1. Man falls through ceiling, onto dance floor. I wonder if "It's raining men" was playing. I used to live in Gippsland; this doesn't surprise me in the least.

2. Amrozi looked "pale and afraid" as he faced a firing squad. Martyrdom: not so hot when push comes to shove.

3. A 1960s tape recorder the size of a household fridge could be the key to unlocking valuable information from NASA's Apollo missions to the moon. The obsolescence of data recording media should be of grave concern to scientists. Modern computers are good at correlating and crunching said data, but it must get fed into them first. I wonder what else is lying around fallow.

4. Greek Orthodox and Armenian worshippers have traded blows in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christian denominations jealously protect their hold over areas of the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion. Somehow I'm not quite sure that this is what Christ meant when He said "I bring not peace, but a sword."

5. And in May the bodies of about 400 Australian and British servicemen were found in a mass grave on the outskirts of the French town Fromelles. Governor-General Quentin Bryce was in Fromelles yesterday, where she laid flowers in honour of those fallen soldiers who were killed in battle in 1916. The bodies will be buried in a new cemetery in the town next year. Just another fucking ghoul, wallowing in failure. Why not commemorate the dead on the battlefield at Hamel, or Amiens, or any of the other completely successful operations that filled the hundred days of continuous victories between 8 August 1918 and the end of the war? The sooner we as a nation stop mentally masturbating over failures like Fromelles or Gallipoli, the sooner we'll get the imperialist chip off our shoulder; and then we can put this stupid talk about an Australian republic in the ground to rot.

Source: the novelization of "Star Trek: the Motion Picture." The novel is attributed to Gene Roddenberry, and if anyone would know what canon was, he would. I hadn't read this novelization in a long time (possibly as much as 25 years), and knowing what I know now about Kirk/Spock slash, I was most surprised (and amused) to find the following.

On p18 of my (hardback!) edition from the local library, an "in-universe" footnote references the Vulcan term t'hy'la, and the text of the footnote is as follows:

EDITOR'S NOTE: The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term t'hy'la, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter has drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However because t'hy'la can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk's and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has led to some speculation over whether they had actually indeed become lovers. At our request, Admiral Kirk supplied the following comment on this subject.

"I was never aware of this lovers rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of the right eyebrow which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself, although I have no moral or other objections to physical love in any of its many Earthly, alien and mixed forms, I have always found my best gratification in that creature woman. Also, I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years."

There are many ways around that, of course. Kirk could be lying within universe. The relationship could have developed after the comment was given. The feelings could be subtextual and never expressed as anything more than a close friendship. One can always say "Fuck canon - that's what fanfic is for!" (a position which I strongly support). But I found the whole thing quite fascinating, as Spock himself might say. The book, oddly enough, bears no copyright date - but someone has scrawled in the front the date "21/5/80" among other used-book sale-price data, and IIRC the film came out around 1979 - plenty of time for Roddenberry to have become aware of fanon Kirk/Spock and to craft a response.

My personal position? There is more than enough support for Kirk/Spock in canon. It's one of those slash pairings I find very easy to believe.