Hell's bells Damian, trust the wedding is not until my return, although I do urge more haste than P and my 17-year courtship.

Congrats buddy, and most especially to Rebecca.

Enjoy the snorkel!

Mmmm...well Mr. Christie I think I had a ICR moment the last time we caught up, but I can't really blame it on the drink. Perhaps some of us are always at war with Mr. Jekyll so its part of our deep structure rather than occasional surface flooding that is our underlying malaise.

That said, bravo bro although perhaps you might consider having one of those cold beers and nice white wines next time I'm up your way. If you put them both in the same glass so much the better...

Hey bro, very sorry to hear. Tonka would sure have loved all the kai you used to bring home when you were down on the Bay.

Must have fancied you, too, coz Tonka's blackmail potential would have been quite the temptation me thinks.

Take care man

It's not often that one can at least make the claim that an entire city's readership is better informed about politics by NOT reading about it in their daily newspaper. This sorry state of affairs has taken some doing by the Herald, its owners, editor, and its senior political staff, led by the intrepid duo Audreyward and Franstein.

Without condoning nor approving of Labour's conduct around its 2005 pledge card, as well as its frequent mishaps since, I've always found it ironic that all of the examples of Labour's so-called 'Attack on Democracy' have been so blindingly overt that even the pedants have been able to keep up and hold them to account.

Labour insists on destroying our democracy in a very transparent way.

Meanwhile, at the Herald...

I was wondering the other day whether people still feinted at Obama 'rallies.'

Was it now such a mundane occurrence that it was no longer thought newsworthy by the national press corp? Or, had this rarest of rare political phenomena finally pettered out, washing up on the shore of Obama's slow transformation back to man and politician?

Imagine my surprise then when I got an email out of the blue - from someone I had previously viewed as the very embodiment of the rational fact - in which a religious conversion to Obamamania was fortrightly declared. Even more intriguing was the thought offered that a change in sexual orientation for Obama was not out of the question.

So, you're not alone Keith, and in the spirit of your post let me leave you with a lovely thought:

E paru I te tinana, e ma I te wai,
E paru I te aroha, Ka mau tonu e.

(If you're touched with mud, you can wash it off,
If you're touched with aroha, it lasts always.)

First time post.

Was that Monday? Oh man. Thanks, too, for leaving the sombreness behind at Hunter S.

I need, however, to correct one minor point grasshopper.

Thompson wrote 'What Lured Hemingway To Ketchum? in 1964. Hunter strongly identified with Hemingway from the very beginning, even down to re-writing Hemingway's prose - just to get the feel of it - while still a teen. My 'Stella" point was, therefore, that it was no surprise to friends such Ralph Steadman and Jann Wenner that Hunter chose a similar end-game, and for similar reasons.

In my view Hunter's absolute peak was writing about Nixon - I still quote Hunter extensively in my U.S. politics course - and his long decline, as the Zeitgeist got further and further from his grasp, must have been been excruciating.

But, as Hunter would himself say, "And selah to all of that."

Can I just add that it's good to have you back and I don't believe you are imprudent to suggest your grasp of the Zeitgeist is superior to Grannies...so is my labrador's.

jon j.