It's dark and overcast outside with flashes of lightning that have meant that connecting to the Net risks the loss of my modem (despite the gizmo on my phone-line that is supposed to stop that happening.)

What's worse, I wrecked my back a few days ago and every time I move, my right buttock goes into spasms of cramp. The price of petrol has just gone up by another four cents a litre and the dollar has fallen below US$0.43 again.

And, to top it all off I feel that I should be wracked with guilt after a delinquent politician is claiming that the sad plight of Maori and their children is now entirely the fault of the colonial invasion more than a century ago and that they have inherited some kind of post traumatic stress by osmosis or something.

And there's bugger all news to write about.

But hey -- things can only get better and everyone (including myself) has to get up off their fat (and spasming) bums and get on with things.

Never before in the history of this country have we been handed the kind of golden opportunity that the New Economy represents to a tiny isolated group of islands on the backside of the planet.

Stuff Cullen, stuff Anderton, and stuff the sycophants and bureaucrats who seemingly serve only to impede the entrepreneurial activities of the hard-working risk-takers on whose efforts the entire future of the nation now rides.

Let's make the sun shine -- send me details of any new ventures that you might be involved in or know of. Let's just see how many of this country's best and brightest are thumbing their nose at government's best efforts to hold them down.

If you've got a project, product or service that is a good example of hard working kiwis in action -- send me the details and I'll share it with Aardvark's readers.

That American Millionaire
After spending God-knows how much money in legal action, the NZ Herald has finally won the right to publish the name of the US millionaire who appeared in court earlier this year on drugs charges but one must ask -- why bother?

Maybe it could be argued that there's a principle involved and that The Herald is doing the public a service by correcting the apparent injustice that surrounded the name suppression in this case. However, since Aardvark pointed out that the man's own home-town newspaper and at least one of the major US newswires had already published his name on the Internet, I think it's safe to say that anyone who doesn't already know his name isn't really that concerned about it.

What do you think? Did the Herald pursue the lifting of the suppression order for the good of all NZ or was it simply a marketing ploy to boost their own circulation?

To Be Read At Your "Convenience"
Are you the kind of person who prefers to do much of their reading on the toilet? If so, you are probably in the majority and you probably hate the way that online publications tend to tie you to the keyboard.

I'm considering reviving the good old Aardvark Weekly as a summary of the week's news and commentary, plus a little extra. However, rather than making it an online HTML publication, I was thinking of distributing it by email to subscribers as a PDF file that could be printed and read at your leisure -- even on the convenience of your choice.

Before I invest the not inconsiderable amount of effort involved in such an undertaking, I'd like some indication as to the level of interest -- and even better would be someone offering to donate a copy of Adobe Acrobat in return for a year's free promotion by way of prominent sponsorship or advertising in the weekly edition.

As always, your feedback is welcomed.