please do not let them have killed alan johnston. i've heard his dispatches on the bbc world service late at night. he is a good and fair and brave journalist. and in hellish gaza i can only imagine it takes a real mensche to be all those things. he does not deserve this. i feel sick.

I just bought a record off ebay that I already own just to win the auction. I think I have a problem.

I have just gone from a warm fuzzy quasi-government job (which in actual fact, thanks to the Howard's IR butchery, is no safer than the next place) to a cut-throat, well-paid-but-one-false move-and-you're-out-with-no-notice environment where it is interesting and heartening to note that the law of the jungle has not produced Lord of the Flies contract staff all out to drag each other down, but rather a culture of contractors (traditional scum of the earth in Labour market folklore, and with good cause) banding together against their fat-cat, safe-jobbed boss. Perhaps a primitive survivalism and innate socialism modelled on classic unionism has managed to prevail despite attempts to root it out and/or argue that it goes against self-serving human nature. Perhaps, (and my heart smiles at this), it IS human nature to bond together where unreasonable contract terms give you no formal, organised way of doing this. It's a pleasant surprise. So far, anyway.

I have a long term creative project underway. It feels good. It keeps me going when aforementioned money-spinner rends my soul from my body.

I miss writing. I'm going to write here once a week. Regardless of whether I have anything to say when I set down at my computer. Suffer!

I am very sad that the prolific, iconic Kurt Vonnegut has died. He had a shite job just like me before he managed to pen about 50 texts in his lifetime, but was still human enough to ache. According to the BBC:

He likened himself to a flower, which having finished blooming, "has some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served".

Until of course, Bush came along and sent KV into a last flourish of righteous creativity in 2006.

I am going to go to bed now, as my dear young man is there (we promised ourselves an early night for once) and I am sitting up.