Smell The Briefcase

Go on, you know you want to.
It's such good fun.

The Strange And Subtle Effects Of Sleep Deprivation

WAAAAAAAAAAAH

Boom oom
oink.


SKUcha skucha skucha


skucha skucha skucha

do do do do do do do do do do do do do do la la la la la la la la la la
bee beep a skiddly bom bom bom

ska wap a doo dah
oink.


cawa cawa cawoo
wowowowowowowowowowowowo


Skin bibbly BOO waa a doo do
oink.


!??

So can anyone tell me exactly why there is a pig in here?

The Striking Of London

Today was the day London got bombed, and I officially got my degree. 2:1, which I'm happy with although I feel I deserved a first. Pompous or what, but the people who would have got firsts didn't really do anything special. They did what they knew and they did it well, whereas for the important parts of the course I always took a risk, tried to do something completely different, risk failing as much as success, but I didn't fail. I simply didn't do the unknown as well as certain people could do the well known. This ain't sour grapes towards the people who got firsts, as yet I haven't heard from anyone save Lucy and Deb. First text from Deb in ages, so good to hear from her. But to the system perhaps in which dull but safe is always better than new but risky. Vision doesn't really count for anything.

It's rather unfortunate that vision and idea is really just about the only thing I can do really well. I don't really see things objectively or subjectively any more. At the moment it's a kind of detachedness from everything, from reality. Moving back home, it's like an entire little world within the family and the outside world might as well not exist. I cannot allow myself to stay here for too long, even the year I have set myself might drive me mad. I need the world. My family will suffocate me. Here, I have nothing other than the family, no friends, no life, no beyond.

In the 1870's, shortly after the exploration of Central Africa, General Charles Gordon was made Viceroy/Pasha of the newly mapped Sudan. He was succesful and popular. But politics led him back to Britain and around the world for four years during which time The Mahdi rose to power, an Islamist with intent to destroy the Jews and Christians he declared a Jihad. In short he was the 19th Century Osama Bin Laden. Gordon returned to the Sudan to put down the rebellion as he had with so many slave traders. The Mahdi sacked Khartoum and executed Gordon.

Bin Laden and all Islamists bent on Jihad today, are actually less powerful than the Mahdi in the 19th century. The Mahdi had a coherent and cohesive army, based in one place. He was able to invade and ransack Khartoum and destroy one of the most popular leaders Africa ever had. Today, there is no evidence that Osama Bin Laden can actually command Al Qaeda and the many affiliated groups. He has given them a mission statement and off they go. What do they actually do except blow a few tens to a few hundreds of people up every few years except for the flashpoints of Iraq and Afghanistan. They could never be an army in the traditional sense and so they can never succeed. After Gordon's death, The Mahdi had a period of power, i don't yet know how he was stopped, haven't finished the really quite excellent book I'm reading on the subject, but he was stopped eventually. Today, we cannot stop Al Qaeda, but likewise, they can never ever win because they will never again have a stronghold of concentrated power. Bin Laden preaches from a cave. They are snakes, they can bite us and there will always be some in the undergrowth that we may never find, but we are not afraid of the sunlight. We must just be careful not to aim at our own feet when we fire our guns at the ground.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, this attack on London was absolutely pathetic. London is one of the greatest cities in the world. It has been destroyed and rebuilt twice, these bombs were probably just about the least of all the crises the city has ever faced. Not even close Qaeda. There's a song in Britain, it goes "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough." You could blow up every single operative you have in London and still London would be undefeated. Think you're the equal to the Luftwaffe? Not a chance in Hell. What are they gonna do? Invade? Blow us up a tube train at a time?

Life goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Had a brilliant idea for selling music on the net today. Unfortunately not a businessman. Will pass it on to one when I meet them, just as my brilliant idea for creating a government that actually works by combining socialism and capitalism needs to be passed on because I am not a politician, or a famous soicologist or philosopher. Otherwise I'd need to form my own party, and run an internet business. Both of those would take forever. I'd rather be a hobo.

Is it possible to be any lower than I am at the moment? I'm not considering suicide but if I were that would be an improvement, at least it would mean I had some feeling about something somewhere. Life does not mean anything at the moment, not even enough to end life. The only things that are alive to me are the cats. Their emotions are simple and uncomplicated. They seek for nothing more than each other and the rest will come, even if they weren't in such a good home. Two brothers, they curl up around each other, clean each other, play and look after one another. I have never known such kind cats. Alex likes to chew on my thumb and lick my hand like a dog, he is the smaller and occassionally is timid of the outside world.

My God, I have been home a week and already I yearn for freedom. I hope to work at Waterstones. Maybe this will be my year of books. If I immerse myself in other worlds perhaps the real one will not call so strongly, perhaps it will call with more force. I can resist, I have no choice in the matter for now. But what price my sanity.

I am trapped and I have no hope of rescue. I live in comparative luxury but a gilded cage is still a cage. What is more, it is a cage that traps all of my family, but are deaf to the others. So I get to spend this year listening to all the prisoners complaining about how trapped they feel, while weighed down by the keys about their necks. And I, I put up with it, somehow I stay sane by staying aloof. I am alone, always have been, always will be, even amongst family, and this year I plan my final escape.

Of the past seven years, I spent two mad, two trying to desperately avoid madness and three where I gleefully embraced it as part of me. But that was a madness allied to the joy of the world, wedded to the possibilities of life, where nothing truly matters. This madness is like a deep dark, possibly bottomless well, down which I have already begun to sink. Too far and I may never emerge. I have to be stronger than that. Have to be.

What is life but a matter of avoiding death for as long as possible?