1. A steampunk mobile phone (preferably one that emits a puff of steam, like a Mississippi paddleboat, every time it rings);
2. Somewhere, Over The Rainbow (the version off ‘Sapphire’) by John Martyn on the NZ iTunes Store;
3. The Living Channel to stop inserting apostrophes in the plural of ‘weeknight’;
4. Dog Breath, In The Year of the Plague from ‘Uncle Meat’ by Frank Zappa on my iPod;
5. To be regular and orderly in my life so I can be violent and original in my work, like Gustave Flaubert;
6. My dinner;
7. To write something as good as Pilgermann by Russell Hoban, preferably before the end of the day.

The Independent must be having a competition to see who can cram the most metaphors into the smallest space. Here is Nick Smith’s entry (not online) in Wednesday’s issue:

Where others raised the spectre of a hard landing, she has consistently argued there is a lot more petrol in the Kiwi economic tank. And the Citibank bull was right. It is with no small measure of irony that Beacher noted the economic worm has now turned, just as the Reserve Bank further cranked its OCR handle to dampen domestic demand.

Having gone to the trouble of transcribing the following for The Kraken, I feel I ought to get my money’s worth… Will Self talking to John Mullan, professor of English at University College London, on Guardian Books, in part about Russell Hoban’s cult classic Riddley Walker. The conversation was recorded at a 14 June discussion in London. The podcast is here. And, any podcast refuseniks will find a transcript of the Hoban parts of the conversation (the entire podcast lasts 48 minutes) here.

This just in from friend of NZBC, Karl Hyde (left): Underworld was supposed to be appearing at the Heineken Ejekt Festival 2007 in Athens, Greece last Saturday (16 May). But Karl, along with Rick Smith (right), tour DJ Darren Price and crew were caught up in trouble reportedly caused by “anarchists” at festival. Underworld was scheduled to close a show that also included Madness and the Beastie Boys, when a group of around 30 masked individuals, armed with CS-gas, iron bars and baseball bats stormed the stadium at around 23:20 while the Beastie Boys were performing. As cars were burned and property damaged, the stadium was evacuated. Underworld’s Rick was one of the injured. He was hospitalised for a time in Athens, but subsequently returned to the UK for further treatment. Several other people including security guards were seriously hurt. Karl tells us Rick is on now the mend, “as you would expect from the Welsh”. More news on upcoming tour dates and the fifth studio album, Oblivion With Bells, here.

I've belatedly embraced podcasting over the last few weeks, and one I listen to is US National Public Radio's Fresh Air. And just the other night it featured our own Conchords chatting and performing three songs from their new US TV show.

As you’ve probably read, the ASB breached the Fair Trading Act 1986 by not adequately disclosing currency conversion fees on overseas credit and debit card transactions before March 2005. If you’re an ASB customer, this would affect everything you bought on overseas trips or from offshore websites during that period. Dig out a credit card statement and look for “offshore service margins”. I emailed ASB yesterday, asking for clarification about how its compensation would be paid. Warren Knott of the ASB E-team replied (worryingly) that he personally would have $0.41 cents refunded to his card. This morning, I checked my account online and found $30.37 had been credited. A letter later arrived but provided the above amount only as “total compensation”:

“Each cardholder who made foreign currency transactions between 1 March 2002 and 31 March 2005 is entitled to receive a pro rata portion of this compensation based on the amount of fees paid by them on these transactions.”

I’d say we’re entitled to a bit more than that. Since ASB’s “offshore service margins” average $1 per transaction, how has this proportional payment been allocated? Have you kept your 2002 credit card statements? You can’t get statements older than 13 months off ASB’s website. So, it owes each of its customers details about the affected transactions in this period, not a letter with an apologetic ‘lump sum’ amount. Worse still, the ASB website says, if you haven’t received a letter by 29 June, it’s your obligation to lodge a claim before 19 October or you won’t get any compensation. Anything unclaimed after that time will be paid to a consumer-related charity nominated by the Commerce Commission.

Making sure you get your share: the cost of an email to your personal banker. A line-by-line breakdown of “offshore service margins” without having to hunt for five-year-old Visa statements: priceless.

Update: On 21 June I rang the ASB call centre again. They have now promised to send me a letter with a breakdown of each overseas transaction in the period and the service margins that apply to each. I’ll keep you posted.

Eww. Vileness on Stuff:

Judy Bailey is changing her official title to “Grandmother of the Nation”. The former Mother of the Nation introduces the country to her new grandson, Harry, in Woman’s Weekly, and she’s stoked she doesn’t have to look after his dirty nappies. “It’s a different sort of love when you’re a grandparent,” she says. “You don’t have all the day-to-day grind.” Guys, let the ‘GILF’ debate begin.

As judged by The Times are here.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution (which is one of them).

There is now a Scots version of Wikipedia, written in Scottish. Here’s an example:

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, KG, ONZ, KBE is a New Zealander, a muntaineer an an splorer, best kent for the first successfu clim o Munt Everest. He raxed the 29,035-fit (8850 m) tap on Template:Event wi Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa. Aifter comin doun, legend haes it the chiel said he an Tenzing haed 'knocked the bastard off', a phrase that haes fund its wey intil colloquial New Zealand English. Sir Edmund is the ae leivin New Zealander ti kythe on a banknote.

This airticle's a stub. Ye can gie Wikipædia a haund bi eikin til it.

LinkedIn is a funny old business. I receive periodic bursts of email from people asking me to connect with their “professional network”. This past week alone I’ve had five or six. It rarely occurs to me, though, to go and browse the website. Although, needless to say, I weakened and have had a LinkedIn profile for a couple of years. It may be true that you get out of things what you put back in, but when I clicked on “10 people you should connect with now”, LinkedIn tried to install software and connect with my Outlook inbox. Their emails claim around 13 people join every minute — around my total network of LinkedIn connections — but I struggle to see any advantage to being connected with them. If I want contact I send them an email. As far as I can tell, no work or even correspondence has eventuated from my being part of it and the only purpose seems to be to swell someone else’s buddy network. I’m hardly surprised to find plenty of bloggers out there agreeing with me, but if any NZBC readers are benefiting from this service I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment, or the next email you get may be one from me begging to be disconnected from your network.

I've just been reading The Economist's Technology supplement (June 9th issue) and they have quite an extensive article on recycling, finding that it can produce real environmental benefits across a range of different types of materials.

You may think she exaggerates for comic effect, but she doesn’t. I was present at one of the disgraceful occasions she describes and can verify that this is an accurate account of a fuck in a church.

In the BBC's last Word of Mouth language programme for the year, listeners offered proverbs for the 21st century. The compiler's top ten:

“Eat, drink and be morbidly obese.” (Carol Faulkner)
“A little bit of what you fancy does you in.” (Carol Faulkner)
“All roads lead to Tesco” (Katy Carrington)
"Lightning never strikes Piers Morgan." (Pat Harkin)
"A cut lawn always has one dandelion." (Geoff Lane)
"It is unlucky to be superstitious." (Robin Ekblom)
"Don't count your chickens until they are vaccinated." (Alec Gallagher)
"If at first you don’t succeed, lower your success criteria." (Peter Anderton)
"If at first you don't succeed, press zero to speak to a human operator." (Brian)
"There are twenty more fish in the sea." (Tom Watson)

Stephen reckons the Brits are better than us at humour and music, which is about right, though they have got a few more people. Any suggestions to defend our honour?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Americans are beginning to outsource small private jobs that don’t require face-to-face meetings – landscape design, maths tutoring, book illustration and so on. For example:

Actress Michele Greene, known for her role as Abby on LA Law, has found a way to outsource one of Hollywood’s most entrenched jobs: the personal assistant. She contracted India-based concierge service GetFriday last year. Ms Greene says she pays $150 a month for about 20 hours of service. That’s about $2 less per hour than her LA assistants charged.
Ms Greene says her offshore assistant has been a big help while she works on her second young-adult novel and a country-folk CD in addition to acting projects. Along with paying her bills and booking her flights, her assistant has given her tips on Bollywood movies and Indian food. His recipe for garbanzo beans with eggplant and peppers has become one of her signature dishes. It’s a huge improvement over the unemployed actors who typically fill these jobs in Hollywood, she says: “They’d screw up everything you’d ask them to do.”

US freelancers aren’t happy about it.

We know from The Hollow Men and other books that MPs' supposedly ad-lib remarks are often tightly scripted.

So it was with a skerrick of cynicism that I read that John Key, when asked if Parliament should change the prayer that had been read at the start of each session for 150 years, said that it "is steeped in tradition, has been there since Adam was a cowboy and there's no point in changing it".

He's taking a firm viewpoint, one which sides with the forces of "why change for the sake of it" common sense. Mentioning Adam lightheartedly acknowledges the country's default religious origins, and adding the "cowboy" bit rather than just "boy" reinforces that he's not po-faced or exclusionary when it comes to spirituality, his or the nation's. It suggests he might even have a sense of humour. We like our pollies respectful, but not too respectful. Nice.

Since atheism is probably the fastest growing "belief" in the country, and the prayer is literally lip service for most MPs, be nicer if they actually stuck to the principle of the "laying aside" bit of it (and true religion, anyone?). The prayer apparently goes like this, says the Royal New Zealand Herald:

Almighty God, humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It was a weird and unusually aggressive night around town last night after the rugby came out.

We went to watch the game at the Union Steamship Company, down on Britomart, and that was fine, though the game was below average. Later at the Coco Club, listening to some pretty good young jazz musos this older lady decided me and my mates were "Ghastly!".

She was pissed, but that doesn't mean she was wrong ...

We were quietly minding our own when she laid into us, mainly my mate Dave who was closest and who responded in kind.

Later still we ran into a real rugby boof-head. I said I thought the French defended quite well and I thought he was going to kill me. After abusing a nearby woman, he said they were a bunch of hopeless girls, or something generous like that, and they had no chance in the World Cup.

I reminded him they knocked us out of the Cup a few years back and again he glared as if he wanted to rip me apart.

Lucky I didn't mention our theory about the throat-cutting movement in the haka: that it represents the All Blacks as World Cup chokers.

Maybe we need anti-social behaviour orders after all - to control bitter, middle-aged rugby fans.

Peter Urlich is the new Rolf Harris. The proof is right here.