Update: No it's not [The Age]. Maybe.

I don't know why I didn't blog this earlier (I read about it on Saturday). I guess it skipped over my mind like a pebble on a sea of beat ups. Laws to be ignored. Like "thou shalt not chain a monkey to the main street sign post in November, unless it is snowing".

Vegemite is banned in America. Not because they find it revolting, but because it contains foltate, "a vitamin that in the USA is only allowed in breads and cereals" [Wikipedia]

Can you make bombs out of folate? I know those stuck in jail have been known to make beer out of it.

The ban is a technicality, but apparently people are being asked to hand over their vegemite at airports.

Someone told me once that when travelling, be sure to carry some Vegemite with you. It'll get you into the "I have food to claim" line, which is usually much shorter than the regular line. And as it's "just Vegemite", they'll wave you through. Not anymore it seems.

Maybe it should have been banned for having too much salt. Eight to ten percent of Vegemite is salt.

I did a Bloglines search for Quan+Regurgitator to see what the little guy has been up to lately and dang it didn't I just find this blog post:

A few weeks back, on a new segment called "Famous Face-Off", Quan from Regurgitator, and Tim Rogers from You Am I were pitted against each other to find out who was "the hardest rocker in the world". The challenge was to break as many guitar strings in one minute as they could, and halfway through they could make use of an assortment of tools including a mallet, a saw, and two beer bottles.

How the heck did I miss this? Why isn't it on YouTube? Why are we letting this historic television fall into history, never to be seen again?!

The second-hand CD store across from my work has a $1 CD section. It's next to the $5 CD section. I believe they sort their store the following way:

• This looks familiar - $15
• This looks vaguely familiar but I don't know it - $5
• Never heard of this - $1
• This looks big - $20+
• This is in a non-CD-sized box - Display glass cabinet, $25+

I heard somewhere that the shiny sides of CDs can be used to scare birds. This makes sense as cats, who are the opposite of birds ("anti-bird") love shiny things (see Red Dwarf). Where there is shiny thing, there is more likely to be cat.

So I thought the $1 CD section would be a good place to find me some bird scary. Yee-haw.

To make it a bit more fun I chose CDs purely on the coolness of thier covers. After a bit of searching and not paying too much attention I bought four CDs. These were (reason for purchase in brackets):

• Roger Taylor, "Fun In Space" (cute alien on cover)
• End, "The Sounds of Disaster" (excellently harsh "safety warning" images)
• Tweak, "Dirty Sanchez and the Misfit Kidz" (a friend likes 'em)
• Blindside, "Hopes Rise" (photo of a building, Australian band)

Unfortunately it seems I'm going to keep them all. Oops. Mission failed.

Roger Taylor is the drummer for Queen. The artist name is not immediately obvious on the cover of the CD and I missed it. It's nice sounding CD. Fairly simple music, vocals similar in style to later Pink Floyd. Some nice trippy background sounds.

End's album was released on Ipecac, Mike Patton's label. They're like a cross between Propellerheads and Aphex Twin. Imagine a heap of songs with cool beats with lots of horn samples, that halfway through suddenly turn into noise fests that make it sound like your CD player is broken. It's great, but a little monotonous.

I've yet to listen to Tweak but I'm likely to give the CD to a friend. You know who you are.

I've also yet to listen to Blindside and I'm fairly sure I'm not going to like them. I've just read they're "hard rock" and that is one genre I've heard way too much of. It'll take a lot to impress me.

Next time I'll choose CDs based on how terrible their cover is. This could also proove risky...

Oh, and I'm scaring birds because they torment my dog. And thus she barks. Which torments me.