This collection of short stories includes innovative tales of an aspiring politician, an encounter in the film festival toilets, being stranded in the Fiji airport by George Speight's coup, and a lonely farmer who buys armor on the Internet and jousts in Palmerston North. These stories make an immediate impression with their vigorous, often outrageous humor and with their firm grounding in New Zealand's country towns and suburbs. But their darker subtexts soon become apparent, as does a passionate engagement with social and political issues.