Lily-livered New Age puritans are forever railing against the dangers of alcohol and coffee while espousing the health-giving properties of peppermint tea. But if you talk to the people who drink it you quickly realise it's a far more dangerous substance, capable of reducing sane adults to dribbling, infantile saps after only days of regular consumption. In fact, it would appear that peppermint tea damages the nervous system as severely as a stroke does.

Interestingly, what's the best way to prevent stroke damage? Well, coffee and plonk of course -- imbibed simultaneously!

Makes a spooky kind of sense doesn't it?

A good piece on possible reasons for the non-use of chemical weapons by Saddam.

Carlton Lite's latest gargle illustrates just how morally and intellectually adrift the fluffs are at the moment. The first part is the usual: Dubya is the morally absolutist cowboy out to rule the world, in league with the "Prince of Darkness" (a morally absolutist epithet if ever there was one); these evil right-wingers are lying when they regret civilian casualties; and Carlton is so so jaded, so world-weary, blah, blah fucken blah, pass the Bollinger, etc...

The last section is a vaguely amusing comedy sketch mocking Mohammed Sahaf. In the first line of Sahaf's Lite actually parodies the stance he himself sympathisies with in the first section (the idea of the "criminal Bush-Rumsfeld Zionist conspiracy"). Ironically, the sketch gets closer to the truth than the first part: that Saddam's lackeys were corrupt and deluded to a surreal degree; part of a cruel and cowardly system. It does what all jokes do (if they're not half bad): cut out the crap and get to the heart of the matter.

Strange that he can crank out both, and put them in the same column. Maybe he's trying to have a bob each way? Or maybe he really is so jaded that he just doesn't give a fuck about what's right or wrong, good or bad anymore. He's just throwing down the words on the page to justify his hefty salary, just as he yodels happily for his corporate masters at 2UE. He calls himself a "hack", but I think this title (and song) might be more appropriate.

I'm sure you've all seen these photos by now. But there's one pearler of a snap I have to say something about. I reckon it'll live in, er, anti-infamy. It's halfway down this archive and shows a couple of blokes holding a sign reading: "Go home human shields. You US wankers."

Now that's priceless. Just the kind of anti-Americanism I'm all for!

Found this story about a very unhappy polar bear via this quarter-wit's blog. He reckons it's the stifling institution of marriage that's to blame. But maybe she's just a bipolar bear? Or perhaps it's the heat, and she's got a thaw head?

Here's a funny satirical piece by Lowell Ponte about possible career opportunities for Mohammed Said Sahaf, eternal optimist. He says that the "liberal" media would love to hire him for his quirky sex appeal and PC views.

In the piece, Ponte describes him as the "Minister of Misinformation". The pun puts me in mind of another surreal tosser: this Minister of Msinformation. Maybe they could have a show of their own, not unlike this pompous pair, in which they quack on about the vile push for worldwide democracy coming out of Washington instead of crap fillums made by Hollywood?

I'm not a barking nutbar or anything, but I must admit to a growing interest in the UFO phenomenon. It is clearly a mass psychosis, and its sheer size shows just how many seriously sick puppies there are out there. Still, wouldn't it be great if it were all true?

For those of you who, like me, are hooked on this drug, here's an excellent site.

A fluffy wuffy who is close and dear to me -- no, I'm not being facetious -- described the war today: "It's a terrible business. It's just awful. I'm not going to find any joy in the outcome."

The subtext to this remark seemed to be that, well, yes it's good that Saddam Hussein is gone or going, but it's not appropriate to be happy about it.

Then I saw the elated crowds in Baghdad on the teev tonight. They held a slightly different view.

How ironic is that? Fluffs are appalled at the bombing, but the civilians of the city that was bombed are over the friggin' moon! Crikey, the fluffs are so solipsistic and sanctimonious, they won't even give (formerly) oppressed people credit for their own jubilation.

Speaking of sanctimonious solipsists: Heard Carlton Lite masturbating his larynx on the radio yesterday. He was quacking on disdainfully about the installation of an "American puppet" in the near future.

My first reaction was, well how do you know that this Iraqi will be a "puppet"? And even if he is, isn't that still an improvement on the puppet master who ran the joint before?

Weak-as-piss Carlton, like so many sad ol' lefty dreamers, clearly believes that Western capo-democracy is inferior to atavistic totalitarianism. Yet he's a deejay who makes squillions on a commerical radio station. It's hilarious! Hasn't he figured out that the very fact he can intersperse his unctuous oral advertorials with little pinko puffs of indignation and suffer no ill consequence whatsoever clearly illustrates how superior our system is to all the others on the planet -- let alone one that employs a human threshing machine to stay in power?

Obviously not.

What a tosser.

But back to the "terrible business" of war: Of course it's a terrible business. The battlefield is hardly a joyous and life-affirming work environment. And being a military commander, while not physically dangerous (er, unless you're an Iraqi one -- he, he!) is not exactly a pleasant gig. Apart from the knowledge of what you're going to do to the enemy, imagine how it feels to send your own citizens into danger? Does anyone actually believe that blokes like Rummy and Tommy Franks are actually enjoying their duties? Certainly, they are gaining satisfaction from knowing they are removing a tyrant. But I'm sure the feeling is very mixed. The worst that can be said of them is that they are looking at things in a cold and uncompromising manner, like a surgeon who looks at a gangrenous limb and realises all he can do is lop the bastard off.

Heartless? Perhaps. Cruel? No way.

John Lennon said "give peace a chance". The West does, all the time. Gave "peace" a chance for 12 years in Iraq.

I don't like the idea of violence. I'm a complete wuss. I've been known to wet myself when the pimply kid from the local video store phones to say I've got a fillum overdue. But how else do you deal with an immense group of mass-murderers and rapists who have complete control of an entire country. Send them an aromatherapy pack with affirmations? Some soap from the Body Shop? A little book of friggin' hugs?

Shit. Grow up fluffs. Evil is its own force. It's not evil to beat it down with greater force. The quicker and more thoroughly it's done, the better.

I was just scouring the Deckchair Theatre website for something to annoy me. Sure enough, I found it. (They never let me down.)

Here, on the "Late Suppers" page was this description: "THE LATE SUPPERS are an exclusive opportunity to discuss the craft of theatre with those whose work you've just enjoyed."

The obvious response to this is, why are they so damned sure you will have "just enjoyed" that night's play? Or is having a critical opinion of it a friggin' thought crime?

I just feel like having a bitch about young blokes and their dumb music. See, I'm in an internet cafe, as usual. (Still haven't gotten around to getting online from home.) This peckerhead next to me had earphones on and was playing music so loud my screen was shaking. (Well, I'm a exaggerating a little, but it was certainly clearly audible. And being the sensitive, artistic type that I am it really fucking annoyed me!)

I politely asked him to turn it down. "Eh?" he barked.

"Can you please turn it down a little?"

He lowered one of the earphones.

"Could you please turn it down? It's really loud."

He just stared back at me vacantly and said, "So?"

No change.

As I moved to another PC I made a couple of snippy comments about him having brain damage. Don't think he heard me, but.

Now, I'm proud of being very un-PC and all, and I'm more than a tad shat off with bimbo-feminist carping about men (that sentiment probably comprises half this blog, I reckon). But what is it about blokes, Walkmans, and stupid music? Whenever you hear that moronic backbeat in a train carriage or on a bus and you look around to locate its source, sure as shit it's never a woman.

Whenever I see these guys I want to say: Do you know what you're doing to your brain with that crap? (In fact, I have said that a couple of times. Either they don't hear me, or they just shrug disdainfully and turn the volume up.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a wowser. But imagine how loud that music would have to be that people several metres away can hear it and be annoyed by it? And it's always crap music. It's never Mozart, Pachelbel, or even Ray Charles now is it?

What are these guys trying to do? Is that malestrom of androgens causing them so much friggin' psychosexual angst that they just have to erase it with sound? Or is it some primal tribal thing? Or maybe it's because their neurons are so numbed already that only a thousand decibels at point blank range will do the gig?

Shit I dunno. Whatever the reason it really pisses me off. There oughta be a law, I say!

If you ever thought that fluffy wuffies were basically caring, sharing, huggy wuggy types whose only fault was their excessive zeal, then have a look at their reactions to the death of Michael Kelly.

They just glow with liberal love and goodwill.

Maybe not a smoking gun, but certainly a poisonously mouldy one.

(And re that whole WMD thing: Wasn't it nauseating to hear squits in the media carp petulantly about how long it was taking to find 'em during the war, when before it began they kept saying, "More time. More time!")

I found an amazing graph via Andrew Sullivan's blog. It shows which countries armed Iraq, and to what extent, over the last 30 years. As you'll see, Saddam acquired a large proportion of his weapons from France and Russia, two of the countries chanting, "Lay off him. He wouldn't hurt a fly!" (And contrary to the fluffy wuffy line, the Seppos have sold him close to buggerall.)

It's so revealing I'm almost suspicious of its veracity. Looks dinkum, but.

They called him "Chemical Ali". But now Ali is nothing but chemicals.

Poetic justice or what!