We're having a heatwave, at least in Auckland. The Girlie reckons it's, like, soooo global warming.

"It never used to be like this," she said as we walked up the shops yesterday. Not in April.

Anyway, before they melt, here's your lollies. First from Mark, on one writer who had to shut down her blog after five years because:

"...somewhere between the bedsheets and 6 a.m., I realized something: Blogging wasn't helping me write; it was keeping me from it."

Stephen likes this Economist piece on Tom Wolfe's encounters with "hog-stomping reality".

Chris says we now know why that third-rate science fiction hack did it: "L. Ron Hoover of the First Church of Appliantology" (as Frank Zappa once dubbed Hubbard), once addressed an authors' convention saying writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. "If a man really wants to make a million dollars he should start his own religion." (via Arts & Letters Daily).

He also recommends the KCRW Bookworm site especially Michael Silverblatt's interview with the "god-like Kurt Vonnegut", and his interview with Elliot Perlman, author of The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, which he says is one of the most extraordinary interviews he's ever heard. Silverblatt starts by reprimanding Perlman for being modest (he asks him to be as articulate and impressive as his work), and Perlman has an 'epiphany' at the end that makes you realise how stunning the silver-tongued Silverblatt is at summarising writers' work. Priceless.

A blogger called Heather warns of the dangers of not knowing what to do with your breasts, providing a blasphemous photo of our Muse to, er, support her case. "Breasts deserve better," says Heather.

Finally, from Chris anyway, German scholar Matthias Kuntzel has written "a dramatic-and frightening" cover story about Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the New Republic (free registration).

And analysis of Iraq casualty figures over at Sir Humphreys appears to reach the conclusion that the data may or may not be cyclical and may or may not be important depending on what you are trying to measure - which no one can agree on. But no matter what, my analysis is wrong.

Ciao.