Well, I'm back in the north after a couple of weeks road-tripping around the country with a mate from Australia. And very fine it was too.

Highlights include: the road between Murupara and Waikeremoana (terrorist country for sure - one of those "100: it's not a target" signs was all shot up); Wellington bars (Mighty Mighty really is); Dansey's Pass (just do it - in summer only); most of the food and wine (best of the best were Relishes cafe in Wanaka and Barcelona in Christchurch); seals; and fly fishing on my favourite river.

Lowlights? Sorry Blenheim.

A few days on the Hokianga and it's back to work. Bugger.

There's more good news for the DG; that is, those who overtipple. A new drug may not just stop liver damage but reverse some of the collateral of those late nights. Any suggestion this may encourage binge drinking in the knowledge you can pop a pill later should be discounted.

But bad news for readers: you may be in rare company in the very near future. As Proust said, reading is "that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude".

There’s no reason to think that reading and writing are about to become extinct, but some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special “reading class,” much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy, in the second half of the nineteenth century. They warn that it probably won’t regain the prestige of exclusivity; it may just become “an increasingly arcane hobby.” Such a shift would change the texture of society.

Yes. Libraries would become home only to students, smelly hobos and creepy types.

As Alien vs Predator: Requiem nears our screens, I know what you've been asking yourself.

What happened to Newt from Aliens ("They come mostly at night. Mostly."), Vasquez ("Are you ever mistaken for a man? No, you?"), and Corporate Ferro ("Spunkmeyer!? Arghhhh")?

Newt, who is now 31, was the daughter of a US air force officer. She is a school teacher. She has never acted again.

Ferro, who wore the least cool aviator glasses in history, has two teenagers and a musical career reaching London.

Vasquez, who has the un-Hispanic name of Jenette Goldstein, has a website. We liked her biceps.

AVP II looks the go.

Here. Warning: contains vileness from Norman Mailer.

Edwin + Matilda by Laurence Fearnley.

Michael Cullen to John Key, 5 December: “Rich prick!”

Michael Cullen’s salary as Deputy Prime Minister: $264,500

Gay for Johnny Depp.

Hooray! Three cheers, and then some more. Poneke reports that the NZ League of Rights, a vilely racist far-right group that was most active here in the 70s and 80s, has at last died and gone to hell. He gives a good history of who they were and what they did here.

With the return of Led Zeppelin for a concert in London yesterday, it’s time to look again at what is perhaps, just perhaps, the best cover version of any song ever.

A guest post from Sarah Fraser:

Not only are they up for a Grammy, but Flight of the Conchords are the cause of much amusement on a new US-based knitting forum still in its beta phase but with tens of thousands of posters already [yes, really - I signed up to join in September and was no. 34,324 in line]. There’s a Flight of the Conchords discussion group with just the bare 16 different threads, one of the best which is on business socks and asks posters for a pattern. Ideas suggested so far include linked Mars & Venus symbols, “9am - 5pm” woven in and socks with sideburns. The thread header also demands that they be “sixy” so that’s definitely not a NZ fan. Posters talk of holding FOTC viewing parties for when the DVD was released last month and quote lines back and forth at each other. Mel is not alone.

Nice to see someone slaughter a sacred cow with calm precision and lots of evidence.

The Atlantic critic BR Myers doesn't find much to like in Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

Judging from his critique, it's probably not worth the fulsome blurbs of people such as Johnathan Franzen - whom I do respect.

There is no point in dwelling on the story line, because even some of the book’s admirers have conceded its sluggishness and overlength—albeit with some humbug about how flaws make a good novel more likable, perfection being such a turnoff, etc. As for the action, it never feels authentic. Soldiers do not laugh in unison or call out frantically for M&Ms during a sudden and intense firefight, nor would a soldier crawling through bush find the attendant lacerations “exhilarating.” Not once does the reader feel fear or tension.

I've got two of Johnson's, including the much acclaimed (!) Jesus' Son, but they were Amazon purchases ages ago that I have not managed to read yet. I'll give them a go. Just as soon as I get them out of storage. Should I bother?

The DG is missing. He was last seen in the Rotorua region in pursuit of a hot pool / swilling from a spittoon near Napier / approaching Wellington / in Christchurch / in Dunedin.

He is believed to be in the company of a man who claims to be Jewish Australian, citing his frizzy hair, sarcastic manner and ability to swear in Hebrew Strine. This man may speak with an Australian a Jewish a foreign accent.

If you see these men, do not approach them. Particularly if Unless you are slim, attractive females.

The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has died, aged 79. There is a good survey of his career here in the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph’s obituary here, while Tyler Cowen weighs in here with interesting comments on the work (how many other academic economists could write sensibly about contemporary music?). He singles out Mantra for two pianos and electronics, Stimmung (there’s a terrific new recording by Paul Hillier and the Theatre of Voices) and Gesang der Jünglinge, to which I would add the choral Invisible Choirs, the orchestral pieces Gruppen and Inori, the early chamber works Kreuzspiel, Zeitmasse and Kontra-punkte and the purely electronic Oktophonie from 1991, which depicts an inter-galactic aerial battle and, played suitably loud, is utterly terrifying.

I don’t agree with Cowen’s dismissal of Tierkreis for music boxes, which is the one Stockhausen CD that doesn’t make my wife flee from the room; and he is a bit harsh on the operas too. Yes, Stockhausen was, like his teacher Olivier Messiaen, never afraid of boring his listeners, but there are wonderful instrumental passages among the longueurs, two of which are collected in different arrangements on a marvellous CD by his trumpeter son Markus, and the electronic music can be ravishing, as in the opening water music of Montag.

But there’s no argument that the Helikopter Quartet of 1996 must be the most barking mad music ever recorded. This takes a perfectly harmless string quartet, the Arditti, puts each player into a separate chopper, and then they fly for half an hour scraping away at some pretty thin music listening to each other through headphones. We hear them over the thud-thud-thud of the rotors. And the helicopters are the best bit.

None of this music, needless to say, is on iTunes (apart from the Markus Stockhausen album, and also his Michaels Reise, a sort of trumpet concerto spinoff from the opera Donnerstag), but it’s all available by mail order here. The CDs aren't cheap but the packaging is lavish. You can steal chunks of them via BitTorrent or similar, obviously, but apart from the morality of it Stockhausen was fanatical about sound quality - and all the CDs are sonically spectacular.

Further to my post about the historic bed housed in the Sargeson Centre from 1987 until 2002, Graeme Lay, secretary of the Sargeson Trust, advises that it will be auctioned by my old law professor Bernard Brown at the annual general meeting of the Auckland branch of the NZ Society of Authors this Friday evening, from 5pm, in the Common Room of the English Department of the University of Auckland:

You will all be aware that no other bed in New Zealand’s history has been occupied by so many distinguished writers, including Janet Frame, and that it therefore carries the DNA of dozens of renowned poets, novelists, short story writers and playwrights, making it a priceless literary artefact. A photograph of the bed is attached here, under the interested gaze of Frank Sargeson. The writer coyly occupying the bed at the time that the photograph was taken wishes to remain unidentified, but it was a former holder of the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship. In the photograph the bed is covered with the crazy quilt sewn by Janet Frame when she lived at Sargeson’s house at 14 Esmonde Road, Takapuna, in 1955-6. The quilt, however, is not for sale, as it is considered by historians to be beyond price. Bernard Brown advises that email bids for the bed can be made prior to Friday’s auction. His email address is here.

I slept in the bed myself for a month, and recommend it highly. I had a very nice time there.