Walsingham

I always think about the poor young lads who never got to have a long and interesting life, or even dull and intermediate ones. It's why I don't so much mind kids getting drunk on the war memorial. I figure it would be just the thing they'd want to see, not more tedious bastards in uniform. I don't include that unspeakable s*** who peed on the war memorial last year.

Completely forgot it was mother's day. Don't have a mother any more. Phew.

Can't say I'm surprised by the opinion of a self avowed 'Libertarian Socialist'. I haven't read it yet. But can I assume that Chomsky reckons that Bin Laden is a stooge for terror perpetrated by the evil USA? I'm currently reading Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization, and seldom have I read such self-contradictory and self-aggrandising nonsense. Particularly in the opening chapter about bin Laden.

Could be symptomatic of having received a cognitive battering in the same way that someone with PTSD would. If there is some bio-cognitive architecture which predisposes people towards PTSD this might be helpful in getting soldiers to seek help, since it's not their 'fault' or a 'weakness'.

Tried to take today off work entirely. Found myself congealing like cheap cheese in the waxy corner of a sandwich box. Back on work now, feeling much better. Contemplating having no dinner to see if there's actually anything wrong with not eating dinner.

Being left handed correlates with symptoms of PTSD being worse.

Appropriate, I feel.

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1? Weirdly I thought someone might ask that. I made up the number. I think 18% would be a fairly high dead rate in most battalions. Though that's not counting injured. I think on the first day of the Somme that would be a tad on the low side. Apparently I was 2% out, overall. But individual battalions did get almost completely destroyed.

You say that as though the two were mutually incompatible!

I have been thinking we ought to use sports reporters to cover this sort of ting. Because as much as 'proper' journalists look down on them, sports reporters know better than to Monday night quarterback inherently fraught situations. I've never done a hostile entry into a building or anything, but pure common sense dictate that you can't sit down with some law books and identify what's a totally justified shoot. You have guidelines which are drummed into you time and time again, and then you hope you get it right. The fact that they got the decision close enough that we have to debate it at length suggests it was a very wise choice in the second or two available.

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1? Weirdly I thought someone might ask that. I made up the number. I think 18% would be a fairly high dead rate in most battalions. Though that's not counting injured.

Actually I tell a lie. I pretended to have just come out of hospital, and on drugs. You see the problem was I couldn't understand a single wword the lady behind the counter was saying and these three skinheads were looking increasingly moody. It was a crappy night in a ****ty town, and to be fair I'd have started a fight with me if I was them. So I thought fast and excused myself on grounds of being high as a kite. They were actually really nice at that point. Which is in a way even more Scottish than starting fights.

Well, obyknven, the short answer is that it's no more dangerous than anything we chuck about. I knew a chap who worked with it all the time, just wearing a dust suit. Two happy bouncing kids. His precise words on the subject were: "I wouldn't want to eat it, but then I wouldn't want to eat lead either, and we fire that at people."

Well, nothing could exist without quantum tunnelling Mmmm... quantum mars bar.

*peers at Monte* lol I'm such a walt, in fact I was a lance corporal in the women's royal auxiliary balloon corps. Aye, it's a hard life in the WRABC.

Are you mad? Portugal is awesome. At least I assume it is. Portuguese people taught me about 50% of everythingI know about good food and wine. I once escaped a fight in a Scottish chip shop by pretending to be a retard.

I thought it would be nice for the Germans, who always seem to have learned their lesson, and probably deserve a break.

From this day on I

I walk past a Great War memorial almost every day, and I try to keep it clean. But to be honest no-one gives a ****. All the trash I find is always sweet wrappers and cider cans. Poor dumb bastards can't even respect the fact that the lads comemorated by the stone were barely a few years older than they are. I sometimes think that part of the problem is that we've eleavted the First World War to such an iconic status that it's lost meaning. It's practically religious. It'd be far more effective to have all 14 year olds put trhough a 'great war experience', where they spend a week in a trench, living on runny tinned beef and crapping themselves inside out, ankle deep in mud, and coughing on arrtificial smoke. Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

Monte is quite correct about Scotland. I like to think I'm historically aware enough to regard Scotland leaving the Union is a bloody disaster. But sometimes if you love something you got to set it free. I really don't know why the Scots think they are economically able to sustain the kind of policies they want - i.e. socialist leaning. Back when there was still oil and gas under the North Sea maybe. But now? I mean seriously, guys.

Still no tim eto read and digest the long post there. Apologies again. Thought it might be interesting to hear the story of a lady who lost both legs in the 7/7 bombings. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ter...vors-story.html

Even I had forgotten how funny Jan Jansen is in Baldur's Gate 2. Of course, a lot of the humour is best seen in context, after you've fought tooth and nail against a liche king and so forth. So I won't post any of the best bits. But this one made me laugh immoderately:

It's another way of saying that you start out seeing everything that'[s wrong with the way things are, then [i]time [/i]happens and it only gets worse. Largely as a consequence of damn fools thinking they can make things better just by wanting it really very much. So you begin being far more concerned with trying to protect what somehow works.

Have you considered dressing the puppy up as Ayman al Zawahiri, taking it to a large public park, and phoning in an anonymous tip to the US embassy? He'd be in Gitmo before they discovered the error, and then they'd refuse to acknowledge the mistake.

Hey! Just because I'm wrinkly and fat and slow and old, doesn't mean I'm old.