March 14

Vision of the day : a roomful of schizophrenics and other damaged souls shaking maracas and singing 'Volare oh oh oh oh' at the top of their lungs in top-volume tuneless karaoke style. As we howled away like we were testifyin' to the good lord I felt my cynicism about these sorts of activities take a mortal blow : it really seems to work, and to give people an unselfconscious pleasure that they might not get in any other way. It almost created enough warm fuzziness to dispel lingering remnants of Wolf Creek which are lurking at the dark edge of my psyche. On the Gladesville bridge this morning on my way to work I theorised that inability to watch sadistic psychopaths taunting their victims on screen is actually an indication of a highly developed empathetic faculty but on the other hand maybe I'm just a sissy.