It is pissistantly pouring down ‘ere in ‘Ampshire, in fact it hasn’t stopped since I washed the car.
It is as dark as a dark thing can be in a very dark place and very muggy, as soon as I drove off in the car the mobile rang, so I stopped to answer it (as you do) and was assailed by someone who wants me to upgrade to a new phone which would give me half a million minutes a day and endless texts, for five pence a year; my reply was “no thank you” yeah right, so I set off again and my mobile rang, I stopped (as you do) and it was a text, from someone who wanted me to upgrade..................., so, after I switched the phone off I drove to the smash and grab (Tesco) to do my weekly gruel buying.
Tesco it seems thinks it has become a post office, the nicotine fix and magazine counter has been “revamped” complete with flashing LED sign that says “cashier number 2” or some such bollocks, and there are four tills each with a number which are “taped off” with those standy uppy Barrier thingys which are too narrow to take your trolley down.
The snags are that the entry to the sacred nicotine fix and magazine counter is at the far end, and they have had to employ someone to tell people that fact, because all and sundry have been going in the out and out of the in.
The other snag is that only two of the tills are manned which is what we had before, so a message to the management: leave it as it was, it worked perfectly well and we customers are quite capable of sorting ourselves out without your help.
Moan over:
First up:
Australian artist Van Thanh Rudd's work, on display at Off The Kerb gallery in Melbourne, is entering uncharted territory with his asking price.
Rudd claims the work contains a small piece of an Afghan civilian car, destroyed by an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) missile in southern Afghanistan.
"All art must be priced and the price paid by victims of war is astronomical. So my price tag should reflect this," he said.
"I know it's beyond reason to put $1.2 billion on this object, but everything out there in the global market place is extremely devoid of reason. The global recession is showing us this."
Rudd says his pricing analysis included a breakdown of the multi-trillion dollar US war budget in the Middle East since 2001, and other variables such as the cost of civilians and soldiers wounded.
Once he came up with the figure, he instructed the gallery director to put it in the catalogue.
Off The Kerb's director Shini Pararajasingham says the work is probably uninsurable.
Damien Hirst's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever set the record for the most expensive single artist auction - going for $203 million in 2008.
If Rudd's Used Car Part sold it would eclipse this figure - although Rudd admits a sale is unlikely.
"Christies and Sotheby’s would no doubt argue that my piece is unsellable," he said.
"This is totally the point."
Easier than actually producing real art I suppose.
Puma store in Barnaby Street, London, have decided to make an F1 Ferrari out of clothes worth £40,000.
The car is made from a staggering 1,999 items - including 1,682 t-shirts, 88 pairs of jeans, 64 pairs of shoes and 31 belts.
A team of eight people worked for five hours to turn the pile of clothes into a model of Kimi Raikkonen's motor.
Designers sketched the 14-feet long car by hand and spent a week in a studio experimenting with thousands of items of clothing.
They then made the finished product in the store overnight.
The wheels on the impressive car are made from water bottles, the wing mirror from sun glasses and the harness from a backpack.
Black jeans are used for the tyres and red t-shirts give the car its classic Ferrari colour.
Formula1 fans have been visiting the store to admire the work but are banned from touching it or sitting in it because it is so fragile.
A time-lapse video showing the team making the car has been watched more than 130,000 times on the internet.
Creative director Peter Hale, from GBH Design, said: "The Formula1 car was great fun to make and looks great.
"We worked like a pit crew when making it - each person piecing a different part of the car together.
"The hardest part was getting enough clothing delivered to our studio so we could figure out what to put where.
"We needed so much stock we had to place a special order and get things shipped in from Germany.
Puma is the official supplier of clothing to the Ferrari team.
Anyone want to buy a red t-shirt or some jeans that have been lying on the floor?
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” which is the correct quote, I checked with Ask Yahoo so it must be right.
PASADENA, Texas - Authorities say a Houston-area woman who was burned up (annoyed?) at her former common-law husband fried their pet goldfish and ate some of them.
Pasadena police say it's a civil matter and no charges will be filed. The seven goldfish were purchased together by the couple during happier times.
Police spokesman Vance Mitchell says the man reported on Saturday that the woman took the goldfish from his apartment.
Mitchell says the two argued earlier about some jewellery the man had given her but took back. She wanted the jewellery returned.
Officers who were dispatched to the woman's home arrived to find four fried goldfish on a plate. The woman said she already ate the other three.
What no chips, or is it fries?
And finally:
One retailer is selling half Christmas trees this year.
The artificial tree appears bushy and full from the front, but it is an illusion. It has been sliced down the middle, so it has no back, allowing owners to push the Christmas tee against their sitting room walls, saving valuable space.
B&Q, which are stocking the £29.98 trees, is confident it will prove a hit with owners of bijou pads in lofts and newbuild flats across the country, keen to decorate their homes with Dickensian lavishness even if their homes would struggle to fit in the Cratchits' turkey.
The 6 foot high trees hit the market just a few months after a damning report by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), which suggested newbuild homes are increasingly cramped, with the majority of owners complaining they did not have enough space.
Elaine Walter, Christmas buyer at B&Q said: “In modern small houses, saving space is crucial, and as a result compact products are much in demand. These half Christmas trees are being introduced to help create that same warm festive look, using half the space and decorated in half the time.”
Tom Bolton at Cabe said: "These are rather clever. Christmas trees take up a lot of space at the best of times and B&Q is just reacting to what their customers have told them – furniture needs to take up less space."
But shouldn’t it be half the price?
