i know we're cool.

* Jeff Milner's Backmasking Site: Check this out. (via W and Wurh)

I saw the video for this Lindsay Lohan's pseudo angsty song on MTV the other day, Confessions of a Broken Heart. Millions of poor kids out there with broken families and hers had to be glamorized into some wailing session and my god - it sounds horribly irritating. I don't understand how she thinks going all black and rock means people will actually start taking her seriously (your website is still pink, pink!), it's really personal to me or I'm real! I promise! - oh wait, that's Ashlee Simpson. I mean, you are rich, privileged and stays in Beverly Hills, channel Angelina and feed the kids in Somalia! Or nearer to home, do a Jennifer Love Hewitt and feed the homeless! Stick to acting, Lindsay and leave your sister out of this. One Ashlee is enough.

Gwen Stefani is my new guilty pleasure. I think she is the epitome of bubblegum cool. Who else can carry off cheesy early 90s' old school-meet-Aqua and made it deliciously so, like Cool. Or sing about having a simpler-than-blingbling life and made it deliciously so, like Luxurious. Or about playground politics in her early 30s and call herself Hollaback Girl. Or Rich Girl. There is also a track in her album called Harajuku Girls. Who else can prance about in that platinum blonde mane and blood red lipstick, and still not made it into Mr Blackwell's Worst Dressed, and then staged her own clothing line?

Moving on, and on an entirely different note altogether, one of My Great Plans of 2006 includes reading up on Southeast Asia, because I want to get out of this nanny state and what better time to do so than when I finally get out of this slavehole. It's all very exciting. Everything is in the state of daydream but I am bent on making it happen. Perhaps I'm watching too much Discovery Travel and Living. The prospect of sampling a taste of another world - the people, the food, the culture, the architecture, the history - that is different from our sanitized walls has been something I look forward to everyday at work. (10 more freakin' months!)