Ooops!

Oh dearie me, the AOL cock-up! The revelation of search-engine queries for some customers, albeit with cunning "numbers-instead-of-names" (which proved doubly distressing for Mrs. Marjory 1127908 of Orange County, CA), should be sending shivers down all our spines. I for one stray into some very dodgy territory in search of material for articles, essays, stories and poems. I'd always kidded myself that if I didn't inhale - I mean download, of course - then it didn't count. Goodness only know what my Google profile must be like.

For instance, in the last few weeks alone, I've done some research into Countess Elisabeth Bathory, Ed Gein and (no particular connection implied) the Ku Klux Klan. In the spirit of pure curiosity, I've sometimes checked out what the Satanists are up to, and in a more know-thine-enemy way, the Bush administration. The results were chastening; the Satanists ambitions seemed to be limitied to selling a few goat-headed T-shirts and black scented candles, whilst the Bush administration appear to want to destroy the world. Surely in a sane universe.......?

So anyway, what have you Googled in the last few months? I wrote a whole blog entry (the last one, if you're interested) under the influence, and didn't remember a word of it until I re-read it five minutes ago. I can certainly believe that I've typed a few curiosities into search engines whilst a bit squiffy. Mind you, having read a few examples of those released by AOL in The Guardian yesterday, I can at least be fairly certain that my spelling and punctuation will be well above average, even if the content is a tad weird.

Pick a side, any side, we all drink oil!

"It beggars belief!", the man on the TV said, as he pulled a bag of half-drowned kittens from a drain, into which we presume a psychopath threw them - of course, it couldn't be one of us! Well yes, it is a sad thing; not as sad, though, as the man in Hertfordshire (or Bedfordshire, or Hampshire - I wouldn't like to malign a shire if I could help it) who shot greyhounds in the head when their racing lives were over. 10,000 in his field, apparently, and when he ran out of space he started again at the other end, where the bodies were decomposed; waste not, want not.

They - the half-drowned kittens, not the greyhounds - lived on in an animal sanctuary (all but one, who died) and were adopted by good kind people who gave them loving homes. Once or twice one kitten or other was ill, because we saw them on "Animal Hospital" with Rolf Harris, and every person (except the psychopaths of course) were happy when the kittens pulled through.

I also watched a programme about a woman in Lebanon who'd had to leave her two sons behind. In the dazzle and haze and panic of war, somehow she and her sons were seperated, and she had their papers; it's a sad thing, to be dragged away in a boat from the children of your breasts, to scream and to weep for them and to draw slowly away. No-one looked after them, and there was no follow-up ; it beggars belief.

On the same News Bulletin, I saw an Israeli woman weeping and scratching her face. She hadn't loat a son, or a grandson; she was weeping for Israel, for the good young Jewish boys who are forced to fight. She reminded me of every mother and grandmother; any woman who has lost a child too breakingly, achingly soon to the careless world.

It beggars belief, I say, that so many of us women (and here I raise my glass, drink a little) give up our most-beloved children to die in stupid, man-made wars; nothing, no creed, no principle, no border-girdled fantasy of fatherland, or motherland, no songs, no anthems, no priests and no churches, no hymns or dim qabbalistic mutterings, can ever persuade me to send my child to war!

So I said, and so I believed, and believe still. Like all proud women, though, be they queens or queans, I forgot one small proviso. I will never send my child to war; why should I trouble so, when war can come or send for her?

holojojo