Telling it like it is

We've got water again, but this time it's all through shiny new PEX piping. Sweet. On monday though they're going to park a 4 ton digger on my lawn to dig up the xeriscaping for the main supply line :( And it's taken me so long to get the lawn looking this good too dammit. This is the first year we've actually had a lawn instead of a scrawny patch of bug-infested weeds....

I went home last night to be amazed at how much our plumber had managed to get done, on one day, on his own. All the new PEX pipe is in and ready to go. Today he's going to shut off the water and swap over all the lines to the new PEX, then remove the old FIP. Monday is the big job - that's when we get the main service line replaced. Fingers crossed !

Ford has launched a campaign to try to save it's ass by appealing to American's patriotism. Catchphrase? "Red, White & Bold". One of the stuffed shirts is quoted as saying "Americans really do want to buy American brands. We will compete vigorously to be America's car company." Fantastic. I mean what could be more American than the classic muscle car, the Mustang? Well, apparently, the Toyota Sienna minivan. And how can this be? Simple. Only 65% of the parts in a Mustang are sourced and fabricated in America. The Sienna minivan, on the other hand, has 90% of its parts sourced and fabricated in America. So American-assembled Toyotas are far more American than Ford. Now that's just embarrassing for them.

Well it's official. The Utah state quarter is going to be the Golden Spike. Typical. When presented with a chance to have something different - something fun and representative of the state, like the snowboarder, officialdom manages to cock it up just like always and pick the stupidest design. So long snowboarder. A most excellent design that was a little too modern, too cutting-edge, to clever and popular for the likes of Utah. Why welcome the world with a modern, representative design? After all, we only had the fucking winter olympics here a few years ago, and our license plates read "BEST SNOW ON EARTH" ! Jesus. Can you believe they picked this shit on the left instead of the snowboarder?

Oh no! Governer Huntsman looks like he's going to announce Utah's state quarter is to be the terrible 'Golden Spike' design tomorrow. Why? He's holding a press conference at Promontary Point where, 137 years ago tomorrow, the Golden Spike joined the east and west railroads. This certainly isn't going to help push Utah forwards in the minds of others. The snowboarder design would have, but it looks like that's not to be :-(

Woohoo! Sony have broken silence and shown production PS3 units at E3 ! The price is going to be $500 for the 20Gb version and $600 for the 60Gb version. Both systems otherwise identical. They have blu-ray players in them and the controllers are wireless with tilt sensors. Suck it, Microsoft.

We've suffered another bout of people with no class or dignity overnight. Our neighbourhood cleanup pile had a box full of rubbish on it - all bits of wire, wood, bent shards of metal etc. We got up this morning to find someone had torn it open and emptied it all over our grass. I'm getting to the point now where I want to go out there and just beat the living shit out of anyone who stops. What do you people not understand? This is JUNK? It's RUBBISH. It's worth nothing - it's crap. There's a reason it's out on the kerb to be collected. Because it's worthless. And when you people go digging through it, you just make yourselves look stupid, classless, and extremely poor. If you're that poor, and so hard up you have to dig through other people's rubbish, do it somewhere else because next time, the box is going to be full of cheap knives attached blade-up so you fuckers cut yourselves. I might even lace the blades with a nice poison to teach you a

I caught two of the ads for the new Mercedes GL SUV. The first showed a side-impact test where the impacter bounced off the car and flew through the air. Underneath, it said "Exaggeration. Real side impacts cause significant body damage." What? Given that most people don't read that stuff, you just know some school mum is going to buy one of those things because she believes it's indestructible. Then she's going to sue Mercedes when her little darlings are trapped in a twisted wreck of burning metal. The second advert showed the thing doing this really tight slalom course without tipping over. Again, with a disclaimer, which this time reads "Professional driver. Do not attempt. SUVs cannot perform this maneuver safely". ? I think Mercedes have replaced their marketing guys with retards.

We just finished watching Family Guy - they did their take on Poltergeist (Petergeist). They had a classic moment when Stewie was stuck inside the TV talking with the pre-echo effect. He finished talking and then said "hold on, hold on - I've always wanted to try this...." and then launched into In The Air Tonight where they did the pre-echo chorus : "Well I remember...." It was bloody funny. The writer obviously has a thing for 80's music videos. A couple of months ago they did a pencil-perfect rendition of the old A-Ha video where Chris Griffin got pulled into the pencil-drawing world through the milk shelf of a supermarket. They did the whole 'Take On Me' bit. It was genius. Then a couple of weeks back they did Paula Abdul's 'Opposites Attract' and replaced the cartoon cat with Peter. Brilliant.

As far as I know, my part of the current basement / wiring / plumbing project is done. Can it be true? I've got all new phone lines and all the sockets work. I've got 16 network sockets scattered around the house, and they all work. I've wired the speaker cables into the walls and ceilings for the home theatre, and I've run the video cables to the projector from the front of the room. Yes, dear reader, it appears I'm done. I'm bloody knackered. (and covered in cuts and other nasties from where the house has bitten me many times)