I do not like the human race

Actually, bits of it are ok, but large tracts of it make me want to convert to something sensible, like orang-utans.

It is a fearful and wonderful thing, to be an English academic in a time of terrorist bombings: the opportunities for linguistic analysis would make your toes curl (unless you're starmadeshadow, in which case there's no knowing what they'll do). I am fascinated by the extent to which responses to the London bombings have divided themselves into two camps, which are in ongoing and dynamic tension as they try to colonise the opposition: the sensible/rational/measured response versus the deliberate attempt to emotionalise. People like Blair and certain media sites are doing their damndest to turn this into a black/white, us/them process: big on words like "horror", "terror", "atrocity", very low on actual logic. The bus didn't blow up, it was "ripped apart". This isn't an attack on London's people or transport system, it's an "attack on values and lifestyles". Sensationalism scares me, not only because it whips up extreme emotional responses, but because it suggests that those are the terms in which the majority of people actually want to respond. The rational voices suggesting that this could have been a lot worse, and that maybe we should wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions about the nature of the perpetrators, are a minority, and they're not the ones in charge. Politics these days seems to be interchangeable with mass media - you have to say what sells. I hate it.

Today was an annoying day. Last night's game was lack-lustre and is giving me crises of confidence about my ability to DM, or at least to bludgeon my brain into something like wakeful energy during games. The belated discovery that today is the deadline for tax returns didn't help; of all the things I hate about being a Grown-Up, tax returns are about the third worst. It is also one of the many ramifications of Sod's Law that this morning should have seen me bitten suddenly with inspiration re this thrice-dratted Tolkien paper, since I almost immediately had to stop chasing up fascinating ramifications of fan culture in order to wrestle with numbers and bureaucratic language. (You try making sense out of tax certificates when two-thirds of your brain wants to be wandering Middle-Earth in analytic mode.) The total non-appearance of a vital tax certificate didn't help, but, in a bizarre twist of hitherto unsuspected efficiency, the medical aid company provided me with an online copy in about two and a half minutes flat. I think I'm still faintly stunned. I was able to post the wretched thing about five minutes before the post was collected from the box, having exchanged furtive and guilt-ridden grins with two other people in the photocopy shop as we all frantically copied forms and certificates. Inefficiency, the great human commonality.

Just think. If we were an orang-utan civilisation, we probably wouldn't have to fill in tax returns. Bananas don't generate that much paperwork.