pap

I'm what you'd call a quiet atheist. That's my view, and I really don't want to push it on anyone else. As someone who likes to discover things for himself, I find the dogma of religious truths to be bloody limiting. As for denying belief, I ask again, where do you draw the line? I specifically mentioned evangelicals because a specific part of their practice of religion involves getting other people to believe the same things they do. In the contest of beliefs, my belief that they should keep it to themselves or their belief I should believe what they do, who wins?

You should try working for a company that is infested with evangelicals, mate. Literally one day a week was spent fending off their advances.

I've got no real problem with religious iconography worn by people, but I also accept that it means something very different to them than it does to me. Where do you draw the line, though? Do we leave it at personal adornment, or do we start allowing people to proselytise in their workplaces? After all, talking about one's religion is just as much a form of expression as outward facing symbols. Some branch of Christianity has had cultural primacy for over a millennium in this country. They've had their time front and centre. It's gone.

Certain things now starting to make a bit of sense in retrospect. Was in the market for a Wii U before Xmas. Did the tour of all the shops in Liverpool. HMV had marked up the controllers by a tenner. The top games were £50. Around £43 in other shops. I did actually think "wtf are you doing? are you mental?". Turns out they were just brassic.

I really liked a lot his Ali G stint on the 11 o clock show, but his basic schtick has been the same throughout. Disarm people through the prism of a character. That's fair enough when you're bamboozling an archaic politician with a modern definition of the word "caning", but his stuff got a little more mean-spirited and agenda-driven as it went on. Enter Borat, which was the one that really raised my heckles. You can argue all you like about the depiction of Kazakhstan. The country itself wasn't too pleased at the way it was depicted. Most of are smart enough to know that Borat's Kazakhstan does not equal real life Kazakhstan. Bit later in the film, you see Borat attempting to lead a load of rednecks in an anti-semitic song of his own creation. Eventually, after they've heard a couple of choruses, some of them start singing along. Now to me, for this scene at least, Baron Cohen has gone out of his way to engineer a message; some rednecks might be anti-semitic. Toward the end, Borat hitches a ride with some drunk college students, who confess to wanting to bring slavery back. Naturally, I don't condone their statement. Perhaps it's my age speaking, but young people talk a load of sh!t and have a load of hang-ups that are pretty much cured by time they're 30. I wouldn't want any extended footage of 22 year old pap doing the rounds, so I find myself questioning the editorial decision to include these life-damaging statements in an international movie. Watched 10 minutes of The Dictator and was getting hints of post-funny Adam Sandler. It gets better, I presume?

It's really not hard to see the subtext in Baron Cohen's films. I look forward to his remake of "You Don't Mess With the Zohan".

Don't forget the supermarkets buying the most popular stuff and undercutting them. But yep, there is actually very little you need to go out to see before you buy these days, only really big purchases, clothes and food.

We moved to Shirley for around two years when I was at Cantell. After about six weeks of hell on the buses ( hey, let's not bother going anywhere in a straight line, eh? ) I started walking it. Would relapse onto the bus if the weather was terrible, but generally did it every day. I still walk to most places when visiting Southampton. Yeah, there are direct buses from Bassett into town, but the walk through the Common is better.

I take my kids to school, pick one daughter up from an after school club one night a week, but they generally make their way home on their own. My neighbour had been running my kids to school when I was in Ireland, but I took over the street school run when I got back. This year, it's both my kids, girl from next door but one and the missus, who also works in the area. We started letting the kids come home from primary school on their own when they were about nine, part of the plan to get them used to the big wide world. They certainly didn't range as far as I used to when I was younger, but I'm more worried about traffic than violence, and Liverpool is a much busier city than Southampton.

According to the latest from the Indy, and reports do vary, HMV is about to go into administration. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/hmv-set-to-go-into-administration-8451438.html Birruva shame, as our Cilla might say. I always liked nipping in and coming out with an armful of media I never intended on buying, but I'm part of the problem. Why go to HMV on the off-chance that they'll have something when it's guaranteed to be online? So what do we reckon? Did online, piracy, mismanagement or the recession do for HMV, or was it a combination of all four? More importantly, will we miss it? Evidently, we haven't missed it much lately.

My worry, perhaps shared by others, is that J Rod will go into the unofficial "big list of divers". Could cost us games and him personal safety on the pitch.

Crowd, be proud. Twelfth man yet again. You sounded superb.

Love him. He's a nutter. Unpredictable. Think Benteke (sp) was unnerved by him. But damn, we rode our luck.

F**k f**k f**k YES!

I think we might have found our new keeper.

C'mon Saints. This needs to count if we've lost Shaw for a bit.

F**k me, this is tense, boys and girls.

My 13 year old daughter likes the fellows. She has large posters of all of them in her room. We alternate playlists on the school run. Hers drive me mental. Another fave of hers is Taylor Swift. All her songs are either about having a boyfriend or not having a boyfriend. I think she is rebelling against her embarrassment of an ageing rocker dad, and is purposefully listening to sh!te tunes to smite me.

Think I might do the same. Thought Slave To The Grind was cool too. Get The F**k Out is hilarious.

Like.

You lucky lucky bast@rds!

I really need to see Muse and the Foo Fighters.

Lighter in the air, dude

I am still reading Antony Beevor's Second World War, as recommended by View From The Top. Very well written book, but given the subject matter, is really hard going, according to Kindle, I am 57% through the book, and am now reading about events in 1944. One of the interesting things about the book is Roosevelt's dismissiveness toward Churchill in the later stages of the war, and how much US distrust of Britain's motives laid the groundwork for the Iron Curtain to fall. Churchill wanted to send western Allied forces to open up a new front on the east. Roosevelt was having none of it, effectively ceding all those territories to their Soviet allies. If you measure that war in terms of long-term gains, most European Allies came last. West Germany had money pumped into it, as did Japan. Until recently, both had very strong economies. One still does. The USSR massively increased its sphere of influence; from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, as Churchill defined it. The US became a world superpower in every respect. The Chinese communists eventually won their internal struggle and now have the strongest economy in the world. European countries lost their empires; they really had no choice. The dismantling of empires was a US objective from the start. We and the French got a bit stiffed, although I'd argue that independence for former Imperial assets has created a lot of instability. I agree with self-determination, but would India and Pakistan have nukes pointed at each other if they were still part of a British Empire? I doubt it. We played divide and rule there. The dismantling of empire was divide and rule on a global scale. I suppose we have the consolation of being permanent members of the UN Security Council.

I think I might have been one of the last generations to get to go to the Top Rank on a Monday night. Anyone from my neck of the woods will probably remember the 812 club, the youth club that ran on Thursday nights for 8-12 year olds. Games nights most weeks, with a disco every month! The girls gave it a proper go at dancing. The lads mostly did run-ups before sliding about on their shins.