I saw ‘The Lizard‘ this week, worth seeing if it’s playing near you. I also saw ‘Turtles can fly recently – almost shockingly powerful.
In other news, my passport is with some dodgy tattoo-covered guy in a flat in Islington while in the process of getting a Russian visa. I can’t decide whether to do a day trip from St Petersburg to Novgorod, or stop off in Novgorod on my way to Moscow, but I think Novgorod is a three hour trip from St Petersburg, so it makes more sense to go there on the way to Moscow. If I catch the train from Novgorod to Moscow, it means arriving in Moscow at 5am, which is a little daunting.
The Russian train site at http://www.rzd.ru/ has a brilliant sound file on loading, with bonus train sound-effects. I’m not so sure about the Babelfish translation of the page, which doesn’t seem to have translated much except the mysterious phrase ‘of 3 milkings’.

There’s something really cute about this story.
In other news, I’ve had a song stuck in my head all day, and I told my boss, “I can’t get that Tom Jones song out of my head” and he ACTUALLY SAID, “It’s not unusual”.
I voted in the UK elections yesterday. While I miss the freedom of expression of preferential voting, I’m just glad the Tories didn’t get in (let alone UKIP or Veritas). There was a swing against Labour, but they’ve still retained a majority. I wonder if people will now feel they’ve done their bit in punishing Blair for Iraq.
I don’t know if it’s because I hang out with politically aware, passionate Australians, or the influence of compulsory voting but I’ve noticed that Australians tend to be more politically engaged than the English.

We love you, Paul.
“All the people who dabble in race, whether it be the Hitlers at the hard end or the Hansons in Australia on the soft end, have one subject in common – citizenship. And these days, for citizenship read migration.
They seek to construct parochial and arbitrary distinctions between the civic and the human community. So some of us have a right to enjoy the sovereign benefits of security, sustenance and belonging while others are wayfarers and itinerants who are not entitled to inclusion with us.

Britain is a great state because it has always had solid values, and has been prepared to fight for them. How wrong it is for Michael Howard’s Conservative party to tread the slippery and sleazy track of race to ingratiate themselves with that proportion of the electorate always susceptible to this malignant appeal.

In 2001, Prime Minister John Howard ran a despicable election campaign against asylum seekers. The campaign was successful but Australia was weakened by it. Its moral compass now lacks the equilibrium it had and the underlying compassion has been compromised.”