Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

[This is one of those "it would have been helpful if I had clicked Publish, not Save as draft" posts, as it has now been superseded by events].

November 2nd 2004.

I wonder what I could possibly find to write about today?
It is:
- 3 days away from Bonfire Night (except the town's fireworks were last weekend, and I wasn't here).
- A couple days after Halloween.
- A friend's birthday, hence being away for the weekend.
- All Souls day [being the day after All Saints, or All Hallowed Souls day, which obviously is the day after All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween]
- The birthday of Marie Antoinette [1755].
- The day when Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity by publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover [1960]. Ok, so Wikipedia helped on that one.
- The day when [Presidential Candidate Number 1] won the America election, beating [Presidential Candidate Number 2]. Or maybe not, as it's more likely to be the day when the lawyer's fees start, and the feuding begins.

But given all the media coverage there isn't really much to say. I do however find the degree of uniformity in opinions very worrying. Each new set of vox-pop clips brings yet more people speaking of "Kerry is a flip-flopper, he betrayed his fellow veterans, he...". I'm not American, I don't live in America, and yet I know which advertisements and sound-bites they are quoting. Yet the interviewee invariably claims these sentiments as their own individually formed opinions, and defends them as such.

And what the hell is a flip-flopper anyway? It sounds like it ought to be an electrical relay, or possibly an improvised percussion instrument.

[I interrupt this piece, as my monitor is wobbling with the thundering vibration from some set of nearby fireworks, and I can't even see them. No fair].

Anyhoo,