yippee-kai-yay
Just finished one creative project (big hint in the topic heading there, by the way) and have been tentatively commissioned to do another. It's been an absolute age since I got to do creative stuff. It pays practically dirt (and sometimes cheaper than dirt!) compared to my corporate work, but it's generally around a thousand times more fun. And Elbert has even offered to be my artist for the first project! I'm sooo sick of always partnering with Marco. (Heh. I just said that to check if he's reading!)


out in the weird world
A 44-year-old German woman stripped naked in a Cairo airport yesterday just before she was scheduled to board her flight. Other passengers looked on in astonishment (and horror/delight?) until a doctor arrived to inject the woman with tranquilizers, and the plane finally left without her. The impromptu striptease was later explained as an attack of nerves.

I don't know, I guess I've just never been that nervous...


You, too, can win an award for bad sex!
Indian investigative journalist Aniruddha Bahal just won the London Literary Review's 11th annual 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award for his book Bunker 13.

In the offending passage, a woman drops her trousers to reveal a strategically-placed swastika to the book's hero, previously described as "an ancient Aryan warlord". The deathless prose continues as follows:

"Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time...

"She picks up a Bugatti's momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen's steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she's eating up the road with all cylinders blazing. You lift her out. You want to try different kinds of fusion."

The judges cited the 'exuberance and energy' of the writing, granting Bahal the dubious distinction over rival nominees Paul Theroux, Paulo Coelho, and John Updike.