I've got shopper's remorse.

My work shoes got busted this week, so last night I had to buy more.

I was naughty.

The new shoes cost $200! I must have been freaking out or something.

They're Doc Martens, and they felt heaps better than anything else, and I'm
sure they'll last.

But $200!
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matthew

It is good news from Baghdad. It seems to have all gone better than lots of people expected.
Saddam was a nasty piece of work.

On the minus side:

1) The americans invaded saying that Saddam was a military threat & was trying to put together weapons of mass destruction. But Saddam's army was capable of putting up surprisingly little defence against the americans (so why were they considered a current threat to the world?), and the american army has uncovered no major new evidence of Saddam having big deadly weapons.
and,
2) The fact that this victory turned out to be easy for the americans worries me (very few americans dead, though thousands of Iraqis died). I can picture the next time this sort of situation crops up, the americans won't be afraid to use their military again. Vietnam will be forgotten. It'll be a case of, do what we say or we'll do to you what we did to Iraq. And things might not go so smoothly next time.
and,
3) There are some very serious ramifications in other places. These events have upset people in volatile countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. A few days ago North Korea said that it was not going to go ahead with negotiations with the UN to reduce its arms. It is now MORE keen to go down the nuclear arms route. They've seen what America did to Iraq BEFORE Iraq got its hands on weapons of mass destruction. So North Korea is keen to get those weapons NOW before America decides to kill off their government. This is scary.

But for the time being, I guess we should just be happy with the good news.

Ding dong the witch is dead (or in hiding at least),
Which old witch?
The wicked witch!
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matthew

Why is America so sure that Iraq has chemical weapons?

The US was the main arms supplier of iraq during the Iran/Iraq war and they kept detailed lists of everything that was bought and of everything that was used...and the surplus??

Italians are a rather suspicious people and a lot of these type of current affairs investigations are carried out repeatedly with a most suspicious eye.

C

I saw Madonna's American Life videoclip on tv tonight.

Anyone else watch it?

I felt a bit sad for her. She went and made this complex anti-war clip and then failed to get it released in time. Now that war's already happened, she can't show it in the USA, probably ever.

I thought it was brave of her to have tried to cram a complex message into 5 minutes of film.

If anyone else saw it, let me know what you thought.

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matt
Sydney 2003

Everytime I see the Daily Telegraph front page headlines these days I get annoyed.

If the story is about the Americans, they use words like "Compassion" (on the story where they showed an american soldier giving water to a captured Iraqi soldier. I don't see that being especially compassionate. It would be rather extraordinary if the americans refused to give captured Iraqi soldiers water!).

If the story is about the Iraqis they use words like "Evil" (on today's story about the Iraqi army having protective clothing against chemical weapons - their army would be stupid not to have them as far as I can see).

The Daily Telegraph is an evil little thing.

Media coverage like this is probably part of the reason why opinion polls are showing a slight increase in the number of Australians who are ok with our army being over there.

Good Guys vs Bad Guys is the only story the Daily Telegraph seems to be capable of covering.

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matthew

The Hours

Who's seen The Hours?

I saw it last night, and have been thinking about it all day.
I think I was very impressed.

Was annoyed by the make-up on Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris (and his cliched role).
Also a bit annoyed by the Philip Glass music (every time it comes on the soundtrack you just know that some famous actress is about to start getting emotional again).

But I liked all the actors ('specially Julianne Moore - and the kid who plays her kid with the big sad eyes).
And I hadn't realised that it was all going to be so much about the characters being lesbians and what satisfaction they could get from their lives.
The writer obviously read Mrs Dalloway and saw it's central character (a woman with a perfectly nice life who feels that it could have been something more if she had not married her husband but gone along with another fella) as being Virginia Woolf's way of writing about herself - married to a man but wondering how much better it would have been to go with the woman she wanted instead.

I'm not sure if Viriginia would approve of herself being psycho-analysed in an american movie this way?

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matt
Sydney 2003

---Who's seen The Hours?

Not me. But I have read a good deal of Virginia Woolf, so I felt compelled to say something.

---The writer obviously read Mrs Dalloway and saw its central character (a woman with a perfectly nice life who feels that it could have been something more if she had not married her husband but gone along with another fella) as being Virginia Woolf's way of writing about herself... I'm not sure if Viriginia would approve of herself being psycho-analysed in an american movie this way?

As I've said, I've neither read nor seen The Hours so I don't know what I'm talking about. It's cool, though, how different my impression of reading Virginia Woolf's stuff was. I always had it not that the characters would rather be with someone else, but that they would rather be ultimately with nobody at all. I don't mean that they all wanted to become hermits, but all of her characters--to me, anyway--really prized their internal lives, and saw some of the relationships they had as hampering their ability to grow personally. Now I'm making Virginia Woolf sound like a self-help book, which makes me ill, but I do think that her characters treasured their isolation somewhat. Woolf's nonfiction, I think, makes the point even more clearly: the title isn't "A Room of Her Own," it's "A Room of One's Own." The singularity--and the androgyny--in the pronoun is totally intentional.

But given how much she seemed to treasure her privacy, I think Woolf would be insulted at anyone insinuating anything about her, whether they were Americans or not. And I agree with her: I'm a member of that old-fashioned camp who thinks that fiction is fiction, and it's unfair to assume anything about the author by what they write. I also understand, though, that that's not how lots of folks seem to read fiction anymore. Jesus, I sound like an old man.

Brian

good plan

Tonight is oscar night.
My tv night of the year.

But this year we're meant to boycott it, to show that we think it's rude of George B to go blowing up people just to show how big his guns are.

I'm weak. I can't bring myself to miss out on it.

So I've decided on a compromise.

I'll watch it (all snug on my couch, with some chips and fizzy drinks handy). But every time an american wins a prize, I'll stand up and shout at the tv "you filthy american capitalist pig-dog b*stard!".
That way I'll be able to show my disapproval of the USA's war-mongering ways, while at the same time releasing my frustration if Renee Zellweger steals the oscar from dear Nicole.

I think my plan is a good one.
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matthew

If Renee wins it I think Nicole should do what Sophie Lee did to Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding and storm over and throw a cocktail in her face. I'd pay good money to see that!
It's time the Aussie's put some spark into those dull butt-kissing awards shows! At least Russ had a go and decided to spice it up by
assaulting that guy who wouldn't let him read his little poem.
I do wonder what the poem was like:
"Roses are red/violets are blue/start the music during my speech/and
I'll kick the crap out of you" ???

Cade