I was kind of reticent about going because it’s the first day in about a month that my hip has not had any problems. The worst thing is that it hurt to cough or sneeze.  Seriously hurt, like a flat-head screwdriver inserted in the hip joints, and harshly twisted.  The sneezing bit is a problem when you have hay fever, and live near hay.  I found that if I leaned forwards prior to a cough or sneeze, and grabbed my knees it mitigated the pain somewhat.  I don’t believe in jinxes so I’ll say now that hopefully yesterday’s quick burst of energy won’t lead to another severe flare up of the hip.  It doesn’t feel too bad.  But it didn’t feel too bad the night before the last major hip flare up started.

But enough pathetic raspberry-ripple whining **.

There was a really attractive woman on one of the stalls.  So staggeringly attractive that I was quite prepared to override my natural shyness, and try to strike up a conversation.  However, something got in the way – a tiny yappy dog.  I fucking hate tiny yappy dogs.  I’m not one of those people that thinks a dog has to have a specific utility (a gun dog, or guard dog etc.) but there is something so stereotypical about yapsters it makes my head hurt.  Then I saw the Daily Express  in her Range-Rover and thought (somewhat ironically) fuck-that, and lost my semi-erection faster than stumbling across gore on the Internet.

* Leica are very nice but I’d prefer a 1Ds Mk III.  A Nikon D3 would be OK also.
** Thought of the day: Apparently it is healthy to talk about that sort of thing.  I think it is fucking pathetic, and boring.

For instance, when moon landing conspiracy theorists talk about film being too brittle to work in out of space – which is common sense – they overlook (or are ignorant of) the efforts NASA put into making film work in space. Etc. Conspiracy theories thrive on ignorance. And the lengths some people will go in order to disregard evidence that clashes with their theory is astonishing. No-one likes being wrong.  Especially when it’s pointed out, but, being able to hold onto a belief regardless of the counter evidence, requires conviction. And having strong convictions is good, right?

Amber is cool.

I have no clothes awareness. By clothes awareness I do not mean taste or fashion, rather thinks like putting T-shirts on the wrong way around, and not noticing throughout the day. Or forgetting to wear underwear. When I put my mind to it I’ve got a fairly good memory, so it’s not a question of senility, or mad cow disease, or other awful thing. I just put T-shirts on the wrong way around, – occasionally forget to wear underpants – , and inadvertently put socks on that don’t match. It’s like my brain is elsewhere when I’m dressing, and once dressed I’m usually thinking about things, so don’t notice the mistakes. People have confused it with making some kind of statement. It’s not. My back is often so bad I have trouble sleeping, thus I am often awful in the morning. The morning is when I dress.

I ordered some clothes today. I need new kit. I’m beginning to look like Catweazle had he adopted the apparel of the modern bachelor. So I’m going to shave the goatee and maybe get a proper hair-cut. “The squarest haircut you have good man/woman!” is how I’ll greet my hairdresser. Although if they take that seriously I could end up looking like I have a rectangular head. A Muppet gone wrong. Then end up having to shave it and look like a footie hooligan. Or a shaven bollock pulled taut, adorned with a Mr Potato Head DIY kit. A bad back doesn’t affect your temperament. This post is a testament to that.

PS

World: Fuck you!

And there’s an important caveat: I was lucky enough to have a good family network, to have gotten well paid jobs, to have been born with a bit of smarts and good memory, with people constantly pushing me back into education, and a host of little things many just don’t have. So don’t mistake this for an argument that given the will it’s easy for people to make something of themselves. A kind of “I did it, so I don’t see why anyone else can’t” argument. Such arguments are right-wing bullshit. Oft spouted by self-made men who forget they’re not normal. If idiot kids don’t have the support networks that are available to many people by default, then it’s a shame if they live in a society that offers poor alternatives.

* Can’t say I was ever a danger to anyone other than myself though. Other than the occasional punch-up.

• The behaviour of children is mostly influenced by their upbringing – which, for most people, is provided by their parents.
• Said parents were children in the past.

It seems very strange to call for a return to the past in order to deal with moral panics bad behaviour among young people.  Maybe I’m saying is way out there illogical because you rarely hear it used as a defense against fucked up rose-tinted diversionary over-simplistic actively harmful nostalgia “things were better in the past”.  The good old days.

Cause there is no moral vacuum, people are generally less fucked up than the past (less: racism, wife-beating, children-beating, abject poverty, bad health, ignorance, and a lot of other negative shit, man),  and people that tell you otherwise should be birched.   The future, upcoming recession aside, is bright and I’m pretty optimistic.  Optimistic is not equal to complacent.

Just for the record Brown talks a great deal of bollocks too.

Thought of the day

Don’t delete your spam before checking whether it was legit or not.

I think Scientology is a religion.  In terms of what is a religion and what isn’t a religion, I can’t distinguish one set of nonsense from another. I’d define a religion as any collective belief system that involves a supernatural belief in the spirit.  Scientology may charge huge sums of money.  But there’s people that believe in it.  The money they charge doesn’t invalidate it as a belief system.  Imagine taking the potential earnings of Jesuit monks. There’s some very clever Jesuits.  Scientology is no more stupid than any other religion.  But it still deserves criticism.

The ways ‘they’ (I’ll get back to they) have pursued people with litigation, and their attitude towards critics have not given Scientology a good track record.  I say ‘they’ because, I imagine, your average Scientologist has as much to do with litigation, smear campaigns and the like, as your average Catholic has to do with sodomising choir boys, or your average Muslim has to do with suicide bombing.  I.e. Nothing at all.  It is unrealistic to think of Scientology as an homogeneous organisation.  It no doubt it has its sects and its bad apples.

With regards of ‘fair-game’: I would not like to clash with certain sects from any religion.  If anyone takes their religious book seriously, you’re in a fuck load of trouble if you cross them. One thinks of the Amalekites, or extreme Islamic sects that regard outsiders as Kafir, or interpretations of the Bible in the Middle Ages, or the way Christians regarded Jews.  Many of those things are in the past for mainstream religions.  But, like Scientology,  mainstream faiths should not be thought of as homogeneous organisations.  There are sects and individuals from widely recognised religions that have views that are utterly vile.  Mel Gibson’s father is a good example of Catholicism gone wrong.

So, are people right to protest Scientology?  Absolutely. The record of litigation against opponents of Scientology is something they should be ashamed of.  In purely practical, amoral terms, it doesn’t seem to have worked.  If anything it has made the situation worse.  And the money they charge is a valid thing to criticise.  Their attitude towards the media, specifically removing clips of Tom Cruise, was anti-free speech, and should be criticised.  Abuse of things like the DMCA and asymmetrical litigation through attrition are problems of our age.  People with loads of money, suing people with little money, until they give up.

The bad things that have happened within Scientology are an emotionally charged issue.  I cannot rationally say that any of the things that have happened within Scientology (notably the Lisa McPherson case) are any better or worse than things that have happened within mainstream religions.  Even limiting the scope of inquiry to the Twentieth Century.  In mainstream religions there have been deaths, suicides, exorcisms, child abuse, extremism, racism, financial irregularities and more. 

So lets not, for a second, think that mainstream religions are any better. But two wrongs do not make a right.  The behaviour of other religions doesn’t justify the things Scientology stands accused of.

Fundamentally speaking, I’m a wimp.  I can’t bring myself to be anti-religious – people have a right to make up their own mind.  My belief is that all religion is wrong.  That’s my choice.  Other people have theirs.  It’s not my place to be evangelical about my beliefs or to tell others what they can and can’t believe.  The thing that pisses me off about religion is when it steps outside of its domain.  Interfering with politics, science, and law. That is as bad as atheists expecting a say in theology or giving advice on the ‘spirit’ (whatever the fuck that is). 

I don’t think anonymous is anti-religious either. 

People have as much right to criticise religion as religion has to criticise atheism.  Free speech is the way it should be.  I think we live in a better world if there is critical dialogue between people who disagree.

The best thing that Scientology can do in response to anonymous is to prove everyone wrong by not attacking well meaning people in masks.  If they attack ‘anonymous’ they are proving all of their critics right. Scientologists have a right to practice their faith and people have a right to peacefully protest.

I am going to take pictures and to lurk.  In real life anonymous is new shit and therefore interesting. If anyone wants to meet up, or is going, or wants to go, drop me an email.   I’ll be lurking around all day. 

Links:

London Lulz.

If you’ve ever been to a country that has a problem with feral dogs, you’ll know that dealing with wild dogs can be a total pain in the arse because they’re unpredictable. They’re mostly scared of people, because, as scavengers, they’re chased away with sticks and shouts. Other times, with children, or if they feel threatened, they’ll bite, and in packs they can attack. They can carry rabies and present a public health issue. Under Saddam Hussein the infrastructure in Iraq was held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and tyranny. After the invasion, the coalition political leaders, those so keen on war, had no decent plan, at all, to deal with the aftermath. Rather depressingly, it’s been repeated by politicians calling for a pull-out of Iraq; with no detailed plans to deal with what happens next.

During the invasion, and its aftermath, all of the pest control, public services, and public service infrastructure, were destroyed, looted, or both, here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say at the time:

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things … stuff happens”

The destruction of public services was allowed to happen. Simple things like pest control were looted out of existence – and worse was to come. The people who dealt with practical things, the people running ministries, what was left of them, emigrated to neighbouring states like Jordan and Syria, or were fired in the de-Baathification of the Iraqi state. As a result wild dogs are a bigger problem in Iraq today, than they were prior to the invasion. And they were a problem prior to the invasion. Tossing a puppy off a cliff isn’t the best form of pest control, but placed in context, it’s different from someone buying a puppy in a pet-shop specifically to toss it off a cliff. It’s still cruel and it’s still wrong, but given the situation soldiers are in, dealing with the arse-end of geopolitics, it is, to my mind, forgivable. Many people seem to be more incensed at a soldier tossing a dog off a cliff than they are about the situation soldiers have been left to clean up.