TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

There's a new arrival in my studio. An alien. He didn't arrive in anything so primitive as a space ship, being much more evolved than that. In fact, he kind of evolved from house hold items like paper and card. He has soft drink bottle eyes. He doesn't say much...perhaps it's difficult when your mouth is painted on? His brain is crumpled newspaper so were he to speak he'd probably verbalise the newsprint in his head. Hopefully not the fashion pages or the sports section. I'm sure he has plenty he wants to tell you but for now we're just learning to communicate. There's an alien in my studio. A welcome new arrival.

I was going to call this article 'Me and the Lawnmower' however, apparently, it is grammatically incorrect to put yourself first. Were it not for grammar I would certainly not put the lawnmower first. Let me tell you about the lawnmower... Our family owns a second hand lawnmower that we bought so we could cut our own lawns (obvious really...I mean what else do you use a lawnmower for?). The lawnmower and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate the lawnmower and it loves to plot ways to make me hate it even more every time I use it. Typically, at first, it was fantastic. Started easily and did the job no problems. It was only once it became difficult to start that the wheels started to fall off. Well, not so much fall off, as split in half. Our lawnmower has half a back wheel. It's still a full circle but imagine that sliced in two like slicing off a piece of met worst or cucumber. After that it was never the same. Every time I wheeled it out to mow the lawn it was a battle ...

Have you heard the term 'Net Neutrality' and wondered what all the fuss is about? This documentary by four eyed monsters explains it in everyday language and draws parallels with newspaper and radio for how the every day person lost access to open, mass media communication in those mediums. Essentially it's about Phone companies in the USA wanting to control the Internet through charging for different types of media as it is uploaded and/or downloaded to and from the net. For example it might cost you an additional fee to upload a video file to share with your friends. Currently you can upload as many videos as you like for whatever it costs you to be connected to the Internet but think of this cost for uploading each video file as an additional cost to being connected. These additional costs could be applied to all manner of files from email, pdf files, mp3 songs etc. etc. Remember how it's said that it costs virtually nothing to send an email? Potentially the phon...