Check It Out *

I don't seem to post much these days, partly cos I can't be bothered and partly cos ... I can't be bothered. Darren over at Inveresk Street does the most mentally prolific posts, as does John at Counago and Spaves, both of which, by the way, I read on a daily basis these days and both of which are for more interesting than the stuff you can read here.

I have a new participant(s) to my blog, and it's a warm welcome to John and Jane. My good friend Messalina has certain problems with this couple, which, I must say, I don't quite get - particularly considering that I believe the latter has taken her moniker from the following:

"In 38 A.D. Claudius had married Valeria Messalina, a scion of a noble house with impressive familial connections. Messalina bore him a daughter (Octavia, born in 39) and a son (Britannicus, born in 41): she was therefore the mother of the heir apparent and enjoyed influence for that reason. In the sources, Messalina is portrayed as little more than a pouting adolescent nymphomaniac who holds wild parties and arranges the deaths of former lovers or those who scorn her advances; and all this while her cuckolded husband blunders on in blissful ignorance."

You can read more about this character here.

Anyway, the point of me coming online tonight was to rant and rave about how much I hate religion. And I don't just mean that I get irritated about religion and can't wait until faith and state are separated. Oh, no. I fucking despise religion in all its forms. I hate christianity, I hate judaism, I hate islam, I hate seventh fucking day adventists, I hate buddhism, I hate mormons, I hate the fucking lot of them and all the rest. Before I go on, I must say that I do like human beings, by the way.
I think it's stupid the way that the SWP and elements of what was once a sensible left got into bed with the Muslim Association of Britain and decided that islam was "cool" and made up the myth of "islamophobia", only to give rise to the nonsense that the left should suddenly defend the indefensible of the "right" of men to cover up women's faces and such like.

I also think it's stupid that, as I may have mentioned previously, our city's mayor, who is an egomaniacal arsehold by the way, gets dragged over hot coals for hissing at a right-wing journalist that he was acting like a concentration camp guard. Now, come on, who has not used this insult when faced with either bureaucratic intransigence or jobsworths? I remember a friend of mine standing in court for a poll tax "crime" when faced with the comment that local authority workers were only doing their job by prosecuting those who didn't pay by saying: "That's what nazis said after the war!" A bit harsh, I thought, but there we go.

It's all fucking stupid. That's why, thanks to Popbitch, I was very glad to see this website. It's certainly for militant atheists like me.

Popbitch, by the way, is a great e-mail service. Please don't tell me that it's the web equivalent of reading the Sun - it's not, it's not, it's not. Even though it gives jokes such as this:

A good Samaritan, a lawyer and a priest are on a boat which begins to sink. The good Samaritansays "Women & children first". The lawyer replies "fuck 'em". The priest looks up, "have we got time"?

Or how about this:

Q. What goes into thirteen twice? A. Roman Polanski.

But it does give some good info such as this:

American artist Edward Stross has been given a jail sentence for painting a mural of Michaelangelo's Creation of Man (featuring a bare breasted woman) outside his gallery in Detroit.

So it's not all tittle tattle.

Just listened to The Streets' A Grand Don't Come For Free - isn't that young Mr Skinner a fucking genius?

* Super Furry Animals - a great example, along with the likes of, among others, The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse, of why prog rock now is much better than it was back in circa '71-75. But, then again, prog rockers in 2025 might say: "Aren't our prog rockers much better than those who were around in 2000-05?"