20 March 2014

let's just not go there...

Friends, New Yorkers, I have some good news and then I have some bad news.

The good news is that tonight you get a chance to see a bright star turning off in realtime, and then 14 odd seconds later, turning back on as an asteroid passes in front of it - something that apparently hasn't happened for a naked-eye star in all of recorded history - and in my thinking just goes to show how short our recorded history actually is (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/03/tonight-star-will-disappear-over-new-york-city/8678/)

The terribly bad news is that my deranged/delusional(?) personal boycott against travel to the USA has been ratcheted up and so I can state for the record that I will not be visiting any of you in the foreseeable future, nor most likely, ever in my lifetime.

Yes, I do realise that to my friends and possibly everyone else who lives there, this is just going to be seen as just more astoundingly good luck. And besides, most of you know that I'm never ever going to break out of a lifetime of habits and priorities that keeps me happily broke, and this 'boycott' therefore, completely theoretical.

But fuck it, I'm calling it a boycott anyway, because apart from temporarily vanishing stars, tonight is also the 11th anniversary of what must surely be up there for the crime of the century - the for-profit invasion and slaughter in Iraq which began tonight in 2003. ... And surely it wouldn't be so crazy to ask those that can, to desist from holidaying there while all this madness goes on, and on, and on, and on.