Telling it like it is

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-thwack! So sounds a petrol-driven lawnmower when the mulching blade hits the plastic pop-up part of a sprinkler head. Another trip to home depot, then.

Went to see the Matrix Reloaded last night. Ace film. Sound was shite though - the surround kept going out and leaving us with muffled bass mono from the centre of the screen. We moaned at the cinema manager afterwards and got free tickets to any other show we want. Complain and ye shall receive. :-) It was nice to hear Juno Reactor and Paul Oakenfold on the soundtrack to the movie too ....

We all despise spam - people who send out these emails should be castrated live on TV then thrown into a septic tank. But leave it to the politicians and the FTC to come up with a solution : why don't we tax email? That way when someone spams the system, they'll get a huge bill? Idiots. That won't work and is wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to count them.

I'm depressed and lethargic. I'm going to see the Matrix tonight and even the thought of that can't cheer me up. :(

I feel pretty deflated today due to some revelations I've had here in the office pertaining to how little value some entities in the company appear to place on me or my work. Plus, fucking Microsoft fucking Windows has just crashed for the third time today for no reason at all. Jesus, Gates. How can you sleep at night?

The Total Information Awareness program now under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will henceforth be named the Terrorism Information Awareness program, the Pentagon said today. Call it what you will chaps, it's still Big Brother. The US is rapidly catching up with the UK for unashamedly spying on it's populace.

Thank the Lord... Dyson are finally selling vacuum cleaners in America. We've been waiting over two years since we left England for them to start selling over here!

*** WAR NEWS*** (yes, we're still at war, even though CNN says we aren't). The private Lynch setup has finally been blown wide open by the BBC and CNN. They finally figured out it was a setup, that it was staged to make the allied troops look good. The truth of the matter, of course, is that the hospital tried to give her back to the US troops the day beforehand, but they riddled the ambulance with bullets and forced it to turn back. The hospital workers have long claimed that had anyone just asked for Lynch, they could have walked in and taken her any time. She claims to "remember nothing" only because she's been told to.

Related to the F1 story, it really chaps my hide when people moan and bitch about Michael Schumacher and Ferrari dominating Formula 1. Any team could do what Ferrari do, but I guess they don't have the perserverance or expertise. Remember back in the late 80's and early 90's when everyone said "it's all the car" ? Schumacher left Benetton Renault and they've never been the same since. 6 years ago, Ferrari were the laughing stock of the F1 world - couldn't finish a race, let alone win. Now they're on top and everyone's bitching about it. Maybe the other teams should do some real work, get their drivers to train properly and get their fingers out of their mechanic's arses. If Ferrari can go from laughing stock to outright winners in such a short period of time, so can the rest of them. If Williams, McLaren and the others put as much effort into ensuring a win as they did bitching about Ferrari, they'd be unstoppable.

Michael Schumacher is officially the worlds best racing driver, ever. This sunday, in the Austrian Grand Prix, a problem with the refuelling rig set fire to his car in the pits, with him in it. Instead of jumping out, he calmly waited for the mechanics to douse the fuel fire - less than a metre from his head - and then pulled out, wiped his visor and went on to win the race. As my wife said : the man has ice in his veins. Meanwhile, the internet's latest phenomenon is Star Wars Kid. Do a google search for it - he's everywhere. This poor kid was doing a Star Wars lightsaber battle, on his own, with a broomstick, doing the sound fx with his mouth. Someone at school found his tape, digitised it and Kazaa'd it. Now it's everywhere and a couple of bloggers are raising money for the poor kid.