The Stasi have feelings too
March 22nd, 2007 at 21:15

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the train ticket game I play. This was also published in my newspaper column – click here for a scan. It turns out that Midland Mainline staff don’t like being referred to as ‘The Stasi‘ in newspaper columns.

I was at the station today buying my ticket when the ticket man, (who happened to be my old next door neighbour, trivia fans) told me that he’d read my column in the paper. “Oh.. er… which one?” I asked, hoping he’d say the one about learning Chinese.

“The Gestapo are waiting on the train for you”, he said, before the other ticket person chipped in that fare enforcement have their eye on me.

“Oh, I’m scared now”, I said in a voice that hopefully implied that we were all having a joke together.

“You should be“, she sniped back.

Oo-er. It appears that I’ve pissed off the people I rely on to go about my daily business.

I was half expecting to be roughed up on the train by some ‘black-ops’ Midland Mainline staff – no one would be able to save me as the train would be in motion and the doors locked. This didn’t happen, but I’m still pretty scared now that I’ve received proof that my awful opinions are being read by the masses.

There is a silver lining though – I mean, aside from the one lining my coffin when Midland Mainline catch up with me. I can add yet another group of people to my list of people who hate me.

The contents of the list is thus:

1. Nazis – I bad mouthed the real British Nazi Party on my blog ages ago, they, er, found it and left threatening comments.
2. Window Cleaners – See: here.
3. Wilkinsons – Caution: early, and thus terrible blog entries.
4. Christians – Because of, y’know, all this stuff.
5. Midlands Mainline – See: above.

Do you hate me? If so, let me know (in the comments?) so I can add you to my list.

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Gordon B(backwards ‘R’)own
March 20th, 2007 at 16:03

There’s a bit of a fuss in the media today about a former top civil servant suggesting Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown is like history’s favourite bastard, Joseph Stalin. What surprises me is how politicians complain about civil servants getting involved in politics, and how this is unprecidented.

As a civil servant myself, albeit a low-ranking one, I want to raise my head above the parapet and also say something that might be considered shocking: I think that former-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is JUST LIKE former-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. I mean, look at the evidence:

• He was leader of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1953… just like Stalin.
• He lead his country to victory in the Second World War… just like Stalin.
• He colluded with Hitler in the partition of Poland… just like Stalin.
• He had a moustache… just like Stalin.

So yes, let it be noted that a CIVIL SERVANT has said ON RECORD that Joseph Stalin is just like Joseph Stalin. How do you like that, politicians?

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Another Book Review
March 18th, 2007 at 00:48

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Has beens
March 17th, 2007 at 22:35

Comic Relief is one of my favourite TV events of the year, after the annual overnight transmitter engineering tests when they show the test card, and checking to see if Teletext has once again forgotten to change their clocks when they go forwards.

This year I enjoyed the jarring tone-shifts when they switch between poor people and Catherine Tate, and the irony in a lot of material being derived from the misfortunes of the poor people they were trying to help (see: Vicky Pollard and urban deprivation). I think the best bit though is watching it with a clean conscience because I donated weeks ago, and knowing that my cash is going to help some poor destitute multinational get some free publicity on prime-time BBC One. A close runner-up for “best bit” of the evening would probably be the slightly bizarre sight of Davina McCall getting the audience to cheer Oracle and Cisco – I never knew there were so many fans of databases out there.

I think if I were a proper student, complete with Thundercats watch and German army jacket, I’d have really enjoyed Peter Kay’s bit where he got all of the rubbish has-been celebrities to sing along to some old song. I imagine most of the people in the studio with him probably have mock Che Guevara style t-shirts with their faces printed on, labelling them a “legend” – the sort of thing a student would buy to show how “crazy” and “wacky” they are.

It does make me wonder though: how do the likes of Roy Walker, Keith Chegwin and Jim Bowen resist the temptation to slash their own wrists? I mean, they know they’re old, crappy celebrities and their best days are behind them. The only work they can get these days is touring the student unions peddling their old material. They must spend one evening a month being worshipped “ironically” by students as if they are some sort of God, dying a little inside every time they repeat their catchphrase again, before going back to being a forgotten nobody during daylight hours. It might be good money, but it’s not right.

I bet Jim Bowen cries tears of regret every time a drunken student tells him that he “couldn’t beat a bit of bully”. When he looks back at what he could have been, the only thing keeping him going must be the deluded hope that there’s a Noel Edmonds style resurrection on the cards.

I imagine the same would be true for supervillains, if they were real. The Riddler, past his prime and stuck in Arkham Asylum spending his time solving Sudokus, must still yearn for the days when he constructed elaborate schemes to snatch diamonds after entering the museum through the skylight, or whatever. The best crime he’ll get away with now is scrumping apples.

Poor, crappy, old celebrities.

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Terrifying GodTube Video
March 16th, 2007 at 22:29

As you may know, I’ve caused quite a stir recently by posting some sarcastic videos on GodTube. One of the commentators on my blog alerted me to this video of a chap in a balaclava literally bashing a Bible, and claiming that the atheists who have been uploading videos to GodTube and blaspheming will be “put to death” and that the “whole congregation will stone the blasphemer”. I can’t help but think that this is directed, er, directly, at me.

Here’s the video using the GodTube embed code, if the video gets taken down, this won’t work:

I’ve watched it a few times and I can’t figure out if it’s fake or not. It must be fake… but it’s been up for a few days now. It must be some sort of meta-humour for all of the atheists watching. Surely? My videos were online for a few days, but this bloke is wearing a balaclava and it hasn’t been taken down. But it is fake, right?

Or should I really be expecting loads of mental Christians to stone me to death? Ooh-heck.

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Nutter of the week
March 14th, 2007 at 01:10

I was travelling to university on the train today, and I met Katy on there. After a few minutes, our conversation got on to the topic of the TV series 24. All of a sudden, a head popped up from the seats behind where I was sitting, and there was an old man with a battered face and a raincoat staring at Katy, who was sitting opposite me.

“I do not wish to hear your conversation”, he said in a quiet, considered way. We were probably being quite loud by the standards of the rest of the carriage, so Katy apologised and we spoke more quietly, with no projection in our voices.

A couple of minutes passed, and he popped up again, and still seemed to have an issue with the volume which we were speaking at. After repeating that we were speaking too loudly, he offered some advice: that you express things with words and not volume. He laboured this point quite a bit – and Katy who had merely been slack-jawed and making a monotone squawking sound prior to this sagely advice, changed her tune.

We reduced our volume further – literally speaking no louder than a “loud whisper”, in the sort of way you do if you’re whispering but want to make it obvious that you’re trying to conceal something.

A couple of minutes later, and nearly at the station, the man’s head appears over the top of the seat again. He seemed pretty irate this time, as you could hear the anger in his voice as he stressed each syllable: “Words… Not… Volume“. I was getting pretty worried at this point- he seemed to be focusing all of his anger on Katy and not me, so I was worried that I might have had to intervene and try and mediate the situation, by saying “leave it out, it’s not worth it”.

I thought Katy was going to explode with anger, as you could see it in her face that was covered in pointy eyebrows and a tense jaw. I could see her clenched fists as she calmly, but firmly replied something along the lines of “I’m sorry sir, but I have reduced the volume at which I am speaking, and I am sorry if this offends you. I’m getting off at the next station so you only have to put up with it for a couple of more minutes”. Imagine her saying that entirely in italics and underlined, as that is what it sounded like.

The unfortunate thing was that the bloke, the Nutter of the Week, seemed to win. Slightly shocked at what had happened made us a bit lost for words, meaning that all we could do was silently look at each other with an expression of “what the fuck?”. As we left the train, a couple of other passengers commented that he was an arse, which was fun.

I think the strangest thing is that he seemed to only pick on Katy and not myself – despite me being equally as loud an, er, loudmouth, and at least twice as arrogant. We’ve come up with a few working theories to explain his actions:

• He watches 24, and doesn’t want to hear any spoilers from, er, season one.
• He’s old, and thus assumes that women should be seen and not heard, hence why he didn’t mind me shouting my mouth off.
• He’s old, and thus homophobic, and possibly Christian, because at the time Katy was explaining that she thought one of the actresses in 24 was “pretty”. And the word “pretty” is obviously a youth slang term for her desire to have a lesbian encounter with the person she is describing… and this offends him?
• He’s just a nutter.

I think the last theory is the most likely – after all, you’d have to be slightly unhinged to pick an argument over a minor issue on an almost empty train. I think most sane people would simply opt not to cause a fuss and move seat if they can’t bear “raised voices”, as that’s the British thing to do.

So yeah, that’s the first Nutter of the Week in a while. At least he didn’t try to mug me.

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Footnotes to a reference
March 11th, 2007 at 14:51

I sometimes worry when writing something that when I try to reference something to get a laugh, that I’m referencing something badly. Like if I were to try and end a paragraph by arbitrarily name dropping, say, Canadian kids show The Adventures of Shirley Holmes.

I think what I reference can risk saying a lot about me and the sort of audience I’m targeting the nonsense I write at. For example, if I were to reference contemporary politics, it might sound a bit lame and unoriginal. “It’s dangerous for North Korea to have nuclear weapons, as they’d be controlled by a mad man… not unlike another major world power“, I might wryly say whilst stroking what one of the commentators on GodTube called my ‘neckbeard’.

So what else can I reference instead? What about old political and historical things? I could be sickeningly obvious and make a reference to the Nazis – but someone in a very high place has noticed that nearly all of my columns mention the Nazis in some form or another. Or I could be obscure and reference, maybe, Martin Luther (the one who wasn’t King)? Or would that make my writing too inaccessible? There can’t be too many people would know what I’m talking about when I’m talking about 90s Canadian kids TV AND the reformation and split of the church… and I can’t imagine many of them read my blog.

How about instead I try and derive my humour from the absurd? “Wouldn’t it be funny if gorillas had cannons instead of arms and they shot out aborted foetuses!?”

I could just go down the obvious studenty route and try and get laughs out of “ironic” references to “ironic” celebrities – Pat Sharp, Thundercats, Neil Buchannon, Roy Walker, Keith Chegwin, Jim Bowen – all of which will undoubtedly have Facebook groups dedicated to them calling them a ledge, which, to my understanding, means that they are a “legend” or “legendary” and is not a blank check to try and balance things on them next time they tour at your local student union.

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A quick book review
March 10th, 2007 at 23:41

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Christ Club
March 10th, 2007 at 02:36

The first rule of Christianity is that you do not ask questions.

The second rule of Christianity is that you do not ask questions.

The third rule of Christianity is that you do not post stupid sarcastic videos on Christian websites.

So I’ve been banned from GodTube. I probably should have expected that. I guess it’s no longer a case of me rejecting Christianity, and instead Christianity dumping me. They didn’t even have the decency to say “it’s not you, it’s us… we’re just not ready for the scientific method right now” – they just stopped returning my calls. Proverbially.

If there’s any Christians reading, I know you have trouble with not taking things literally: ‘proverbially’ means that it didn’t really happen, but it’s basically the same course of events or message transposed into a different narrative to illustrate a point.

I think I’ve just re-discovered (one of) the problem(s) with religion – I think it’s the lack of accountability. It’s as powerful a force in world affairs from international relations to the individual, yet unlike the politicians, and like the multinational corporations it doesn’t have to answer to anyone if it fucks up, and doesn’t have to justify its actions to the people it is ’serving’.

Religion seems to get a free pass despite the awful things it is doing to the world because it is perceived as untouchable – some ancient book has told its readers that it should wage war on people who believe a different ancient book with equally spurious origins. The Bible, the Koran and so on are cleverly written as they are self sustaining: encouraging readers to defend the book to the death against any difficult questions or scientific reasoning that contradicts it. By wrapping itself in a veil of moral guidance it hides a mechanism of control and gives itself a veneer of legitimacy that leaders have used throughout history to push their own agendas and consolidate their own power.

I think the worst thing about religion isn’t the illusion of a deity who can intervene in peoples lives or the wasted resources of humanity on building monuments to a God who doesn’t listen, but is the breeding of ignorance.

The removal of my videos, however stupid they were, is yet another illustration that Christianity is SCARED of tackling issues that question it’s foundations. Or maybe it just says that I’m just an arrogant twat poking my nose in on a website where I don’t belong.

Either way, Christians don’t want to address the questions that are most important to them: Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is going to happen next? How is the universe organised? Why are things the way they are? Every time science offers a rational explanation to some of the biggest questions, Christianity will be on the front lines fighting against it as it doesn’t comply with assumptions they made thousands of years ago. It’s only when the church is backed into a corner that they’ll re-read the one book they’ve been reading for their entire lives and magically discover that it does in fact allow for a heliocentric universe, or whatever.

Christians just don’t want to know when they’re wrong… or even if they’re right. The systematic discouragement of asking questions is terrifying for the future: if we’re not curious about the world we live in, then what is the point in the continuation of human existence?

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GodTube
March 10th, 2007 at 00:03

If you’re savvy enough to be reading a blog, chances are you’ve seen the Internet’s number one newcomer this week: GodTube. It’s basically a Christian version of YouTube, featuring sickening videos like this one. Or this one. Basically I could link you to practically any video on the website and have it outrage you like it outraged me. So I’ve decided to have some fun instead.

Does anyone remember Peter Florida? Turns out that he’s a nutty Christian and has been posting video blogs to GodTube.

In this first video, “Peter” discusses the Bible. Click the link to see it on GodTube, I’ve posted the video below on Revver too, just in case they remove it.

Incredibly, it wasn’t deleted after being posted, and has now been online for around 48 hours. It must have been too realistic. So “Peter” made another video to see if that would get deleted. It discusses a controversial topic for the church: homosexuality.

These two actually got some comments from real people commending Peter’s religious beliefs, although they’ve mysteriously been deleted since. I thought it was getting a bit ridiculous – as of right now, they both still haven’t been deleted despite obviously being the work of some smart-arsed atheist blogging twat.

I…, er, Peter thought he should up the ante and really show his devotion to God by complaining about scientists:

This has now been on GodTube for a couple of hours and is being viewed by real members of the Christian Taliban. Can the limits of GodTube be pushed any further? Just how absurd can one go in the name of God before being rumbled? Tune in next week.

UPDATED 10/03 00:51. I’ve been found out and they’ve banned me. The funny thing is that because my ISP uses a proxy, presumably everyone in the county is now banned from GodTube too. Whoops.

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