Some funny handbag stuff around. First a "fine" headline from the SMH:

Handbag incident: Masoe hit in purse

Then one from The Age on our new post codes:

NZ on the threshold of post modernism

Next some handbag shots from Whaleoil.

Embarrassment for Australia's Channel Nine: Aussie commander in East Timor Brigadier Michael Slater was pressed by Today Show host Jessica Rowe about whether Dili was as safe as the Australian military said, given the armed soldiers onscreen at his shoulder. Slater responded:

Jessica I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good.

Ha!

I imagine it's been a busy weekend at Rakon after the Herald's special report on Saturday. The fact the company supplies the US military with components for smart bombs will not be news to anyone who's been even half awake over the last couple of years, but the volume of internal emails included in the story was pretty impressive - and the contents embarrassing for the company. Watch for the reaction.

Anyway, from Mark this week we have Douglas Coupland on living to write:

It's a need. When it goes, it's not so much writer's block, it's more raison d'etre block; I can't much see the point of anything.

Plus this on the challenges faced by newspapers online and someone getting their suspicions about Disney confirmed in the cruelest way - trying to buy a drink.

Stephen finds environmental sceptic Michael Shermer recanting under the weight of global warming evidence:

Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental scepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from scepticism to activism.

Chris finds Oulipo, a strange school of literature that uses linguistic constraints to create new ways of writing, interesting. Some Oulipo members restrict the number of vowels used; some never use the same word twice. It seems absurdly conceptual, but it can help writers to break through cliched thinking. Here and here (Quicktime), Ian Monk, one of the few who does Oulipo in English, discusses his poems and stories.

Perhaps stranger than Oulipo, Boing Boing finds police in Florida targeting an English student over a horror story. They have demanded he submit his fingerprints and DNA so they can compare his fictional murder with evidence unsolved cases. There’s an update here: an angry lawyer wants to know why they’re policing fiction.

From me Slate does tawdry pulp covers for the classics and this worrying piece on a questionable US terrorism conviction.

Ciao.

A decision that bloggers had to reveal their sources for confidential information about Apple products has been overturned on appeal in California, in effect extending some of the rights enjoyed by journalists there to other forms of web media.

In a 69-page ruling, the San Jose-based 6th District Court of Appeal broke new ground by concluding that bloggers and Web masters enjoy the same protections against divulging confidential sources as established media organizations. Civil liberties groups and journalism organizations have argued that online journalists need to protect the confidentiality of sources just as much as traditional media, such as the New York Times and CNN.

Thanks to the great Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, we now know what Condoleezza Rice listens to while working out:

'Her current playlist includes Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto, Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love," Aretha Franklin's "Respect," Kool and the Gang's "Celebration," Brahms's Piano Quintet, anything by U2, Elton John's "Rocket Man," Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov."

She is a trained classical pianist and member of a chamber quintet, so it's no wonder she goes for the Brahms and Mozart. And everyone loves 'Respect', Celebration' and 'Rocket Man' - come on, yes you do. So it's hard to argue with her list. Apart from U2, obviously.
The full list is here.

White phosphorus "horror weapon" used in Iraq - by the insurgents. (The US used this "horror weapon" too, here.)

One shell was a rocket assisted projectile that had been packed with ball bearings, and two of the steel balls punched into Rodriguez' right lung. His first sergeant survived but has only recently begun walking again. A second shell was standard high-explosive, and a third was a horror weapon - white phosphorous.

CD review: ****½
“The traffic has gone quiet/just the fingertip drumming/of the last train on the hill/now only I can hear it coming…” Don McGlashan’s eagerly anticipated first solo album sounds personal, intimate and — in the best sense of the word — like a great demo. More…

You may remember last October The Guardian ran a "profile" of Noam Chomsky, apologised and then took the article off its site. We wrote about that here. An independent review of its decisions is now out supporting the decision to apologise but saying the Guardian did not have to remove the story.

Aaronovitch and his fellow complainants objected to the correction, arguing that Prof Chomsky "most certainly does seem to believe that ... Srebrenica was not a massacre". He had in the past put that case, they said, "directly and unambiguously".

In his adjudication Mr Willis disagreed, finding that Prof Chomsky had said nothing in the interview to justify the claim that he had put massacre in quotation marks. "Nor in the long complaint from David Aaronovitch and others is there a direct quote from Chomsky that supports an opposite view."

There's a fascinating article in The Atlantic, June issue, called "Stoking the Beast" (not online at The Atlantic online but can be found here with a lively discussion). It covers the ideas and research of conservative economist William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute.

Niskanen, a Nixon and Reagan administration veteran, reckons tax cuts can, when not matched by spending cuts, reduce the apparent cost of government and stimulate rather than starve government spending. They reduce the apparent cost of government only and what happens when you make pork cheaper? You got it - you sell more pork.

He can find no sign that deficits ever constrained government spending, as Reagan and Bush jnr argued. On the contrary, he reckons a tax cut of 1 per cent of GDP will stimulate spending growth by .15 per cent a year. Increasing taxes has a converse effect.

Now, Niskanen has his critics, as you would expect. This one thinks the entire analysis is bogus. And while Niskanen's use of market value theories looks okay it's hard to see how these mechanisms work in the context of government.

As New Zealand no longer deficit finances government, this may all be moot to us, though it would be interesting to find our own stasis point (the point where tax has no negative or positive influence on government spending which Niskanen puts at 19 per cent of GDP in the US).

Some of you may remember we linked to this short story, Mason and The Man, by Darby Larson the other day. Since then Chris and I have been cyber-stalking the boy to see what else he has done. The answer is quite a lot and some pretty weirdly interesting stuff too, for someone so clean-cut. These searches also take you to some kewel online lit journals.

Here we have a date with a great white shark, and here suffer total sensory deprivation to discover Estelle. Here he deals with loud people and here someone gets cut in half by a TV salesman. After all that we take a Beautiful Shit. Here he discovers the Eggerhead flower:

An Eggerhead is a flower that blooms from sidewalk cracks around the San Francisco area. They look exactly like a miniature Dave Eggers with a ring of pink petals around his neck. They have little Dave Eggers arms and legs. They say things one might expect Dave Eggers to say.

His web site is here and he does an interview here, with some thoughts on flash fiction (that a story should either be 1000 words or less or 100,000 words).

"Darby Larson" is also an improper noun, apparently:

Darby Larson n. An ideal that serves as a pattern; an archetype. ("My father is the Darby Larson of sophistication.")

We at NZBC like Darby Larson. Perhaps we like him a bit too much ...

Meanwhile, Picador is doing its bit to revive the short story.

While newspaper circulations continue to sag around the world and proprietors continue to wrestle with questions about the future of media (fundamentally, how to move to internet delivery while maintaining profitability), there is some good news for print.

The Guardian has increased its circulation year on year by 4.4 per cent since moving to a tabloid (or rather Berliner) format. It has also increased its full-rate sales and its circulation market share. And it hasn't just been The Guardian. Other newspapers, including The Independent, that have changed format have also seen their circulations rise. The big question is whether these increases are ongoing or just a one-off spike.

Meanwhile UK readers may also be moving, in print from the popular papers such as The Sun and The Daily Mail, to the more serious papers. Online, however, the popular papers are thriving. Newspapers have been falling over backwards in recent years to attract new readers, but that is a dangerous game. As one Times media writer notes:

Some editors and marketers might also note a pertinent comment by Martin Kettle in last Saturday’s Guardian: “The media are preoccupied by the fact that young people are less interested in newspapers and news programmes. So the media are permanently reconceiving and rebranding themselves to appeal to people who do not want to read or watch them rather than to people who do.” Hear, hear to that.

Moving house is stressful enough but service providers, it seems, are determined to compound it. Before relocating, I checked with Sky TV and was told because there was an existing Sky dish with functioning digital connection at my new place, all I’d need to do was take my receiver with me. It turned out to be a long way from ‘plug and play’. When I called Sky to report the lack of service, it transpired there’d been a “disconnect”: I’d been booked in for the fitting of a new dish, although I’ve no need of one. A visit from a technician was the only option. As far as I can tell, he just changed a frequency setting, which could have been done over the phone, ‘helpline’ style. Instead, I’m left holding their bill for the call-out fee. As an existing Mercury Energy customer, I was persuaded by a zealous CSR to stay with them although the new house was on Contact Energy. The electricity supply is fine, but Contact hasn’t acknowledged Mercury’s request for a transfer of the gas account within the specified two working days. Now we risk having it cut off, even though I’d been assured Mercury would sort this out. Spurious reconnection fees seem to be a nice little earner for service providers, and I’d be interested to hear of NZBC readers’ own experiences.

Me and the Girlie picked up a kitten from the SPCA on the weekend and I'm discovering how difficult it is to blog, or do anything much, with a cat walking all over the keyboard, perched on your shoulder chewing your ear or attacking your zipper. She's already deleted my Explorer shortcut, consulted the Help files on numerous occasions and done a search for "gzzzz-ax;".

Anyway, Chris finds a first-time author using eBay to publish a thriller. "While the quality of the writing might charitably be described as variable," writes the Guardian, "there is no shortage of plot".

More seriously perhaps, Chris reckons the Waterstone's list of 30 books to be rediscovered is notable for at least four titles. We should all go and read (or re-read) Revenge Of The Lawn by Richard Brautigan, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

On a musical note, as one who followed Boy George's career closely since the very start, he's dismayed to find that soon the Culture Club supremo may find himself picking up trash in New York. And Aston Barrett, once Bob Marley’s bassist in the Wailers, has again failed to persuade a court to give him a cut of the royalties. This was the third time “Family Man” Barrett (so called because he’s fathered 52 children) has taken legal action, and it gave the Guardian an opportunity to pun wildly on Marley song titles.

From Mark we get the newest coolest name for girls in the US. It's Neveah (heaven backwards), now more popular than Sara and Vanessa. Journalist Frank Gardner getting shot up in Saudi Arabia and the Observer tearing itself a new ring over anal sex.

Stephen likes Cactus Kate's take on tax cuts and Paul Brislen's on unbundling.

From me? Just this on another chapter in the seemingly endless US debate about the great American novel.

Ciao and Miao.

Over night New Zealand joined Google's street mapping service. Check it out. It's so cool. Not complete but getting there.

A dialogue on Werner Herzog's doco Grizzly Man

Board members Rob O'Neill and Mark Broatch sloped along to a screening of Grizzly Man in Sydney town last year when the former was trying to escape a dull week and the latter a dull spring. Instead of presenting your common-or-garden review of the film (which opens next week here) with accurate plot summaries and technical analysis and all that, we thought we'd just post and riposte about the film via email.

I've mentioned Haditha before. Time Magazine broke a story about an incident there involving the death, or perhaps murder, of more than a dozen civilians at the hands of US troops. Now we have our first report on what the findings of an investigation into the incident may be, from Rep. John Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee:

There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the report is going to tell.

If Murtha is right, this is no Abu Ghraib. It's worse. Though I doubt it will get the same level of media play.

Meanwhile, troop reductions this year look increasingly unlikely despite some people's wild fantasies. (More reports here, and here. AL points out Rumsfeld still hopes for a drawdown in 2006)

I've just picked up a copy of the relaunched Independent, now the Independent Financial Review. I wouldn't really call this a relaunch, more of a transition, but it's a good transition.

All the favourites are still there, led by Trotter, whose thinking really is worth tapping into for twenty minutes or so each week. This time around he's on to Winston about the impact of his Brash email on relations with the US. It's something that gets mentioned in blogland, but Trotter gives it the full treatment.

Gone are the several pages of Wall St Journal copy replaced by an international page and an Australia page, all from the AFR and much more relevant to New Zealand readers. And Jenni McManus is writing again as promised.

Chalky is still there on the back page as is Scuttlebutt. Another thing that has changed is the price, up nearly a dollar. But with this issue at least you get a free copy of the glossy AFR Magazine thrown in.

One of the Indy's advantages has been retained. The paper is still produced and distributed overnight, so the Rakon story is there on page 2. My understanding is this would not be possible if it was printed on glossy paper like the NBR, but I stand to be corrected on that.

I wouldn't hold my breath for more free copy online, though. The AFR doesn't do that and I don't think the Indy will either. Best of all, you can still call it the "Indy".

Mark Steyn's column on the Da Vinci Code and the Judas Gospel, linked in our latest Lollies, is causing something of a stir - and not in religious circles. Steyn, it is being suggested, has liberally "borrowed" the first 550 words, or at least the ideas and examples, of that column. More here and here.

First the important business. NoiZyboy informs us that while the Sun may refer to our muse's breasts as her "lady bazzers" or her "sauce shelf", Scarlett prefers to call them simply her "girls". Awww.

Stephen offers this funny from Tim Blair and Mark Steyn on the gospel according to St Judas, which Steyn says

contains a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord Of The Rings and her CD collection

From Chris we have Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy on The Guardian's latest Culture Vulture podcast (from last year's Guardian Hay Festival).

Also, British comedian Chris Langham has been charged with 15 counts of making indecent images of children. Langham, who played psychiatrist Peter opposite Paul Whitehouse in the excellent Help said he was devastated to have been charged with the offences and is anxious to clear his name.

A funny video of a cabbie mistakenly interviewed on the recent Apple court case by the BBC. And, finally from Chris, a gripe: on Thursday 11 May, TV One's Breakfast featured Random House NZ's publisher promoting “Random House/NZ Book Month Gift Book Award” to “support local writers”. Sadly, entries for submissions closed on 5 May. If you really want to support NZ writers, guys, how about giving us a bit more notice?

Not much from me this week, but I did rediscover the 3am magazine literary website and especially like this "flash fiction" or short short story, Mason and The Man.

Ciao.

There is a fascinating media story developing. Over the past couple of days journalist Jason Leopold has broken two stories about the indictment of Karl Rove for a small independent media organisation. He says Rove is being indicted. That's a huge story, but so far no one else has followed him. Leopold has, in his short career, already had a colourful history, and written a book about it.

This is definitely one to watch over the next few days, not just the indictment or otherwise of Rove, but whether Leopold achieves journalistic vindication or damnation.

BTC News notes Monday is new White House press secretary Tony Snow's debut.

If Leopold is right Tony Snow's press room debut should be a doozy.

Update: We have some denials. And very oddly Scoop, which led with what is clearly a news story last night, has now put it into their Comment & Opinion section.

Update 2: Q and O talk to Leopold about his story and sources.

Update 3: Leopold stands by his story. More here courtesy of AL at Sir Humphrey's. It's quite funny to imagine all those reporters spending their weekends chasing this. "Where are these reports coming from?" Indeed.

Update 4: Now the story is definitely the story. Here's the WSJ.

Update 5: Now Leopold has had his new book pulled.

Update 6: Truthout still backing their man.

One of the best TV comedies of recent years debuts on TV1 tomorrow. We Can Be Heroes follows the stories of five nominess for the Australian of the Year award in mockumentary style. All five are brilliantly played by comedian Chris Lilley.

Ja'mie, a self-obsessed north shore girl from Sydney sponsors 85 African kids. Melbourne based Ricky Wong is a prize Physics student, but really wants to be an actor. Daniel Sims lives in the outback. He's been nominated because he is donating an eardrum to his deaf brother for a world-first operation.

Over six unmissable episodes we follow the progress of the nominees towards the grand final in Canberra.

If you loved The Office, you'll love We Can Be Heroes. Watch out for Ricky Wong winning the lead role as "Walkabout Man" in the Chinese Musical Theatre Group's production Indigeridoo for the priceless and somewhat mindbending sight of a European playing a Chinese playing an Aboriginal. Just brilliant.

There has been a lot of talk about waiting list culls over the last few weeks and I have been growing increasingly concerned about them. As someone who has seen the benefits of great public hospital treatment in very recent times, I appreciate our system. I don't appreciate seeing it running down.

I've not posted on this so far because culls in themselves are not necessarily an issue. If people have been put on lists they should not be on, then sure, cull them. Resources are not infinite.

But now we are starting to see some very specific concerns raised about the types of patients being culled and these concerns are coming from authoritative sources.

Given current budget surpluses, there seems very little excuse for a Labour government not to deliver in this area. And on this one I agree with many politically rightish commentators. Delivering does not just mean providing more money. It also means doing more with the money provided.

The Guardian has written about Google Trends, using the service to unearth facinating information such as most people searching for "Britney Spears naked" come from Perth. I thought I'd throw in some kiwi seaches and see what happens.

A search on "celebrity" and "drugs" shows people in New Plymouth and Auckland were the most obsessed. Helen Clark and Don Brash both rate, but look at that spike over the Exclusive Bretheren issue. Rodney Hide doesn't make any impression at all. Will Dancing with the Stars change that?

Our ties to the mother country are clearly as strong as ever. A search in "london" and "bombings" shows more New Zealand-based people searched that term than any other region, even the UK.

It looks, though, as if no one was interested in "shrek" (the "sheep") apart from us.

In the battle of the bloggers, David Farrar doesn't rate, but Russell Brown does (though some of these might be looking for the guy who invented Photoshop).

Hours of fun here on a rainy day. Post any other interesting searches in comments below.

Subject: Ian Wedde, writer.

"I thought he'd gone away and died or something."

"No. He was working at Te Papa."

NZBC has been lucky enough to receive a pre-release copy of Don McGlashan’s solo album ‘Warm Hand’, out on Monday (Arch Hill Recordings AHR024). We’ll be reviewing it here soon — before which it deserves several more plays than we’ve had time to give it — and it’s sure to become heavy-rotation winter listening around these parts. Edmund McWilliams and Tom Miskin’s recording sounds strikingly intimate, although McGlashan’s voice, guitars, ukulele and percussion are augmented by a full ensemble, as well as strings and brass on a couple of titles. Early Neil Young and US folk are invoked in intriguing ways, and Blame and I Will Not Let You Down are instant standouts. Here’s hoping it gets the international distribution it deserves. Watch this space.

Underworld will perform another in its ongoing series of webcasts from Lemonworld studios this weekend. Tune in at 09:00am on Sunday 14 May, New Zealand time (that’s 22:00 on Saturday night, UK time). These shows are quite an achievement, says Mike Gillespie of the band’s management, “given that the studio is in the middle of a field, in the middle of nowhere and until very recently didn't even have a phone line”. You can tune in here and check out the funny preview here, which is also a bit of a larf. (This cartoon of Underworld’s Karl and Rick performing Born Slippy comes from the New Traditionalists’ website).

The Register has a report on a unique tribute to perhaps Australia's greatest PM. A portrait, straight from the ... penis.

I'd like to know more about the state of the, ahh, brush during the, creative act, as it were. No, on second thoughts, I wouldn't.

Okay, that does it. A few weeks ago, he called me "an ignorant twat", later amended to simply "an twat" (sic). And now he has a headline impugning my, err, trustiness. Well, Lemur, you may think you have covered your sneaky little pawprints. But I've had my people looking out for you. It's taken some time, but we've been putting the pieces together.

Now it's time the world knew Antarctic Lemur's real identity. No more psuedonyms for you, little man!

Antactic Lemur is ... (more)

Buried, so to speak, beneath the miners and the Australian tax cuts avalanche, is this intriguing item, suggesting the Rupe may be considering backing Hillary Clinton in her Senate reelection race. What could this mean for her presidential ambitions?

The prospect of a Fox News that is not an extension of the Republican Party would represent a significant lift for the presidential ambitions of Senator Clinton in 2008.

Man, Fox could be fun to watch over the next year or two!

“In this world,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, “nothing is certain but death and taxes”. That was in 1789 and there have been a lot of deaths and tax returns since then. What if, in an uncertain future, the Revenue became literally ‘Internal’ and, through the wonders of cortex implants, began demanding a tax based on what citizens were dreaming?
Read the story…

I've just found this tres kewel SMS lingo maker. It's also a translator. Now even us boomers can do the meanest texts, or, to put it another way "us b%mers cn do D meanest txtz".

Some totally random examples:
Hey Chris, want to go to the pub at lunchtime?
ey Chris, wnt2go 2 D pub @ lunchtime?

What say we have a real long lunch, buddy?
w@ sA w'v a real lng lnch, pal?

Beer tastes so much sweeter when everyone else is working
(B) tastes so mch sweeter wen evry1 Ls S workin

Up our local Asian supermarket you can find it under quite a few labels, but the one I like best is "Gourmet Powder". It is, of course MSG, or monosodium glutamate. I've had several "What the hell is wrong with MSG?" discussions recently and have never really been able to get my head around it. Well, now Slate picks up the slack with this great exposition on the subject, asking whether we are seeing an MSG revival. It also reveals "Gourmet Powder" is still being used by some big food chains under the label E621.

Treasury describes its latest indicators, released twenty minutes ago, as "a little more upbeat":

Data in the last month have seen net migration increase, retail sales lift and house prices continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate than in 2005. In addition, recent business confidence surveys have recorded a rebound in measures of general confidence and in firms’ expectations of their own performance.

What that means for GDP for the March quarter is anyone's guess. Treasury expects it to be weak, but how weak is the question.

Firms’ expectations of their own trading conditions increased from a net 9% expecting a decrease in activity in the next three months to a net 2% expecting an increase in activity. However, a net 7% (seasonally adjusted) of firms also reported that activity in their own business contracted in the March quarter, suggesting a weak GDP result for the quarter.

National Bank projects a pretty sharp bounce (see chart), but will it come in time to avoid a technical recession. We'll find out next month. Either way it's a soft landing.

Update: Statistics released its employment surveys today too, showing increased demand for labour and steadily improving pay rates for workers. I'm sure somebody will try and paint this as some sort of crisis (Whoops they already have, and it's the CTU!). And a few days ago Michael Cullen, following a similar announcement in Australia, said the NZ government was debt free. And, via David Farrar, beneficiary numbers are dropping.

Okay, I usually give my bloggies the first run here, but not this week. No sirree! This boy is putting himself first for a change, if it's okay with you.

First up, from The Guardian we have an interview with the Popbitch herself, Camilla Wright. And here's a good angle on Russell Crowe's recent drag act, should smoking be banned on stage if a role demands it? Chris Trotter waxes this week about Wayne Mapp's probationary employment legislation in both the Indy and the Sunday Star-Times, but neither appear to have put it online. A message to the deaf: stories live online and die in print.

Mark offers this on Mexico decriminalising recreational drug use. On that subject, I read somewhere the prediction that soon people would be swimming the Rio Grande in the opposite direction. Also what happens when a bunch of chicks prowl the street cougar style? The writer of this piece, The Rev Jenny Miller "patron saint of the uncool", has an great site. We especially like the funny story behind the Anti-Slam, a "poetry" event she runs in New York.

And what about that mention of Mars Bar in NY, the awning of which carries the the motto "Day Care for Drunkards". Love it.

Chris notes that Auckland band Ruptus Jack recently opened for rock legends Deep Purple in Auckland and Wellington and made quite an impression on Gillan, Glover and keyboard session ace Don Airey. Ruptus already has an endorsement deal with Alpine cough mixture manufacturers Jägermeister, but when will the majors take note? The video of their latest single can be found here

Richard Cooper at Thoughtcat says a chapter from Charles Webb's yet-to-be-published sequel to The Graduate, Home School, appeared in The Times. Richard has written it up here and the extract is here. There's also a "news blog" entry with details of how the paper came by it. So far there's been little comment, so get over there and support an impoverished writer.

While Sophie Kinsella might find it "heartwarming" that readers, "not the publishers or the authors” spotted similarities between her own book Can You Keep a Secret and Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, Chris reckons this latest plagiarism scandal is just a further indictment of a publishing industry beset by apathy and greed.

One John Howard, for instance, submitted the manual for his new washing machine to literary agents and publishers after he became convinced that none of them bothered to read unsolicited manuscripts. Some wrote back to say they had enjoyed reading it (via the New Zealand Society of Authors' weekly newsletter).

Finally my dear ol' dad sends us Kinky Freidman's site. Check out the merchandise for his run for Governor of Texas.

Saiofuckinara.

When NZBC dropped novelist David Mitchell a line at the beginning of last October, he said, “My wife gave birth three days ago, so I’m lost in Newbabyland for six months or so. Please feel free to get back to me then.” The man’s a twice Man Booker shortlisted author, so how did we get his email address? Call it a lucky guess. We drummed our fingers, fidgeted and decided to do some research while were waiting for him. Wikipedia had some interesting things to say about his next book and the Guardian reckons he was once turned down for a job at McDonald’s. Outspoken writer Dame Antonia Susan Byatt said his debut novel, Ghostwritten was “the best first novel I have ever read” and we found out that his newest, Black Swan Green, is set in the dark days of Maggot Scratcher’s England. Upon his return from Newbabyland (to the right of Canada, it turns out), David remained true to his word. It was our shout, so we asked him if he’d like anything — a tomato juice or something from Burger King, perhaps? “Please could I have a beach-house on the Queen Charlotte Hiking Trail and a permanent residency visa?” We’ll talk to our people. More…

It's almost sad to watch the dawning realisation among the right that the Middle East is refusing to be transformed, as America planned, into a hotbed of western, or even eastern democracy.

Pragmatism is replacing idealism all over. More.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a survey of media trust showing only 25 per cent of respondents trust blogs while 23 per cent don't. 82 per cent trust TV news and 75 per cent trust national newspapers. But the future is online, apparently.

The BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera were most trusted in their own regions. Hah! More detail here, with consumers highly willing to move from one news source to another. The survey was conducted by GlobeScan (results here) for Reuters, the BBC and others.

Update: AL has alerted me to this worthy opinion on the poll from BBC journo Paul Reynolds. AL does a bit of his own spinning on this one as the question is more open than he pretends:

"How much would you say you trust each of the following media sources to provide you with the news and information you want on current affairs?"

The news and information "you want" on current affairs. AL thinks he knows what the people want, spinning this into "original sources of news and information on current affairs".

Meanwhile, Antactic Lemur's real identity exposed!

Just on TVNZ news, Telecom to be forced to unbundle the local loop. Announcement made after the market closed in NZ but TNZ share price now down 7% in Australia and expected to drop sharply here tomorrow.

Dammit, Farrar already has his take up. You gotta be quick.

This is great news and will introduce a new era of internet and telecommunications service. Competitors will have a much more level playing field and that will encourage start-ups and overseas investment in the industry. The NZX will suffer in the short-term, but further out we may see a whole bunch of new listings. It's very exciting and good for both business and consumers.

Memory works in mysterious ways. Often, the images and fragments that resurface from our subconscious are unsolicited, as a certain Frenchman once described so meticulously. There are memories that seem, inexplicably, fundamental to what we are. So what do we do with them when we have them? Where do we put them? These fragments belong in a symbolic place, one that stands for both the experiences we can and those we can’t remember. It doesn’t need a name but, if it were to have one, it might as well be The Barn.

(Photograph by Dave Mulligan reproduced courtesy of NVM Digital.)

Motivated by my recent attempt at jazz fiction — or, more properly, the Miles Davis masterpiece that inspired it — NZBC’s mate Richard Cooper over at Thoughtcat dreamt up the “Grand ‘Kind of Blue’ Story Challenge”. The idea is to write a short story in the time it takes to listen to the album (that’s 55 minutes for the extended version). Your story doesn’t have to involve ‘Kind of Blue’ and there’s no set theme. There’s also no prize, “Just as there’s no prize for the best solo of the night,” says Richard (although I might be able to rustle-up one of our cool, black NZBC t-shirts if there are any particularly good entries). So, if you don’t already own what’s been widely described by critics as one of the best albums of all time, buy it, play it, wait for your Muse, then email us your entry.