pootling

i meant to record a film for a good friend last night. buffoon. upon apologising to said friend, and pointing out that i was a fool, she told me that the tarot for fool suggests unrealised potential and attainment of cosmic consciousness.

i have cool friends.

i’ve seen quite a few blogs commenting on this story from the times. as an atheist, i rather enjoyed the concept, but the reporting is rather out of order. as this post points out, there’s a cause/correlation problem here - isn’t it just as possible that people turn to religion because there are these problems in a country.

this comment by newfred from plasticbag is an interesting addition to the argument, as is this post from his site:

“I am similarly sceptical. The problem with these surveys is that they deal with highly schematised, and often very narrow, definitions of what religion and religiosity is constituted in. For example, prominent secularisation advocate and sociologist Steve Bruce persists, even in his new books, in making statistical data about churchgoing the driving resource for his thesis. To understand the nature and role of religion in Western democracies we need to look much wider, towards the appeal of astrology and similar “superstitions”, towards the language and hermeneutics of desire and appeal, towards the semiology of films such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc., all of which contain strong religious and quasi-religious themes. I, for one, do not consider the popularity of these films to be coincidental. Looked at in this way, it becomes clear that the image of the USA as “more religious” than Europe is fragile to say the least, and may even be downright wrong.”

i also liked this comment from james about atheism not really being a dogma - i keep failing to explain what i mean by this to people, and i think this sums it up well. i also like the hoolaganism addition to the analogy - i agree.

“Atheism can’t really be a dogma as such, though, since it only implies a lack of belief in something - not a positive belief in something else. Of course, atheism has been harnessed to secular dogmas (such as Soviet communism), but in itself it is like saying ‘I don’t like football’ as opposed to choosing whether you support Chelsea or Man City. You can’t be a fan of not-football, if you see what I mean… (and to push the analogy - perhaps too far - it is religious ‘hooliganism’ that is the problem).”

on a similar note, here’s an article about “gerin oil” - a craze that’s been sweeping all nations for thousands of years.

i’ve been re-living my university days by reading about nietzsche and wittgenstein on wikipedia today. it made me remember how much i miss having all day to read interesting stuff, and it actually being what i’m supposed to be doing. that said, i doubt i’ll be heading back to study further any time soon (lottery wins aside).

i learnt today that now people think that nietzsche did not go mad due to syphilis, but, instead, just went mad. he also thought he was a god before he lost it entirely - which from my point of view doesn’t seem all that far from the truth.

i was quite chuffed that i could still understand both of these articles, and that i remembered most of what i was reading from when i studied it - a few years of regular work hasn’t quite destroyed my brain just yet (although spending all day in front of a computer screen, and then coming home and doing the same does keep giving me headaches).

yesterday the starfish spent some time getting wound up by some tube staff (join the club). i don’t agree with violence, and i also totally agree that people should be able to go about their work without the risk of violence, but i can also see how a person can get to the point of hitting one of these overpaid fools. i know that there are a lot of nice tube staff out there, but then there also seems to be a fair proportion of brain-donor jobsworths.

however, she also brought home the wonderful sin city that she had bought on dvd. i was expecting to like it, having only heard bad things about it from people who hadn’t seen it bleating about it being too violent. i liked it. lots. the filming is amazing - you can pause the film at any point and the shot looks like a beautifully taken black and white photo. the dialogue is funny, stylised and fantastic, and the cast all put in wonderful performances (apart from, perhaps, clive owen’s accent). still, it’s one of the best films i’ve seen in years and comes heartily recommended. (*****).

incidentally, the sin city trivia section on imdb is quite interesting too…

my favourite article of the day is all about new words. so, it turns out that that george bush has a Backpfeifengesicht (a face that cries out for a fist in it). and when i go to holland (hopefully next year), i may do a little plimpplampplettere (stone-skimming).

the article is full of little gems like this - i think i may adopt a few.

linked from this on the bbc site are some pictures from the “beard olympics“. i’m not entirely sure of the connection, but i enjoyed the pictures nevertheless.

a good friend of mine is getting married in november, and has set up a john lewis giftlist for the wedding. i think the most entertaining part of my day has been choosing what my title should be for the confirmation email. we umm-ed and arr-ed over sir, perhaps major, finally settling on brigadier (john lewis give you a lot of choices - the starfish suggested “reverend”). i rather like it - i’m getting sick of being just “mister” - at least girls get a bit of choice (are you a miss, a mrs or a ms?) and the potential to change by getting married, but outside the remote chance of making the new year’s honours list, us blokes are stuck with mr.

this leads me to the question - am i allowed to choose whatever title i want? if i do decide to be a brigadier on all future forms, will i get into some sort of trouble if someone finds out that i’m not? it certainly wouldn’t take much of a guess if the people were to meet me. i know that it’s illegal to impersonate a policeman (although there seem to be a lot of strippers that don’t seem to get into too much trouble) but what about army personnel? answers on a postcard.

what a week it’s been. first, it turns out that a supermodel with a junky boyfriend has taken some coke. who would have thought?

and now, it turns out, that a north korean guy doesn’t like team america: world police. wow. whatever next?

at last, a complete catalogue of acme products 1935-64. i was a little disappointed to find out that you couldn’t order an atom re-arranger or a jet-propelled pogo stick - i’ll just have to wait for them to turn up on ebay.

firstly, radiohead are back in the studio to record the follow-up to hail to the thief, and they’re blogging about it too. wonderful. jonny’s been listening to a lot of reggae. good for him.

secondly, nirvana are to release a rarities album called sliver. this is all well and good, but the vast majority of the album is made up of tracks from with the lights out, the box set from last christmas. only 3 tracks are new, and of them, only spank thru is really unreleased (and i heard that on a bootleg years ago). i feel a little cheated - this smacks a little of milking it, but i guess if you didn’t get the box set (poor fool) it’s a good short-cut.

watched this fascinating programme on “the hobbit” they found in flores. of course, they didn’t reach any final conclusion, which is one of the things i like about the horizon format. as for my opinion, who cares? i just appreciate a programme that’s prepared to put forward a rounded argument, and leave the decisions for when there’s evidence available. great.

on a different note, it seems that kevin smith too has failed to steer clear of the blogging world. i guess, though that he won’t get in as much trouble if he talks about his job. it’s got a lot of pictures, and for me with my prehistoric dial-up connection, it takes forever to load, but its mundanity is rather entertaining.

well, it’s friday tomorrow. qi, and people like us are on tv in a bit. my big, exciting, job of the weekend is to uninstall norton antivirus and replace it with a far newer version of mcafee. wow, the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle i lead…

my god there’s a lot to get worked up at on the net today. boing boing have been terrifying me with tales of geek arrests, evil record companies and the rather short-sighted author’s guild, and to top it all off, a tory councillor suggesting that gay people getting married is somehow infringing the rights of straight people. twats - all of them.

i’d never been to the bedford before. god knows why, it’s a delightful little place (i say little, but for a pub, it’s pretty damn huge). we were ushered into one of the backrooms, took a seat right by the stage (and when i say that, i mean that i had my feet up on the stage itself) and waited, eating some chips and drinking some beer as we did so. the staff are lovely, as was the compere.

first on was lee broderick, a sixteen-year-old from liverpool. i really couldn’t get my head around him being so young. he had a gorgeous voice, not entirely unlike seth lakeman’s. his songs were witty, beautifully crafted and basically, just amazing. he was walking around after his set, giving out fliers - i really felt when i met him that i was in the presence of greatness. not because of his attitude or personality, but because of the fantastic set he’d just treated us to.

twenty minutes later, willy came on stage. we’ve seen him before, but this time we could count his nostril hairs if we felt so inclined. his set was great, mixing tracks from his album, and a few newer/older tracks, including one written by his mum.

what felt like a few minutes later, he finished with sold my soul and went offstage - it was actually after a couple of hours and he’d overrun by almost half an hour, but i didn’t see anyone complaining.

as we were leaving, i shook the man by his hand and thanked him. it was truly heartfelt - this was one of my favourite gigs, not only of this year, but ever. fantastic.

off in an hour or so to see a good friend i haven’t caught up with in a while (hi if you’re reading). but before that filling an hour or so after a very pleasant snooze. reminded me of the jean-paul sartre quote:

“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
jean-paul sartre, nausea (193 “vendredi”

ah, so true.

blogging about napping - exciting huh? still, i’m not alone.

tonight i’m off to see willy mason in balham, should be fun - will fill you in later.

for those of you who wanted to know, here are some links and some information regarding how wizarding genes may, or may not, be passed on.

on a different note, you may have gathered from the excessive number of posts today, that i’m not at work, and am spending my time catching up on blogs. i imagine there will be more to come - the combination of a bit of radio 4, some tea, and a lot of good websites is making my life feel more complete…

ok, maybe the us government didn’t manage to place anyone on the moon.

what i severely doubt, is that they faked it, then placed handy hints around the place for later people to find out. am i missing something or would this be about the most stupid thing a secret government official could do?

maybe if they give the new moon landing an emmy for best comedy we should start to suspect something…

…i’m sure it would deserve it more than everybody loves raymond.

i’ve always hated this abominable show, and although shocked, am not surprised at this tragic story. however, i would like to add to anyone who feels they would like to go on the hideous show - the pretty people really aren’t any happier.

it does show you the level to which people will stoop to create what they deem “good tv”, however. the faster the show is dropped (especially in the uk, from whom i expected much more) the better. i’m not a fan of shows being banned though, so just stop watching it.

wandering aimlessly around the net i found that there’s a freakonomics author’s blog, which is rather good (and, as far as i can tell, on blogger, which i found interesting). i read the book when i was in naples over a couple of days, and enjoyed it greatly. since then, i’ve been lending it out to people i thought may find it interesting, which is pretty much everyone, so i don’t think i’m going to see much of it in the next few months.

what i particularly liked is the fact that the authors will sign a bookplate for you and then send it over to put in your book (which saves the problems of having to send it to both of the authors). i’ve applied for one, but i’m not sure whether they ship to the uk - i’ll keep you posted.

as you may expect, i don’t own the copyright of the cover of freakonomics, and use it for illustrative purposes only. that said, i much prefer the uk cover to the american one.