Forgot to take a photo today, for the first time since starting my project in May. Don’t even have anything on someone else’s camera, or a webcam shot or something. Damn! For a while there I thought I might make it the full year. Oh well.

A scandal is rocking the music industry:

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has admitted he was among the thousands of people who paid nothing to download the band’s latest album.

Despicable. Just because he wrote and recorded the thing doesn’t mean he shouldn’t pay for it like everyone else. Who does he think he is? I predict there’ll be a wave of revelations. I bet J.K. Rowling didn’t pay for her own copy of Harry Potter 7.

Right, chaps. Here’s the plan. No matter what happens on next week’s Strictly, here’s what we do: vote for everybody but Kate and Anton. It is the only way. All she has to do is hit the bottom two and that’s it, sorted - she seems nice and all, but it’s just getting silly now, and perfectly good dancers are falling by the wayside for no good reason. So, spread the word.

Also, that professional jive was a hell of a thing.

I spent much of today panicking over a photography project due in this Friday. The idea I’d been planning and working on for a few weeks fell through due to a combination of my muppetry and some unfortunate timings, so I came up with a new plan this evening, and called a friend in the hope he might be around to help. Not only was he around, but he didn’t complain once about spending much of the evening doing this:

Which isn’t as easy as it looks. I have impressive friends - thanks, Nod!

I’m going to London tomorrow to develop the films and hopefully get a few decent prints. I’m annoyed with myself that it’s ended up so last-minute, but I’ve learnt not to leave anything mission-critical to the last few days, and plenty more besides. Hopefully the prints will turn out ok tomorrow - not sure what I do if not…

Dear Public,

You are stupid and should not be allowed to vote on TV talent shows.

Yours,

Andrew and Abi

Kudos, hat-tips and smiley-faces to B4L, who says everything I was thinking about Facebook/BNP shenanigans, only in actual well-arranged words.

And while we’re talking Facebook, everybody should join the Bring Back Joosters group. Because they should. A world without Joosters is worse than one with and furthermore everyone knows it. My mouth is literally watering at the thought of Joosters. I was in the fan club, you know, although their website has now been squished, like a proverbial Jooster.

And while we’re talking about sweets, I would like to say that I am terribly conflicted over stories of cricketers and jelly-beans. On the one hand, just another example of cricketing muppetry. On the other, terribly endearing.

Me: Huh, that clock must be broken.
She: Why?
Me: It says ten to twelve.
She: Andrew, it’s ten o’clock.

I have apparently forgotten how to tell the time.

Today I remembered to buy salt while in Tesco. It only took three months. I know people were on tenterhooks about this.

The Bishop of Willesden thinks recent flooding was caused by society’s increasing acceptance of homosexuality. Being a) a bishop and b) clearly bonkers gets you coverage, and he was quite-rightly ripped to shreds and laughed at by anybody who reached the end of the article without throwing the newspaper across the room. Unless, that is, you’re the religious correspondent for The Times:

In our rational, spiritually sceptical world it is easy to laugh. Gratitude might be more in order.

For giving us yet another amusing tale of a bishop with the critical thinking powers of a nostril hair? Nope:

In any other walk of life, is there a scientist, a politician or even a media commentator with the courage to suggest that we might indeed be morally responsible for the chaotic weather systems disrupting our lives?

Well, no. Because it’s stupid. It’s nothing to do with courage. What a strange thing to say.

And if the bishops who believe in God don’t say it, who will?

Well, nobody. Because only somebody who believes that would say it, obviously. And nobody else thinks it. Because, as I mentioned, it’s stupid. I think giant lizards secretly rule the Earth. If I don’t say it, who will? Everything needs to be said!

All right, maybe she’s being sarcastic. Or making some confused point about global warming. Except, in the same article:

[The Bishop says:] “There is a view that both oral and anal sexual practice is liable to allow entry to spirits.” It is important to note here that the Bishop is not equating destructive spirits in everyday life with full demonic possession. Trained exorcists are, in fact, far more careful about diagnosing possession than most.

Obviously. What kind of muppet would think destructive spirits are the same as demons? Duh.

Part of his calling is to speak out, to “prophesy”, another of the “gifts of the Spirit”. Bishop Dow will know of prophets vilified in their own time and their own lands. But even only as myth, we ignore the lessons of the Bible at our peril. Much of what the prophets predicted came true.

That’s a good point. This also happened in Battlestar Galactica. We should not ignore the lessons of Battlestar Galactica. Prepare for the cylon rebellion now. They have a plan.

What started out as a misguided defence of raving gobbledygook under the banner of ‘it’s brave to say what you believe’ seems to end up hinting he might have a point. It must be really easy to get jobs at national newspapers.

(Sorry about the title. Couldn’t resist.)

One: the coming of the Lord

You know how it’s been raining recently? Do you know why? It’s because God hates the gays. It is. The Bishop of Carlisle says so:

“The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.”

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with “environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate”.

How broken does your brain have to be to believe this drivel? I could write plenty more, but Ophelia is better than me:

Funny god these bishops believe in. Arbitrary, whimsical, cryptic, absent-minded, brutal, sloppy, and stupidly vicious. We’d better hope it doesn’t exist. Oblivion is vastly preferable to being bossed around by a petty shit like that for eternity. Funny that the bishops seem to find it attractive. (But not really funny at all of course, since it’s merely a projection of their own petty shitness.)

Perfectly put. The Archbishop of Canterbury has of course been quick to disassociate himself from the remarks and to emphasise the inclusive nature of…oh, wait, never mind.

Two: it’s icky and I don’t like it

A mother has frozen some of her eggs for potential use by her daughter, who has a medical condition that will render her infertile. This is apparently ethically dubious because of ‘identity problems’:

Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, expressed sympathy with the family, but could not support storing the mother’s eggs.

She said: “The psychological welfare of the baby itself has to be the principal concern.

“Such a baby would be a sibling of the birth mother at the same time as the direct genetic offspring of the grandmother donor.

“In psychiatry we are hearing more and more of children suffering from identity problems, and specifically a condition called ‘genealogical bewilderment’. Could it possibly get more bewildering than this?

Fertilise with the grandfather’s sperm? It’s not really that complicated. Just because the child wouldn’t quite fit with either of the usual definitions of ‘child’ or ’sibling’ doesn’t mean anything - it’s just something new. I’d want to see strong evidence of psychological problems before denying anyone the chance of happiness through having children, if that’s what they want. As it happens, ‘genealogical bewilderment’ was posited as a possible problem with adoption, but doesn’t appear to exist. It’s tempting to suggest that critics are just scared of things they don’t know how to classify, but who knows.

Three: the EU is a porn merchant!

The EU created a channel on YouTube. The most watched video is ‘Film Lovers Will Love This!‘. There’s a bit of a fuss as it shows:

men and women having sex in different ways and places, and ends with the words, “Let’s come together”.

I’m always happy to suffer for my website, so I watched it. It’s mostly clips from Amélie. It’s cut very quickly, there’s no nudity, and it’s pretty funny - I thought it was actually a decent advert. Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris does not:

They do have an image problem but I think cobbling together 44 seconds of soft porn on the internet is not a brilliant way of solving it

Dude, that is to soft-core porn as a monkey is to Jeremy Paxman. Take a look at the top-shelf of the nearest newsagent, and get a grip. Wait, that sounded wrong, although it might actually help. Meanwhile, Labour MEP Gary Titley (stop it) said:

European films are about more than a quick slap and a tickle. It is bonkers that this clip gets so much attention.

I like this. I picture the two MEPs cornered by a reporter, trying to think how they should respond. The Labour MEP pretends not to understand why a video vaguely showing people having sex is popular. The Conservative MEP pretends he thinks it’s disgusting. Over to people who will at least say what they really think:

A Polish MEP from the conservative League of Polish Families has accused the commission of using “immoral methods” to promote itself.

Is all sex now immoral? Somebody should tell them everything’s fine in this case: all the actors were married.

European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said there had been a flood of complaints from Poland about an intimate scene between two men

It’s the gays again. Not content with making it rain, they’re now trying to…er…promote the EU. Infamy! What does Martin Selmayr have to say about it?

Fuming at what he called “quasi-religious bashing of the very important cultural diversity we have in the European Union”, he said the lovemaking clips were excerpts from award-winning films, and that the commission was proud of the EU’s rich cinematic heritage.

“The European Union is not a bible belt, we believe in freedom of expression and artistic creativity,” he added.

Go Martin Selmayr! Let’s not mince words, it’s not ‘quasi-religious bashing’, it’s just religious bashing. Find me all the atheist ‘family values’ groups, and I’ll change my mind.

It’s a good job I’m beyond moral reproach, isn’t it?

I have had no salt for a couple of months. I don’t know how anybody has salt. Nobody remembers, in the middle of Tesco, that they need salt. Other than people who’ve made lists, obviously. But that’s cheating. Far more fun to get home and realise that yet again you slipped into the fluorescent netherworld befuddle bubble, and although you’ve got bacon, which you never eat, and chicken sauce, which you’ve got nine of already, the concept of salt was lost to you for those forty minutes. This was me last week:

• 1100: Right. Today shall be different. I’ll be in and out. Quickly. No worries.
• 1105: Did that announcer just say ‘good morning customers?’. Shall I shout ‘ho-de-ho’? Better not. Why is that person giving me a funny look?
• 1110: There are many people in front of the bananas. I’ll loop around the salads and come back.
• 1111: Strawberries! No. Mustn’t.
• 1112: Are those…the same people? The same people? HOW LONG CAN IT TAKE TO CHOOSE BANANAS?!

You know how irritating it is when the person ahead of you decides to pay by cheque / forgets their pin / can’t find their wallet? A while back I started counting how long these procedures actually took. I reckon it rarely adds more than twenty seconds. I had the same thing with Hettie the arrival-time-predicting sat-nav: traffic-jams that seemed to take hours to clear only added three minutes to the journey. I’ve decided I can’t be bothered getting annoyed at ‘wasting’ anything less than fifteen minutes, and it’s impressive how much calmer my day becomes.

A former Massachusetts governor named Mitt Romney is one of 10 republicans seeking the party’s nomination for President. He recently spoke at Regent ‘University’, a Christian institution founded by Pat Robertson, and said:

In France, for instance, I’m told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.

Over to You Are Dumb for post-match analysis:

In case you’re wondering: no, marriage is not contracted in France. Not in seven-year terms or any other. It’s not true. In fact, it’s SO not true that there’s been a great deal of effort put forth in trying to figure out where in the living blue fuck Romney got this idea in his head in the first place.

The leading contender is, I shit you not, the Orson Scott Card book “A Memory Of Earth”.

For some reason I find this incredibly funny. Orson Scott Card is problematic in many ways, but I’ve never heard of anybody believing his fiction before.

I look forward to hearing future tales of the Pilgrim who has become unstuck in time, the snowy drug you take just by looking at it, or countries where the populace allow pets to multiply out of control while battling metallic neighbours whose only goal is assimilation. And, please, nobody tell him about the Death Star Conspiracy.

Given the large signs indicating the correct motorway exit, the presence of a sat-nav unit telling me to turn off and my having driven the route many times before, I wonder how I nevertheless managed to miss the M69. Oh well, doubling back only added twenty-five minutes to the eighty minute journey
I had a great and busy weekend with Abi, including seeing Coriolanus at the RST, a social dance¹ and trips to the Butterfly Farm and Shakespeare’s Birthplace. I knew nothing about Coriolanus before Saturday, but enjoyed it very much. It was surprisingly fast-moving and unpredictable, neither of which I’ve found to be common Shakespearean traits², and the production was beautifully lit and staged. I really recommend it, especially since balcony tickets are £12.

This was at the Butterfly Farm:

I don’t need to own anything with a name that includes both ‘giant’ and ‘hissing’.

1. that a whole bunch of my friends failed to turn up to, disappointingly [↩]
2. not a criticism, just an observation [↩]

I live in a block of flats owned by an old-people’s housing association, and the ground floor is reserved for the disabled / elderly. One I’ve chatted to a little, one is housebound and I only see rarely, and one is always coming and going but gives me are-you-crazy looks whenever I nod a hello here or on the street, so I haven’t spoken to her at all. Earlier this week I bumped into the latter while taking the rubbish out, and held the door open as she moved some objects around. She suddenly started talking, telling me how she helps out the partially-sighted lady who lives along the corridor, and in the process indicated what I thought was her flat.

I don’t think she lives here at all. This would explain the strange looks. It’s only taken me 18 months to realise. Ahem.

I drove through a red light this evening. Not a clue how or why. I’d been sitting there waiting, and can only imagine that something somewhere turned green - possibly the lights further around the roundabout - and I moved off. First time I’ve done that (or, at least, that I’m aware of having done that). I wasn’t particularly tired or distracted, it just happened…weird. There was nobody around so it was safe, but the junction was at a slip road exit so it’s possible there was a camera somewhere. I’ll completely deserve the points on my license if that comes through. Pretty stupid.