They interviewed my Honours supervisor on the news after the event. He's a specialist in strategy and diplomacy and stuff like that. He's also my mentor, and taught me most of my knowledge and cynicism about America and the world system in general. I just wish this event hadn't proved him right, and wasn't going to continue proving him right. Cynical I might be, but there's still an optimist streak in me that shrivels and dies a little more every time I see that footage again, or hear that they're going to bomb Afghanistan. Because that's a travesty of justice, and I run out of fingers when counting up reasons why bin Laden wasn't behind this attack.

Every conversation I have these days swings round to this. I'm almost sick of it. (And I hope J^e's wrong, and I don't wake up tomorrow morning to find that there's been another attack. Please, let her premonition be wrong.)

How do you move on from talking about it? I guess you just do...

Some people are going to find their Irrational Licenses revoked if they're not careful.

Norma does some beautiful artwork. I've found inspiration for several minor characters in the Novel from her pictures, once I finally got to access them in the lab downstairs.

From Wednesday, I'll be away for a week. I'm going down to Melbourne, for the second time in my life. This time, I go to meet the Male's family in a real way. Not just the parents, but some extended relations. I also go to look at the city in a new light, as a prospective new home.

Who wants to move to bloody Melbourne, I ask you? But it seems likely that come 2003, it will be my place of residence. Better get used to it, I guess.