Goodbye Hillary. I don’t know whether I’ll miss you.

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And so the inevitable, though 18 months ago unthinkable, has happened: Barack Obama has grasped the candidacy of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the US. I am not qualified enough to play political journalist and will never posess the beautiful prose with some of these people write, but I can tell you that 12 months ago I was a commited Hillaritarian: I wanted a woman to be president (I still [maybe foolishly] believe that women [even in politics] rather talk about shoes than wage war, making the world an inherently safer place), and I wanted it to be Hillary. She was committed to universal healthcare, had significant experience in policy making and as a European I wanted her to bring Bill along (always called the most instinctive politician of his generation but who damaged her campaign from the sidelines so badly that he needs to take some of the blame for her downfall) who would have made a great foreign policy advisor and all around good guy. I had a soft spot for Joe Biden and thought that Obama was a ballsy, inspired orator, but for me it was the Hill and Bill show all the way.

Then, 2 months ago, I switched allegiances. What went wrong? It’s not like that Obama has presented a detailed set of policies that I can subscribe to and he still sounds terribly vague on most fronts, but it was really Hillary herself that made me leave her camp.

The first time I rolled my eyes and thought ‘oh my god’ was during her interview on ‘Good Morning America’:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel). In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Hello? Haven’t we had enough hawkish morons in the US administration over the last 8 years? As soon as that goon Ahmadinejad is gone it’s going to be easier to talk to the Iranians anyway. But now, she had to do a McCain.

And then there was the environmental own goal of proposing to give the most energy inefficient nation on this world a ‘tax holiday’ on their enormously subsidised fuel.

Duh.

Obama (or that ‘Muslim Guy’, as I heard a lady from Arkansas call him) makes more conciliatory noises on foreign policy and was not prepared to support that idiotic and populistic tax holiday thing which strikes me as a better plan if you want to steer a globally despised nation in times of 145$ per barrel of crude.

So, if I would be a resident in that country south of Canada (which I’ll [touch wood] never be), my vote would go to that brave new hope of the Democratic Party.

Can he do it ?

Yes, he can.

P.S. Although he should really lose the ‘Bob the Builder’ references.

P.P.S And Hillary? She would make an excellent Secretary of Health. And Bill could become the American Ambasador in Paris.

Sheds, glorious Sheds.

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As a male of the species, living within Her Majesty’s commonwealth for more than a decade, there are some things that have left their imprint on me. By gradual social osmosis I have started to develop a taste for real ales (I am even a member of CAMRA, for goodness sake),  roast potatoes, instant coffee, gardening programs and sheds.

Yes, sheds.

If you think about it, the humble garden shed (or garden outhouse, in which this blog was conceived) is the ultimate getaway for today’s male. Persecuted by the pressures of washing his hands regularly, putting things were they came from, and not having various gadgets in a state of repair lying around, the shed is the location where we unfortunate bearer of the Y chromosome can hide away, listen to his favourite music, pick his nose, pass wind and play his favourite games while being surrounded by a tasteful cacophony of old motherboards, CDs, electric tools and speakers.

I always had the fantasy of having one of those (after having to say goodbye to the outhouse) again. Of course now being back in blighty I will not be able to afford an such an enormous structure (heck, my garden won’t probably be that size), but a smaller one could neatly fit into my future backyard.

This is where Shedworking comes handy. A blog on the same level of aberrant genius as Eggbanconchipsandbeans, this gives the aspiring shedworker everything he needs to consider when building one himself. In my case that would of course include being off the grid and have the shed’s innards run on renewable energy (there’s always space for phothovoltaics and the odd wind turbine on the roof of the shed) and with a wireless accesspoint in the house there would be no need for wires. The ‘time for dinner’ call could come via twitter.

So, another site that makes it into my elusive blogroll.

Tataaa!

Congratulations to Nasa!

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The Phoenix Lander has made it. 7 minutes of terror during entry, descent and landing have been survived, thanks to some brillant engineering. Sitting pretty on Mars’ polar region, it will now look for water and carbon.

I for one welcome my martian single cell overlords.

Picture courtesy of Nasa.gov

Eurovision Song Contest 2008. A review from the guest critic.

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The resident guest critic will today feature for the first time on ‘Messaged from the Outhouse’. C from D near M is an avid reader of this blog and wanted to share his views on that most important of TV dates in the European calendar.

Take it away, C:

“I just watched 3 hours and 16 minutes of Eurovision song contest 2008 in Belgrade (no, the contest took place there, I sat on my sofa in D and used the BBC iplayer). My only excuse is that it has been pouring down with rain all day and that I did all my gardening yesterday. So there.

I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am not to have gone to any Eurovision house party. Being quite partial to the Germans, I would have had to kill myself. Germany’s “No Angels” were worse than bad: their song (the title of which I cannot remember) was lame, the costumes were utterly crap and tasteless (even compared to the tiny glitzy Swedish, Ukrainian, Greece and Armenian numbers), and one of the four women sang constantly out of tune! They should have done the honest thing and give their miserly 14 points to the UK, who deserved better but ended up with the same result. Germany, UK and Poland (blond bombshell with crap song, good enough voice but horsy teeth) came last, although Andy Abraham’s song was quite funky and well performed (with crap lyrics).

Best voice of the show (and that’s what Eurovision is still about in my humble opinion): Boaz Mauda from Israel (The Fire In Your Eyes). He’s got an amazingly clear and beautiful voice of a mature women inside a short male muscular teenage body. Maybe he would have won if he had shaved his armpits, if he and his pretty boys-only back up singers had all taken their shirts off during the song and if they did not come from Israel (currently not very popular in international politics, is it). If they’d done all this, I bet they would have got the millions of German gay votes instead of the Russian guy.

P.S.: Just one question to all of you out there: Was I the only one thinking that when the Swedish singer came on they finally allowed aliens at the Eurovision song contest. Terry Wogan (commenting for the BBC, as usual, although maybe for the last time) uttered something along the lines of “a bit terrifying” but didn’t elaborate. I think he meant the eyes, too.”