OPINION: Joe Bennett takes a sneak peek inside a mythical public relations agency as it congratulates itself on its recent success with the Royal Wedding and Osama bin Laden.

JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Joe's get-rich-quick scheme involves becoming an abstract artist.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: The news is like Pacman. It consumes what's in front of it, then moves on to the next morsel.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: I rejoice at the destruction of a cookbook.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Alert readers may have noticed a common thread to the major news stories of the week.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: The wind scythed around corners and went for the marrow. Yet the pavements were thick with girls wearing little, girls dressed for sex.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: No, no, no, no, exclaimed the secretary of state for the tiny Pacific island of Columnia, "of course our president didn't write those lines himself. He's a president, not a comedian. The lines were supplied by the scriptwriters at TVNZ.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Michael Jackson is now dancing with God. (If you don't like that fairytale, pick your own.)

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: The young men trooped into the dock. They hung their heads. Their chins rested against their properly knotted school ties. Their shoulders, encased in blazers, slumped.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: All Blacks anthem coach Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has acknowledged that the team failed to learn the lessons from the first test against the Springboks.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: My parents passed on no wisdom. I don't know how they resisted the urge.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Dawn. The commander stood in silence on the plain. It was bone-snapping cold.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Entertainment in a trillion shoddy forms buzzes around us at all times, seeking entry by any orifice.

© Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Joe Bennett investigates the golden road to holistic health.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: I'm not going to attend the G20 summit in London. I simply can't be bothered.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Things change, and it is the duty of crusty old men to bemoan change.

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Sunday afternoon, when time drags like a wet mattress. What better to shift the mattress, to kill the time, than Scrabble?

BY JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: There may well be protocols to eating in China. I never discovered them. As far as I could tell, the only rule was to get stuck in.

© Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Did you see the clever child? Oh it was awful. He was so precocious and so very unwisely happy. But let me begin at the beginning.

© Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: WAKE at 10. Fetching coffee and the paper, I reflect on last night. Wonder whether our burnouts will have made the front page.