My four-year-old daughter is currently fetching $101 on TradeMe. Half an hour to go. Too exciting for words.

Update
She, or rather her staggering work of heartbreaking genius that was her one-off collectable Weetbix card - click on the image to see it properly - raised $161 for the Hippy Foundation. Not bad when the other two went for $76 (Emirates Team NZ, for the Child Cancer Foundation) and $101 (Hamish Carter, for the Starship Foundation).

Result!

Since my last post we’ve had a Telecom engineer in, carried out isolation tests, disconnected Sky Digital, had all of our phone jacks checked, and I’ve spent over two hours on the phone to Xtra. No dice. Our broadband connection is stable for just minutes at a time — in the time it has taken to write and post this, it has dropped out a dozen times. The guy on the Xtra help desk has suggested buying a new router and says I will be credited for my D-Link DSL-G604T as soon as I return it and its replacement, which can’t hold a connection, either. The problem is, the only wireless routers Xtra supports are by D-Link, making the prospect of installing a new router terrifying in the extreme — Xtra can’t even provide adequate support for the D-Link products, let alone anything else. Try ringing D-Link for help and unless you’re an Xtra technician you’re led circuitously and infuriatingly back to Xtra. The suggestion that some settings were altered in our line profile to the exchange as part of Telecom’s “unleashing” neither coincides with the start of our problems (last Monday morning) nor has downgrading our profile helped. Xtra’s help desk guy spoke to D-Link, which concedes it’s having trouble with this device, but hasn’t been able to get to the bottom of the problem. Is anyone else out there using the D-Link DSL-G604T and unable to hold an internet connection for longer than a few minutes? It ought to be abundantly clear that Telecom is in trouble. The fact I had no problems with Xtra wireless broadband before “unleashing” merely underscores the fact that it has bitten off more than it can chew.

Today's Dominion Post reports that when Hamilton grandmother Ngareta Tauri-Wright confronted three burglars in her home, they "said they would set the Mongrel Mob on her. She replied that she'd set her tribe on them."

#47 in a possible series.

One way for a misanthrope to clear the house of unwanted overstayers after a dinner party, I find, is to put on a CD of the late Beethoven quartets. It’s music I like but almost everybody else can’t stand. So I’m happy, they’re miserable and they go. Result!

Ugly music works every time – but it must be ugly music I want to listen to while winding down late at night. That usually rules out everything from Ades, Birtwistle and Carter to Varese, Xenakis and Zappa.

So last night when my wife was overtired and desperately needed to sleep but was still on the internet at 11.30pm, my thoughts turned again to ugly music.

Stockhausen’s Helicopter Quartet was out as it’s too ugly even for me, being the sound of four helicopters each containing a member of a string quartet sawing away seemingly at random, so I tried Oktophonie – an electronic portrayal of a intergalactic aerial battle or somesuch bollocks but terrifying at the correct volume ie LOUD – but she was unmoved. So I put on King Crimson’s Red album from 1974. After thirty seconds of the first track, she was in her pyjamas. Result!

Well, overnight Ferrit launched its e-commerce site, just in time for the Xmas rush.

Chris hates The IT Crowd, you know, on the telly. So he was surprised to read this from BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow: “The IT Crowd is a convulsively funny British TV show.” Chris reckons the show is weak, flags punchlines and features one of the most annoying characters on TV. Having raved about this show before, investing it with Boing Boing's cred, Doctorow now announces he was “privileged” to consult on the show, which rather excludes him from being able to comment, don’t you think?

Via Arts & Letters Daily, Adam Kirsch of the New York Sun reads Thomas Pynchon’s new novel Against The Day so you don’t have to; and Allen Ginsberg’s anti-war poem Wichita Vortex Sutra was a proto-podcast, says Rolf Potts of The Nation. He recorded it on a tape recorder paid for by Bob Dylan and you can read it here.

Mark finds Will Ferrell’s London maps.

Stephen points out that trade with China is not all one way. Britain’s biggest export there is rubbish.

Ciao.

Have any other NZBC readers in Auckland been suffering Xtra broadband micro-outages over the last 24 hours? Since Monday morning the ADSL light on my wireless router hasn’t remained on for longer than five minutes at a time. Websites, particularly those overseas, are accessible for precious seconds at a time, while my laptop shows the wireless network connection to be “excellent”. The Xtra help desk people have managed to contradict each other repeatedly about the cause, passing the buck to everyone from Sky Digital to the makers of cordless phones and the broadband filter. Meanwhile, the Xtra website continues to display its default disclaimer: “There are currently no major problems with the Xtra network. No outages are currently scheduled.” As fast as your line allows, they reckon, which turns out to be not very fast at all...

The Economist comments on Daniel Ortega’s election win in Nicaragua, “One of the lessons from this year's elections in Latin America is that the region's voters, like those elsewhere, dislike being told what to do by outsiders. Having been rebuffed when he backed candidates in Peru, Mexico and Ecuador, Mr Chávez kept quiet about Nicaragua. The Americans did not. Mr Ortega duly won 38% of the vote, enough to give him victory over a divided opposition that included both conservatives and the centre-left.”

So you can’t always get what you want, but if you shut up sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

I wish my four-year-old daughter Madeleine would learn this lesson. Must be all that artistic temperament.

Terrific news that the pope has reaffirmed celibacy for Catholic clergy. With gays out (or in), and women being resolutely kept out of the sacerdotal loop, the seminaries will soon be swarming with young straight men.

I await with great anticipation the curt dismissal of any doubts around limbo, the reinstitution of the laundries for wayward women, and the enthusiastic revival of the Crusades.

Mind you, if the priests look like this, churches could have women rejoining the flock in, ah, droves.

This just in: more American women are taking the veil.

Most of us have done a Gibson - said stuff we didn't really believe in, in an, er, unguarded moment.

Borat is a prized, paraded collection of such moments. Especially the jew-hating stuff. Only problem: it's all real and it's all on screen, the anti-semitic, anti-gay old cowboy, the misogynistic college boys, the well-meaning types ready to indulge a seeming ignorant ingrate for the promise of cash.

Parts are very hard to watch, particularly those involving fat naked men, but any film that can ask a "chocolate-face" politician, two-time presidential contender Alan Keyes, "Are you saying that the man who tried to put a rubber fist in my anus was a homosexual?" gets my vote. The film, not the politico.

And Pamela Anderson, the Holy Grail of Borat's quest - or maybe Holy Grill - to gain cultural learnings to take back to his glorious nation, is either a disgracefully underrated actress or she's in on the joke. She can run too.

Chris Trotter (TM) in the current Independent Financial Review reports that after Helen Clark's address to the Labour Party conference in Rotorua the aspiring candidates and activists "were wearing the expressions of people who'd just had sex".

Hmm. What picture does this conjure up for you?

Obviously none of them was having a fag. Maybe all the men were asleep and the women were scowling. Any other ideas?

I heard Al Gore's presentation today and was impressed by his wit and the quality of his argument. I wasn't one of the invited few, which suits me just fine. Instead I went down under the Auckland Uni library to B28, a lecture theatre I hadn't been in in over 20 years. It hadn't changed much. Gore's presentation was being simulcast there, though not his image (for "copyright reasons").

Anyway, the guy's a charmer. He runs a great line of self deprecating humour and understatement, though you sometimes feel it was a bit too well practised.

As to the main part of his speech, well, let's just say when I look at the evidence I see it heavily, heavily stacked on one side. A lot of business people now get this. Many even see business opportunities in it. Maybe the people who deny climate change are just anti business.

We at the NZBC approve of the latest Bond girl, Caterina Murino. She'll provide great distraction from Daniel Craig searching for Bond's dark side, we think.

Stephen points, once again to Chase Me Ladies. This time Harry has discovered a "dull mystery" in Andrew Sullivan's comments section. There's nothing dull about Chase Me Ladies' comments, though:

I am a poststructuralist trailer-park cesspool skimmer raised by self-abusing Trotskyists in Fecksville. Reading Harry Hutton has given me hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is the end of the barrel of a gun which has just unloaded a shell flying at Harry Hutton's scrotum.I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.

Stephen wonders if he could be writing them himself.

When Peter Morris was ready for a new relationship he thought he'd try net dating, Chris says, but found interweb women wanted treated him like a sex object. Shock, horror. Gordon Ramsay is having to be nice in order to crack the difficult American market. It'll end in fucking tears, yes?

This is the most ridiculous thing Chris has ever heard, apart from this, both featured on Boing Boing. Via Arts & Letters Daily, Theodore Dalrymple on the mistakes he says the New Zealand criminal justice system makes over and over. And, on the sunny side, the Economist on how New Zealand is promoting itself as a destination for foodies.

Spare a thought for Onan, an article on Canada.com urges: "Imagine having a sin named after you when there's no evidence you ever committed it". One thing's for sure: it'll never stand up in court. Finally, make sure you listen to Zadie Smith, talking to il Pate Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm — the kind of dialogue you wish all authors were honest enough to take part in.

From moi, here cometh the world's first creationist museum. Has America gone green? Also the shocking story of an almost complete lack of media bias against the Iraq war. Golly, how wretched the MSM has become.

In Slate we have the Zeitgeist checklist: the Democrat gloating edition and how the news from home broke for some Marines deep in Iraq (and how little they cared). Oh, and before the US puts that wall up to keep the Mexicans out, they might want to think about the effect that could have on recruitment.

Ciao.

He’s been described as having “irrepressible humour, a stand-back imagination, a wondrous facility and control of the English language”. Paul Di Filippo (photographed by Deborah Newton) is the author of hundreds of short stories — some of which have been anthologised in The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, Fractal Paisleys, Lost Pages, Little Doors, Strange Trades, Babylon Sisters — and a novella, A Year in the Linear City. He has also written the novels Ciphers, Joe’s Liver, Fuzzy Dice, A Mouthful of Tongues, and Spondulix. Boing Boing loves him, as well they might. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. In this interview, di Filippo describes his goal as “to be some weird mix of Flaubert and Gandhi”. It’s been a while since NZBC Five-Minuted anyone, so we ordered tall lattes, kicked back and asked the man who invented the word ‘ribofunk’ to tell us what it’s all about. More…

It’s disorientating to discover that someone you never met has died, especially when you never knew what he even looked like while he was alive. But Norman Hidden was one of my important early influences. He died in April, having achieved the age of 93, and was awarded a civil list pension in recognition of his services to literature. I’d like to give him some kind of posthumous award for being the first person to publish my writing; it was an enormous confidence-boost and just the encouragement I needed. More…

Microsoft's iPod competitor, Zune, gets a serve for taking exactly the same line of attack Microsoft always takes: substandard features, not considering much of what users actually want, promising much to come in next version, big marketing, lots of buy-in from partners, uber-strong on copy protection, etc etc.

Competition is good and all. But what, exactly, is the point of the Zune? It seems like an awful lot of duplication — in a bigger, heavier form with fewer features — just to indulge Microsoft’s “we want some o’ that” envy. Wireless sharing is the one big new idea — and if the public seems to respond, Apple could always add that to the iPod.

... to borrow an expression from Gordon King.

Okay, a trip down memory lane:

David Farrar, just a year and a half ago, on why the Republicans keep on winning:

The Republican Party in the US is on the verge of becoming the natural party of Government. This is not due to their strengths as much as the idiocy of the Democratic Party which makes Michael Moore their unofficial spokesperson.

You can guarantee whenever anyone uses the term "natural party of government", on any side, it's about to turn to custard.

And, of course, Adolf, strident!

During the early hours of Anzac Day, Adolf contemplated a post on Iraq. Among other things Adolf considered the unreported relative calm in the country. eg the number of bombings and killings seems to have subsided recently. It seems the end game is at hand, wherein the Iraqi army is close to taking over much responsibility for internal security while the Americans go about the jobs of cleaning out the last vestiges of Baathists and Syria/Iran sponsored trouble makers and sorting out a palpably corrupt and infiltrated police foce, thereby releasing some 50,000 or so troops to come home before November. (God, how the dopey Doncs hate to hear that.)

Hmmm, let's just call that a wet dream. Okay Adolf, did you take the bet or not? And what was in the super secret small print?

What's going on? First we're getting Ikea. Now it's Jones the Grocer ... Anybody would think we're becoming the world-class city some people think we need to become.

Okay, that's probably overselling a few new bits of fancy tat, and anyway, without a transport infrastructure of any real description, Auckland is doomed to become an archipelago of villages; well-heeled, boutique-retailed ones in the centre serving competitive car-parkers and Link users, ringed by cheaper ones anchored around megastores and motorways.

But we won't be regarded as world class if we stick a great stale doughnut on our waterfront, hugely detracting from the Tank Farm and the city's 2040 plans, whatever they count for now.

If we're going to spend a billion, I'll keep harping on for an underground. For some reason I love this site, where the subways of different cities are displayed by comparative size. Auckland has the same population as Vienna or Stockholm, both here. So what if our GDP is a third of Austria or Sweden? There's bound to be plenty of volcanic tunnels that'll save on the digging and the bills.

I don’t think anyone in New Zealand is naïve enough to believe recycling will save the world, but it’s a damn sight better than dumping everything in your wheelie bin and praying for Rapture. So, having recently bought a new battery for my Toshiba laptop, I made some enquiries about what to do with the expired lump of two-year-old garbage it has replaced. I bought my new cell online from these guys — highly recommended on price (less than half the cost of the same battery from the laptop specialist where I bought the PC) and prompt service, to boot. James Huang of the Fortech Computers & Network Team came back with this very helpful response:

“I have talk someone special re-cell battery man, the cell can be recycling and the type cell is OK for the land.”

So quickly is my mind put at rest! Mr Huang’s special battery man clearly knows what he’s talking about and we all know how safe laptop batteries are. Meanwhile, Toshiba’s local website is characteristically devoid of battery recycling information. The matter of Lithium-ion battery recycling is contentious. Do NZBC readers have any experience with the impact of this chemistry on our environment?

Okay, being a curious type I thought I'd check out exactly what method of hanging lies in store for Saddam. It looks to me like it's what's called a "short-drop" hanging where he will probably die of strangulation rather than having his neck broken. Unless he gets special treatment of course.

Chris reckons he loved Sophie's Choice, both the book and the movie, though particularly the author's spot-on description of “the hangover hots”. So he was sad to read that the author, William Styron, has died aged 81. Meanwhile, in the latest issue of The New Republic, Rick Perlstein ponders Henry Kissinger's mysterious visits with George W. Bush. What's that all about, then?

The influence the internet is having on the way we live our lives is to be the focus of study under the leadership of Web Daddy Tim Berners-Lee, says the Guardian, which also reckons two thirds of teenagers are too fat to be soldiers. Mark will doubtless have something to say about that news, but could this spell peace at last?

And, in time to coincide with three new, free Ricky Gervais podcasts in conjunction with the Guardian there's also an interview with co-writer Stephen Merchant here.

Finally, Sky subscribers shouldn't forget to watch the fabulous Yes Men movie this Thursday (9 November) at 20:30 on the erratic but worthy Rialto Channel.

Stephen sends this video of Hong Kong accountants getting down and this view on the future of the big music labels (hint: they're f*cked).

Ciao.

Have we really allowed ourselves to be bullied into this behave-or-lose-our-fireworks standoff?

I was in Barcelona a few years ago when they had a mad parade. People threw fireworks all over the show, and clearly had done for decades. Could I imagine anyone calling for a ban after this display - he he - of total abandon? Of course not.

What a bunch of babies we are. If we choose to spend our hard-earned taxes on extra shifts for the fire service and the emergency departments, so be it. And the pollies should shut the guy fawkes up.

Mind you, if you blow up a cat, or throw a cracker at some kid, I'll be braying loudest for a life sentence. Be warned.

I like the retro notion of ‘Cover Flow’, introduced in iTunes 7.0, well enough. Being able to browse albums by cover art takes me back to the 1980s when we all seemed to be crouched in front of our stereos, flicking through 12-inch vinyl, looking for the perfect record to play while our useless mates used the covers to “roll another j” and Channel 4’s The Tube played on silently in the background. But, although I hate to rain on Apple’s parade again, I think I’ve found yet another iTunes bug; in version 7.0.2, to be precise — although it doesn’t seem to be troubling these bloggers yet. This update may, as Apple claims, have fixed stability and performance issues in iTunes 7 and 7.0.1, but it’s introduced a new one: if you’re playing your iPod in ‘Shuffle’ mode on your iPod Hi-Fi and you set it to display ‘Large Album Art’ in the ‘Speakers’ setting, you’ll frequently be left with only a thin strip of colour at the top of your screen, and no cover art. The first couple of times it happened I assumed I’d forgotten to manually load a cover .jpg for the record in question — the only option for us Kiwis until they give us an iTunes Store. I shouldn’t grumble: it takes me back to my youth, when I could crouch painlessly for days in front of the stereo and I only paused from dj duty to curse my perpetually wasted flatmates about taking the cover of London Calling and not putting it back in the pile.

Oh dear, the hard men are going soft on terrorism, just like the Defeatocrats. Perle, Adelman, Rubin and Frum give the Pres, and his mate Doddery Don Rumsfeld, a huge thumbs down (Vanity Fair article, "Neo Culpa", is here). Adelman:

I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.

They make the obvious point. Whether or not Iraq is better off now than it would have been, the US would never have gone in had it foreseen the present result. The benefits don't outweigh the costs. Perle:

I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?', I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Some of us have been saying that for going on three years. While others are still looking for WMDs. Meanwhile, reality is dawning all over.

Update: David Frum writes he was taken out of context and his views haven't changed since 2004ish. Major stoush abrewing here.

Okay, we all know Al Qaeda wants the Republicans to win in the midterms so infidel troops will stay bogged down in Iraq and untold young men and a few young women will keep volunteering to be suicide bombers:

In June, U.S. intelligence also learned from an intercepted al-Qaeda communiqué that bin Laden's terrorist band wants to keep U.S. soldiers bogged down in Iraq as the best way to maintain and expand al-Qaeda's influence.

"Prolonging the war is in our interest," wrote "Atiyah," one of bin Laden's top lieutenants. Atiyah's letter and other internal al-Qaeda communications reveal that one of the group's biggest worries has been that a prompt U.S. military withdrawal might expose how fragile al-Qaeda's position is in Iraq and cause many young jihadists to lay down their guns and go home.

But, really, in publishing details of how to make an atomic bomb online relations between the GOP and Al Qaeda are getting a bit too cosy.

Find a room guys.

The US midterms are just 6 days away. Slate is keeping rolling polls on the House and the Senate. The House seems almost certain to go Democrat, if John Kerry can just keep his trap shut. The Senate is on the cusp, but somehow I can't see it going.

There was no October surprise, but people are still wondering if Karl Rove has something up his sleeve. There hasn't been the fightback from the GOP most expected.

The GOP is talking tax a lot. You've gotta reckon the Dems should be rolling this chart out every time they do.