Sweet things

How's this for delicious The Remarkable Sweet Shop
their fudge looks like my absolute favourite fudge in the world (you can buy it in Hanmer)


A few of us went on Sunday to visit Juliet's Riverside Cottage in Amberley. It was built in the 1860s and even boasts a bedroom with a four poster, open fire and a window seat. It is idyllic and I forgot how dark and starry the sky is out in the country.

Radiation/The Arms Race/Disasters

Was just reminded today of one of the topics I find perenially fascinating. This site is the story of Elena, a motorbike rider whose favourite destinations leads her North from Kiev, towards the Chernobyl "dead zone".

A lot of people my age have strong memories of that 80s nuclear/radiation fear. I did a school project with all the half lifes of various radioactive elements based around an article in the Southland Times about what would happen if a bomb hit Invercargill.

Remember

• Threads - the British tv series
• The Day After
• and Edge of Darkness - one of the best tv series ever. It starred Bob Peck as a policeman trying to find out what killed his activist daughter. I've got the dvd.

I read this book earlier this year The radioactive boy scout : the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor by Ken Silverstein. Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments - building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion - were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed.

David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. (Ironically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was his number one source of information.) Scavenging antiques stores and junkyards for old-fashioned smoke detectors and gas lanterns - both of which contain small amounts of radioactive material - and following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town's forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah.

Earlier in the year I read a whole series of books about disasters:

• Ablaze: the story of the heroes and victims of Chernobyl by Piers Paul Read
• We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families : stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. I haven't seen the movie "Hotel Rwanda" yet but the same guy is mentioned in here. It is devastating reading.
• Five past midnight in Bhopal by Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro. I didn't know much about this before reading the book. In 1984 a cloud of toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide, the American pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal, killing 16,000-30,000 and injuring half a million people.
• A time to die : the Kursk disaster by Robert Moore. At 10.30am on Saturday August 12, 2000, two explosions shook the icy Artic waters of the Barents Sea. One of the largest and most technologically advanced nuclear subs in the world, carrying a crew of 118 Russian sailors, had rapidly crashed to the ocean floor..

karaoke

You'll just have to trust me that the following descriptions are true. It will sound like I am exaggerating, but I'm not. Karaoke competition finale last night. The stars were out and the highlights were:

1. She looked splendid with a towering bright red beehive. Her 2nd outfit of the evening (I didn't know you changed outfits for each song, but all of the competitors did) was a purple sequin number, split right up, oh yes riiggght up, fishnets, boots, bingo wings. And she sung "Burning love". By the time she got to "hunka hunka burning love" I think I lost consciousness ...
2. A mullet. But not just any mullet. It was v long, and festooned with glitter ...
3. Speaking of which, I have never seen so much sparkle and sequins in one place. Even the men wore shirts so shiny they'd blind you at 40 paces.
4. He was over 50 and she, well, of indeterminate age. With white blonde hair and equally white tight trousers. They cut a rug, she curled her leg around him, there was murder on dancefloor, eyes averted. Dirty dancing ahoy
5. I forgot how cool the karaoke videos in the background are. One featured a lovely blonde woman leaning against the wall with a meaningful smile, and then laughing kissing her teddy bear and throwing it in the air.
6. The Welshmen arrived. Big and brawny boys from the Valley.

Speaking of which - Town is ahumming with Red fever. I have never seen so many tourists in Chch or people wearing the same outfits and travelling in packs.

I've another shameful addiction to add to the long long list. If "Big Brother" is on I find myself immobilised, even though I know the housemates are feral.

Adios amigos and amigettes

Hot and not

HOT

Alfonso Gomez

He is a Mexican angelic thug and it would be worth watching "The Contender" just to see him in his pimping sunglasses.


Murdoc

Watch the video for Feel Good Inc. Murdoc is the epitome of the hot rock star, bass from the depths of the earth, low slung pants, no shirt. Too bad he is a cartoon.


My new shoes - the 71st pair
Robert Clergerie from Paris (and the shoebox proclaims $595 but you know I didn't pay that babies). Soft satin bronze ribbon to tie round your ankles.


2 dozen roses in our lounge


Kimi Raikonnen
F1 ice monotone man

NOT

It's catchy yeah but how skanky is "Dontcha" by the Pussycat Dolls?
sample lyrics "Bet you wish your girlfriend was hot like me"
Hello, if you are so hot and irresistible Ms singer lady, why is he with her not you? Ay?

The return of NZ Idol
I can watch crap tv with the best of em but even I couldn't stomach it last time. It's bound to be worse in 05

the Crusade

I must mention one of the goals for this year ...
some people will join me in this quest TO DO THE SPLITS

Do you want to be able to gracefully slide into both front and side splits?
Yes?? check this out, this, this and let's get splitting

Inspirations:
Jean Claude van Damme
Sam Rockwell
martial arts movies