(no subject)

US planning massive arms deal in Middle East. Because obviously the way to bring peace to a war-torn region is by arming it to the teeth. I wonder how Condoleeza Rice washes the blood off her hands?

If I wanted to be more than usually cynical, I could say that if Al-Qaeda did not exist, one would be forced to create it, because since the Soviet Union's collapse, the US no longer has an equally mighty foe to play proxy toy soldiers with around the world, so needs new bogeymen to arise , which they have.

I increasingly suspect that the USA's epitaph in the Middle East is going to be borrowed from their own shameful past - "We had to destroy the region in order to save it".

But then, of course, inactivity was not an option either, and in the fever of anti-Iraq sentiment, it's easy to forget that Saddam Hussein was a monster too. Of all the lessons the modern world teaches us, one of the hardest is that in a world of infinite choice and opportunity, there are no unambiguously right or wrong decisions, and few if any entirely good or evil people. There is a freedom in that realisation, but a lot of pain too.

(no subject)

Nursery rhyme for trhriller wrters:

"Do you know the McGuffin Man
Who lives down Drury Lane?"

(no subject)

Two things, one faintly irritable, and one very joyful:

I was just looking for info on a pub near cambridge, and chanced upon a couple of review sites./
How come is it that, no matter what place you look at, there is always someone on the site who had the absoluite worst meal/drink/service/orgasm of their lives there?
I actually think the sites lose in credibility from this - in trying to cut out the outliers from a sample, if the sample only contains half a dozen reviews, I will be inclined to ignore the lot, unless they are unanimous.
I suspect part of the problem is that, for all our increased savviness, more and more people expect every pub, restaurant or hotel they visit to be like the Ritz, even if they're only paying £5 for a pub lunch. It's ridiculous really - like the people who pay 1p plus tax to fly halfway across Europe, then complain that Stansted doesn't roll out the red carpet for them...

On a happire note, just watched an old South Bank Show on Humphrey Lyttelton. What a hero that man is. He is:

- Britain's greatest ever jazz trumpeter
- chairman for 37 years of the funniest show on the BBC
- described by the Sunday Times as "purveyor of blue-chip filth to Middle England"
- still touring the country and playing to sell-out crowds
- eighty-five years old

The only other person I can think of with a similarly enviable record is Sir David Attenborough, and he doesn't make me curl up howling with laughter, at least not intentionally.
God keep you, Humph, for as many more years as we can get away with...