trying to keep calm

but my tail is wagging

Much of today, a Saturday, was spent volunteering for the city council, overseeing kiddies frolics in Rundle Mall on Christmas pageant day. November 8 seems way to early for all that stuff, but they do it the same time every year. It was fun enough and got me some much-needed exercise. Afterwards I hung around Borders and bought two books I could ill afford, The Blind Watchmaker and another history book, but one I sense I'm going to argue with a bit, The War of the World by Niall Ferguson. My life has crumbled so much that really reading is the major solace and focus now, I've become largely invisible in the real world, but I did at least have some pleasant conversation with the lovely Huey, a fellow volunteer who talked me into the gig. I work with her at a city community centre on Mondays, and she's applied for a job and wanted encouragement from me. I thought she had a good chance of getting it, and she suddenly said, I'm sure quite innocently - I tell you what, if I get the job, we'll go out to dinner, is that a deal? 

My immediate thought was - am I hearing this arright?  Is she talking about just us two, or maybe the whole staff of the community centre? She's a very attractive woman, and of course much younger than myself. A couple of months ago, she confided in me quite unexpectedly regarding the sudden break-up of her marriage, and then I felt a spark, though I dismissed it as the usual desperation on my part. In any case, it gives me a fillip - my body might start getting the attention it needs from me again. I'll have to check through her application to make sure she gets the job - English isn't her first language.

Must change the subject. 

With all the poo the USA's in at the moment, the election of Obama shows things haven't changed, the black guys still get the worst jobs. Still, it's pretty exciting, and I was unexpectedly tearful when the victory was announced, it's kind of miraculous, even though I've supported him since before he started moving ahead of Clinton in the fight for the Democratic nomination, and it restores my faith in the American public somewhat, though the claim that now the possibility of becoming US President is open to anyone with sufficient merit is clearly bogus, and will be so for as long as Presidents and wannabe Presidents have to utter those puerile words ''God bless America" after every speech. Those founding fathers must be spewing in their gravies. 

But there are plenty of reasons not too get too excited about Obama as a pacifying diplomat. In the first Presidential debate, I think it was, he just happened to slip in the claim that Venezuela - a democratically elected government that just happens to be a bit antagonistic to US foreign policy - was a rogue state. More US arrogance, pure and simple [and chilling too - let's not forget the CIA's murderous intervention in Iran in the fifties and Chile in the seventies, democracy my arse]. Today he had a go at Iran. I'm not so much annoyed that he claims Iran supports terrorist organisations. Presumably he has proof and I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt [though evidence must be produced, and we'd expect something a darn sight better than the shite served up as evidence against Iraq]. What I am concerned about is that a state bristling with nuclear weapons somehow imagines that it has the right to prevent any other nation from developing similar weapons. Hypocrisy, pure and simple. Motes and beams in eyes. Of course I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. I don't want any country to have them. I certainly don't trust the US with them, not after eight years of Bush and his Cheney gang. 

So I'm with P Z Myers on this. No reason to get too carried away.