Tonight you can have your cake and eat it too.

Long­time gui­tar­ist and co-con­spir­at­or of Greg John­son’s, Ted Brown is play­ing a free gig at Bodega. Sing­er-song­writer Brown has been based in Los Angeles over the past few years, after mak­ing the big move there with Greg John­son (U.S. site) in 2002. After 5 years build­ing a fol­low­ing they now tour reg­u­larly across Amer­ica. And did I men­tion that the gig is free? That’s bet­ter than bad.

Across town at the Adelaide, the post-rock­ing Dukes of Leis­ure are play­ing with rock-posters Mar­inev­ille. They’ll be start­ing at a sens­ible time, provid­ing as much oppor­tun­ity as pos­sible for drink­ing plenty of that cheap cheap Adelaide booze. Door $5 for that show.

Well to start
– it’s prutty
– i can nev­er res­ist the whit chocol­ate and rasp­berry muffins at clarks at the cent­ral branch.
– the karori branch has a fully integ­rated cafe so one can have a cof­fee in the lib­rary
– most import­antly they keep on doing new and cool things.

My latest lib­rary dis­cov­ery is down­load­ing audio books, and not at the lib­rary but from the com­fort of my own com­puter
It looks like a recent thing, and to access this all a Wel­ling­to­ni­an needs is their lib­rary card

so for now their down­load­able media sec­tion is now tak­ing pride of place in my tool­bar.

Plus you can win a DVD rent­al by check out their new visu­al cata­logue
which adds one more thing to my list
i also love the lib­rary because they use logic­al names for new things.

I received unso­lic­ted spam (yes, it was an elec­tron­ic let­ter by email) this after­noon:

Hello Joanan,

I’m John McGrath and I am stand­ing for May­or. It’s time to put the Mojo back into the May­or­alty.

If you love Wel­ling­ton as much as I do, please take a look at my web­site and let me know what I can do to make Wel­ling­ton a bet­ter place for you.

www.johnmcgrath4mayor.co.nz

Cheers,

John McGrath

Why am I repub­lish­ing his spam after he spelt my name incor­rectly? Why, so that I can tell you, my dear read­er, about how you can go about win­ning a bottle of wine. Just head to his blog, note that on the 23rd he declared

“Oh and for all those Gramma Nazis out there we are more than happy to stand cor­rec­ted. My Cam­paign man­ager is put­ting up a Bottle of Te Kair­anga Reserve Pinot Noir 2002 for the per­son who finds the most errors in the Blog. We aren’t per­fect but we do have a sense of humour!”

… and get count­ing! I found 54, and that did­n’t include any issues with the actu­al con­tent I might have had (like “Kerry has done a good job”).

Foot­note: yes, the title of this post is a Nazi joke.

Lyr­ics? Oui! Après l’in­ter­rup­tion!

Dis­claim­er: that’s a Pea­nuts ref­er­ence, rather than a com­ment on the qual­ity of can­did­ates. Ahem.

Nom­in­a­tions for loc­al body elec­tions closed last week, and the can­did­ates are all lis­ted on the WCC web­site (res­id­ents of oth­er Wel­ling­ton Ter­rit­ori­al Author­it­ies should find them on their respect­ive coun­cil sites). While it can be argued that the choice of May­or is less import­ant than the com­pos­i­tion of the coun­cil as a whole, it’s cer­tainly the role that gen­er­ates the most heat. So, here’s a full list of the may­or­al can­did­ates, fol­lowed by a call to action:

• Ray Ahipene-Mer­cer
• Paul Bailey
• Carl Gif­ford
• Rob Goulden
• Nick Kelly
• John McGrath
• Bry­an Pepper­ell
• Kerry Pren­der­gast
• Helene Ritch­ie
• Jack Ruben
• Nick Wang

Oth­er than sit­ting coun­cil­lors and John McGrath, I don’t know much about the can­did­ates. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of com­ments about Kerry P on the Wel­ling­tonista, and I’ve men­tioned McGrath in passing on Wel­lUrb­an, with the odd ref­er­ence to Jack Ruben as well. But here’s your chance to com­ment sagely, spec­u­late wildly or just gen­er­ally vent spleen. Here’s a starter for ten: if you don’t like the incum­bent may­or, who can and should get the num­bers to unseat her?