As I sit here Julie is trying to fix a hose pipe to a tap- this has demanded some serious attention, purchase of various fittings and so on, and involved considerable exasperation over time. She will shortly cart the whole lot down the DIY shop and demand a solution, brandishing various useless but so called 'universal' attachments. Apollo 13 we are not. Me, I'm reading JG Ballard's  The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)- well not really reading it, you can't do that- you just dip in and go- OH FUCK he's right- right at the heart of it-we are psychotic, especially NEWSREADERS. Newsreaders must be the lowest of the low, but it's probably a close run thing with solicitors. But newsreaders are clearly the most awful people in the world. They are prepared to get up very early and be incredibly chirpy and care about every little shitty thing about their appearance and then be chirpy about just about anything. When did you last see a newsreader cry? But when Walter Cronkite died- all they showed were his tears (on JFK's assassination)  We should have decent, pissed, hopelessly wasted newsreaders who don't give a fuck (any more) as ROLE MODELS. We would all take a lot more notice of the news for sure if this were so. It would make the news more real. It could get more and more EXTREME. The level of repression we collectively represent seems extraordinary- which is why, in my list of top professions, I would put strippers first. Strippers are very real. Of course they may be bonkers as well, hardly knowing how real they are. Astronauts would be a close second, because they can't feel how real they are (also bonkers). Those are the only two professions which represent the best bets for youngsters at the careers advice centre. I'd like them all to cue up and demand these jobs. Otherwise you just have to live with all this SHIT. Of course if you could write Dad's Army, then you'd simply be a genius, because by writing Dad's Army, you would sum up the whole repressed bullshit of our little land for the whole of the universe and you would also make the people laugh. Laughter, as Siegfried and Roy used to say, is the cure for all sorrow.