My legs won’t bloody work properly.
I’ve been running around looking after my Mother, as she has had a fall and couldn’t get out, and this old body machine has finally given in. I can’t get upstairs and going out isn’t going to happen.
Maybe a day in just fannying about will cure them.
I was offered a bungalow a couple of years back. Everything on one level. But my sentimental attachment to this place saw me turning it down. I had the key and was packed and everything. I sort of, quietly, in the depths of me, wish I’d gone to that bungalow now. But me, Miss Show-off me, never thought things would get so bad. I should realise by now that with this body machine, anything that can go wrong, will.
I know what’s happened to my legs. They have stiffened up with going out in the rain. Bloody arthritis.
Fortunately, I got a load of stuff in for my Mum yesterday, so she doesn’t need anything today. She says she’s going to try and go out, which is good for her. Fortunately, (again) I got a load of stuff in for myself yesterday so I don’t need to go out.
It’s bloody stupid. I want to, I have the heart and will to, it’s just my body machine won’t.
Bloody joke, isn’t it?
MORE BLOODY COMPLAINING
ANNIVERSARY. . .
Forty years ago today, 20th of July 1969, members of the human race in the form of Neil Armstrong and Buzz* Aldrin stepped upon the surface of another planet.
I was five years old that year, so was too young to really catch the excitement, although my Dad’s enthusiasm rubbed off on me somewhat, but not in much detail. I do recall being in our back yard and him picking me up and showing me the moon and telling me that men were up there. I could almost swear it was a full moon, but it’s probably due to layers of imaginative wishful thinking having me mis-remembering. I do remember though being very disappointed because I couldn’t see them, no matter how hard I looked.
Back to today, two of the three astronauts who made that first journey, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the one who stayed, alone, in the command module orbiting the moon and never actually landed, have suggested that the world of space exploration be reopened, and this time the goal should be a man on Mars.
As a species we’re only just beginning our journey to the other planets, as thrilling, dangerous and challenging as when the first men got into their galleons and headed for the horizon, across uncharted seas, in search of land. We are natural explorers and Aldrin and Collins are just two whose imaginations have been fired with the idea of breaking from earth and discovering other places; it won’t be within my lifetime, but if we work together as a species, and stop this silly tribal infighting, which should have died when fire was discovered as a way of keeping away the bitter winter chills, we can plunge into truly uncharted territory, beyond the solar system and out into the universe.
*Although his born given name was Edwin, Buzz has been Aldrin’s legal name since 1988. It comes from his younger sister’s mispronouncing ‘brother’ as ‘buzzer’, shortened to ‘Buzz’.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME’
This weekend’s song is ‘Summertime, Summertime’, a one-hit wonder by the Jamies, sung a-cappella (without instrumental accompaniment) apart from a harpsichord. Although none of their other songs hit the top 40, this song managed it twice, once in 1958 then again in 1962.
I’ve picked it because it’s fitting, because of the schools breaking up for the six weeks holiday, which was the best part of my school years for me.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and
A good week whether you say goodbye to dull school days or not.
HARRY POTTER
What did you think when you read the title to this posting? I can bet it was a strong emotion either for or against. That’s how it works. No one is indifferent towards Harry Potter. They are either in raptures about it or hate it with a passion. If you think I’m exaggerating, you try it. Go up to someone you know (even if it’s just an acquaintance)* and say ‘Harry Potter’ to them. Watch their reaction. It’s either ‘Harry Potter has got kids reading and therefore the youth crime rate has dropped to nothing and he really should be elected as god of the universe’ or ‘Harry bloody Potter! I’m sick of hearing about him. I don’t get the attraction at all. He’s just an annoying little nuisance.’ It’s topical with the latest film in the series coming out and spread all over every advertising hoarding and web site and with clips playing on those film advertising screens you get high up in shopping centres.
What do I think? I’ve never read a word or seen a clip from Harry Potter. All right, it might have got ‘the kids’ reading, but it’ll never be ‘His Dark Materials’. Harry is no Lyra!
ng h**
*I wouldn’t recommended saying it to a total stranger. They might think you’re a loony.
**Lyra tab was here!
MORE THOUGHTS ON A SUBJECT+
I know I’ve sort of covered this already in a previous posting, but well there is more than one angle to cover stuff from.
Sometimes you get theists saying ‘if you’re an atheist, where do you get your morals from? Why don’t you go on a killing spree because you don’t think there’s a god making sure you behave?’
Surely this can be turned around; suppose it can be proven, scientifically, without a doubt, that Biblegod (the involved god of the theistic believer no matter what their flavour of belief) doesn’t exist. I know, I know it’s not possible to prove this, you have to use reason and logic that shows you it’s more or less likely that he is just made up, like all the other gods. But just let’s imagine it’s proven that he doesn’t exist. Does that mean all you theists will lose your moral way?
If god doesn’t exist, what would stop you theists from going on a killing spree? Surely it isn’t just the notion that a Father Christmas of a god, seeing if you’ve been naughty or nice, stops you from murdering and raping and stealing and performing other anti-social actions against your fellow human beings?
If your answer is ‘no, I wouldn’t harm anyone even if Biblegod didn’t exist’ well, why not? For the same reason us atheists/freethinkers don’t harm others. Because it’s built into us that harming others harms us as a species in general. It feels wrong because we have evolved to survive long enough to pass our genes on onto the next generation, ensuring they live on, and if we went ahead and killed and stole excreta, we would be wiping out our genes, and ultimately our future.* Welcome to the human race and the world of scientific freethought.
If your answer is ‘yes, I would. I would go on an anarchic orgy of mass destruction if Biblegod was proven to be false’ well, bloody hell. That’s all. Bloody hell. There’s more than just slavish belief going on in your mind. You ought to get treatment before it leaks out and around that wall of fear you have built up on account of your god and you go ahead with your desires. You are actually in the minority, and if you truly would kill your neighbour and/or rape his or her wife or husband if god wasn’t holding a break on you, then that’s why we have non-theistic, secular laws. But get help, seriously. For the sake of humanity.
As for my personal existence, I’m still in an agony of loss over my (ex)girlfriend. I miss her so much. But I have to respect her wishes, and for me to reach out in an attempt to regain her would be unwanted attention and heading into the dangerous territory of the stalker. And that’s a place I have no interest in ending up, for her sake and mine. Sometimes you have to love enough to let go.
*Another good reason leads us to the marvellous philosophy labelled Hobbesian reciprocation, which basically goes, ‘if you go around freely hurting others,without any consideration for them, then there is no logic reason why others can’t hurt you.’ Or ‘Don’t harm others because then there’s no reason why they can’t hurt you back’ I believe this is one of the best-reasoned and excellent philosophies, and a great basis for non-theistic morals, and can be correctly used in an argument with a theist who asks ‘where do you get your morals from?’
PERSONAL CONSIDERATION
The oddest thing, now I’m no longer in a relationship, is that I’m completely alone and there is going to be no chance of human company for a while.
I’ll just have to get used to it again. I’m a loner, I prefer my own company.
I damnwell miss her just being HERE though.
IT’S ALL OVER
My girlfriend was given a choice by her parents; either stay with her or come with us. And you know what? She picked her parents. She’s gone home to them. So, another relationship down the metaphorical lavatory.
FACE TO FACE PROMISE
I’ve been asked why I can no longer believe in Biblegod. The simple answer; he has never given me any evidence he exists. If the god of the Bible was real, he would be as involved as his followers say he is. There would be some sign of him. I don’t mean in the shape of the mountains or the majesty of a tree or the beauty of a kitten’s purr. That just says that some creator at one time set things going. I mean like in the Bible when he appeared and made in unambiguously clear he was THE god. Yes, he was very busy on earth at one time, with him burning bushes and sitting on mountain tops and setting sacrificial mounds afire when Baal couldn’t. Then he appeared as a man and walked amongst us, taught and healed and generally involved himself. Just like Zeus and Krishna and all the other gods appeared to mortals in ancient writings. But never mind that for now. Pretend the Bible is true. Why isn’t he around now? If he appeared to Thomas and then later on Paul why doesn’t he appear to people now?
Let’s try it. Try praying for Biblegod to reveal himself; if he loves you enough to sacrifice himself to see you are no longer eternally damned by the laws he made himself, and truly doesn’t want you to suffer in hellfire for eternity, then he would appear to you. The shepherd of the flock who went out of his way to rescue the lost sheep, that’s Jesus/Biblegod. And Biblegod knows everything. He knows that atheists/freethinkers don’t believe he is real because we have no evidence, he has never shown himself to us. He knows that atheists/freethinkers are hardened unbelievers, he would know that we are not to be convinced by a set of contradictory writings, we need the real thing. To save us from the eternal punishment he doesn’t want us to suffer.
If Biblegod exists, he would show himself to us. It’s only fair. Reason knows all the praying I did for him to make himself known. If he was real and he knew my faith was waning and he didn’t want me to head for hell, he would have appeared.
All right, when he was in Jesus mode he said he would disappear and he would send the Holy Spirit */qwp;l* to be our counsellor but after saying this he put in an appearance to Saul who became Paul. Why not today? He could appear. He can do anything and everything. All arguments would be at an end, all bets would be off. Hell would be empty. Salvation would be universal. Why does he remain hidden, leaving us with ancient writings that are so ambiguous there are dozens of different sects all claiming to be the one true Church and condemning all the others to hell, all based on the same words?
I’ll say it more clearly;
IF GOD LOVED US ENOUGH TO DIE FOR US TO SAVE US FROM HELL, WHY IN REASON’S NAME DOESN’T HE SAVE US ALL FROM HELL BY APPEARING TODAY?
Here’s a thought; could it be he doesn’t exist? Could Biblegod be the absent god, the god who isn’t there, because he is just like all the other gods found in ancient fables and for some reason the Bible has caught on while most of the other gods found in ancient writings have been dismissed as ancients man’s attempt to deal with and make sense of what he saw as the mysteries around him, and discarded as fiction?
It makes logical sense.
*Lyra Tab strikes again!
TIMES OF SORROW
How sad Domino is!
She is a little soul who knows things, just like we do, just doesn’t obsess about them, and try and find the ‘why’ of them. She understands that Jessica, Hayley and Oliver are all gone. She has gone into a deep mourning of loss. Her little head is actually bowed under the weight of her sorrow. Lyra isn’t helping. Just imagine, if you lived with three grown-ups whom you loved and whom loved you and they suddenly disappeared and in their place was a lively, chatty, noisy toddler.
She did something last night she has never done before, she climbed on my bed alongside my face and sobbed helplessly. All I could do was stroke her furry face and kiss her and tell her that it would be all right, that I’m missing the others too.
I do wish I could help her!
NEWS FROM THE NEIGHBOURING DOINGS
A chap who works for my landlord has been onto me concerning my neighbour and her behaviour. He told me something I already knew, that the whole row is sick of her, and then he dropped lightly on me the news I have been waiting for;
HER LANDLORD IS WILLING TO GET HER EVICTED.
I mean, yeah or what?
The relief! This means I don’t have to leave a place I love, and neither do any of the other neighbours. Some have already gone, which is rotten, but the rest of us can stay put and when she is finally booted out, my landlord is willing to buy the house and someone decent, quiet, who can behave themselves, is put in.
It’s better than bass music, screaming for Christ to help her into the early hours, and what sounds like wheelie bin races up and down her house, with doors banging for accompaniment. Plus the freaks going in makes it look like the Addams family reunion. Only the Addams family don’t bang on your door at six in the morning, drugged out of their head, and shout for your neighbour to let them in.
There is always hope, and it looks as if I won’t have to leave my home (the only place I’ve thought of as home since leaving the house I grew up in back in 1983 when I was nineteen) and I can properly relax for the first time in what must be two years.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘SIX DAYS ON THE ROAD’
This weekend’s song is ‘Six Days On The Road’. Written by Carl Montgomery and Earl Green, it was discovered by country singer Dave Dudley who only turned to singing when an injury stopped his career in baseball, and who recorded this particular song in 1963 at his own expense and personally placed it in juke boxes in truck stops across the US. His actions paid off, getting it to number two in the charts.
This upbeat number about a trucker heading home, is the definitive, but not original,* truck driver song. I love it because it’s all about getting out and doing things, living life to the full. I used to want to be a lorry driver, as we call them over here, that sense of being king of the road, going wherever the trucking firm tells you, the freedom, one day in Aberdeen, the next in Aberfan, one day in Yeovil, the next in Yeadon. I especially like the lines;
‘My home town’s coming in sight,
if you think I’m happy, you’re right!’
It’s never going to happen for me, though.
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week whether you’re passing everything in sight or not.
*That honour goes to the 1940 released song by Cliff Barnes, entitled ‘Truck Driver’s Blues’.
OFFENSIVENESS OR WHAT?
You get Christians and other believers in the imaginary friend in the sky saying that anyone who says anything against them are offensive and meant to offend.
When a fundie district nurse offends and distresses one of her elderly charges by offering her Bible tracts and to pray for her, to be thoroughly disgusted and see to it she is challenged is ‘political correctness gone mad’. When we look at a woman in a burqua and express hatred of an idea which would force a fellow member of the human race into such restricted straights, in the name of a god, that is being offensive and disrespectful. We are meant to accept and be touched when someone wants to pray for us, when someone shares god’s love. To act any other way is offensive. It offends believers.
You see, when they say anything about anyone else, like the Bishop of Rome saying homosexuality is as big a problem to the world as climate change, or the evangelicals and Catholics* who wrote to the General Teaching Council to force them to water down their promise to treat all children equally, which could result in outwardly gay seeming children being bullied and teacher not being as bothered about it, and the Bishop of Rochester insisting that gays should repent and change, they are doing it in a spirit of godly love. They are saying it to save a sin soaked world from01** eternal damnation. We are meant to respect or/and at least tolerate their ramblings.
But when we speak up on behalf of our atheism or freethought, that is offensive. To say ‘there is no god, live with it’ is causing distress to believers. They feel offended, upset, got at.
Got it yet? The believers can do and say whatever they like, but if us freethinkers protest, we are being diverse, or offensive, we are saying it just to cause trouble for believers, and we should be made to stop.
And yet surely condemning someone to hell for something they might do that is condemned in a book of ancient stories is the most offensive thing someone can say. ‘If you don’t do what this god says in this book here, you will burn for ever in eternal torment’. That offensive enough for you?
*Evangelical and Catholics? Banding together? They should look into their history books, look up the truth. These two different slants on Christianity once burned members of their opposite sect with godly enthusiasm and Christian joy. And even today, on some parts of the planet Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants hate one another and are still killing one another. Even in this country, where burning people would have the Health and Safety jokers on your case, the Protestant evangelicals and the RC’s are suspicious of one another and insist that the other lot are off to hell.
**This mistake was left in as a tribute to my baby kitten Lyra Tab who was jumping all over the keyboard and using my hands as a teething ring while I was typing this.
LACK OF VICTORY, LACK OF JOY
The last British Wimbledon men’s* finalist winner was Stockport born (yeah!) Fred Perry (yes, the clothing line is named after him) back in 1936. This year, Andy Murray has got further than any male else since 1942.
And now. . .
Andy Murray has been beaten by American Andy Roddick in the Wimbledon semi-final.
I’m not going to say anything else.
*Although the ladies final was won by Brit Virginia Wade back in 1977. Jeremy Bates and Jo Durie won the mixed doubles for Britain in 1987.
