Never strike a woman, because they bruise too easily. Hey I didn’t say that, the Wiz did. 88-year-old Ian Brackenbury Channell was the official Wizard of New Zealand, until just recently.
That’s right, New Zealand had an official Wizard. In 1990, Channell was invited by Prime Minister Mike Moore, to perform magical duties for New Zealand, Antarctica, and “relevant offshore areas.” This led to a contract in 1998, with the city of Christchurch to perform “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services.”
And apparently he was a whiz at his job, given that his contract seemed immortal up until a few months ago. His duties included casting spells, blessings, and curses. He also performed rituals to make it rain during droughts, and was met with thundering success.
But alas, Channell’s sorcery was not all-powerful. It could not protect him from cancel culture. Earlier this year, he got on TV and said a few unfortunate things about the fairer sex.
For instance, the Wiz quipped that women use cunning to get men who are dumb. And then he had all the gall to jest, “I love women, I forgive them all the time, I’ve never struck one yet. Never strike a woman because they bruise too easily is the first thing, and they’ll tell the neighbors and their friends . . . and then you’re in big trouble.”
But big trouble was what The Wiz got into, for joking about those things. He realized he’d made a big mistake. He had not yet turned the politically correct crowd into toads, and some of them happened to be watching TV that day. They felt mortified, and proceeded to rent their clothing and gnash their teeth. They raised a stink over his “sexist” jokes about the gentler gender, and the city council of Christchurch responded by firing Channell.
Christchurch spokesperson Lynn McClelland was nice about it, though. She thanked him for his service and told him he’d “forever be a part of history.”
However, The Wiz was not so easily appeased. He stewed about this for awhile, while stirring a boiling cauldron of hummingbird tears and lizard tails, and considering occult messages that rose from the steam. Finally he issued a statement saying that he believed he was being canceled for being a “provocateur,” and because a Wizard no longer “vibes” with the city.
“It implies,” he continued, “that I am boring and old, but there is nobody else anything like me in Christchurch . . . It’s just they don’t like me because they are boring old bureaucrats and everyone likes me and no one likes them . . . They are a bunch of bureaucrats who have no imagination . . . They are not thinking of ways to promote Christchurch overseas. They are just projecting an image of bureaucrats drinking lattes on the boulevard.”
So cackled The Wizard. And none dared argue.
He’s an interesting old fart. If you want to learn more about this eccentric visitor from the shadowlands, here’s a blurb about his life, and the woman of his life. It was produced last March, about seven months before he was commanded by Christchurch to vanish:
Categories: news
Chasing Unicorns 
you gotta love these quirky kind of characters…
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I know. Every city should have an official Town Fool, or Wizard, or whatever.
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that’s a job I am qualified for…
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Me too. We’d better not apply in the same town.
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I think Washington D.C. has already filled its quota…
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In fact there are so many of them in DC, I understand it’s caused a supply-chain crisis of available fools elsewhere in the country.
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so that’s what caused it…
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I would have thought that I would have been in the top of the running for town fool where I live, but I am apparently no where near the top of that heap.
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Well, at least you can get lots of free entertainment, just by looking out your windows.
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Mostly people walking dogs. Or dogs pulling people down the street. Humans are weird. What would we think if we saw another animal that kept a smaller animal as a pet and took it out for a walk?
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We would probably want that animal for a pet, so that it could walk our dogs for us.
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Wow! You aren’t? Thats the most shocking news of my day! 😂
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Great human interest story!
I’m thinking he may yet pull some magic out of his hat… 😊
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Oh gosh, where do these type of people come from? LOL!
Yeah, I would say he got himself into trouble with that statement. Trouble that magic can’t get him out of! Perhaps he needs some magic tips from Lauren or Bridget.
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I really don’t see the harm in his jokes. I guess if I was the Wiz, I’d have been canceled a long time ago.
Maybe he could use a magic cowbell, or maybe we can sic Betsy on those idiots who canceled him.
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Yeah, keep your day job, you don’t have to be worried about being cancelled. The WP wizards just try to block followers from you. 🙂
I agree with you in that he probably didn’t mean any harm with that statement, but he would have been smarter to have just said it in the privacy of his own home among family and friends, not on public Tv.
Too many women have had serious trouble with “bruising too easily”.
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But the whole purpose of his job is to entertain, and a lot of his entertainment involves humor. Humor always comes with risk, if it’s going to be funny. Comedians can’t be timid, or they’ll never be funny. So once in awhile someone feels offended. That’s the price we must pay if we want good comedy, and not the boring drivel we usually see on TV.
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Just don’t go on TV. You can’t read the room.
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Yes, the television room is dangerous for that. You don’t know who’s watching. On the other hand, there are plenty of other rooms available for those who don’t like what they’re watching.
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I like Frank and Alice. They’d be fun neighbors. I guess New Zealand is also having its last gasps of excitement. Too bad.
There’s an irony in that Frank’s words would likely have been overlooked, if not excused as lyrics in an overtly misogynistic piece of “Gangsta’ Rap”. I sense a double standard in the interpretation of “art”.
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You make a really good point there LT. In rap music it seems like one can say anything and get away with it! There are double standards all over this world! I can listen to all kinds of music, but “gangsta rap: That I can’t do!
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Yeah, very true. Rap music is considered politically correct, just by virtue of being rap music, regardless of the content. It seems we can’t have fun anymore, without the Fun Police getting all over our asses.
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