The Day After Tomorrow

It was the usual Saturday with crap to watch on TV and nothing much of highlight in the evening (other than the discovery of a very nice Australian Shiraz. I usually don't like Shiraz - I'm not much of a red wine drinker - but this one didn't have too much of the smoky, strong tannin flavours of red wine that puts me off.)

It came down to 3 crap movies: Underworld, Clueless or Day After Tomorrow, which we eventually settled for, since I could at least watch the special effects. The movie was, as expected, pretty crap, but it made me decide I should definitely get myself more polo fleeces and goretex jackets - with the winter fast coming on, London as Siberia does not an appealing idea make. I also quickly made up my mind I should learn how to pitch a tent, a skill which I understand the guys at home learn in the army, so at least the army does teach people one useful thing.

But the movie also made me realise with horror this is how America actually, really, truly sees itself: that, in the wake of crisis, FEMA would actually be there handing out hot soup, owners of Arabian horses be damned. That an ambulance would actually roll up in the middle of the night as they "had heard that someone was left behind" - tell that to those who were stranded on roofs, waving frantically to the media helicopters. That third world countries would receive and welcome Americans, grateful for the chance to repay everything America had bestowed and conferred on them in the past years - we need not even go there. That an American president would actually be the last to go - what, I thought he would still be sitting in that classroom staring at the children's book. That an American leader would finally learn the folly of his ways, and apologise sincerely and contritely for a genuine mistake he had made...... I can say no more.

In the wake of everything America has messed up in the world and, in particular, Katrina and Iraq, this is more than laughable; this is horrific, astounding - this is shocking.