ASYLUM

* Articles

I've dragged some old pieces kicking and screaming out of the archives and put them online. They live in the new Articles section, listed in the navigation bar at the top of the page, which is for extended articles, essays and fiction that are too big to just dump onto a blog page with everything else.

* Lights

The Regent's Street 'Christmas' lights were switched on last sunday. They're... underwhelming. I mean, considering they're sponsored by Disney or Pixar or whoever's responsible for pimping The Incredibles (now there's a mental image for you) they're just not that impressive.

However, duck down a side-alley into Carnaby Street and they have some geektastic lights made from hundreds and hundreds of blank compact discs. Much cheaper, probably less likely to fail over the course of the shopping season, and much niftier.

* Ah, memories

Profanity.

* Hurrah! We're saved!

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved" — John Ashcroft's resignation letter

Well, that's alright then! We can call off the War On Being Frightened, right? And rescind the 'Patriot' act? Good! Just checking.

* Camping biotches

"These people are hardcore," Capt Robert Bodisch told Reuters news agency. "A man pulled out from behind a wall and fired an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) at my tank. I have to get another tank to go back in there." — BBC news

"Goddamn rocket whores!" he added, "Biotch is probably still camping on the respawn." Capt Bodisch is also believed to have accused the guerilla insurgents in Falluja of "running an aimbot" and being "l@m3rz" before signing off the server in disgust.

* Not Just America

Rocco Buttiglione, recently rejected by MEPs as an EU commisioner for his views on gay people and single mothers, announces he "plans to push for Christian values in Europe". Interestingly, compare his:

If they want a Catholic witch to burn, then here I am. — Buttiglione, quoted by the BBC

with the comments of this American based on his own experience growing up as a Christian in the South:

A key mantra of Campus Crusade was this: If you're not being persecuted for your Christianity, then you're doing something wrong. — wayfairer

Wayfairer also writes, in another post:

Adversity makes us stronger — and this will be adversity. But it will make us citizens of the land of the free; it will ask us to forge our citizenship and our patriotism through fire. We will do it. We will not leave the country, because that would be running from the challenges that democracy asks and expects of us. Democracy asks us to dissent. Democracy asks us to stay informed and to speak out and use our voice whenever we can. We have been vocal but we will be more vocal. We will earn our citizenship in the next four years, the way that once in a generation Americans are asked to. The GLBT community during the AIDS epidemic. The civil rights movement. The Vietnam protesters. The World War Two veterans. The suffragists. The abolitionists. We have not endured all that these people stood up for in order to run away now just because some shrub with an attitude and an inability to speak in proper sentences has been elected to office. We are not dishonoring them by leaving the country when they stayed and fought for freedom against circumstances we can't even imagine. — wayfairer

And finally, another perspective on just what 'majority' means these days here.