WTF Wednesday? Rollin' with my Kobe

This is so weird and definitely counts as a "what the fuck???"

Japan's Solid Alliance is selling Ipod Nano cases that are designed to look like raw meat! At the very least they've had the good taste to make it look like expensive bit of raw Kobe beef. And to add to the realism, it even comes in a cellophane-and-Styrofoam pack.

Now don't get me wrong. Despite the fact that I am definitely a "please kindly just wave my steak at the open grill and bring it to me bloody as hell" girl, even I can not see any reason why I would want my mp3 player to look like a piece of dead animal.. I really don't think I am their target audience somehow.... Would it sell well with vegetarians you think?

As a very, very, very short aside, for an amusing example of flame wars gone bad, check out the comments on the Raw Feed page where I found this weird piece of gadget paraphernalia... This is a perfect example of what happens when people on the Internet, drunk on their own sense of anonymity, get too stuck up their own arses... very funny..

More Cool Stuff From the Grand Designs Live Show

If you're vaguelly interesting keeping polar bears from losing it's natural habitat, and reducing your carbon footprint, then this device is one cool little gadget. Called Bye Bye Standby it works by 'reducing daily energy consumption on electrical devices by completely cutting power to the devices plugged into it when they're not in use thus saving the power that these devices would otherwise have consumed in Standby Mode'.

Seriously it is really, really cool. Basically, it's an adapter you plug the power board to which powers things like your telly or dvd player. You then get a remote switch which works within a 30m range of the device, so you can then just turn off all your appliances in one go. The coolest part is that you can have multiple of these devices all configured to one remote switch, so you can turn multiple electrical devices off at the same time. And this is exactly why I'm going to buy it! Yes, I am interested in reducing my carbon footprint (not so much so that I've gotten around to offsetting all the airplane trips I've taken this year yet, though I have calculated that it would cost me about £25 to offset them all. If you're interested in seeing how big your footprint sites like co2balance.com are good. To whom you should actually pay the money to I'm still unsure because I did quick check on google to find that loads of these offset companies are not necessarily the best places to give my hard earned mula to. Perhaps just donating that money to recognised charities that actually do good conservation work might be the answer.. If anyone has any ideas let me know, and yes the obvious 'just don't take planes' is good, but in reality, I'm not about to stop doing that just yet..)

I digress. I'm going to buy the Bye Bye Standby not only for it's green factor, but because it is the perfect solution to the following tricky problems:

1. How to turn on and off the tv in my bedroom without having to get out of bed now that I've lost the remote control, because I am lazy.
2. How to have multiple little lamps in my bedroom and lounge room to create little pockets of mood lighting and and be able to turn them all on and off in one go, thus avoiding having to go around the room and do them individually, without having to spend a fortune on an electrician to rewire the whole house.

It's a fantastic find!!

The Big Three

I'm in the long and drawn out process of buying a house (well, I say "house", it's more 50's ex-council estate flat). I've done all my paper work (for once) and I'm just waiting for the vendor to sign all his stuff and send them back to his solicitors. This seems to be taking forever, as according to my good-for-nothing estate agent, it's not that my vendor has changed his mind, or the house he's trying to buy has problems, it's just that he hasn't been bothered to send back the surveys because he's just "plain lazy".

This lack of movement however has not stopped me from going out and browsing (read gawking) for The Big Three: Washer, Cooker, Fridge/Freezer. So I went to my new house last week for only the 3rd time ever (how wierd, I've spent more time in a cheap pair of jeans, trying to decide if it makes my arse look big before I buy them, than in the house that's going to cost me more money than god) so I could measure the spaces for The Big Three.

In my head, everything is always, well, a bit on the crazy side. In my head, I'd managed to make my new flat seem tiny and dark, with no welcoming or redeaming feature, where I have to always be on my guard in case zombies (or thieves) break through the ground floor windows and get me in the middle of the night. However, when I walked through the front door, I remembered exactly why I loved it.
1) It's just so pretty inside.
2) It's got a fantastic kitchen, which is about 3 times the size of the current 3ft x 2 ft pathetic excuse of a kitchen I cook our meals in.
3) It's got 2 (yup, you read right: two) shower heads in the bath! Water wasting decadence.

Since I've been renting from the first day I moved to Britain (i.e. the last 5 years), I've never had to buy any major kitchen appliances, such as ones to keep food from rotting.
So now that I'm browsing for The Big Three, I've managed convince myself that I am in desperate need of:

* The extra large, 6 burner, gas stove/cooker, with wok attachment, seperate gas grill, seperate fan forced oven, with possibly even a longer 3rd oven on the side
* The extra large double door American style fridge freezer, with water cooler and ice machine attached, which is plugged into the central plumbing. Essential for constant cold water, plus crushed ice, which every girl needs for the essential cocktail making and ice bucket chilling for the soon to be established "Champagne Thursdays".
* Extra large washer with tumble dryer, for fluffy, fluffy towels.

And because I feel some small glimmer of guilt for having such extravagant appliances, they all need to have lowest energy ratings around, thus thrusting their prices into the upper echalons of the spending stratosphere.

Where I'm supposed to get the ready cash for these little beauties I haven't quite worked out yet... I'm thinking about possibly selling non-essential organs on the black market... (who the fuck needs two kidneys anyway?). Besides, what's cash to me these days when I am soon to have a crippling mortgage but little bits of paper that drift in and out of my life like snow?

Lego Cool

Finally blogger has come back to life!

Continuing from last friday's moment of zen , I found these at slashfood.com and despite what I said about Lego, I do think they are very cool. Lego, who have pretty much merchandised every possible item in the world, have moved into kitchen ware:

Lego Ice Cube Tray (though you may not be able to build your own Lego sculptures from these blocks), Lego Salt & Pepper Shakers, which look a little sinister, Lego coasters , and the Lego apron, which isn't exactly made of lego, but it will give the cook a cool lego body.

I will conceed these are pretty cool, and there are a whole range of other Lego kitchen ware items out there. Unfortunately, their website is a bit of a bitch to maneouver through when you're in a hurry...