Frolix-8

He's Rudy Giuliani. And he approves this message.

Mr. Joe Powell, in a post over at cupofjoepowell.blogspot.com makes an excellent point and one which has really inspired this blog from the beginning – "…if we can catalog current events as elements of (Philip K Dick’s) fiction, we are in deep, deeeep shit."

Reading Joe’s post reminded me of Dick’s musings about people not having ideas but ideas finding people when circumstances are right. Anyway, Joe needn’t worry about frolix_8 so much as the video below. Now that is scary...

UPDATE - He's William Gibson and he approves this message (via He's Ken MacLeod and he...etc, etc)

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SF Gospel's Ten Best Science Fiction Stories About Religion

Excellent piece over at the SF Gospel - The 10 Best Science Fiction Stories About Religion. PKD gets an honourable mention for Faith of Our Fathers and is cited as an influence on another tale, Rick Moody's The Albertine Notes.

I think the mention of 'Wash-35' in the context of fictional drugs was more likely a reference to JJ-180, the super-addictive time-and-space brain burner from Now Wait For Last Year. Putting my PKD pedantry aside for a second, though, the SF Gospel certainly makes me want to read the stories on the list, which can only be a good thing.

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The Sunn o))). We Love It.

Here's another pic from the weekend's big fight - Anderson vs. O'Malley at Butlin's, Minehead. Anderson's winning on points here, although O'Malley was having problems with his valves. But let's face it, performing at that illustrious venue is bound to send anyone 'a bit funny'.

Well done to the Illusionator for the find. And weller done to the photographer for taking the pic in the first place.

More Shiny Black Sunn o))) & Boris

Look, I know I'm going off on one but really - you people who insist on choons and beatz and wordz and things don't know what you're missing. You can have your James Blunt. Really.

Berlin #1	Berlin #2
Berlin #3	Roskilde #1
Roskilde #2	Somewhere Out There

The God / Bottom Perspective

Eldritch Junior, upon hearing that the Princess Eldritch has to make a promise to 'my god' at Brownies next week:

"But you don't believe in God. I believe in God, but I have to go and wipe my bottom now because it's itchy."

Perspective. That's it, right there.

A Mote of Dust, Suspended In A Sunbeam

The venerable broadcaster Brian Walden was on the radio this morning, delivering an opinion piece about religion. Passing over the fact that he always reminds me of Enoch Powell, I shall simply say that Walden is evidently a religious man with little time for the likes of Richard Dawkins. As he said in his piece this morning, religion isn't about science or facts. It's about faith. It's about believing that there must be a better fate for human kind than being alone in a Godless universe, the result of a cosmic 'accident'.

Unfortunate, really, because otherwise he seems quite a reasonable bloke. Apart from reading The God Delusion (which, amongst many other things, deals with the fallacy that life is an 'accident' without attributing it to a god), I would advise him to consider a particular snippet from a speech Carl Sagan gave in 1994. Sagan was talking about the photograph to the left [click for fuller joy] - the Earth, taken at a distance of some four billion miles by the spacecraft Voyager I;

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Child Zen

Apropos of nothing at the dinner table last night, the Princess Eldritch made the following pronouncement;

"I don't believe in God. I think Jesus made him up to keep people happy."

She's worked it out. And she's seven. And no, I did not coach her or tell her that particular theory regarding the origin of Christianity. Coincidentally, I read the following this morning on the blog of one Robert Anton Wilson;

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

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UPDATE - This is a satire but I can see plenty of Christians not getting it. They obviously don't know their Galileo - "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

UPDATE - "Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box." (Italian proverb)

God Is A Toupee

Long overdue ramble about Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, about as close to an atheist's Bible as we're likely to get. It comprehensively debunks the insanity of religion, of course, dealing with pretty much everything of relevance including; the origins of religion, what religion is for, why the arguments for the existence of a 'supreme being' are literally a load of old shit and why religion is much more of a danger than a benefit to society. I did think at one stage that his deconstruction was too centred on Christianity but he does take Islam to task as well - just not as much. Quite sensible, of course, given recent events from the Salman Rushdie fatwa onwards.

It was particularly interesting to be reading Emmanuel Carrere's I Am Alive And You Are Dead: A Journey Inside the Mind of Philip K Dick alongside Dawkins' book, as PKD became very religious and discussed God and existence at great length throughout the second half of his life - to the extent of writing millions of words on the subject late at night in his never-published (indeed mostly never-read) Exegesis. The same question is discussed in both books - why, in the face of all the scientific evidence, do people still have religious faith ? - and both reach similar conclusions 'they just do'. God exists in the minds of the faithful - and that is existence enough, for them. They don't need or want scientific proof.

Dawkins has more trouble accepting this explanation than Dick does, obviously, but neither make enough of what I think is the crux of the matter - fear. I think fear is deeper than any other instinct - its fight-or-flight aspect coupled with human beings' consciousness of their own existence are what makes religion and sustains it. It's almost a reversal of the arguments about the existence of ghosts - to the believer in ghosts, no evidence is needed. To the non-believer, no evidence is good enough. For the committed faithful, no scientific evidence is enough to disprove the existence of a god - in fact, scientific proof is pretty much anathema in general. To the atheist, each scientific observation points to further proof of god's non-existence and of the faithful's dangerous abrogation of responsibility for their own actions.

Both Dawkins and Carrere mention the part fear has to play in the religious mind but they don't seem to see it as fundamental. Dawkins piles up all the different aspects of religion into a nasty heap which he then clinically disinfects, for the most part. On a couple of occasions he becomes carried away slightly by the disbelief as yet another anecdote describing the madness of religion is told, but that's understandable. People have done countless acts of utter madness and evil in the name of religion throughout history and continue to do so. Carrere hardly mentions fear with regard to religion at all - but then his book is a strange ( but very effective) mixture of biography, speculative fiction and lit-crit rather than a philosophical discussion.

I shall read both books again, of course, if only to check that what I've written here isn't a load of inaccurate waffle. And I heartily recommend The God Delusion to anyone - it's a great pity that those to whom it might have the greatest positive effect will be too scared to read it before burning it.

Twats

I've nearly finished The God Delusion, so in preparation, please to be viewing the following examples of religiosity today. Bearing in mind we are now living in the previously-mythic 'twenty-first century'...

"A doctor at a family planning clinic told a patient that she needed an exorcism because there was something sinister moving around inside her stomach...."

"A man who climbed a 45-foot tall statue of Jesus to pray for a miracle cure saw his plan backfire slightly, when he fell off, breaking several bones."

And, of course, the story from Glastonbury which is in the post below this one. As Dawkins says, they're not mad - just religious. The problem is, there's precious little difference between the two...

Exactly What It Says On The Tin?

The Illusionator informs me that Liverpool Hope University is a genuine educational establishment of some renown - not some godawful religious cult, as the flyer to the left might suggest. Indeed, the web site for the place confirms this, with a nice potted history of a big school going back some one hundred and fifty years. Nevertheless, why did they choose a pair of comatose extras from an Enrique Iglesias video as the photographic representation of the place? Ho hum. Marketing, marketing.

How Low Can You Go?

Today's coincidence began with the arrival of a copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion this morning - a book which has intrigued me since I first heard about it not so long ago. I'm intrigued to see if he has a go at Spinoza and Pascal, for example. The book has a gushing quote from one Derren Brown on the back cover, but I'll pass over that (geddit? 'pass over'? No? Oh, never mind) and get to the post point...

The current pope, Benny 16th (I don't know about you but that photo of him to the left scares the pants off me), is apparently in the process of abolishing Limbo. That's right, he's going to abolish one of the places certain religious folks have been believing in for centuries. It was a pretty comfortable place in Dante's Inferno, I seem to recall - if a bit boring. All the unbaptised babies who died went there, as did certain atheist philosophers, who wandered about a grassy meadow philosophising (presumably having lost their atheism).

It's OK to forget about Limbo, saith the pontiff, because "it has always been only a theological hypothesis". Unlike Heaven and Hell, of course, that really do exist, honest. Oh, and Purgatory, obviously. It's a huge mountain somewhere that stretches up to Heaven. You can't miss it.

It's great how he can pick and choose, isn't it? But still, he is the Pope and if anyone can abolish "theological hypotheses", it's him. The whole thing is very reminiscent of the recent arguments over Pluto being stripped of its status as a planet by a large gang of astronomical popes (or the Judean People's Front as they're also known). Presumably Pluto's being a planet was only an "astronomical hypothesis".

So the whole thing has made me even more geared up to read a book about how organised religion is a load of scary bollocks, practised by scared, scary people. Unfortunately, it means I share something with Derren Brown, who I consider a bit of a cock, but there you are. I shall rise above such a petty feeling of loathing. It's not very Christian.

UPDATE - Will he ban the game, I wonder?

Derek Acorah, Off The Ball

Derek! Derek! She's online now! From the spirit world!!

Fuck Death

Eldritch Jr. to his mother, this evening;

"Mummy, if everyone dies, will the dinosaurs come back?"
"I don't know, my love. Perhaps - what could make everyone die?"
"Bombs. Or everyone catches something that makes them really, really ill."

He's worked it out. And he's five. How come so many grown 'adults' seem to have less of a clue than your average mushroom, let alone small child?

Evolution

Quote from the BBC site report of bomb attacks in Malegaon - "If a needle is pierced in any part of your body the whole body hurts, doesn't it? The Muslims all over the world are like a human body"

If only we thought of all humans as being that 'human body', then perhaps less bombs would go off. Anyway, as you were...

False Idols

Just for the Illusionator, here's a link to the Flickr set of Banksy's Paris Hilton CD. There's a link to the remixes in the comments, too. I thought the choice of 'Thou shalt not worship false icons' was interesting, as it adds a religious overtone to what is otherwise a very commendable piss-take, sorry, artwork. What's Banksy saying in his choice of that caption, I wonder? (strokes pointy beard that has appeared on chin)

Oh, and Gilbert - there was a reason why the Hiltonbot was chosen for that House of Wax film, you know. Dead eyes, man! Look at the pictures! There's nothing there!

Fundamentalist Recessive

The current US cult in the news - Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - is not remotely humourous, obviously. They take the notion 'God is love' to a frightening degree. I had to laugh, though, at the end of this blog entry from a journo who has been covering the community for some time. Again, it reads like something from The Day Today come to life;

"...one television crew dressed up in "Little House on the Prairie" garb and tried to infiltrate the population of Colorado City. The small, largely interrelated and paranoid FLDS members were not fooled. But another television crew got taken in and tried to interview the costumed reporters..."

I Am A Hero

I was pleased to be associated with the term 'hero department' courtesy of this article about who is most likely to steal lunches at work. However, I was more struck by what the author had for his lunch. Check it out - what a lard-arse. It was pinched, of course, hence the article but I would venture to suggest that no single indivdual was to blame - it was probably mistaken for a corporate buffet.

If I were to become fed up with my 'hero' status at work, though, I think I now have the perfect excuse for either a few weeks off on the sick or majorly hilarious changes to my working environment - contract Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS). As the sufferer interviewed says himself, "I can't watch television for long and when I want to use the computer I have it on in one room and sit in the hallway looking at the screen through binoculars." I can't watch television for long either, but that has nothing to do with EHS. It's more BS-HS.

The poor fellow would do well to avoid fashion show catwalks in future, as Phillips have developed clothes which can show moving images. What are goths going to do with that when it hits the high street? Or will they still be wearing their Arabic 'I am not a terrorist' t-shirts?

Terrorism. Sex. Physics.

Now then, here's a merry crock of web-widdle for you this Friday morn;

A big collection of vintage 'naughty film' posters.

The Old Testament. In Lego. Why has nobody told me about this before?

How to be Superman. For real.

No money for Mohammed. Or Ahmed. Or Patel. Or...

Don't listen to Metallica during a thunderstorm.

"She is filled with the rapture of sin in its intensity..."

And finally, below are some hilarious click-for-full-joy ads from the Coolhunter, here and here. What would the airbag ad for Rover look like, I wonder?

Maturity, Schmaturity

Adults are becoming less adult, according to some numpty in Geordieland. Whatever. Talk to the hand, girlfriend. Chah, like, really. Am I bovvered?

No I'm not, because I'm off to the eighth annual Bats Day, an unofficial gathering of goths in Disneyland. DisneyMegaCorp™,inc. ltd. have some stipulations for the merry throng, however;

From our previous trips we found out that Disney will not allow capes or fishnet stocking, on guys, to be worn into the park. You can try to wear them in, but keep in mind that you may be asked to take them off and place them back in you car. One of the main reasons that there is a dress code is due to the fact that Disney does not want anyone from the regular visitors mistaken any of us as one of their characters or cast members.

I love that 'one of the main reasons...' bit. Any readers of EL Doctorow's The Book of Daniel will know what I mean.

But we're not all childish morons and once again it falls to our elders and betters to show us how to behave. Step up Warren Buffett, who has decided to stop rolling around in jacuzzis of million-dollar bills and painting his stables in liquid platinum to make the largest charitable donation ever - 85% of his wealth, to be exact. 85% of over forty billion dollars. Most of which will go to a charity shop run by a certain Mr. and Mrs. Gates - itself worth $30 billion. That's a lot of money. Where does it all go? Do you want a bag with that, dear?

Happy National Slayer Day

Rejoice, for the hour has come. Or something. I hope you're all celebrating this auspicious occasion in an appropriate manner, i.e. listening to Reign In Blood at soul-shredding volume. I know I shall be later today. The place to be is obviously Hell, Michigan with their 666 party. Lordi supplying the music, presumably.

Further to yesterday's post about lightning striking a woman praying for divine protection from lightning strikes, there's a news report doing the rounds about a chap in Kiev who jumped into a lions' zoo enclosure with the words 'God will save me, if he exists'. Needless to say, it was an early dinner for the lions.

Today's click-for-full-joy image comes courtesy of Amy Crehore. You know, the woman with a thing about monkeys...

UPDATE - Isn't Pandora great? So precise in its description of the music it chooses. I always think of Slayer's 'vocal-centric aesthetic' whenver I hear them...

God Is Way Cooler

Further to the below post on religion being a lack-of-personality disorder, today's news throws up what I consider to be further proof of, shall we say, the 'questionable' nature of faith, which reads like a Scaryduck silly story -

She said 'Amen' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire...

Jesus Was Way Cool

I'm not remotely into organised religion, you understand. In fact, I would agree with the fellow who posted something on the web not so long ago about religion being a mental illness. So I don't want you to get the wrong idea when I say that I was very pleasantly surprised to get King Missile's Jesus Was Way Cool coming through on Pandora earlier today. Makes me think, in the face of such words, why are so many religious people such fucking nutters?

Jesus was way cool
Everybody liked Jesus
Everybody wanted to hang out with him
Anything he wanted to do, he did
He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines

He walked on the water
And swam on the land
He would tell these stories
And people would listen
He was really cool

If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That's so cool

He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That's so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that's so cool
Jesus was way cool

No wonder there are so many Christians

Detachable Penis is playing now...' Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him. He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen....'

UPDATE - Jesus... and Detachable... videos on YouTube.

The Legal Power of Fuck

This first paragraph in this morning's web roundup could have been put in my infrequent 'Modern Signs of Ageing' series of posts - a chap in Japan writing about couples using their computers at the same time and what that does for their relationships. The comments from others are interesting - particularly from one Anna C, who pretty much covers why the internet is so fascinating and ubiquitous. The discussion reminded me of something a colleague said a few weeks ago about his parents - they get in from work, boot up their PCs and are pretty much on World of Warcraft until the early hours. It sounded a bit Evercrack to me, but then these MMORPGs encourage such behaviour.

Video game / net addicts seem wholly sane, however, next to the religious. I've bashed religion a few times in this blog, most recently Scientology, but now there's a new multi-millionaire right-hand of the Lord. Honestly, God now has so many right-hands he must look like a deformed Durga. Anyway, this new right hand (new to me, anyway), is one Rick Warren and he calls his new spin on God-fearing the Purpose Driven Life (that should be hyphenated, of course, but let's not be pedantic at this stage). So far, so tedious. The difference is that apparently Warren has put a considerable amount of mana behind a video game - Left Behind - which depicts a world sans bible-bashers (they've all been sucked up to Heaven in 'the Rapture', of course. Keep up.) and consumed by religious war. Your mission, in this dominionist FPS, is 'to conduct physical and spiritual warfare' against 'Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians'. It'll be out in time for Christmas.

If the mention of religion has your blood boiling like Sodom's swimming baths, then you might want to take a look at some calming academic research - into the F-word. That's 'fuck', by the way, not 'fundamentalist'.

Who put the 'mental' in 'fundamentalist' ?
Who put the 'cunt' in 'Scunthorpe' ?
Who put the...oh, bollocks to it, I've got work to do.

UPDATE - Seems like the infamous F-word will now cost you much money if you dare say it on US broadcast meeja...

You Couldn't Make It Up...

Well, you could, of course. But why bother, when real life seems to wantonly throw weird guff at you without so much as a 'by your miniscule leave'?

Let's get the hateful stuff out of the way first - Wal-Mart wants to copyright the smiley face, in competition with several people who have claimed to have 'invented' the image. It's a smiley face! Shall I claim to have invented the stick man? Fuck Lowry, he's dead anyway. What are these people on? Apart from too much time and money, obviously.

And speaking of too much time and money - slebs and religion. The hilarity that is Scientology continues apace with their Super Power Building. If you choose to follow the faith of da-doo-ron-L-Ron and his regiment of pointless slebs, you too can sense danger faster than other people and appreciate beauty more deeply. For a reasonable fee, obviously.

And in case you think the Yanks have the monopoly on overpaid pillocks trying to find meaning in their rapidly dwindling lives, just take a look at this eBay auction. Now don't get me wrongly. I like the Damned, in their early days. I even get a bit of a nostalgic haze forming whenever I chance to hear Eloise. But this Holy Grail business? Well it's only similar to Johnny Rotten becoming a property tycoon, I suppose.

If all this has put you in mind of some impending Armageddon, you can make preparations for one of the possible fates of mankind - flooding - at this site, which kindly shows whether your home will be underwater if the sea level rises. East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Essex and Holland are pretty much buggered.

You can also buy an appropriately green-minded t-shirt to wear as your home sinks beneath the waves. You would be wrong, though.

But then, what do you expect? We're just thinking meat, after all.

God Hates Us All

Yet another excuse to title a post after a Slayer song ... a certain Mr. Douglas Rushkoff, of the parish of Uncle Sam, has written a piece on the Bible which I wholeheartedly agree with and urge everyone to read. I'll skip over the few typos and say that the only thing I see wrong with it is that it doesn't go far enough - he doesn't say outright that religious faith is based on fear (although he infers as much at one point) and he doesn't overtly include all religions in his critique (perhaps he fears the ire of the sorts of nutters who blow themselves up in close proximity to people they don't agree with). Sample; When religions are practiced, as they are by a majority of those in developed nations, today, as a kind of nostalgic little ritual - a community event or an excuse to get together and not work - it doesn't really screw anything up too badly. But when they radically alter our ability to contend with reality, cope with difference, or implement the most basic ethical provisions, they must be stopped. Like any other public health crisis, the belief in religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation's ability to behave in a rational way, and - given our weapons capabilities - posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world...

UPDATE - Anyone remember Father Ted? ... I'm not a fascist, I'm a priest. Fascists dress in black and go around telling people what to do, whereas...priests...

Fear and Loathing In ... well, quite a few places

I don't want to worry you or anything, but it's all about fear...

With the hoo-hah over South Park and Scientology this week, I thought I'd have a gander at exactly how many slebs were a part of El Ron's merry band of millionaires. Quite a few, if this site is to be believed. Cruise and Travolta are merely the tip of another scary religious iceberg. The vast majority on the list are people I could care less about, but I was surprised to see Neil Gaiman mentioned - if only as a former member. Scientology apparently is about 'knowing how to know', which sounds philosophical until you look at this. Like I said, it's all about fear.

After the Budget, we are now dodging various phrases involving the word 'stealth' at the moment. One thing definitely happening under the radar of our general awareness is the slow creep towards open dictatorship in the UK, at least if this article speaks true. I can see this happening, because politicians can only care about votes (in the same way that businessmen can only care about profits) and any method of ensuring votes whilst giving the illusion of a democracy is their holy grail.

Fear also stalks (or perhaps that should be 'flaps') the streets of Warwick in the form of a murder of aggressive crows. They haven't killed yet but some Hitchcock fans and journos would doubtless collectively orgasm if they did. You can almost hear the weariness in the RSPB chap's quotes.

That aspirational item of geeks everywhere - the pair of X-ray specs - is taking further steps toward reality with the see-through coat. Nothing to do with military camouflage or surveillance, obviously.

If all this talk of fear has you reaching for the razor blades, allow me to push you still further with this final link. The puppy's fate (and that of your day's work) lies in your hands ....

The War Against Terror Produces Another TWAT

And this time it's Yahoo, who have apparently included 'allah' in their list of banned strings for usernames, email addresses, etc. This was discovered by someone trying to use their surname - 'Callahan'. Hilariously, Yahoo does allow the following;

god
messiah
jesus
jehova
rapeismyhobby1
pedophilepriest88
killallmuslimsandarabs1
nazisaremybestfriends

There is more on this 'you couldn't make it up'-type story here.

UPDATE - Twattage now reversed.

Ban Those Banned Boycott Bans NOW

Malaysia has officially declared 'Black Metal' illegal, as it is 'a deviation from Islamic teachings' and 'its culture often led its followers to worship Satan, to rebel, kill and incite hatred and irreligion'. And 'legal' religions never do any of those things, of course. Also, what's with the weird reference to Botox at the end of the article linked above? Since when does your average Malaysian Goth dabble with injecting his/her face with the slebs' face-freeze of choice? That's just sick.
	As is this gallery of children, photographed to advertise the wonders of food, yet doing more to make the paranoid worry about the influence of Devil-worship than anything else. One assumes the kids were not Malaysian.
Thank heavens for the sanity of Japan, where you can now indulge in a spot of online retail therapy without having any of those tiresome packages arriving at your house. Simply watch the video of yourself shopping and enjoy existentialism and Capitalism in one hefty dose.
Despite having a groovy name, Starforce is in reality another horrible piece of software junk, designed to stop naughty children copying their nice, expensive games. And it also shafts your hard drive and CD burner, apparently. Well I say 'nice, expensive games' but looking at the list so far I don't see anything that concerns me. Yet.

Waking Life

I think I had a waking dream this morning. Now don't worry - this blog isn't about to turn into one of those nauseating online confessionals. I just need to note this down somewhere so I don't forget about it - I was sat on the bus as usual, catching up on some rest, eyes shut, when I suddenly had an absolutely vivid image - the top of the bus was open, with a clear blue sky above and sunlight pouring in. I knew I was awake, because I thought, 'I'm not going to open my eyes, this is great - if I open them I'll just see that I'm on a bus on a dark Wednesday morning in January and the effect will be ruined.' I could even feel the sunlight on my face. I then imagined myself standing on one of the seats and sticking my head out of the top of the bus - to see fields of grass stretching away into the distance, as dark streets passed by on either side.

I put this mental jiggery-pokery down to two things - watching Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind on DVD last night (a film guaranteed to leave a warm feeling in one's mind and body, plus it has dream sequences featuring fields) and listening to the recent Radio 4 (spits) programme Confessions of a Crap Artist. In this there was the new theory (new to me, anyway) that PKD's infamous 'pink laser' vision (which inspired VALIS and was interpreted by him at various times as aliens beaming information into his mind from a satellite and the voice of God) was probably a minor stroke (to see what VALIS means these days, just type it into a Google image search. Hmm...although PKD would probably approve).

Of course I haven't had a minor stroke but it showed again the power of the human mind on its own perception. I was just sat on a bus and yet had a completely self-generated experience which felt fantastic - just the kind of thing you need on a cold, dark January morning. What other experiences can be put down to similar 'tricks of the mind', I wonder?

The Face of God

Well, God doesn't have just the one face, of course. He has billions - one for each of the humans who believe. He has a couple of new ones at the moment, though. One is that of Lawrence Page, the founder of the almighty Google and yet another reason for everyone to start utterly despising The Bloody Bastard Fuck Matrix. Google, it appears, is now a religion in the manner of several other American companies that can't just 'work' or 'produce things and sell them', they have to have a 'mission' and a 'lifestyle'. Not content with attempting to catalogue and order the world's information - a God-like aim in itself - Page and his disciples are reportedly putting together a system that will finally pass the Turing Test. Lovely.

The Intelligent Designer's other new face is that of a child. A child who has not only had the misfortune to be born into a family of Americans, but born into a family of modern-day, New Age, crystal-sucking Americans. These children are Indigo Children, so they should be easy to spot in a crowd. Oh, and they're here to 'save the world' - hence them coming from America. You didn't think God was going to send his world-saving progeny to save the world from Bournemouth, did you?

And then there's Satan, who appears to be manifesting himself in the form of this 19 year-old, spending $100,000 of his savings on going to Disneyland every day for a year before going to College. He got this money from running three 'businesses' from the age of 13. No idea what he was selling but it interests me that he's going to College at all - particularly when his site says 'Business is about luck, timing, savvy, and persistence. Intelligence is optional.'

The real face of God is of course Chuck Norris, and this site tells you why. In a world of bonkers, it seems quite sane. If you need a quick dose of sanity, this site can help, too.

The Little Pebble ??

Currently reading Haruki Murakami's Underground, for which loan thanks must be offered to the Illusionator. I've reached the section near the end where he interviews members and ex-members of the Aum cult (still in existence and now called 'Aleph', according to Wikipedia). Once again I am astonished at the capacity of the human mind to construct different 'realities' to explain emotions, opinions and behaviour. The cult members all profess to feeling like 'outcasts' from an early age and talk a lot about 'individuality' and 'the search for themselves' - it's interesting that such independent-minded people would gravitate towards organisations which simply say 'give us all your money and possessions, do exactly what we tell you for the rest of your life and you will be happy and fulfilled'. Anyway, it's lead me this morning to the fantastic blog Guruphiliac ('celebrity' members of cults are pretty nauseating) and this site of 'favourite guru stories' (i.e. the stories are favourites, not the gurus themselves. You'll see if you take a look).

Modern Signs of Aging, Pt.2

Only people above a certain age refer to an mp3 player (of any type) as 'a walkman'.

Modern Signs of Aging, Pt.1

Number one in (another) occasional series, in which I shall report on my various sudden realisations of mortality, mental debilitation and gradual loss of self-respect. The first sign is this - only people above a certain age would compare an iPod to a hearing aid.

Darkness, Darkness

Quick link - worth1000.com's competitions are often entertaining, with a current one What if Goths Ruled the World being particularly so. Surprised to see no warping of any Dubya images - maybe his face doesn't lend itself to the Gothik. Or perhaps worth1000 are ignoring him in the hopes he might eventually go away.