Charting the predictable: This week's events in a Moscow Theatre have followed all the usual lines of predictability. Firstly it was obvious that the Chechen occupation of the Theatre was going to end in none of the demands being met and the Russians attempting to kill all the terrorists. Secondly it was obvious that the Russians would negotiate the release of all of the foreign hostages. This would lead to the third obvious stage which involved the Russians putting together a badly thought out military effort to end it all. Fourthly, it was obvious that it would get ballsed up and loads of people would die. It was also obvious that the Russians would have no problem fucking over their own citizens once the nice lovely foreigners were out the way - wrongly believing that the outside world would ignore the resulting disaster. Old Soviet habits die hard.

It's all so depressing really.

Even worse they pumped the theatre full of gas probably banned by international treaty and as a result thought it best not to provide any medical assistance for the inevitable innocent casualties that would emerge from the building. The same reason is almost certainly why they still refuse to tell docters what the gas actually was. Plus one of the terrorists managed to escape, meaning that the Russians somehow failed to ring the scene with tight security even though they must have been preparing for days. Classic ineptitude. Hopefully this episode will embarass those in charge into sorting out their act. Although they learnt little from their handling of the Kursk disaster so I'm not holding out for much.

In a way, the terrorists probably got their way. It's doubtful they really expected the Russians to pull out of Chechnya, but probably wanted to draw attention to their cause. And in that they have suceeded. Russian operations in the region are again in the news and the bungled rescue means that instead of everybody crying out against the terrorists, the anger is being directed towards the Russians.

Not being one to tempt the possibility of bungling a gradual shift from seriousness to homour I will dive in with....


Try winning at this. Not as easy as you might think but nevertheless mediocre.

Then find this fairly good but not spectacular Alanis Morissette lyric generator


....Slow web day. As you can probably tell.

Mmm, surely there's something better than this?

Well. It's one hour after my plea for something better and I have discovered 2 cool things:

1: A ridiculously cool looking new keyboard

And 2: An embarrassing piccie of my mate Rob. Hehehe...