THOMPSON

Pardon my lack of sympathy, but I'm finding it very hard to get upset at Hunter Thompson deciding to paint his living room with his own brains. Ignoring the man's work for a second, which I acknowledge as being a substantial body, let's encourage those who are mourning the man (in some cases so loudly they could get a job as a professional mourner) to look at it from a different angle.

Thompson was not the victim here. The real victim, and the one I feel a gut-tearing amount of sympathy for, is his wife, who will go through the rest of her life never knowing what really happened in the mind of the man she left to go to the shops that morning. Because the selfish bastard didn't leave her any kind of explanation, she will forever blame herself and wonder if she could have said something, done something, to change what had happened. She will take on the burden he apparently decided he couldn't, and it will destroy her memories of him.

He may have ended his life, but he will have ruined a very large part of hers. And for that I can only feel anger at him, and tremendous sympathy for her.

And for those who might be jerking knees at my effrontery, both my stepfather and stepbrother killed themselves, with no note to tell why. I know of which I speak.

I LOVE MY LOCAL CHURCH

There's a church down the road from our place, and every week they hang a new slogan on their signboard outside, guaranteed to draw us all in and make us bask in the glory of the one true Lord, or some such bullshit.

The fantastic thing about these messages is how they manage to contain an unintentional subtext guaranteed to give me a giggle.

This week's effort, for example: Israel's survival proves God's existence.

So what they're saying is that God didn't exist before 1947? :)