Aaah yes.

Listening to the most recent Art Of Fighting album is a good way to wind down after playing the bass. Actually I haven't picked up the bass for a good couple of months or so so my fingers will be sore today. Never mind - it's going to suffice for 'exercise' at the moment since my schedule is basically revolving around sleeping and teaching - hence the lack of updates. I have to kick the laziness... perhaps around September or so.

Everything is up in the air at the moment. I can sense change is in the offing but when and how is anyone's guess. I guess since my life changed so drastically in the past twelve months that I'm now up for something new. Maybe 'change' has become the norm and this period of stillness is the 'normality' settling in. Problem is that things have now settled to the point where I could easily cruise through the next several years and nothing could change at least on a personal level. As Ferris Bueller said, "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

So I stopped. I looked. I found something nice. Can I bring it home with me? Time will tell.


Bad design is the highlight of today's posting.

First comes what could only be described as the perfect mix of bad taste and permanency (so this is the reason why laser surgery was developed?), the Hello Kitty Darth Vader tattoo.

Next, also from Japan, comes a mix of sci-fi and not thinking much about the reality of cost and the environment comes the pyramid built over Tokyo Bay that'll house 750,000 people and contribute vastly to the death toll if there's an earthquake or tsunami. Hey, isn't Tokyo overdue for a major quake? Why, yes, it is!

Seriously, how would you play a guitar with six heads?!? At least you wouldn't have to buy another one. The sixth one is a baritone, apparently, and the fifth is a six string bass a la the Fender VI, which would be my next purchase in itself, if I could afford one. Originals cost about $3000 new! (I saw one for that price in Kobe a few months ago)

One architect's response to a council's red tape over building a simple garden shed on a farm is a model for the witty sarcastic response - the irony being that the council would likely accept such a response as it satisfied all the criteria for the application!

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy has a contender. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to welcome to the stage, Joey Linello! Mullet would happily support him on his Australian tour.

Not so much bad design, but bad taste: things people do and wear that they think make them look cool, but actually make them look like they're stupid.

We're kind of segwaying into a couple of my usual topics for posting: the limitless depths of human stupidity and the environment. Witness the first stupid move of the Rudd Government (up for debate), the means testing of the solar panel rebate, instantly cutting the revenue for these companies in half. Ummm... show me the working middle and lower classes who are going to put solar cells on the homes? I agree with the commentator who says that cutting CO2 levels is going to take a bold and broad-sweeping move, especially when we read that levels are at the highest for the past 800,000 years and climate change is a global phenomenon. Cutting rebates is not going to do that at all. It's really going to take a global movement to make it happen - and do you think that's going to happen soon? I didn't think so either.

Organised crime has its hands in our waste disposal. Insert witty irony-laced comment here.

The strange quirks of our bodies show the history of evolution. A decent read!

DARPA is 50. Here's a list of its successes, and (more amusingly) its failures. Mechanical elephants indeed!

Speaking more than one language may slow the ageing process in the brain, and the more languages you speak the better according to this study.

The drums for war across the Middle East and even into Asia grow louder, and already the predictions are coming out. Too many too much to go on about here concisely, but sometimes you need to listen to what seems like crazy ramblings. The ones before the Iraq invasion were ignored and now the fallout has extended into food prices going up around the globe and creating a food crisis now starting to spiral out of control towards... what? Already China is eyeing a global land grab to grow food for its population while Australia continues to change into a dust bowl. Japan's government is conducting studies (as they usually do), fiddling while Rome burns. Meanwhile Bush, who should be indicted on war crimes charges, may be gunning for life-long dictatorship in the USA. Read, watch, listen, prepare.

Is it time to invade Burma?

It's nice to see one superstition supporting another, such as the Catholic Church now saying it's OK to believe in aliens. Does this mean the pope's a Scientologist?

The ten longest novels ever written.

At least someone's had the courage to tell the truth about England, but the English themselves!?

And finally, the complete ACME catalogue.