Telling it like it is

After last night's disastrous video rental, tonight I rented Eurotrip and Unbreakable. Eurotrip made me laugh like I've not laughed in a long time - Vinnie Jones was priceless. Unbreakable...? Unfathomable, basically. Another turd floating in the soup that is cinema. Ho hum.

Paula knows my intense dislike for "Jared" - the gay fool who wants us to believe he lost 800 pounds by eating nothing but Subway sandwiches. And it seems my gut feeling was right. In the TV spots Jared claims that three footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki subs have less fat than one Big Mac. Good claim, but probably a little wide of the mark given the lawsuit that was just launched. Why? Those three footlong sandwiches actually contain more than three and a half times as many calories as one Big Mac, nearly four times the amount of cholestorol, six times the sodium, seven times the carbohydrates and fourteen times as much sugar. So in fact, the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki that "Jared" is so fond of, should be called the super saturated big fat fucker artery-clogging heart-stopper. This on the heels of Subway's dig at McDonalds earlier this year with the fat Statue of Liberty holding a Big Mac. Mmm. Pot. Kettle. Black. Oh and "Jared" - nob...

Just got through with watching Garfield and Scooby Doo 2. Not even Jennifer Love Hewitt could save Garfield, and as for Scooby Doo 2..... well.... the first film was light entertainment. This one is raw sewage.

My favourite company : Utah Power. Seems there's a flurry of activity around our area at the moment. I wonder if its coincidence, or because I started camping on the phone to them a couple of weeks ago because I'd not seen any changes that they promised to make after last winter's big outages. Either way, it's pleasing to see the trucks out in the street, coned off, with people up in the cherry pickers doing "something".

Arafat who's health was declining, then he was okay, then in a coma, then not in a coma, then dead, is now not dead.

Reports are circulating that Yasser Arafat has died, rather than fallen into a coma, and the Drudge report is indicating that one of the four horsemen is about to resign. Apparently Attorney General John Ashcroft 'plans to submit his resignation to Bush in the next several days'. Does that and Colin Powells motions about leaving (following the Republican's adamant denial on that) point to dissent in the ranks ?

From an article in the Guardian's G2 section today: Despondency was instant and lethal. On the way to work, the faces of people on the tube looked like chalk pavement pictures after a downpour. As people got to their desks, a day began of low productivity and high personal email exchange. Dismally, people asked each other how long they had stayed up the night before. "Until 4.30am," said my friend Jim. "Long enough to start crying like a girl." The first email I received the following morning read: "Fucked off, dejected, our hopes have been blown to shit." The next one read: "As REM once sang: 'It's the end of the world as we know it.' Only unlike REM, I don't feel fine." There's going to be a brain drain from this country which will leave the Red-State [Republican] morons to fend for themselves," wrote an American on the Guardian talk-boards. "I wonder what the immigration requirements are like in the UK?...

I just watched CNN's roundup of today's front pages back in England, and it seems I'm not alone in my despair. The Guardian simply had a completely black page with "Oh, God!" printed in the middle in small letters. The Mirror in typical Mirror style had "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb? U.S. Election Disaster" and the Independant had a black page with "4 more years" interlaced with pictures of Abu Ghraib, Enron, oil companies, Halliburton etc.

When I got home tonight, one of our neighbours with a huge tree outside their house was busy bagging all the leaves. She doesn't have a vacuum / blower so there's now 30 bags outside her house awaiting collection. Our Black & Decker blower/mulcher did a great job on our tree - I sucked up all the leaves last night and they fitted in a single sack when mulched. 'Course our tree is a lot smaller, but I reckon Christie would have been able to get everything in 10 sacks if she'd had a mulcher. Great investment, even though it only gets used for a couple of weeks in a year.

President Bush declared victory in the 2004 presidential, telling supporters: "I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens. With that trust comes a duty to serve all Americans. And I will do my best to fulfill that duty every day as your president." Well - I suppose if that's true, it's better 4 years late than never. I'm having trouble reconciling my feelings today. Whilst living here is clearly better than the anus of Europe that is England, and whilst I love the job, the state, the surroundings, the American people, our house and our friends, I guess I'm going to just have to live with another 4 years of Bush at the top. As creepy as it sounds, it's better than that spineless fool Blair. Whilst I disagree 100% with almost everything Bush does, at least he has conviction. He believes in what he says, no matter what anyone else thinks. Blair just says "George - what do I think?"

The situation this morning: CNN claim Bush 254, Kerry 252. BBC claim Bush 254, Kerry 252. CBC Canada claim Bush 254, Kerry 252. ABC News claim Bush 254, Kerry 242. CBS News claim Bush 254, Kerry 242. FauxNews claim Bush 269, Kerry 242. MSNBC claim Bush 269, Kerry 238. FauxNews and MSNBC have the weirdest figures because they claim Ohio has gone to Bush, when in fact Ohio hasn't been counted yet. But then FauxNews are the ones who bollocksed it all up for everyone last time. Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card has claimed victory this morning. After all, there's no point in waiting for actual votes to be counted. That would be a democracy. Essentially it's come down to Ohio who now have 11 days to count their provisional ballots. Until that's done, the race is still wide open. Because if Kerry gets Ohio, he's won. Meanwhile, the nation has proven itself to be a nation of homophobes with all 11 states with same-sex marriage bans on the cards ha...

249 to 195. Ohio which has been projected as Kerry all evening is suddenly looking like it's going to Bush. That will put Bush at 269 - 1 vote short. Kerry needs to win every other state! Please let this be a mistake!

Bush has 246 electoral votes to Kerry's 195. It's 270 to win. Oh dear God no. We've had it. Bush is going to win..........the world is going to get a hell of a lot more dangerous :( The most interesting result so far? New York - scene of 9/11 and excuse for Bush's rampage into the middle east, voted for Kerry. That's a big middle finger to Bush, but sadly not enough. I can't believe it. 4 more years of lies, high taxes, failing economy, invasions and fearmongering. I can't believe it. You might as well tell me Tony Blair just got re-elected too. I can't believe it.

Deep breath people. We're going in.... First up, Florida, obviously, are bent on fucking it up again. An unknown number of voters in Brevard County, Fla., may have voted twice after complaining to a precinct supervisor that their first ballot was missing an annexation issue. Voters in Cape Canaveral were supposed to be given special ballots that included the proposed annexation of Avon by-the-Sea in Brevard. However, many voters at the Cape Canaveral library realized that the annexation issue was missing from their ballots. Second up - Philly - where Diebold machines already had 2000 votes on them when they were turned on. And now the most current exit polls - which don't mean a lot - put Kerry ahead in Florida and tied in Ohio.

In England they're voting today on whether to make it a punishable offense for a parent to smack their child. Wha....? And how, exactly, would they police this Orwellian measure? And how do they suggest children be disciplined? Harsh language?? Jebus. There are certain things the government should have no say over, and this is definitely one of them. F@ck the civil liberties people - some kids need smacking. I know I did - didn't do me any harm other than teaching me right from wrong. If you make parents toothless to discipline their children, then the country is staring into a dark, violent, crime-laden future.

So election day is here. I'm not even a citizen and I'm excited. Well, excited and nervous at the same time. Of course there's going to be recounts, lawsuits and counter lawsuits. But today's the day we might be rid of Bush. You can feel the tension in the air. Kerry is ahead in all the polls, and the superstitious markers all point his way (the historical outcome of sporting events and such). The question is, when the inevitable recount comes, what's going to happen with all those votes cast on Diebold machines?

Ok that's different. Got home, and the tree outside the front of the house was totally bare. Every single last leaf all came off in one day. Dayam!

So the snow has settled, and the temperature has plummeted. It was a chilly -3°C when I got up this morning. Nature has flicked the "leaf" switch and every tree still with leaves is shedding frantically today. Driving down our street, I was literally being rained on by leaves. Not just one or two - hundreds. It made the morning drive interesting, because the roads are a nice mix of black ice and wet leaves :-)

The first proper storm of the season has arrived, dumping about 2 inches of snow in the valley. It's not even the end of Autumn yet - the trees are most confused.

Had an excellent trick-or-treat night. I decided to play "scare the kids" so I hooked up my smoke machine and used an extra piece of the pipe I had left over. I cut a hole in an orange bucket we've got and filled it with ice, connected the pipe to the hole and the other end to my smoke chiller. All the ice meant that the smoke got super-chilled and was cold to the touch and it swirled along the ground. I put a blacklight bulb in the porch light, then ran the smoke machine remote lead under the doormat. Finally I dressed up in all my biker gear complete with mirrored glasses and sat slumped in the corner of the porch with the candy bowl between my feet and the remote in my right hand. I'd flick the smoke machine on and off to generate a nice mist and then the kids and parents would come up really cautiously, trying to decide if I was real or a dummy. I stayed perfectly still and let some of the kids grab some candy, and with others, I lurched at them. I got tons of peo...