believe me good will come

I like your pin. I was wondering that myself.

It’s gonna be gone soon.
   I know.
What do we do?
   Enjoy it.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.

I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

I believe that what self-centred men have torn down, men other-centred can build up.

I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill proclaimed the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.

I still believe that we shall overcome.

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

- Martin Luther King, Jr (from his acceptance address for the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, 10 December 1964).

An Austrian woman who wanted to make heroes of her two sons after they joined the village fire brigade went on an arson spree, alerting them by telephone so they could be first on the scene. The men’s suspicions were raised after she was the first person to spot nine fires in a month. She confessed when the pair confronted her. The woman told the Kronen Zeitung newspaper: “I was so proud that my two boys had joined the fire brigade that I wanted to make them heroes. The sound of the fire engines was music to my ears, knowing that my sons were out there helping to save their community.” – The Dominion, 9/3/02, 29.

A French court convicted a mother of two of premeditated armed violence after she tried out her new teargas canister on an innocent shopper to see if it worked, police said yesterday. Disguised in dark glasses and a hat, the unnamed 35-year-old sprayed a woman shopper who had just returned to her car in a supermarket carpark. Unimpressed by the defendant’s plea that she had merely wanted to try out the device, the court in the northeast town of Saverne gave her a four-month suspended sentence. – The Evening Post, 6/4/02, B8.

U2 are releasing a new ‘best of’ compilation on 20 November. A best of best of…Titled U218 Singles, it features sixteen of their best known songs, a new track called ‘Window on the Sky’, and their cover of the Slits’ ‘The Saints are Coming’ (a collaboration with Green Day).

So, come 20 November, three of U2’s last five albums will be ‘best of’ compilations (I guess if you’re struggling to create good new music then it makes sense to recycle your old music…).

Here are my sixteen favourite U2 songs (excluding B-sides, covers or live versions) -

01 Running to Standstill
02 One
03 Mothers of the Disappeared
04 Please
05 With or Without You
06 Mysterious Ways
07 Mofo
08 Discotheque [original Pop version]
09 Do You Feel Loved
10 One Tree Hill
11 Lemon
12 Miss Sarajevo [full-length Passengers version]
13 All I Want Is You
14 Tomorrow
15 Where the Streets Have No Name
16 New Year’s Day [full-length War version]

“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”

“There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!”

“They are nowhere near the airport. They are lost in the desert…They can not read a compass - they are retarded.”

“They have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.”

“We have destroyed 2 tanks, fighter planes, 2 helicopters and their shovels - We have driven them back.”

“Now even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them.”

[and sometimes he told the truth:]

“I speak better English than this villain Bush.”

“I think they will not win, those bastards.”

“Bush is a very stupid man. The American people are not stupid, they are very clever. I can’t understand how such clever people came to elect such a stupid president.”

We love the Iraqi Information Minister

- A Milwaukee high school student, 17, posed as an elementary school teacher for a week before the fraud was detected.

- A California activist who embarked on a trans-Pacific sailing adventure dedicated to saving whales called off the attempt on Saturday after his boat ran into one of them.

- Firefighters were called to ventilate the basement of the Wellington police station at 5:40pm yesterday after a prisoner set fire to his socks. Police put the fire out.

- A teenager was wedged in a laundry chute at his Auckland home for over monkey hours yesterday until firefighters rescued him. The 17-year-old was discovered stuck feet first down the chute in a linen cupboard of the two-storey Titirangi house after a neighbour heard his calls for help. Titirangi fire station officer Terry Batt said the youth became trapped at 8am after his parents went to work. “He was quite a large lad and his body filled the whole cross-section of the chute.” Mr Batt said the youth was not able to explain why he was in the chute.

A girl walks into a supermarket and buys:
1 bar of soap
1 toothbrush
1 tube of toothpaste
1 loaf of bread
1 pint of milk
1 single serving of cereal
1 single frozen dinner

The checkout guy looks at her and says, “Single, huh?”

The girl sarcastically replies, “How’d you guess?”

He says, “Because you’re ugly.”

I first saw these a year ago, but still find them amusing:

George W. Bush sings Imagine/Walk on the Wildside

George W. Bush sings Sunday Bloody Sunday

Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.

“He could be right,” the president said, before adding, “There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.”

ABC News. 18/10/06.