Taschen mailed me a copy of this today:

It's the kind of book you need to hold your breath to look at but it also raises all kinds of questions about the world we live in. Such as, why are we content to pay for garbage and have it taking up time and space in our lives? You can sit around all day long and say things like '...that's not fair, it's Michelangelo' - but you will have missed the point. As an intelligent race of people who all live on the same ball of dirt, how did we get to a place in which we're more than prepared to accept junk as being normal and carve the place up in the name of progress?

I can't even articulate this properly - it's too big a concept - but you have to draw the line somewhere, so this morning, I took all the junk mail that came through the letterbox from supermarkets and telephone companies and put it all back in the post box. If we all did this, every single day, somebody would eventually get the message, stop doing it and that would at least be the tiniest movement in the right direction.

Mr Smith: 1 • The World: 8,948,458,392 (and counting)

It's going to be a long day.

•••••

On the way back home after taking The Moose out for a walk at lunch-time, I passed the park keeper sitting in his truck-like-park-vehicle-thing. In the back of it was a dead swan. I guess animals die all the time out in the wild, but this one had been hit by a car and then left in the road. It made me sad - they're such graceful creatures - but the bigger question is: how do you fail to see a swan in the middle of the road? They're at least four feet tall, highly visible and pound for pound, probably weigh more than a small child.

In Germany, I believe you can get your ass prosecuted for things like that, but here, not so much. Life is frighteningly cheap sometimes.

•••••

I need a drink.