If this is for real (and I’ve no reason to suspect it isn’t) then this is yet another entertaining example of the collossal bastardy of the US govt, and, more importantly, needs circulating. Caveat: features seriously disturbing pictures of badly deformed babies, made that way by the after-effects of Depleted Uranium dust, left behind by the ammunition the US used in it’s wars in the gulf, which is will not mow permit Iraq the tools to clean up. There’s a text piece as a lead in, so you won’t see any photos immediately on clicking, and it’s worth reading in itself – scroll down and look at a few of the photos, though, just to see how bad this actually can be – they’re where the visceral impact of the thing lies.

Yes, of course this could be spin. Those might be the sum total of all the deformed babies born in Iraq since Desert Storm. But even if they are, if there’s even a chance that more will be born, how can the US justify not permitting a clean up?

While I was blogging that last, Mr Page was doing the same, along with this related article from Yahoo News, which is about the increased rate of deformities in the children of Gulf War veterans. Apologies to our mutual friends for the duplication of linkage, but I think both of them need to be circulating widely…

I’m not posting the whole fucking thing, but I’m amused to note that according their system, the person on my friends list that I’ve been known the longest is the person I’m least compatible with, and the people I’m most compatible with (those that scored over 90%) are all people who I’ve hardly spent any time with, or indeed, never actually met face to face at all.

Summer’s hit Battersea Park. I’m beside the boating lake, drinking massively overpriced Red Bull, and contemplating a vareity of solutions to my current writers block.

Option 1: Drown myself. It’d be easy, and convenient, and with any luck it’d leave a few of these bastard children that are all over the damn damn park with something collosally traumatic to remember.

But on the downside, I’d be dead. And I don’t really want to be, so I think I can rule that one out.

Option 2) Just keep hammering my head off a wall. Well, I’m getting kind of tired of that, to be honest. I’m sick of dealing in substandard fragments of thought, and half-formed ideas. I need somethingto give soon, and let me actually write, rather than makes notes.

Option 3) Medication. Devolve back into my bad habits, and abuse my body with whiskey and coffee. This is my favourite option – I know that belting my brain sideways with those two will nearly always shake something loose. I’m not the only person I know that works like this, and I’m certainly willing to give it another go at this point.

The problem with this is manifold, though. Top of the list: it’s bad for me. My diet is still residing in the “fucked, but improving slowly” zone that it slipped to late last year, but my other habits are actually quite reasonable – my caffiene intake is minimal, these days, and I don’t drink more than a few measures in an average week. This is not the sort of level I can use to punch myself in the frontal lobes with – I need half a pot of coffee and a good double in me to get started, and I need to hold that level of wired over time. Additionally, coffee makes me want to smoke, and I’ve been having a hard enough time staying away from the fags for a while now.

Also: I’m not much fun to be around when I’ve medicined myself. I shut myself in my room, and fight with language, emerging only to refresh my drinks. This is not the sort of behaviour one can indulge in when one has a girlfriend one would like to keep seeing. It’s profoundly anti-social.

Still, I think it’s my best bet. And y’know, Fin gave me an espresso machine last night, which is practically an inivitation to anti-social behaviour.

So it’s out to buy a burr grinder with me tomorrow, and fresh coffee beans on Sunday.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the last of this Red Bull, and put some more notes together, in the summertime.

Sucked. Got up at my usual time, to find that one of my flatmates was running late, and was in the shower. So I wound up running late – not “late for work” late, just “later than I like my routine” late. My meeting this afternoon has been cancelled, too.

So, at lunch, I went to the gym. It was dry when I walked out the office door, but tipped it down within minutes, only to dry up as I got to the gym. It remained dry all through my workout, and right up to about thirty seconds after I left the gym. It’s dry again, now that I’m back in the office. And my workout was deeply unrewarding. I underperformed on just about every machine, and I don’t know why. So I’m feeling deeply disassified with myself. I don’t feel like I’ve had proprer exercise, and I’m damp.

This afternoon had better be better.

Pan fried zebra in red wine jus. Reminded me curiously of duck. Highly recommended, though.

Of course there are. I direct your attention to this (Nicked off Rachel, ta.

Checking in on Done Deal, I see that Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle has been optioned. Excellent news. Hope it actually gets made…

Like, tonight. And, y’know, drop me back again, too? I’d like to go see Flogging Molly again (saw ’em last night, they were fantastic), and they’re playing in Oxford tonight, it turns out (on Cowley Road, wherever that is), but I need to get back here tonight, in order to, y’know, work tomorrow.

I’ll happily pay petrol, and a for a ticket to the gig for anyone that gives me a lift. :)

No, didn’t think so. Anyone fancy getting the train with me, then?

Everyone’s doing it