Everyone is going to love these: push ringers. MobileTechNews - Emotive announces "Push Ringer" It means you get to choose the sound your phone makes when you ring someone, instead of the old-fashioned way of choosing the sound your phone makes when they ring you. Want them urgently? Send a screaming ring. Want to charm them? Send something from your iTunes.

How brilliantly, brilliantly anti-social. Wish I thought of it. Unfortunately, the press release looks like typical tech sector hype around something that doesn't really exist and won't work. How is everyone's phone going to be compatible with the push technology?

Meanwhile, in other new product news, a wine company hits on the idea of putting a picture on the label of the food that goes with the wine.

Gasp. You're meant to have food with wine? Who knew?

This concept plays on the insecurity people have about wine snobbery. It's true some flavours go together sensationally. But the wine industry should really be highlighting the way you can have whatever you like - anything can go with anything you want! The rest is just wine snobbery, and wine snobbery exists so that people can express their social identification through their drinking habits. When you think about it, it's a very queer way to make a statement about yourself.

I am going to experiment with this, by sampling a range of wines for the sole purpose, of course, of proving my point.

The UK Sunday papers are saying Tony Blair will go on 9 May and Gordon Brown won't be challenged. As Jay Leno said, so, President Bush has toppled yet another government.

Josie is very excited. Paris for the French elections, the UK for the end of Tony Blair's government. Makes you wonder what will happen when she gets to the US in late May.

Apropos that section 59 issue, Tina Fey said:

"Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted during an interview this week that he has smacked his children, though only because he believed reports that they were carrying weapons of mass destruction."

Here is what a map for the world would look like, based on where Walmart gets the products it sells: Benjamin Edwards: Works, Projects, Archive

The Warehouse map would look pretty much the same, no?

Is this important? No, I don't think it is.

[Via Marginal Revolution, where I also found Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal  of December 1900].

Three hundred million pamphlets have been delivered to French homes, containing taxpayer-funded appeals from each of the twelve Presidential candidates to voters. On Sunday, the French will vote.

I know you’re dying to understand it all.

Nearly everyone I know in France who can vote is voting for Nikolas Sarkozy and everyone thinks ultimately he will win. That is mainly a reflection of the wealthy area we live and privileged groups we mix with. Across France barely one in four voters will tick Sarkozy. He is consistently polling in the high twenties. The Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, is in the low to mid-twenties. If those two make it through to the second round run off between the two highest polling candidates, Sarkozy is polling a lead of a couple of points on average - not much more than a statistical dead heat.

But look closely. In the first round, Sarkozy is supported by a few percent who will end up voting for the ugly racist slug Jean Marie Le Pen. Second, Royal's support is much higher among younger voters, who have cell phones not landlines and who are therefore under-sampled. Some analysts think the gaps might close up, Le Pen will come up strongly, and Royal pull ahead in the second round.

Madame Royal's support dipped sharply in mid January and hasn't recovered. It almost all went straight to Francois Bayrou, He was touted for a few weeks as a 'centrist' but closer inspection revealed he is a run-of-the-mill European christian democrat. The basic idea of christian democracy is (a) post-war rejection of socialist softness on the soviets (so in Italy Romano Prodi could be a christian democrat who now governs with socialist support ); plus (b) corporatist economic policy based on industrial development of heavy industry; plus (c) a value system that says rich people should look after the poor as a charity project, intervene like a bunch of know-it-alls and take a paternalistic, slightly illiberal approach to social issues.

If Bayrou gets to the second round he will probably win. Everyone wants to stop whoever he would face more than they want to stop him. But his support peaked in February and he is now stuck in the high teens. Unless he can break more away from Sego, he is a goner. If he gets knocked out on Sunday some of his supporters will go to Sarkozy, but the majority will go back to Royal, from whence they came.

If you had to find a New Zealand politician like Ségolène Royal, it would be Laila Harré. She is striking, capable and intelligent, but prone to public sulkiness and completely unable to form alliances with anyone at all. She is easily the most left wing of Europe's major social democratic leaders, although she won the nomination by running to the right of her party and also promising to change France. Senior Socialists have refused to back Sego - like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is the closest the Socialists have to a potential third way finance minister; the genial vegetable Lionel Jospin, a lump of porridge who didn't make the second round as Socialist candidate last time; and Laurent Fabius, who was prime minister when the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior, helped orchestrate the cover up and now claims it was all nothing to do with him. Nice guy. Unlike Ms Harré, Sego has a compelling informal touch - some have speculated she may promote abandoning the formal 'vous' form, in favour of the familiar 'tu' - which would be a cultural revolution. She can be hardline on social issues - she supports compulsory military training for urban trouble-makers. She advocated more homes should fly the French flag with pride.

Royal has praised Britain's more flexible labour laws and low unemployment, though she has never met Tony Blair. Nikolas Sarkozy made a point of flying over to be photographed with him.

If M. Sarkozy were a New Zealander he would be a blend of Winston Peters and John Banks. He is frenetic, cynical, given to inflammatory language about social misfits, he hammers populist themes and he's somewhat cuddlier on close inspection than the brutish larriken-come-good image he likes to play in tv news clips. He advocates mildly right-of-centre economic reforms that would upset very few applecarts and on this score the Economist magazine is backing him. But he has spent ten years in government, achieved nothing and backed down every time there has been concerted opposition. There is no chance he will do anything much.

His support is mainly built around two pillars: Economic reform and immigration.

His platform pledges repeal of the 35-hour working week. He might have aimed for deep microeconomic reforms - why is there a law prohibiting shops from holding sales outside two mandated seasons? But opposition to micro-reform and deregulation runs very deep. It's just mad that most people cannot be paid to work longer hours even if they want to - they simply go on to salaries and do the extra hours unpaid. Meanwhile, misguided first-job protections have resulted in nearly everyone taking a first job that is unpaid. The jobs are called 'internships'. They are deeply exploitative opportunities to take on free labour. Employees get no protection but hope for employment references. Labour reforms are critical, but opposed by extraordinarily powerful unions and interest groups.

Everyone says they want the economy shaken up, but there is little consensus on how. Most American and British commentary claims the French economy is struggling. It isn't. It is under-performing on employment, and it is growing more slowly than it grew during thirty post-war years. But it has been growing at the average of developed countries in this decade, the French standard of living is far higher than ours, French companies are some of the most dynamic in the world, it owns more intellectual property than any country, it has many of the world's strongest brands, the world's most global retailer and ten of Europe's forty largest companies.

Sarko would try to style something like the nordic country reforms that have produced vital economies and still maintained high levels of social protection. They also have stingingly high tax rates.

Sarkozy's opposition to illegal immigration is a much more popular strength than economic reform. He subtly links immigration to crime and violence in the metro areas with the highest jobless rates - his talk of washing 'rascals' out with a brand of high pressure hose helped create the anger around last year's car-BQs in the Paris outskirts.

It's common to hear voters blame immigrants for causing unemployment in the same breath as condemning them for being so commonly unemployed. France has a vigorous belief in assimmilation. The 'equality' in its revolutionary slogan means everyone should be treated the same. Sarkozy is seen as threatening equality because he supports preferential positive discrimination for the disadvantaged urban young.

High levels of social exclusion, combined with France's comprehensive social protections, have left many taxpayers worried about paying welfare costs for outsiders. While the EU has brought a lot more East European workers into France, and they've had a share of resentment, veiled racist comments about French Africans and Arabs are ubiquituous in social conversation.

Sarkozy has made a central plank of his campaign total opposition to Turkey ever joining the EU. The policy is popular, but it would be disastrous. Turkey is a secular state with a higher per capita income than Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, which are all in the EU now (and Turkey ruled half of Europe back in the Ottoman days.) If Europe turns its back on a modern secular muslim state it will face a century of instability.

Opposition to Turkey is not limited to the right, however. There is a brace of Trotsykites and unreformed communists representing various shades of the insane left, and hogging nearly ten percent of the vote mainly by dressing up their anti-foreigner messages as being pro-worker. Most have run for President before and last time round they knocked the left clean out of the race, leaving the final round a non-contest between Le Pen and Slaphead Jack (Chirac). Royal fears their power to do the same this time too, while Sarkozy is fending off a couple of swivel-eyed rural conservatives. Far left posters appeared alongside those of neo-fascists opposing the EU constitution in 2005 and while the rhetoric is very different it's still very hard to see how far left and far right here differ on major economic and social issues. Bayrou aside, polls indicate there has so far been no surge from the outside this time.

The promises of Sarkozy and Royal have been independently costed and both would massively increase the rapidly growing public debt. Sarkozy probably has the greater ability to manage the economy better, but in a better world his opposition to Turkish EU membership - ever - would make him unelectable. As it is, he will probably go through to the second round as top qualifier.

Is that the dullest post headline in the history of the internets?

Anyway...Boing Boing posts this:

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced. Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

The act of posting, of course, being an example of exactly what the post is about.

As is the act of posting about the post.

As is...

Except in Italy.

Meanwhile...exactly!

one of the favorite topics of discussion on conservative blogs was the inevitable crash of the euro in favor of the mighty dollar. Most of this had nothing to do with any thought about economics but instead a general association between perceived penis size of your country and the value of its currency

What an abject humiliation it is to be reined over by these people: John Harris on what the weekend's events tell us about the class minefield that is Britain today | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited.

Why would anyone want to call themselves a 'subject' of these people? These people so up themselves that using the word 'toilet' or greeting someone with a form of words they don't care for is enough to have their entire family damned as unsuitable.

These up themselves poms, with no discernible personal qualities of their own beyond the ordinary somehow, see themselves fit to pronounce on the qualities of the people they leech on? And their 'subjects' invite that?

The royals and their hangers-on are leaking this stuff! They are revealing the core attitudes at the heart of monarchy. If you support the monarchy, it is necessary to subscribe to their views.

How emasculating. How self-hating. How humiliating. How repugnant the royals are to every value of modern civilisation, enlightenment and humanity.

Carlo's favourite breakfast cereal is Smacks.

"What cereal do you want today, Carlo?"

"Je voudrais Smacks, Daddy. Beaucoup Smacks."

I want Smacks, Daddy. A lot of Smacks.

So I suppose when that anti-smacking bill goes through he'll have to switch to Miel Pops.

Antarctica is haunted, apparently, by the ghosts of the Erebus crash. I'm sure this thoughtful and fantastically well- research article is a great comfort to the families of the passengers. (Oh - do ya think the editor looked at that piece before credulously running it?)

Accepting the truthiness of this story, a number of questions might be posed:

Do penguins have ghosts too?

Do living penguins get the ghosty heebie jeebie thing going on? Do they hear pecking in the night? Are ghost penguins spooked by ghost people?

Do the ghosts get...ummm...bored? You know, with all the ice and white stuff and the long, long winters?

What's that thing about only showing up when there is one living person around? Is there an ethereal tapu on haunting more than one person?

Who, or what, make the ecto rules?

Does anyone else think the ghosts are a bit, y'know - perverted? The whole peeping thing? The going 'boo' thang? How come only the perverts get ethereally preserved? Why don't normal, right-thinking ghosts rein in the perverts a little? Why don't they lean on the omni-present to give the living a little space and dignity? Just saying.

Do ghosts get cold? Why don't the ghosts go somewhere warm? Like those old people who retire to Miami. And Tauranga*.

Do ghosts in warmer climates take tourist trips down to the ice to see the wonders they never got the chance to check out while they were flesh?

Then there are the energy issues. We can safely assume that, since ghosts have a corporeal presence sufficient to produce endogenous energy (i.e. noise), they contribute to global warming. I mean, plainly, ghosts do not take in energy. The creation of noise (footsteps) is the creation of energy. That energy then changes its form - it can't be destroyed, so it must turn to heat. THIS IS WHY THE POLAR ICE CAPS ARE MELTING. Caspar's frying the ice!

Now, if we consider the seventy-five billion people who have lived and died, ever, and assume a proportion become ghosts eternally, exothermic** energy is only increasing. Every year. There is nothing we can do about it until we all stop dying. Or haunting. We should drive our 4WDs happily now, knowing it's not our fault. Climate Change is caused by the dead people!

* Possibly not everyone who retires to Tauranga is old. Some of them seem positively teenage.

** I don't have any idea what 'exothermic' means either. It just seemed like a clever, sciencey-sounding word to use right there in that sentence.***

***http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/hell.asp

This is a pretty good summary of the election campaign posters.

Something funny: everyone is given exactly the samer space for posters and a single company puts all the posters up, ensuring equal prominence for each candidate.

I don't agree with the comment that Ségolène Royal's posters look like something from the seventies. They are very hip.


(Poster came from here - a very readable blog on the elections.)

Sarko's posters are really tired.

The nutty far left posters are covered in manifestos no one will ever read.

The point is universally true: the more words on a poster or billboard, the less serious the candidate.

It was Josie's last day at work, so eighteen of us went here for dinner: KIWI CORNER

Eighteen was about six too many for the table. Oddly there was kangaroo on the menu, so we sang Waltzing Maltilda, shamefully, more lustily than we sand Pokarekare Ana.

We ordered Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. Yeeeahhhh. Sour, baby, how it should be. I had green-lipped mussels, sadly smothered in something crusty - though tastier than the European cockles that pass for mussels. And then I had possibly the best lamb I've enjoyed in France.

This is a detail from a card Maria made me for my return to France. Notice the cunning representation of France...

Putin is repellent: BBC NEWS | Europe | Kasparov arrested at Moscow rally

As we get ready to leave France, spring is setting in for the third time since we arrived. Yesterday the temperature gauge outyside the chemist here reached 29 degrees at 5 o'clock. I've sen it as low as minus seven, so I'll take it, although another gauge down the road indicated 26. It was more than shirtsleeves warm. The weekend forecast is up to 30.

The trees are putting on their twinkling green sparkle again. The tables falling out from the cafes are laughing and playing in the evening warm. Lovers are lighting up and flirting and the air has gone soft.

We'll miss this.

Just because someone is a good writer, musician or actor does not make them an expert political analyst, nor their views about the world more interesting. And, if we think of, say, Harold Pinter, the opinions of even bad writers can be stunningly dull as well.
But if artists are to be allowed to comment publicly I guess a writer is possibly more likely to say something funny. Kurt Vonnegut:

"So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget."

If you haven't read Galapagos, it's worth every page. Slaughterhouse Five I thought was a bit dire, but I might go back and read it again. I was put off Vonnegut for a long time because people said he was a science fiction writer. Bollocks. He writes hypothetically, which, when you think about, every fictionalist does.

"There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president."

Update: Brilliant - Kurt Vonnegut, R.I.P. - International Herald Tribune

You Are 50% Normal

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

Maria had her first harp lesson today.

At the end of it she played me Frere Jaques and claire de lune.

I know.

Meanwhile, Bernard Laporte backs Sarkozy; Yannick Noah is for Royal.

Ramos-Horta is trailing in East Timor.

This means Xanana might not become the Prime Minister to replace him. It means there might be a wholesale clean-out of the post-independence government.

As a fan and friend of Xanana I'm not so happy about this. As a democrat, this is fantastic. I wonder how many of the global media who queued up to describe Timor Leste as a failed state during last year's military unrest will now celebrate the democratic momentum? No, I don't wonder. None will.

"There's a big scandal going on with ... 'American Idol.' Sanjaya is apparently being kept on the show because there's a web site called votefortheworst.com, which urges the voters to vote for the worst possible choice. Bush heard about it and said, 'Hey, it worked for me.'" - Bill Maher

I'm sure everyone will think this is a story about how stupid George Bush is.

But it isn't. It's a story about how stupid the Ford Motor Company is.

Why would a car company design a car so that you can immolate yourself by putting a plug in the wrong hole?

Is it predictable that people might make mistakes?

There is a special school for the stupid where car designers are educated.

Campaigns were out in force in the market this morning, banging pamphlets into the hands of passers-by.

M. Sakozy had the most numbers out, Madame Royal's campaign looks the most professional and creative, and M Bayrou's was easily the most visible and energetic, with cheery smiles and bright orange shirts.

To a political communications strategist like, say, me, the campaigns with only days to go before a vote look moronic. They are all handing out multi-page booklets. Well who the hell is going to read them? They should be handing out materials focused sharply on their political advantage. None were.

Bayrou is fading. His campaign literature is dull. His supporters have that vacuous cheery grin of time-share sales stalls.

Le Pen's campaign was absent from the square, even though his polling approaches the levels of the leading three. Not surprising. Our market is the centre of one of only two electorates in France to have voted Yes! on the Euro constitution, whereas Le Pen is a belligerent racist prick and a holocaust celebrator.

Sarkozy's turn-out is not surprising. This is a rich area next to the township Neuilly where he made his political start as mayor at age 28. His campaign materials are diabolically bad. Dated, staid and uninspired. Analysts suspect he is getting some Le Pen support in polls that will switch away from him to the oink in the privacy of the voting booth. If that happens then Ségolene Royal will finish first and enter a run-off against Sarko - though she is still expected to lose the run-off section.

In recent weeks I have heard both negative and positive Royal comments increase. While the buffoonish right-wing press continue to hype Sarkozy (and soft-pedal Le Pen) and write in cartoonish slogans (Charles Bremner is a world-class tit) the election is no longer a referendum on Sarkozy. Royal has surged back by firing her socialist party machine and reverting to the casual insurgency that stormed France last year.

Who actually knows what either would do? Their campaign policies are either unbelievable or trite. Sarko, for example raves about immigrants fitting into French culture and speaks of headscarves in the same breath as female circumcision. Excuse me? His slogan - together, change is possible - is slick.

Ségolene has one I might steal somewhere: Respect for all, progress for each.

Not bad, eh?

The Queen of Paris bloggers, petite, lost her job last year and has won in the industrial tribunal. Must have been uncertain time for her, but from the outside the chance of an employer winning an industrial tribunal hearing in France seem fairly slim. Or unfairly...

You can see why she's the city's top blogger in this piece she's written for the New Statesman.

Anyway, apparently a central reason for firing her was that in her then-anonymous blog she called her boss a 'twunt.' Which, clearly, he is.

Word of the day, don't you think?

How to skin a rabbit.

(Not for the queasy.)

I've been reading this blog for ages. It's an excellent foodie insight. That hare is huge. Until it gets chopped up.

On Saturday, after wandering around the Marais for a while, where I bought a f.off pair of Italian leather boots and a €130 Cavalli belt (despite not even being gay), we went to the Lizard Lounge - described in some circles as the best bar in the world - where most of our group drank pink mojitos, though I eventually settled on a French vanilla martini.

Hmmm...

It's full of the 'turtle neck' Anglophile French men who only pounce on the women once their men are in the loo

May have happened, who knows? I was in the loo at the time.

On Friday Carlo's school - ecole maternelle - held their spring break festival - fete du printemps - to end the pre-Easter term.

He has spent the last two weeks making his costume.


I put up some more photos over here.

We had dinner at Georges restaurant on top of the Georges Pompidou centre. Very cool ultra modern theme. Amazing view over Notre Dame and out to the Tour Eiffel (popular local land-marks, you know). Ridiculously over-priced. They even kindly offered to look after our coats and then whacked us €10 each to get the back. Plain food. Good cocktails.

The wait staff are mostly supermodels in very short skirts. They ignored us most of the night, which might have cut their sales by half. I told Daniel, who was over from NZ, I would try to get their attention to order. He said he had spent most of his life trying to work out how to get the attention of beautiful women and felt right at home being ignored.

Did I mention the post-modern décor? Okay it was cool.

The next night we dined here, Au Petite Riche.

Food and wine from the Loire, with that distinctive French heavy emphasis on protein. When the fois gras arrived Victoria from NZ and I stopped talking while the rest of table gabbed, because something that good leaves no room to be doing anything else with your mouth.

The walls are hung with signed photos of every minor French celebrity from the young Jacques Chirac (1971) and not so young Franky Mitterand, to gorgeous Catherine De Neuve.

Who ever links to an advert? Nobody. No one links to ads. But this is cool - everyone in the world should link to it, just so you can see a very cool way to sell a book.

Also, our friend Alexandra has started a new business helping expats settle into Paris. I made her website.

Yet another example of the idiocy that infects commentary about trade...

In a plausibly sensible article, Philip Bowring goes from arguing in the first two pars that it is unlikely either South Korea or the US would have bothered with their 'free' trade deal "if they believed there was a realistic chance now that the Doha Round of trade negotiations would have a positive outcome" to saying with terrible certainty a mere twelve paragraphs later, "In theory, these deals might add up to freer trade, but in practice multilateral agreements - preferably global ones - are the only ones that deliver it."

In other words, things that never happen deliver the most.

No wonder then his point is both that the agreement should never have been made and it must not be rejected.

Everyone paying far too much for food and agricultural products is fine. But everyone paying the same for music? There needs to be an inquiry.

They must have really wanted that drink.

A French TGV train broke a world speed record on Tuesday as it hurtled down a newly built track at 574.8 kilometres per hour (357 mph) in the Champagne region.

From about 380 kph, vibrations in the train became more and more noticeable. At 490 kph passengers started to get slightly dizzy. At 540 kph it became difficult to remain standing up despite the stability of the train.

Italy makes a tank that goes faster. But only in reverse.

In France, apparently, there is one April fool's joke. Prepare yourself for this.

Oh what an hilarious jape.

Before I tell you, make sure you put on some tight clothing or some such to ensure you don't split your sides.

Ready? OK.

Every April first they put a paper fish on each other's backs. And laugh heartily.

That's it.

That's the French April fool joke.

So ubiquitous is this humour, the day is called, not April Fools, but 'poisson d'Aprile'.

Maria came home yesterday. April second.

She produced a piece of paper and asked me to show her how to draw a fish. I saw her concentrating very hard with a pair of scissors. Then she came up to me and said 'Dad you've got something on your back!' And craftily sellotaped her handiwork on in a way I would not have noticed at all if I had been unconscious. Maria and Carlo manoeuvred around behind me, pointed and giggled and slapped each other with pleasure.

Later when Mummy came home the kids greeted her with a furtive hug from behind. After a few minutes I pointed to Mummy's back and said 'oh look, there is a fish on your back.' I may have said it in the flat inevitable monotone of the straight guy setting up the zinger.

"Oh what's this? Who put this fish here?"

Maria, whom I think we can now agree is fully French, laughed so much she actually fell off her chair. We will have to sew up her sides.

"Maria, your French is getting really good!"

"Yeah. Maitresse telled me I speaked really goodly."

The European Union insists that Russia should open its gas pipeline, saying "We are seeking a level playing field, a win-win for both sides."

Opening the gas pipeline "would make prices more transparent. Consumers would also have more choices for their suppliers, and European industry could become more competitive as a result of cheaper energy," the EU Commissioner says.

Just as in agriculture, for example. The average EU tariff for agricultural products is 18.6 percent. It is 146 percent for frozen beef and 168 percent for skim milk powder.

Meanwhile the US is adopting "a new policy" of imposing tariffs on Chinese manufactured goods on the grounds that its government subsidies violated international trade laws.

"The message that we have been sending all along to all of our trading partners is that we want fair trade and that we will use every tool at our disposal to guarantee that our workers and our companies have a level playing field," the US trade secretary says.

The US has a tariff on our whey powder of 108 percent, on dairy spreads of 122 percent and on butter of 92 percent.

The more choices we have, the more likely we are to make a sub-optimal choice, and therefore the more likely we are to be unhappy with our lot.

According to this fashionable theory...

If I have to choose between, say, black and white, I am very likely to make the right choice.

If I have to choose between black, white, red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, grey, cream and magenta, I am less likely to make the right choice. (Not brown. No one would choose brown).

And if I have the choose between every single colour anywhere, then the chances of getting the choice exactly right are tiny.

The more colours, the greater the likelihood of picking the wrong one.

Knowing I haven't got the best is depressing. Therefore, the more choice I have the more likely it is that a depressing outcome will result (although 'greater likelihood of depressing' is not the same as 'more depressing').

Thus, voila, this will only make me sad.

Though one would not have thought so.

This thing is gorgeous.



Imagine getting one of those under you and riding with the wind in your hair...

Yeah baby, don't tell yo mama, you know you want to.