telescreen.org

Didja see the NYT story about Linny Boyette, the "Today" show's "ultimate fan" ?  Aside from the incoherent headline (what exactly does "'Today' and Yesterdays" mean?), I thought the article's description of Boyette in the seventh graf sounded a little funny:

Born in Jamaica and raised in both New York and London, Mr. Boyette, who is a retired United States Army man, speaks in a deep British accent, peppering his conversation with words like "bloke" and "telly."

(My emphasis.)

He's an "Army man"?  Is he made out of green plastic or something?  What's wrong with "Mr. Boyette, retired from the United States Army", or "retired U.S. soldier"?

And, more importantly, who's on the copy desk over there?

Truly inspired:  the Jesus Pan.

(Does one loaf feed a thousand people?)

6H10, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

(from Says-It.com)

Amazing photoseries of teenage girls doing their compulsory service in the Israeli army, via the grubbykid.

Oh noes! Some journalists are teh ghey!  Man-on-dog must not be far behind!

Kevin Drum, with an astute analysis of just why this Administration screws up so much:

Pundits keep trying to figure out just what it is that makes Bush so different from other presidents, but most of them start by trying to figure out what he values. For example, maybe he's far more dedicated to hardline conservative ideology than any other president? That seems reasonable at first glance, but even a cursory look at the evidence turns up way too many exceptions for this to account for his record.

Pure, ruthless political calculation? There's plenty of that, but it really doesn't explain things like No Child Left Behind, the Iraq war, or his immigration policy. . .

The fact is, all presidents rely for their decisions on a complex stew of ideology, interest group pandering, and political calculation. So what is it that makes Bush so different? Just this: until Bush they also all cared about serious policy analysis. This was obviously more striking in some (Clinton) than in others (Reagan), but they all paid attention to it and it informed their actions.

But not Bush. He's subject to the same stew of competing interests and factions as any other president, but what truly makes him unique is what's missing: a respect for policy analysis. After eight months of working in the Bush White House, John DiIulio reported that "the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking." Paul O'Neill described Bush in cabinet meetings as "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." A senior White House official told Ron Suskind that the Bush White House is "just kids on Big Wheels who talk politics and know nothing. It’s depressing." The meltdown at FEMA, the war with the CIA for being insufficiently hawkish, the lack of a serious plan for Social Security privatization, the staffing of postwar Iraq with inexperienced ideologues — all of these things have the same root cause: a belief that ideas are all that matter.

Of course, that also means that President Bush's initiatives fail at a truly spectacular rate. After all, policy is all about figuring out how to implement ideas so that they actually work. If you believe that policy is something for effete liberal wonks — as George Bush evidently does — your ideas are doomed to failure. In the end, ironically, the one thing that Bush disdains so utterly is the very thing that guarantees his utter failure.

Patently Silly is worth your time.

Kosmonaut's got a friend who could use your help:

Through some hard work and a lot of luck, I managed to land a position this summer working for the United Nations in Khartoum, Sudan. Now that there's a peace agreement signed in Darfur, the UN will be taking over peacekeeping operations there, so it's an amazing opportunity to do some really good work, and maybe help make things better for people who have suffered in almost unimaginable ways.

The Bad News: The UN can't afford to pay grad students, which means I have to pay my own way. Unfortunately, I haven't had much success on that score; I was hoping to get by on fellowship money, but I've recently found out that I got much less than I'd hoped for. I'm working as many billable hours as I can find as an IT consultant, but Khartoum's not a cheap place, and running out of money once I'm there would be an incredibly bad thing. I'm really worried that I'm going to have to call the whole thing off, but I won't do that until I've done everything I possibly can to make it work.

Dropcash campaign is here.

Did Bob Novak and Karl Rove conspire to obstruct justice by concocting a bogus cover story?

I just looked at the lineup of this year's River To River Festival, and it looks pretty good:  Anthony Braxton leading a 100-tuba orchestra, Ralph Stanley, Dr. John singing Johnny Mercer, Bang On A Can, Ricky Skaggs, Eels, Belle & Sebastian, Dave Alvin (!), Little Feat, Dianne Reees, Jimmy Vivino with Felix Cabrera, Dave Holland Quintet, Bio Ritmo, Marshall Crenshaw & others interpreting Neil Diamond (!), Box Tops (featuring Alex Chilton), Ted Leo, and, as they say, much much more.

It's Creative Department Douchebag!

(via Czeltic Girl.)

Well, to follow the WTFNYT posts (#1 and #2), here's a truly bizarre WTFWaPo for you:

Bill Frist: A Doctor at Heart

The houses were dark on Bill Frist's street. A morning bird chirped; the others were waiting for dawn. But Frist was awake, and his bedroom light was on. "I'm going to take a shower," the Senate majority leader said brightly. Ten minutes later, the blow dryer roared.

In the kitchen, Frist's wife, Karyn, was brewing coffee and remembering their life before politics. For 20 years, Frist had worked as a heart transplant surgeon. He had stitched hearts into more than 150 lives.

One Saturday night, Karyn recalled, "we were supposed to go to a movie. He walked out in his scrubs." Instead of taking Karyn to the theater, Frist brought her to the operating room. "To see the human body alive -- without a heart in it."

Really?  He knew Dick Cheney way back when?

*rimshot*

The carnage continues:

Frist, at heart, is a doctor. At 5:45 a.m., before a recent Senate workday, he prepared for a quirky slice of surgery. During congressional breaks, Frist, 54, has been known to fly to Africa to operate. But in Washington, he has quietly cultivated another practice: gorillas at the National Zoo.

"These gorillas seem to develop heart disease," said Frist (R-Tenn.). "It's totally unknown. I did a lit search -- nothing. The fact that we're working on the edge of the unknown is fun."

"Well, your first patient was a dog," Karyn said. In medical school, Frist cut out a dog's heart and held it in his palm. It continued to beat for a slippery minute.

"Watching it beat, the beauty of it," Frist recalled. "I decided I would spend my life centered around the heart."

So after watching the dog die (after the "slippery minute"), he decided to spend his life not-killing.  Was this before or after he adopted other dogs and cats from animal shelters so he could experiment on them?

Let's get back to the gore (not, alas, the Gore):

Frist, in a gray suit, picked up his file marked "ZOO" and said, "We've got to be on time to open the Senate."

He climbed into the back of his black SUV; his driver steered toward the zoo. "I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."

Just like I don't understand how a heart surgeon can promote "intelligent design", I guess.  Or how he can effect a cure for "AIDS or cancer" by cutting funding for medical research.  Or how he can support torture by the U.S. government.

At the zoo hospital, a team of four veterinarians, three technicians, an animal keeper and a veterinary dentist were wheeling a 350-pound gorilla into surgery as Frist arrived. They would perform an ultrasound of the heart, a root canal and a physical. Frist joined the team, as he had on other mornings, tying on a mask. He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.

"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.

Frist snapped on rubber gloves. He leaned over the operating table, gripping the corners. An oxygen monitor beeped. The patient gagged.

(Much like, at this point, the reader.  "Hairy, toned biceps"?)

Let's continue carving up the carcass:

He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females. When Kuja started to stir, a veterinarian injected more anesthesia. One backhanded swipe could break Frist's neck.

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."

The oneness of humanity?  (Also, does the Senate Majority Leader enjoy "exclusive mating rights" with Liddy Dole and Barbara Mikulski?)

Nice sentiments from someone who is suspected of insider trading, methinks.

"There's almost a spiritual, poetic component to it," Frist said, his eyes expressing what his surgical mask hid. "This oneness, this wholeness. You can't compare it to the Senate floor. I immerse myself in it. This is my real life."

Incidentally, I assume that Kuja the silverback gorilla wasn't diagnosed via videotape?

Frist lifted Kuja's huge, leathery black hand. Williams, the dentist, said, "Take him with you to the Senate, so when Biden or Kennedy mouth off, you can turn him loose."

"He's on my side," Frist said, stroking Kuja's fur.

Afterward, Frist buttoned himself back up, into his blue shirt and into his senatorial reserve. "I need to be talking to the Israeli prime minister in 18 minutes," he told his driver as the SUV rumbled toward the Capitol. He said he was aware of critics, "People say, 'Oh, he's inside-baseball, and stiff.' "

I get it!  Finally!  I understand!  I think I'm supposed to take away the impression that he's both powerful and human!  (From his PR people to Laura Blumenfeld's ear...)

"Reid called," an aide said at the Capitol door, referring to the Democratic leader.

"I think we're on the same wavelength," Frist said as they strode inside.

Hey Laura, are you sure the aide was "referring to the Democratic leader"?  How can you be so sure that Tara Reid wasn't leaving adoring, gushing voicemail messages for the senior senator from Tennessee?  (After all, you're certainly making him sound like a hell of a guy...)

At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table. Across the city, rolling in a bed of hay, Kuja opened his eyes and grunted. The gorilla kept touching his tongue to his tooth. Something had changed inside of the beast while he slept. Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.

And that ever-so-subtle tang of either Old Spice or bullshit, I'm not sure which.

 

 

 

ADDENDUM: (I mean, not even the friggin' Onion goes this far...)

I know that it's only been a few days since I posted another entry entitled "WTFNYT?!?", so the title's taken.  Pity, as yesterday's mealymouthed, pointless A-1 pseudo-dissection of the Clintons' marriage deserves it too.

Who's running Page One over there, and do they have dirty pictures of Punch in their pocket?  (If so, kindly keep 'em there.)

The article was content-free, as Slate's Jack Shafer noticed:

When the New York Times prints a news story in its own private code, as it did with today's (May 23) Page One article "Clintons Balance Married and Public Lives," veteran readers grope through it, sentence by sentence, in hopes of piecing together the article's true meaning.

Even the headline of reporter Patrick Healy's piece appears coded. It alleges a Bill and Hillary "balance," but, specifying no fulcrum upon which the relationship firmly rests, it invites the reader to conjure up a wobbling teeter-totter.

The story states that the "state of their marriage" is "Topic A" for "many prominent Democrats" without ever saying how or why it ranks so high. And who are the many prominent Democrats? If they are many, why aren't they represented in the piece? Or do Healy and his editors count "one, two, three, many" when enumerating their subjects? . . .

[H]aving emphatically made the point that Bill is both present and absent, both a devoted co-gardener and an L.A. zipper, that Bill participates in her strategy sessions and Sen. Clinton operates as her own person, the piece concludes with Hillary saying, "I'm so grateful to you, Bill, wherever you are," as she surveys the dimly lighted fund-raiser where Bill has spoken and exited the stage.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Wherever he is literally? Figuratively? Existentially? This is the sort of news story that when read leaves you knowing less about the subject than when you were merely ignorant.

Do the ABC News brass have whiplash from doing such a quick 180?

I think Charlie Gibson is a fantastic choice to anchor "World News Tonight."  (For that matter, I think Diane Sawyer would be a fantastic choice as well.)

But check out Rebecca Dana's story in the NY Observer, which is worth reading if you're interested in things like this.  An excerpt:

On May 23, ABC News president David Westin announced that he was undoing everything he had done this past December when he appointed the youthful duo of Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff as Peter Jennings’ successors. Those two, he said, will go quietly to other projects—Ms. Vargas to child-rearing and 20/20, Mr. Woodruff back to his slow convalescence. Diane Sawyer, meanwhile, will continue to brighten the dawn from her post at Good Morning America.

 

For those tallying at home, that’s two whopping demotions, one long-delayed promotion and, for the network’s biggest star, one permanently thwarted ambition.

 

Thus ABC settled its anchor quandary Tuesday after a tumultuous six months—and one week to the day after its evening newscast had dipped to third in the ratings.

 

Mr. Gibson prevailed, in large part, by hanging in. “I was the guy still there by the candy machine,” Mr. Gibson said, “and so I got the job.”

 

Mr. Westin maintained, against a considerable body of evidence, that the shuffle is agreeable to all involved. Ms. Vargas—who according to network sources had been struggling to keep her job in recent weeks—“has had a lot of ups and downs and turns around through the whole process,” Mr. Westin said. “She’s had a lot of responsibility and a lot of stress, and she’s done a superb job throughout. She’s been the consummate professional, but it’s taken a toll on her.”

It seems strange to publicly anoint a co-anchor format, then disdain that format.  Likewise, it seems like a slap to Vargas -- maternity leave or no -- to give her half a broadcast and then none.  And, as I said, I think either Gibson or Sawyer would do a great job.  But this is also the only broadcast of the big three that's replaced an older-generation anchor with younger-generation ones, and then backtracked to replace the younger-generation anchors with an older one.  (Which, given the staggering emphasis on "the demo" -- the coveted 25-54 demographic in TV news, seems like an odd move.)  I'm not sure they had any choice, though...I think that Vargas by herself wouldn't be competitive against both Brian Williams and Katie Couric, and a Vargas/Gibson pairing would be uncomfortable.

I just hope this means that Bob Schieffer won't be reduced to reading the headlines over at GMA...

Paid shill for ExxonMobil -- appearing on Fox News, no less -- compares Al Gore to a Nazi:

That’s the problem. If I thought Al Gore’s movie was as you like to say, fair and balanced, I’d say, everyone should go see it. But why go see propaganda? You don’t go see Joseph Goebbels’ films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don’t go see Al Gore’s films to see the truth about global warming.

I take it that he's one of the conservatives who are working hard to bring this much-vaunted "new civility" back to the public debate?

Actually, "debate" is the wrong word.  Because, simply put, there is no debate about global warming.  It's about as "controversial" as evolution...because all the evidence is on one side of the "debate."  From Science:

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

See?  It's a consensus.  And no amount of Nazi comparisons or right-wing smears will change what the reality-based community agrees upon.

(Oh, didja see the CEI's new ads about "the alleged global warming crisis" ?  Especially check out "Energy", the first spot, and tell me if it doesn't play like an SNL parody ad...)

ADDENDUM:  This link may prove useful, too...

Security guru Bruce Schneier, writing in Wired, about why privacy is important.  Pay special attention to that last graf (emphasis mine):

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. . .

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. . .

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable. . .

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Exactly.

In the WaPo, the very good E.J. Dionne makes the case against a "national language" for the US:

As it considered the immigration bill last week, the Senate passed an utterly useless amendment sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) declaring English to be our "national language" and calling for a government role in "preserving and enhancing" the place of English.

There is no point to this amendment except to say to members of our currently large Spanish-speaking population that they will be legally and formally disrespected in a way that earlier generations of immigrants from -- this is just a partial list -- Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, France, Hungary, Greece, China, Japan, Finland, Lithuania, Lebanon, Syria, Bohemia, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia were not.

Immigrants from all these places honored their origins, built an ethnic press and usually worshiped in the languages of their ancestors. But they also learned English because they knew that advancement in our country required them to do so.

True, we now have English-as-a-Second-Language programs that have created some resentments and, in the eyes of their critics, can slow the transition from Spanish to English. Still, the evidence is overwhelming that Spanish speakers and their kids are as aware as anyone of the importance of learning English. That's why we have an attorney general named Gonzales, senators named Salazar, Martinez and Menendez, and a mayor of Los Angeles named Villaraigosa.

Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, introduced an alternative amendment to Inhofe's that also passed the Senate. It declared English the "common and unifying language of the United States" while also insisting on the existing rights of non-English speakers "to services or materials provided by the government" in languages other than English. As Salazar understands, the best way to make English our unifying language is to avoid making language a divisive national issue.

I make my living writing and speaking in English, and I would preach to anyone the joys of mastering this Anglo-Saxon gift to our nation. My wife and I encourage our kids to speak the language with precision and to show respect for its grammar, as did the nuns who taught me as a kid -- even if some of them spoke French better than English. Politicians who care about the language might usefully think about how it can be taught well, to the native-born as well as to immigrants.

Mathowie is the man.

Ted Koppel's got a crazy idea that just might work:

"At some point, in the not-too-distant future, it is going to occur to someone in authority at a network news division that developments beyond the borders of the United States are worthy of ongoing and detailed attention by a corps of smart, curious and courageous young men and women who are willing to live and work in places like India, China and the Middle East for extended tours," said Koppel. "We could call these people '“foreign correspondents.' Their reports could inform us of important and potentially dangerous developments at a time when we can ill afford to remain in the dark."

"Actually, ... never mind. It’s too expensive, and why would anything that anyone’s hatching overseas have any kind of impact on us?"

President Bush has a positive job approval rating in just three of the fifty states, according to a recent survey.

Which gives rise to this map:

(Via Chuck.)

Stick a fork in Rep. Jefferson.  He's done. 

He needs to resign now.

More New Zealand/French Polynesia travel notes:

Tuesday, May 9 (Part 1):

B. felt better when we got up, and we made breakfast in the holiday park’s kitchen (and set out the rest of our surplus food -- the holiday park already had a designated area for this, being the one closest to the international airport), before dumping the sewage and grey water one last time.  We got going around 9:45, found our way to the rental agency, and dropped off the campervan.  No extra charges (we’d noticed a grey water tank leak a couple days before -- while cooking lunch in Whangarei, I saw a thin stream of water from the van on the parking lot’s surface -- the rental agency didn’t charge us and said they’d check it out), and we were off to the airport.  Auckland’s airport is very pleasant, and they certainly run you past a gauntlet of shops before you get to the gates.  (And, unlike American airports, the shops carry things you’d actually want to buy.)  We picked up our wine and some other things with no trouble, and boarded our plane. 

“Nuku Hiva” is the third Air Tahiti Nui plane we’ve flown on (out of their total fleet of five), and this one seems to be the most comfortable yet.  It helps that we got the coveted aisle-window pairing in the 2-4-2 configuration, but the seats seem more comfortable, and the seatback entertainment system even has channels that show you video feeds from nose-mounted cameras, one pointed ahead and the other pointed straight down.  Cool!

Monday, May 8 (Part 2):

We crossed the International Date Line during the flight, so we flew back in time -- we left Tuesday afternoon and arrived into Tahiti on Monday night.  It was hot and muggy, and there actually aren’t too many places in the airport that aren’t open somehow to the outside, usually just the occasional air-conditioned shop.  I hit the ATM first off to get some Central Pacific francs, but it spit out my card.  I hit another ATM operated by a different bank, but it was the same story.  Gulp!  Time to break out my stash of five hundred-dollar bills that I’d gotten from the bank just before we left, specifically in case something like this might happen.  Changed them at a bank in the airport, so we at least had some cash.

All the while, we’d kept an eye out for a sign with our names -- or at least our hotel’s name -- on it.  We’d made a reservation at “Chez Lola”, a guesthouse very close to the airport, for one night before heading off to the other islands.  I got a phonecard (the payphones here use cards instead of coins, kind of like European ones used to do) and called the hotel.  They seemed very casual, and she didn’t seem to remember who we were or that we had a reservation.  They promised to come get us, though, in a gray Peugeot.

After another forty-five minutes (and two fruitless conversations with guys driving other gray Peugeots), Lola and a young man drove up.  Her son, presumably, but we weren’t to see any of him for the rest of our brief stay.  Lola was older, maybe in her seventies, and she spoke very little English.  We communicated, after a fashion, with my atrocious French.  She took us to her house above the airport, showed us to a room with an all-important oscillating fan, and went to bed.  Not long after, we followed suit.

America's finally caught up with the Dixie Chicks.

More New Zealand travel notes:

Monday, May 8 (Part 1):

Our last full day in NZ began in the tiny holiday park in the tiny village of Matakohe, a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of place just off State Highway 12.  After another breakfast of good New Zealand eggs, we headed into “town” to visit the Kauri Museum.  It was very big and well worth the couple hours that we spent there.  We saw lots of displays reconstructing the early life of the kauri loggers and sheep ranchers in the area, and several old engines -- the internal-combustion engine was a big deal when it arrived here, because it made many backbreaking tasks more feasible.  The museum had a full-size replica sawmill, powered by a huge steam engine with a mammoth flywheel.  It also had displays of fine furniture carved out of kauri wood, slabs of kauri that were maybe sixty or eighty feet long, replica rooms of area houses during Victorian times, models of ships made from kauri wood, and a huge collection of kauri gum, which is the resin that oozes from the tree.  It looks like amber after it’s been polished (but it's not as hard, since amber is fossilized) and can be carved.  We really enjoyed the museum; one interesting touch we both liked is that each of the mannequins depicted doing a chore was modeled after someone in the community who did that job (or who had an ancestor who did.)

After visiting the museum, we ate out for the first and only time during the trip, having lunch at the Gumdiggers Tearoom across from the Kauri Museum.  B. had vegetable soup with ham and a pasty, while I had two small meat pies: one “potato top” which was a bit like shepherd’s pie, and an oyster pie.  We washed it town with bottles of very good ginger beer.  (Schweppe’s ginger beer is very good, but we liked an Australian brand called Bundaberg even better -- it tasted much more strongly of ginger.  The same company also made a lemon-lime drink with bitters, which I really liked…and I’m looking forward to putting Angostura bitters in my 7-Up back home.

We then headed back south, eventually rejoining Highway 1 and retracing some of our steps iinto Auckland.  Auckland was very nice-looking as we approached it and crossed the Harbour Bridge -- it certainly earns its nickname of “City of Sails”, judging from the packed marinas near the bridge.  B. wanted to visit the Borders in Auckland, so we got off the main highway, navigated to the city center, and found the Borders on Queen Street.  Parking was a bit more challenging, though -- we couldn’t use any of the parking decks because they weren’t suited for vehicles as tall as our 2.7m van.  We spotted a surface parking lot, though, and went there, but it was a tight squeeze.  We eventually were able to successfully park in the third space we tried.

Next to the parking lot was a small store specializing in NZ wine, so we went in for a tasting (and maybe I just needed a drink after that parking job.)  We really enjoyed the reds from the Hawke’s Bay area, especially the ones from the Sacred Hill winery, so we got three bottles (a bottle of their "Helmsman" Cabernet/Merlot blend, and two of their "Basket Press" Cab/Merlot blend.)  As an added bonus, we could get them tax-free and the wine store would deliver the bottles to us at the airport, where we could pick them up in the duty-free shop. 

The Borders was just like a Borders back home, but spread out over three floors in a shopping center -- they had done a good job with a challenging space, and there were interesting neon-lined escalators and stairways connecting the various levels of the store.  B. enjoyed browsing around and seeing what was similar to and different from the stores back home.

Unfortunately, by this time B. wasn’t feeling well, and was nauseated with a bad stomachache.  We got back to the car, managed to extricate it from the parking lot, and got back on the highway to head to our last holiday park, near the airport.  We got there and I did laundry and cooked some lamb steaks -- again, quite good -- while B. rested.  We thought for a while that we might have to find a clinic or doctor, but she was able to get to sleep.