A sign I passed on the motorway told me "Take Junction 11 for The Oracle". It appears the Matrix is real. I shall report back on my attempts to leap between skyscrapers.

The US government has now taken control of the entire world. Thought you had those fancy "rights" things? Shame on you! They have ceased to supply financial support to foreign aid agencies/workers, hospitals etc that offer abortion. Because, as any poor Catholic person knows, Abortion Is Wrong. It doesn't matter that women in these less fortunate countries will have to return to getting a dirty bastard with a hook and a grin to do it in an alley way, and risk death or serious injury/infection. No no. Apparently what matters is "that these women are longer getting their abortions in these alley ways with US money". Yes that is a rough quote of what a spokesperson actually said. The fact that if the US government funded/continued to fund proper abortion clinics then women wouldn't bloody have to go the dangerous alleyway route just passed them by. It's times like this that I want to take all the people that are against abortion (and therefore pro-fucking up millions of women's lives and quite possibly killing both mother and child as a result) and shoot them.

Not content with deciding that they Know Best on abortion, the US government are also considering legislation to ban online gambling. Because Gambling IS WRONG. We'll just ignore that place they wouldn't dare try and close down. What's it called.... oh yes, LAS VEGAS. The reason? Apparently online gambling is a threat to "The American Family". Let's just brush right past the countless other staples of American culture that are equally threatening to The American Family (can we all spell GUN?). What's worse is that so much of the internet hardware & foundations (backbone stuff, hosting stuff, other things I'm too lazy to list or find out about properly now) are based in America. So any net-related legislation in the US almost certainly affects the net for the rest of the world. Just think of the many outstanding cases in the US where they're hunting people (fellow net nerds) from other countries for breaking the law in the US, despite not bloody living there or being there when they broke US (not their own country's) laws.

I was sat in my hotel room on this last Wednesday night, happily watching TV (Sky One for those in the UK) from the world's smallest bed (a Hobbit would complain about the lack of room). Then I saw something quite quite scary. An advert came on for an upcoming movie news, reviews kind of show. All fine, you'd think. Take a moment to consider the advert including... the scary visage of Harry Knowles. Now I'm an ugly bastard and everything but christ! It was possibly the most shocking thing I've seen this month (including the content of Die Puny Humans). Congratulations Harry, you scary orange man you, I have been inspired to resume my exercises and cut down on eating to avoid looking like that. And who says he's a complete waste of time!

The British government, perhaps feeling outdone in the obstruction of Freedom by the US government at the moment, has decided to attack the press. More specifically the BBC news service. The BBC cited an unnamed (obviously) source in the intelligence service when reporting on the over emphasis, in one of two Iraq dossiers released pre-war, on Iraq's ability to deploy Weapons Of Mass Destruction in 45 minutes. There main reason for taking action is probably because we can all see what laughable bullshit that claim is. The government want the BBC to apologise and reveal their source. Riiight. The BBC have nothing to apologise for - it is the job of the media to hound and harass the people in power to make sure they do their jobs and that they feel accountable to someone, because we - the general populace - are far too lazy to do this ourselves. As for revealing the source. I thought freedom of speech and a free press was Something To Be Proud Of? Isn't that the kind of thing we wanted the people of Iraq (and all these other Bad Countries) to have?

It looks like I have to shave off my head-strap beard/single sideburn thing if I want to increase my chances of landing a job with Fujitsu. Bugger.

Written to Metallica - Master Of Puppets