Thought of the day - DADT

You know what I think, I think 'Don't Ask Don't tell' is a good thing, it's just that it's miss applied. I think instead of this being a military policy it should be one that applies to government. And instead of it being about being gay, it should be about religion. If you are outed as having imaginary friends and believing in fairy tails, you should be kicked out, but if you can successfully keep it a secret, and don't let it impact on your work in any way, go ahead believe what ever fanciful nonsense you like.

Thought of the day

A lifetime a child abused, or a lifetime of being enslaved, is like the distance between stars. All we can do is to recognise just how far outside our experience it is.

Thought of the day - It's all about where you stand

Look into the centre of the moon during a lunar eclipse. If someone was there looking at you, they would be a observing a solar eclipse.

Barely legal grade school girls

I have a friend, his girlfriend is 16, a friend of mine tried to tell me that was illegal, I went to check and turns out nope, 16's legal in WA, but while I was on the site, I discovered this.













Ok so homosexuals don't exist, that's fucked up but no surprises, but the minimum age for hetero sex is, 12? Fucking 12? I haven't done any research on this, it might be crap. The site http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm# below is an international aids charity. They have this disclaimer.

Disclaimer

We rely on the help of our readers to keep this table as accurate and up-to-date as possible. If you know that the age of consent in your country differs from that given above, and if you can supply good references to prove it, then please contact us. Please note that AVERT will not answer personal enquiries about age of consent.

So Italy's Age of Concent is 14, kinda fucked up but you know, whatever. But if you want to fuck yourself a primary school kid, aparently all you need to do is roll across the border to the holiest place on earth and your all set.

If you can see it there's a little orange dot kind of in the middle of this map of italy the roads around it making kind of a circle, that's basically Rome. That's where the pope lives. So not only are the church protecting people that have sex with children, aparently the police aren't even legally aloud to arrest them. Didn't the pope just recently apologise for this? Wouldn't a nice little token gesture to show they are taking this seriously be to actually make fucking kids against the law? I'm just saying.

Early success

Ok so when I first started this blog, I was determined not to just post whatever was going on with me at any given time. I wanted to put up stuff that I found interesting, so I could read it later and be interested or find ideas or whatever. Well something funny happened that is kind of relevent and since I haven't actually had a decent post in a while I'm going to write it.

So I had an idea for a regular blog that i was going to call "Credible vs Incredible" which I may still do. I got through a bulk of the research but never managed to finish the blog. It's still sitting in my unpublished file with about 3 other blog entries that I may or may not complete one day.

First I need to give you guys a little background information. Monday the first of March was the first day of uni, it was also the day of the Sound wave music festival. I had one lecture at 6 o'clock and I thought fuck it I'll get it on iLecture later. I went to the festival and I had a great time. That was until the first song of Faith No More when some complete asshole decides to sucker punch me for no obvious reason from behind. Broke my nose, chipped my teeth, kinda fucked up my jaw, I lost my nose ring and worst of all, I missed FNT, fucking asshole right!

So fuck it, it happened, we move onward. So my first day of uni is the next day, I have a big black eye, a busted nose I had kind of a shit sleep and I'm all fucked up on pain killers. I was kinda struggling, and more than a little self conscious. I was finding it difficult to pay attention and then totally by accident I ended up volunteering to do an oral presentation the next week. So fuck right. But as luck would have it, the topic for the presentation was news sources and values, which happened to be exactly the same topic as my "Credible vs Incredible" post. So yay, my research is done. I spent a day making a powerpoint presentation, I pad out the speech for a little while with some references to the text book and I think I've managed to pull off a fairly decent presentation. I do it and the tutor pulls me to the side at the end and tells me that she wants me to present it in the actual lecture. It was supposed to be this week but God had a little cry and decided to flood the school. So it was cancelled but my tutor came up to me the next day and said fuck it we'll just stick it at the begining of the next one when it's no longer relevent to the lecture topic.

So that's the story of how a half finished blog post and a broken nose ended up with a first year student getting his own segment in the lecture. I've got two weeks holidays now and then the lecture is on the next Monday. Once the lecture is up on the net, I'll cut out my bit and I'll put it up here and that'll be, you know, good.

Peace be with you muther fuckers.

The rise of Atheism

Hey hey! So I'm back from the imensely successful Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, and I had an absolute blast, met up with a few good people, thoroughly enjoyed the event, the speakers were all first rate, even if I was only able to attend the final day (don't tell anyone but I snuck in to see PZ and AC on the Saturday. I would have been glad to pay but unfortunately tickets had sold out). While I was there I organised a couple of interviews with Youtube Atheist (am I the only one that hates that term?) NonStampCollector, New York Comedian Jamie Kilstein and an impromptue interview with legendary blogger, biologist and all round awesome guy, PZ Myers (whom I've since discovered prefers zee to zed). On top of this, I made a mistake with my flight booking and ended up staying in Melbourne a day longer than I expected, which gave me the opportunity to have a chat with one of the preachers at St Pauls Cathedral, Jim Brady (unfortunately not Phillip Freier).

Click here to Download the MP3

One of these days I'll work out how to do an audio stream.

In case you want to skip my crapping on in between, or your just interested in a particular interview, here's the times

NonStampCollector 1:54
Jamie Kilstein 28:40
PZ Myers 41:24
Jim Brady 55:33

Thought of the day - 2 good

If it sounds too good to be true, there will always be people that call you closed minded for having the gall to investigate the claim for yourself.

Stupid animals gotta taste so good.

OK, so after much thought and continual reminders I've decided that I can no longer justify a meat diet. So yesterday I decided I was going to make the transition to vegetarian. I haven't done very well so far, some guy gave me a silverside sandwich, I hadn't eaten all day and I was starving and the guy was just going to throw it out so I figured that was OK. Also I made up a feed of veg tempura last night, and I had a big bag of frozen muscles in the freezer and I figured, well there's no point in throwing them out so I cooked them up, and they were good.

But today is the first time that I'm actually turning down meat, and worst of all it's free meet, the best kind of meat. My work is doing a BBQ. I would really love a hot dog right now and I know that it's already dead so it's probably not going to do any harm, but I figure that if I'm going to make it as a dirty no good vego, I have to stop thinking of meat as food altogether. There's a couple of documentaries that I heard about that discuss responsible meat and fish eating that I would be very interested in, because I don't actually have any problem with the simple act of killing animals for food, (I'm on my lunch break at work so I don't really have time to go into my whole position on the matter, I'll write about that later) but until I can be sure that certain necessary minimum requirements are met, I just plain can't justify it.

Don't worry I'm not planning on turning into some sanctimonious dick about it. I had to come to the decision through reason and inquiry and I don't expect anyone else to change their mind just because I'm jumping up and down about it. So anyway, feel bad for me because someone just sat down next to me with a big sausy delicious hot dog and I want one! :(

Thought of the day - Martyrs

Someone that allows themselves to die in war expecting to be rewarded in the afterlife for their sacrifice, is not a martyr, but a mercenary.

The Casino Philosophy of Existance

Atheism is often viewed as nihilism, skeptics confused with cynics, proponants of evolution as proponants of eugenics, humanists as moral reletivists (a much subtler topic than the average theist gives credit) and with tragic unironic word play, materialists (those that are so far unconvinced by non material explanations) with materialists (those that hold the accumulation of material luxuries as a high priority). These are the people that believe that non believers are essentially missing something essential about life by not believing. We are shallow, joyless, husks, no real emotional connection to life, because we don't believe it has any real value and when we die it's all over. It pains me to think that there are people that believe that, considering all you have to do is look at Atheists and skeptics today and see what they precepts are doing, very little of it could be thought to be nihilistic, and I have met very few skeptics that I could comfortably describe as cynics, most of them are downright optimists.

Now I may come across as a fairly dark, angry kind of guy in the posts I have written so far but really, that's just letting off steam. Sure there is a lot of stuff in the world that makes me angry, and rightly so, but that doesn't make me an angry person, and it doesn't mean that I don't have hope or that I just hate everything. In fact my experience is that my position is one that is both happier and more optimistic than the average theist's with very little of the negative like hell. I call is Casino Philosophy, and here's how it works.

Imagine that you one day just wake up in a casino with no money. You find that you cannot leave, you're stuck there. You don't know anything about the outside world, or even if there is one, but everything that you need is right there, there's food, drinks entertainment other people, but they all have a price tag. Then some how, you don't really know how, you win some money. You think hey it's not really my money so I might as well have some fun with it. You put it all on 36, and you win. You put it all on 17, and you win. This keeps going and keeps going defying astronomical odds odds and you just keep on winning. This is a metaphor for existance, You've got the odds of the universe begining in the first place, the odds of it taking the form that it did, the odds that our solar system and planet would come into place and everntually become a viable birthplace for our form of life. Then every little mutation, every little changed through evolution, every choice to procreate, every seed selected out of millions. Tracing your own lineage from that first spark of life those billions of years ago and seeing all those branches along the way that didn't make it, all those individuals that, after all this time, just lost the game, and they'll never get another chance. All this culminates for you in the winning of you're own life.

So here you are. You've won astronomical amounts, and you've still risked nothing, because it's all free money and you can't spend it anywhere else. So what do you do? Well here's where you have to really look at the situation and then make some decisions. First of all, despite winning this much, you know you probably won't win forever, eventually you're going to lose. So what does that mean? Well since you came in with nothing, when you do lose, it's ok, you haven't really lost anything. Does that mean what you're doing now is meaningless? Well no because there's no because you're at the casino, and you're having fun, you're having experiences, you're enjoying what you have. Should you just commit to wild hedonism? Again no, because you've come this far and you aren't just going to literally throw it all away, you're going to keep trying, keep taking risks, just see how far you can take it, see how many new experiences you can open up with more winnings. As time goes by you realise that the casino is getting bigger, more doors are opening up, you realise that the better you do, and the more risks you take, the more you are going to see, and the bigger the world is going to be for you.

Now there's all the other people in the casino, what do you do about them. Well you can try and stab them all in the back, try and steel their money, cheat, lie and who knows you may actually stay in the game just a little longer, but sooner or later that kind of behaviour is going to leave you alienated and alone, and that will diminish your opportunities for experiences while you're in the game. But if you work together, form friendships and companions, this will keep you all in the game longer, and will make the game more interesting, it will open you up to more experiences, greater joy, it is in the end, far more satisfying, and you can see that the better people get at cooperating, the more successful people are at the games and the more the casino expands.

But there's still a few things to think about. What are you really working toward? I mean it's fun and all but is there something more? Well maybe there is? It could be that this is all there is, and that's fine because it's pretty good on it's own, but the casino is much much bigger than when it started, and you realise that the work of people before you must have expanded it for you, and that is meaningful to you. So in a way, you can help to expand it further for the people that will come after you, and just enjoy that process in an of itself. But to what end? Is it just an endless stream of people showing up in this slowly expanding gaming house? Maybe, and I suppose as long as it keeps getting better, that's ok. Is it a finite thing, eventually everyone loses and the casino just disapears? Again, maybe, but that's OK too, we haven't lost anything, the casino served a function in and of itself and it doesn't need to be any more than that.

But, what if something else happens. What if people get better and better at cooperating, people get better at the games and are winning for longer and longer, the casino continues to expand and grow? What if there is some critical game changing point? Maybe, one day, we can win everything. We can win the casino and everything in it. We can win unlimmited money so we don't have to play the game anymore, so we never lose. The casino can reach infinite expansion, and all possible and imaginable experiences are suddenly open to people, and we have infinite time and resources to explore them. What if we can find the door, and have a look at what lies outside? That for my money is something worth working toward.

Let's drop the metaphor now and I'll sum out how this view is practically useful for me.

1. We've started with nothing, so there's nothing to lose, except for potential opportunities for experience.

2. Since this is all we know we have, there's no good reason to just throw it away. You want to push it as far as you can, and that means you need to strike a ballance between enjoying the present and preparing for what will be the present tomorrow.

3. Experience is it's own purpose. We should seek to have as many experiences as we can. This means we need to find a compramise between risk and caution. Too little risk and you waste the now, too little caution, and you lose the game too early.

4. Make sure you're happy to lose the game at any time, because every spin of the wheel could be your last, regardless of how safe you try and play it. Make sure that at any given moment, you are satisfied with what you have done up to that moment.

5. Share and cooperate with other people. This provides you with not just advantages in life but a better life. You have more opportunities and more experiences. Friends help you to expand you're world.

6. Remember that most potential conclusions to this great game of life and existence are OK. But some of them are trully great and wonderful, and they are worth working toward regardless of how low the odds are, because we really do have nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

See? It really is all good.

Travesty

Michael Jackson. Old news? Is Zeplin old news? Are Beach boys old news? Is Beethoven old news? Well it depends on what your talking about.

Now on one level, none of these artists should even be mentioned in the same paragraph. But at the same time, you can see how they are all comparable. They were all the best at what they did, and even if you didn't like them, you can't not respect them for that fact.

Now you can easily single out M.J. as the most fucked up, which is to say, if you asked anyone which of these are the most fucked up, pretty much anyone will say Michael Jackson, even though most people don't really now anything about any of the other choices. I'm not defending Michael's choices here, which were, let's face it, less than productive, but at the same time, had little to no bearing on his performance as an artist. But in the eyes off the public it did seem to have an effect on one thing.

The public Jackson, the Jackson that could not be hidden, was one that other human beings, knew, as in totally, cynically, fucking knew, could be manipulated to their own benefit. I don't know how people could not have been aware of this, but I suppose it's the very fact that they didn't notice that made it possible.

Now I could never describe myself as any kind of MJ fan, not by a fucking long shot. But my skeptics mind surely lit up whenever people would talk about Michael Jackson and all the really fucked up shit. Let's start with something simple. The baby over the ledge. Let me just straight up say that I have no idea what the big deal was there, as if there was ever a second in which that child was in any danger. Are people just born with a terrible risk assessment ability, or is just cause Michael did it that people lost their freaking minds? Let me say it in plain English in case you still can't wrap your little mind around it. That kid was in NO FUCKING DANGER WHATSOEVER. None, nada. That child was in as great a risk of coming to harm sitting in it's cot in the hotel room as it was being held securely from a height. Really, think about it. Think about all the situations you would gladly put an infant through that is statistically, orders of magnitude more dangerous than what Michael Jackson did. If you can't honestly name 10 without thinking, then you either don't know your stats, or you are abusing your child by concealing it from reality.

What else is there. When you really think about it, you're not overwhelmed with choices for things to criticize Michael Jackson for. But here's one, and I think it's pretty much fair. Producing a song called "it don't matter if your black or white" after deliberately changing your skin color is, to be fair, begging for criticism. In that regard, the man is a hypocrite, or he is just so deeply embedded in denial that he really can't tell reality from fantasy, which could be true, but that's not really your business now is it. I know, I know, by allowing yourself into the public arena you have to accept they you are open to this sort of attack. But hang on, no one really went after him for that. So there is one real point that MJ could be reasonably criticised and yet he wasn't, people let that one go. Huh? how the fuck did that happen. I was pretty little when he made that song so maybe I just missed it, but either way, pretty confident it didn't get the press that the kid fucking did.

OK. the kid fucking. Why did ANYONE take this seriously AT ALL. I found this to be one of the simplest and most obvious, transparent scams EVER. Here we have a guy that in the eyes of the world is a freak. On top of that he has a weird relationship with kids. In that you know, he actually try's to make the lives of dying kids, slightly less unbearable. If we accuse this guy of fucking our kid, no ones going to question that shit. We'll get paid, destroy and eventually kill a man in the process, but that guys a weirdo so who cares, everyone is happy.

On my cover page it has this quote from Benjamin Franklin "Those that an give up essential liberty to obtain temporary saftely deserve neither liberty nor safety" well I'd like to add that. Those that can give up the liberty of others for they're own sense of safety, deserve neither liberty, nor safety, nor fucking life. You are a traitor to the species and deserve death. The fact that I believe there is no human alive, qualified to meet out that particular punishment doesn't change the fact that you deserve it. Anyway the point is, Micahel Jackson's rights were just trampled on, and the people responsible were those assholes that couldn't face the fact that parents were LYING to make MONEY of a popstar. every aspect of Michael Jackson's life is now a matter of public record. His human rights were completely abused because people were afraid of him and didn't stop to question the claims made against him. There were TWO claims of child abuse made against Michael. Both of which were eventually thrown out of the courts because, that's right people, NO FUCKING EVIDENCE. Of course the average public seems to think evidence is a dirty word these days, as if any effort to actually try and distinguish reality from fantasy is an assault against humanity.

Michael actually paid out on the first claim in the early 90's.

wikipedia extract

The father was tape-recorded discussing his intention to pursue charges, where he said, "If I go through with this, I win big-time. There's no way I lose. I will get everything I want and they will be destroyed forever ... Michael's career will be over". In the same conversation, when asked how this would affect his son, Chandler replied, "That's irrelevant to me...It will be a massacre if I don't get what I want. It's going to be bigger than all us put together...This man [Jackson] is going to be humiliated beyond belief...He will not sell one more record".[93] The recorded conversation was a critical aspect of Jackson's defense against the upcoming allegation made against him. He and his supporters argue that he was the victim of a jealous father whose only goal was to extort money from the singer.[93]

end

I'm not going to bother tracing this quote because whether it's true or not is irrelevant to my point. Fact is the parents of this kid took the deal. what cunt of piece of shit worthless parent could accept a cash settlement for their own child being fucked. I don't care if Michael did fuck the kid, if you accept money for your child's suffering, you're worse than whoever caused your child to suffer. But I don't think that's what happened at all. I think that these parents knowingly and willingly destroyed a man for their own financial gain. And you know what, I don't even think they are the worst people involved here. The greatest harm that was done to this man, that for all his faults, never, and I mean never, sought to do any harm to his fellow human beings, the greatest harm was done by the public. The public that instead of using their fucking brains, and doing what they should have done, namely taken the children off the parents that could so horrifically abuse their own children for financial gain, instead decided to attack a man that by every public record that was ripped out of his PRIVATE life, sincerely wanted, and took every measure he could to make the world better for him having been in it.

So for the last few years of a life that should have been venerated and honored as a good and decent philanthropist and humanitarian, wholly apart from being an incredible musician and artist, other human beings, ignorant assholes, drove him to an early death after years of shame and rejection. I hope you are all happy with yourselves. You killed this man.

This is not old news. This is the same news that's been repeated for thousands of years. Anyone that stand for something trully good in this world must be crushed. Celebrities in particular can't reach beyond puppet politics. They must maintain the standard of mediocrity and bland universal morality, seeing as they are the holy priests of the new religion, hollywoodism. And anyone that strays from the status quo, must be stopped.

The treatment of Michale Jackson for his last few years of life is a fucking travesty, and I can only hope that some people will learn something from this lesson of history.

Misunderstanding

Ok so in the 90's you used to hear alot of fear driven nonsense from, in my humble opinion, ugly as fuck middle aged women with disgusting jewelry and just doul crashing fashion sense. What I'm talking about is American talk shows on youth culture. Now I've never been to America, but I'm from Australia and we get alot of your guys' TV (who would have thought we'd live in a world where one day "That's so Raven" would be aired across continents) Show's like Donahue, Ricky lake, all that crap. Oprah's still going strong and we've got the joys of Dr Phil as well, but I was just watching an old youtube clip of Marilyn Manson on Donahue and I realised something that has really changed in the eyes of these middle class cunts. Or at least in the TV they like to watch.

On this episode of Donahue, they were attacking moshing at a Manson concert, and the objections that he was raising were so blindingly ignorant. Everyone that was not like Marilyn and the teenagers and stuff that were trying to defend the activity, were all just arguing amongst themselves over who's job it was to stop it. But on top of it they had to include all the ignorant shit about how "I feel very sorry for the parents,", "there's got to be a better way to get out you're anger" and "is there something bad going on in your life, are your parents hurting you," as if there was no way that an essentially normal, reasonably well adjusted young person, couldn't just enjoy this music and this style. Like unless you dress like a fucking soldier, you must have been abused. Like unless you agree with them, somethings gone wrong.

Well, the point I'm trying to raise here is just that it's funny that you don't really see this kind of thing anymore on TV. No one is going to be so horrified to see a Manson clip on a day time talk show anymore. I mean plenty of people still don't like it, but it's not going to get you ratings. I did see an add for a story on Today Tonight not too long ago about the emo culture, which I guess was in that vein of, "watch young people be different and be horrified," but for me it just stood to show the general lack of interest in that sort of thing now.

The only consistent attention grabbing story on young people is, well anything to do with cars. Speeding, drinking, Texting/talking on your phone, 17 years olds in V8's, people are going to tune in for that. But the music that I listen to now is far more offensive than anything Manson ever produced and no one seems to notice, let alone care. Death circles at metal gigs, people flailing around punching and kicking the air, while the singer screams from the depths of hell the lyrics from songs like 'sponge bob log cock' and 'barbed wire baby fuck'. I guess the beauty of it is that it's so confusing to the onlooker that it loses it's horror.

I think another part of it might be the Christian acquiescence of these rock and metal ellements. I remember when I was young going to Christian youth events, I'm not proud of it, I was young and experimenting spiritually. But there were some pretty heavy acts there, with tattoed band members, we were all moshing and croud surfing and all that shit, at a Christian event. No one is shocked by this shit anymore.

So I don't really have an answer for this, and I'm not asking the question rhetorically, I really would like to get an answer.

Why is it that the middle class is no longer so shocked by youth culture? It's certainly no less fucked up than it was 20 years ago, in fact it's probably more. Do these people know that the average 8th grader has seen a woman suck a horse dry these days? or is that just too edgy for TV. Have people really just gotten so used to the idea that they don't care anymore, or has the gap between generations just become so wide that the easily offended are sticking there heads up they're asses and pretending it isn't there. Or is it just that a different genereation is middle aged now, and the shit that puts their panties in a bunch is different to the previous. Things like using red ink to mark a kid wrong on a test, or letting them resolve their problems with violence the way God intended (read your bible kids).

It might also be that the political shit is literally just overshadowing any of that stuff. War, public health, boys kissing, republicans hate democrats and brown people, democrats hate everyone except brown people. Everything is falling apart and no one. Liberals are shattered and scattered, conservatives are ignorant and united and youth culture is just taking a back seat with regard to the ostentacious outrage of the public. Now don't get me wrong, on one hand I like this, alot. Because kids really do need to be left alone most of the time. Parents are by definition the least qualified people to advise children on the world, more than 50% of them had kids by accident. You accidently made a human being, didn't do the right and honerable thing of killing it before you had a chance to fuck it up, and people trust you with trying to shape and mold a productive and well adjusted citizen? Parents are the most ignorant, terrified, undeserving authority figures in the world. The more they stay out of their kids choices in life, the better.

But at the same time it's interesting to think that they aren't paying attention at all anymore. Everyone want they're kids to like them now days. Here's a tip parents, if you're kids don't fucking despise you, you're not doing your job properly. If they're like me, they will grow up and leave, and if you're a decent person, they will come to like you once they are adults, and they can meet you as equals.

So parents, this is your job. Keep your kid alive, push him to work hard, kick his ass for doing drugs, tell him he can't swear in your house, but let them date whoever they want, listen to whoever they want, dress however they want. The point is you cannot make you're kids choices for them, but you can make some harder for them. Drugs aren't all bad, but they're not all good either and you don't need to make them better by giving them somewhere to do it 'safely'. Teenagers should be doing drugs in the most unpleasant, sneaky, underhanded ways possible, that way they get a more realisitic picture of what it's like to have a drug habbit. Parents, think about what is actually going to damage you're kids chances at having a happy life. No education, no skills, too many drugs, bad vocabulary, inability to think for themselves. You don't need to make their decisions for them in order to provide a more realisitc environment for growing up.

Wood

So this is a short story I wrote today. I sometimes have speed writing games with friends to see what I can come up with. The topic she gave me was "wood" and this is what I came up with, you could say I went a little off topic. It was meant to be only half an hour but she fell asleep and it ended up taking four hours. Enojoy.

_________________________________________________________

WOOD

"Mornin' mr elsworth", said James as he wondered past the towering structure, aprehension in his voice.
"Oh, Hi Jim. How's the day treatin you?"
"Oh, fine, fine. Didn't see you at the mass this morning. Busy again I take it?"
"Yes I er," Simon thought absent mindedly over a list of excuses he had stored in his mind. It was an issue he came across frequently in a town such as this, that seemed to take it's alliegance to the creator a little more seriously. James never felt any animosity toward the church or it's parishoners. He couldn't even say confidently whether he disagreed with them or not. But Simon was not a man to throw away a perfectly good day, sitting and listening to stories and hymns. His heart was in his own creations. His soul, imbeded in the hammer and chissel. That which he loved, to which he would sing and praise, in his own mind, silently and privately, that stood tall and proud in the forrest.

Simon became so lost in his own thoughts that he simply returned to the task, striking at another nail, extending his newest creation still taller, that it might compete with the mighty oaks that kindly donated the material.

James was a little offended at the apparent lack of interest, though unsurprised He simply said, a little louder than before to compete with the hammer blows. "Well I'll be on my way then shall I?"

"Oh, uh sure. Good bye then Jim, nice to see you,"
"likewise," Jim replied, with a little more than a hint of irony, though it seemed to go un noticed.

James continued along the path, thinking to himself. It had seemed so strange to him, it was almost as if he Simon didn't beleived in God at all, though such an idea was unthinkable. To not believe in God was like, not believing in the very ground upon which one walked. How could someone not believe in what was right in front of your very nose, and everywhere else for that matter. He was still deep in thought when he heard a familiar voice call his name. "Oi, Jim. hold on," It was Michael, walking with his wife and young son, aproaching from an intersecting road.

"hello there Mick, Ruth. lovely service it was today wasn't it."

"Oh twas fine, fine. I noticed that mr Elsworth wasn't able to make it again today.Tthat's the 4th week in a row if I'm not mistaken,"
"Oh aye. I just spoke to him a moment ago, working on his new, uh, well I'm not quite sure what it was. whatever it is it's tall,"

"Might be that he's trying to get one up on the man up stairs,"
"What's that mick?" James said, with the distinct feeling that the Mick hadn't quite said all he meant to say in that sentance. Like he was leaving something out to build tension, Mick being sometimes known for using grand speach.
"Like the father was talkin about today," said Michael, a little quiter in case anyone might have been in earshot. "Those fools that were trying to get one over on the Lord, so they try and build a tower, uh, wad they call it love,"
"The tower of Babel Michael,"
"right that's it, the tower of babel. Anyway you never see the likes of Jim paying matters of the lord much heed. Just might be the sort of thing a daft feller like Simon Elsworth might try,"

James looked thoughtful for a moment. Simon had been tolerated as a bit of an oddball, a reputation he'd earned early, and maintained for the 3 years since he moved into the town. But he'd always seemed harmless. Still it made him very uneasy to think there might be someone in his village trying to temp the holy father, or even worse, mock him. Catching the look on Michaels face, he realised he would have to offer some sort of response.

"I don't know about all that," he said, a little cautiously. "He's never sought trouble with any of us, he's always been downright friendly, if still a little daft,"

"aye, but it's the friendly ones you've gotta be watching out for. Think about it, he's not often at Sunday mass, he's comes to the dances and fete's with even less frequency, and everytime you talk to him, he's always to nice, but don't tell me you don't see sense it Jim, that feeling like he's not really talking to you, like his heads always somewhere else. Seems to me a man like that can only be half daft, or he's hiding something,"

James didn't like the idea, but Michael was making sense.

"Well if he is trying to, well you know, he's not likely to get far. The Lord will likley fix him up good and proper, and his tower, before it get's anywhere near him,"

"aye but it's not him I'm worried about, more his bleedin tower,"
"eh?" responded James, the second time so far he'd felt like Mick hadn't quite finished whatever he was trying to say.

"Well all I'm saying is, if he is trying on some funny business, it's not the sort of thing I want going on in my town, nor anyone else I might imagine eh Jack?"
"I know I don't much fancy the idea," said Michaels son, timidly. James couldn't help notice the hint of fear in his voices, along with a rising look of intensity, as he apeared to be
paying very close attention to the conversation. Michael continued, not really paying attention to his son.
"If you ask me, I think we should be doing something about it ourselves. It's not the sort of thing we want to wait too late on. I mean we don't want thinking that we approve,"
James thought that he new which anyone he was refering too. There was a definate tension building up and they both were begining to feel like they were treading on some dangerous ground. They had to be careful about the words they used.

"well, what did you have in mind Mick," James said, a little aprehensively, but starting to come around to Michaels way of thinking.

"I'm not sure, but I think a good start would be having a chat with the village counsil. Maybe they can sort it all out nice a quickly. But we need to do something, that's for sure. The tower cannot remain in our village"

It seemed that James' earlier resistance to the idea was all but gone. Of course the tower had to go. He couldn't even remember having thought anything else.

"Quite right, Mick. We can't be allowin this sort of nonsense in our town. let's bring it up with Mayor Robbins and the counsil tonight at the summer harvest dance,"

James couldn't help but notice the particularly intense look on the face of Michaels son. It seemed to grow more anguished as the conversation went on. But he put it out of his mind, the affairs of children seeming somewhat less important than the topic at hand.

"Right. That's settled then. We'd best be heading back then. Looks to be a good one tonight. See you there then Jim,"

"You too, Mick. Ruth," he tipped his hat to them as they each went their seperate ways.

James went home, and for the time being put the thought out of his head. He had worked quite late the previous night and decided he might squeeze in a nap before the dance.

He slept for a long time, much longer than he had anticipated. He took out his pocket watch and saw that it was 6 pm. The dance had begun an hour ago. He got ready as quickly as he could and managed to arive at the dance on the borderlines of fashionably late. He walked in to the familiar event, having lived in Herold Shire his whole life, there wasn't much to be surprised by. All the same old faces where there, the same decorations and all that. He noded and greeted a few people as he made his way thought the event, until he noticed Michael and Ruth not too far ahead of him talking to the Mayor. All of a sudden he remembered what he was talking about earlier and he moved his way through the croud over too the 3, catching Michaels eye on the way.

"Jim, what you doing over there eh? Come over here," Michael had a very large smile on his face, and had aparently already gotten started on the cider. He seemed uninterested in anything Jim might have to say, as he continued to string sentances together without pause. "Come on Jim, get over here ya daft berk. Where you been then eh? You didn't seen little Jack about on you're way in did you? little begger asked us if he could go play with his friends. I told him to make damn sure he was back by 4 o'clock so we weren't late tonight, haven't seen him since. The boy can look forward to a right smack on the backside next time I see him. But never mind that now, I've just been talking to Nigel here about what we were talking about earlier. So what do you reckon then Nig', you're the mayor aint you. There's gotta be something you can do.

Mayor Robbins look slightly apologetic as he replied. "I'm sorry Mick, but he's not breaking any laws. We can't just walst in and tell him to tear it down or else. I'll tell you what, I'll go over there tomorrow and have a chat with him myself, see if we can't come to some sort of agreement,"

"Sound's like a good idea to me," Michael replied "Just so long as the agreement is that he stops what ever shinanigans he's up to before he puts the whole bleedin village in strife,"

"Yes well I'm sure we can resolve this peacably Michael," said Nigel, "You'll have to excuse my now, as I think it's about time I do my address."

Michael continued to talk to Jim though he didn't pay him a great deal of attention, mostly it was just rambling drunken gossip, and Michael seemed quite happy to hold the conversation on his own, so Jim decided to turn his attention to the Mayor. He walked onto the stage where the band had briefly stopped playing and he called out for the croud to quiet down.

"Hello, hello everyone. Great to see you all here again. If you can all pipe down for a second we can get this out the way and get back to the party," the sounds of all the people talking and singing grew quieter till they were all quiet and looking at the stage. "Yes thank you all for your attention, I'd like to start by saying," the Mayor kept talking, but with everyone else quiet, it was just possible to hear a faint voice call out in the distance. "FIRE! FIRE!" as it grew louder people begin to look around to try and see where the voice was coming from. Seeing this, Nigel stopped mid sentance and, having now heard the voice himself, began to strain to who it was in the dim evening light. But then he saw it, flickering just above the trees. There was indeed a fire, off in the distance. Nigel started to try and calm people down as panick slowly began to spread and people began to stir,

"Now it's alright everyone, calm down. Doug and Pat are on standby down at the firehouse, we'll make sure they're contacted as soon as possible to bring down a truck. Beside them just the rest of the fire bugs are all here, and I'm sure will get there as soon as possible. Everyone else is safe here, really this couldn't have happened on a safer night," He continued trying to calm everyone as the fire fighters began to leave to there vehicals to try and get there as quick as possible. But the rest of the croud was growing nervous and they all started to follow the fire fighters on foot.

James was in the thick of this mass migration, slowly moving toward the flames that seemed to get bigger and bigger as they got closer. Soon they'd be close enough to see What it was that had caught fire, though somehow, he felt that he already knew. The flames reached far to high to be any of the houses, no there was only one thing it could be. Finally he could see it for himself. The massive oak structure was engulfed in flames, far enough from everything else that it wasn't really a danger, but still it burned with a violent brilliance, the dry carpenters wood little match for the destructive force.

In the corner of his eye he saw a small figure dart our from behind Simon's house and he called out to it.
"Oi, whos that!" The figure slowed and looked up to try and trace the voice, giving James a chance to see his face,
"Jack, get over here. Quickly now." Jack paused briefly and then decided it was best to do as he was told, he jogged over to James, who still couldn't help notice that same intense look in his face.
"You're dads been looking for you boy-o, where the bloody hell you been? Are you all..."
"You're too bloody right I've been looking for you," Michael had appeared from out of the crowd and grabbed his son coarsly by the arm. "Just what in the Lords name do you think you were doing. After all that your mother and I do for you, this is the thanks we get? And just what if you'd been hurt, what do you think that would do to you're mother. Oh yeah are gonna get it sonny jim, as soon as we get home you are..."

"AAAAGHH!" Came a horrible womans scream, causing Michael to cease chastising Jack in order to see what had happened. They all 3 walked over to see the woman crying and turning her head. And then they saw what she had seen. Simon was lying on the ground, motionless, a short way from the tower. The side nearest the fire apeared to be red and was still burning dew to his close proximity to the flames. His bones in his legs had snapped and the left on had burst right through the skin. A great pool of blood had colected around him. The blood that was drifting toward the tower was drying and bubbling and crackling under the intense heat. He had obviously been at the top, still working on the tower when it had caught fire. It wasn't a big enough drop to kill him instantly, he would have bled out, though it probably didn't take too long. James wondered what he would do in the same situation, if he would have jumped to avoid the flames. It wasn't much of a decision.

The crying woman managed to splutter something out between sobs, "How could something like this happen," Michael seemed prepared with an answer.
"I'll tell you how. This is the work of God," The crying woman looked at him surprised and a little horrified, even James looked at him aprehensively, "You were right Jim. Remember what you said earlier. You said that he wouldn't get far, that God would fix him and his devil tower. He must have added an extra 30' to it today. The Lord decided he'd had enough. Poor bastard, didn't know what he was getting himself into. Still we're lucky it was just him and his tower the Lord decided to punish. This is a warning here, and a lesson. The Lord is a Merciful Lord, but he's not to be tested. You'd better remember this Jack, unless you want to end up like him,". Jack didn't say anything, he didn't even seem to hear his father, who seemed to have for the time being forgotten about his anger toward Jack. He just stared at the body of Simon Elsworth, trasfixed, and yet he didn't seem like he was present at all. He was suprememly calm, unagitated by what must have been the first dead body he'd every seen. He thought he even saw a smile flicker across his face, but maybe it was just the shadows dancing on his face in the fire light. He put it to the back of his mind, there were more important things going on. If this really was the God visiting his wrath, well, James didn't really know what. Without looking up he eventually said solemnly "You could be right Mick... You could be right."

The Old New Age

2000 years ago in bronze age Palestine, there were a lot of poor people. Really a whole shitload of poor people, and not just poor but desperately impoverished. Now I don't want to give the impression that I'm any sort of authority on this topic, I'm certainly not, but this sort of stuff is fairly common knowledge. Remember the scene in apocolypto where they first get into the city, and every one's all sick and fucked up? Like that but bigger. To top it off, you're taught from birth a whole lot of spooky nonsense by all the other ignorant animals around you, so you're not only bored, hungry, sick and miserable, but these people have to heap on a whole lot of fear, guilt and confusion too.

2000 years on and not much has changed. Health standards have improved (thank you secular science), choices for entertainment have expanded (thank you secular and non secular entertainers, writers etc, as well as secular science), people now have more food than ever (big thanks to science on that one, specific shout out to Norman Borlau, the man that saved a billion lives) and miserable people can now seek therapy (pretty much science), go do something fun (science and capitalism) or you can just take drugs (illicit or prescription, both with many thanks to science). Yet even with all these improvements in the quality of life, we still seem to be not much more than a pack of blind animals with too much power to understand, and no one there to explain anything useful. But there is one more big difference. In the past 50 years the ability to communicate has been improving at a blindingly fast rate, and now these people are in a position where there ideas are free to flow like piss from a drunken horse, into the ignorant animal brains of all the other little people out there. Hence we have the "New Age".

Back to 2000 years ago they didn't have no fancy mobile phones or Internets. But what they did have was a hole shit load of the miserable people crammed into a space stumbling blindly about this thing they called life, with not much better to do than just talk shit to each other. Consider that back then the age new to them. It's pretty easy to imagine these people having there own, specifically very weak, but generally very strong memes that spread among the poorer classes, serving as a replacement for real understanding. These would have been the new agers of the time. It's like this, they flung a whole lot of shit at the wall, and I mean a lot of shit, each generation is throwing shit of a different color, (specifically weak), but they're are all still flinging shit, just the way they're parents told them (generally strong). Think of it as a shit based memetic organism with an extremely high mutation rate and ever changing artificial selection pressures. So you get big shits, small shit, black shits, green shits, shit of every concievable variation to suit the new age dipshit's personal apetite, no two shit's quite the same and each shit very different to it's parent shit, but ultimately, it's all still shit.

One particular shit monster happened to take hold by a series of unfortunate events leading to a more consistant selection pressure and a mild decrease in the rate of mutation, and now we have Christians, spewing the same ignorant shit that these old new agers pulled out of they're ass 2000 years ago. Now I'm not here today to argue the historicity of the bible. I find it to be pretty laughable whether it's all bullshit or just most of it, (to my way of thinking if God wrote it, there should be a mutation rate of zero, because firstly it wouldn't be hard for an omnipotent being to try and not confuse the shit out of his people by having 4000 slightly different versions of the same fucking book and secondly because if the God wrote a perfect book any change no matter how slight can only be Satan fucking with the original script. So there you have it, most Christians are worshiping the false idol of a Satanic text, explains a lot) the point I'm trying to make is that the new agers then, are the same as the new agers now. They are spiritually hungry people, confused by the world and they're place in it. Cynical of established convention and it's ability and willingness to take advantage of them. They're realities are distorted by miss guided notions like faith and "open-mindedness" (as if there was ever an open minded new ager, there's a difference between just accepting anything you like, rejecting what you don't and existing in your own tautological epistemological paradigm, and actually being open to all ideas, and assessing them PROPERLY to see which ones hold water and then accepting the truth in spite of what you might prefer to be true, in other words, a skeptic). Yet it's from this confused counter culture this figure of a mangod came that went on to become the very essence of European mythology and later the accepted religion of one third of the world. It became a symbol, not of rebellion, but of the system itself.

So what's my point? People just refuse to learn this lesson. These people have been making up new ways to intellectually fuck people since probably the dawn of time. Anytime there's enough of them in a small enough space, you've got yourself a "new age" group that's going to leave more intellectual waste in the meme pool for everyone else to have to clean up. Meanwhile, every time we do manage to scrape one of the shit monsters out of the pool these people just keep pouring more and more in. But why are they still here? Why do these god damn new ager, religionist nut jobs still get to pump all there bogus, fear driven insanity in the well and no one is going to call them on it. We've got raliens, scientologists, anti-vaxers, homeopaths and God knows what else. These are just the latest in a series of serious attacks on the human intellect, as if we needed any more heaped on, and they are all a result of modern new agers.

So what's so dangerous about it all, where's the threat exactly? Well even now, wealthy christian groups usually without realising it are funding wars and supporting soldiers, including children, to fight and kill Muslims, who are themselves being supported by wealthy Islamic groups and trained to kill christians. This is the legacy of the old new age and that one shit monster that happened to stick to the wall. Why would you want to risk that sort of shit just so you can have this new age fantasy and keep coming up with garbage, especially given the fact that we actually are in a position to know so much more about the world than we did even 200 years ago, let alone 2000. Back then you could really right it off to unavoidable ignorance. There was just no one there to tell anyone what to do, God being conspicuously un-present. But now in spite of everything we actually have the scientific tools to try to discern the difference between what's real and what is not. Ignorance has made the transition from unavoidable to understandable to willful and it's getting pretty close to unforgivable.

Put simply if you allow yourself to accept that something can be accepted without being tested, you risk taking actions based on corrupted data, and that ladies and gentleman is how Cancer works. Unproven, discredited ideas are intellectual cancer, and one day they will kill us.

First blog - Rules of Comedy

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.