American Cake Bomb

City Floral

Beautiful Soap

My neighbor and his accordion

A few months ago my neighbor got an accordion. He plays it every day, all day until about 11 pm, which is good and bad--good because he can actually make music with the thing now (which stands in contrast with the shear bleating he was initially coaxing from it) and bad because my neighbor is playing accordion every day, all day until 11 pm.

The other day I was trying to take a practice test for the GRE, but he did too thorough a job of breaking my concentration. He was learning "New Slang."

Today it's "Walk of Life" by Dire Straights.

Autonomous Zones and Micronations: A Few Links

Since the site is called Make Your Own Country and I've already mentioned pirate utopias, here's a short list of interesting bits on the internet about micronations and autonomous zones:

• Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zones: where the "pirate utopias" comes from.
  
• The Freedom Ship: This is either some uber-capitalist's pipe-wet-dream or an elaborate hoax. Either way it looks like a sea-borne star destroyer.
• The Yahoo! Answer about how to start your own country.
• Minerva: the micronation mentioned in the Yahoo! article.
• The principality of Sealand: a micronation off the coast of England that's now used as a datacenter.