Chicago-based poet, author, creator of the Ocelot Factory, not to mention the man who single-handedly put Russell Hoban on the internet, Dave Awl, has just re-emerged from the workwood with his new blog Ocelopotamus. NZBC is on the blogroll, in ‘Culture’ just above ‘So Gay’... Recent posts include the horrible crap from which they make some cat food; and why Sir Ian McKellan thinks he’s finally ready to tackle King Lear, but not for long. The first paragraph of Dave’s latest post also kind of hammers the final nail into the coffin of the palm oil industry troll who infiltrated Public Address’s System recently. Watch out for greasy comments by Robin Draper on your blog.

Blogger won’t play ball again, so there’s no photo of the Muse. And, while we’re on that subject, My Lovely Girlfriend is sick of the sight of her and reckons we’re alienating our female readers. Do you agree? In the meantime, I’ve lassoed me some more lollies: Mark likes this Slate piece about editors writing badly — in particular, the poor quality of their interoffice memos. And also from Mark (“Climate change is go!”) via Stephen (“Crisis? What crisis?”), the law of unintended consequences strikes yet again.

Stephen is upset because nobody tells him anything, although simultaneously cheered by the fact that Jack Marx is in fine form, but then he is a Skeptic (and apparently not too gutted by the All Saints split to note that the blog has some good comments — he recommends you scroll down for the one on Tony Robbins). SS also has biologist PZ Myers ripping into Scott Adams — yes, the Dilbert guy — for his recent “perfect storm of stupidity” on evolution. Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the anger caused by Natalie, Nicole, Mel and Shaznay calling it quits that has Stephen proposing how nice it is to see someone attacking Garrison Keillor? No, probably not.

I like this nostalgic if bumpy ride back into the DDR (Hut ab, Sylvia), possibly the first time I’ve ever linked to a New Zealand Herald piece in lollies. And this Guardian story gets my vote for correctly observing that the Black-Eyed Peas’ Humps was probably the worst song in pop history, although Agadoo by Black Lace might give it a run for its money.

A New York Times story about deluxe room service has me homesick for a long stay in a flash hotel someplace — just in case there are any cashed-up IT vendors reading… Sorry, I came over all green and woody there for a moment. The latest Amazon Wire podcast has jazz legend Keith Jarrett talking about his latest CD, The Carnegie Hall Concert. Finally for this week, a bonza hat-tip with bugles and drums blaring to Stephen Robertson for telling me about the Godlike Justin Currie’s MySpace page. Currie is sometimes frontman for one of the most underrated bands of all time, Del Amitri, and is pretty much the most talented composer, lyricist and singer who ever breathed into a microphone. Check out a few of his new songs — free to hear, with some to download, here.

We had a superb night out and the DG is so lucky no one took any snaps of his IT nerd-like dancing to The Clean at The Hustle For Russell on Monday night. But if you did, we’ll pay you good money for them.

In his sermon in the Sunday Star-Times of 18 March, the Reverend Rod Oram tells us that to deal with climate change “we have to devise vast new intellectual frameworks full of new concepts and tools. Those in turn require a lot of goodwill, effort and compromise – in the best sense of the word – by all players.”

Where does one start with this? Perhaps by asking how many senses of the word “compromise” there are. What is the worst sense? What is the, or even a, middling sense? Does the Rev Rod make sense?

Then he lists “five fundamental, strategic imperatives” to deal with the problem. First, he writes, “we need more trees. They absorb and store carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas.” Except it isn’t. Water vapour is.

I fear that if we need vast new intellectual frameworks, we shall have to look elsewhere.

Okay, Russell B's facing a difficult time. some of his mates and PeadPR have done the yards and organised a brilliant event to help him and his family. NZBC will be there and we've bought an extra ticket which we'll give to the best comment of the week.

Creep — not the song by Radiohead but that time-stretching affliction that dogs many a project is to blame. A scope-creep variant, lolly creep, has struck the NZBC so badly that we’ve lost track of internet time. The fact that the DG’s under the illusion that he has a “real job” doesn’t help. We’ve humoured him so far, of course, but the person whose desk he’s occupying is likely to come back from the water cooler soon, and then there’s going to be trubba. A risk of arga warga, even. Luckily, Mark and Stephen are a darn sight better at multi-tasking than I am.

The Broatchmeister reckons Sienna Miller has the double-whammy: she sounds like fun plus she’s OK to look at. Why do so many people experiment with drugs, Simon Hattenstone asks her, in this Guardian interview:

“’Cos they’re fun! ’Cos they’re fuckloads of fun! No, don’t write that. I always end up putting my big fat foot in it.”

Fat feet don’t worry Aussie actor Guy Pearce, who plays Warhol in Factory Girl. What a guy — just not necessarily in a good way. Meanwhile, the Goodies are back to set the record straight, just in time for us to realise from the photo that one Goodie has masqueraded for years as an IT publisher. We’d always suspected he promised advertisers “anything, anytime”, but who knew he was also versed in Ecky Thump?

A guy called James Ulmer, “proprietor of the Ulmer Scale”, a periodic rating of movie stars’ “bankability”, is making excuses for the fact that the few movies starring black actors don’t do well at the box office. He’s created his own myth that it’s the international market that’s racist. The real problem, says Mark, is that coloured actors are in shit films, but America thinks everyone is like them, only worse.

Michael Moore has done a lot of good, but boy does he like control. And finally from Mark, via Arts & Letters Daily, Neil Gabler in the LA Times on why the intrinsic value of movies and most entertainment has diminished. Something to do with internet avatars, apparently.

Stephen has been finding out from The Friday Thing why, based on the 100 books they can’t live without, Britain’s bookworms are a miserable, bitter bunch. From Jane Eyre to The Lovely Bones and Winnie the Pooh, it makes for cheerless reading. I blame it on a British childhood in the last resort (close to where this photo was taken, in fact), so at least I have an excuse for being miserable and bitter.

You can vote here to bring back Vogels unsliced bread. And Stephen points us in the direction of Mark’s analysis of foodie mags (if we all linked to each other would that be unsafe blogging?). Enemies of Wikipedia have set up Conservapedia to get rid of British spellings and “anti-American ideas”, such as evolution and a perceived failure to give credit for the Renaissance to Christianity.

Me? I just have the latest “craze” of celebrity women going commando because they want to, not because they have to and, via Arts & Letters, why if you’re ever in Frankfurt (or, for that matter, Hamburg) you should go see a performance of Shakespeare in German.

Also, tschüss dann.

You think global warming or climate change or whatever it’s called this week is frightening – according to PopBitch, which is good enough for me, evolution continues:

Chimpanzees have for the first time been observed making spears out of pieces of wood in order to hunt prey. They'll be on X Factor before long.

The Guardian admits to being “shamefully clueless” about New Zealand literature and wants us to tell it who our best writers are. So far nominations include Frame, Grace, Hulme, Crump, Sargeson, O’Sullivan, Gee, Baxter – all the usual suspects plus the Finn brothers.

Go on – add your faves.

Hat tip: James Macky

There are many advantages to being an Auckland wanker.

Tonight’s competitive advantage was enjoying the first Bluff oysters of the season before anyone else in the country – yes, even anyone in the South Island, as these were helicoptered in off the oyster boats and flown straight up to Sylvia Park.

And by golly they were good – on Vogels bread, of course. Heaven.

What can I say? Oh yeah: “Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.”