the first automatic deep fryer was born in australia in 1972 it was given the  wonderfully descriptive name set n forget. a boon to fast food companies and restaurants as now the staff in charge of cooking fries could could now turn their attention to other things.

i can’t help but think that this marvel of efficiency has influenced the way we live in more profound ways than the simple pleasure of eating fried potatoes and the attendant expanding waistlines.

perhaps it is time to take a cue from the slow food movement toward a slow life, taking note of every single detail of our day to day lives and making each one better for the attention that we give.

then again it is probably too late given that the first auto pilot system for aviation has been with us for almost a century.

in my early teens one of the things that me and my older brother would do to pass time was to play role playing games. him as the game/dungeon master and me playing the campaigns he created.

thinking about male dominated fashion message boards today i was reminded of the character creation in the james bond role playing game. one of the statistics that you had to decide upon while making your M16 agent was appearance. there were big advantages in making your character plain, neither handsome or ugly. somebody is more likely to remember your face are not right in the middle of the looks bell curve.

why is it that men when talking about fashion with each almost invariably try to advise the same kind of plainness in dress, is there a reason they want everyone to be invisible? easily forgotten.

perhaps there is a secret agency that the members of the fashion message boards are all working for.

i am all for some kind of pride about heritage being reflected in the manner that one dresses.

i have always had an affinity for black and can’t help but wonder if that has been influenced in part by the fact that it is the colour worn by national sports teams at home. as a homage to the working shearers and cow cockys of rural new zealand i more often than not think it is appropriate to wear jeans boots and a black tank top.

i have to wonder if i would feel the same way if i had had the unfortunate luck to have been raised in a place that khakis were part of the national costume.

can’t help feeling, buried alive

can’t help feeling, buried alive

got a dirty face, to match my dirty mind

can’t help feeling, buried alive

a good friend once said to me that i talked about interpersonal relationships as if i was edgar allen poe. i don’t remember having ever seen a raven at that point in my life.

there is a state that is just between sleeping and waking, where the subconscious is so close to the surface that all of one secrets are revealed.

the act of falling asleep in another’s presence is an act of deep trust. with your deepest wants and fears playing themselves out in the forum of your dreams, you could let out the things that are so often hidden by the daylight.

a word, a smile, a caress.

it will all come out in the wash..

on the subject of stain removal there are so many differing opinions but every one i have come across agrees that it is better the get to the stain when it is fresh. if you give the stain a chance to set then you are going to have to take much more drastic measures in order to remove all evidence.

even worse than letting the stain set is a failed attempt, often the water from the washing combined with the heat of the drying can marry the stain the fabric until death they do part.

human stains such as blood are best removed fresh with some saliva that comes from the person who bled in the first place, the enzymes in the spittle do a magical dance with the proteins in the blood and it will come away lickety split.

if all else fails you could always make the move to darker hues. start with dyes for the stained garments and a more general darkness in anticipation of future blemishes.

It turns me on
To imagine
Your blue eyes
On my words

in a case of form over content people get really excited by hand written letters. i can only assume that it is something to do with hand writing analysis that the way we put pen to paper says something more about the person.

how about emails, surely hidden somewhere in the misspellings the screwed up grammar and the typing and retyping there is something of ourselves in there. the thoughts put in words and the way we do that reveals a whole lot about the person writing.

from a purely sensual perspective i can imagine that the letter shows more, how hard the pen is put to paper? does it deftly dance across the page, or is it forceful, desperate.

then again who ever heard of postal sex.

life is sometimes too hard for it’s own good.

by way of comparison take a hard drive, there is always a way to recover something that has been deleted for a short while. in fact a deleted item is available until something takes it’s place.

this kind of soft delete would be welcome as a a back up plan for almost everything, not just things you got rid of. a soft purchase, a soft job, a soft dinner, the soft dinner being especially useful for those days that you forget that kfc always seems like it is going to be delicious until it is a pit of congealed chicken fat in your stomach.

way back, when intermission was part of the ritual of the movie going experience the feature itself was a whole lot shorter. is this because there is a limit to how long a person is willing to suspend disbelief.

i am trying to remember what it was like to rejoin the story after the break.

did it take long to be seduced into forgetting that you were watching a movie?

there is a period at the beginning of every movie where i have trouble concentrating, where i am more aware of my immediate surroundings, if it is a good film i let go to it for the duration.

please turn off your cell phones.

we are living in the most recorded time in history. everywhere that you go you are bound to see somebody with a camera. the cellular device in your pocket is a means to trace your whereabouts at any given time.

we have become so blasé about being watched that we report on ourselves via social networking sites often times also reporting the company we keep.

we have moved way beyond the idea of big brother watching every move, we invest time and energy in broadcasting the minutiae of the day to day grind.

perhaps so much time that we have very little energy for anything that big brother would want to know about.