SONG TO END THE YEAR ON : ‘OH BY JINGO’

Another cross over from my previous, and now non-existent blog, is the song to end the weekend on, which is what it says. Every Sunday, I provide you with a song, via a link either to a short video or just a song (for which you will need Quick Time’s relevant programme), to ease you into the week, or to anticipate if you enjoy the idea of a working week, and are fortunate enough to be in the productive spondulicks earning.
I know this weekend end is mostly different, with it being the last day of the old year, so it’s a song to end the year on as well and it’s found on Youtube, a video clip from the Brit telly programme ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ with Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster, and containing a jolly song just right to sing along to, with the words helpfully printed on screen and almost right.
(I KNOW it doesn’t mention New Year, but it is a party song, nice and shallow and non-challenging. I also featured it on my last blog, but that doesn’t exist any more so it doesn’t matter.)
Apart from a question, would the scenario have worked as well if Hugh had played Jeeves and Stephen, Wooster? I think not! No more commentary, just enjoy, and have a smart week and the best New Year possible according to your circumstances. And, from me. . .
All the best!

(Quick note added on 16th September 2007. If you’re after this particular song, don’t bother, cause it’s gone. Bloody Google trying to take over the world. It was there for an age til Google bought out the independent Youtube and, in the name of bowing down to the big companies, they have removed a lot of good stuff. Like it’s not their doing at all, they have to respect copyright laws. There was no problem at all when little indie Youtube ran it. That’s one reason why I left Blogger, cause Google bought it out and started going on about collectives and ‘the team’. I’m probably the worst person alive when it comes to being roused by thoughts of ‘the team’. Ugh!
Addendum : 18th December 2007. It’s back! Jeeves and Wooster and gang singing ‘Oh By Jingo!’ Twelve months after the original I’ve found it again, same channel different upload. Let’s see how long we have to enjoy it before it’s pulled again.

MORE FROM WHO I AM

I am an admirer and adherent of the philosophy called deism. So, what’s that, then?
In case you’re wondering why I am delivering this mumbling on when I described it all on my previous blog, well my previous blog no longer exists and I am going to do a lot of continuity-type transferring (including the song to end the weekend on. Oh, wow, yeah!) So it’s only right I explain my meanings and reasons for those meanings.
First of all, if you’re a Theistic believer, (Christian, Muslim, etc) ask yourself some questions;
God exists. How do you know he is the god of the bible or any other written scripture?
If god is the almighty creator of everything and he exists, would this being who formed universes and single rocks on far away lifeless planets, really involve himself with a single tribe of a single species on a single island on a single planet in the back end of the universe? I mean, he is god, he created everything. Would he even know we exist?
If so, would he really care what this single species do with their reasoning ability enough to seperate them out and condemn the massive majority to an eternal punishment (that’s for ever) for believing the wrong thing. I mean, he is the creator of everything. Would he be so involved?
Isn’t the god described in the books of religions a little bit petty? A little bit too involved? A tiny bit too, well, human? In fact, not at all god-like and worthy of worship?
Could it just be that this god (biblegod as I shall call him, him because that’s how I think of god, as a male, which is what I’ve been taught down the years.) this god of the scriptures, is an invention? A petty, capricious, bloodthirsty, self-obsessed, murdering tyrant, a king or tribal leader of the kind the locals of that time would probably be familiar with, only unseen and with a bit more power? An invention of men to make sense of what was going on around, or to make others behave, or to try and make out that THEY are superior because the creator they created has picked them over the others?
Would you admire or respect a scientist who cries and screams and threatens a set of ants on a hill in the back of the lab to eternal punishment if they don’t waggle their antenna at him in the proscribed way? Wouldn’t you think he was a bit mad? Then why worship such a god?
Now, to make my position clear. I am deistically minded; God created everything by setting the machine off that tick tocks away through evolutionary change, and we and other species developed, and then he went off. Disappeared. My favourite label is the Great Architect, who designed the lot then well, went.
If he is still around, I mean exists, he has long gone, is not interested in us and what we do.
Again, Christian, Theist, doesn’t that seem a little more logical than the picture of the completely invisible and undetectable and yet oh-so-involved god of the bible?
Then, of course, there is the chance there is no god at all.
As for the other idea, that the god of the scriptures exists and is involved in our lives, for good or bad, then well, I was a Christian, a follower of Jesus, invited him into my heart, lived my life according to his word, attended church, did good works, evangelised, for almost a quarter of a century. A year and a half back, approximately, I finally give in and admitted that using logic and reason, this god could not exist. Because if he did he would be more visible. And to waste my life trying to please him and speak for him and work for him was just silly and pointless.
And you know, I feel much better. Never mind what the believers say, that knowing you are on god’s side or god is on your side, is a recipe that brings a certainty of peace and knowledge of salvation. I felt a lot better when I could walk away, brush the dust off my feet and move on, into the true light of logic and reason. Because the god of the bible does not exist, and therefore to fear him, to run about trying to fit yourself to what he wants, to constantly abase yourself, to hate others for not being the same, to even do good in the hope of winning celestial brownie points and try and bring the word of god to others, for their own salvation, is just a waste of time. Better to live how you want, don’t hurt others, help if you can, and stop worrying about what happens after this life. Because it doesn’t matter. Instead of worrying about the streets of heaven being paved with gold, why not try working so the streets of earth are paved with gold, now, and not in some massive, made up, hereafter.
Oh yes, I am also going to do a lot of reverse evangelising, using the techniques of soul winning taught and learned when I was a Christian, to try and rescue people from living by the words of the latest, and most enduring fairy tale, of a creator god who came and picked out one tribe out of one species and then gave them rules to live by.
Because the way things are shaped, the ‘my god is better than your god’ battle is literally murder for hundred of human beings, every day.
I’m going to re-employ a soundbite which covers what I mean in a single phrase:
There is no god, so don’t worry about it.
(In case you are pointing the finger and shouting ‘So you believe in Intelligent Design?’, no, no, no, no, no. Intelligent Design is Christianity by the back door, an attempt to twist scientific enquiry to make it fit between the pages of the bible, rather like a flower, picked and dried and pressed between the pages, lifeless, looks lovely and magnificent, but with no vitality. No deist who could really say they were a deist could allow themselves to be attached to such a parody of deism, a Theistic idea made to seem reasonable and scientific, Christianity by any other name . (of course I can’t speak for all deists, it’s just all the ones I’m familiar with.))
So, that’s where it comes from and who I am.

PERSECUTED MINORITY?

This from the satire website ‘The Spoof’. . .
I’ve always said that Agnostics are the new bisexuals or mixed race, and the only type it’s officially all right to persecute for ‘not being able to make their minds up’ or ‘not being one or the other’.
But seriously, that’s why I like satire, because it’s an amusing but pertinent look at what could happen if an idea goes as far as it can go. And though I’m not one myself, I want to add a plea of tolerance for those of us who genuinely do not know, and to remind us that none-Believers are all Freethinker from Atheists to Deists and every shade in between and if we have an enemy it’s the Fundamentalist Theists, not one another, and fighting amongst ourselves will only score a point for the Theist.
In case any of you are wondering, and are not convinced by my words, the word ‘Agnostic’ was coined by a man named Thomas Huxley, who spoke up for a shy, media-phobic Charles Darwin and became known as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his fierce defence of Evolution by Natural Selection in the face of Christian Theist Bible obsessed non-reason. I’m sure that his position as a Freethinker and non-Theist could not be any clearer and unambiguous. Yet, like Bertrand Russell after him (one of the few modern philosophers that, as a young Christian, I was taught it was all right to hate, and the opposite of any role model I might try to emulate) he decided that ‘to know’ or be a Gnostic was beyond human understanding, therefore, he admitted, in all honesty and humility he didn’t know everything, couldn’t be sure, and therefore was an a-gnostic.
See, nothing to do with not making your mind up.
So, Next time someone says ‘huh, he’s an Agnostic, a fence sitter, can’t decide one way or another’ just tell them about Huxley and exactly what Agnostics believe and why, which goes for both sides in the argument as to answers the great questions of life, after all, as the Agnostics might put it, not to know IS the answer.

FUTILE GESTURES?

They hanged former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein today.
At around 6:00am Iraqi local time (3:00GMT) the ex leader was led into the chamber where in the past, executions he himself had ordered had taken place. The whole thing was filmed just in case someone suggested it might not really have happened.
By all accounts, he faced his last moments bravely, albeit in a slight daze, and refused to wear a traditional hood favoured by all executions the world over. He recited part of the Koran and then the level was pulled and he dropped out of life and into history.
The reactions from across the world are mixed; the majority not being happy about hanging, but being quite accepting of another country’s sovreign right to execute whoever they feel fit. Most of the Arab world are upset that it happened on a holy Islamic occasion. One or two (George W. Bush, and John Howard) embrace the death with enthusiasm. Even the tradional ally of Saddam (Omar Quaddafi) although declaring a period of mourning, were quite silent about the actual event. Israel is silent and Iran’s attitude was it had to be (after all, they are age old enemies of Iraq, and the battle, to do with who should have taken over after the death of Mohammed, has gone on since before the US was a country) while the Palestinians managed to condemn the crime without even blaming Israel. This is all according to the BBC website section devoted to the subject.
And meanwhile, the murders go on. . .
Car bombings, suicide bombings, taking out the innocent and helpless in what is quickly becoming the world’s first suicide state.
And I will tell you what I reckon; we are not going to win. Just as the US was in Vietnam in the 1960’s, and we in South Africa at the turn of the last century, we are bogged down against an elusive and determined opposition, and are unable to grasp the enemy and fight them full on.
But then, how many sensible adult people actually believed, putting emotions to one side and using reason, that the death of Saddam would achieve anything but a stirring up of anti-US and western feelings, and it’s attendent results?
After all, Nuremberg happened sixty-one years back, and people have come on in their attitude to hanging war criminals.
The only reasoned action to take now is to step back, to have a breather, to allow time for the two sides, (and this action had split world opinion down the middle) to have a think and decide exactly what to do next.
Unless some people actually ENJOY massacres in the name of ‘my god is better than your god’ which is what it’s all about. . .

WRITE AWAY!

Has anyone else noticed how the art of actually writing letters, using a pen and paper, in longhand, seems to have dwindled to a handful of older folk?
From being as young as I can remember, I’ve always been encouraged to write thank-you letters to those who sent me gifts at Christmas, birthday, etc. I did it this year. Yet, when I brought the subject up to my younger relations, my neice (fifteen, and a boyfriend and that!) brushed it off with a;
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll send ‘em an e-mail next week sometime!”
An e-mail!
I’m sorry, but that is just NOT the same.
Mind you, as I’ve already put, letter writing is dying off. I have a bundle of letters in a box, tied up with an unromantic string, and the latest ones date from a good ten years back, when I corresponded with an elderly gentleman, a sailor in the war, who has since lost touch with reality, doesn’t even recognise his own family, and has gone into care.
(There was a later one, a sort of piss take affair, from my ex, who thought my way of corresponding humorously and helplessly old fashioned in today’s e-world, but it went the way of all stuff from my ex-burned on a ‘goodbye’ bonfire in my back yard, and the photograph then sent to him through his beloved e-mail. Apart a ’softening up’ war picture on DVD he bought for my Mother, which she loyally donated to charity to save me upset.)
I bring it up sometimes, and the general attitude is a bewailing of this lack; more that one I’ve spoke about it with has complained how their hand stiffens up whenever they try to write instead of hammering away on a keyboard. My Mother, one of the older folk, writes to various people, in longhand, and can still write well, although she can work a keyboard well, if she chooses.
I KNOW ‘I’ll send them an e-mail’ sounds the height of sophistication, and is a lot quicker, and more certain to hit the spot, but surely, a pen and paper will do. I mean, it’s more personal and more, well, fun. In a way.
Next generation, we’ll have people looking at pens like they are some sort of alien concept, and another generation no one will know or care how to use them. I KNOW it’s progress, and we can’t expect people to use mangles instead of drying machines or get on their hands and knees to bank up and light fires when they can just switch a switch, but the idea of people no longer corresponding via pen and paper is a saddening one.
The one advantage is that it saves trees.

THE MOVE

Well, I’ve made the move (The Move?) and have left Google’s Blogger behind.
I am eternally grateful to the original Blogger for giving me a start, but that’s all done with now, and it’s time to move on.
Here’s a picture of Jessica, contemplating this tragic existence (she’s not happy above the move either.)
More soon and for now,
All the best!