Well I should warn you that what lays below is a space for whatever fills our tiny minds at any point in time. It is uncannily like what some "people on the internet" call a "blog". There I said it..blog..bloggity, blogdiddly bloggity blog. Ahem. We’ll be posting stuff about some of the other fun stuff we are up to, informal rants on why the world is so strange, music we are listening to, recipes and tips for good nail care. If you don’t like it then close your eyes.

According to a report issued by the United Nations, the use of robots around the home to mow lawns, vacuum floors and manage other chores is set to surge sevenfold by 2007 as more and more consumers snap up "smart" machines. According to the report 4.1 million domestic robots will likely be in use by the end of 2007 with vacuum cleaners making up the majority and sales of window-washing and pool-cleaning robots will be likely to grow.

Now maybe I am a little on the cautious side, but the idea of leaving a "robot" in control of a petrol powered, sharp bladed machine seems like a recipe for disaster. And what happens when they accidentally get the chips mixed up at the factory and the robot lawn mower thinks it’s a vacuum cleaner and wants to come inside? As for the idea of a robot pool cleaner, what will become of the rich trophy wives right to a hot Latino pool boy? Perhaps all she could hope for in our robotised future is a hot Latino pool bot?

Of course it doesn’t take a sci-fi novelist to tell us that it won’t be long before this race towards automation will blindly replace the majority of human tasks and endeavors until we are little more than jellified lumps being fed through tubes in front of a high definition tv, and as predicted on the wonderful Futurama, watching robot soapies, android crime shows and computer generated comedy.

Us puny humans don’t stand a chance!

I am not sure how long it will take for George Bush to realise and then either send his I.T. department on a one way field trip to Guantanamo Bay&nbspor nuke Google, but it seems that our Junior Bush has a slight marketing problem on his hands. As of the last two weeks (at least) when one types the word "failure" into the Google search engine, the very first entry to come up is the following:

George W. Bush
Biography of the 43rd President of the United States.
www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

It’s worth noting that this page is located on the official Whitehouse website.

Look I know it’s wrong and far too easy to make fun of illiterate fools but this was too good to pass up. Enough said.

Just a quick one that makes me laugh each time I see it. If you have had a quick scoot around our site you will have noticed in The Lab that we make mention of a shirt that hasn’t made it to production yet, "You’ve Got Shemale". Ok so please do whatever you can now to remove the image of Tom Hanks in a brassiere and suspenders or Meg Ryan with an uncomfortable bulge out of your head. Gone? Good we can proceed. Whilst trawling through our server traffic statistics I landed upon this most odd fact. It seems that over 15% of people who come to our site via a web search engine where searching for the term shemale and I can only assume where not interested in clothes. Now this brings Shirticus to a very interesting series of dilemnas. Do we revisit our business plan? Is this a potentially huge untapped market?  Have we been wasting our lives being straight?

Hmmm……if I mention the term Dwarf Porn will we receive visitors to our site who are looking for love in small packages? Time will tell and I promise to report back with my findings.

In the last weeks I have almost been overcome by a new musical discovery (new for me, not so new for others). I should first explain that I listen to music almost non stop during the day and when I find something that talks directly to my innards I fall in love (we are talking meet the parents, discuss marriage kind of love). I somehow stumbled across the Danish band Mew over at the net radio site Last FM (worth checking that site out - quite a cool setup and our brethren Hidden Shoal Recordings have their catalogue up for your listening pleasure). I think when I first listened to their second album, "Frengers", I was struck by an almost guilty kind of pleasure. I felt like I was hearing Europe doing Sigur Ros covers (bad description but perhaps an example of the border riding and hopping this band does. This was like progressive pop music or as they describe it somewhere on their site, Bliss Rock. Their latest offering, "And the Glass Handled Kites" builds on that album and as fast as you can say, "Damn the Danish" you find yourself slave to the cd, using it as a buffer against silence. The music is soaring, dripping in wonderful pop sensibilities and full of inventive and dare I say prog rock influenced arrangements. I think one of the things that really touches me about this band is the musical freedom they seem to allow themselves. By eschewing the rules of musical cool they have seemed to have made one of the coolest records this year.