Drum-roll...

I am now going to attempt to eat fire while walking barefoot on hot coals over Niagara Falls juggling three lives cats and singing the National Anthem of the United States of America.

Or, to put it another way, I am going to try and follow the instructions lovely Gil sent me, for moving over to the new luxurious airy breezy seasidey space that is alicebachini.com. If all goes well, see you there later. If everything crashes, SOMEONE PLEASE HELP! Most likely, I'll just find I can't manage all alone without more help, and surrender. Hopefully it won't be too late by then; if the cats and the fire and the National Anthem all land on me while I drown, that could be dangerous.

  ¶ 11:03 AM | |

  September 11th

Two years ago today, like millions of others, I sat glued in horror to my TV screen, full of shock and outrage and incredulousness, watching those evilly emblematic planes fly into the WTC over and over and over again, and wondering what would happen next.

What happened next was the War on Terror, a historically unprecedented campaign against fanatical international murderers which I have supported completely throughout. Which is not to say that the US government became flawlessly brilliant as soon as it took this moral imperative upon itself: maybe mistakes have been made. Although I can't recall a single one. And I've been watching fairly carefully, surrounded by antiwar friends and family, so I hope I would have noticed if they'd managed to come up with a single valid argument against the war.

But also there has been bad stuff. The strength of antiwar feeling has disappointed me at times, appalled me at other times. I can see why some people misunderstand what is going on in the sense of being against Western governments on principle; those who grow up in a haze of innocence often find their whole world-view turning cynical as soon as the first cracks in their false idealism inevitably appear. "We trusted them! They turned out not to be perfect!" is the mistake many of us make about our so-called guides and leaders.

The thing is, people should get over their adolescent rebellion sometime before the age of thirty, at the latest. Sooner or later, we've had enough time to find out better ideas. Raging indiscriminately against authority is an outright pathetic approach for any thinking adult to take to their political life. Plus, hindering the War on Terrorism is the same thing as helping people get killed by terrorists (I include Saddam Hussein in that category. No, I don't include George Bush. He doesn't put people through plastic-shredders. He doesn't have children's prisons. He doesn't blast innocent babies to pieces on public transport. He doesn't knock down tall buildings full of thousands of office workers going about their business.)

What makes me sad is that I feel I have to say this yet again. But I expect to be saying it for the rest of my life, frankly. And my voice is only a drop in the ocean.

Differences between Bush and Saddam:

1. Saddam murdered 4 million people during his reign of terror.
2. Saddam horrifically tortured whoever he wanted whenever he liked.
3. Saddam gassed his own citizens.
4. Saddam sponsored international terrorists of the kind that murdered thousands of Americans 2 years ago.
5. Saddam was/is evil (You don't call that evil? What do you call evil, then? Huh?)

Differences between a suicide bomber and a US soldier:

1. Suicide bombers try to kill as many people as they can.
2. Suicide bombers have no practical strategic targets.
3. Suicide bombers want to die.
4. Suicide bombers target innocent adults and children.
5. Suicide bombers are fanatics.

What all people in the West now need to do is make the mental leap from comfortable conspiracy theorising that lets them personally off the moral hook, to responsible rational analysis of morally complex matters that require action and integrity.

I'm not one for anniversaries, personally. I won't be watching video reruns of the planes today: I'll be watching 8 Mile at home and then Pirates of the Carribbean at the cinema. But hey, we all need our strength. It's gonna be a long long war.

  ¶ 3:36 PM | |

  Back soon

Anytime now, this blog will be changing url and I'll be back with a whole new sunshiney attitude. I have now completely morphed from my former dozy homebody self into a hard-nosed ambitious businesswoman set on conquering the world. Capitalism, I have decided, don't mean shit unless you practise it. And that's What Alice Will Be Doing Next. And what's more, it will be the second best fun anyone can have without time-travel.

*punches the air*

(Got one strange email after putting up that picture. Why do some men think that any woman not wearing a burqua must be desperate for sex with the nearest functional male? I think actually the opposite is true: almost any functioning male will have sex with any woman who makes herself available. But whether it will be as worth her five minutes as it is worth his, however, is much less certain. The fact that women know this is what leads to their being so much fussier than the guys.)

  ¶ 12:14 PM | |

  Picture

This picture of me on the sidebar looks squished in some browsers. Advice, anyone? (Apparently, if you right click on the picture and choose view picture, you can see it in its own window in properly).

(I'm still on hiatus till things get solved.)
  ¶ 6:20 PM | |

  Still not done

(This redesign is on its way but not finished yet. Just so you know.)

  ¶ 9:14 PM | |

  Blogoholiday

I am taking a break in order to change the look of the blog and do various other things in general life. Brand new relaunch in a couple of weeks-ish.

(Just to confuse you, I may post one or two things still, if I feel like it. But they don't count.)
  ¶ 9:54 AM | |

  I'm back

One day, everyone will have a blog. We will post on our blog general notification of our whereabouts and suchlike, and our friends will be able to keep track of our lives and feel in touch much more economically than by the old means, and we will be able to blog things like "Very busy! Will reply to all emails Tuesday!" and so on, in a way that makes everyone's life much easier. Also, it will be fun, because we'll get to find out more about all our friends and their lives than we otherwise would. The blog will be the general public persona of the future. Everyone will, effectively, have their own column, and everyone they know will check it out. All of this will take a whole lot of extra knowledge about how to do it right that is only just starting to be evolved, mostly by celebrities and other people about whom information is widely broadcast. The good thing about blogs though is, people edit them themselves. Sometimes they even do this quite effectively. I plan to do it better in future.

  ¶ 9:27 PM | |

  The News

Do anti-American pacifists think that the victims of 9/11 were guilty by virtue of living in New York City? I suppose they make some distinction between those deaths and the deaths caused by the war in Iraq, not to mention the deaths caused by Saddam (four million, was it? can't exactly recall). Is that right? I remember seeing pictures of Palestinians on the streets cheering when this happened. I don't remember anyone in the West going out and cheering when large numbers of anyone in the Middle East got similarly murdered, though. I agree with pacifists that the deaths of innocent civilians are bad. I don't agree with them about how to minimise their number. I suspect that I don't agree with them about what constitutes guilt and innocence, either.

And Libertarians will be pleased to learn that the Tories are apparently not, as I for one would have hoped, benefitting from the latest pile of shit to be heaped at Blair's door, so much as suffering from the same tar-brush. Which still begs the question of what is to happen in this country. More whingeing on the internet from the likes of me, accompanied by close-to-zero real-life political improvement, I suppose. And whose passive fault is that, I wonder?

  ¶ 2:16 PM | |

  Boys will be boys...

As the battle of the sexes always fascinates me, I decided to respond here to the mini-thread below. The lovely David Carr turns the well-known (? I've been too busy listening to Eminem to notice, but I think it was a hit) Cheeky Girls song into this:

"We are the Geeky Boys
We are the Geeky Boys

You are the Geeky Girls
You are the Geeky Girls...."

... and his meaning is intriguing me. Although there probably isn't any particularly deeply considered implicit moral in the jibe, it set me wondering. What are geeky girls? Medical students in big glasses who aren't interested in boys? Smock-mothers with baby-sick on their shoulders and organic hand-made shoes? Chaste Cambridge science dons married to roguish Tory politicians?

Are they the same as geeky boys, computer gals with playstations and a fascination with space-travel and macho sports? (Hmm, I think possibly not that one). Or are they Sex and the City chicks, only interested in fashion, restaurants, men, men, men and more men? (seems like a complementary set of female obsessions, but the sex part makes it un-geeky, I'd have thought)? Or maybe "You're the geeky girls!" is just what geeky guys rejoin when accused of being geeky, and I'm reading too much into the concept?

And, am I a geek myself? Should I add that to my long list of Thing To Get Paranoid About, just below Not Doing Enough, The Wrong People Finding Out What I Am Doing**, and Failing At It All Anyway?

The best answer I can come up with is yes and no. However, I only wish I was geek enough to know how to make websites as flash and professional as this one, dammit. Perhaps I can murder her and take over her identity. OK, that was just a joke. I'd miss her. Anyway, we look entirely dissimilar. So now I only need a professional photographer to make me look good enough that I can stick my mug up here for you and prove it. I did get an offer from a professional photographer the other day, but it wasn't that kind of photographer, or that kind of offer. Amazing what you come across on the internet.

** Nothing.
  ¶ 11:02 AM | |