I thought that blogs were supposed to be things that one vomitted forth on a diurnal basis full of the seething maggoty bile of deconstructed thoughts and gangrenous frustrations...

But i am not that regular and tend to bottle it all up, occassionally, some of the bile seeps forth onto this screen, but usually it just sinks to the bottom of my being and makes me the bitter and twisted bile bound bod that I am.

Enough here is a photo:

So, what is this armed man guarding or protecting. If you can work this out before reaching the end - if you can abide to read that far - you'll win a prize...

Headlines yesterday in the islands other great newspaper, The Quotidien, was that people here eat dogs. So what, I know people who eat frogs, marmite, hamburgers and andouilletes. The front page carried a photo of a cuddly pouch in a cauldron being cooked a la creole. This tells me more about the pathetic quality of the journalism and the interests of the state to debase anything that isn't European than anything else. Let's not mention the rampant corruption or the environmental destruction, no let us talk about cooking a dog.

This could turn into a real fermenting rant so let us get back to international events. In the great war against terrorism nothing is sacred and we must all do our best to protect that which is our way of life etc... Personally, I have not been instructed by God to defend anything but I am happy to see that France is taking this terrorism stuff seriously - hence the photo above. We have to be aware that the terror can strike anywhere and this is why it is necessary to place armed guards...


... on a volcano at 2400m. They were supposedly there to protect the public following the recent small eruption (www.fournaise.info), or was it to protect the volcano from the litter wielding public? Or was it that they were afraid a would be suicide bomber would try to blow the volcano up, err it was already. Why were these people armed? Were they going to shoot anyone who got too close to the volcano? What about all those planes flying around the crater, they could be terrorists - fortunately they only had pistols and not SAMs.

Still, i spent a day at the volcano but was not allowed to get too close for fear of being shot and...

...sour grapes? ;-)