My teddy bear is called 'God is a cunt.'

So, what can we say about the Sudan that will shed any light onto the sorry spectacle playing itself out over there? For one thing, it needs to be noted that people out there have been being murdered, tortured and raped in their thousands, without so much as a naming a beanie baby after Abraham. In a sense, then, the current spectacle is not really that important.

Still, it's unedifying in the extreme, isn't it. I've thought of all sorts of epithets for the numpties on the streets who are so upset about their wretched prophet being apparently insulted, but truly what they are is wretchedly ignorant. I don't know whether they have been whipped up by local authorities into their frenzy or if its truly spontaneous or, indeed, what, but it amounts to the same thing.

One thing, though: if, as, of course, all the moderate voices agree, this is ridiculous, then it is equally ridiculous for there to be any suggestion that it is not OK to insult religion in any way. Offense is in the eye of the offended, and how offended they are should never ever be used as a measure of whether what was done was illegal or otherwise reprehensible. The Sudanese have a point, in the sense that the intentionality of the person causing offense is irrelevant, it's just that they draw the wrong conclusion.

And you know what else? As long as we allow there to be a law against blasphemy on our statute books, we are the sodding numpties. There is no better justification for it than for burning teddy bears. This is not Islam's problem, it is the problem of any system of thought which privileges recieved wisdom, because belief without evidence (i.e. faith), no matter how apparently benign, is a doublethink which inevitably leads to absurdity. And blasphemy laws do nothing other than protect people from having to listen to facts and opinions and, indeed, lies, which might challenge their doublethink.

And by the way, if your God, the arbiter of the afterlife, really wants you to kill people who say rude things about him or his, when he has all eternity to do as he wishes with them, then he is a miserable, wretched hobgoblin who deserves every insult he gets.


Appropriate, time, then, to rediscover this. I heard this when it was first broadcast, inserted in the middle of a routine radio 4 topical comedy show. The visuals are well done, but will, I fear, add little to the experience. Just listen...




oops! forgot to add the Music: not sure now; Either Lou Reed - Rock 'n' Roll Animal or Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile. Probably.

Phew, FW...!

Having heard about it ages ago, I finally got around to checking out Snopes. This is a worthy website whose purpose is to debunk - or occasionally verify - the ludicrous rumours that get spread around the interweb, like looking at asylum seekers will cause your eyeballs to get infested with horrid parasites. That sort of thing. Next time someone FWs you some scurrilous rumour, go here and you will quickly discover if its fer real or just nasty minded crap.

Gast me flabbers, though, at what is number two on the list of current rumours. That's right, Philip Pullman's books have anti-religious themes, and they've been made into movies! In case you're rabidly clicking to find out what else it's all about, I'm afraid I must disappoint you. That's it. At the risk of sounding like a Spitfire pilot, or even a teenager, like, duh.

This is the second most shocking piece of info currently tearing its way from computer to computer in the most powerful nation on Earth. Fear for your children! Free thought alert! At some point I may return to this computer and pour forth some more bile about this, but QI's on in a tick and there might be some people there who can cope with the idea that it's all right to think that the universe and life happened in the way that the evidence suggests they did, rather than having to protect your kids from any actual information so that they can continue to swallow like gannets the absurd cosmology of a two and a half thousand year old desert sky god cult and another thing ...


Music: Skindred - Roots Rock Riot

Spoilers below. And blasphemy.

Mark was up last week as he says here, and delighted I am that he had a good time!

While he was up, he remarked that it was rumoured in some quarters that the upcoming Pullman adaptations have actually left in a good deal more critique of the Catholic church than they are letting on; slipping it in under the counter, so to speak. Nicole Kidman was dumb enough to marry insane midget Tom Cruise, so I guess she'll believe whatever she's told. I simply can't be bothered to search out the bit where she says she's a Catholic and so wouldn't be in a film which was against Catholicism, but it's out there somewhere.

I can't help thinking that there must be something to this. You can mess around with the trappings of the Magisterium in order to make the resemblance less obvious, by all means. But just how, exactly, do they propose to alter the later books, where God turns up and turns out to be a wretched fraudulent tosser, in order to pretend that this is not the assault on religion and hymn to skepticism that it is blatantly intended to be? It wouldn't be the first time Hollywood completely obliterated source material, of course, but Pullman's involved in this project, I believe, so here's hoping.

Music: Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains The Same (the new version, and it sounds awesome. The old version of this was rubbish. Amazing job.)

My best, most pithy and meaningful post ever.

Because I am a walking tragedy, and at rather a loose end tonight (definitely avoidance behaviour, as I really should be practicing) I've been wondering how to add one of those little bits at the bottom for popping in info on the Rock that is currently Rocking Me. Like what Mark does. And I dod wonder if it was a bit of a rip off. But then I thought sod it, I'll just type the bugger. So I will, in a minute. Maybe I'll actually ask Mark if and how he has that set up. But that would be confessing that I've been actually thinking about this....
I've just bought a new duvet and so will be going to bed soon.
In the meantime...

Music: Comets On Fire - Avatar

Try it!

How do you confuse a Mail reader?





Tell them that asylum seekers kill paedophiles.

Young people today...

So I joined Facebook. It's like discovering how your granny felt about the video recorder.