Ugly Rants Fade Away

There's little time in the fury of the morning to get ready, attend to the caffeine addiction, put on a nicotine patch, face the world with a barrage of substitutes.

I don't know why, but herewith begins extracts from a story called And Then A Funny Thing Happened. It was published in an anthology called Men Love Sex. Never liked the title. It briefly flashed on to the best seller lists, being number one for one week, in 1996.

That, as were so many years around that period, a time of turbulence and torment; of hopeless disarray and a profound, tormented despair; walking along the bottom of a lead aquarium; every move almost impossible, so deep was the depression. So much had I become a person I never wanted to be:

"At 9.15am, already running late, everything looked tawdry, the colours just plain wrong. A Qantas 747 was taking off half a kilometre away. They watched it climb in the winter wash. Red kangaroos in industrial skies, poetry out of chaos, promises never fulfilled. The din was unbelievable. Assured by the Federal Airports Commission that things would improve for their loing-neglected suburb when the new runway went in, at a mere cost of $320 million, things had instead got decidedly worse..."

THE BIGGER STORY

Al Qaeda claims Iraq soldier abduction in Internet posting
The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a group led by Al Qaeda, say in an Internet posting it is holding three US soldiers who survived an attack south of Baghdad at the weekend, in which the US military says four troops and an Iraqi Army translator were killed.
Thousands of American troops have been searching for the three soldiers missing after an ambush on Saturday (local time) in which Al Qaeda says it seized "crusader" forces.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told CNN television Al Qaeda appeared to have abducted the soldiers, though he was not sure the website that carried the group's claim was authentic.
"No one can be complacent about Al Qaeda and its affiliate organisations and perhaps one can say because of the pressures on Al Qaeda in Baghdad ... they are adapting and moving into other areas in trying to inflict mayhem in those areas," he said of the attacks carried out.
Major-General William Caldwell, chief spokesman for the US military in Iraq, told a news conference US troops would make "every effort available to find our three missing soldiers".
Yesterday, the US military said it had identified the bodies of three American soldiers and the interpreter who were killed and said it was still hunting for the three missing US soldiers.
The attack on the eight-member US-led patrol took place in a rural area south of the capital that is a stronghold of Al Qaeda militants.
A fifth US soldier was killed in the attack, but has not been identified.
In a statement, Islamic State in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack on the US patrol, but gave no proof.
"God has enabled your brothers at the Islamic State in Iraq on Saturday ... to clash with a crusader patrol in Mahmudiya area at the southern part of Baghdad," it said.