I think we live in an age of idiots. Some of the worst of these are the ones who run our opera and symphony companies as well as those to attend the performances. First it was supertitles, now it is unnecessary and superfluous narrations which interrupt the flow of the music and which insult the composer as if to say he didn't know what he was doing, or insult the listener as if to say this is what this means, that you can't get this from listening to the music, that you must be led like a two year old. What crap! I resent this greatly and will not support companies who insist on this approach. As for other concert goers, one friend of mine said he found opera boring without the supertitles. Yuk! Opera is about music. If you don't like the music get the hell out of the opera house! That is my reply to these people. Of course, there is the old argument, even amongst professionals about which comes first in opera, the music or the words and Richard Strauss wrote a very witty opera based on that predicament.

Then in politics we have such idiots as George Bush thumping his chest on D-Day trying to compare our effort in Iraq to that of the Allies during WWII. What rubbish! We were fighting a war against an enemy you could see, an enemy you could find, and one who could be brought into submission. In Iraq we are involved in guerilla warfare but are trying to fight it with conventional means and we are fighting an enemy who favors martyrdom over living under our influence in any way. There is no way we can win this war. There are good people in Iraq who would like to live in peace and who are agreeable to what this country is trying to accomplish but unfortunately there are just too many in the world who are not agreeable to those terms who will continue to fight in whatever manner possible in an effort to defeat us and defeat us they will unless there is a complete change in mental attitudes by ALL sides in this action.
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"Another gin & tonic bartender..."