds into
watching bubbles, and then creative dementia
     doing the plateau incremental snap: re re re.
the god does not exist argument is founded on
a banking system: it's the most viable way to make
an argument that provides wages -
          no other reason for it,
or: as according to the Chilean nomad Faustino
Barrientos
, begin with the self- unit
                of self-determination and sustenance:
otherwise don't bother arguing that sort of argument
without undermining the collective Disney index
of the people: who are incompetent at ruling themselves
then they congregate to give birth to a Picasso,
end of!
              so just because i studied the sciences i can't
be persuaded to an ulterior version of humanism:
i swear, Kant said that there was nothing nobler than
to concern yourself with god... or an argument for
such a being... maybe i'm misreading things:
after all... it's not all that fashionable to say such things:
because never was sane sensibility akin to Jane Austen
for ******* despicable as to read Jane Eyre.
              well sure, i have my "furthering" notes,
from the trenches of the devil's sulphuring *******...
         again: that statement "god is dead"?
is effectively going cold turkey... shutting off all
the superstitious metabolism of the past: oh, 20 centuries.
   sure, the Anglo Renaissance came, Elvis too,
       but the repercussions of what we "experienced"
at the height of the latter part of the 20th century?
unreplicable, gone, dust, sniff the actual grey dust
death of ash... it's not coming back: here my pessimism
and valour in the name of comedy - realism
and the very mortal hand of the extinguished flame:
it's gone! done!
                and it ain't, coming back with a backlash of
infuriated rigour to keep afloat: or return to / replenish.
  it's gone!  mind you, Heath could also be
included in this ode that celebrates necessary
obscurity of the Chilean to my jealous fancy as having
perfected survival skills.
             but this cold turkey debacle over the death
of god penetrates former colonial, hence post-colonial
societies: it affects the youth.
                  it suggests a quickened pretense of
diminished responsibility within a framework of
the lack of all things "karmic":
sure, so history is without a continuum to ensure
there's transgression for every transcendence
and we all live in an Utopian scenario of
immovable mountains: maybe that's why we're
no longer writing history but historiography:
and there is a distinction:
the former is actually angling and fishing -
the other is counting the number of skiving salmon
dreaming of wings rather than gills out
of the river.
                     among the other observations?
or apathy without origin in blissful thinking,
statement A.
     can you imagine anything more apprehensively
digested that reaching the conclusion:
a- + -pathos (without pathology)
                                 can be interpreted negatively?
negative thinking prior to reaching the consolidation
that apathy is, well: most people treat that as
an abnormality.
                     (if i ever wrote a self-help book,
i'd write one like this).
              you go past bulimia, past self-harm,
past all the negative bull and reach a state of apathy,
a non-disconcerted attunement toward feeling:
but you have been chiseling with your thought
at all the unpardonable negativism of your
identifiable physiognomy from genealogical nuance:
you seem to want to replicate an ancestry -
your heart will not tell you to **** yourself:
but find enough automaton curriculum in your
thinking: and your own mind will slothfully entice
you with a thinking sidewinder that aims at the
guillotine, or the gallows.
                   and after all that negative thinking,
you reach apathy, or being without a pathology?
and you feel an emptiness?
             don't expect to be Nepalese -
your ancestry forbids it...
                        you didn't reach a Buddhist apathy,
you didn't start from a zenith: but from a nadir,
tattooed with so many pathologies:
to reach apathy you had to transcend them:
       this is the bit were i say, concerning your heart:
it's a bit like a Cartesian cogito ergo sum moment.
talking about going beyond:
ever think that foundation of ontology is grammatically
based, if not biased?
        i limit this question toward grammatical
categorisation of words...
      primarily? the usual questions:
why are we here?
                       how? (well, that's outdated
'cos we have all the answers and that leverages our
greatest dissatisfaction, even in terms of writing
a new version of Don Quixote, which we can't).
                i devalue grammatical categorisation
altogether, i don't believe in it,
            for example why is categorised as
both adverb and conjunction... to me synonyms
don't exist in grammar, why is therefore only
an adverb...
              how? also an adverb... (ad- + -verb
         toward an action) - thus toward the municipality
of professions: but that's not a moral question.
       why is also an int. (interjection) and n. (noun) -
all it takes is a missing h to completely it as a noun
(unless of course the Oxford dictionary is wrong,
and i'm not Shylock Holmes)...
             what i am focusing on is the word
is, which is grammatically categorised as a conjunction,
and so it is, and so that is, and so this is:
       that's a canvas for me: mirror mirror, on the wall:
who will the the fairest of them all once i stop
asking the question with rose petals in mind being
plucked in that fateful lottery?
                         i don't care why, i already have
a good enough estimate as to how...
                          i base my ontology (nature of being)
upon the is...
                        where there was jungle, there too is
another jungle made of concrete -
and i don't trust the Quran: it makes grammar too
inaccessible, too holy even,
             you tell me the naked truth of the grammar,
i'll put on a ******* Hijab and prance to the tune
of le trio joubran's song masar down a street:
the weeping man of Amsterdam, two German chefs
tripping out on mushrooms while watching
American Dad in a darkened hostel room,
   and an Egyptian architectural student i spent
the afternoon with; otherwise? don't bother.
      and it really is great how is can't be an adverb
and merely a conjunction (well, "merely"),
      there is nothing that requires is to be a limitation,
or a necessary morphing into: toward doing / being
something... everything just, is;
and if it wasn't for Shia Islam you'd get **** all Sufi...
maybe a Falafel kebab, but **** all apart from that.
                    of course i'd side with the ****** Iranians
on this matter...
                                i can't live without music,
for fare game to Faustino Barrientos, but i can't live
without music, and Wahabbism doesn't recognise
music:      never was hearing a camel hart or a
merchant burp or a woman ****** seem so appealing,
and worthy to fight for!
(italics for the sarcasm).
do you think that if i clap my hands for a year
i'll hear a minute's worth of Wagner?
                                         (snigger): probably not.
judy smith May 2015
An upcoming fashion show, and I don’t mean to be unkind here, is lacking in both. It’s just the way it is. These models are beautifully ordinary people, your neighbours, and their designs are self-crafted, each suiting the model’s personal interpretation of high fashion. It’s the social event of the season. Everyone in the “know” will be there.

Eight models and an emcee will take to the Capitol Theatre stage in Oxford Thursday at 7 p.m. for the third annual Foolish Fashion Show. Foolish is the operative word here. It’s an evening of fun, with each model parading across the stage in four outfits during the show. The fashions are indescribable literally. You have to see them to appreciate them.

The show is the annual fundraiser for the Oxford/Pugwash Unit of the Canadian Cancer Society. To date the show has raised about $5,000 for the society’s Lodge That Gives in Halifax.

The show was the idea of the local unit’s Bev Clark.

“At the time there were no people to canvas door-to-door,” she said. “People were getting older or had less time. There were also other fundraising campaigns going on at the time.”

After seeing a foolish fashion show elsewhere, she decided a similar one would work for the local cancer unit. The first show was a sellout and the models of the evening agreed to take to the stage the next year.

Each designer/model is responsible for their haute couture. With the final result left to their wild, some might say perverse, imaginations the creations are a sight to behold.

Unit secretary and past president Bob Hunsley in his best 007 voice introduces himself as “Bob, SpongeBob.”

“Every good fashion show should include good costumes,” he begins. “Here, our unit president Edna McCormick is wearing her all-weather coat. In this coat she is well prepared for sunshine, rain, fog and snow and all the wind that blows (the coat is adorned with representations of each weather condition). Notice her “son” hat (which is a tribute to her son).”

Jane Smith is new to the Foolish Fashion Show runway.

“I came to the show last year and really enjoyed it. It looked like fun,” she said.

First time jitters?

“Doesn’t bother me a bit.”

This show is one in which you can’t do anything wrong. You show off your creation however you deem fit. It’s all fun.

Tom Kay, is making his modelling debut also. And what will Councillor Kay be strutting his stuff in? Not to give too much away but a muscle shirt like you’ve never seen and shorts will be worn.

Nine-year-old Emma McCormick is also a featured model.

It’s a show not to be missed.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015
judy smith Jul 2015
Fashion designer Dame Trelise Cooper is holding her first show in Wanaka to help raise funds for the town's planned hospice.

The September 30 Theatre of Fashion event is being organised by Wanaka fashion store Escape Clothing owner Lucy Lucas and the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust and organisers hope to raise up to $30,000.

Trust fundraiser Bev Rudkin said the show was "such a coup for Wanaka".

Wanaka hasn't had anything like this before and we know Theatre of Fashion will be an exciting event."

The event will be held at the McRae family's Glendhu Station Woolshed and will showcase the Trelise Cooper Summer 2015/16 collection. It will also feature three Trelise Cooper 1950s-inspired installations.

The event includes an auction of donated items, with all proceeds going to the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust.


photo:www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses
Lucas lost her mother to cancer two years ago and says the hospice facility is especially important for the local community.

At the moment, Wanaka cancer patients and their families travel either to Clyde's Dunstan Hospital or Dunedin Hospital for hospice care.

The Upper Clutha Hospice Trust will be a tenant in the Presbyterian Support Otago and Mt Aspiring Retirement Village's proposed aged care/dementia facility on Cardrona Valley Road. Construction is scheduled later this year.

The trust is raising capital and operating costs for its patient rooms within the larger facility.

Lucas stocks Trelise Cooper in her shop and approached Dame Trelise to see if she was interested in helping the trust.

"Dame Trelise is incredibly generous with her time. She does a lot for community causes. Wanaka is so lucky to have her agree to holding this event, and for her to attend is even better. Guests are in for a treat. Trelise Cooper shows are always fantastic, with plenty of 'wow' factor," Lucas said.

Dame Trelise said she was only too happy to help: "Giving back to the community is something I have always believed in. It means a lot to me that my passion and the work that I do can be put towards something that really makes a difference . . . I have some very loyal customers in the South Island who have supported my label right from the beginning, and it feels great to be able to bring an event like this to them."

FAST FACTS

What: Theatre of Fashion inaugural show

When: 6.30pm, Wednesday September 30, 2015

Where: Glendhu Station Woolshed, Glendhu Bay

Cost: $65 per person or $75 for front row seats. Tickets from Escape Clothing, Ardmore Street, Wanaka, or the Upper Clutha Hospice Shop, Ballantyne Road. All proceeds to the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust.

- The Mirror

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses
A L Davies Nov 2011
a few weeks back i
   opened my big
                              fat mouth
& agreed to bartend
this art auction fundraiser for
street children in
         kenya
which my parents organize
         yearly
to which a lotta local artists
big & small all
donate pieces to.

anyway my pops wouldn't
let me serve gin with tonic (this being a front so
i could drink it all of course, if y'know me at all..)

and bought bud light (horsepiss)
and for wine used several
bottles of the stuff my
mother makes
                          in town
                          at the Penetang Wine Cellar
which, though rich & darkly red
is over-dry and smacks of vinegar,
be assured.

so despite see-sawing between
indignant "No's"
&
commiserative "Yes'ses"
(i mean who else are they gonna get??)
(---and due in part to
my lack of success in
making other plans)
i end up doing it &
having an alright time
in the process ...

(hey i had a big sink fulla icy beers &
'probly drank more than anyone
else save my father's friend Ted!!)
---i even threw down
a bit o cash on a pretty neat little
abstract called "view to the bay"
but got outbid,
---as if i needed to drop $100 +
on some painting
when i should be saving ev'ry dime
for old España
in the new year.
so i crack another beer and
live vicariously thru my mother
when she picks up a oil of this island
with big storm & clouds comin' in
---and then outta nowhere it actually is me
that closes out the show by outbidding
a neighbour for a
photograph of some dingy toronto night
(buildings under construction)
and then go back to pouring more wine
& smiling & shaking (wringing) a few hands.
seven beers deep poetry
Zulu Samperfas Aug 2013
They smile, and they attend social functions and are in pages of
a city's social diary, a mockery of a democracy
the Hearsts and the Bloombergs  and the others rolling in it
so their aging women can have too much plastic surgery
because time happens to the elites, too, and cancer and unhappiness
and the smiles hide the discontent and the slow death
and they are afraid of us, can't bear to be with us, this other species we are
and once, with my now X, at a fundraiser for his elite boarding high school
I listened to a pretentious speech that was so intolerable
underneath the canopy of a white tent in the middle of a gigantic field
with every grass blade evenly spaced and the same height, and the soil
filled with nitrite.
And the speech ended and the applause served as cover, like brush and I ran
out into the open air and flattened the springy grass
and I walked away because I could take no more
K Balachandran Dec 2011
Poetry recital,
smashing hit
at political
fundraiser;
an idea ambivalent!
Zulu Samperfas Jan 2013
Have you seen _?
She asks early in the morning when I'm tired and upset
have music blasting through my ear drums so I can stand to exist in this place
On our break, she re-appears, to deliver a package, some materials to help you
I am with you, still, we are work aquaintances, and I see you already have a lover here
A former baseball mom who has remodeled herself, at her new job
pretending husband and children don't exist as she seeks you out, hair done perfectly
dressed to accencuate the ******* and behind, sits so close, has promoted you in her department
to the position of soul mate

And when I flirted a little with you about going together to a fundraiser
you resisted, and now I know why, because you already have a date
and now I know why she tried to be assigned to our work group
when she is really in another because you are there, and you are her light
and my former married flame saw this,
and after the meeting, he ran, as if stung by a bee
to his new work flame, by her side
not alone, and I've finally forsaken him
and he may fire me, or not, but the ring on his finger still isn't there
for her to see, and she needs him, for her own career rehabilitation

Just watch, I am told.  Just watch since you are really not my type and
that is what discerning women do, who don't get swept off their feet by
posssessive and abusive men...and I won't go there again even though
I was defenseless then...given my background and insecurities
but stronger now and men near us nibble juicy meat off ribs
and talk about them, as we sit together, ****** tension still a bit there
even though it's fairly casual "It's so tender and moist, so soft, tender, but a good chew"
and I can't help but smile thinking that these heterosexual men are describing what
they most love, and at then end there is only a hard bone left
which should be of interest to me, except that is not enough since
there is little feeling in me to receive its pleasures, and that is just a compromise of nature

And I tell you I adore you, which is a complete tongue in cheek exxageration
but to get through your thick skin it is a plea for you to stop teasing and judging me
and let us just be friends who are nice to each other
and wander away

— The End —