milk, honey and all that stuff

right: main news which i've told pretty much everyone - i'm going to palestine for ten days on the 14th feb (though I haven't paid yet, so it might still fall through)
I'm finding out about the situation there, 'cause i never really knew much about it before, and i'm putting the basics up here 'cause it'll help me remember and modify it, and if anyone else is interested it may be interesting. though of course the info i put up may be total rubbish(just to make it fun). and will be changed and updated. I could just do this in a word file but.. whatever.

SO we have, a section of the middle east is split into israel and palestine. Palestine is a section known as "the holy land", it was the land of milk and honey (which, I THINK is what moses was looking for in the desert, when he parted the red sea and ate bread that fell from the sky (sounds more like halucenogenic mushrooms to me)? NB I need to read the bible) ANyway, in palestine is Bethlehem, Nazereth, Jerusalem and places important for both Jews and Christians. Early in the 1900s, britain had some control over it and by some authority - probably the very british one that goes "we have a flag therefore we're in control you un-british unsophisticated people".
in 1917 the british said that the jews could go and live in palestine. these jews are now "the israelis" (as far as I can gather) and the people who were ther before 1917 - mostly muslim - "the palestinians"
As we all know, during the second world war, stuff happened. then, I think, more jews went to palestine. they have some kind of official right to it.
in 1947 the United Nations said that "palestine" as it was then (see picture?) was to be divided equally between the jews (israelis) and the arabs (palestinians). the israelis were OK with this, but the palestinians weren't and attacked the israeli half of the country in 1948. after the war, izrael got a bit more land, and egypt got the gaza strip (on the south-east-ish coast area).
the official borders set up by the UN were called the "green line"
the palestinians continued to suicide bomb the israelis, therefore the israelis set up checkpoints on the roads, where their guards check everyone who goes through, but they often stop ambulances and deliveries etc. people have died because they couldn't get to a hospital soon enough. and some suicide bombers still got through.
now israel is building a wall around the palestinian sections. they say they're building it on the official green line, but actually it's often inside that, giving the palestinians less land, and sometimes it cuts people off from their land so they can't farm any more.
recently (in the last week or so I think) there's been an election in palestine and the organisation that carried out most of the bombings - Hamas - (which I THINK is like the IRA, though it may be totally wrong or intactful of me to say that for some reason, I don't know at all) has just got into power. whether that is good or bad is yet to be seen, but they are refusing to follow on the peace process that the previous government started. I think.

that's it for now, updates corrections and details to be added.

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

terribly sad not to be out with the gorgeous davies sisters (and pals) tonight :( BUT hopefully the non-infecting-other-people-with-my-nasty-germs-goodness will let me get into heaven, or wherever, in the future. hope y'all have fun.

meanwhile I will finally watch some of the ENTIRE FOUR SEASONS of futurama that have been in out house for almost 48 hours without being watched (!!) and await the hopefully inevitable proof of the existance of some kind of divine being that the morrow will bring. (happiness comes in such strange forms)
jesus doesn't love me - we're just friends
((this link probably won't explain anything)) *cough*webcomicaddict*cough*

oh, love you too, Janie-pie. you are pretty and nice and nice and pretty and nice. and more.
much more
*cwtch* :)

grab opportunity by the balls

...a chance to go to palastine for ten days...£300
should I?
i don't want to get blown up
:s

some headlines

- i'm back in aber after travelling over 3,069 miles in the interim!
- i've just got our webcam working!
- people are great!
- technology is amazing!
- I love ..stuff!
- too many exclemation marks make a piece of writing tiring and dull!
- I may be going to belgium!
- I may be cycling from faslane (north of edinburger) to london in april!
- the polish people upstairs are creeping around!
- Life is beautiful

new link

i feel intensely underqualified to even be mentioning this, but hopefully it may go to a good cause eventually..
just found this site out from nijabunny: www.yarr.org.uk may it be used well

out amongst the hills of south mid wales, where, deep within the land's core, spring is beginning to wind its young and green way upwards(not far from where two lovers played out their whole familiar story for all and none to see on a windy hilltop where, once, daffodils and bluebells bloomed together), a land which, in a few months only, will be awash with all the greens of summer and the swish of cars (and roadworks), lies a small town. the smallest of the land, so they say, where drugs and severe alcoholism are, allegedly, rife (as is bog snorkelling - is this a mere coincidence? you decide). Amongst the few buildings of this village, a small, cast iron shed, filled with complicated and finger-cutting machinery, paper and more political motivation than any other building within a twenty mile radius, i'd imagine.
here two fifty-somethings, both recently seperated from their respective partners, for several years have, together, informed the locals as well as the welsh anti nuclear movement, through writing and the press.
now, a revolution begins
(step aside banksy)



appologies, parenthesis wildly overused, writing spontaneous and dangerously near poor poetry, humour inappropriately used, material immarterial and widely incomprehensible. either i'm an awful writer or so damn good i don't have to make sense. (i'm pretty sure i know which it really is.. though i wasn't trying that hard or anything..)
I want to go to university RIGHT NOW, dammit

The adventure of the mysterious pride

Yesterday was a day for feeling proud. Not only did i, through an obvious amazing feat succeed to listen to the entire 7 hours of 'the hound of the baskervilles' on my beloved MP3player, i got the front upper level seat for the five hour national express trip from manchester to london victoria (that, might i add, left at6.30am and caused me to have to get up at 5am) BUT I also spent four hours with the freemans, which was a terrible and strange experience, though it did leave me feeling, if only for a few hours
-thinner
-prettyer
-cooler
-more original
-cleverer
though
-more like i don't fit in
-terrified.

my family is so horribly and overwhelmingly english and it's a daunting experience to be stuck in a room with so many of them. Had ben only been there things would have been 80% better. half the time i felt like laughing and half the time like crying. what with amazing lines such as "of course, martin, you were very into organs then" and my auntie frances (not blood related) insulting everyone quite loudly (a great and nice relief), and looking at my gran and two unmarried unkles sitting on the sofa opposite me, a sight that made me shiver with fear and worry. i'm not going to end up like them, am I? like the oldest of my three unkles who got married only a few years ago and he and his wife still call each other mr/mrs freeman, and who chuckles like a vicar. or my second uncle who is a vicar but also happens to be gay, though won't admit it, and seems to have absolutely no faith or respect for his religion but just earns money and gets along in an indeterminably but strongly english way in his centre of london well furnished flat. the only vaguely sane ones are my youngest unkle and his wife who've had children, and their two sons (friendly)but still, one of them WANTS to be a supermarket manager.
am i doomed? how can i be related to such people? is there any way of escape? am i destined to innocently utter lines like "do you like tits, michael?" in refrence to ornithology, and leave the last scowne because it would be impolite not to? i don't want to be a freeman!
how can i be decended from such a lot? and how can carys, one of the people i respect the most in the world, be the daughter of such a man as rod? is it the increasing nuclear radiation in the air deforming our blood, or did they all start out as young, more interesting people and our only future is downhill to distance and terrible, terrible englishness?
i am afraid.

well, a quick blwyddyn newydd dda to you all,
our rave was fun, charl and i proved we're so hardcore and cool, by falling asleep in a room full of children. hooray!
other things were good..
there was a young reasonably tall, slim young lad there with floppy hair and who moved so much like a mr joshuaro.. just left me going "aw..josh..." all night.
josh is cool.
nice other people too. specially nice people like janie and ezra and charl and tom and thom. - hope everyone's got home and not mugged or met death in the car of doom, etc.
er.. yeah. that's all for now. i'm tired. i fell asleep on the train on the way back and i think my dress finally fell down completely. woo!
night. look out for rougue falling moons.
xx