Poseidon

When we were in Flinders I went for a run early one morning and found this (I went back later to take the picture; I don't run with the bloody camera). It's a tasteful modern house, and just outside is this. You just know the owner knows better but he just couldn't help doing it.

Hard Rock Letterbox

I saw this on a letterbox outside a terrace house in Surry Hills yesterday afternoon:

NO JUNK MAIL
PRETTY PLEASE
WITH A CHERRY ON TOP

Of course this annoys me, as most things do. (As an aside, I was recently in an airport departure lounge with my sons and I was pointing out things that annoyed me about the other passengers and my older son remarked that it would be quite a lot quicker for me to find the handful of people who didn't annoy me and just point them out instead.)

So back to this letterbox. Whoever lives in this house doesn't want junk mail, clearly. So far so good. But instead of a sticker that says sternly "No Junk Mail", they've gone for this lighter, let's-try-to-make-a-joke-of-it-sticker. Why? I'm guessing that they thought the plain one was too harsh, too negative, too judgmental. Too heavy.

It's like that loathsome sign they have in all the Hard Rock Cafes, "No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed inside". Which really just means no drugs allowed inside, but rather than just saying that and letting it be they had to make it sound a bit more whimsical. I doubt very much, though, that if you were caught with drugs in a HRC a defense along the lines of "the sign's clearly not meant to be taken seriously" would do a lot of good.

My oldest son and I found this car in a parking lot in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This is a superb example of the genre. Points to note:
- really impressive menagerie of stuffed animals, front and back
- P plates
- Hello Kitty headrests
- almost total lack of visibility out of the back window

Passport

I renewed my passport today, which was a lot less work than I'd imagined. I filled in a form, got some photos taken, went to the Post Office with the forms, my beloved old passport and some money and the whole thing went very smoothly.

On the way I ran into my friend Ian who, when I told him I was going to get a new passport, wanted to see my old passport photo (where I look impossibly fresh-faced) and my new one. In my new one, I told him as I handed it over, I look quite a lot like a Dutch serial killer. He looked at the picture and said "more like a Belgian serial killer", which is, as we all know, infinitely worse.

For what it's worth, the lady in the Post Office said that I looked handsome with the beard.

Bikinis and tools.

From the Grauniad:

Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.

Phew.. so it's not just me then.

Attention to detail.

Big and presumably expensive ad at Melbourne airport, just as you come down the escalators from the Qantas lounge. Aaaargh....

Guernica, South Yarra style.

I've had 5 beers and I can't think of much to say about this. Shop window, South Yarra. A week or so ago.