The Outside of the Asylum

For rather a while, I've argued that New Zealand is Douglas Adams's Outside of the Asylum.

In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, John Watson read the instructions on a packet of toothpicks, decided the world had gone mad, built a wall around his beachfront property, decorated the outside of the wall for the inmates of the asylum, changed his name to Wonko the Sane, and declared his home to be the Outside of the Asylum.

I feel like I'm walking through the door to Watson's property whenever I clear customs to come home to New Zealand. In a world going increasingly mad, New Zealand is, at worst, growing mad more slowly.

I've put together an essay drawing together some of these themes. We'll be releasing it as a fun report for the Initiative at the end of the month. But we're doing things a bit differently with this one. The good people at The Spinoff will be serialising it in five installments - one for each of the books in the inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy.

And, for your listening enjoyment, you'll also be able to catch an audio version of it on Soundcloud, narrated by yours truly.

Watch for the report's first installment at The Spinoff on Saturday. The full report will be released at the end of the serialisation.

I've also set up a separate Twitter feed for this kind of thing.

I rather like the header image I threw together for the Twitter feed.

Apologies for light posting of late. I have a long queue of many things I've wanted to blog about, but a few reports have stood in the way.