Hah! with all the fracas over whaling at the moment take a minute to read this very funny rant from Rod Liddle of The Times, who reckons the Japanese just hate whales, cos they sure as hell don't like eating them:

There is more stuff ... on the Japanese whaling industry’s website. Whales are a bit thick, it suggests ... But also devious. And there are loads of them, more than we could ever possibly want, and they breed like aquatic rabbits. Always at it, whales. Quite disgusting. Reading through the whalist diatribe one half expects warnings about a sinister world conspiracy of whales and Freemasons, a sort of The Protocols of Moby Dick.

Oh and the Japanese are suddenly glad secret ballots weren't adopted yesterday.

It was Bloomsday a couple of days ago, the day advertising salesman Leopold Bloom got pretty tanked in old Dublin town, little knowing all his good wife Molly was thinking about was another man's Johnson. In celebration Stephen and Mark submit this on a latter day Joyce.

Mark also sends this and this on the right to detain people for you know, like, forever, under US immigration law. And this on consumers wising up to Hollywood's lack of new ideas.

From Stephen, if you want a lively romp through the mainstream media's errors, try Regret the Mistake.

Chris finds Green Gartside of Scritti Politti spent seven years boozing. That beats even the NZBC's long lunch record. In his case, it was caused by self-doubt rather than the discovery of a particularly nice Pinot Gris. Simon Reynolds of the Guardian wants to know what brought him back to the land of the living?

We're all doomed, so when horror movie characters are sent to their grave, it should comfort us, reckons the Private Fraser of the literary world, author of The Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk.

NZBC reader Chris McBride asks whether the special constables now seen roaming New Zealand are the new "Massey's Cossacks", last seen in 1913.

Finally we are all collectively amused by the strange demise of a once common, and rather Joycean, street name: Gropecunt Lane.

Ciao.