Just when you'd lost all hope...

Hi folks. It's me again. To those of you who were on the brink of hopelessness, contemplating suicide to end the utter desolation and emptiness, the nothingness and futility of a world without my blog updates...

...sorry about that. For everybody else, which would be all of you...how's things??

I would like to say that nothing's been happening so there's been nothing to report. That wouldn't really be true, but most of it involves little four wheeled machine business and spending money and you can find all that out by clicking here .

The new toy should be ready before Christmas. Whilst dismantling the old one to pilfer the engine and other parts, I discovered my silencer had broken in three places. I wonder how long it was like that? - he says, grinning quietly to himself at the notion that the motor might actually be coaxed to go FASTER...

But other things have happened. We've grown a little older, for a start. And that's non-trivial, because life is a journey.

We also went to the U2 concert. "We" being Sharon AND me. Which is scary. It's the second time the vast chasm which is our respective musical taste has actually met in the middle.

It was fantastic. Sure, Bono did his usual get-into-a-cause thing, and I don't see how paying $140 for a U2 ticket is going to make poverty history. If anything it's going to make poverty worse. But anyone who doesn't complain about Global Warming is alright with me. And I would put up with anything to hear the guitar chime of Beautiful Day...

The downer was we had to park at the Exhibition Centre and walk to the Docklands and Sharon was wearing the wrong shoes. The upside...the docklands are really nice.

Now that we're up to stage 58 water restrictions, our front lawn is brown and the back yard has no lawn at all. So the kids have a sandpit to play in and I didn't even have to build them one. At least the Bracks Government can blame Global Warming for the fact they had absolutely no preparation whatsoever for a drought.

You see, Global Warming only started happening immediately after the lastVictorian election, and nobody saw it coming. It had nothing to do with the screaming, bleeding heart, pagan humanist green-worshipping Left crying "Burn them!!!!" the moment someone mentioned making dams, or enlarging catchments. Nope, who could possibly have foreseen the sudden effect of 100 years of greenhouse gas.

Note carefully that I inscribe "Global Warming" with capitals so as to afford the appropriate respect to the deity of the Green religion. The messiah is Al Gore, who is still on his I'll-save-the-world-from-Global-Warming Tour. It's a worldwide tour, and Apostle Al (PBUH) flies busily about, in planes that belch hordes of greenhouse gases...

Currently there's an Inquisition to root out the heretics who are skeptical of the seriousness of Global Warming (peace be upon It). That includes those pesky scientists who just won't shut up with all their "facts" about largely cooler temperatures.

Then with all the healthy skeptics gone we will be panicked into making laws that planes must run on lentil juice. Planes will fall out of the sky and thousands will be killed, but it will all be worth it.

Religion comes in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes, huh?

Meanwhile Naomi has adpoted yet more Guinea Pigs, which further worsens the grass problem.
While Mum was over in October for 'Omi's birthday, she tripped over some piles of junk and discovered a spare room underneath it. There were no Egyptian Tombs, Hebraic stone etchings or anything else of note, mainly just odd socks, long disused toys and junk mail. I came home from work to find an elegantly decorated formal sitting room with two new suede chairs, a little coffee table replete with a marble chess set we picked up in Brazil ten years ago, and a rug.

I'm not sure where all the junk has gone but I'm sure it may have been shifted into one of those spare dimensions I talked about earlier in the 'blog.

I gotta go. There's a Greens party member at the door, I suspect they are arresting me for blaspheming the God of Global Warming. Tell my kids I lov...................

=end transmission=

A post about nothing

Yes, this is about nothing.

Haven't posted for a while because I've been busy driving performance cars, celebrating Naomi's TENTH (!!!) birthday, Mum's visit, and racing karts at Wakefield Park (link on right)

Catch y'all when I've got some time.

Peace out

Speaking of Cars...

Okay so we weren't but I'm going to anyway.

I have never won anything in my life. Not even a chook raffle.

Australia's best motoring mag, MOTOR, runs a series of tests annually to determine the Performance Car Of The Year (PCOTY). The journos like to pretend that the tests are arduous and hard work but really they can't hide that it is pure, unadulterated FUN. They do a competition allowing one lucky reader to join them in their tests. It was one of those "tell us in 25 words or less why..". So I did. And I won.



Scary sports car with fiery Italian temper







So, this weekend (14th 15th and 16th October), I will be touring around from a (secret) airfield in NSW to Winton raceway (I'm sure I've been there before) with a collection of MOTOR journos and the PCOTY finalists, which include: Porsche Cayman S, Aston Martin Vantage, Golf GTI, Subaru STI, Nissan 350Z, a handful of Falcon Turbo sixes, and some "wild card" entries which I've been told includes an Audi RS4, Mercedes CLK63 AMG and something called a Lamborghini Murcielago with a 471 kilowatt V12 Engine and all-wheel drive.

For those who aren't sure why I'm raving, here is a pictorial selection of some of the aforementioned vehicles.


Why is it that every Lotus Exige I see is bright orange? The one that pasted me at the Nurburgring last year was orange. This time, I might actually get to drive it!







Another Nurburgring memory. Emmmmmmmmmm Six








At last! Porsche have made something that doesn't look like a 911 or a Boxster. Instead, it looks like both...






Yes Miss Moneypenny...









A Datsun!! How nostalgic...






Umm....Wheeeeeeeee! (ran out of imaginative captions)







Sure, it would have been nice to win something that was transferable to cold hard cash, or, God forbid, something I could share with the rest of the family. But sometimes you just gotta do something that money can't buy (unless you have over three million dollars, of course).

Since the last competition was won, no doubt the magazine's lawyers swooped on the whole civilian-driving-performance-cars-fast thing and made the prize a little less potent. If you have the September edition of MOTOR you'll see what I mean. But hey, beggars can't be choosers and I will happily tag along and see what I get to drive/ thrash/ drool over.

It could be a real fizzer. We'll know by next Tuesday. But somehow I suspect it will all turn out juuust fine....

Ach Liebe!! Meine Auto!!

I hate cars. Sodding things they are (please excuse the profanity). Murphy's Law doesn't generally apply to us, but when it comes to cars...

We thought we were home and hosed when we bought an Uncle Cliff- approved VS Commodore (for much less than what Mum and Dad paid for theirs, I glibly add. Heh heh). Gone were the days of the Skyline's fun-but-fragile manner, where Sharon spent most of her time walking three kids to school after trying to start the damn thing (once again, please excuse the unseemly language) or just bailing out from the burning oil smell. Nope, now we have a common but reliable, popular and safe Australian mass-produced automobile.

Ach!! Despite some plans for something nice and different, common sense forces me into mediocrity

Buy a Commodore they said. Can't go wrong they said.

But NOOOOoo, even our new dependable Commodore can stop on the side of the road and give Sharon some enforced exercise with some annoying problem. Thanks to a dodgy ignition pack ($250). Two hundred and fifty bucks!! It's a Commodore! You're supposed to be able to fix them with bananas and fencing wire!

Maybe I should have bought a German car after all. So who's laughing now? Probably Mum and Dad with their one that actually works.

The Skyline you ask? It's having a ball doing what it's always wanted to do. We sold it to a guy with 5 acres who needed a paddock-basher for his annual Bathurst 1000 paddock races. Which reminds me. Nobody ring me on Sunday Oct 8th. I'll be watching Bathurst. I missed it last year on account of being overseas which was far more interesting. But I'm not overseas this year. So I'm watching Bathurst.

Before all this happened we decided to do one-third of a backyard makeover. I hired one of those Dingo-thingys to dig up some soil in order to lay some new grass in one section. Once that was done successfully, stage 2 water restrictions came into effect so now there's no point in laying anything that needs watering. Whacko. But it was all worth it just to play with the Dingo. They are more fun than they look. I even managed to pop a tyre off it's rim.

having long tired of conventional modes of transport, I recently tried something new. Even this thing broke down

With Sharon off horseriding last Saturday I had the kids all day so we took the new Common-door (pre-ignition failure) up to the You Yangs. The You Yangs is our local national park. It's main feature- lots of big rocks, and some kangaroos. And more rocks.

And Kangaroos.

No Sound of Music jokes please

Hey Dad! There are some girls down there here having a picnic and they're dressed all old-fashioned-like..

In other news Naomi's slutty guinea pig Anna (again please excuse the profanity) has gotten herself pregnant again and again, she does not know who the father is. But being a Christian family we graciously accept her in spite of her mortal sin and were all blessed with three more little newborn vermin sometime Sunday.

and well you might look guilty you promiscuous little rodent

And in far more interesting news I raced at Winton two Saturdays ago (last race on P-Plates! After that no more excuses). The results are now on www.laglerracing.blogspot.com , I can bore you with the details there. But as a small indication I went 14th to 6th in race one.

I can't think of any particular socio-political rant at the minute so you're all off the hook.