What do your eyes say

Your eyes are the windows to your soul. What type of eyes do you have?

CLOSED EYES You have Closed Eyes! Positive Traits: Intelligent, Creative, Imaginative, Loyal, Honourable Negative Traits: Depressed, Withdrawn, Pessimistic, Fatalistic, Avoidant Take this quiz! Quizilla |

I have tried iridology and my major traits are that I have a very robust constitution, which is true. I am very rarely sick. I am not sure it would pick up pyschological traits. I think that this result is fair.

When I was in Primary School, I can remember this from bullying classmates.

"Blue Eyes True Eyes Green Eyes Tell Lies"

I have green eyes. Kids can be so cruel.

Thanks JMB Hope your cruise is going well.

This makes the Toyota Advert look pretty slick

Not having lived in a high rise, I cannot really comment on the likelihood of this working on a regular basis.

Thanks Guthrum the Old and Ian Grey the not so Old

Massive U Turn by China after International Pressure

Beijing has given in to international pressure and promised to change it's ways. While it is resolute on the Tibet issue, some jumped up athletic prima donnas have forced a major cultural change in the way pooping will be conducted during the Olympics.

If you are stuck with the squat toilet, here is how you go about it.

Approach the squat toilet apprehensively and make sure it's not covered in stool. If it is covered in stool, choose another stall. If another stall is not available, accept the cards that have been dealt you. This is a good time to come up with a title for your experience such as My Great B.M. Adventure or Disgusticon One.

Close the door to the stall, knowing full well the handle has more germs on it than the entire population of Botswana.

Place your feet on the appropriate foot grids, assuming they are not covered in stool. If they are covered in stool, place your feet on the least fouled space you can find, being careful to maintain balance.

Unfasten and drop your trousers and underpants, making sure that they do not make contact with the urine and stool covered surface area.

Grimace and ask yourself if a country with such a toilet can or should ever be a superpower.

This is only part of it and yes I know that this is way too much information, but based on my own experience, this is pretty close to the mark. And as for those 8 foot 10 basketballers, I can feel your pain as you squat and can understand why you would want the change.

Now all you have to do is to use some of this persuasive stuff and take up the Tibet issue.

Happy Easter Week

Happy Easter from The Easter Bunny

and from Mrs Easter Bunny

and from the cutie Easter Bunnies

and from Ben and Daisy the real Easter Bunnies

and from before Easter Lunch

and after Easter Lunch

and from Ryan and his class mates

and Hannah and her classmates

Last night I was doing some shopping along with the masses at a Woolworths supermarket that I have not quite mastered in terms of its layout. Why are they all slightly different. I had found everything (well almost everything) and needed eggs, which despite having a prominantly labelled aisle, which I had failed to spot were all but invisible. I asked the checkout chick, who was bound to know and was quickly pointed over to the specials corner where hordes of shopping baskets were being filled with chocolate chickens and eggs to spread the joy. We both laughed when she realised that I was looking for the real thing. Even then she was not sure. I am sure Supermarkets lay things out this way to make you explore all aisles (and buy lots of unnecessary stuff).

I used to work in night fill and it was amazing to me how many products I didn't buy (and would never buy). Doing that kind of work, you were forced to discover the location of some very unnecessary and some borderline inedible products.


While on the Easter theme, I was looking for images for an Easter Bunny gag at work and came across this one. Very confronting image from 1942 in Hawaii, where even little kids had to have a gas mask. It certainly wouldn't want to make me want the Easter Bunny to come.

The Easter season in Hawaii coincides the year with the manufacture of "bunny" masks designed to provide gas protection for infants. The hoods are being made here by agencies working in cooperation with the office of civilian defense under the supervision of the department of chemical warfare.

Makes me feel lucky to live where and when we do. Humans have a great strength in dealing with adversity, but I prefer what I have.

On a more up beat note, Elizabeth bought a bunch of small Easter eggs and we left work early and the kids gave them out to their classmates. A very fun and rewarding end to a harrassing week of employment. I finally got to be the Easter Bunny after all. Now for four days of not too much. We will have our traditional easter egg hunt for the first time in our new house. Elizabeth has been doing that since the kids were little. Even although they are older, the lure of chocolate is very strong.

Many South Australians take to the road for this holiday to be with family. It is always considered quite a dangerous time because of some of the long distances that are travelled. One of the things that they do here during long weekends is driver reviver centres, where small communities on the road to wherever (there is a lot of that here in South Australia) host places where tired drivers can stop to take a break. I like that kind of community minded thinking that is very visible here. For me, packing the kids into the car after a long week at work and driving a long distance, I couldn't think of anything worse. We are staying home mostly. That is my kind of holiday at this stage in my life.

Happy Easter everyone, whatever you are doing.

Who Thought Blending Phones was Tricky

For all those of you who are frustrated with trying to make a Hollondaise Sauce, try this. It is the AK47 of blending tools.

There are many more and don't try this at home.

Delusions of Grandeur

Why Nauru is like Bear Stearns.

Nauruans were high on the hog on a mix of Bird Poo and Coral until they dug it all up and spent the money on frivolous things. And then along came Kevin Rudd and shut down their last cash cow, the immmigration detention centre with about two refugees and two hundred employees. Cash cow to beat all cash cows.

Nauruans realise that the party is well and truly over.

Now comes the hangover and then, with luck, some sort of recovery. But it will take squeaky clean governance, hard work and rock-solid investments for Pleasant Island to once again live up to its name.

It may not yet be paradise lost, but it is most definitely paradise postponed.

And delusional Bear Stearns employees, who believed that everything would always go up in value lost that bet when their customers smelled the roses.

The deal values Bear Stearns, which has been at the centre of the US mortgage debt crisis, at just $236m (£116m).

Its shares have lost 98% of their value since their high of $158 in April one year ago, when the bank was worth $18bn.

Sometimes life is just not as rosy as we would like to think it should be.

O'Bama Courts Irish Vote on St Patricks Day

Today is St Patricks Day here in Australia. I understand that it was moved to last Saturday in other parts of the world so as to not clash with holy Monday and offend Catholics. Australians don't really make a big deal about St Patricks Day unlike the totally over the top stuff I witnessed in America.

Thanks Mr Eugenides

Are You a Little Mad?

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer at Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It 'In.'

5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write 'For Smuggling Diamonds'

7. Finish All Your sentences with 'In Accordance With The Prophecy.'

8. Don t use any punctuation

9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.

10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat with a serious face.

11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is 'To Go.'

12. Sing Along At The Opera

13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme

14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day.

15. Five Days In Advance , Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're not In The Mood.

16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.

17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream 'I Won!, I Won!'

18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling 'Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!'

19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. 'Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.'

20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity is to keep thinking like you think.


I have tried a few of these and am still married and hold down a job. Must try wierder things.

Thanks Theo

Saturday Sing Along

I decided to start a new series of Happy Sing Along Songs to brighten up your day. I loved this one when I was little.

You can blame schoolspirit for this and you can rest easy. I am unlikely to be doing this regularly.

Photo Hunt: I Spy

I spy with my little eye a bike, a basket, some tassles, a bike helmet, two valves, a white t shirt, a pedal, two white tires, lots of spokes, one shoe, some strong muscles, a smile and Hannah.

I created an ISpy Blog for Ryan about a year ago. This is one of the posts.

photohunt

Obama Trading on Legacies from the 1960s

Inspiring Black Man 1963

Inspiring White Man 1961

Lucky Black Man 2008?

Slothfulfillment

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Very High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	High
Pride:	Low

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

I am too lazy to work out what sloth means.

Thanks James and Jams

Hillary's Running Mate Plans Run Aground

Ex-Governor Spitzer had a very telling self prophecy directed towards Obama earlier in the campaign that “he won’t be able to shuck and jive out of this one.”

Well put! Even in his wet dreams, he wont be escorting Hillary to the White House.

One less Super Delegate for the Clintonistas.

If it is in the news it must be true department

Now I am pretty open minded, but this one strains credibility. Great story all the same.

An American woman became stuck on her boyfriend’s toilet seat after sitting on it for two years, Kansas police say.

It is believed the 35-year-old woman’s skin had grown around the seat, with police still considering whether to lay any charges against her boyfriend in the bizarre case.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

The woman’s boyfriend said he brought her food and water and asked every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said.

"According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

Police are curious why the boyfriend waited two years before calling them to report that "there is something wrong with my girlfriend".

Macquarie National News

Who Says Local News is Boring?

Aussies the most vain?

Australians use cosmetic surgery on a higher per capita basis than Americans, forking out over $300 million for botox and the like last year.

There's been a 30 per cent growth in the industry last year, with the biggest growth in anti-wrinkle treatments mainly botox.

Other people chose to have dermal filler procedures to plump up lips, while some favoured laser treatments for scarring or hair removal.

And it's not just women, physicians have reported a 10 to 20 per cent increase in male clients last year, mainly seeking botox, acne-scarring treatments and facial vein surgery.

Botox, Beer and Barbies. All Aussie Icons? What would Crocodile Dundee say?

The Good Life II ?

Not since Felicity Kendall and her goofy husband dug up the back yard have I seen something so nutty in the self sustainability/home gardening department.

Fresh from Bag's Department of Nutty Ideas and Wrong Thinking, we have do it yourself bread making. Not the store bought packages in the bread maker, but plough the back yard and scatter variety.

Baker and organic food campaigner Andrew Whitley believes the answer lies in your back garden and that it's time, as he puts it, to "bake your lawn". He is launching the Real Bread Campaign.

"If wheat makes bread why not grow bread just like you grow vegetables. We think of it as being a massive prairie-style enterprise but it is just a plant like anything else. It's like grass.

I think that this is a more sensible scale.

Medical Round Up - Sexual Health

My sister in law is a medical representative and keeps me up to date on what is going on in that field. Here is her latest update.

In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin. Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of 'cocktails', 'highballs' and just a good old-fashioned 'stiff drink'. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

And now proof that sperm can think.


Thanks Dr Merhnaz

Get Entrecard See the World

One of the interesting impacts of Entrecard is the increasing range of countries from which, people visit this blog, even if it is just to drop a card.

Hello World.

Star Wars Meets the Avengers

If Star Wars was made in the 60s the intro would probably look like this. Very creative school project.

Thanks Duncan

Communist Republic of Barnsley 1 Nouveau Riche Ex Communist Republic of Chelski 0

I wonder what sorts of odds you could have got for any of Cardiff, West Bromwich Albion, Barnsley or Portsmouth getting to the semi finals of the FA Cup, far less all of them. What a great competition. Barnsley last reached the semi finals ten days before the Titanic sank. My friend Daniel who grew up there reckons it is the most significant day in the history of the town. Who said that there was more to football than life and death?

Would you rather be a Chelsea player or an England Cricketer or Brendan Nelson today? Or just for James, how about an English Rugby Player? I am a bit surprised that he was surprised by Scottish reaction to that kind of win, ugly or not it was a win over the Auld Enemy. As always, very sweet.

Try this one on the next unwanted telemarketer

Bush Killing Fields Montage

All Servicemen killed in Iraq.

Photo Hunt: Different

There are so many ways to look different.

photohunt

Fucking Elocution Lesson

Don't listen if you get fucking offended by the multiple uses of the very useful work fuck.

Thanks very fucking much to Ian the Entrecard Dropper Extraordinaire. He has this Drop Ranking, which I have never seen before Deeply committed - Deadly serious. A drop master

This Makes Televised Darts Look Cerebral

Strike 100 and Banzai to The Purple Turkey

Greenwashing Spreads to Beer

Not content with brewing crap beer, Fosters have decided to tackle the touchy feel green beer market. Not the lets get pissed St Patricks Day variety, but the latte sipping variety.

The new brew is, unimaginatively, called Cascade Green, and not only have all the greenhouse emissions, from the growing of the hops to the recycling of the green bottle and label, been included, but it's low-calorie, too.

Cascade Green's carbon offsets come from burning off methane gas from Tasmanian landfills and converting it to electricity, but will not include methane emissions derived from the beer's consumption.

The Fosters-owned boutique brewery is confident its rigorous certification process will stand up to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's clampdown on misleading environmentally friendly claims.

But does it taste any good? Gag!

My Love is Like 124,000 Red Red Roses

An Iranian woman has successfully claimed on her dowry with a court ordering her "stingy" husband to come up with 124,000 red roses which he promised in her dowry. Iranian women can claim on their dowry at any time. I wonder if she will get them all at once.

Not so romantic!

Lucky Escape for Lufthansa Plane

I have been in some pretty rough flights and landings, but nothing like this. Lucky! I suppose situations like these are why pilots get so much training and earn so much.

Australian Mortgage Holders Weep

Homeowners on variable interest rates in Australia face their gazillionth rate increase in the last year today. It must be excruciating, especially with more predicted in the not to distant future to rein in rampaging inflation. We are fixed for five years, which is good. My sister in law is selling their family home, which they worked very hard to get into because their period of fixed interest ends shortly. The revised repayments are unaffordable. This for somebody who lends for a bank. She knows what she is talking about.

This at a time when housing affordability is at its lowest for a generation and their is a huge under supply of affordable housing. Many of the factors driving this are external, with huge pent up demand for many Australian resources contributing to inflation.

At least it is not as bad as in the US.

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”

In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge—many once sold for well over $500,000—but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied.

McMansions as McSlums? as predicted for many years by James Howard Kunstler in Clusterfuck Nation.

The article addresses some of the underlying factors.

If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban communities, families may find that some of the suburbs’ other big advantages—better schools and safer communities—have eroded. Schooling and safety are likely to improve in urban areas, as those areas continue to gentrify; they may worsen in many suburbs if the tax base—often highly dependent on house values and new development—deteriorates. Many of the fringe counties in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, for instance, are projecting big budget deficits in 2008. Only Washington itself is expecting a large surplus. Fifteen years ago, this budget situation was reversed.

This is ironic, because I lived in Washington DC when this was indeed exactly the opposite. People were fleeing the city with its corrupt and semi bankrupt municipal government, dangerous neighbourhoods and urban decline. Huge commuter communities were sprouting up anywhere with land and within a 1-2 hour commute of Washington. Not too bad when interest rates were low and petrol was around a dollar a gallon. Changed days now.

Another thing the article hints at and which is a growing trend here in Australia is the increasing numbers of people living alone in fairly large houses. There is a huge imbalance in the efficient use of the current housing stock.

Tricky issue, with no easy answers.

Is Mark Nicholas Unctuous?

Important issues such as whether Mark "GQ" Nicholas passes the mark as lead cricket presenter for Channel 9 here in Australia. I had to look up unctuous, but it would be hard to describe him better. Australia would have to be nine wickets down with 50 runs to get in the last two overs of a one day match for Nicholas to call the match as "in the balance".

I always thought it was a bit odd having the most polished pommy accent being the main media cheerleader for the Aussie Cricket Team on television. Sort of Richie Benaud, who was the voice of television cricket for me when I grew up, with a lot less class. That said, the resident Brit on the ABC Radio commentary is Peter Roebuck, who, more knowledegable, is still very annoying. He only has a cameo role however.

This person knows how to gauge Aussie opinion on this one. Not saying he is biased, but I have to agree with a lot of it. Aussies are passionate about the cricket team, but I doubt that they are looking for a cheer squad of one to state the bleedin' obvious. Insincerity does not go down too well here.

Our Sunflower Garden

The kids planted these as seeds just after we bought the house. They survived being transplanted from the front of the house to the back, where I built a narrow garden bed next the shed. They are now in full bloom and the bees are busy. Hot again here in Adelaide. Mid to high 30 degrees all week. Even sunflowers wilt in that heat.

Bill Predicts Ta Ta Hillary! Adios, Adieu, Goodnight

When I lived in America, people always thought that Bill Clinton had great political intuition. Seems they were right.

Photo Hunt: Party

Hannah had a party with her class for her last birthday. She documented the day with her new digital camera and this was one of the better photographs. The kids have moved school now and these memories are very special.

photohunt

More Photohunters.