Paul Hester RIP - Somewhere deep inside ...

Goodbye Paul Hester. You were a chirpy, cheeky chap full of life and energy.

With the news of your death comes an overwhelming sense of sadness.

Paul Russell, I'm thinking of you and your gentleness and kindness and amazing drawings.

Therea Mullins, I'm thinking of you and your elegant, long white gloves.

Rod Davidson, I'm thinking of you and the good times when you played footy with a golden, beaming smile.

Reinvention

On the whole depressed. Down about Rima.

From Salon's review of Ian McEwan's Saturday: 'Her notion "that people can't 'live' without stories is simply not true. He is living proof." Henry, like many a scientific man, doesn't want the world "reinvented; he wants it explained." '

There is no explanation. I want reinvention. It's time to move on again. All the signs are there.

Similar to 1994, 1997 and 1999. It's time to do something different, to seek reinvention.

The Courage to Count the Dead

John Faulkner NSW Labour Senator on the Iraq War Dead quoted in the SMH:

"It is the duty of the Australian government, the US government, the British Government to try. It is their responsibility to take account of the dead, of their names, their ages, their families and the ways and reasons they died.

It is their duty to take account of numbers like 98,000; or 41,000; or 55 murders a month; or 16,389 deaths reported in the Western press alone.

The point is, we should know the price.

I do not expect the armed forces of any country to be able to invade and occupy another without killing civilians, without damaging hospitals or water treatment plants, without disrupting food shipments. That is an unrealistic expectation.

Wars are bloody and horrific. A lot of people die, and they die hard. Most of them have no connection to the abstract causes being fought for or interest in the politics that brewed the battle. Every one of them leaves a lasting wound in the lives of those who loved them.
And knowing that, we should be very careful about when and why we go to war. It is inexcusable to pretend we can wage a war without cost, as the Howard Government is trying to do. And it is inexcusable to take our nation to war based on a lie, as the Howard Government did.
This government didn’t have the strength to say no to the United States nor the integrity to tell Australians why we were going to war.
They ought at least to have the courage to count the dead."

Listening to Yo La Tango & Glenn Gould.

Attacked by flying pygmies while wading thro Corporate Finance Models AAgh ...

Today at Turf City watching Charlie's football team, the Gunners, in his cup final versus the Bombers. They won on penalties after their goalie Ben saved 3 penalties.

At work, wading through spreadsheets.

Amused by Leunig's rejected cartoon.

Depressed as my relationship with Rima appears doomed.

I did however manage to get my photos to fade nicely into each other.

Reading Kafka on the Shore.

Listening to Gravenhurst & Turin Brakes.

Bored at work

Bored at work so I checked out Moby's webdiary which is always interesting ie he eats Chinese food on the backseat of a taxi on the way home from rehearsals.

I watched Rabbit Proof Fence last night with Rima. She couldn't believe that forced assimilation happened in Australia.

The Chief Protector of Aborigines in WA said in 1937:

"Are we going to have a population of 1,000,000 blacks in the Commonwealth, or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia?"

I like the fact that John Hewson very strongly supported this film and urged little Johnny H to apologise. The guy has a lot of integrity. But the street fighter Keating made mincemeat of him.

Listening to Yo La Tango.

Getting over a bad back thanks to my french Osteopath.