I Can't Believe I'm Not Healthy

I have been sneezing for two days and my eyes are half-shut. My bones ache. I hardly ever get colds but that's two in 3 months ! I blame the parents, who are visiting. I wish it was Summer, and we've hardly begun Winter. The cold mornings seem worse when you wake up in the dark at 6.30 am. I don't want to live in this country, I want to live in a hot country.

Last year more than 200,000 Brits left Old Blighty and the number one reason given was: more sunlight. I can see how that works. I am going to follow suit as soon as I can, strolling to the beach for breakfast, drinking juice from fresh-picked citrus fruit, enjoying what remains of this precious earth while I am still walking around in my bit of it (this body). Otherwise I will have to live in a big coat which I never take off and which smells of damp, and cuddle old iron pipes for comfort, like the Russians do. My house will be made of old fridges and I will eat spinach all the time, turning my teeth green. My legs will turn completely white and the hairs on them will mat together in dreads.

I want white teeth, brown legs, and Bermuda shorts. I must go and live further South as soon as possible.

Lovely Tell Your Mum

I was really touched by two emails I received this morning, both quite unexpected, both from internet pals that I've never met. For some reason, they both sent me really affectionate messages, bless 'em. It doesn't take much to make a difference, sometimes. Come to that, I seem to have been getting on really well with pretty much everyone recently. What the hell is right with me ? ;-)

Just for the reason that this full moon seems to be a good one, here's an image taken on Thursday in The Mall (pronounced as in "malcontent" or "malicious") towards the Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. I'm not a royalist by any means, but these remnants of Empire look great in the dark under a glowing night sky.

Blogshit

In the morning, when my girlfriend stays over, I like to walk with her to the station and back when she leaves for work. This is most often a nice time, we share a conversation, and I sample the day before starting my work around 8 am.

I used not to be such an early riser, but my healthier habits and my girlfriend's job mean that the alarm goes at 6.30 am and up I pop like a tea-making weasel.

The road outside my block is short and runs alongside a local park. This means that the city dogwalkers head towards it, for it is a dumping ground. It's a well kept place in fact, with pooper-scooper bins often well-stocked, but this doesn't apply to the streets around the park. Walking these requires good eyesight, nimble dancing feet, and you dare not be half-asleep or drunk. The amount of crap that adorns my local pavement is enormous. The size of the dogs involved is surely gargantuan. The way that a recently landed pile is so often left bang in the middle of the path depresses me with it's awful inevitability. It's a matter of a few hours at best before a drunk/short-sighted/mobile-phone-preoccupied pedestrian's flat foot does the squish, the uneasy sideways too-late leap, and then spreads the awful mess eastwards or westwards, rejuvenating the stench and multiplying the chances of more shit on more shoes.

I have started a blog just for recording this process, since it is one of the chief environmental problems that we suffer here. The other two are air quality and urban noise pollution, but these will have to wait. No shit.

London College of Inebriation

I went to the opening of the MA Photography show at the London College of Communication (which used to be called London College of Printing) at the Elephant and Castle. It was a great show. My reason for being there was Julian Ward, whose photos of items taken from his deceased father's loft I found poetic and touching. His sense of colour was superbly subtle.



Julian was well supported by friends and deservedly so. His work stood out.

There were several exhibits which I also liked, one particularly by Anna Schori - images taken through doorway fish-eye security spyholes. I found myself peering to make sense of the blurred outside worlds, differences magnified by being so distorted and yet made homogenous. It was a timely image.



As the evening wore on, much wine and Tuaca was drunk, the artists got rowdy and expressive, and very silly things were happening. On the way to a Shoreditch club after plenty of Student Union Bar action, it was getting a bit messy as I bailed out for an early bath .

Karmabanque

What a great idea to get Coca Cola to go bust. I've already been involved in undermining the mighty "soft" drinks corporation. They are currently holding the license for Malvern Water and they are seeking to drain the Malvern Hills (in the same way they have drained Indian agricultural land) and threaten the local wet woodlands.

Aliens have been warning us against this for some time and recently have taken to extreme measures to alert people to our peril. What they need to do of course is skywrite "Coke Isn't It" across the Malvern skies. This would probably do the trick...

Bewch

It doesn't mean anything - I just like the sound of it. I typed it into Google and found... lots of mad mispellings of other words! Some examples:

Beach Towels
... toqels b3ach beiach towuls towele t beerch bbeach toweyls bech towrls beassh towelc
teauwels beaych beacj towagels bezch beedgech t0wels bewch beafh bwach ...

Columbia Sportswear Bimini Beach Shirt (for Men)
... bimenti columbea coulmbia folumbia beedgech colubia baemini i columbeia sharrt colarmbia
wear sportsweedger spotrswear cplumbia bewch bimink bimuorni spatswear ...

Palmbeach Jewelry - Complete List of Available Stores and their ...
... palm heach jewelry palm neach jewelry palm brach jewelry palm bdach jewelry palm
bsach jewelry palm bwach jewelry palm beqch jewelry palm bewch jewelry palm ...

So: it's a new word. BEWCH. Shall we find a meaning for it ? Come on, children ! Suggest, and we will invent.

Bloginality Disorder

One of the reasons I link to other blogs is that they have so much time to find cool things that I can check out. It saves me pressing the "next blog" button so much. At Jackal's blog I found a personality quiz, and I had to find out what my Jungian type was. I did it twice, last night and this morning.

According to the results, I have a different personality on a Sunday evening after vegetable curry, a couple of glasses of red wine, 2 hours of a nonsense sci-fi movie, than I do after a night's sleep, waking up to a grey damp Monday, to a week full of the tasks ahead.

On Sunday evening, my Bloginality is ENTP. On Monday morning, my Bloginality is ISTP!!!

My ENTP Sunday personality is "... Extraverted, iNtuative, Thinking, and Perceiving. This makes your primary focus on Extraverted Intuition with Introverted Thinking."

What on earth is extroverted intuition ? Inner perceptions about the outside world ? Intuition which you just can't keep quiet about ? On the bus: "OH MY GOD I HAVE JUST REALISED SOMETHING EVERYONE !!!" Damn, I may have to click one of these links to find out. It continues:

"This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Rational (Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Inventors or Visionary... As a weblogger, your love for a discussion may cause you to debate things more often. You might also flit from idea to idea, not completing one before going to the next. Your largest sense is intution, which makes you a good at understanding what is going on around you - and this could act to your benefit when making blog-like posts over a journal."

Right, of course. Except, I don't know about the flitting. Where does it say that I return obsessively like a dog to a bone to the subjects that I constantly find engrossing ? Where does it say I finish things eventually ? That of course will be my Monday morning personality.

Monday ISTP personality is "...Intraverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving. This makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with Extraverted Sensing." EXTRAVERTED SENSING ? I thought my senses were there to collect external data and ferry it to my brain for processing. I must be out of touch... and hang on, Introverted THINKING ? Do I think with anything other than my brain, which as far as I know is in my skull ? But, my brain reminds me, that's Sunday ENTP thinking (the "critical" bit).

It continues: "This is defined as a SP personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Artisans (Sensation Seeking) type, and more specifically the Crafters or Mechanics." Well, that's true, I do make things. I work and work and work on things until they are as near perfect as I can get them. But mechanic ? I'm not so sure. I use cameras and musical instruments and software and language.

"Because of your desire for action and independance, you will change the format of blogging or design frequently to keep it interesting and different. Your loyalty may have you reading the same blogs over a long period of time. Even though you could be easily bored with blogging, you might find that because you like following a project through, this is a good way for you to use your alone time to sort the facts you pick up through the day."

Embarassing to say, but the format of this blog has been (aside from the funky top graphic) kept the same for the last 5 months. I do keep on reading the blogs I like - bloglines is really cool for doing this - but I can't say the rest of it really applies. I must be still on Sunday personality.

Nowhere does the system say you can be one thing and another at the same time, but I clearly am. As for why bother with the blog, well, it's as much about making sense of the world as it is about sharing my impressions and thoughts. Is that extraverted or introverted ? My head is beginning to go round and round like Professor Branestawm's Colonel Deadshot.

I had weird dreams after the Arnie film (The 6th Day, a sentimental action romp about cloning) lots of running and hiding in strange buildings and avoiding scary people and electric wires, just like the movie. Maybe if I had watched a romantic French film I would have woken up with a different personality. Isn't that right Deek ? Yes, Deek, of course, Deek. Go back to sleep, Deek. Zap-kapow !! Glug glug. Alors. Zut !

Hampstead Sunday

We woke up after a fantastic evening's entertainment with Da Loco, Stella, Ditti (from Switzerland) Emma, Indi, and Jo (from London) feeling like we needed a refreshing walk, so even though the day was grey and cold, we headed on foot up to Hampstead Heath, where we found these amazing mushrooms growing on this beautiful fallen tree.



Hampstead is a fabulous place, even in the cold and damp. Somehow woods are the place to be in the cold months - all of life continues there, so different to dead city streets.

Smoking the Priest

Churches have been found to be a health hazard. The pollution from candles (especially in this festive KWITHMUTH season) has been found to be full of lung-damaging free radicals which can seriously damage your hymn-singing. Then of course there is the danger to atheists of passive prayer.

How soon will it be before church doors are labelled "WORSHIP CAUSES CANCER", an outright ban on religious advertising is introduced, and praying with candles and incense is completely outlawed ?

Halleluya, He is Lethal.

ABSOLUTELY LAST AND FINAL WORD on the US Election

My Canadian blog friend sent me this. Spooky ! Revealing ! Shit !! Click the image to see it full size.

New Socks

I am so chuffed with my new socks I have decided to show them off in their full red-toed-and-heeled glory.



I have also bought some new underpants... I may start a new blog just for those.

Quality of Loaf

Ireland has been named as the place with the highest quality of life in the world, says the Economist. Having just returned from there, I can vouch that, with the exception of the smoking ban (see previous posts), Ireland is a fabulous, if bloody expensive, place, and somewhere I would be happy spending time drinking Crested 10, sheltering from the rain, and avoiding tax.

'TOP TEN COUNTRIES'

1 Ireland

2 Switzerland

3 Norway

4 Luxembourg

5 Sweden

6 Australia

7 Iceland

8 Italy

9 Denmark

10 Spain

The USA is 13th and the UK 29th. Surprises me not. What interests me is that I have been to 8 out of the 10 top countries and can make comparisons. Last time I read such a survey, Norway was top and had replaced Switzerland. When I went to Norway, I loved the place, but the beer was 5 quid a pint (double the expensive UK price) and you can only buy wine from licensed government shops. However, heroin was plentiful and cheap, so Oslo city centre was full of white-faced kids passing out on the pavement.

A survey by William M. Mercer (2002) said that Zurich is the best city on earth to live in. It may now have been replaced by Dublin, but when I first visited there in the early 90s, it was in the middle of a similar epidemic. I was travelling around in a luxury car (they were ALL luxury!) on my way to a radio station and we went past a young, vibey looking crowd having a good time in a well-kept park.

"Who are they ? What's that ? Can we go there ?" I asked chirpily. I got a strange look from the driver, and my beautiful (they are ALL beautiful!) female host said quietly and with some dry amusement, "They are the addicts. They are being given the clean needles."

It's a funny phenomenon - a country gets to the top of the tree, and it's population, in particular it's youth, languishes. Is that because, at the top, there is nothing left to strive for ? What is it stops a country like Ireland, Norway and Switzerland from descending into chaos ? Is it because they are all actually pretty damn straight places (and they are ALL straight!) ?

Switzerland cleaned up it's drug problem with a series of measures, some strict, but mostly by treating the addicts like the health problem they were. Norway was still in denial when I was last there, it may have improved by now. Ireland does suffer from it's own problems - it still has pockets of real poverty, something you don't find really anymore in the other two of the top three - and has a degree of drug banditry which sometimes causes high-profile deaths.

I doubt the availability of hard drugs figured large in the calculations of The Economist, unless it was compiled by HUNTER S. THOMPSON, but they do seem to come as a package. Perhaps this explains the constant Irish references to "the craic".

Captain Sensible Is God

Punk band The Damned have attracted a whole lot of Church criticism for... turning on Cambridge Christmas lights !!

The Damned's Captain Sensible is in my personal Hall of Fame, because 1. He comes from the same part of South London I do 2. He wrote a song about it called "Croydon" which contains the immortal line,

"but I'm always dreaming of you, Croydon, especially in the cold and rain..."



I have a mixture of memories of my old home town, which I will record in future posts. Meanwhile I am looking through my boxes of old vinyl looking for "Happy Talk" which contains this most excellent B-Side. B-Sides need to be brought back - they were a fabulous art space where you could find occasional rare jewels among tacky, careless fillers. Maybe I will start to digitise all my B-Sides to see whether my fond memories are worth reliving.

Red List

The IUCN Red List is of endangered species. The BBC have made a nice pictorial of some of them.

There's one species significantly missing: HUMANS.

Watching them all fall from the tree one by one, we forget we are sitting on the same branch.

Stereotypically Funny and Drunk

Surveys are being done to establish British national characteristics. Britons are a 'funny but drunken' breed, claims this BBC report. We dress better than the Americans but worse than the Italians. We are reserved and polite until we drink, or watch sport, and then we become disorderly.

Hang on: isn't this the case practically everywhere? Look at the French and the Germans - the same can be said of them. They can be ridiculously formal ("vous" and "tu" "sie" and "du" are embedded in the languages) and our supposedly more civilised neighbours are notoriously riotous - French farmers riot in Brussels as soon as the agricultural subsidy is even looked at. Germans suffer from social unrest as ever - pro- or anti-Nazi, pro- or anti-Capitalist - and I cannot believe that all this activity is teetotal.

Surely there are comedians in all crowds ? It's just that nobody is writing the Euro jokes down, as they are too busy dodging the bottles and the tear gas, reading political texts, dressing worse than the Italians, and laughing at Mr Bean.

London Is Bonkers

I am in the process of decorating my flat and it means many forays out into the local area to buy paint, brushes, sandpaper, handles, screws, hooks and the like. I am cooped up for hours staring at the same few colours, drinking tea, blasting out music to keep sane, suffering slightly from the effects of paint fumes, and the outside world seems more bizarre as a result.



It's not just me that's making improvements; everywhere around here is being rebuilt. From my balcony I can see the new Arsenal 60,000+ capacity stadium rising up in a mess of cranes. As it is, when the local team scores, I can hear them from their current location with 42,000 watching the game. I guess this will be much louder when it's finished.

And there are buildings and rebuildings going on everywhere around here. To make the new stadium, they moved the municipal dump. Plus, I can count 4 new domestic multi-level developments within a block of here. The Holloway Road is finally changing. In among the old Victorian redbrick and new concrete, we even have a major new piece of architecture by Daniel Libeskind brightening up the area.

This frenzy of improvement seems to have attracted a whole new array of sex shops, like the fabulously named Fettered Pleasures (instantly renamed "Fetid Pleasures") but it hasn't quite removed the 2nd hand furniture shops.



North London University will surely soon be reflecting the local area and offering degrees in architecture, majoring in office chairs and very shiny shoes.

Bonking Boris

It's great the way I always seem to side with the underdog. In the European Cup before last, I managed to predict with 70% accuracy the winners, without really studying team form, just by working out who I felt like supporting. The trick was then to presume I was supporting the team that needed it most - i.e. the likely losers. In fact, the only bet I have ever actually made was on a win for my team, and I'm proud to say I made 60 quid that day.

It follows that my uncharacteristic support for a conservative, Boris Johnson, would then be either because of (or despite, I've never worked it out) his failures. He failed the nation and in particular the whole of the City of Liverpool when he slagged them off re: Bigley, and this morning the tabloid headlines gloat: "BONKING BORIS MADE ME PREGNANT" - outing the now ex-Conservative Arts spokesman for his affair with Petronella Wyatt. I hate to say it, but they upped their circulation by one - it's perfect toilet wall material. Boris' embarassment can now accompany my ablutions on a daily basis.

I may start a "Befriend a Failed Tory" campaign. That should keep them out of power for another 5 years.

Meanwhile, I have been further enjoying my new camera phone. Two pictures from Vauxhall Park taken this morning at about 9.30am, and one 30 minutes later on the Holloway Road.






I love London on a Sunday morning, it's a totally different land.

Prurient New Phone

I upgraded my phone from a Sony Ericsson T610 to a K700i which takes much better pictures and makes video. I like the pictures, but they are mostly a bit too big to post unedited. My main reservation is that the annoying, exaggerated, synthesised camera sound cannot be disabled.



I browsed forums to find out why this is. Apparently some appalling people somewhere have decided that you'll be likely to infringe people's privacy if this sound is not present to warn them that THEY MAY BE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED.

It's a triumph of prurience over choice, and it makes no sense at all. If you want to take pictures of people without their consent, there is a host of unobtrusive digital cameras available which are completely silent, most of them cheaper than this phone. How can I possibly take wildlife pictures without scaring birds and animals out of their tiny lives ? And what if, as I photograph my world, creating images that other people wouldn't see the point or value of, some lunk hears a huge "KER-LACK!!!" and decides I am stealing the soul of his wife's underwear and puts me in hospital ? Cries of, "No, honestly, I was photographing my own shadow!" will not be convincing - even though this is something I frequently do as an existential act of self-acknowledgement. Pretentious this may be, but it is my right to be silently pretentious if I so choose.



I can see lawsuits looming.

Remembering

I read that one sixth of domestic buildings in the UK suffered damage in the 1939-1945 war. My Mum lost her brother - he was shot down over Belgium. It's sad that the unjust war in Iraq is blurring the memory of the days when we fought a fascist oppressor, rather than for one.

I normally wear a white poppy if I can find one.

Last Words on the US Election

The seismic aftershocks are still reverberating: US liberals realise that in 4 years their country will be unrecognisable, America's schisms within and with the rest of the world deepen, and ecologists resign themselves (and all of us) to an early mass grave.



Found this map at DaTaste.com Tasty Blog which kind of sums it up nicely, and sent it my Canadian friend.



Then my Canadian friend sent me Sorry Everybody - a dream of an idea, for which I thank John Kerry for losing.

Smoking and Hunting

The serious debate about whether to ban smoking in Britain is being had, long-drawn battle-lines are being tested and moved, and dominos are falling. Ireland is now painfully and slowly adjusting to the ban on tobacco in public places. Bars and eateries there are reported to be 20% less profitable as personal pleasures are squeezed by the sensible measures introduced to protect the health of leisure workers who have to work in the fug. Scotland is about to follow suit, and London will be hot on it's heels.

I have mixed feelings about this. I loathe and detest the tobacco companies and establishment's legalised addiction, and the sooner this vice is revealed as the destroyer of lives and habitats, the better. Smokers are being marginalised, driven outside, refused a place to settle. In Sydney, they are even about to be banned from smoking in the streets.

Smokers will soon become a rare species, in the developed world at least, because the tobacco companies are still projecting large future profits as they target the developing world where health education is less and public health laws non-existant.

While I am happy to see laws enacted everywhere to force the corporations to build specialist heart and lung hospitals, I believe smokers need our support, not our scorn. As always, it's the addict who suffers most, and punishing the sick seems churlish. The compassionate thing to do would be to set aside special reserves for them to live out their remaining addicted years, free from persecution, provided with Nicotine gum, rage management counselling, and additive-free tobacco in the meanwhile.

In the UK we are also attempting to ban fox hunting, and this is meeting stiff resistance at both local and governmental level. Personally, I loathe this archaic ritual cruelty as much as I loathe smoking. Wilde is often quoted on the subject: "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible".

Conservatives see the ban argument in terms of social control, and fear that ban culture will be extended beyond the realms of reason, but this is no excuse for hanging on to outdated poisons and prolonging bad public health. The real problem with banning smoking, as with banning hunting is that not enough thought (and no funding) is given to dealing with the consequences, and nothing is done to re-direct banned activity. Smoking, like hunting, profoundly affects emotion and is a means by which we control our mood. Curtailing behaviour without providing alternatives is bound to hurt individuals and cause social unrest, and I don't just mean grumpiness and the odd parliamentary flour bomb. It comes down to our denial of our needs - the need for excitement and aggression, the need for release, the need to belong. You can guarantee that the new social groups created by the bans will be stronger for having been forged in the heat of resistance to the imposition.

Goodbye John, Emlyn, Yasser

Goodbye, Emlyn. You were Crazy Horse. You ran and ran. You had a high-pitched voice. We loved you on Question of Sport.

Sadly, you have gone to be with John Peel. John, you have also gone early. You gave all new bands hope. You supported music, and your team, Liverpool, with a passion. You died in Peru.

And soon, Yasser, if you aren't already gone, you will be with them. Hated and loved in equal measure, you never saw the Palestinian State you wanted.

And if there is an afterlife, what will you talk about ? The 90 minute game of two halves ? The Undertones ? The long-held dream of a contiguous homeland ? Or the awful finality of our inevitable ending ?

The Horniest Bass Player in Christendom

I have the great fortune to be living in quite close proximity to probably the most sexually frustrated bass player in the world. He lives half in denial, half in honest expression of his young adult life two flats away from me. He is truly a nice guy - just in permanent awe of his lust, and missing his girlfriend almost unbearably.

I can remember how it was to be young, male and horny. I am two of those right now. I wish he could have a fabulous pretty woman every night of his tender life and that he could be in love all the time with every woman he fancies.

I have to give him credit here - he is a seriously good bass player, intelligent and good looking. If I were him, I would be living a shame free life of lust and sexual exploration. But I have to say I am almost moved to tears by his plight. Almost, but thankfully, not frequently. Otherwise my compassion would tempt me into procurement and possibly imprisonment. And worse, vicarious living. Oooh, missus.

Toblerone

"Toblerone" went the jingle, "out on it's own.." MEANING WHAT PRECISELY ? I've always thought this was one of the weirder and more misguided ad campaigns ever. It somehow suggested that if you ate the uniquely shaped chocolate bar, you would be cast into psychedelic isolation. The merry song tripped along mentioning triangular people, triangular honey, triangular bees, triangular smells, all set in a colour-saturated saccharine and disturbing triangular cartoon animation hell worthy of the son of the clone of Bob Godfrey. I wish I could find a copy of it.

Toblerone ads have always been bizarre. I get the impression that the only way Ad People are allowed to encourage the company to distinguish and sell this confectionery product is by it's shape.. this is the way it has always been since Mr Tobler had the wonderful, inventive, and typically SWISS IDEA of a non-rectangular choc bar, and any marketing utilising this feature and thus keep the Toblerone profile in place is acceptable, even if it puts you off eating the stuff.

A more recent campaign where models used the triangle to disfugure themselves I found utterly repulsive:



This makes me anticipate the delicious combination of chocolate, honey and nougat ? No. It makes me want to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre as a preventative measure. And because Toblerone have always traded on the eccentric, they attract freaks from all over the world... not nice, funny, interesting freaks however.. just freaks !



The text reads (translated from German using babelfish):

The Toblerone flog stands one before the judge, can from sport equipment fast a weapon become. Does this danger exist also with a large Schokoriegel? If one has cousin a ball racquet in the car to lie, it can be which one with police control annoyance gets. Is a large Schokoriegel, which policeman to assume which one these used as weapon, how suspicious?

Actually, I do quite like Toblerone. Oops.

Post-Election Nightmare

With the Devil safely back in his pen, the world seems a chirpier and more certain place. No, this is not an ironic comment. With the Republicans in power, hastening the collapse and furthering the divides, at least we know where we are, and the battle lines are clear cut. Some of my Democrat friends are bad tempered, even tearful as the Right march on to ascertain the extinction of society as we would like it to be. But have they no imagination ? Have they not read science fiction ?

Science fiction is a genre I have always loved, as it makes guesses about the future and then improvises a plot based on a world different from our own. The comfort of even the darkest sci-fi is that it presumes an existance beyond the contemporary. The mistake of sci-fi is that technological developments rely on economic continuity, and this is an assumption which, looking at the dearth of basic natural resources, just is not going to happen.

The Democrats would have preserved capitalism in a fluffier less brutal way, and BIG BUSINESS would have had to increase it's PR budget under them, but that's about it. Renounce greed and squander profit ? No way. American capitalism is the dominant force for good, evil and otherwise. It may relatively soon be superceded by Chinese capitalism, but for the moment, it's the winner in a race of one.

People think that the human world will develop (advance, even) without the collapse of capitalism's strangehold on the ecosphere, but I can't see it. Western politics of all shades is funded by and props up Corporations, and so it shall be, world without end, Amen, until we humans are a species without a grain of food to eat or a drop of water to drink, sharing the planet with rats, cockroaches and flies, on our knees and praying for God to come and save us from what we have done.

If I sound depressed, and cynical, I'm not. Know your enemy is my message.

To indicate my lack of bias, here's how four British papers reacted, two left, two right.




I particularly like the way that The Independent has illustrated the moral hypocrisy of the Bush administration. But I wonder whether it would have been so illustrative had there been a less abrasive, Europhile, apologetic Democrat White House incumbent during this incredible period of blatant human abuse.

Pre-Election Dream

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting in a cafe with some friends, just chatting and hanging out. George W Bush came into the cafe. Dressed in his election blue regular guy shirt, he was looking pretty anxious and stressed as he took 10 minutes out, sitting on a table on his own, having a coffee.

He looked so bad that I had a moment of sympathy. "You look tired, George. This electioneering is tough, isn't it?" I said. He looked up, a flash of gratitude for my comment, and mumbled a few words of agreement. I recalled the comments I had seen yesterday on the news by a lipsticked Republican, which were that while Bill Clinton may not have been liked by Republicans, they didn't consider him the threat that Kerry was, and passed them on to show my understanding of his situation.

Even in my dream I was fairly surprised to be offering GW any encouragement at all, but he looked so damn stressed, I felt that as human being, he needed it. To my right a guy I didn't know started to engage GW more, putting some political points to him, not being aggressive exactly, but not really letting him have the space he so clearly needed.

I notied that the guy was wearing a head microphone on like a TV sports pundit or a telephonist or something; he was American and looked kind of professional. George, for all his sins, just needed his coffee break, and this guy wasn't giving it to him.

I grew uncomfortable and GW stuttered some inadequate responses, and started to sweat, so I moved to George's table, interrupting the flow of the persecutor. George looked actually sick by now, not good at all. I stared into his face, and he started to speak to me directly. What he said was less remarkable than the changes in his face. His skin ruptured and he wept blood. His face changed to that of a much younger man, then to a youthful version of Kerry, then back to GW. This happened several times over. George was in there, but he was possessed, struggling to emerge, but unable to. Despite the nightmarish vision, I was unscared, remained concerned for the host, and saw clearly that he was the puppet of powers more sinister than merely political.

I realised that whoever wins, at the moment he takes power, the Devil will have him. Not for nothing is the Pentagon the shape it is. Poor George. Poor John. Poor US.