Telling it like it is

Whilst I was in Singapore I noticed a lot of sweet JDM tuner cars on the streets. Some louder than others, a couple with neon underlighting. The one that really struck me as super cool was a jet black 2007 Honda Stream MPV. I've never seen the Stream before - turns out it's an Asian market only vehicle. But it's nice. Really nice, especially when done out in subtle JDM tuner stylee. The windows were blacked out all around, it had black and chrome wheels and about a 10cm lowering kit in the suspension. It looked like it had a Mugen exhaust which means I guess the owner likely had a Mugen cold air induction kit in it too. Searching the 'net my bet is that the owner was a member of the Singapore Stream Owners Group ( linkypops ). I wish I'd known what I was looking at and had chance to take a photo but it was only the second or third time I'd seen a Honda Stream.

On the same day that petrol went up to $3.59 a gallon, crude dropped to $63 a barrel. Quick history check: same week last year, crude was $74 a barrel ( source ) and petrol at the pump was $2.78. ( source ) Factor out the various taxes and such and the simple fact is that the oil giants are making about 70¢ more profit per gallon today than they were this time last year. And people still aren't complaining. Why? It means the average motorist is willingly giving the oil companies an extra 7 bucks to fill up their car without question! Coincidentally, and this has nothing at all to do with memorial day having just passed, the refineries that have been offline are starting up again today, and wonder of wonders, the situation in Nigeria has settled down.

Big news! FatDyke O'Donnell has left something or other. A TV show I think. Whatever. It's not like she has any bearing on anything that's going to affect anyone's life in the real world. It irritates me when gaseous wastes of space get all worked up thinking they're more important than they really area, especially 200-kilo hippos like her.

Suh-weet . To get the hang of the tablesaw, I made a mini cupboard / cover for the water shutoff that's been sticking out of the wall downstairs for the last 12 months since we had it changed. Everything fit together pretty well even though I did forget to double check the finished sizes of the top and bottom bits so it's a couple of mm wider at the bottom than it is at the top. But hey - I've popped my tablesaw cherry now so it's onwards and upwards.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing in a commercial on TV last night. Volvo have a new "safety" system in their cars now - a collision warning system. A radar sensor is designed to monitor the area in front of the car. If the driver does not react when the car approaches another vehicle from behind, a red light is reflected on the windscreen and a buzzer sounds to alert them of the impending crash. The commercial was brilliant in its utter retardedness; it shows a woman driving along whilst looking down on her passenger seat, riffling through a pile of papers. The buzzer sounds and she looks up to see she's about to crash and applies the brake. .....!..... It's not bad enough that these super-cossetting steel cocoons are turning marginal drivers into bad drivers, now Vulva are actually implying in their commercials that it's perfectly OK to be driving whilst paying no attention to the road in front of you. This is another in a long-line of so-called "sa

I just made the mistake of watching a couple of minutes of Nascar racing. Quite apart from the so-called 'racing' being interminably boring, the commentators are hysterical. They're quintessential rednecks from their accents to the words they choose. For the most part they appear to be just stringing words together randomly. "Whul I tell ya - that thar car is haulin' the mail ya. That riiight thar is the whole reason fur havin' a spotter cos y'all gotta know that car's there even when yer racin'" Shit it's funny to listen to. It's like listening to four Bill Engvalls. And just before I flicked off, they were talking about some guy who was having a power steering problem. Why do you need have power steering in a car that only ever turns left? Especially a closed-wheel racer that has no aero load on the tyres. That's almost as dumb as the concept of Nascar itself.

I'm home again after the longest friday of my life. Going forwards across the international dateline will do that for you. My best guess is that friday lasted 39 hours for me. Good news is I was able to sleep quite a lot on the flight back so I wasn't a total zombie when I got home. Although we did get an interesting welcome back - an earlier-than-expected introduction to Utah drivers. As we taxi'd out from LAX to takeoff, we came to a screeching halt - our pilot nearly drove us into an Alaskan Airlines 737 as he turned on to an active taxiway without looking (I guess). I mean all the passengers saw the Alaskan 737 coming, and there was a sphincter-factor-ten moment as it looked like we were going to collide with him. Oh - and would you believe it? My luggage made it all the way back with me two. That's really unusual. Given the way Karma works I suspect something terrible is going to happen now so I'll pay for my unusual good fortune of travelling with my luggage.