Con­sider, hypo­thet­ic­ally, that one had dropped one’s laptop, break­ing the back­light to the LCD screen but leav­ing the screen itself intact. Con­sider also that the author­ised repair com­pany for the laptop man­u­fac­turer (name omit­ted to pro­tect the thiev­ing mono­pol­ist­ic b*st*rds inno­cent) said that the whole screen has to be replaced at a cost of nearly $500, when it seems that it is the­or­et­ic­ally quite pos­sible to replace just the lamp, a com­pon­ent that is worth in the region of $20.

Now sup­pose, hypo­thet­ic­ally of course, that the own­er of said laptop is too stingy envir­on­ment­ally respons­ible to throw away a per­fectly good LCD screen. Where in Wel­ling­ton might that the­or­et­ic­al own­er find a reli­able, reas­on­ably-priced inde­pend­ent laptop repairer?

Appar­ently there’s a dire short­age of pink Hi-Glo tag­ger vests in parts of the East­ern Sub­urbs, and a pub­lic appeal has been launched.

Stuff: The mes­sage is a reac­tion to Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil-fun­ded pink vests that school-aged tag­gers are being made to wear as pun­ish­ment when clean­ing up their handi­work.

Read more on Drinks After Work…

Want new threads but can­’t afford them in these straitened times? Got some old clothes that you want to see go to a good home? Wor­ried about the envir­on­ment­al obscen­ity of our throw-away fash­ion cul­ture? Then The Big Shwop is for you.

The concept of “swish­ing”, clothes-swap­ping parties for eco-con­scious fash­ionis­tas, has been around for a while. Our lovely lovely lovely friends at Pretty Pretty Pretty also had a “dud-swap” for cos­met­ic products at their big party. But The Big Shwop takes it to a more pub­lic level, with their first Shwop hap­pen­ing at the South­ern Cross on Sat­urday August the 2nd. For more details on how it works, see their web site.

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again, but there are few things as fun as going to the wrest­ling. Just check out the audio of the video below if you don’t believe me.

Yes, that’s the almighty Laz­arus Volt kick­ing the Con­dor’s ass quite soundly, and he’ll be doing the same thing to the crotchety old Brute this Fri­day July 24 at After­blaster and you should be there to see it. Details are on the Kiwi Pro Wrest­ling site, but what you need to know is that doors open at 7.30pm and tick­ets are $15 pre­s­ales, or $20 on the door.

Fur Patrol are a band with an agenda.

A hid­den agenda.

Actu­ally it’s not so hid­den. They want to teach the world to sing, in fur­fect har­mony…

*Cough*

I’m all punned out. So I’ll cut to the chase…

Fur Patrol are back! And they’re in pog form. And they also have a new album com­ing out.

Loc­al Kid, due out in Septem­ber, is their third full length album, and their first since Steve Wells left the band.

To cel­eb­rate their new single ‘Hid­den Agenda’, our favour­ite boys and girl are tour­ing NZ, most import­antly play­ing Bar Bodega in Wel­ling­ton on 22 August.

Be there or hate kit­tens.

If you’re not lucky enough to be in Wel­ling­ton but wanna catch a gig, check out the oth­er dates here.

And if you simply can­not wait that long, here is their last single, ‘Great Leap For­ward’ after the jump.

It’s one thing to look for food in the gov­ern­ment quarter, but what a politico bar­fly wants to know is “Where can I get a decent Cham­pagne with­in crawl­ing dis­tance of Par­lia­ment?”. As DPF and Cac­tus Kate found out (stand­ard Kiwib­log warn­ing: com­ments con­tain copi­ous amounts of poo), there is noth­ing worth­while at the Back Bench­er (Kate evid­ently shares my lack of excite­ment for Mumm).

Apart from Maria Pia’s and Le Canard (which pre­sum­ably have fine selec­tions, but don’t count as bars), there really is not much prop­er bub­bly around in Thorndon. Fol­low­ing the Wel­ling­tonista tra­di­tion of pre­fer­ring use­ful inform­a­tion to vin­dict­ive invect­ive, after the jump I have provided a list, in approx­im­ate order of dis­tance from the Back Bench­er, of Cham­pagne selec­tions at nearby bars and pubs.

The mag­ni­fi­cent Petone Winter Car­ni­val has been post­poned until tomor­row night, which is lucky, since I for­got to men­tion it is on until today. It really is worth a vis­it, and great for kids. Unlike the Guy Fawkes dis­play, the fire­works kick off at a very civ­il­ised hour, 7.30pm. Pri­or to that there are heaps of activ­it­ies along the Esplanade to keep every­one in the fam­ily enter­tained. For those with a per­verse desire to feel extremely uncom­fort­able, there is a polar plunge at 2.30pm, it is for a good cause (Wes­ley Com­munity Action), so if this floats your boat, get nekkid! Actu­ally, nekkid isn’t really part of the pro­gramme, but I’m all for ini­ti­at­ing fun.

And while you’re out here, grab a bite to eat. There are masses of excel­lent estab­lish­ments, my favour­ite at the moment is the mag­ni­fi­cent Gusto, and if you go, I recom­mend the steak. Mmmm steak.

Check out the Party of the Uni­verse the Mighty is put­ting on for Wel­ling­ton NEXT WEEK!!!!!

(click image to see lar­ger ver­sion of the poster)

For those of you who don’t know CW Stone­k­ing – you should. He’s nev­er played NZ before and he’s some­thing. Check him out on myspace.

And for the oth­er nights, the finest in NZ bands from around the coun­try cov­er­ing a pretty diverse range of genres. There’s the Amer­ic­ana night kick­ing things off, extreme neon for the Heavy Pet­ting elec­tro night, fol­lowed by a total mash up of rocka­billy and elec­tron­ics from Bang Bang Eche, and then a Wild Trash extra­vag­anza of Wel­ling­ton’s own to top things off.

There’ll be pole dan­cers, limbo com­pet­i­tions, a vodka slide and so much more. Chose your night. Bring your friends and come and party at the Castle that Cares!