and I laugh

It's funny. Life that is, and the way it has of rising up in front of your face, giving you a bitch-slap, and wandering off down a dark and dreary street while you, just accosted, shake your head and think, "ah well, we'll all be gone some day anyway."

The point is, that here, on the eve, nay the breaking of the day, of the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre I sit reading bits of news and commentary and have nothing better to console myself than a good chuckle at all the madness that I read.

Alice went down the rabbit hole, all's good for her, but it seems I've had, and for the most part the rest of the world, the rabbit hole shoved up my ass. There's a simplicity in the world view held by America's leaders, and I would imagine a substantial percentage of Americans, that indicates that five years on from that horrendous day, nothing really has improved and, and this is the big part that bitch-slaps you on the street, no one really gets it.

CNN reports an hour-long, sophisticated, tape has been released by the number-two man (that's funny, because it makes him the poopy one and the number-one man the pissy one) at Al-Qaeda where he basically thumbs his nose at the west and calls for renewed action in the "jihad".

Eric Margolis reflecting on the anniversary has this to say about more recent events, "Sending troops to Afghanistan, and cheering the destruction of Lebanon, seriously endangered Canada's national security, though it may help lumber exports."

And then there's this little bit from Condoleeza Rice, “That particular report I don’t remember seeing,” Ms. Rice said. Intelligence, she said, is often contradictory. and the report she hasn't seen is the one written by a group of U.S. senators that's been in all the news lately saying how Saddam and Al-Qaeda didn't have any ties and a bunch of other stuff that I guess a high-ranking administration official really doesn't need to know about.

And after reading each of these points, all I'm prepared to do, or perhaps am able to do, is laugh. It's not a nervous laugh or a forced laugh. It's a genuine, honest to goodness chuckle, that this is the world I live in and nothing's gonna change in the near future.

I think I'd better go to bed.