A cautionary tale:

A Star Trek fan has gone bankrupt after spending £12,000 turning his home into the Starship Voyager.

Tony Alleyne's flat in Hinckley, Leics, has moulded walls, touch-panel blue lighting and a life-size model of the show's transporter room.

He even built a command console, reshaped windows to look like portholes and set up vertical lights so he can pretend to be "beamed up".

He hoped his pad would tempt other Trekkies to pay him to convert their homes too.

He took out two huge loans and ran up debts of over £100,000 on 14 credit cards marketing his idea and paying for the merchandise and has filed for bankruptcy.

Tony, who split from his wife Georgina after he replaced their fridge with a "warp coil" said: "I was convinced Trekkies all over the world would want a house like mine and pay me to do it.

That sucks flea, I hope they get the money situation fixed quickly.

so this eating thing. I have eaten a banana, a slice of toast and half an apple in the last hour. My stomach is making terrifing noises, which I am going to assume means it was empty and happy to have some food. The other side of that is big nasty loud belches. So not office friendly, I hope this settles down quickly.

I have eaten a banana, a slice of toast and half an apple in the last hour.

Heh. You're on the BRAT diet. You need some rice now.

My favorite Woody Allen Big Question quote is "Dad, why were there Nazis?
"How the hell should I know? I don't even know why the can opener works."
Don't really know where I stand on ID, except opposed to the whacked-out "Throw out all the biology and replace it with THE LORD." kind. But do I think there's a Creator? Not sure. Although I say "Please, God, this." Or "Thank you, God." But I'm not always sure if they are metaphors or if I really expect Someone to be listening.

hmm, I was told raisons.

Phrase that makes me laugh:

just another weapon of craxy.

Once upon a time, in fact in Newton's day, there were metaphors in use of "Exactly what kind of god is this??" when attempting to reconcile scientific discovery to received doctrine. I find the "clockmaker god" particularly elegant, because, okay, clocks are just cool, and it's one of those theories where no proof is ever necessary either way. Basically, god built a clock, and every once in a while he winds it up quietly, and if we ever caught him at it he'd be a pretty lame god.

I mean, not that I believe in god, but if I had to, I'd tend to choose the elegant, reality-based metaphor over the one that is craxy-flavored.

I just got outed as a kravver in the training class. At least two people knew what it was an volunteered that is was more hardcore than the instructor's kempo.

Now I have to pitch the school in the next break to the woman next to me. I can't turn this off.

Today's new horror is they're upping the child-teacher ratio in my daughter's classroom, unannounced, in a week

I'm surprised they can do that without telling the parents. Even if the ration thing weren't an issue (and it should be) don't you get to know if someone *new* is coming in to watch your child/ren?

Me, I'm just waiting for the ID head honchos to successfully replace the fields of physics, chemistry, and engineering with more biblically-compatible disciplines and then embark on the maiden voyage of their prayer-powered flying machine.