A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
Joseph Conrad

The days are increasingly shorter, the darkness wrapping us like a shroud. November and December are cruel months, cold, damp and dark. They're not the cruelest, Eliot has reserved that distinction for April.

The shadows on the magic box are telling me that apparently the Liberals have taken a turn to the left. The new leader Dion, chose to harangue our honourable prime minister on his stand regarding gay marriage. Why in 2006 we are still debating a fundamental issue of human rights, I don't know.

The fallout from the pandering Rumsfeld memo continues to rain down on Bush. More and more, with each passing day it's evident that Bush is not only disconnected from reality, he has no interest in becoming part of reality. Wednesday brings the release of the baker commission on Iraq, with an expected call for troop withdrawal. Bush has already discounted that possibility.

I'm having a problem finding my voice with this journal, it's there, I just need to find it, I need a muse, an inspiration.

My choice of reading material of late hasn't been helpful in finding that voice, a lot of depressing material about the dark days in Baghdad, putting emotional strain on an already tortured heart. As I lean back in the chair, I listen to rags by Scott Joplin these days, in an attempt to cheer myself up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

In fact as I write this, I'm listening to “the entertainer” which makes me smile, just a bit.

A golden age of film, pops into my head, the early mid 70's. The Sting was part of a movement that came out of the sixties, that led to Scorcese, Coppola, De Palma and Ridley Scott. Alas, another part of that movement was Star Wars, one of my fondest memories of youth, but a movie that may have forever damaged the art of film making.