Photo Realistic

I came across the work of Alyssa Monks today. If you want to see, it's possibly not safe for work, but here's the link. Her work is amazing. She paints pictures that look genuinely just like photos. The effect she manages to achieve is incredible, but I can't help wondering why she does it when a camera can do the job just as well. It's not really art is it? Maybe it is. It's certainly interesting, but I find it rather soulless. I don't mean that to sound negative. I quite like the paintings, I just can't see them as paintings. They're too real.

The boy was up all night throwing up. Great being a parent isn't it! I was up all night with him of course. We were half expecting this because his little buddy Jonny had the same thing at the beginning of the week. If it's the same he should be getting better by tomorrow, which is good because I will need sleep by then. Thank God the weekend is coming.

There's a story all over the news this morning about a 12 year old boy who is to undergo a sex change procedure. I wonder whether this story is true because it appears to originate in the sun and no one is named. It would seem that the child left his primary school last term as a boy, and started her secondary school this term as a girl. The child's name has apparently been changed from a boy's name to a girl's by deed poll, and he/she is to undergo hormone therapy. As I said, I'm doubtful as to how much of this story is true, but at the risk of sounding obvious, isn't 12-years-old too young to make a decision like that?

The men's lavatories at work were flooded again this mornig so we had to share the ladies'. Actually I think the ladies in the office were requested to use the disabled one. We have more boys than girls you see. It's odd using the ladies. You have to go into a little cubicle. Can't just pee in a hole in the wall. I remembered to put the seat down when I finished.

The new bedroom we're having built for the boy has been postponed. Work was suppose dot commence last week but the builder says he's been held up so he can't start for another two weeks now. I suppose it doesn't matter but I rather wanted to have it done before winter.

It looks suspiciously like someone is trying to fix the Bulgarian National lottery because the same six numbers came up in two consecutive draws. Statistically that's apparently unlikely to the tune of 4.2 million to 1. Pretty long odds. Of course it isn't clear what has happened here. If someone is trying to fix the lottery, they'd be pretty stupid to try it with the same numbers two weeks in a row. It could be a stupid mistake on the part of a fixer, but it does seem slightly strange that an unprecedented number of players (18) chose six winning numbers in the second draw. You'd think that no one would enter a combination of numbers the week after they were drawn.

Here's a theory; lets say that the lottery machine is like the British one. It tosses loads of balls around until one randomly falls through a hole and comes out. You replace all the balls except the six you're going to bet on with larger ones. The six original balls will fall through the hole and be drawn, in some random order. The others are too big to fit in the hole and will never be drawn. The plan is to collect your win in the first week and vanish so you don't need to take the large balls out again. However, you can't do this alone. You have to have accomplices to get access to the equipment. These people all know what you're doing and chance their luck the second week because they know the balls haven't been changed back. Just a theory.