Holy Shi’ite!
February 7th, 2008 at 19:21

There’s an old maxim used to point out something obvious: “Is the Pope Catholic?” – the idea being that everyone knows that the answer is “yes”, and would respond to such a question by pushing their tongue into their bottom lip and make a “duuhhhhh” noise. Unfortunately, this could soon be out of date, as there’s a very real question that we could ask where the answer isn’t so obvious: is the Archbishop of Canterbury a Christian?

Rowan Williams doesn’t seem to be into the whole Christianity thing – he doesn’t tend to do the whole fire and brimstone angry rhetoric that a lot of his peers do, instead preferring to calmly offer some platitudes about how important it is to protect the environment and that sort of thing – and he’d make it more difficult to slag off Christianity if all Christians were like him (thankfully a quick Google search for “Westboro Baptist”, “Ray Comfort” or “Irreducible Complexity” gives us anti-theists something to be angry about).

In fact, Williams has said some downright atheistic things, which really makes you wonder how he got his job in the first place. Last Christmas, talking about the Nativity story he said “Nah, its all bollocks really” (paraphrasing). Apparently the three kings were made up, and there was no proof of animals in the stable – “It works quite well as legend”, he apparently said. “And as for the star rising and then standing still: the Archbishop pointed out that stars just don’t behave like that” according to the Times. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’s extended this reasonable logic to everything else in the Bible.

He even praised Richard Dawkins in his Christmas message (though has slagged him off in the past).

This doesn’t make him sound very good at his job – I mean, you should probably expect him to be a bit more Christian than that… he’s the Archbishop of Canterbury. He gets paid for going on about God too, so you’d think that he’d be a bit more enthusiastic about it.

So its completely and utterly baffling to see Williams sticking up for the other guys. He’s advocating Sharia Law. Maybe he’s getting a bit mixed up, as the major religions are a bit samey – but Sharia law is the Islamic one… and he’s supposed to be a Christian.

Even if he has converted to Islam (and presumably kept his job because of anti-discrimination laws), it still makes him sound like a crackpot. Why? I don’t need to explain why Sharia Law is bad, do I?

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Hyper Bowl
February 5th, 2008 at 02:54

In this 21st Century multi-cultural society we’re all supposed to be progressive, modern and tolerant of other cultures. We’re supposed to all be cultural relativists, and even though we may not agree with what a group of people are doing, we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut so not to offend them and their hallowed traditions.

There’s loads of countries doing all sorts of unpleasant things, but we’re supposed to tolerate the likes of Saudi Arabia oppressing women because it is how they do things there- women not being able to leave the house without a man is part of their culture, and we should respect it. Similarly, we presumably shouldn’t complain about Russian President Vladimir Putin rigging elections in Russia because its part of Russian History and Culture to have a distinct lack of democracy.

I hate to say it, but I disagree with this relativistic way of looking at things. I think it is about time that someone came out and said it once and for all. I know I’m being courageous merely committing these words to text… but… but… the American Football Super Bowl its rubbish, isn’t it?

Sure, it’s a major part of American culture, with millions of people around the world tuning in to the highlight of the American sporting calendar… but after staying up late on a Sunday night to see what all of the fuss was about, I really don’t get it.

I should qualify this by saying that I don’t actually know how to play American football, but as far as I can tell it goes something like this:

A man blows a whistle, another man throws a ball, another man catches it, and then they stop playing again. Then they do a replay of that one throw of the ball in slow motion from a number of different angles, before cutting to lots of different shots of the players milling about or the coach talking to someone on his headset – then they’ll go back to the studio for some analysis, and then they’ll start over again and have five more seconds of play as the process repeats itself. It’s a strange ritual… but who am I to question it?

To make this even more bewildering, I think the commentators were speaking another language too – quite possibly an obscure dialect of gibberish – rather than describe what was going on, like I assumed they would do, they jabbered on about “taking the snap” or “the sack and the fumble”, whilst hundreds of different number graphics flashed about on the screen.

I realise that by writing this I’m almost literally picking a fight with men who are much more burly and numerous than I, but I can’t see the appeal of this weird spectacle of American culture. Maybe I’m just a bigot, and need to learn more about the game in order to understand it, before writing it off completely, and build bridges that way. Or maybe it is actually just a load of men in helmets bumping into each other over and over again.

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Municipal Waste: Birmingham
February 4th, 2008 at 15:03

Last night I went to see a thrash metal band who’s name inadvertently sums up the city they were playing in: Municipal Waste.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I thoroughly detest Birmingham – almost everything about it is revolting, from its Escher inspired road network, to its grimy, litter-strewn exterior to the cretinous drawl of its inhabitants. We did have a minor victory this time, though. I successfully managed to flawlessly navigate my way in to the Academy, where the band were playing, without so much the aid of the satellite navigation. As we pulled into the multi-storey car park, the putrid smell of stale urine that follows you wherever you go in Birmingham, became the smell of sweet victory, even if it was accompanied by involuntary retching. As insane as it is to say, maybe I only now hate Birmingham for its people and not its infrastructure?

Despite arriving with plenty of time to spare, we neglected not to go for a drink in the nearby pub that was built into the corner of the multi-storey car park. Classy, is Birmingham.

“Welcome to the Metal Asylum”, said the vocalist from the first band, Toxic Holocaust, which pretty much set the tone for the night. They, and the next support band, Mutant, then proceeded to play their guitars, hit their drums and whatever it is that thrash metal bands do.

Municipal Waste came on stage at about 9pm – pretty early by gig standards, so I guess they wanted to get away from Birmingham as fast as possible too. I’m not terribly familiar with their music, having only known of their existence for about two weeks, but Bouff informed me that they were going to be “brutal” and they were going to “slay”. He wasn’t wrong.

Now, I’ve been to a fair few rowdy punk shows in my time – but this was thrash metal. The crowd surfers didn’t just crowd surf… they literally bought along body boards. There was also a horrendously brutal looking wall of death. I say “brutal looking”, because by this point I’d retreated back to just in front of the sound desk, as I’d reasoned that I needed my limbs to drive home.

The band were really good – I can’t really say more than that, as I don’t know the songs well enough to identify them, but the atmosphere generated made it decent. I think the band were incredibly clever for having a “theme tune” song that includes their name – there’s a chant of just “Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!“. Which gives the audience something to chant before the encore too.

The next gig I’m going to see is Reel Big Fish. Followed by Reel Big Fish. Followed by Reel Big Fish. I can’t wait.

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