gobbledonk

Man, this is better than 'The Bold and the Beautiful'.

Way overdue, KS, way overdue. Give yourself a spanking and thank me in the morning

I'm moving to Kota Sorong, simply because no-one has the slightest clue where the bloody hell it is.

I could only live with that kind of boredom if I was making the big bucks, but apparently those days are well and truly over for foreigners in Dubai. Brunei, however .....

Guys, again this is my naivety speaking, but isnt the focus of the FBI supposed to be the stuff that happens *within* the borders of the USA, and the CIA focusses on the stuff outside ? I'm not saying they dont overlap, but I would have thought 'McVeigh - FBI, Bin Laden - CIA' : in a perfect world, they would share whatever each had on McVeigh or Bin Laden, but (correct me if I'm wrong) one of the major issues identified after 9/11 was a 'silo' mentality within each of the intelligence services. For those who feel that I was overly critical of the CIAs actions leading up to 9/11, it appears that I wasnt the only one who felt that way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11#Internal_review_of_the_CIA The Inspector General of the CIA conducted an internal review of the CIA's pre-9/11 performance and was harshly critical of senior CIA officials for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism. He criticized their failure to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States and their failure to share information on the two men with the FBI.[247]

Thanks for the feedback, guys - I know you have no more power to change US foreign policy than I do, but its sad that the CIA have more power than they did pre 9-11, an attack which they failed to protect the US people from. I dont know if its a conspiracy theory, but you will all have heard about the warnings coming out of the FBI in the days before 9-11 : I guess its all history now.

Flash, I freely admit that I watch way too many docos made by lefty types with an axe to grind. Even if 50% of what they say can be attributed to the CIA is fact, its just scary. As the American who spent a lifetime trying to help the people of Laos, particularly the Hill Tribes, put it 'This isnt about body count - they didnt leave any bodies. These people were vaporised, incinerated and torn to pieces in the continual bombardment'. I could insert quotes from Wikipedia on the amount of ordnance that the USAF dropped on Laos, but its all a moot point now - the US lost to both the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao, a generation of young Americans was scarred by a war they didnt need to fight and the US literally sowed the seeds for another unwinnable war : the war on that-of-which-we-dare-not-speak. Don't even get me started on Cambo : thats a topic for a whole new thread.

I am not American, and I may never understand the motivation behind American foreign policy over the last 50-60 years, but I have to ask just one question : Why do the American people allow the CIA to continue to derail the positive impact of their efforts overseas ? In a conversation with an American recently, he told me that the CIA operates completely independently of the Congress - I can only assume that makes them 'accountable' to exactly one man. The man who, presumably, signed off on the genocide of the Hmong people on the Plain Of Jars in Southern Laos, with his advisors whispering in his ear that it was for the 'greater good'. The same man the CIA had killed in full view of the public in 1963, which might explain why no-one has tried to challenge their power since. Happy to hear otherwise.

Agree 100% - he carries that show, but he has some very good 'straight' men and women around him. Not sure how many actors would feel in sequences where some overgrown dufus is throwing front kicks millimetres from their face and they just have to sit there and look stunned. If Carrell is overrated and 'unfunny' (and I think he is both), he is exceeded on both counts by Will Ferrell. I have loathed him in everything except 'Step Brothers' - he is credited with the screenplay, forcing me to concede that he may just have some comedic talent. Getting back to Carrell, I may have been the only male on earth not to find '40 Year Old Virgin' funny but the guy just irritated me from go to whoa. All this from someone who laughs at Jim Carrey movies, even those where he isnt trying to be funny.

Anyone who has watched more than 3 eps of 'The Office' will know that Gervais can be very hit-and-miss. As CS said, you cringe at least as often as you laugh. The Brit version had a lot more pathos, I think, than the Steve Carrell depiction of an incompetent trying to bluff his way through the working week. As far as the line about 'Sex and the City', I far prefer the gag from 'Family Guy' where Brian, easily my favorite talking dog, is forced to go to the gay district and watch repeats of the show. 'Hey, I know this show - its about 3 hookers and their mom, right ?'

We are notorious for the 'tall poppy syndrome' here in Oz, and I think we got a lot of it from the Irish and British working class people who came here from the First Fleet on. As one observer remarked 'Australians are happy to see you get ahead, they just dont want you to get ahead of them ..'. For all that, we persist with the belief that ours is a 'classless' society - talking to an Irish guy recently it was clear that they dont grow up with the same illusion, and his relatives in Boston sound like they are still carrying a lot of that baggage around with them. 'Good Will Hunting' meets 'In the Name of the Father' - naive of me to think that it all went away with the 'Peace'.

- after the first few seasons of 'The West Wing', a large number of Americans reportedly wanted Martin Sheen to run for President - after his son Charlie featured in several court appearances, support for such a campaign seems to have dried up Its a fickle world, American politics (still love 'The West Wing' though. Sorkin's writing is a lot sharper than whoever wrote Bush's rambling monologues)

I'm too lazy to shoot anyone, and most of them really aren't worth the consequences, but man I'd love to take the shit-eating grin off Dick Cheney's face: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney He just needs the black helmet and the cape - come to think of it, even *that* guy had a boss who wasn't just a puppet for his amusement. 'Sarah, I'm your father'.

Just finished watching 'Battlestar Galactica : The Plan' - I enjoyed it, even if the series confused the hell out of me. Hadnt watched the new Galactica for a long time - was a big fan of the campy original - when I went to Thailand for 3 months in 2008. The cable in the apartment had several hours of the newer series each day, and it was *heavy*. I would wake up from a drunken coma and watch hours of the darkest, most intense dialogue, often restricted to two or three characters for 15-20 minutes at a time. Thankfully, The Plan has more action than any 2 hours of those series, but the writing in the series was undeniably good - I just had to wonder what Machiavellian world some of those guys must live in. When you have 'Resurrection Ships' for the Cylon characters, you can afford to kill of a regular once every few eps, but it still came as a shock. All in all, not a universe you want to spend a lot of time in, but streets ahead of so much of the crap on our TVs in 2010.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the best thing he ever did - I still laugh at the scene where he is laying into a hapless Steve Martin with a belt to prove that Martin cant feel anything from the waist down. The 'May I go to the bathroom ?' scene are alltime for mine.

Just sat thru 'New Moon' : had to get out of the house and there is little else on. Looking forward to being able to get the DVDs for Avatar and Zombieland in just a few short weeks.