Other interests

I know from my stats that I have a handful of regular visitors. I notice them mostly by the fact that their referring URLs are blank instead of the usual slew of theistic phrases peppered with profanities. So out of respect for that appreciated handful I thought I'd let you know what I'm up to.

First off I've just had a very nice holiday with my children. We enjoyed a mix of sea and mountains and the days I get to spend alone with them count amongst the most special in my life. On top of that there was the addition of four puppies to my household fairly recently. As they've bene growing they've become much harder work and just cleaning up after them, which seems to be a near impossibility thanks to their ability to make mess faster than I can clean and organise it, is leaving me feeling pretty tired. With the work that piled up during my holiday now rolling back over me like a mud slide I need another holiday again and I have suprisingly little time but that which I do have I'm not using for blogging and there's a very good reason for this.

When I started blogging I really just wanted to try out writing again. I've not been very impressed with the results and the obvious culprit has been a lack of dedication. Religion is such a huge topic, thanks to the potentially infinite variation of the imaginary, and to write about it properly requires more research and fact checking than I've so far given. The result is stuff that I really don't want to write. I want to be clearer, cleaner and more precise.

I've also been figuring out what I want to write about. It's important to have an objective and I've not really fulfilled any of those that I do have. On the one side I want to write personally. I want to share thoughts and experiences in a more emotional and personal way, without caring for the facts any more than you care to check your blood oxygen and glucose levels before you write in your diary that you are feeling tired. On the other hand I want to deconstruct religious nonsense and add something genuinely beneficial to the fight, and it is a fight we are in, between madness and reason - between progress and retardation.

So the result of all of this is that in the small amount of time I do have I have been setting out the projects that do deserve my time. There are essentially three of these, but they split into many subcategories and there is considerable cross over between all three.

The first is that I want to improve this blog. I've started work on a redesign having listened to the odd comment about the dark background being difficult on some eyes. It will be changing soon. I've also got every intention of making this a far more serious effort at genuinely offering a resource of interesting arguments and information against the theist crap still being used to fertilize (although it might as well be 'sterilise') the minds of children everywhere. At this point there is considerable cross over with my second project.

I've begun researching, planning, and even writing a book directly targetted at Christianity. Since no child is born christian it might be considered a deconversion book. It's a difficult objective for sure and anybody reading my blog is welcome to doubt my ability to deliver, but I think I'm on pretty solid ground. There is a great deal that I have not written about on this blog or in the comments sections of any others that has made planning the book a doddle so far. Adding the meat to those bones will require a great deal more effort but I think I'll do just fine.

And that leads me into my third project, which is a precursor to the second. I've come up with a new idea for books which I will not go into at this point. I've eplained the idea in some detail to a patient friend of mine and the feedback is more than positive so I think I shall invest the effort and complete it. My own book will depend upon this idea and I will make it freely available for any other budding authors to use when I am done. It's sort of a book on steroids. Book 2.0, you might say - but without the hype, just the good ideas.

Anyway, just to give you something to read whilst I'm finishing the redesign I thought I'd post a few paragraphs I wrote way back when I decided to start blogging but about a year before I actually got around to it.

Here it is:

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Ok, so I’ve decided through some deep and nagging need that I want to publish some of my thoughts on a web site and maybe someone will read them and instantly the troubles begin. What should I say? What’s my objective here?

Straight away the little ego demons start to bite my ankles telling me to jump up and down and scream to everyone what a clever individual I am. Or more precisely it’s the fear. “You’d better be clever” the demons say, “Or the real demons of this world, the people, will jump up and down to tell you what a worthless fucking fool you really are. Maybe you’ll believe them”.

These thoughts do not seem conducive to an honest expression of whatever little point it is that’s bugging or exciting me at any particular time. For this reason, all hopes to impress or even satisfy will remain well and truly damned and forgotten.

Here’s what I think. Random and free from even my own expectations. Take whatever entertainment from it you can.

The difference between writing for a book and writing for film and TV basically boils down to the censorship. You can make a movie as strong as you like, but you’ll get a huge amount of shit and probably scenes cut out if you push just a little too strong. But with a book it’s different. You can go as far as your imagination (or personal experience) will let you go. No one serious is willing to come out and suggest banning a book. And if they do you’ll instantly have a million active defenders, even if they hate what you wrote.

A stiff hard cock, gently pushing into her womanhood is standard fare in many respected novels and I’ve read far stronger in many. But when was the last time you saw that on TV? I’ve seen Richard Gere, sadly it must be said, in a significant number of love scenes in dire romantic comedies but it has to be noted that I’ve not once seen his thrusting prick, proud and erect staring like a giant throbbing cyclops at me from the cinema screen.

Movie makers of course are hard pushed at points to maintain integrity when bringing versions based on books to a cinema going public mostly too lazy, too busy and too stupid to read. Sometimes the scenes must be changed in order to pass the various regulatory commissions of morons deciding what it’s safe for the public to see.

One scene that springs to mind is from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, during their stay at the Flamingo Hotel when the maid unexpectedly enters the room. Various factors of the scene, like the vomiting, have been toned down for the screen and other parts are changed, but it’s still a good scene. In the book, both Dr. Duke and Dr. Gonzo are naked. In the film, they are both clothed. In a film full of drugs and the most socially abhorrent behaviour known to man, the spectre of the penis would still cast a shadow over the future of the scene. Cut, cut, cut. What is it with all these freaks wanting to cut penises everywhere?

The director, or who ever came up with the idea, made a good attempt to recapture the severity and ridiculous nature of the scene. They dressed Dr. Duke in huge rubber lizard legs and feet and an enormous green strap on lizard tail, amongst other things that is. It went someway for me towards providing the scene with the stupidness necessary to make the point and good for them. However this makes me wonder about other ways to beat the moral guardians and get true book content to the screen.

Hell, use animals I thought. It’s obvious. Why not when Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are just getting down to it in a romantic comedy version of a Clive Barker novel, can’t we just substitute the actors for animals to keep the full strength of the scene? Watching two humans fuck is of course obscene, but it’s practically natural history education to watch a Viagra powered chimpanzee chase a female chimp around the screen. So what if the setting is a Manhattan apartment with a hugely expensive view and football pitch sized terrace instead of some leafy grove where the banana is still king? Who could complain about that? Surely the chimpanzees are happy.

It seemed so simple. This was how to truly bring literature to screen. And why use only chimpanzees? Maybe mountain goats or crocodiles would serve to bring more sensitivity to these intimate moments. For violent scenes like rape, use penguins to deliver full power to the drama, not just to arouse, like for instance a comely duck. Tax exemptions for using endangered species would be helping art and nature. Perhaps the WWF will get behind the idea – that‘s the World Wildlife Foundation and has nothing to do with wrestling, as far as I know.

But I’ll not be writing a book, or at least not yet. I’ll be writing a blog – a stupid web site from which to scream my thoughts and opinions at the world as though I have any right to. There’ll be no room for animals to help me through difficult or strong topics and I’m damn sure nobody would even consider objecting to my deletion as they would if I wrote the same in some book that some other idiot wanted to burn. I’ll be fucked from the start, it’s obvious. But I’ll do it anyway. Something worthwhile will come of it maybe. I will see. And if it doesn’t I’ll head to the zoo and steal the penguins and try to remake Requiem for a Dream or Train Spotting. “Choose fish. I didn’t choose fish I chose heroin”. I wonder how difficult it will be to get their beaks and the audio to synch.

It doesn’t matter. If people the world over pay again and again for Richard Gere and Julia Roberts to pseudo-fuck within the cock and cunt free constraints of Christian cinema morality then the last thing I need to concern myself with is caring what others think. Most of them very certainly do not.

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