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Gimme Gimme!

Great article on the Tesla Roadster.

"You see any cops?" Eberhard asks, shooting me a mischievous look. The car is vibrating, ready to launch. I'm the first journalist to get a ride.

He releases the brake and my head snaps back. One-one-thousand: I get a floating feeling, like going over the falls in a roller coaster. Two-one-thousand: The world tunnels, the trees blur. Three-one-thousand: We hit 60 miles per hour. Eberhard brakes. We're at a standstill again -- elapsed time, nine seconds. When potential buyers get a look at the vehicle this summer, it will be among the quickest production cars in the world. And, compared to other supercars like the Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari Enzo, and Lamborghini Diablo, it's a bargain. More intriguing: It has no combustion engine.

The trick? The Tesla Roadster is powered by 6,831 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries -- the same cells that run a laptop computer. Range: 250 miles. Fuel efficiency: 1 to 2 cents per mile. Top speed: more than 130 mph.

... "If you took the energy in a gallon of gas and used it to spin a turbine, you'd get enough electricity to drive an electric car 110 miles,"

Also, Mark Morford's hilarious Lick My Silent Sports Car

"See, they lie. And they've been lying for years, decades. They lie about how difficult it is to replace the internal combustion engine. They lie about how unfeasible it is to eliminate auto emissions without sacrificing real performance (the 130-mph Roadster's lithium-ion battery system is estimated to be twice as efficient as a Prius and three times as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell. Not to mention Tesla's fabulous solar option).

But they lie, most of all, about how much we still require foreign oil, because these billion-dollar corporations claim they can't possibly afford to develop sufficiently advanced technology in your lifetime to create a 100-percent emissions-free, oil-free, ultragreen vehicle that still has all the comforts and performance of a regular car.

Nice pipe dream, they say. Here, have a bloated SUV, they say. Sorry about all your dead kids in Iraq, they add, smirking like a chimp and blowing their noses into a big pile of Halliburton profits. "

Courtesy of Houston.

Darth Vader Being a Smartass

Human eyes + shiny, bright green makeup = not a good thing

The Big Day shenanigans continue.

I'm hunting for a hair and paint-face lass for the Big Day and asked my hairdresser if he knew anyone who might fit the ticket.

He suggested I speak to his mate at the Shiseido boutique in QV (Melbourne shopping site) who had done the makeup for his colleague's wedding.

I should have heeded a mate who advised, "never trust a Honky when it comes to anything involving aesthetics." (Honky = person hailing from Hong Kong, or one who is heavily influenced by Canto culture).

I trotted off to the Shiseido shop and asked to speak to, let's call her, Stuffy Counter Wench. Turned out I was speaking to her and she too was a Honky. "Oh no," was my first thought. It was going to be a tough sell for Stuffy Counter Wench from the word go. She was in her 40s, possibly 50s, and was sporting bright green SHINY eyeshadow. Nice.

We spoke about pricing, while I stared at the shiny bright green eyeshadow. Naturally, I asked if she could show me photographs of her previous work and Stuffy Counter Wench turned into Snippy Stuffy Counter Wench. Snippy Stuffy Counter Wench huffed and rolled her eyes and snapped, "I've been doing this for ten years, I don't do that anymore!"

"I ask because you're wearing shiny bright green eyeshadow, and girlie, that's all kinds of not happening." I did not say.

I thanked her and left.