hiya - hope things are going ok in your new home. college towns are a gazillion times better than just about anywhere. i dont know madison from a bar of soap. ive only lived in sf and briefly in lalaland and nyc.

the paypal thing sounds reasonable - cept as i mentioned before when i was fussing around - their hidden costs are the suckerpunch - the exchangerate. ill wait to see the creditcard statement. anyways - glad it was a help. u deserve it. i havent had a job for 3 years - but i have a roof over my head - so it feels kinda nice to be able to help with the rent (which is kind of a guilty niceness - cos you earned it - it wasnt charity - consider it a $10 donation from 38 of readers)

its kinda odd to hear that you arent liberal - where do you disagree with libs?

its kinda odd to hear that you write for an online mag - but i never see any reference or links to it....? wanna point me to it or is it the anonymous thing?

yeah - its the pm election here this weekend. its kinda odd that you havent heard of it. as jfk2 reminded us in the debate, australia was one of the 3 coalition partners from day one. given the whole madrid thing, its weird to me that there isnt any speculation that australia might be subject to a similar attack - either by alqaida or by more nefarious participants if thats your preferred flavour. the australian electoral situation is very similar to the key issues in madrid - relatively high profile in the dubious coalition and an opposition leader whose goal is to 'bring the troops home by xmas' (although he hasnt made this claim for a few months). to me, the similarities to madrid are inescapable - yet its virtually never mentioned. the recent attack on the oz embassy in jakarta briefly raised the issue, but it has disappeared again. in fact, iraq has virtually disappeared as a campaign issue - its quite astonishing. take a look at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ if you like - this is about the only respectable murdoch paper on the planet - a national broadsheet. or http://www.smh.com.au - there are only a few iraq stories - and its totally disconnected from the election. the cone of silence has descended - its not that aussies are indifferent - we had massive peace rallies here (i notice that quite a few of your contributors are ozzies.)

my logic for an oz-based october surprise is very similar to the logic of my entry into your octsurprise competition (that was our first date!) - but with a few extra advantages - it would be easier to justify to the octsurprise conspiracy types (nobody predicted it), and there'd be fewer dead white americans.

the major problem in my scenario is that its a full 3 weeks before the american election - and our memories are so short. madrid seems like ancient history but it was only 6 months ago. even beslan seems like forever ago. the problem with this train of thought is that, unfortunately, the only way around it would be if the attack is spectacular - something sufficiently enormous to make a sufficient imprint on the psyche of american voters that they change their voting patterns. in my bad moments, i consider an oil tanker blowing up in sydney harbour. or a missile from northkorea (as our evil powell-esque foreign minister recently suggested (he also recently said that he could understand if australia was preemptively attacked!!!))

you may have noticed a few months ago when we got a fullcourtpress from the whitehouse about Latham's (opposition leader) plan to pull oz troops out by xmas - they all lined up to criticise the plan - bush, powell, armitage and others. it was almost like they were trying to make a big deal of it.

ive actually been concerned for months about the idea of an oz election attack - and have been meaning to write to you about it - but i was waiting for a bit more info. in fact, back in june i was so worried about the fact that the media hadnt even considered what seemed obvious to me - the idea that oz might get madrided - that i kinda set up a psa blog called 'vote safe at oz election time' - votesafe.blogspot.com - but i only got around to scratching a few thoughts. it was gonna be for the retail crowd - so theres no mention of the possibility that maybe alqaida didnt 'do' madrid.

ive been following the whole thing about the possibility of an ozelection attack on my blog for months. unfortunately google seems to have gone kooky and i cant search the blog for specific bits.

heres my most recent posting on it http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/09/vegemite-on-toast_29.html which ends "if your job was to terrorise the us election and u didnt think of attacking oz then u arent doing your job properly."

there was also some curious circumstances about the timing of the election - it was 'supposed' to be called in august, but murdoch headlines (yep - you can blame us for him) seemed to be pointing for a delay - and then howard finally called the election for oct9 when he was in the middle of a scandal called 'children overboard' (which is disgusting but i wont be sidetracked) and his numbers couldnt have been worse (he had till april to call the election).

only 5 days to go till the election - im hoping not to hear that bush crony/ozambassdor tom scheiffer has to rush back to the us for some family time or some such.

grrrrrrrrrr.hugs.

luke


----- Original Message -----
From: "Unknown News"
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 07:54:47 -0400 (EDT)
To: luke@lukeryland.com
Subject: RE: $

>
>
> Subject: RE: $
>
> ok - so im still confused - how much didja get?
>
> $364.88. You sent $380, they took $15.12. 3.9%, by my math. Compared to what banks often steal, it doesn't seem excessive to me. Especially considering it paid most of next month's rent, while my husband is still unemployed and looking for work. So thanks again, kind sir. We are attempting to pass along the good karma. :)
>
> i hope your new world is better than the old world. books unpacked and all.
>
> I don't know what you know about America and Madison, but it's a very, very liberal city. So I'm happy. It's a small city, 150,000 or so, maybe 1/3 the size of Kansas City, but it's home to a huge college with 50,000 students, which changes the whole feeling. It's overwhelmingly liberal, home to the nation's most liberal Senator and only openly lesbian Congressman. We're not quite liberals ourselves, but it's a pleasant change from Kansas City, where they just voted to deny gays the right to marry.
>
> any job news?
>
> I make a little money writing for an on-line magazine, a job I brought with me from Kansas City. Husband is still looking for work, and starting to worry more than he should. He'll find something. He always has.
>
> im fearing an october surprise in australia. i dont really feel like being madrided. election here oct 9.
>
> For PM? Please, feel free to tell us about it, and about what you're worries are, especially if it's for publication. You will probably not be surprised to know there's been no coverage of it in America, at least none I've seen. And we do try to follow the news... :)
>
> hugs and that
>
> Right back at ya, with a great big kiss on the cheek.
>
> :) Helen