Divorce

Well, not quite, but was just looking at photos of my brother and his daughter from her first birthday (back in February, that particular website hasn't been updated since), and was thinking of that whole mucked up situation.

Just the look of pride in my brother's eyes as he held my niece, the huge teddy bear that she got for her birthday (which is too big to ship back across the Tasman - well, not without some serious cash, which that side of the issue seems to have issues with, the ex-girlfriend and her mother, who did a smash and grab seeming trip, overnight stay in Brisbane before flying back the next day with the daughter and grand daughter, were even selling some of the stuff that they couldn't take back with them).

Anyways, back to the point, my brother holding my niece, the big bear, the toys in the loungeroom - I don't know about my brother, but if I was a father and had some of the wreckage of a family around while the former partner flitted off to an overseas country, with my child, I wouldn't be happy. Of course, I think I would have tried harder to keep the partnership on an even keel than I think my brother did, but still, if I let myself think about it too long, if it was my kid in a tug of war, I would be heart broken.

Damn, my fatherly instincts coming out. I think I would be a good father perhaps, but of course, need to be in a grounded relationship, and not long distancing, to even think about starting something like that. We will see what happens.

And to have to stay on good terms with the ex to have the hope of visiting occasionally - since the daughter is an Australian citizen, there could have been a fight to keep her in country or something, but it's a fine line between creating a bitter environment and caving in to keep on good terms - if you know what I mean.

Perhaps if I were in my brother's shoes, I would have at least gotten some visiting formulation put down in writing, signed by a JP or lawyer or something, just to ensure that you would see the kid again. Rather than the possibility of short visits, strained with too much emotion, and the daughter asking who is this guy - she is still only eighteen months at the moment.

Of course, there is the long term thought that my niece may get too smothered on that side of things and will rebel in her teens and seek out Dad, but we don't want to play that long a game I would think.

I would have worked much harder to keep a partner onside with a child in the frame - yes, I would probably be victim to the 'it's for the kids' school of relationship thinking, if things started going south.

Enough rambling for the night
Paul

More Lebanon

US Secretary of State Condi Rice has had her flying visit to the Middle East, and back to the relative calm of Rome for the hastily arranged international conference to try and set up some sort of international consensus. Basically as soon as she had left Jerusalem, the Israelis ramped up the bombing of Lebanon again.

A United Nations observer post got bombed today, four blue berets killed, and yesterday a Red Cross ambulance got hit by a missile in the south of the country - luckily with that, it was only injuries rather than any deaths, although there was an amputation involved. And there was a heartbreaking report, both in the Guardian and the New York Times on Sunday, about a minivan with a dozen family members getting hit with a missile - a mother dying in her son's arms. Another Israeli hater created...

The UN Secretary General went off at the Israelis for that attack earlier today, saying it may be that the UN post was deliberately targetted, to which the Israelis said preposterous and not to judge the situation before any investigation - although the UN posts probably haven't moved in like twenty years. Just throws me back to that Gaza beach incident about two weeks before that particular front restarted, when a shell hit the beach and killed a family of seven - in that case, the Israelis didn't admit responsibility for any incoming shell...

Just the footage from Lebanon is stunning in it's destruction - Rumsfeld's Shock and Awe tour of Baghdad in 2003, doesn't even come close. South Beirut is like a major earthquake zone, rubble piling on rubble, and south Lebanon's road system has been torn to shreds - huge craters in the roads, cars that have been attacked or crashed either in the craters on at the sides of the roads.

Was reading a report in one of the papers tonight that said the death toll in Lebanon isn't anywhere near where it is likely to be, what with the reports from hospitals and morgues on the ground, the fact that a lot of bodies are probably in cars by the roadside or under buildings, and the oncoming crisis that is the no food, water and sanitation situation brought on by both the war and blockade.

And no doubt the Americans will disown Iraqi democracy shortly as they did with the Palestinians - the Iraqi PM is touring Britain and America at the moment, and is saying an immediate ceasefire is needed, rather than the 'durable' ceasefire tweedledum and tweedledee seem to be wanting. Tony Blair had an interesting press conference earlier in the week, where not wishing an immediate ceasefire was, by common sense I would think, equated with allowing more civilians to come under fire and probably die.

That microphone conversation that Blair and Bush had at the G-8, probably turned on and then leaked to the media by their host, Vladimir Putin, Blair was doing his earnest trying to help thing, and got slapped down by Bush saying Condi will get there, eventually, while taking bites of a bread roll. And Tony spluttering for about a minute after that - very funny, if it wasn't so tragically pathetic.

And one of the Democrat senators in Washington, Schumer I think, is saying why are we allowing the Iraqi PM to address Congress when he isn't trashing Hizbullah. Yes, you can have democracy, but only if you are lapdog-like to the power of Washington - regime change in Baghdad again perhaps?

Oh, and with 100 people a day dying in Iraq the last month, and more casualties there than in the Hizbullah war since that started, Bush and the Pentagon are reallocating troops from the provinces to Baghdad, civil war central. That will puncture the Administration a bit more before the mid-terms.

Part of the reason I have been a bit slack in my blogging lately, is reading reports from Iraq and Lebanon, and, to be honest, the way some of those reports are written, it is a bit intimidating to even think of ever writing again. Especially the report from the roadside on the weekend (NYT and Guardian), and a Washington Post series on the screw ups in Iraq in 2003/04.

I could only dream of writing as well. But, getting back on the horse of regular writing, I will just slog away in my little corner of internetland and try, try, try.

Paul

Family Illness

Hmmph - have been reading the newspapers online end to end the last week or so, that both my blog and my appreciation of life within my own little bubble, not meaning battles half a word away, has gone downhill a bit the last week. But back to blogging on a regular basis hopefully...

My grandfather has been in hospital the last week. A flare up of pneumonia again, which he hasn't quite seemed to kick the last few months - last weekend, he went to bed on Friday night, wouldn't get out of bed on Saturday, and then when he did get out, to the bathroom, on Sunday, he got there, but when trying to come back his legs gave out and he couldn't stand. Also having the 'usual' hallucinations as well, which he has when he is sick.

My grandmother rang my uncle, who lives around the corner from them, who then insisted they ring the ambulance - my grandparents have all the bells and whistles and panic buttons and all to go straight through to the paramedics, but they either don't want to cause the fuss or are too proud to actually use it - I guess I can't comment until I get into my seventies to see whether that is a valid point of view or not, but from the viewpoint of forty years in age away, it seems a bit silly.

So he has been in the hospital the last week - it wasn't looking so good last Monday and Tuesday, as he was being 'a bit of a handful' as the hospital staff were saying. He was sure the nurses were playing up with the other patients and wanted to leave, he tried to throw a fire extinguisher through a first floor window - the security guy was amazed when he caught up with my grandfather, for someone who was having trouble standing a few hours before.

But over this weekend, the news sounded better - he was responding well to whatever treatment they had put him on, and he was likely to be out of hospital mid week rather than later on. It's all kicking on from the cancer he has had diagnosed for the past seven or eight years of course - there was a time there where we weren't sure whether he would be around for his fiftieth wedding anniversary, which was June 2000.

And of course, thinking that I haven't seen the grandparents for a good eighteen months now, and was remember how leaving at the airport it was awkward because I wasn't sure when I would be back again - also what the situation would be when I got back. I was having a vague idea that I would get back over next February, but it always strikes at my heart when bad things health wise are happening over there...

Should I get over now, can I leave it any longer, say next February, and guiltily, remembering that the last time I was over, my grandfather was in fine form. The alternate being to see him sickly now. Evil cowardly thinking of course, but I do have to admit that it is there.

Enough of the maudlinity, if that is a word...

Paul

Is The West Winning?

With the latest news from Lebanon humming in the background, I have been thinking. No, not too depressed and introspective today, but still angry at what is happening - a simmering anger rather than a rage, as it were.

Israel is bombing Lebanon back twenty years, Iraq is in the midst of a sectarian civil war, the Taleban is resurgent in southern Afghanistan - the question is are we winning?

We being the liberal democratic West, and the thing we may or may not be winning being either the war on terror, or the winning of hearts and minds, or the hope that we are having an actual war on terrorism, rather than a general war on Islam.

There is a phrase in Australia at the moment, that of an arc of instability from Indonesia to the South Pacific. I feel, and fear that the major arc of instability at the moment goes all the way from the Egyptian border, through Gaza and Lebanon, Iraq, Iran all the way to Afghanistan and probably Pakistan.

And the news coming out of the part of the world is not good - there have been no liberal democracies built up, or even looking like being built up, in the past five years since 9/11. And even when democracy is allowed to take place, the 'wrong' parties seem to be winning. That was written tongue firmly in cheek, if only the elections and consequences thereof were funny in the real world...

And ever since Bush took over the Presidency in 2001, he has never appeared to be interested in either the Israeli/Arab situation or negotiating with people he disagrees with at all. There has always been a roadmap to peace, that the Arabs or their militias had to stop terrorism, to disarm, to always do that one step first before the Israelis had to do anything, like stop building settlements in the West Bank. Or the one about the idea that the Americans will 'allow' the Israelis one more week of carnage in Lebanon before Condi even considers getting her feet wet in the situation.

Or the fact that Bush seems to think that if only 'someone' talked to the Syrians that Hizbullah would be sorted out. How stunningly naive, especially when his Administration is so black and white, with us or against us, that he obviously doesn't consider that America could be the someone to talk to the Syrians or Iranians - or North Koreans, but that's another crisis altogether.

Yes, of course if someone talks to Damascus, then everything will be okay again, Hizbullah will automatically put their missiles away, the Lebanese will obviously be all sweetness and light towards their southern neighbour who have damaged most of the country's infrastructure, oh, and maybe Iran will also decide to give away their nuclear ambitions.

Thinking nasty words to say of the US President, but will keep them in my head for now.

My thought is that we are not winning, that the anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western forces will get stronger the more 'Operation Bomb Back To The Stone Ages' we have, and that we truly need to take a step back, a deep breath, and wonder what we are trying to do with the Arab world. Because to me, at the moment, we sure as heck aren't helping them.

And also step back and take a deeper breath with the sight of next week's oil prices.

Paul

Very Weird Subconsciousness

Have had a couple of very strange dreams the last couple of days, and I mean very strange.

Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, I dreamt that I was watching a TV show or something, because the main character was a woman, and that obviously wouldn't be me, whereby the woman got into some city or other at the railway station, and a couple of blocks walk to the nearest hotel or hostel, not sure which. There are two other friends, one guy, one woman, and the main girl gets recruited by the FBI, although she swans around the office, not doing much of anything.

Then this FBI girl finds out that her friend from the train station is a double agent or something - and the way the FBI head honchos find out is that they have been using the main girl as bait, have bugged her without her knowing. Which is kind of embarrassing due to the fact that she slept with a workmate or superior the night before LOL.

Second dream, from this morning, is the really weird one. I dreamt, and this is going to get Homeland Security reading my blog, that I was prepared to become a suicide bomber. Going to a bar or err strip club at night, the day before I was due to martyr myself, and not quite getting to my hotel room that evening. My friends and family were looking for me, because they had an idea I had gone off the deep end or something - they found me, but I can't remember the conversation I had with them that much, because I was preparing myself.

Rather than excited or nervous or scared or any of those emotions, I think I remember feeling I just wanted it over with, a sense of exhaustion with living or something. The last bit I can remember is putting my socks on, and for some reason there were a million pins in them - like the small ones you find in packet shirts, I was taking them out slowly but the more pins I took out, the more of them appeared. On my big toe, there were so many of them to take out that my toe was soon an unrecognisable bloody mess - putting back on myself what I was likely about to do perhaps?

Or maybe I shouldn't have written down what I have been dreaming, because with anti terrorism laws the way they are, tomorrow night I could be arrested or something - seditious writing perhaps.

My subconscious is becoming stranger by the day. And yes, scarier.

Paul

Gloom

It has been another weekend where I have had to convince myself, force myself to do anything, to go out. So I did go out to the local shopping centre, but only because I needed a book to read on my weekly commute - was almost as if I was seeking inspiration when I was down there, which I don't really think was found with donuts, milkshakes or burgers. Almost felt overwhelmed by the crowds, which is surprising, because it was just a normal Sunday, people wise.

It took me three visits to the two bookstores in there to decide on a book to get - even though the true story of some Adelaide serial killers sounded interesting, I didn't want to depress myself further I thought. Maybe in a couple of weeks or months I will be up to reading about torture and cannibalism, but just not today - was trying to find something uplifting, or at least slightly positive. Even books about fictional crimes or fictional takes on geopolitics - California versus Mexico in a near future civil war perhaps - seemed a bit too close to the bone, so I spent ages trying to find a fantasy book I could get my teeth into.

Not sure what it is, whether it is the Robert Jordan series that just keeps going on and on, or the whole post September 11 thing where geopolitics or non fiction was more interesting as a subject, but I have really gone off fantasy and science fiction as a genre the last few years. But I got one today, so hopefully I can get into the genre again - one of the problems is that there are so many series on the shelves that don't have a book 1 available, instead books 2 through 4 etc. Maybe I should sign up to Amazon or one of the Aussie bookseller sites...

And was thinking of getting a computer game as well, but seriously, there are just so many variants of empire building, sports management or simulated cities or people games that you can have. And am always worried that I will bring these whizz bang games home and the five year old PC won't be able to handle it. Wouldn't mind getting into one of these online World of Warcraft kind of games, but again, would probably need broadband to get the most of it - yes, yes I am still on dial up. So, no computer game bought today, and not buying more than I need to does save money, or mean that I can pay more off my debt.

And that is what it all comes back to lately - the debt repayment. Should take about another six to nine months on the latest projections, but while I am doing that it just feels like my life is on hold. I don't feel I can do much of anything until I do pay it off - from the small things of obviously not being able to buy a computer or get broadband if I don't know whether I will be in Brisbane or at least the familial home this time in however many months, to the big things of making decisions on where to live for example.

Work has sucked the last couple of months, although surprisingly the last couple of weeks I have been doing okay - one day last week I actually hit all the daily targets I should for like the first time ever - but unsure whether to keep in a holding pattern for the next however many months or to contemplate finding a career path in there, it is a nationwide concern so I could move around if I did want to stay in the company.

That's how I am feeling in general at the moment, that things are in a holding pattern, that I am putting too much emphasis on the financial stuff - of course, my own damned fault for getting into that trouble in the first place - and that I could be concentrating on other stuff in my life just as much. I would like to have friends in this state that I could go to movies with, that I could go to shopping malls with, but one of the worst habits I have gotten into was doing things by myself - I guess I have been too much of a loner for most of my life.

I feel like most of the friends I have had in my life, especially from back home, New Zealand, have fallen by the wayside and that is mostly my fault for not keeping in touch enough. I could make friends in Brisbane, apart from workmates who I don't feel comfortable with asking to do weekend stuff with, but if I am going in a short time, it takes so much effort to make good friends. Making friends in general is easy, but making friends that you can do stuff with, meaning stuff more than just Friday drinks, not so easy.

And of course, the specific cause of this weekend's specific gloom is the Middle East situation. Speaking purely personally, I feel that no matter who started what - was it Hizbullah capturing the two Israeli soldiers, was it Israel for the 1982 invasion that helped start Hizbullah, was it the Arab nations for sabre rattling in 1967, was it Sykes and Picot for supporting the Arabs in the First World War whilst secretly promising the Jews their homeland in 1916 - no matter what the history is leading up to all this, the fact is that Israel is the regional bully. Plain and simple.

They have held two million Palestinians in occupation for forty years - and don't give me the well they let Gaza go free story, yes, the Israeli military may have left the territory, but with no port, no airport, no access to the outside world apart from the Rafah crossing to Egypt, how was Gaza ever supposed to detach itself from Israel.

On the northern front, if you are really trying to destroy Hizbullah, which, by the way, Israel hasn't been able to do for over twenty years, sure, destroy all the infrastructure in the south of the country, but why blockade the entire country, bomb the airport, collectively punish the entire country for one militia's vendetta towards you - oh, that's right, the Israeli policy, as reported on the wires, is to get the rest of Lebanon so angry at Hizbullah that the rest of Lebanon gets the militia under control. A bit of dodgy psychology there, to go against a party that isn't bombing the heck out of the country - caused a war, sure, but isn't currently bombing Lebanon itself...

But the gloom is that which I think is found whenever you come up against an example of bullying, the absolute feeling of impotence, of uselessness I feel on this side of the globe. Yes, I do know there is absolutely nothing I can do about this situation, but people say that as if I shouldn't get angry or depressed about the situation at all. And yes, the gloom affects me by giving me guilts about even attempting to enjoy myself at say, a movie cinema or shopping mall.

Sorry about the length of this one, and I'm sure I've lost most of the readership, but some issues I just can't keep quiet about.

Paul

It's Going To Get Worse

The Israel versus Everyone Else story, I mean in the title, it will get worse before it gets better. From the 'normal' storyline of the Palestinians in Gaza getting smashed over the last couple of weeks after some militants killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another, to the very worrying escalation in Lebanon the last couple of days, where Hezbollah killed eight Israelis and kidnapping two, and Israel going ballistic on Beirut.

One soldier kidnapped equals one and a half million people in Gaza under siege, with little electricity, little supplies, constant bombardment. Two kidnapped soldiers equals Lebanon under air, sea and partial land blockade, Beirut under bombardment, and Syria threatened in keeping well out of things. God knows what a higher casualty toll would entail - maybe if four got abducted, we would see Tehran getting nuked.

Unless the Israeli high command expects to be able to exterminate the Palestinians and the Shia Lebanese, trying to bomb them back twenty years is not going to create anything positive , and more than likely inspire countless more intifadas. Iran and Syria look like buddying up if either of them are attacked - and if the Americans think Iraq has been a mess til now, I can only imagine what it will be like once the Iranians are truly pissed off.

Talking of the Americans, it's very worrying that they are telling everyone to calm down, but allowing Israel to defend itself (by blowing up a territory and blockading and bombing an entire different country), while thinking that one day we will get back to a road map for peace, on both the Lebanese and Palestinian counts. What fucking road map, what fucking peace??

Too angry to write anything more even hoping to masquerade as anything less than absolute bile. Oh, and with oil nudging $US78 a barrel, there goes the world economy...

More later
Paul

Holiday and World Cup Final

And the winners of the World Cup this time around are Italia. Good luck to them, what with the match fixing investigation horror going on at home in the off season, the big question is will Juventus be demoted two divisions. Would certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons - and I do feel sorry for Zizou, if I were called a dirty terrorist I would probably take a swing at the abuser as well. Although the fourteen red cards in his international career, hmm - why did the Italians need to get so gritty when they can play so well?

Or I just heard it may have been something about Zidane's family dying, with his mother seriously ill it must have hurt. Still, didn't stop him being the player of the tournament.

I did sweet bugger all with my five days off in the end - I got out of the house twice, caught one movie (Click), bought a couple of books and a couple of CDs. Just felt better staying at home though, and got told I looked refreshed at work today, which was nice.

Another crap busy day at work, but I wasn't letting it get to me, water off a duck's back is the best analogy I can come up with. Not caring as much as usual cuts both ways though - my customer service can be a bit off, but on the positive side I don't get stressed. It's a delicate balancing act, and for the customer I don't really want to have too many Iceman days :)

More soon
Paul

My Fave Chili Peppers Song

I'm a little pea
I love the sky and the trees
I'm a teeny tiny, little ant
Checking out this and that

And I am nothing - ahhh
So you have nothing to hide
And I'm a pacifist
So I can fuck your shit up

Oh yeah, I'm small
Oh yeah, I'm small

Fuck you asshole
You homophobic, redneck, dick
Big and tough and macho you can kick my ass

So fucking what

So fucking what

So fucking what

So fucking what

Says it all really :)

Rage This Weekend

The programme, people, not the emotion. Tonight's playlist hits a lot of the spots for a 90s music era guy such as myself - Sex and Candy, Marcys Playground for starters.

Well, for starters after the sublime Today by Smashing Pumpkins. Fave line out of that, for err obvious reasons, is about pink ribbon scars never forgetting, trying the best to cleanse regrets. Yes, I have self esteem issues okay LOL.

Big Me by Foo Fighters, No Rain by Blind Melon - ahh, those were the days. Or at least those were the days that did not involve Metallica or Rage Against The Machine or Chili Peppers or, err, Bob Marley. The cream of the alternate crop brought to you in a yearly dosage called Triple J's Hottest, because, being in New Zealand at the time, we didn't have direct access to the radio station ourselves.

That's what they should have on Rage, so I don't have all these fake memories of listening to 'alternate' bands in the early nineties, a Metallica and Sepultura and Pantera night LOL. And me with a hipflask of bourbon, a keg of beer, and some actual friends around. Wouldn't it be nice...

Paul

Let's Get It (Re)Started

Hmm, five days since my last post - if this was a report card, I would be saying to myself 'must try harder'. I also have let my photo website slip, and a couple of days this week have only been online half an hour at most - World Cup news is about all I have been actively searching for, otherwise it has been passively seeing what's on the news websites basically. Also have been withdrawing into myself quite a lot the last couple of weeks, haven't been talking as much to anyone as usual, especially those not in Brisbane directly in my line of sight.

Went into a chatroom yesterday, for the first time in approximately six months - was only on there for half an hour at most, probably less actually. Was rolling my eyes almost as soon as I got there - the same old same old, the virtual hugging, the virtual flirting, the virtual stalking (well, guys just going on there asking for girlfriends every twenty seconds). And that scene was my main socialising outlet for hmm two or three years, and I was fully into it - the hugging and flirting, to clarify, I mean. 'Met' some nice people out of it, emphasis on some, but am looking back on that time and have to admit I was a dickhead as much as anyone else around the rooms...

There was a very stupid 1900 poll on Sunrise last week - yes, stupider than the whole pay to vote and it doesn't become public policy anyways - on whether smokers and drinkers should pay for their own health care if they end up in hospital. Two thoughts, that would work only if we made the heroin addicts, the cocaine fiends, all those meth drones pay for their own healthcare as well - which would take a lot of pressure off the health system, but we would have thousands dying from overdoses every year - and then was thinking about the way Prohibition worked, and also the wonderful succcess making marijuana illegal has been. Because you can't get dope at all in this country, oh no.

The whole new Queensland law of banning smoking where food may possibly be served - in real terms, banning smoking from public areas, including bars, clubs and pubs, altogether. Yeah, second hand smoke can be dangerous, but of course let's go on serving alcohol, which often brings out the worst in people, let alone the drink driving dangers. If something is legal, it should be freedom of choice where or where you don't partake in that legal activity, and as for private property, it should be up to the owners of the premise (be it a pub, club, or private property) whether smoking is allowed there - not a government diktat.

Anyways...

Italy v France in the World Cup final eh. And yes, the burn out has occured this World Cup as previously - watching a lot of the games at the start of the comp, when it is coming to crunch time I have been setting my alarm for 4.50am to wake up and catch the games, but haven't been able to get the motivation to get up. Need sleep more is the thinking, but will catch the final, and may catch the 3/4 match...

More soon hopefully - not another five day delay perhaps.

Paul

It Doesn't Take Much To Keep Me Happy

Well, over the past several days I have been thinking about writing about Big Picture kind of stuff - like, why do people blog, the I'm here, I exist, I mean something kind of thinking, that I am sure almost all the six and a half billion people on the planet try to express as I do - or the fact that I am putting some stuff together in my head, of what I want and require, and was thinking of writing up a manifesto or something...

But instead, I am bouncing away happily here to the CD in the player - Fatboy Slim's Best Of, especially Weapon of Choice. Which I actually thought would be the only thing tacked onto the singles from You've Come A Long Way Baby - but we do have the dance versions of Brimful of Asha and Groove Armada Shakin That Ass - as well as the DVD of the videos. How could I go past it when it had the videos attached :)

And that of course comes on top of watching a top notch movie - well, maybe not in the same league as Schindler's List or something, but I quite enjoyed watching The Break Up, nice observations on a disintegrating relationship - some laughs, some spots closer to the bone than I expected (friendly guy who doesn't let anyone in extra close, sound familiar?). As well as one great trailer - Thank You For Smoking, anything with Rob Lowe looking sleazy is half way good - Austin Powers, Waynes World come to mind. But really, my movie watching schedule has gone to crap the last few months.

And got a book with an intriguing premise - that it snows for a year straight and the world is covered with three miles worth of permafrost. Was in the sci fi section of the bookstore, but not written in your usual over-wordy geek speak. Am already in a long way, and feel that it will be one of my read in two or three days books - in a good way of course.

So, the personal manifesto and analysis of human need and such will have to wait until later. I am working through a lot in my head though, so I am making progress - just a shame that I need to get motivated for my photography thing again, everything else on the net I can take or leave, but photography I feel I need to immerse myself in to really enjoy it.

Oh god, just felt I sounded like that weird kid in American Beauty - with a three minute portion of a plastic bag skipping around in the wind. A lot of good moments in that movie, the plastic bag was not, repeat not, one of them. But one thing there was right out of that movie, there is a lot of beauty on this planet, if you look for it.

I'll get my way out of the ugliness, the why botheredness of the past wee while soon, I promise.

Paul