So with the nearest Super Bowl party 90 minutes away, I lamed out and watched Lost instead, catching a glimpse of the game and falling asleep just as the Colts put 10 points on the Saints at the end of the first quarter. And of course the first thing i did when I woke up this morning was start watching the ads. Some of them are 60 seconds of art genius.

Being the liberal left-learning environmentalist with hard-hitting conservative views, this ad was my favourite:

Closely followed by the beautiful simplicity of this.

You can watch them all here. Or go to the reviews that I read first by my friend-who-don’t-know-at-all-but-read-his-blog-a-lot, Brett.

Having just endured a horrible 5 minutes inside a card shop a mere two weeks before Valentine’s Day, a shope suddenly resplendent in the most garish reddish hues and sparkly bits possible, with so much tat filling shelf space that I had to pass my purchase through stacks of mugs and balloon strings to reach the cashier, a thought occurred to me.

Who on earth thinks a teddy bear with a heart is EVER an expression of love? If I received one of these mass-produced flea-magnets, I would take it as a direct indicator of a lack of love.

“Darling, I wont thank you for the bear, because clearly you don’t love me, and it is thus lying. Had you loved me, you would have listened to me in our conversations, observed my hobbies and pursuits and possibly bought me something that I would genuinely like and could convey the fact that you care for me and want me to enjoy and pursue my passions in life. As it is, you clearly don’t know me at all, or couldn’t be bothered to think of anything that would actually signify you cared about our relationship. Instead, you toddled to a card shop, shelled out a fiver and bought into some mindless corporate image of cutesiness. It’s over.”

Unless of course I had a particular obsession with cuddly toys, in which case love was clearly being demonstrated.

Things I like about the iPad:

• It’s sexy
• Multitouch is cooooool. And probably the only genuinely futuristic thing in it that was envisioned in my occaisional sci-fi youth.
• The screen looks sweet. Everything that looks sucky on iPods and iPhones will suddenly look gorgeous
• It appears to be everything that the MacBook Air wasn’t

Things I don’t like about the iPad:

• It has a lame name. Those jokes have already been made, most notably here.
• It doesn’t fit in my back pocket
• I will never read books on one of those things. Or a Kindle. Nothing will beat reading a battered paperback.
• No camera? Netbook win.
• I can’t make phone calls on it? Maybe not the biggest fail, but it would increase its usefulness.
• No multitasking. Anyone who has seen my desktop, or indeed any real-life desk of mine, knows that I only work with at least 10 tasks running (doesn’t necessarily mean I’m actually any good at it).

I believe Adolf Hitler expresses my sentiments best.

Via Discipl:, via cultofmac.com

I’ve decided to reactivate my twitter account. Not that it was ever actually deactivated, i just stopped using it. It’s all a part of some resolution to use my jobless days somewhat intelligently and to engage in interesting and meaningful discussion. I’ve been off it at least 6 months, I’m interested to see what’s out there again.

If you want to follow me you do that by clicking some buttons and entering KeepFishing (i still haven’t got the hang of all the at and hash symbols). And I make you all a promise, that if you do, you will never, ever, have to sit through a tweet about what I’m eating or what colour underpants I’m wearing (unless I’m going commando, cos that kind of awesomeness often needs to be shared).

Those of you who know me personally may well have heard me prattle on about the Sea Shepherds and their exploits in the Southern Ocean’s so-called Whale Wars, protests of seal clubbing in Newfoundland and the making of the film Sharkwater. Those who have heard these diatribes (calling them conversations would be unreasonable because a rarely allow a word in edgeways), will know that I don’t really like the organisation. More from an annoyance at their flimsy ’scientific’ justifications than anything else, and I’d be much happier if they just owned up and said ‘Whales and seals are cute and cuddly and we just love them too much to see them harvested. Look – we even give them names!’.

A couple of years ago, whilst engaged in ridculous Facebook group discussions with passionate and delusional insomniacs, and at a time when SS founder Captain Paul Watson ludicrously claimed to have been shot by a Japanese sniper ( the ships were travelling at 15 knots side by side at the time with cross winds and he was curiously wearing a bulletproof vest at the time), I drafted a blog about it, but never published it.

It was about this time that I tried to hide my identity a little more and someone set my car on fire.

Anyway, I quite struggled to be articulate and witty and actually make any good points, so in the wake of a Japanese whaler running over the Sea Shepherd’s Batmobile boat, someone else did a much better job than I could. If you only click one link in this post, let it be that one.

From NASA. Nicked from the ever interesting DISCIPL:

From The White House Flickr stream via Love in the Key of Longbrake

Stay tuned for the final few posts wrapping up the Kenya experience.

What the guidebooks say:

“A incredibly romantic island, with a labyrinth of streets to get lost in the biggest Stone Town in East Africa. There’s only one car, and most transport is by donkey. You’ll fall in love with a culture that hasn’t changed for years and the friendliest people on the whole of the Kenyan Coast”

What I say:

The streets are pretty cool, but it doesn’t count as a labyrinth if all the streets are in a grid. Also, why didn’t anyone mention the open sewers? And donkeys = muchos donkey crap. Open sewers + donkey crap = Nasty smell. It smells worse than Venice, which apparently smells bad, although didn’t smell at all when I was there in July.

Additionally, there’s no way Lamu’s Stone Town is bigger than Zanzibar’s.

All that moaning out of the way, Lamu is pretty darn sweet. The people really are super friendly, and although they’ll try and persuade you to come ride their dhow, they wont become pushy if you refuse, like everywhere else.

Also, Shela beach is one of the more incredible phenomena on the Kenyan Coast. 12km of unadulterated deserted sand, and cool, deep blue blue water.

Overall, I give it 4 thumbs up.

Out of 5.

But make sure you fly there, unless you have a particular penchant for long cramped busrides on un-tarmaced roads with Islamic music blaring at full blast for 5 hours.

Ooooh i  want…

Movember