Lucid Dreaming

Disturbed night, strong winds blowing against loose lead flashing and through suburban Lleylandii. Drifting in and out of sleep. Falling down into a vortex of dull colours - "Hey, I'm dreaming, I know I'm dreaming! That means I can have sex with-". vortex disappears down a plughole, as awake as possible in the darkness.

Proof, not only of the existence of God, but specifically of a Catholic God of the old school.

Appearance at Norm's

Norm has added a cricket memory of mine to his excellent series and if you so choose, you can read it here.

Tone-Deaf

God my last post was wishy washy and dull and boring. It's bloody hard to get the tone of this blogging thing right. You might have noticed that I am trying to tone down the swearing but all that comes out is fucking pathetic slightly old and wilted petal type writing.

Fuck the government and fuck their stupid arse-aching attempts to control our lives with piss-easy targets that all their chums in the lefty bloody academies and animal rights arsehole groups and socialist working-class-people-are-too-thick-to-eat-properly brigades applaud with media-hugging thunderous-fart talk. Fuck them.


Well, it feels better, but has it achieved anything?

And I'm not drunk, by the way, check the times on the posts. I'm not such a lightweight that I can go to the pub AND lose all sense of reason in just 10 minutes. I need to be sober to lose my reason.

End Bacon Now

Well, this is the message of the experts as any fule no by now. And, as Anita Anand said to a guest on last night's Drive show on Radio 5, "who are you to argue with peer reviewed science?". I presume the words "Sokal" and "hoax" mean little to her, but I'll defer to her point nonetheless.

The question is, apart from the simple "ok then" or "fuck off", what does one do? When I heard the news I did experience a moment of genuine panic and I can't help but think that this is partly the aim of such studies, however much they bleat about it actually being a good thing "because it helps us control our lives" or whatever. But while some people will, others, like myself, will continue to manage the risks and try to be careful with our diet.

The facts being "known" however, and I know DK has done a fine job of casting doubt on them, the _other_ question is - do I deserve medical treatment, should it become necessary, for refusing to follow the peer reviewed advice? Should I be regarded as a fool? I can't help thinking that this will happen, sooner or later, but, more, (oddly enough), food and drink we will expect people to control thoroughly but their sex lives we will not. No one, as far as I know, has suggested that people have less sex due to the risks, or that people should not receive treatment for sex-related conditions.

Why are we becoming collectively neurotic about food, obsessed with finger-pointing and threats of losing basic civil rights through it; but seem not to think that people can control what happens to them by having less sex?

I'm going down the pub, despite being exhorted to drink little or no alcohol. I won't be causing any fights, but I suppose I might fall over or something.

I probably won't come up with answers to my questions, but I might think about them a bit more.

Guilty

Back from my school trip. Normandy is one of my favourite places and the weather was stunning: cold and bright with the mist trotting over the gentle valleys each morning. It was, as usual, a fairly exhausting process but I find the Bayeux Tapestry gets more stunning each time I see it, with more ambiguities, more political comment, and more breathtaking action sequences. It helped that the place was empty so for once we could see from a distance, where the cavalry charge sequences look almost cinematic. Some of my charges found pictures of men with their knobs out which I hadn't noticed and was unable to explain unless it was Adam.

I feel as though I need to apologise again to my blogpals for non-appearance at their sites recently. It really is difficult to visit them as often as I'd like because of my dial up and also I'm online a lot less than before, owing to work and a slightly confused home situation (ie I'm in a couple of places). However, I am going to try more to get round.

The title of the post refers really to Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've just finished and which I found less satisfying than his other novels. At times it cannot decide whether it is a murder mystery, a satire or an exploration of consciousness and it ends up being not quite any of them. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it: there is the detail which is characteristic of his work, though it's toned down a bit; there is the Adrian Mole like narrator and the enjoyable hints that the entire thing is made up from much later on (the anachronisms which occasionally creep in, usually from the mouths of other characters). You also sense an author having a lot of fun and letting himself go, whereas his other books feel tightly controlled (especially Human Traces). It's worth a read but you might finish it with a "meh".

Literary Joke

Apologies for the light posting, the return to work has taken me by surprise somewhat, and I'm increasingly finding my antediluvian dial up connection simply gives up on many fellow BP blogs, especially, darn it, James's.

It'll continue to be light for the forseeable as I'm off to Normandy on a school trip.

So here's a quick gag I saw in the Torygraph last weekend: a letter, dated April 1959, from Ted Hughes to TS Eliot: "Dear Mr Eliot...I hope you are well and enjoying April."

How I laughed.

The Origin of Laws

Interesting 5 Live debate on the Eu Constitution/Treaty today, the usual Eu-philes calling everyone else "bigoted/xenophobes/little Englanders" and Mark Mardell intervening only to make pro-EU points, but what interested me was this. One caller pointed out that EU law is framed by the Commission,after secret or hidden negotiations and reviewed by the parliament, but ultimate authority rests with the commission, unelected. Recently of course an EU commissioner graciously decided to allow Britain to continue to use imperial units without threat of crminial prosecution. I'm not commenting on the truth of all this, by the way.

Victoria Derbyshire challenged the caller by saying: "If it's a good law, does it matter where it comes from?" and the caller did answer her, but it struck me that for the first time to my knowledge someone openly questioned whether or not law makers should be elected, accountable, removable, and their laws open to repeal. Her argument rested on the philosophy of a given law - is it right? Do I agree with it? Does it satisfy my sense of justice or ethics - and the concept of a lawmaker deriving their legitimacy from the consent of the governed was not mentioned.

It's seemed clear to me for a while that we're moving towards a kind of technocracy, where "experts" really do know better than everyone else because the modern world is so complex; but it's rare for someone so openly to challenge the basic tenet of democracy and then to replace it with something resembling this: If the modern world really is unfathomably complex, and if some people really do understand it better than us, then they do have a greater right to frame it than we do. Our view, or vote, is largely irrelevant. Moreover, if a principle is right, or "good", then it should be enacted, regardless of the wishes of the people.

Am I then an old reactionary in thinking that laws which affect my day to day life: which measurements I am to use; how long I can work; what I should think about certain events or people; should be enacted, if at all, by a government elected by the people with a mandate for that, and that they should be able to be repealed when they fall out of favour or outlive their usefulness and the lawmakers removed?

I'm not saying that our current system does this well, but it is at least supposed to, and we can scrutinise it and hold it to account. I don't see the EU commission held to account much at all, and it depresses me that intelligent people want less public involvement in law-making rather than more.

Then again, everything depresses me so that's largely irrelevant.

Animals are Panicking

I can't readily explain what it was that brought me back to blogging, unless it were boredom: it certainly was not a desire to explain or expand upon my political obsessions, though I intend to do that too. My assumptions are of a simple class, obtained through Freudian simplicities and back pedalled reasoning.

Did I ever discuss my favourite types of pornography?


Well, time and place my friends, time and place.

My political views are easy and reactionary: I don't see why government deigns to give me rights and why I should be grateful. I _do_ see why there is no other source of rights, though we've transmuted a post-holocaust set of aspirations via Ernest Bevin into a Platonic reality of some faintly sinister kind.

Nathelees, blogging is no reason for expounding on these ignorances, nor are ignorances reasons for blogging. No. The bloghaters, whisper if you dare, are right. We blog because we are frustrated and because we want to hear what we want to hear. Yes, alright, sometimes I read the Intelligent Person's Guardian (Matt, Stumbling &c) but mostly I read the nearest equivalents to the Mail, the Torygraph and the Times (though it's dispiritingly socially liberal these days, even unto its tv reviews helpfully pointing out which tv shows show homophobia and which don't, as if anyone reads a tv review to be told what to think about human sexuality).

By the way can I just take this opportunity to tell ALL tv reviewers the following:

I don't give a fuck for your views on abortion, Mrs Thatcher, Eisenhower, President Reagan, gay rights, religion, atheism, stem cell research, the internet, blogging, corruption, sex or murder.

You are hired to discuss whether x programme is good or not. Kindly stick to this remit or fuck off. We are not so utterly ignorant that we need political point scoring in the middle of so-called professional media criticism. So fuck off. Or give me your job.


Then again, if they did, you'd get stuff like this:

Castrovalva is a pointed satire on Thatcher's Britain (c all newspapers): the characters (who, interestingly, barely seem to know who they are in this nightmarescape) stumble over invented traditions, which appear to give a conservative gloss to reality but which in fact expose the hollow and false nature of conservative fantasies....


Er...no, actually, hang on. More like this:

Logopolis suggests that technology and "progress" (c Greenpeace) is but a fig leaf for universe threatening desires. It is wholly ironic that Logopolis, the mental maths paradise, resorts to flawed and, if you observe closely, cobwebbed technology to save the universe. The implication is clear. Only the natural mind is acceptable. Technology (ie carbon footprinted wasteage) is harmful.

Erm..no that's still not right. Wait a minute...er....


Um. Anyway.

By the way, academic twats, research does not "show" anything. It might "suggest" conclusions, but it does not "show" them. I learned that in GCSE History. Shame that graduate teachers are bedazzled by self interested twats waving bits of paper and telling them that x study of 4 children in Luton "shows" that y obtains when it might well do, but we just don't, actually, know for certain.

Huh. So much for blogging as a way of expanding the mind.

Another Industrial Ugly Morning

...but on the other hand, as Matt has recently revealed, Doctor Who's short term future is safe after a fair amount of speculation about RTD and David Tennant.

We get series 4 in Spring 08, 3 feature length specials during 09 (IMO to allow David Tennant to mourn Yorick) and series 5 in spring 10. Over at Outpost Gallifrey a lot of people do seem to think that DT will return for series 5 having committed to the 3 specials.

However, RTD is apparently quoted in The Sun as saying series 3 was "too dark" - whereas I thought its tone was mostly perfect.

Hooray for Doctor Who and its infinite variety and adaptability.

That Book By Nabokov

I knew that would get your attention.

Yes, alright, TD is not dead. What happened was this: after reading yet another Guradian editorial about how all is well in our glorious isle, and how being appalled at murder is moral panic and hence a bad thing; and one in the North London Daily Mail* about how climate change will take our children from their playgrounds, the tin drummer fell as dead, on the ground: he was then buried but was not in fact dead. Owing to a clause in his will stating that an emergency button had to be put into his coffin he was rescued after only 30 days of eating wood and maggots. And breathing...well, we'll leave that for now.

However.

His health is poor, so he advises his readers not to expect too much (ie regular, well written, knowledgeable posts).

For now I will say only this.

The TOTP2 retrospective on The Police this week was fucking brilliant. As were they. The pop group I mean. I know the real police also need a retrospective, but we're not going to see that any time soon. I mourn, as does everyone else, the death of Tony Wilson (pbuh) but I disagree with him about The Police. They did not piggyback New Wave: they were clever, stylish, intelligent and cool.

And they referenced Nabokov.

Evidence of dumbing down can be seen by the fact that the 1980 original release had the above quoted line; whereas the 1986 re-recording said: "that famous book by Nabokov" as if it needed some explanation.

Anyhoo. I love music with hinterland; and the lyrics of The Police have hinterland. As the retrospective showed, Sting's solo stuff verges too much into the lick-my-own-ass territory: I wonder if Stewart Copeland brought him down to earth occasionally.

Hey ho. Look, I'm working near as dammit full time now so don't expect anything good. This country is, though, more of a shit hole than it was when I "died", complete with even more arrogant lefties telling us that everything is fine and that to believe that murder cannot be tolerated in a civilised society is "right wing". Hooray. Some of my best friends are right wingers. Andrei Kanchelskis for one.** [rest of paragraph edited to remove drivel]

anyway. Some of you might be under the impression that I outed myself as "[edited and obscured on legal advice]". Au contraire. He was my ghost, and himself died unexpectedly after a lethal cocktail of The Daily Mail, eight pints of Stella, four packets of plain crisps, and the sight of a local youth spitting into the street. Tragic, really.

*The Independent. In case you didn't know.

**I'm guessing at this. I liked him anyway.

Update:It seems the break has not stopped my rubbish writing! Never mind. It's too late to do anything about that anyway. Still, it's not an inevitable condition for everyone. If you don't want rubbish writing, consider an online degree in English composition. Also, ditch the Stellas. They do for your writing what they do for your driving.

..but the moment has been prepared for.

No more words, as Orcini says at the end of Revelation of the Daleks: no more shadow-hibernations. I have, finally, run out of enthusiasm for The Tin Drummer and all his works, and so he dies.


I am not ruling out a return, either under my own name, or a totally new pseudonym (heh heh, wouldn't that piss Tim Ireland off!) but either way - no more TTD.

CBI recently wrote:

Awake ye, Oh Tin Drummer...

More posts required by chomping army of fans...

The world is lacklustre, the Drummer has things to say.
Time for the silence to end.

I'm sure you can do better than me, old chap. Over to you.


-Drum goes in the bloody bin -

Crumbs

Saturday's Doctor Who was really, very very good indeed. I thought "crikey, this isn't for adults, this is drama for the whole family and goodness me I haven't seen anything this damn good for years and years." As usual, myself, Ms Drummer and Ms Drummer's boy watched spellbound - how many modern dramas can a whole family watch like this? - until finally I had to send the boy out to attend the barbecue because I needed to, erm, do some washing up* immediately after the last scene.




*=yes, alright, I was crying. So what?

A Crap Death

Now far be it from me to condemn anyone's passing into the other world, but today's death of Scott Timmins (aka Stingray) on Neighbours was downright arse. I've nothing against stupid or freakish deaths (like the guy who died while clambering down a cliff face to shag a chicken, or the bloke who had a heart attack while watching a fight between a set of bagpipes and a black pudding on "The Goodies"), but this takes the freakin' biscuit.

Firstly, Neighbours is resolutely secular, even unto refusing Harold a prayer while Stingray committed himself to surgery to save baby Kerry; it is always going on and on about the benefits of secular values like promiscuous sex sans the consequences; but today....Jeez....

Right. Firstly, Stingray, feelin' fine, but saying he'd "sit this one [dance] out" went and sat down and looked lovingly at his family's party. Then, the camera angle swooped to over his head _and rising_, then from that pov the fmaily noticed he was slumped in his chair and they all went over and the credits rolled. For such a secular show to even suggest that some kind of soul or spirit or some such nonsense "rose" out of Stinger (why do religious images suggest that rising is good? We are natural to the lowest point available and being in the air is an abomination) is a massive, massive cop out to an audience, which they believe doesn't do God, but still wants some kind of reassurance that the default position of tv companies is that "souls" or whatever, rise out of dead humans upon their death. Pathetic. If they'd really thought their worldview through they'd've just shown him slump, or sent the screen blank. But not a rising camera angle. Neighbours does not do religion or God, even if Stinger said "say one for me", like my old atheist grandad used to, today in a ghastly, shitheaded act of foreshadowing. This was cowardice, a sop to a society which _still_ has not got past Nietzsche's point about George Eliot: that they have given up the belief, but not the ethics, or sort of, or something.

I mean, how crap was that? A rising camera! Why not go the whole hog and show little fucking angel wings coming up as well?


Yes, I know it isn't real. But still. For goodness' sake. It could be I'm reading too much into a camera angle ascending on someone's death, but I doubt it.



No Stingray, you must die. Die Stingray, die, Stingray, die, die!!!! Hah! Hah! Hah!!!

Blog Hiatus Continues

I'm still on hiatus BUT


1) In Doctor Who last night, "John Smith" gave his parents' names as Sydney and Verity.

Sydney Newman - inventor of Who, head of BBC Drama in 1963
Verity Lambert - the first producer of Who.

Truly, Doctor Who's mum and dad.

and

2) The highest score by an England batsman since 1990 with Pietersen's 226 yesterday. Does anyone know all the other test double hundreds by England players since 1990? Clue: there ain't many.

MMMmmmm....the 1981 Budget....

...is just a way of getting your attention. I'm still on hiatus, the previous piece of utterly harmless nationalism notwithstanding (anyone who disagrees with it can fuck off to France). I still have no way to express my infantile rage or my more considered anger at the self-serving habits of _any_ tosser who comes anywhere near power.

As if to prove it, I've just passed a law which states: "The financial dealings of Mr T Drummer Esq (MA (Oxon)) are herewith and hereby to be kept from the prying eyes of all and any agents of the state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Hey, it's a piece of piss, this lawmaking business, eh?


By the way, the 1981 budget was fucking amazing. Firstly, the inestimable Geoffrey Howe raised taxes, and then....


(contd 2007AD*)



*er..it turns out that "AD" is in fact offensive*: it is in fact, hencefuckingforth to be known as CE and BCE (for "Common Era" and "Before Common Era", what the fucking twatting makes it common is to be fucking well censored untill we're all parts of another fucking planet).


*it is in fact, furthermore, offensive to people who want to be offended, in the hope that it might, somehow end capitalist oppression of socialist academics, who have been under the yoke since...well, since they left Oxford anyway.

Hibernation Interruption

Jeeeesus, when _will_ the French and the intellectuals learn? When I hear phrases like "perfidious Albion" and all that fucking bullshit that the French come out with, it fucks me off big time. The _most_ offensive phrase in history - to me - is "The English fight to the last Frenchman".

Right.


Listen, you bunch of arrogant fuckwitted twats. We fought and died for _your_ country, you cunts. The British Empire lost 1 000 000 mainly _very_ young men in the Great War fighting for France or for ideas of France: and still they think we are selfish, Atlanticist (as if that were a bad thing) tossers.

When did France commit the lives of millions of young men to the defence of Britain? The fucking tenth of fucking never, that's fucking when, the gitannes smoking arsewipes.

I've just spent an hour looking drunkenly at photographs of British men - at the same age as me when I was listening agonisingly to tracks by Tony Wilson's bands - dying, dying, for fucking hell's sake, for France.

I've spent days looking at the immaculate cemeteries in northern France, full of British kids amid perfectly hewn grass and the magnificent smells of a northern European summer; and then watched the arrogant dismissals of French stallholders at the English accent.

Look.

I love France. I really do. Goshdarnit I love it so much I'd love to own it - just my little joke - but the French establishment's attitude that we're just a bunch of tossers, aided and abetted by an amazing u-turn by the British Left (from when Jacques Delors made lickspittle promises to the 1988 Labour Conference - before that pro-Eu-ism was just capitalist-clubbism or summat) - fucks me off big time.

We died, we really died, for France, and the cunts still think we're opposed to Europe. Well. When Frenchmen die in their millions, for, say, oooooh, idunnooww, Eng-er-land, - we'll see if they're really "Europeans", shall we?

UPDATE: Notsaussure points out the not very Gallic origin of the phrase "The English fight to the last Frenchman." However, I have heard French personages use it.

Blog Hibernation

Disgracefully, I have been offline for a while and have failed to post or explain myself. Well, as you might have guessed, I have run out of ideas. I am still frothing with anger at the incompetence and contemptuous attitude of our government, but I can find fewer and fewer ways of articulating it.

Hence I've decided to put the Tin Drummer on hold for a bit, until I can work out what it is supposed to be for. While I'm hibernating I will try to read everyone's stuff and leave more comments around than I've managed recently.

If anyone has any good ideas for me, do drop me a line....

(Takes tin drum strap off neck and places it on the ground, with little stick resting on the top).

Humorous Mis-Reading

Phew. The Yahoo news headline says "Queen flashes wit at dinner with Bush." Thank goodness for that.

Slander of the Day

Lacking any serious argument why it should be a criminal offence to display prices in lbs and ozs, the UK Metric Association today compare buying a pound of apples with slavery:

But Roz Denny, spokeswoman for the UK Metric Association, said maintaining the current system was "a nonsense" and that Britain should not be seen as "a heritage theme park" that did not change.

"We are now going to have this crazy double measurement system forever," she said.

She went on: "We are trying to put ourselves forward as a modern country putting our imperial past in perspective, like slavery, and here we are glorifying one element of it."

Nice. Being a modern country does involve, in their eyes, as it seems to for so many people now, associating people who don't agree with you with all manner of evil, depredation and murder. There's a real tone of violence, I think, underlying our modern inability to debate with another without assuming he's something dreadful, and a sense of contempt for others in the need to make laws, laws and laws for things we personally don't like. The more we parrot the hollow slogans of diversity, the less we really believe that people with different views and ideals should exist at all.

The tin drummer is 5' 91/2" tall. Oops. I've just glorified our imperial past and the shocking legacy of slavery. Again. Oh well, off for a pint then.

Not A Guest Posting by Alex

The following post is not written by Alex, on the basis that this is the best I can do.

UPDATE: the rest of this post has been deleted, on the basis that it was stupid, rambling, vaguely drunken and ridiculous. I really have to stop doing that.

You'll Soon Have Ample Scope To Indulge in Melodrama

An advanced liberal democracy somewhere in Europe near the millennium...two candidates for the presidency...one candidate predicts riots, upheaval and unrest if her opponent wins....

Mrs Thatcher? The Valeyard? The Master? The evil Tories exploiting widespread fears of decaying suburbs, immigration and casually demonising their opponents?

No. The compassionate, fluffly, cuddly, inclusive, Socialist candidate for the French presidential election. Just look at the elaborate lengths she's gone to already.

Aha. Of course. Only Tories and other assorted evil right wingers demonise. Left wingers sensibly draw attention to the failings of their opponents....

Oddly enough, the thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate British left has been silent on the appalling tactics employed by Royal in her utterly, totally and utterly failed attempt to win the presidency (that is a mere coincidental occurrence). They have elevated futility to a high art: if Britain had been collapsing into chaos, however, they would have spoken out with the bravery that only the academy can possess. God forbid that the left, anywhere, should engage in any underhand tactics - surely all that has happened is that Royal has clearly and rightly spoken on behalf of France (well, the France that matters, that is)... er...on the other hand, moments such as this should be savoured. There is nothing she can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality. She's triggered a ray phase shift.

To disregard Sarko's commands would be to invite summary execution...er...hang on...er...the election will have inflamed his bloated ego....er...

Well, at least the whole system might self-destruct. No. It's too late. And you said it couldn't be immobilised.

I'll tell you this for nowt...you don't catch me going near no more quill pens again...but if Sarko owes France an apology then it is almost certainly not offered...


Am I the first blogger EVER to mix the French Presidential Election and Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Part Fourteen in the same post? If not, then I am a bit disappointed. It's way better art than the blimming Sugababes and Gary Numan track or whatever rubbish it was.


Switch it off! Switch it off!!



Carrot Juice, carrot juice, carrot juice.

Guest Posting by Alex

One of my great blog pleasures over the last few months has been reading and tentatively participating in, the debates between Alex, (Christian) Matt (atheist) and some others on the subject of faith over at Alex's blog In Search of High Places. This is a subject which often entails abuse, ignorance and all manner of high-temperature low intelligence frothing. Alex's blog is an exception. He debates with people diametrically opposed to his worldview with humility, intelligence and a sense of "we are all in this together so let's see how we get on". The commenters have played their full part in this debate, making Alex's blog one of the most consistently thought provoking around.

Accordingly, some days ago I asked Alex to write up a guest post for The Tin Drummer on this subject, so without further ago, Alex in his own words writes:


A while back The Tin Drummer approached me to do a little write up on belief as part of the guest blogging initiative started by the Blog Power crew. Let me first say that I am honored that anyone would approach me with such a request. I hope I can bring a helpful perspective to this topic.

Let me start off with a little introduction. My name is Alex Blondeau. I am a follower of Jesus, whom I believe to be a visitation of God Himself into His creation. In the same breath I must also say that I don't know that I will ever fully understand what that means in this life. To be honest, I seem to have the heart of a skeptic. I also have this uncanny ability to surround myself with atheists. Not sure what that's all about, but I seem to attract them like moths to a flame. I should also mention that I wouldn't have it any other way. I have been pushed towards growth more from my interactions with skeptics and atheists than in all my prior education. Of the atheists I speak with regularly, I would count many of them as my friends.

Now when TD asked me to to write on the topic of belief, my first thought was: "What about it?" Being asked to write on the topic of belief seems similar to having someone ask an engineer to build a space ship, then toss him a pencil and paper on his way out the door. How big of a space ship? How far must it be able to fly? What's the goal we are trying to meet here? Instead of doing the logical thing and asking for a little more direction, I decided to just run with my thoughts. Because of that, this essay may be a bit stream-of-thought. Sorry about that.

But enough on disclaimers. To begin, I'd like to look at how I've seen atheists deal with belief and how I've seen them apply the term to their world-view. Atheists are often considered "rationalists", as well as people who are without belief. They want to affirm that they are at the very least more rational than their theistic counterparts. Is that actually the case? Depends on which one you are talking to. ;-) Rationalists would like to use the term 'belief' as seldom as possible. For that reason, most reasonable atheists quickly back away from the first generally understood definition of atheism, which is:

1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.

The reason this is a somewhat unpopular position amongst the atheists is that it requires a strong dose of faith to hold such a position. You see, when you ask how one might be able to defend such a claim, it becomes readily apparent that atheism, in it's strictest sense, is untenable. How can a human who operates within a physical reality claim to know that a being who is outside of our physical reality does not exist? It's indefensible Ñ and for that reason I have yet to meet a person who attempts to operate in the realm of strict atheism. Most will instead opt for a for a sort of agnosticism with a bias towards atheism. Still, some will try to cling to the second common definition of atheism, which is:

2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Most commonly it will be stated: It's not that I believe there is no God. It's just that I lack the belief that there is a God.

Sounds a bit slippery, does it not? The person making this claim is attempting to demonstrate that they are not trying to sustain a negative belief, but they simply lack the positive belief. In a sense, they are trying to convince themselves that they have no belief at all.

I don't buy it. For the most part I don't think the average atheist does either. You see, nature abhors a vacuum. With the absence of belief in God you are left with belief in something else, namely, a Godless existence. If one wants to take the position that they simply do not have enough information to make a decision one way or another, let's just call it what it is: Agnosticism.

At least for the atheists that I run with, their title 'atheism' simply means: according to the best information I have I find it highly improbable that there is a God. However, I would argue that one's taking the position of atheism (in the mind as well as the heart) has little to do with the information they are looking at. A confession of atheism is not a logical conclusion, it's a posture of the heart. In fact, atheism is an irrational conviction that does not rely on empirically demonstrable facts.

But that's okay. I would say that Theism is no better.

I know, I know, good believer folk aren't supposed to say things like that. We are supposed to believe that reason is king! Many believers come off as if all they need to do to convert the infidels is to pull out some well reasoned arguments. However, I'm sad to say that if one relies on reason alone you're not going to get very far. There's more to our mind than pure reason.

Now don't take that to mean that I think belief, or lack of belief, in God is stupid or sub-rational. I mean that our belief regarding God, is beyond reason. I am also not, saying reason should play no part in our beliefs. In fact, I'm sorely tempted to start parading out several arguments that I personally consider on a regular basis, but that's really beyond the scope this essay. What I am saying is this: Whether you are an atheist or a theist you take that position based on factors that are beyond what pure reason can give you.

I would argue that each of us has a spirit that is going one of two directions. We are either turning inward and growing in concern for our own affairs, or we are growing in our realization that this life is not about us. Far from it. This life is a gift from one much larger than us. In light of that, we must realize the proper focus of our existence cannot be ourselves. There is nothing in us that warrants the attention we give ourselves. We are not here by our own merits. We do not sustain our own existence. The only proper response to source of our existence is one of fear and awe. Furthermore, if Christ was indeed a visitation of this divine reality, then we can know that our creator and sustainer is good, just, merciful and above all, love. He is worthy not only of fear and awe, but of our surrender and our love.

In closing I would like to ask a question that is aimed more at the heart than the mind. When presented with the reality that Christianity holds to be truth vs. the reality that Atheism posits as truth, which world view seems more worthy of belief?

On one hand you have a world view that says we are created by a God who is love, who means for us to love Him and for us love each other. He grants us the freedom that love requires and has been working since the beginning of time to win our love; even to the extreme of becoming one of us and suffering the consequence of our rebellion in our stead. Human life is honored. Justice is honored. Love is honored.

On the other hand, you have a world view that tells us we are the product of mindless matter, energy and chance. We came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing and soon we will return to the nothingness from which we arose. Freedom of will is abolished since we are simply one insignificant step in a chain of cause and effect reactions. Our very sentience is passed off as an odd fluke that matter may sometimes generate under the right circumstances. All of our ethics and morality are illusionary properties that our freak conscious experience generates. In the real (read physical) world there is no such thing as a moral 'good', or 'evil'. All you have is a mindless matter hurtling on towards heat-death. You have no ultimate value. Your life has no ultimate significance. Your most selfless expression of compassion is no more praiseworthy than indigestion.

As for me, my hope is in Christ.

Two Bright Guys

This is why the blogosphere is ace.

Not Saussure responds to Matt M on the subject of Richard Dawkins. Intelligent people, with different views, cogently argued.

Why can't the non-blogosphere be more like this?

Having Stuff is Stupid

Radio 5 have been making the point for the last few hours that robbery and mugging statistics are up because people will insist on carrying ipods and mobiles around with them. Clearly then, the possession of goods is wrong, and a temptation that others simply cannot resist. The solution is to pretend you have no goods, and then you won't be robbed. In a liberal democracy, as it supposedly approaches a peak of civilisation, with rights extended further to its citizens than ever before, the possession of goods constitutes an unavoidable temptation to other citizens. This argument, you will find if you listen to Radio 5 live often enough, only applies to robbery, which isn't very important, clearly, as the possession of property is no big deal in an open society; it does not apply to crimes against the person unless they happen to be in the "wrong area".

I am going to the pub after all.

Area Blogger Struggles for Inspiration

A local blogger today reported feeling "devoid" of inspiration, and so resorted to posting trivia based on misunderstandings or misprints, just to keep the sitemeter stats ticking over. The blogger,30, said "Despite the total and utter mess our country is in, the fact is I know nothing about economics or politics and live in fear of being tackled on a big subject by someone who knows what they are talking about. So I couldn't think of anything to post except a cheap joke at the expense of ceefax."
It is believed that the blogger, whose blog goes under a rubbish title,was keen to post something about Gordon Brown's pension raid but when asked about it he said "Look. The bottom line is, I don't know anything about anything, let alone the complexities of fiscal decision making. I'm more than happy just to read the Torygraph and tut occasionally instead."
His partner, who refused to give her age, said "I wish he'd stop all that bloody nonsense. He spends more time writing crap for a bunch of nerds than he does with me."
Another problem for the blogger is thought to be the need to sound original, as well as the need to sound furious. "The trouble with that is I just can't be bothered. I'm far beyond anger now and besides, other people are loads better at swearing than me," he said, to which his partner added:
"See how sad he is, he's even talking in html code now."

It is thought that the blogger might "go down the pub" instead of posting, or possibly "watch a bit of tv".

Ceefax

Spotted today on Ceefax's weather page:

WEATHER WARNING
----------------------
There are no weather warnings in the UK today.


Phew! That's lucky. But it's also indicative of the mindset of our leaders and also of what we expect from the buggers that we need to be warned that there are no warnings.*




*yes i know that isn't what the ceefax people meant but why let it spoil a cheap gag?

April Showers

We have just had the first rain of the month, and the place has been heavy with damp and blossom today, almost late-summer in its lethargy and its eyelid drooping misty light. The leaves, particularly the on chestnut trees, are so newly-green they make you think of innocence,purity and guitar based rock, while oaks and beeches are still budding and the light just hangs around in the perfumed evening. It's been an odd month; with only one day's worth of rain so far it's been more like Eliot (April is the cruellest month) than Chaucer (Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote) and the ground is already hard and parched with the edge of lawns yellow or thinning. As I mentioned in a previous post, I like rain: it makes me think, it colours the limestone and it gives life. A day without rain is like a day without alcohol - devoid of luxuriance, deep shades of love, refreshment and release. For me, rain gives a different view to the world and emphasises fertility - the late spring after a few days of rain greening the valley is almost post-coital in its stretched out, loved up colour. Weeks, months without rain make me feel claustrophobic and lifeless. Rain keeps us moving - the famous British climate is a source of tremendous pleasure, as well as comfortable life. Let's have more rain, and less burning sun.

On the Day of Yeltsin's Death

St G's Day or not I can't help feeling a touch of sadness at the death of Boris Yeltsin. He may have been whatever he was, but the image of him climbing onto the tanks was iconic for can't-be-arsed 90s teenagers like myself and galvanised some, perhaps many, of us here in the UK to believe that the world was changing and could change. Of course, we've since turned back to cynicism (let's face it, I'd learned everything I would ever know by 14, more or less), but Boris Yeltsin was, to quite a few young democrats in Europe in the early 90s, the very image of humanistic change and the promise of far brighter dawns. With the Wall coming down...we thought the march of democracy was unstoppable. Oh, the folly of youth.

By the way, James has a wonderful guest post up at Ellee's about life in Russia.

St George And the De-Festering of England

Today is the saint's day, and, predictably, the BBC have done their usual - Peter Allen is reporting from Glasgow asking about the end of the Union and Thought for the Day managed to libel the entire country with bullshit about Little Englanders (funny how when the French talk about "une certain idee de la France" or boast about their great achievements,we lap it up as evidence of our failings) - with our rulers chipping into to smear the flag-wearers and to emphasise St George's multcultural origins (Jack Straw on CIF, via Mr E but if you think I'm linking direct to that tosser, who years ago said on the radio that England had oppressed Europe and so was bad, you can think again).

Whatever.

I'm currently listening to World in Motion by New Order and it reminds me of two things: one, how England throughout my life has been either washed up, failing, divided, and violent; or, it has been the subject of constant attacks by its own elites and rulers. No-one can take an innocent pleasure in England, it seems (except XTC, maybe), whereas even Germany has managed to resurrect a kind of unthreatening national pride. Perhaps it comes down to comprehensive defeat, and whether England needs that before it can rebuild its legitimacy (via the end of the union, maybe) - I don't know.
But the song, World in Motion provides exactly that sense of innocent pride, despite popularising the expression "Eng-er-land", partly through John Barnes's rap, and partly through the lovely samples: "a beauty scored by Bobby Charlton"; "we want goals" etc - even if it is hopelessly naive for New Order to tie football to love, especially in 1990.

I cannot control my birth and I owe more to Ireland than England in ancestry. But England is my home and as such, I love it; rotting cities and corrupt elites notwithstanding. Here are some reasons: Shakespeare/cricket/Chaucer/Joy Division/rain/rolling hills/XTC/Bath/rugby football/the glory of failure/irony/ale/Chipping Campden/George Orwell/Viz/Oxford/kitchen sink drama and soap operas/the light/the abundance of the colour green/the CofE.

There are others, and there are British things I love too: Doctor Who being the most obvious. I don't claim that England invented any of the things in the list, except Shakespeare maybe, but I do claim that they make it wonderful.

If the price of recreating England as a self-confident, meaningful modern state which takes joy in its own culture and welcomes people from everywhere, loves its people rather than regards them with a sort of tired disdain, and tells people who hate it to fuck off, is to lose the union, then that's just what we have to pay.

No Instruments Required

The greatest, most iconic piece of electronic music since 1945, which needs a radical re-appraisal by music critics: I don't know why it isn't routinely recognised as the pioneering work of genius that is surely is.

Alas I've only been able to find an extract of it online. Or rather, only the opening sequence.

Tin Drum

James has asked me to explain the moniker. I have already done so, in the dim and distant past, but it's worth repeating. I love the Japan album "Tin Drum" but that is not how I chose the title, indeed I struggle to see the connection between the album and my inspiration. My inspiration comes from the Gunter Grass novel "The Tin Drum" in which a boy stops growing at the age of 3 and spends the rest of his life -among other fairly ghastly things- banging a tin drum at all and sundry. My idea was that I would compare myself to a poisonous Danzig dwarf in the 1920s, spewing out shit and filth; or rather, I know that is how I was often seen in the real world, so it was an ideal handle for the blogosphere. I *also* know that the tin drummer is seen as a metaphor for Hitler, and I am - sigh - *not* a Nazi; just that I liked the idea of seeing myself as a little scrote banging a drum to the annoyance of everyone else.

By comparison, Japan's album is lightweight, though it is very good indeed. It is really about isolation and travel, in a far more sensitive way, than either my blog or the novel.

Just in case Tim Ireland (shudder) is reading, yes I do, generally, keep this handle for all comments and posts.

Democracy Will Stagger On Nonetheless

DK has been pounding away at this for a while: it seems that EU ministers have finally agreed an anti-holocaust denial & racism law to apply, as usual, across the entire EU-belonging continent. As usual, a law is made with no public agitation or demonstrable need across the union, with no mention in national election manifestos, and, as usual, the consequences will be increased self-censorship and increased state control, together with, almost certainly, increased prison sentences for writing or saying things - and I bet that the noble Lord Philips will lose his traditional sceptism of prison sentences as well. Once the law is rubber stamped by the EU parliament after ministers have given their agreement, the UK parliament, will, as usual, have no practical choice but to wave it through - and another long standing liberty, another hard won right is signed off to the absolutist technocrats who now give their moral simplicities to all of our laws ("You can either be for discrimination or against it"*), leaving common sense and debate to string themselves up from the nearest lamposts in despair.
I am _not_ going to add the rider that "of course I'm not racist" - my readers know that by now either way. But just wait until the first prosecutions are made, and then the next wave, when things we will be told won't come under the law (immigration, say), suddenly do, and we are told "of course it comes under this law - are you racist or something?"

UPDATE: 11am
*This was a saying used during the Catholic adoption saga by some government apparatchik or other. Clearly, according to Radio 5 Live's discussion this morning on "positive discrimination" in the police (wanted by the police, incidentally), the statement is untrue.

Typical

Michael Vaughan, following yesterday's debacle, refuses to quit.

In other news: Pope stuns world by accepting doctrine of transubstantion;
and "Toilets? Cah!" says Bear in surprise move.

Ministry of the Bleedin' Obvious

Michael Vaughan says "it's easy to criticise...".

YES MICHAEL IT IS. No question. It is piss-easy to criticise, and for those of us who've given thousands of pounds to England cricket, we have every fucking right so to do.

Japan

Regular readers will know that I did not choose my moniker because of Japan,'s 1982 album Tin Drum, but I love it nonetheless, and Ian has challenged me to write a post about them because he hasn't heard of them.

Alright. Japan are basically New Romantics but they are not twats. They take, from 1979's Quiet Life album onwards, the meme of the old-but-young man which has always been a Romantic idea going back to Thomas Chatterton but which also surfaced in that chaotic period of the dying consensus between 1976-79. I've always found that fascinating, as a 20 year old who felt 70 ten years ago and who found, in the lyrics of David Sylvian a similar soul. Sylvian may have been self obsessed but I don't think any of Japan's lyrics are personal. He creates narrators and voices in his songs, which are inspired by films, novels and experience: these voices dance, walk and locate emotions in various places in order better to explain what he, Sylvian, thought about the process of living and growing up in a world divided by ideology and hidebound by the worst kind of history anyone could ever imagine. Japan embraced the New Romantic style in order to give a non-stereotyped but bending idea of gender, and synths to give a broken up, digital version of rhythm which went way beyond disco into something that tried to resurrect a fragmented music of dancing and love. There is no way I could imagine dancing to any of, say Gentlemen Take Polaroids or Tin Drum - it attempts to replace movable rhythm with something you think you should move to, but can't. It's too on/off. Too hyphenated. Too unreal. In that, I think, Japan, in a far more convinced way than other New Romantics, and with all due respect to their influences such as Roxy Music, were trying to show that we were moving from an industrial world in which you were a small moving cog in a permanently shifting machine, into a digital world in which you were either on or you were off. I tend to think that their cover of Smokey Robinson's "Ain't That Peculiar" demonstrates this perfectly. You expect to move; you want to move; you stand still in the reciprocating silences and fake sounds.

All of this comes to a head in Tin Drum, and David Sylvian launches off into a number of post-Japan ideas as he outgrows the format (actually I don't think he does; I think there was plenty of mileage in this extremely talented band, but that's the impression I get from the album): in the final song, "Cantonese Boy" you have the whole set of ideas: political ideology; movement; travel; growing up; destiny - in one 3-odd minute song with an extraordinary Mick Karn bassline and the apotheosis of Japan's wholly serious take on synth pop. In 2007, as we know, we're so clever and muscially intelligent that tracks based entirely on synth within an old style pop song are rubbish - they're limited and sound dated. I can't help thinking the Japan period represents David Sylvian telling anyone who will listen that he doesn't give a toss about that; indeed, that having his music crystallised in a very locateable time and in a marble-solid style means something after all, whatever people in 2007 think about it.

They might not be rated; the style may be abhorred; but I stick to my view that their music was brilliantly original and trying to make a set of serious points.

Now you can take the piss out of me.

New Life

Guthrum, Ruthie and Lord Nazh among others have recently joined BP. They are all _extremely cool_ bloggers with intelligence and tolerance. We welcome them. I've left out Crushed By Ingsoc, but that's only because I feel like I've known him for years....

CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO LINK SO.... GO TO BLOGROLL!!

Why I Hate Cricket

Because, among other reasons, which include passing off the murder of one of the game's greatest sons as so much media bluster, England have been stuffed, by 9 wickets to end their piss-awful WC campaign. England mustered 154 and SA got there with 9 wickets to spare and Graeme Smith on 89* from 56 balls.

England's lack of attacking aggression mirrors the general collapse of confidence in both England and Britain - their 4th crappy WC exit in a row exceeds the dismal record of the footballers and leaves the rugger players laughing into their pints of lager.

Until 1992 England featured in 3 World Cup finals, losing them all.

Since 1992 England have failed to reach the semis of any WC.

PissPoor. Fuck off, you bunch of useless tossers. And if someone wants to quote this post as evidence of the badly behaved, illiterate and bullying right wing blogosphere, as everyone seems to be after it at the moment, they can. And here's an extra "fuck off" for their delectation.

Not Much Else to Say so....

Doctor Who last night was quite cool though i didn't pick up on the religious allegories currently being discussed over at Outpost Gallifrey - and am frankly not that interested in them. I thought I'd post some irrelevant information about ratings that nonetheless sends a lovely shiver up the spine of fans like me who grew up amid episodes like Battlefield pt 1 getting 3.1m viewers and season 26 -which I remember thinking was brilliant though I don't agree with my 13 year old self anymore - getting an average of 4 million up against Coronation St. So. Ratings for Series 3 of Doctor Who so far:

Smith and Jones: (consolidated figure): 8.71m
The Shakespeare Code: 6.8m
Gridlock: 8.0m


The consolidated figure includes tapings, whereas the other two figures are overnights - the people who just watched it as it was broadcast.

Say what you like about new Who - and I'm still not wholly convinced by RTD's emotionally incontinent, omnisexual approach - to see these figures, is, especially for someone who grew up in the dark C Baker and McCoy periods, when the show was regarded with contempt and indifference, wonderful! RTD has preserved the world's greatest television programme for future generations to cherish and has done it very well indeed.

UPDATE 19 APRIL: The Shakespeare Code's final figure is 7.23m.

How Times Change

As I write this the Russian Ambassador is on Radio 5 Live denouncing Boris Bereshovsky for calling for the overthrow of the Russian Govt. Apparently doing this contravenes "Russian law, international law, and I think British law" - crumbs! That must mean most Guardian writers and SWP members could be had up for contravening international law too.

Who'd a thunk it, eh? The Russian govt trying to stop a Russian exile fomenting revolution from abroad.

Alas Mr Bereshovsky has recanted, saying that he only wanted a coup, rather than a violent revolution. Hey ho.

Cricket WC

Some of you may, if you can be bothered, be wondering why I have said nothing about the cricket World Cup since the murder of Bob Woolmer.

The reason is in that sentence, as well as in the fact that this is the most spectacularly pointless, badly organised, over-long, smugly priced tournament in cricket's history that will do it more harm than good in the eyes of the non cricket world. It should have been scrapped after Woolmer's death but that no consideration was even given to that, nor no memorial given nor any kind of significant involvement by the ICC in remembering Woolmer - just goes, for me, to expose the venality of the ICC as well as their staggering incompetence.

So. It's crap.

And as if that weren't enough for English people (I appreciate that we're not the world, and only a small bit of world cricket support) this WC has coincided with best Champions League performance by English clubs for years. I suspect I wasn't the only person who switched, in half despair at times, between Life on Mars and Man Utd 7-1 Roma on Tuesday night...

The Flanders Panel/Pd7-d5+

This is an extraordinary Spanish novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte in which murder, chess and history are interwoven in what is essentially a detective story. The central character, Julia, is a restorer of artworks and has been asked at the start of the novel to restore a painting by a Flemish master which depicts a game of chess. Soon, murders begin to happen against the backdrop of her trying to decipher the mystery of a question the painter had hidden on the canvas: "Who took the knight?" She enlists the help of a chess wizard and the murderer engages them both in real and metaphorical games of chess.

It is a brilliant European novel, in which nods are given to many different elements of European culture, and in which ideas are taken seriously (though I wouldn't call it a novel of ideas as such). There is plenty of theorising on the significance of chess, music, systems analysis and logic. There are also passages of what I assume are a kind of free-indirect-indirect speech, in which the characters from the painting (created in 1470) muse and fear and worry, but which are really meditations by the central character through her imaginings of these knights and duchesses. Through this ingenious method, layers of personality are laid down between her dreams and desires, leading us to the slight ambiguity of the novel's conclusion.

It reminds me how crap I am at chess, though I've always led chess clubs at school, and how there is something odd about that game. Children who, we're told, simply cannot, physically cannot, concentrate or sit still, can play silently for the whole hour of the club without moving; children who display no forward thinking or guile in their work flower as people with numerous tendrils of strategy; children who work with intelligence and who have absorbed knowledge and skills get thrashed week after week; almost all of them devise their own tactics and methods of winning. One thing, maybe more consistent, I have noticed is that children who are quite good at dissembling and lying are sometimes extremely good chess players. I have never been because I can never remember ideas and I cannot see the board or the pieces in my mind, I just have to play moment by moment. I don't see attacks on my pieces and I plan my own attacks with the naivety and clumsiness of an eight year old painting in the style of Constable.

The novel comes up with some, perhaps conflicting ideas about the philosophy and origins of chess, taking it beyond war into psychoanalysis.

There are problems with the end, related to this, which I won't reveal here because it would spoil the entire novel. I would be interested to know the thoughts of any readers of mine who have read it, though.

Return & Endings (Spoiler Alert)

As often happens after taking a short blogbreak I find it quite difficult to say anything on my return, so while technically I was back on Monday I haven't actually thought of anything until now.

Last night saw the last episode of Life on Mars, with the final action being the little test-card girl (*John Major voice mode* Test Card F, 1967 I think) turning off the picture. This seems to me less of an indication of Tyler's death than a post-postmodern two fingers to the postmodern project that some have seen going through the series. In truth, the series has taken the drama seriously and has presented 1973 as being inhabited largely by the same flawed humans as 2007, with the consequence that although Sam maintained his desire for policing to be professionally PC it was precisely during such a meeting that he realised he was either dying/still in the coma/whatever - the point was "not alive". The knowing irony that the series appeared to start with had been displaced, the slightly hysterical but very common assertion in the media that we are brilliant and those who came before us rubbish, challenged if not defeated. If the 1970s were brown and cream, 2007 was slightly blue, humourless and self-consciously intense. After all, 1973 did have some value, not solely as irony. The little girl _could_ then be seen as turning off the fourth wall and blanking her access to an image as well as ours: ie - as a plea for a return to drama that does not pretend that drama never knew it was drama until around 1997. Chaucer of course appears in his own narrative as a narrator-pilgrim-tale teller-subject of the host's derison.

Perhaps this is a slightly overoptimistic view of the end of the series given that the sequel, Ashes To Ashes, featuring Gene Hunt in 1981 is apparently to feature a time travelling single mother DCI. I'm not saying that the series _hasn't_ affirmed our general brilliance, just that its conclusions have been, perhaps, surprising in view of our general cultural myopia.

Short Break Again

Apologies for this but owing to Easter and guests using my computer room, there won't be any more posts until Monday probably. Have a fine weekend, whatever you're doing.

I was tempted to use this space to moan about Alan Johnson and his thoughtful dismissal of research suggesting that small children might be better off at home as "ludicrous" - but I can't be bothered. The man, to judge from his recent statements, clearly has some kind of family agenda which I can't bear but there's nothing I can do about it now. It's a lovely day and it's not a day for feeling angry with politicians - instead I should be meditating on the sacrifice of Christ.

Come to think about it, it's a perfect day for moaning about politicians. That Pontius Pilate, what a bastard. Still, with his "What is truth" stuff he'd fit brilliantly into any university humanities dept.

Trial of a Time Lord

Crikey, I'm listening to my off-air copy and speaking the lines almost subconsciously, how sad is that?

"To disregard my commands would be...to invite summary execution."
"summary execution!" (muttered)

"now that you've purged that from your system, can we get on? Load the cassette."
"You really are the archetypal philistine. Moments such as this should be...savoured." (TOP Anthony Ainley moment).

"the catharsis of spurious morality!" (whahey!!!!)

"You blundering imbecile. You've triggered a ray-phase shift. There'll be a massive feedback into here!"


Watching TOATL should be a drinking game...."No...it's too late...."


I shall now disseminate my views on the latest series:

the Dr is the Last Time Lord, having trashed his world in the war vs the Daleks. However, we know from 1963 that he has children (Susan is his grandaughter). We know from the entire world that RTD loves the character of Cpt Jack Harkness.

2+2 people..........

Drummer @ Liquidation of HeathCo

On my brief vacation this week I had the immense pleasure of visiting Salisbury, which despite its many chavs is nonetheless extremely cool.

Time does change things, however. My reaction on seeing Stonehenge 1997: "Woooow. An amazing monument to the ancient intelligence of the human race and possible outside influences." My reaction on seeing Stonehenge 2007: "Jesus. Can someone get these crappy rocks out of my way?" This probably relates, as I've said in posts passim, to my anger and, indeed, humiliation at seeing things I previously believed in or even worshipped turn out to be nothing, faked, or just there, with no deep background to them at all.

Salisbury Cathedral on the other hand is magnificent. It isn't a bizarre spiritual experience, like Chartres; it's not a powerful political moment like Rheims; and it ain't a great omnihistorical object like Rouen. But what it is is perfect. You can see the mathematics pouring off it. You can feel the little gags, the in-jokes, the cheeky repetitions soaking into the transepts and the buttresses. Instead of imposing and awe-inspiring as the naves of Amiens and Beauvais (before it collapsed, presumably) aim for, Salisbury is peacefully, lightly, beautiful with its slender columns of Purbeck Marble and its complete architectural coherence (alright, except for the utterly, supermodel stunning spire). Built in a scant 30 odd years, like the drummer, it exudes the confidence of its designers, the faith of its designers, and the fullness of its designers' worldview. Unlike the drummer. The completeness of Salisbury is unusual among gothic Cathedrals (Canterbury was something like 500 years in the building, demolition and re-building) and it gives it those spendid, dancing lines across the entire length of the nave and chancel (often gothic cathedrals are, say, - mid-gothic nave, late gothic chancel, norman transepts or something like that).

It won't blow your mind, but does perfection ever? You just think that it's right, really right (or I do anyway).

Anyhoo. The tombstone of the late Sir Edward Heath sits near the altar. I'm sorry to say that my first thought on seeing it was "Wot, no effigy?" but at least the stone reads "Statesman, Musician & Scholar". There is nothing else. I expected an exhibition, as I haven't visited since Heath was living, but no. I thought his house might have become the museum he desired, but apart from the departure of the men with machine guns, there is nothing there. I felt very sad looking at it. I recalled his stubborn bulk, his half-arsed fight to save the desperate Britain of the early 70s, and suddenly felt a great, insignificant, lightness that this figure of our troubled living past was stuffed under a stone here. Perhaps it gives him his best chance of historical survival, or maybe that's what he thought - but already you can feel that no-one remembers, no-one cares. Our recent history is our worst recalled, our least cared about. How much had he worked to create, how little he did create, and how little anyone really gives a toss a mere 30 years later - it nearly, but not quite, brought a tear to my eye among the tombstones of minor aristocrats and the Tory historian Arthur Bryant, whom the drummer-dad loves.

The title of this post refers to Private Eye's spoofing of Heath as the CEO of HeathCo (like the Dear Bill letters, or the parish newsletters from the vicar of St Albion's). It sounds good in retrospect, to paint him as the super-professional, ambitious but slightly unscrupulous head of a going-places company: but he wasn't, and it didn't. It must have seemed like a crap joke at the time, which is presumably why people often talk about the Dear Bill letters, but no-one gives a monkey's about HeathCo.

HeathCo was crap anyway. The lights kept going out.

Drummer's Vacation

I'm off for a few days to pile up on booze and histories of the Third Reich. There is nothing inherently contradictory about these aims. It is only under an influence that one feels any of it makes the slightest bit of sense.

Doctor Who last night was top drawer entz. The plot was a bit rubbish but many aspects of it were extremely cool, including (as I've said at Matt's) what I feel is a deepening of the Doctor's character into the melancholy that T & C Baker went into but many of the others avoided. After all, if you'd spend a grand of years on the run, destroyed your own people and many other planets, and lost everyone you loved, you'd be at least as sad as Morrissey, if not rather more so.

I remember in Genesis of the Daleks the Doctor has the famous ethics-of-murder scene,(the Doctor has to touch two strands of wire together to destroy an entire room of embryo Daleks - all the Daleks in the universe at that point) which I always read as a metaphor for abortion; but nonetheless, Doctor Who never takes on, as far as I know, the idea of his killing Hitler or Stalin. The Doctor, despite his principles, kills loads of people with guns or his bare hands. Why has he never, out of sheer love for humanity, ever gone back and had Hitler shot? Something to do with timeline probably. Then again, I've asked Himself the same question and there's never any answer.

Being Positive

If you are: great.


If you're not: don't fall for all that bullshit. You call it like it is: in otherwords, a massive two fingers to all the fuckers.

We have written the doctrine of being positive into our very curriculum, prescribing a set of reactions for an infinite combination of thoughts & feelings.

So if it seems like a pile of old horse manure to look on the positive and to believe that it all turns out for the best -

tell 'em all to fuck off!

(I'd love to draw a massive graphic of two fingers but I don't know how)

Drummer's Head vs Drummer's Arse

Alright. I can accept that some people - mainly those who know me, may their shell suits be blighted - think that I have my head stuffed so far up my own arse that I can tickle my own tongue.

However. This is not true. There is a breed of people who have their heads a lot further up their own jacksies than myself. Such people, occasionally known as "teachers" with a subdivision who shall remain nameless, are thought to spend entire days eulogising themselves and their ideals, at enormous expense. They are also thought to organise immense entertainments and to spend so much time organising them that the object of said events is _completely forgotten_. In the course of this, some things which are believed to have been sighted at 9pm on dank Thursday nights include 40 minute unfunny sketches - one of the worst "entz" crimes ever devised.* In this devilish medium, some largely untalented persons recite (or worse, it is thought, _improvise_ ) cliched-friendly-indictments of known persons for the delectation of non-persons present. Or of persons unpresent. Either way the effect is deadly. Within 30 minutes mild irritation is caused to the outer thought-centres of the brain, inducing a slight dream state known as "boredom". In this conscious-state it is thought that committed persons can suddenly -

lose their commitment -

Anyway. In such a tedious environment an individual can succumb to collectivist ideals, such as blasting the damn hell out of half the bastards here; or worse, of "fomenting revolution", in which persons deemed arbitrarily to be in power (usually those sighted by the revolutionary at any given time) are slaughtered by huge weapons, or even by the _sheer power of thought_. Occasionally the revolutionary is thought to put a whole load of people up against an imaginary wall and shoot the sam hell out of their sorry asses.

The cautionary tale here is to not get involved with people who think their cause is more important than any particular individual (especially when the individual in question is supposedly being celebrated but generally the moral applies anyhow); and to tell people to "fuck off" when one is invited to anything.

Anything at all.

AND the evening was not for the drummer. The drummer was merely a spectator with a headache.


* Another such crime is showing film of the _drummer's bald patch_ to 300 people.

Drummer's Poor Behaviour

Today I had a long distance (half a street) argument with a teenage girl. I drove over her football because she wouldn't stop playing football in the street when I drove by but couldn't stop (it bounced into my path) then when I did stop and _apologised_ for driving over her ball she accused me of being on the phone, which I wasn't and _never am_.

Unfortunately the drummer did not behave like a grown up: I was too afraid to go up to her and tell her to be sensible; too afraid to go and see her parents; and too angry at her response not to say "get stuffed" (which I did say, but I did not swear or be aggressive).

Is it the drummer who is pathetic and childish, or has the world changed? I have lived on and off in this street for 23 years. I know it and I know the people. But some of the kids now have a confidence, an aggression (this girl has abused people who've asked her to get out of the road before) - that my generation (when I were a lad) didn't have.

I feel guilty for responding but determined not to allow my street to be taken over. I know this is rubbish but - how did it get this way that an adult feels he needs to assert himself over teenage girls?

Answers _not_ on a postcard please.

Odd Words

Incidentally, reading in church on Sunday was the only time I've ever been called upon to say the word "sexual" in church outside of the confessional. I certainly never expected to say it during the bidding prayers, but times change I guess.

Work, Football Etc

Speaking of the toad, work: I hate it because I don't like giving effort for no reward - does Steve McClaren? Sure, his money is great, but does he _really_ enjoy being slagged off in all the media, or the pervasive sense he must have that he is failing at his job?

Did Bob Woolmer, in a far more profound sense than even I suspected, die for his job? If he did then surely the WC must end. God I hate it when people who are not dead say "it's what he would have wanted".

Well let me make this very clear. If someone comes up to me tomorrow and says "Look, TD, you're going to be murdered in the staff room by an irate parent, but we're going to carry on the school day anyway because it's what you would want" I would tell them to fuck off, and that in fact what I want is the entire village closed, a vast procession by all villagers, a memorial service, and a massive obit in the local press. Carry on? You're joking.

For Myself, Crushed By Ingsoc, & Anyone Else

Toads


Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.

Siouxsie Suz

I've added a link to Suz Blog in the Excellent Blogs & Sites bit at the right. I have next to no interest at all in Lib Dem politics but Suz Blog is (as many already know) very eloquent and extremely well written. Well worth a look.

Back To Sensible Posting...

..for now at least, or until I get back from the pub later. The following post contains *spoilers*.

I've just finished the alternative-history novel In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove, in which a group of Jews live in the shadows of Nazi Berlin in 2010. It's most interesting to me for two reasons: firstly it borrows several aspects from 1984 - the hidden thoughtcriminal who takes genuine pleasure in doing his job for a repressive regime; being taken in and beaten by the Security Police; the concept of being initiated into a secret "club" of people who deserve death simply for being what they are. It also attempts to refute Orwell, in the sense that hope is not only possible, but essential; and that the people do in fact widely harbour thoughts and ideas that the regime would hate if it knew - they simply live with them, rather than being terrified out of them. In addition, the system of surveillance is _not_ the most complete thing about this regime. The spirit of (some) people survives.

Secondly it also borrows from real history, in that the Greater German Reich of 2010, despite being the most powerful state in history, is atrophying under the weight of a gerontocratic government who have lost the impetus of radicalism. The key moment in the story is when the reformist Fuhrer, Heinz Buckliger, is deposed in an SS coup and replaced with an apparatchik run by the Reichsfuhrer-SS, a scene which clearly owes plenty to the 1991 Soviet coup. In this scene, the Wehrmacht enter the fray and smash the power of the SS, exposing them as bullies and causing the Reichsfuhrer-SS to top himself. Nazism is left to continue a path of reform under the Fuhrer and his ebullient and wildly popular Gauleiter of Berlin (obviously Yeltsin).

I wondered about this: it seems overly sympathetic to the Wehrmacht and almost to have them exonerate or rehabilitate themselves, while casting the SS as incompetent bullies. Unlike real history, however, the Nazi government and state is left intact, with no sign that its key premise - the hatred of Jews - is going to change anytime soon, though its leaders have been forced to admit that Ayrans are not necessarily as great as they have been saying for the last 80 years. In this scene you witness the saving of a regime which, though it is never stated, must have exterminated over 200 million people, and you are encouraged to think reform might be possible without thinking that the state itself is going to collapse (viz: the final scene in which the younger sister of Alicia Gimpel is herself "initiated"). The book does therefore, without I think intending to be sympathetic in any way, give the reader an uneasy sense of the regime legitimising itself both in its society and the imagination of the reader - something somewhat disturbing. It is not enough that the SS are brought down several pegs - there is a lot more to the state than the SS.

Plenty of things about the novel are questionable: could a death-cult like Nazism have the energy to have survived that long (a refutation of Winston Smith, if not Orwell - "you cannot build a society on hate")? Would it be so open about the extermination of the Jewish people - given Himmler's famous speech in October 1943 - "a page of glory in our history..never to be written..."? Would it not be more likely simply to make talking about Jews extremely dangerous (as in Robert Harris' "Fatherland")? Why does the technologically advanced state not use much more advanced methods of sniffing out Jews than the phone tap and the denunciation? Perhaps that's to do with the general decay of the state.

Lastly, one thing about it is quite powerful: the surviving Jews pass on the crumbs and the rags of their culture to their children, fully aware that it could lead "to the showers" but with a sense that they must live as though Jewish culture can and will survive. Easy enough to write, perhaps, but very difficult for a comfortable liberal-democrat to read. Some people really do have courage of a different level.

I Don't Play My Red Guitar**

Firstly, if I did have a guitar, I'd play a blue one, or at least an anarcho-capitalist one, which I would have to consensually lay my -non-tax-payer-funded hands on - as I cannot bear the concept of bossing anyone around for anything. I may be a teacher, but one whose discipline skills are, appropriately enough, lax to poor. Secondly, as my parents were piss-poor as bourgeoisie (though my dad, being self employed, was always somewhat on the edge of the labour movement, if not totally in the ocean*), I cannot, I am sorry to say, play any instrument at all - a red guitar being among the least likely of those that I might have ever picked up and plucked.

As if that tale of post-consensus woe weren't enough, the whole concept of a guitar, red or otherwise, being the "devil in the flesh", is ridiculous. I am a Catholic, as my regular reader wil no, and this means that the flesh is evil. Indeed, I can now-a-days see the Church's point. Why do we love sex and hate toilet habits so much? It seems to me outrageous that men can have a massive shit and a smelly fart and laugh about it, but this is denied to women, who continue to believe that these utterly pleasurable and prehistorically natural functions are in some way "bad" or "shameful". It is surely a mark of the repression of our post-modern society that farts and big smelly shits are regarded in a pejorative way when, in a far more profound way than sex, they _keep us alive_. Yes, they don't make us, but then who thinks that has owt to do with sex anymore? Evacuating our bowels (to wherever) keeps us alive. And nowt compares with staying alive (if compost mentis of course). Why, in the twenty-first century, do I never hear of women "having the turtle's head", or being "desperate to park my fudge" or needing to "lay a cable"? Given that the pleasure they'll get out of this is second only to the pleasure of eating when absolutely gasping for grub, I think we should be told.

Next, in this catalogue of dire physical need and mental degeneration, comes the fact that despite being an anarcho-fuckwit, I cannot bear the idea of working for life. Yes, I'm lazy. Whatever. The truth is, that the beliefs I hold about human society rest entirely on the idea of work - and of that being the sum of human existence, in - partly - that it leaves exhaust trails of us when we die for the pathetic generations to follow. And yet. And..zzzzz...I cannot bear work. I would love to go on strike a la the guys out of Atlas Shrugged, except that they are damned _good_ at what they do and I am not. If I went on strike I'd die. If I do work I live in a cloud of filth.

Finally - "why do I fail just when I'm needed" - sex. "Crushed By Ingsoc" who is, like Matt, younger AND more intelligent than me (Jesus!), likes it and seems to do it a lot. Fair enough. I don't. Partly through the fall of days. Don't get me wrong here, but don't get me right either. It isn't my life nor would I want it to be. If I were a real, true rebel - I wouldn't do it at all. I would stick two pissed off fingers up to the whole damn race back to soil and whisper to no-one "fuck off".

The problem is....I'm in love....have been for years...with someone wonderful...and it's...nice...


-- This has been brought to you by Stella Artois and Walkers Crisps. Again. --



*= indeed, practically a fascist, or so he was told between 1972 and 1985 for *heh* wanting to work when he wanted to. So he couldn't work because there was no leccy - who gives a shit?


**= I Play My Red Guitar

I think this link gives you the video of Red Guitar but if it doesn't don't blame me. You can, however, ask me what the photon I'm talking about.

UPDATE A COUPLE OF MINUTES AFTER POSTING: sigh. Yes I know I'm a teacher. Ergo all of my money is taxpayer extorted. Hey ho.

Thogging

I've just discovered that Notsaussure has nominated me as a thinking blogger, or thogger. I am deeply honoured and flattered. If I do make anyone think it is a miracle as I rarely do any thinking myself; something I tried to point out at Ian's place but just sounded angry (which I wasn't). I am, as I've said before, impressionistic and instinctive. I know some bloggers think this is the worst side of the blogosphere, but for me it makes a terrific mix of daily reading to be able to digest policy or analysis posts, and then to switch to more emotive or feeling-based posts. As most important issues are decided for most people (I think - hoho) on a sort of mixture of logic and a kind of unreason based on tradition, instinct, a "feel" for what is right, or custom (or lack of), that seems to me fair enough in terms of trying to learn from the blogosphere itself.

So....trying to avoid people I know have already been nominated, 5 thoggers for me:

Matt Murrell. He doesn't write too much, or using too hard words. But he very often has real nuggets of insight and good ideas.

Deogolwolf. I get tied in knots with the philosophy, especially if "cirdan" is commenting, but it's great nonetheless.

Welshcakes Limoncello. Bear with me on this. This is a really good example of a different kind of thought-provoking...lifestyle, culture, creativity...and it's written in a very approachable style.

Trixy. She's developing into a really fine policy poster, who mixes a very high level of detail with outrage and a bit of swearing.

Notsaussure. This is not nepotism. You cannot fault his legal knowledge and his willingness to go into detail whereas I'd rather be at the pub but really need to know some of this stuff (even if the bits where he praises Lord Falconer grate with me!)

apologies to anyone who's already been nominated, and to those who find this kind of crap the blogosphere at its disappearing up its own jacksie worst. I kind of agree, but on the other hand some blogs deserve promotion and deserve, erm, thought.

Doing Quotation Marks With Your Fingers

Over at Harry's Place someone in the comments (on the post about Quotation Marks) mentions people who do quotation marks while they're talking; usually, in my considerable experience, this is accompanied by tar-thick sarcasm and some kind of not-very-clever-but-thinks-it-is comment.

I'm sorry to say I was a teenager who did that the whole time. My only defence is this: Stephen Fry did it on tv, so I thought it was cool. I also hated the guts of most people I had to talk to, so knowing it pissed them off was fine by me. However, I can now see that this is the behaviour of a wanker. On the positive side, I don't think I've done it since 1994 so I've been clean for a while now.

Very Sad Cricket News

A day after seeing his Pakistan side lose to Ireland, Bob Woolmer has died. Aggers has just broken the news during commmentary on the England v Canada game. Apparently he was found unconscious in his hotel room this morning and taken to hospital where his condition was "serious"; now he has gone. I can only hope that this brilliant, likeable man did not lose his life because of a silly game - in the sense that I kind of hope it was not the stress that caused a heart attack or something. I know that sounds a bit strange, but cricket is a game, a lovely, funny game: but it is a game and the pressure it creates is out of all proportion to its importance.

RIP Bob Woolmer.

Inconsistency

Sorry for the variable quantity and indeed quality of recent posts. I seem to go through weeks where, despite being assailed by avalanches of idiocy and governmental cynicism, I find I have little to say, instead I simply shake my head and try to get on with what life I do have. I'm probably not being overly controversial if I say I've fallen slightly out of love with the blogosphere too - the recent blogwars, which ultimately seemed to me to come down to one set of people telling another set what to do on their own patches, seemed not only pointless but the exact opposite of what the blogosphere is or could be. We have a forum of global free speech, like an enormous pub and we can go and talk with anyone we want, listen to whomever we want, ignore whatever we don't like or get stuck into debate with whatever we don't like. If we concede the need for regulation, or rules (never actually made by democratically elected representatives, and incapable, it seems, of repeal) - we lose what makes or what made the blogosphere unique. I don't make any pretences for my own status. I'm not a citizen journalist. I don't really research anything, I'm an impressionistic writer and reader and I call it how I see it. But some blogs (not mine) do feature better quality writing than you get from the professional journalists. Michael Henderson in the Torygraph I think on Saturday slated the blogosphere as "the latest excrescence" in which "social inadequates" get to mouth off about things. Well if that isn't a fine description of Fleet Street I don't know what is. It's not the blogosphere which gets paid handsomely to write ignorant vitriol; it's not the blogosphere which claims the authority of professionalism while maintaining the political biases which everyone knows it has; it's not the blogosphere which builds and destroys celebrities for its own wealth's sake; it's not the blogosphere which takes photos of people on holiday and then criticises the drooping of their breasts; it's not the blogosphere which is the world famous home of boozers,cynics, cheats and downright liars.

So, Mr Henderson. I have a response for you. And the response is: fuck off. Now in the old days, I'd have written to you and you'd have thrown my letter in the bin. But nowadays quite a few people will get to read it. So the blogosphere is a good thing. And actually, I _do_ like it. Heh - so much for consistency, eh? So here's my response once more, in case you missed it:

fuck off.

Football. Isn't it...you know...Giggsy Wiggsy...

As regular readers will know I'm more of a cricket man but I do enjoy watching football and there is little to compare with the UEFA Champions League, surely the greatest club competition in existence, only 50 years old but with great myths and narratives: Real Madrid of the 50s, the Munich disaster and United's 68 win, Celtic, Ajax, Bayern, the great AC Milan side of the 1990s and, of course, Liverpool. A match like Liverpool v Barcelona, is more than football. Bound up in Liverpool is a tradition of working class life, now on the way out; a tradition of success and tragedy, a claim to international greatness. Bound up in Barcelona is regional and national identity, a way of life, politics, history and a method of football. Bringing these diverse strands together is what club football does very well and the Champions League in particular manages to mix with a kind of generally healthy nationalism and, rather more rarely, a European outlook. The European Cup predates the Treaty of Rome. Having said that about its nationalism, it has not always been this way, which brings me back to where I started. The competition we have today has been forged, as well as built by its past, including its worst moment: Heysel. Some have learned more than others from that and it is good to see English clubs, now nearly a generation away from that moment, reclaiming their places at the heart of a tough but often inspired competition. I'm no Liverpool fan but I'm delighted for them and I will be supporting all the UK clubs tonight, with an especially hopeful eye on Celtic.

State In Pointless Exertion of Power Shock

From the Daily Fail and a couple of blogs, as well as here I read that churches will have to "prominently" display no-smoking signs once the ban comes in. Firstly that is a bit odd; will they have to put up signs to cover all the other activities that are not allowed there too? Will we see "No Sex" signs, with the silhouette of a couple shagging and a red line through them (no crass jokes about the RC church and sex please)? No parking signs in the sanctuary? No speeding in the car park? Jesus. Secondly, it will blight many otherwise beautiful buildings; and thirdly:

it is completely fucking unnecessary and is just the state doing something to enforce its will on others for the sheer fucking sake of it. I must have been in hundreds of churches, been to thousands of masses (at a rough estimate 1560, not including holy days of obligation, so that makes it about 1570), and never, not once, have I even seen a fag in church. Not even in France. Anyone caught smoking in churches would be thrown out anyway. It treats churches and people who use them as idiots (which is the state's opinion now anyway), and is just intended to say, a la Mrs Thatcher, "We are the masters now". There will be people whose job it is to check and enforce this and I bet they will fucking love it too. Why can't the state just fuck right off and leave people alone? how the fuck do you expect anyone at all to function in a postmodern globalised world, especially in a country fast becoming nothing other than a global hub, when they need to be told not to smoke in churches? How can you demand that people are both independent and infants simultaneously? Of course, it comes down not to law enforcement (which progressives seem very keen on now, whereas years ago they tended to prefer talking about not obeying unjust laws, I suppose conservatives have made the opposite journey), but to: this is right, this is our view, and we will fucking well make sure you are aware of it wherever you go and whatever you do. When you are outside of your house, you are a subject of all our laws and fucking hell will you know about it. Let's bolt a big red sign to the outside of Canterbury Cathedral because we own it and we own you so fuck off.

How Disappointing

According to this site, I'm not banned in China. I'll have to step up my defences of democracy and liberty, and start making a few attacks on communism for being a crock of old murderous shit. Unfortunately, when Britain claims to be a leading free society, the argument tends to fall apart.

Hat-tip: Matt

Notsaussure Does Not Run My Blog or Mind

But on the other hand you might as well let someone with talent and intelligence do their work. NS has also sent me a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan, on his Christian belief, to which I am going to link here. Please do not attempt to engage me with intractable arguments or debates on the existence of God. Anyone who reads my blog, or who knows me, will understand that I am not interested in such debates, having had them many years ago and having emerged with nothing but "confusion in my eyes now" (Mergrave, Castrovalva). If you would like such a debate, please go to "In Search of High Places", in which you will find the brilliant and tolerant Matt and Alex engaged in debate (and occasionally on An Insomniac too). Look at my links for those two. Now that I think of it, one could read the wonderful Castrovalva as a metaphor for religious belief: it is created, is illusory, is destructive. Hmmm. On second thoughts, no. That doesn't quite cut the mustard. Er...it is beautiful but unreal. No, it's not that either...er...well I guess I'll think of it at some point.

No. The reason I love the Sullivan article is this. Mary fails to work but sits at the Lord's feet instead, for which she is praised. Sullivan loves her for this: I feel it as exactly the problem with belief and indeed political ideology. We are great, wonderful, terrible creatures. We should not let ourselves fall mindless to any feet, even those of the eternal divine spirit. We are the spirit's greatest thoughts, or the universe's own attempt to look into itself. We should look at and into immense or even eternal creatures with our own gifts: of thought, understanding, wonder and yes, love. But never to leave thought out of it. I love Mary too for this, but I see it as difficult. Jesus never asks us to shut the **** up and be empty: he asks us to sacrifice, to worship and to work. And, even if they don't concur with your views, that entails rules. Most societies create rules for themselves, even if some people don't like them. In our advanced liberal democracy we love nothing better than creating more and more rules to moderate our conduct (but then I think our modern democracy is deeply suspicious and even contemptuous of people); there will therefore be rules in religion. I take Sullivan's point about fundamentalists and agree, profoundly. But I also acknowledge the need, however slight, for rules, the right of a living system to make demands of its free adherents so that they come closer to its designs. Hence Catholicism has always placed weight on works as well as faith, knowing that even with faith we can often not be bothered with works. Having said that, Sullivan's article is rather more subtle than I've given it credit for being, so if you're interested, read it carefully. I'm not picking an argument, I'm giving a shade of thought. Mary is right, of course, but it is troubling to me.