Taken yesterday on a lunchtime cigarette break at work. The smoke rose up, catching the sunbeams as they snuck through the gaps in the balcony overhead.

Katherine Eleanor Harding, born 8:30am. 7 lbs 3oz.

Mother and daughter doing just fine.

Fascinating. Human beings are such polar creatures.

I do love the phrase “lefty grass knicker wearing peaceniks”. It’s such a dismissive mentality born from post-adolescent competition (on increasingly stupendous scales) that perpetuates the certainty of ‘dirty rotten people who are out to get us’. This attitude maintains the very need for such deterrents in the first place.

I don’t see how a heavy nuclear deterrent will help us win the current blockbuster, “War on Terror”. You can’t fight an idea with nuclear missles. You can certainly fire them into the middle of a heavily populated country where several of their followers may happen to live, but you can’t destroy an idea with physical weapons.

Especially not an idea you helped create, propagate and still continue to fuel.

Myopia will lead us all to a bad end. The only intelligent way you can surmount insurgents and terrorists is by organised unified opposition, not self-righteous unilateral vigilantism. Why does one country have the right to arm itself and another does not?

This ‘them and us’ mentality, especially as a justification, is juvenile. When I was little I wasn’t allowed to play with my toys if I didn’t know how to share them. They were taken away and I was allowed to have them back only when I learnt how to treat them, and indeed others, properly.

Q: How do you know when a classic Doctor Who story is about to be released on dvd?

A: Wait for Ben to buy it on video through ebay. Then wait a week.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that I have too much time on my hands.

Not true, as demonstrated by this individual’s detailed catalogue of all references in popular British Sci Fi/sitcom Red Dwarf to fish.

Or so claims Rabbi Simcha Weinstein.

This is of course nonsense. Everyone knows that Superman is really a repressed homosexual who can only express his rainbow tendences through his colourful choice of wardrobe accessories (an alternative and recent minority claim for Superman’s tights, and my personal favourite). Nonetheless, the Rabbi is adamant, as he comments in his latest book, Up Up and Oy Vey.

I really don’t make these things up you know.

Superman, zipping off to the local
Kosher supermarket yesterday

Where the more pink of us might see something of a small town boyo in the Man of Steel (and let’s not forget, indeed, Man In Pants too - a look which so far only Homer Simpson has been able to publicly pull off outside of a gay pride march) Rabbi Weinstein sums up his undeniable Jewishness by the fact that he “can’t get the job. Can’t get the girl [and] - at the same time, he has this tremendous heritage he can’t express.”

Goodness. I must be Jewish too. And you and you and ba bah baaaaah…

The groovy thing about sci fi and fantasy, as I’m constantly saying, is that it retells so many old stories and allegorises so much about society that anyone can find any agenda they want if they look hard enough for it (even The Forbidden Planet retold The Tempest - a point I often tiresomely raise). That’s the whole point of sci fi and fantasy.

Unless of course we’re talking about Enterprise, which even after all this time still looks only like a big pile of shit.

What an intelligent question…

Where does the survival instinct come from?

…and what a bland and predictable response.

Human beings nearly always seem to find their profundity in less than desirable states - illness, pain, depression, addiction, loneliness. I can only speak personally (and perhaps pluck a few supporting examples out of past artists, philosophers, poets and scholars), but I’ve always been at my most creative when I’m in my most despairing of moods. This is the irony of inspiration - it will only grasp you when you are at your least able to execute it.

So, having stumbled across this really quite interesting question which I had (believe it or not) never really properly considered before, I found myself quite irritated with the superior compassion and conceited philanthropy of its reply. Yes, it’s not exactly a work of art - merely the musings of a human being preoccupied with their pain (as all truly self aware artists, for at least once in their lives, are). But her question interested in me, and the respondant entirely dismissed it - “yes yes dear, sit down. What you need is a nice cuddle and a cup of tea. There there there. You’re only asking these silly questions because you’re upset.”

“in your case, I have responses to your condition but not answers to your questions”
Whoopee.
“Stop with the philosophical.”
It’s true. Never think. Never question anything. Just concentrate on being normal and dealing with your human pain.

Do they just have a series of stock phrases they pick out from a long list? Was the lesson on basic philosophy not included this week? Yes yes yes, I know. Calm down dear, it’s just a support website. It’s just an online Woman’s Weakly (no, I didn’t spelly that incorrectly). I’m just annoyed because her letter made me think, and his thoughtless reflex of a gooey reply - dismissing her insight as nothing more than a symptom of her unhappiness - did nothing but irritate me.

I can’t wait to read his response to Poe or Kafka.

A big fat backlog.

If I watch for long enough I might finally gain a response to anyone who asks why you never see baby pigeons.