I was sitting here wondering whether to get my brother a gentleman's chrome plated ball scratcher for Christmas, but I suppose it'll only be funny for the first five minutes, so I'd better start looking again. Anyway, I've finally got round to writing my first blog. There's no particular focus as yet, just general comments about anything that catches my interest.

I think I should start by describing my political point of view. The closest decription I can find is Andrew Sullivan's term, "South Park conservative". The show's co-creator Matt Stone sums it up like this. "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals". Trey Parker adds, "And it comes from an honest belief we have, which is...George Bush doesn't know what's going on. Michael Moore does not know what's going on. And Alec Baldwin definitely does not know what's going on. Basically, this shit is gigantically complicated". That fits nicely!

While I'm writing I keep checking to see if any translation work has come in today. For the past two or three years I've been working as an Italian-English translator and a primary school supply teacher. I really hate teaching. I saw a piece of paper on a staff notice board last year inviting comments on "How to make our school better". Did they write "Tell the parents to take responsibility for their kid's behaviour"? Or "Allow us to criticise chav attitudes that denigrate education and undermine everything the school is trying to do"? Or even "Sack all the useless advisers and consultants, whose inflated salaries are diverting resources from where they're most needed"? Of course not...what someone had written was, "Be a dolphin, not a dinosaur". Such pointless platitudes no doubt give their writer a self-satisfied glow, and neatly avoid the possibility of ever having to achieve concrete goals. A reflection of how our political classes operate these days.
Well, I'm a dinosaur, and when I see notices like that and announcements written by teachers that are full of such basic spelling errors as "math's lessons", I think, "Bugger it". I'm not really interested in acting as a surrogate parent for Lexus, Ashleigh (pronounced Ash-lee), Amber and Heavenly (real names, unfortunately). With a bit of luck, I'll be able to stick to translating and any other media work that comes along...wait a minute...Yes! I've got mail!