It's utterly uncanny how much Liam Finn looks like his father in the latest Betchadupa video, 'Move Over'. He looks at the camera the same, intensely beetle-browed way. He sings the same way, so you do a double take like you did when you first heard 'Too Late For Goodbyes' in 1983. He strums the guitar the same way. He bops around the same way. It's like young Neil all over again, but better dressed and with a kickass drummer. And 'Move Over' is even like a Neil song - although more like a Neil song before he became old and tasteful, which is all to the good. Like 'Give it a Whirl' or something. I have high hopes for young Liam, let me tell you.

Here is the dorkiest thing in the world: spinning around jazzily to call someone across the room a pussy for not dancing, and dislocating your knee in the process. Ow. Yes, I am a moron. But hey, it's not really a Circulation Xmas party unless someone gets seriously injured. Or, in Rachael's case, goes to A&E (poor poppet! She wasn't even drunk!). And it was worth it to taunt non-dancing Adam. Photos will follow...

This is the Worst Song Ever. Seriously. Download it, you will not be sorry.

Official Announcement: Enetation is BUNG. Why are the comments hiding from me? Why?

You're a Mod. You dig expensive things, like suits
and speed. You have a fine appreciation for the
Kinks and know that Motown started it all, and
you have fabulous style. Hey, nice hair.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
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You can't handle the Christians! They have their fingers in every pie! Even the 'disturbing prosletysing puppets' market lies before them, another easy conquest!

It's amazing what you'll find in Internet Explorer history on a front desk computer. Like this site about marrying your pet, for example.

I just can't seem to get organised. I need to do several things, including: send a VERY late birthday present and a Xmas gift to one Ms Sprecher; send Ms McKimmey something I found for her a few weeks back and never got to the post office with; send Dr Whaley something cheesy and wondrous from NZ, along with the Rain soundtrack (I have yet to post a picture of the cactus lamp she sent me, but it is the bombay); make my house look slightly less like a slagheap of blankets and magazines (quick! name the Costello song!); prepare our miniscule spare room for my lovely guests; organise presents for husband, mother, famille in general; organise the rest of the accommodation and activities for the South Island trip; submit our resource consent to the council; find an outfit for Xmas gatherings; organise to actually see my friends at some point.... GAH. This is all too much.

Vanilla vodka: good.
Being at a fun cocktail party with many dips and breads and golden sangria and manhattans: good.
Hearing the Duran Duran/Robbie Williams concert for free across the road: good.
Seeing the free fireworks show which followed 'Angels': bueno.

Generally, a successful evening. (Note: Duran cover 'White Lines' in concert. Hee.)

Sonnet has inspired me. I mean, I have no actual talent or anything. But I like photos. And sometimes you can't do anything but say 'look at that!'



The pohutukawas are out again. The tiny one in our garden, which you see above, is doing its best to inspire Kiwi Xmas cheer. I thought maybe my second December at home would make me a little more blase about them, but nope. There's a lot of idiotically beatific smiling and pointing from me this year too.

Brent, upon seeing the cowgirl-desert-themed video for Sheryl Crow's totally unnecessary recent cover of 'The First Cut is the Deepest': 'No! No! Don't do the Bon Jovi Old West Squat!'

Because I was a little worried about whether or not my friend James is alive, I had a look for his company's website. While there, I noted that Oprah Winfrey may yet make him a rich man by her recent promotion of a very schmaltzy CD compilation. Yay James!

If he's alive, that is. Car 54, where are you?

I can't believe I cried at the news footage of the Lord of the Rings premiere in Wellington. I can't believe I cried at the news footage of the Lord of the Rings premiere in Wellington. No, seriously...

It occurs to me that I might be ovulating. :)

But it really was so nice. 100,000 people in the streets, and a red carpet half a kilometre long, and Sir Ian McKellen toasting 'the men of Wellington', and Richard Taylor saying that this was 'way better' than winning two Oscars because it was 'at home', and Elijah Wood giving Prime Minister Helen Clark a big bear hug, and Viggo Mortensen 'kiaora'ing and hongi-ing all over the show, and all the stars wearing bone carvings and greenstone and Orlando Bloom wearing an 'I Heart NZ' tshirt... and although you could read it all as pandering shallow cheese (I don't, I think they really all did love it here), and although Sean Astin may have been slightly over the top in calling New Zealand 'a beacon of light and hope in a time of darkness', it was sweet of him to say. And I love Peter Jackson. Love love *love* him. Tom Scott is right. We should reinstate knighthoods, give him one, and then get rid of them again.

I can't believe I cried at the end of Shallow Hal. I can't believe I cried at the end of Shallow Hal. No, seriously, I can't believe I cried at the end of Shallow Hal. What the fuck is wrong with me? (But see, all faults aside, it was so *sweet*. The fat girl got to be happy. Fat girls *never* get to be happy in movies. Not without a makeover or something. But she really did. She was a real person, who was really funny, and nice, and she didn't have stomach-stapling surgery, and she fell in love with someone and they loved her back, and they lived happily ever after in the Peace Corps. Yay. Rosemary can join Sookie, the gorgeous and adorable chef character in Gilmore Girls, on the Very Short List of Big Girls Who Get To Be Happy in Popular Culture.)

I think Brent and I, as The Squatleys, have a vested interest in the porky folks being happy on the screen. ;)

It all comes down to numbers. Yesterday I had to go around all four of my mother's neighbours and ask their permission to build a house bigger than 70 square metres on her back section. 93 square metres, to be exact. And if she had more than 900 square metres of land, instead of 842 square metres, I wouldn't have had to ask them at all. Councils are very weird things.

It was quite scary, anyway. But I did it. And three out of the four were really nice. The jury is still out on the people at the back, since no one who actually lived in the house was home. Still, even if they force us to build The World's Smallest Lockwood House by refusing, we have other Grand Real Estate Plans...