TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

The Dukes of Hazard is a movie that I wanted to see when it was released in 2005 but didn't because, well, I just didn't get around to it. Not only that but when I heard Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson were in it my expectations were immediately lowered to "it's probably not going to be what I hoped it could be." Which is why I've never been pro-active about hiring the movie on DVD. Last night I saw it was being shown on free to air TV. I happened to have the time to watch, so I did. To sum up my experience... I didn't get fired up by the movie until I watched the 'bloopers' in the end credits. The Dukes of Hazard signature is the car. The General Lee flying through the air in some flat out impossible jumps. We know they're impossible jumps but they're just so cool you kind of want to believe the General Lee can do them. The point is, in the TV series, you never (or rarely) saw the General Lee not land safely and undamaged. Thus, seei...

What is going on with John McCain and his Presidential campaign music selection? For someone who is in the running for, arguably, one of the world's most powerful jobs you'd think he'd have someone who could contact a musician or two and ask, "Can we use your song?" In what seems to be a growing list of disgruntled musical acts John McCain has managed to get the backs up of The Foo Fighters ( My Hero ), Survivor ( Eye of the Tiger ), Van Halen ( Right Now ), John Mellancamp ( Pink Houses and Our Country ), Jackson Brown ( Running on Empty ) and, if you add running mate Sarah Palin to the list, Heart ( Barracuda ) and Bon Jovi ( Who Says You Can't Go Home ). Come on John! You're supposed to be a man with influential connections. If you can't even connect with a musician's agent to see how their client feels about you using their song then what hope can anyone have in you when it comes to your foreign policy and extending U.S. Goodwill beyond the b...

This week I spent a couple of afternoons underneath a green 'frog' van (see photo) that my partner's brother got given and offered to my partner for her son to drive until he can afford something better. The van its self is a 1989, Nissan, Vanette, ex-delivery vehicle. It had blown a head gasket and the owner didn't want the hassle of making the repair which, if done professionally, would have cost more than the van was worth. My partner's brother and his backyard mechanic mate kindly offered to do the repairs which turned out to be a little more serious with the cylinder head having blown as well. Now if you're not really an engine kind of person you're probably starting to scratch your head at words like 'gasket' and 'cylinder head'. I'm not really an engine person either however I do know the 'broad strokes' of engine components and how they work. I learned most of what I know during my childhood years. Endlessly studying diagr...

Well okay maybe the lovable little red racing car, that has his own TV show, Roary the Racing Car , isn't evil but I do suspect he's into brain washing. Subliminally teaching everyone his life lessons. How else do you explain a fully grown adult, namely me, waking up in the morning from a dream about Roary? Before your mind begins to wander, it's nothing even remotely perverse (or maybe it is, depending on how you look at things), my dream was simply playing out like a typical episode of Roary the Racing Car. Perhaps we should back up a bit. In your best 'Big Chris' voice say "Come on Roary!" This all starts because I do my daily work out routine watching Judge Judy . Exercise is as boring as hell (oh dear, coarse language) so I watch TV whilst I go through my routine. At 3pm the most intelligent show on the box is, you guessed it, Judge Judy. Her show is only 30 minutes long and my routine is an hour so at 3:30pm I need something else to watch. Channel fl...

Sorry to harp on about the U.S. Economic Crisis (which is apparently a 'World Crisis' with the English and German markets taking a dive - I think - who cares really?) but I happened to be skimming through my Mashable feed and came across this article by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins, How Technology Can Help Alleviate Economic Fears . Mark is one person who understands difficult economic times from the point of view of the 'common man' (or 'common woman' in his more feminine moments so I can be a bit PC) and realises that Stock Market fluctuations mean very little in the big scheme of things to the little people. Which is not to say it doesn't affect us. As I pointed out in my recent post, The U.S. Economic Crisis - Bring It On , in times of crisis us little people make the best with what we have to work with. We don't fall in a heap hoping that Mom (or the Government) will come and make it all go away (How's that buy out working for you? Crisis over -...

This morning I feel like I've lost an hour of my life. Is this how alien abductees feel when they say they're missing time that they can't account for? Apparently everyone in the state of South Australia is also feeling the same way. This smells of Government Conspiracy! Some time last night, I'm told, around 2am the clocks never made it to 2:01am. In no time at all it was 3am and I have no idea what happened between two and three? I hope I had fun though, since I was sleeping, anything could have happened. Did we all just move our clocks forward for daylight saving or were we collectively abducted for an hour of lost time? Think about it. Few people are actually awake at the official time of 2am - when the clocks were moved forward. There has to be a reason they want us sleeping? Why not move the clocks forward at 8pm so all the little kids could stay up late and see what 9pm looks like? When we set the clocks back an hour, is that the hour that we lost? Is everything ...

Lately I've taken to listening to the Michael Groff show in the mornings (whilst I wash the dishes) because his show is intelligent commentary on issues mixed with humorous satire. Whilst he claims to call U.S. Politics like he sees it, he does have Republican leanings in the same way I would have Democratic leanings (if I were a U.S. citizen). By that I mean we both can be cynical about all sides of politics but at the end of the day, if we had to vote, I think Mike leans more towards the conservatives. It's just a sense I get about him and his show. Yesterday Mike made an interesting observation about conspiracy theorists. You know those people that think the U.S. Government can control the weather or that 9/11 was an inside job etc. To sum up his point he observed that George Bush is widely regarded as the dumbest U.S. president to date. Yet conspiracy theorists credit his administration with all kinds of complex, highly planned, covert operations intended to deceive the Am...

I am well aware that if the U.S. Government doesn't act to bail out Wall Street that the U.S. Economic Crisis will eventually affect me financially too - even though I live in a smallish country town in South Australia. However I say the U.S. government shouldn't spend a single dime on Wall Street. Bring on the crisis! This morning I was listening to the Michael Groff show on Internet radio and he was telling me why I should be very concerned about the U.S. Economic Crisis and the Wall Street crash. He said that if the American People and congress didn't support the government bail out plan, there would be chaos. That you may as well take your family, retreat to a farm somewhere and protect what little you have with a gun - because that is how bad it will get. Then in the next sentence he said that he wasn't trying to be alarmist. Despite that he personally didn't want the government to bail out wall street but because of the potential consequences it was the '...