I’ve said it before, and I’m bound to say it again:
When they were handing out patience I couldn’t be bothered to stand in line.
I am going outside to enjoy the sunshine – for one thing I need to go to the University Library (outside, Robin, you said “outside”).
Voice on the stereo: Carole King – It might as well rain until September
That’s what I get for having most of my friends spread, not just throughout the country, but throughout the world. Had a nice long phone call, though. And I did do the washing up.
I also got round to translating the “pictures of me” page to the new template. I even added a picture. Not a new one, mind you (well, it’ll be new to most of you).
Voice on the stereo: Bob Dylan – Seven Days (I think that’s the title, something from the bootleg collection thingy anyway)
You’re all invited over for tea (or whatever). Company would be good, but I can’t decide who to call.
We’ll have to watch Fame Academy at eight, but other than that I’m up for anything right now. Ok, almost anything.
Voice on the stereo: Avril Lavigne – Is it enough
I keep going on about hugs, but I must say that a shoulder massage is not to be sneezed at either.
Friday evening and all I’ve been able to think of all day is how nice it was going to be to get home, shut the door, and just chill. Well, I’m here. However, I find myself in a state of restlessness and vegging out is not only undesireable but well nigh impossible too. Typical.
Well, maybe I can get the washing up done. That would be some compensation. A walk might not be such a bad idea a little later.
A beach would be ideal, but I guess I’ll have to make do without.
Voice on the stereo: Shakira – Underneath Your Clothes
The friday five is in a hypothetical state today:
1. If you had the chance to meet someone you’ve never met, from the past or present, who would it be?
Oscar Wilde
2. If you had to live in a different century, past or future, which would it be?
I’d have liked to try living in the England of the Regency era, with some provisos (independent means being one).
3. If you had to move anywhere else on Earth, where would it be?
The British Isles, somewhere.
4. If you had to be a fictional character, who would it be?
Tricky. Hermione Granger, perhaps?
5. If you had to live with having someone else’s face as your own for the rest of your life, whose would it be?
I’m so used to my own I’d rather keep it, thanks.
I am missing the beach at Worthing. I need to stand on the beach and watch the waves roll in for a while. All it would take is a few minutes, probably, but I really need to find a beach. The longing for that particular peace of soul and mind that only a the ocean provides is, just now, so strong it is physical, an ache in my chest.
Voice in my head: Jamie O’Neal – All by myself
…or are they. Why are all the appropriate lyrics milling around in my head at least 10 years old? And I’m not the only one asking that question.
Friday morning addendum: The fact that this post has the same title as one of Vaughan’s posts (which, by the way, argues the opposite of this one) is a freak coincidence, which is kind of funny considering the post below titled Reflections.
Addendum to the addendum: This post had draft status until this morning, so it really is a freak coincidence.
One of the commercials shown prior to the film when I saw Bowling for Columbine on Sunday was one designed to recruit young people to the navy. I only just remembered. At the time, I thought it was pretty tasteless as a commercial out of context, it presented various recruits as players in a computer game. Surely they don’t actually want people to join the navy in the belief that it will resemble a computer game? Surely? But in the context, in retrospect, especially, with imminent war hanging over us and before that film, it was not just in bad taste, it was offensive and scarily insensitive.
Voice in my head: Somewhere over the rainbow (not quite sure who’s singing, it could be Eva Cassidy)
This arrived in my mailbox this morning (a quick search revealed the original source, credit where credit is due).
The Logic of War
March 13, 2003
All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.
We’re going to wage war to preserve the UN’s ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN’s word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein’s failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Don’t misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, ‘We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,’ but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. As a collector of laughable arguments, I’d be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know–we all know–that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.
PETER FREUNDLICH
Peter Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.
Feeling ever so slightly ill this morning. It could be because I watched the news before leaving for work. It could be because I didn’t have enough sleep last night (nor, indeed, the – what? – 17 preceeding nights). It could be because I certainly drank enough yesterday. It could be a combination of all three.
It could be because I had “Barbie Girl” floating around in my head for rather longer than the ideal (the ideal being precisely 0.000000000000001 seconds) yesterday. It’s gone now, though reminding myself of the fact at this point may bring it back. I prefer the sickeningly appropriate selection currently playing…
Voice in my head: Sting singing Russians