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?