dilemmas and other frustrations

Yesterday evening I went to loads of trouble (really) to knock together a reaction to some numbskull back home. He's a self-appointed community leader who trotted out that threadbare and much derided view that women who aren't covered from head to foot and are outdoors unsupervised are asking for it when they're then raped.

The predicable response flooded in, and it was the tenor of that response which caught my attention. After all the comments I've still to see one man say something like "hang on, I don't like what your suggesting about me here." After all, the explicit contempt for women being expressed here only imperfectly masks an implicit contempt for men.

Anyway the moment has gone and the mood with it and I'm now grappling with (not to say agog at) the spectacle of evidence of subtelty in Dubya. He's reacted to Cheney's answer when asked about dunking in water by saying "we don't torture, we interrogate". That's an answer worthy of Little Johnny and I can't help wondering if our Glorious Leader has been supplementing the meagre stipend provided out of tax revenues for his role as Australian Premier with a little bit of high-fee coaching on the side.

God on yer, wee man. It's a long time till you'll get your next chance to bask in the reflected glory of Australian sporting achievement (and please, please let us not fail to win the Ashes ... I still grimace every time I call to mind the gracelessness with which the Accidental Prime Minister handed over the Rugby World Cup).