So, imagine how they could devibe this. Imagine how a person could take the wonderment of Dominion Road and make it suck. How? Taggers? Come on! Being against taggers was so a fortnight ago. Think! Epic amounts of dogshit! Yes. That would be true, if it was true. But the dogs of the Eden Valley seem well restrained, so move on. How about…death…on a grad scale?

Yeah, that would be pretty much a universal bummer. But that’s filed under “dog shit” as not true, yeah? Yeah. And here, by “yeah”, I mean “no”.

At the top end of Dominion Road, right after you pass the Chinese supermarkets, just before you get to the crossing to go down Valley Road or View Road, one or the other, because you get the two mixed up, you walk past Target. Furniture, you think. Not today. Not enough room in my backpack. And then, there’s a reason alluded to above, a reason why you decide not today, not any day. Death. On an epic scale.

Because, Target is the House of A Thousand Corpses. Sprinkled across the carpet of their display window: an invertebrate graveyard. A zombie zoo established proudly across the floor, for all the public to roll up, roll up and have a look at. Cockroaches as big as a matchbox! See many flies as their death throes are recorded for your amusement and pleasure!

See our staff as they vigourously and rigourously don’t vaccum the floor! Entrance is free! Strike that: viewing is free! Who’s going inside now?

It seems pretty easy – you call or text to unlock a cruiser-style bike for as long as you like, and drop it off at any rack when you’re done. The bikes look  modern and well maintained, and come with helmet, lights, and a nifty rack for your shopping.

The website uses Google maps to keep track of the bikes, and racks are dotted around the central city, from Symonds St to the Viaduct (obligatory Aucklandista viaduct Booooo! goes here). If you’re confident cycling around town, they’d be great for zipping to meet a mate for coffee, or you could take one to Mission Bay for fish ‘n chips of a weekend.

This is not an answer to Paris’s Vélib‘, or “freedom bike”, a state-sponsored scheme that has the French cycling to the theatre or picking up bread, cheese and a little wine from the market, all the while smoking a Gauloise, but it’s a start. The Goodgear team seems to have some council co-operation, securing prominent locations for racks on Queen Street.

What do you think? Would you ride a bike around Auckland? There’s all those hills to contend with, not to mention rabid drivers, but this seems a sensible part of the continuing effort to get Aucklanders out of their cars. Go Goodgear.

However after renting Bender’s Big Score (the first of a number of straight to DVD releases for the previously canceled FOX show Futurama) I nearly flipped my lid.

The cover of rented DVD omitted the crucial apostrophe in “Bender’s.”

Wellington parachutist Hadyn Green immediately undertook to make a correction as seen below.

Yes, we did feel like big men.

Very big men.

In 2005 the Chinese community gifted a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar stylised chrome tree sculpture to Auckland City. It was plonked in the Parnell Rose Gardens to all the usual fanfare and everyone stood around congratulating themselves on their contribution to the “public space”.

All well and good, but Parnell-ians kicked up a fuss claiming they weren’t consulted and that the gleaming dong clashed with the Victorian style of the Gardens.

It finally found a home next to the Winter Gardens in the Domain where it still looks out of place.

As modern sculpture goes I think it truly belongs in the “meh” school of abstract representation. Having said that there’s much worst examples of public art in the city; that Pohutukawa thing down by Pitt Street enticing commuters to travel the stress-free motorways of Auckland for example.