OK, this time I AM NOT introducing the high hat and I AM NOT introducing the tambourine...

( Bristol sushi )

( Book meme )

Who are you going to pass the stick to (four people) and why?

zenith, janinazew, erestania and some_fox because I've never talked books with them and so am interested to see what they are into.

I's also like to join pot80 in applauding the Catholic Church for voting in Emperor Palpatine as the next Pope, just in time for Star Wars III: We Are So Fucked.

(no subject)

Here, read this talk by Douglas Adams on science and religion.

(no subject)

I watched the thing that was on BBC4 the other night about animation. And it had a propaganda cartoon from the 1950s about the danger everyone faced from communism (I nearly had a Freudian slip there and typed 'capitalism'!). It was just so depressing. We have Christians who have someone who reportedly makes John Paul look like a hippy as one of their major religious figures and an American Parliament reportedly trying to make the most Conservative Christian doctrine the sole determiner of whether a law is valid or not, then on the other side equally radical Islamic threats, including the ones yesterday claiming that to take part in the general election is 'un-Islamic' and anyone doing so will be killed. Intimidation and bluster certainly, but we can't know what scale the threat against us is, when Al Qaeda is a name vengeful nutters use when they attack something, not a defined organisation.

Is this what it felt like to live in the fifties, with the Cold War? I just sit here and worry about what is going to happen to all the people I know, both straight and kinked, living lives that would be condemned by the fanatacists on both sides. Documentaries today say that while propoganda made people in the Cold War fear invasion was imminent neither communists or capitalists wanted war because their belief systems only worked with people living to work and toil for them, killing everyone was irrational and to be avoided. But both Christianity and Islam today have become death cults, they don't care if everyone dies because they 'know' they'll be rewarded in the afterlife. You want irrationality, just look at Andrew Sullivan, unable to leave a church that says everything he is is wrong.

I will get up tomorrow and go to work as I always do. I will make plans to see my folks at the end of next week. I'll continue to organise going on holiday with them in the summer. I will take comfort in my friends and pursue the things that interest me or give me pleasure. But to give too much time to long term planning, years down the line, I don't see any point. It's a when, not if.