Dr Donald has been very quiet lately and has not been able to gather momentum from his successes earlier in the year. It seems that the inertia from Orewa is running out too. Polls have National (and especially Brash) slipping.

Maybe not so much a hurricane as a zephyr? Except that Zephyr's are cool.


Cool Zephyr. Brash not in sight.

So here is today's cartoon - "Hurricane Brash".




You can email this cartoon to a friend by clicking here

For the past few months I've been working with Nandor Tanczos and Rayna Fahey on the creation of nandor.net.nz. It's been fun, and it's just been launched... a few minutes ago. It is complete with a "Reasoning Board" where people can discuss issues relevant to Nandor/Green politics.

So the brutal Auckland mayoral race reached a new low yesterday with the resignation of Brian Nicolle. He finally admitted that he was behind the illegal distribution of the NBR hatchet job. Banks desperately tried to distance himself from the actions of his staff member. TV3's John Campbell didn't bother concealing his glee in giving Banks the once over, refusing to let him change the subject and definately asking the hard questions. Banks actually looked like he was going to cry.

So here is my cartoon about these latest developments. My Foot in Mouth cartoons are now appearing on Stuff on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of Wednesdays and Saturdays. They appear on this site the day after Stuff.

The National Business Review stands by the Hubbard "hatchet job". Supposedly they're just reporting the facts and the public has the right to know them. No bias is involved. If you believe that you may also believe me when I say I am the Crown Prince of the United States, and I'm writing this blog from a deep sea diving bell which is currently orbiting Pluto.



Here is one variation of the jammed Kerry Prendergast billboards. Has anybody got a photo of the "Stick it Kerry" version?

If you are in Wellington, come along to the Ctoss tonight to watch the Hi-Aces (Wellington Chapter) play their blend of suburban roots and alt-country. Also playing are the Erik Rouse and Dragstrip.



The Christchurch chapter of the Hi-Aces is playing at the Wunderbar in Lytteton on Wednesday the 29th, along with Wellington stalwarts of gypsy punk, the Raskolnikovs.

Check out Luke's (from the Chch chapter) poster for their gig, bloody marvelous.



Also, the Toyota Museum is a pretty cool looking place if you like vintage Japanorama...



Don't forget to click on the "concerned link".

Tony Blair is trying to cast the war in Iraq as a "new conflict". It seems transparently clear that the reason for doing this is to try and seperate off the failures which have led to the current situation. The new war can then be justified on it's own terms without reference to the role the coalition had in creating the situation. Very cynical stuff.

Welcome to the latest Dorking Labs contributor, Alistair Button. He wields his acerbic prose like a kalashnikov, spraying red hot pellets of ire at his hapless targets. Beware his unusually overdeveloped vocabulary, cos he ain't afraid to use it. His first victim is the NZ Film Commission, poor bastards.

The new format of the Listener is an improvement, which is good, cos It was getting pretty bland there for a while.

The recent Destiny Church issue was full of mirth. Besides the cover headline "Life of Brian" (A Monty Python movie in which the main character spends his life being mistaken for a messiah), and the photo of Tamaki walking in water, there was one other thing that caught my attention. The page opposite the end of the main Destiny article is a full page ad for the History Channel, featuring a bemused looking Hitler washing the dishes. A coincidental juxtaposition or cheeky monkeying from the Listener staff? Hopefully the later.

Also it was good to see the article by Noel O'Hare about the psychic fraud Jeanette Wilson and the deeply flawed 20/20 segment that aired recently. Information about cold reading techniques is readily available and easy to understand. The journalist obviously didn't really bother to try to understand it but instead relied on the inclusion of token comments from sceptic Vicki Hyde. In the so-called "test" no counterbalancing point of view was shown, even though Wilson relied on histrionics to divert attention from her inaccurate readings. Zero cred for 20/20 and Wilson, maximum cred for Noel O'Hare and the Listener.

Also a quote from Kerry Prendergast from the Sept 18-24 Listener culture section...

"We don't want want artists in the whole range of what artists mean being forced to consider cheaper rentals in Porirua or the Hutt Valley or anywhere else. Because they do form part of the lifeblood of Wellington City. They are part of the employees in our cafes and restaurants." (emphasis added)

Piss off. It's obvious Kerry wouldn't recognise lifeblood if it spurted all over her face. Vote her out.

Yesterday I was sent this lovely cartoon by marianland@earthlink.net, along with a link to her website that contains such pearls of insight as "Kerry's voting record is one that even satan would find it difficult to match."



She will be glad to know that I will NOT be voting for Kerry in the upcoming US election, due solely to the fact that I'm not a citizen of the US.

To provide further evidence of my depraved and lascivious nature, I'd like to bring your attention to my cartoon of a Nubile Phone...




For a discussion on oversize digital breasts, check out Zoe and Cleo, who along with Cleo's boyfriend Capt. Poison, are back at their titilating best. Be warned, NOT worksafe.

Reading an autocue is a highly advanced skill that can only be performed by highly evolved intelligent organisms after years of training. I really don't know how I would interpret the news without Judy Bailey's subtle eyebrow inflections telling me how to feel. More cartoons here.

I've never been to Switzerland, but they seem to famous for a number of things. Including clocks, cheese, chocolate and money. This cartoon looks at the first two. I suppose you could make money out of chocolate, but I would prefer to make chocolate out of money. More cartoons here.

The Escalator to Nowhere is the latest cartoon in the gag gallery. It reminds me of some lyrics often repeated to me my a friend of mine, I'm not sure whether he wrote them or not. Sam are you out there?

You will eat my dust for dinner
It's a race to nowhere
And I'm the winner

ElectoralVote.com is a good place to get a reasonable idea of how the polling is going in the US presidential race. Most of this "Bush has double Digit Lead" crap is merely local media parroting what most US media wants people to think. The site has a map showing where the support for each candidate lies.

What's interesting is the new electoral-vote cartogram, which is a "warped and distorted map of the U.S. showing the states in proportion to their electoral votes." It makes quite a different picture from the undistorted map.

The site is updated daily and what it shows can change quickly and dramatically.

An article on Salon about the release of the Kitty Kelley book "The Family"

But, as one of W.'s Yalie frat brothers tells Kelley, it's not the substance abuse in Bush's past that's disturbing, it's the "lack of substance ... Georgie, as we called him, had absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or in books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news; he didn't even go to the movies. How anyone got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me." New Yorker writer Brendan Gill recalls roaming the Kennebunkport compound one night while staying there looking for a book to read -- the only title he could find was "The Fart Book."

You have to watch one of their ads to read the whole thing but it's worth it.

Thank God somebody is standing up against this abomination.

Thousands of Density Church members, clad in black t-shirts, marched on Parliament on Friday to voice their opposition to the "growing numbers of homosexual sheep in New Zealand".

I've added a new gallery to this website. It contains non-political gag cartoons (also known as pocket cartoons). These are available for people to buy or for use in publications by arrangement. There are only six so far but I'll be adding lots more shortly. Here is an example -



The Gag Cartoon Gallery can be found here

Lyndon Hood from Fighting Talk has an excellent discussion about some of the same things I wrote about in my previous post. In particular he references an article that I found obnoxious in a recent Dom Post, entitled "Are Liberals Facists", by David McLoughlin.

I'm not the only one to notice a certain theme after reading many letters to the editor and articles in papers following the Enough is Enough march last week. The "Backlash to the Backlash" in regards to the idea of tolerance.

I have little sympathy for those that whine about "liberals" denouncing the messages of homophobia and discrimination inherent in the Destiny message. Apparently it's the nasty fascistic liberals that are intolerant because they dare to stand up to others intolerant views.

Yes, you could describe the voicing of criticism of Destiny's views as an expression of intolerance, an intolerance of actions which seek to spread intolerance itself. It is quite a different order of intolerance to that shown by Destiny and other groups and it is ridiculous to equate the two types. That's not to say that anybody from either side isn't capable of engaging in either type, just that it is a general distinction that should be applied to the events of last week, and to the ongoing debate.

As for those who think the Nazi comparisons were over the top, I agree that some were. But if you're going to organise large scale public action then you should be aware of the symbolism you use and what it invokes. For most that saw the march it would have been difficult to not see some parallels with fascism at least stylistically.

My cartoon about it is here.

Also, I drew a picture of Tom Waits, the first in a series of portraits of the deaths' heads of rock.