Cross selling

I go into the post office today as I have a big package to send to the local council begging their permission to alter an internal wall in my own house and enclosing a cheque for the best part of 200 quid for the privilege. Needless to say this has not put me in the best of moods.

I get my bunging envelope of forms and engineers drawing weighed and I get my stamps; nice lady behind the counter even sticks them on for me. Great service. Now the problems started.

"Whilst your here would you be interested in insurance?"

Insurance for what? Car, house, second coming of Jesus fucking Christ? "Not really, thanks. Can I have my change?"

"We have saved quite a lot of people money you know, we can do..."

"I have my own insurance broker thanks. Trust me you guys would not even consider insuring the hoard of gold, jewels and eviscerated knights, my car is in a power output bracket that means I need specialist insurers, I very much doubt you do horse insurance and my house is underpinned and I live in a flood risk area and as soon as you say "underpinning" to most insurers they run a country mile in the opposite direction and hide behind their actuaries. Now how about my change?"

"I'm sure if you take a leaflet we can save you some mon..."

"JUST GIVE ME MY CHANGE YOU STUPID CUNT OR I SWEAR I WILL TURN YOU AND EVERYONE IN THE BUILDING INTO FLAMING TORCHES IN THE NEXT FIVE SECONDS! Ah, my change, one pound and fifty six pence. Thank you."

Wht is it impossible in the country for a simple transaction to take place without some bloody till numpty trying to flog you shit you don't need.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed

...after I've put up some guttering. Always assuming the bastard van that's delivering my Screwfix order shows up.

Sausage!

I think I've mentioned before that dragons like sausages. Well this dragon does at any rate; heaven is a sausage sandwich and a mug of tea.

So it was very rewarding to come across this lovely Soviet era Russian poster courtesy of my new friend and sparring partner Leah



"Demand Sausages Everywhere!"

Yay! Long live the revolution of the proletariat!

With a sense of irony normally missing from most Christians she'd attached to a post about the "Chinese eat babies" version of the old Jewish blood libel that's doing the rounds of the InterWeb at the moment and then goes on to talk about Peter Singer and zoophilia. Maybe there is hope after all.


(PS: The spell checker wanted to change "zoophilia" to "necrophilia" - reminds me of that old joke "I am into zoophilia, S&M and necrophilia. Am I flogging a dead horse?")

Apple Twats

I hate Apple Twats. You've all seen them; stupid fucktards who have to have to be seen to be using Apple products because they think it makes them look all counterculture and stylish. I've got one on the train right now: earbuds in, tapping away thoughtfully at his stupid white i-book with the glowy apple logo in the lid, crappy goatee beard and post modern ironic t-shirt that looks like its covered in those "Make up your own poetry" magnets with words on. He's sat there, smugly tapping away and sucking a biro which he occasionally taps with his fingers like he's playing the air-flute and exuding an aura of "Look at me, I'm different, I'm not like all you sad sappy commuters, I'm something special, I'm not conforming, I'm breaking the mould, I've got a fucking APPLE!"

I really feel like wrapping Tiamat II round his fucking stupid spiky haired head.

Seconds away. Round One

The Church of England is to consider possible rules for settling disputes in the Anglican Church, amid divisions over the ordination of gay priests.

The bout to be settled by two falls, two submissions or a knock-out.

A pile of rocks in Wiltshire

Apparently there was some vote for a list of "Seven New Wonders of the World" and this pile of rocks in Wiltshire was in the running



And it didn't get in whereas some concrete statue of Jesus and somebody's tomb did.

And, oh dear, if we haven't got the druids all up in a tizzy about it. That Wilmington thing has really got their blood up.

Druid Terry Dobney, who is keeper of the stones at Avebury, said he was disappointed there had not been more support for the Wiltshire monument. "It's a bit like the Eurovision song contest, there's been block voting around the world so I'm led to believe," he said.

Yep it's those bloody Motenegrans voting for the Serbians again. Maybe we should have given Stonehenge a better dance routine or been a bit stronger on the key change after the middle eight or something.

And how come you get to be "Keeper of the Stones" at Avebury. To be honest the Avebury site piddles all over it's more famous neighbour to the east in general "wow" factor and you can get right in among the stones themselves. but they have been there for a good number of years and can probably can look after themselves. Still it must be a sweet gig if you can get it "Right, check the stones, yep, all still there, off to the Red Lion for a pint."

And yet again the Pagans, in common with all religious types, show yet more wilful ignorance of the facts when they don't suit the "message"...

"They're places of intrigue, but we know who built them and why they were built, there's not a great wonderment attached to them as opposed to Stonehenge which has this great wonderment attached to it."

Stonehenge was built between 3200-3100BCE by the local neolithic people who went on to become the Devonii and it was built as a combination of religious and trading centre and happens to work as a seasonal clock as well.

Thanks to the tender ministrations of British Heritage and the hoards of tourists who come to walk round the outside of it, Stonehenge has all the wonderment of a pile of rocks in Wiltshire.

God's aim sucks

Either that, or as Depeche Mode once observed, he has a sick sense of humour.

According to Bishop of Carlisle, the current flooding some parts of the UK are experiencing is all down to the amazing power of botty sex. Yes, God is pissed at us for passing a law last year which basically says "Treat people equally under the law regardless of what sex they make the two-backed beast with" and The Almighty lets loose a flood of not quite biblical proportions...

In Doncaster for fucks sake!

Last time I was in Doncaster it was full of decidedly heterosexual Yorkshiremen and certainly not a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, well no more than any other northern industrial town. So I can safely conclude that either Jehovah meant to hit the Canal Street area of Manchester and his aim went low and right, in which case he sounds an ideal candidate to replace Flintoff in the England bowling line-up, or maybe, just maybe, this is a natural phenomenon caused by a lot of unseasonal rainfall exacerbated by silly buggers building houses on flood plains.

The bish has got some choice quotes:

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that Rome at the height of its powers worshipped Pagan gods, drank and ate itself stupid, staged fights to the death for entertainment and a statue like this one was regarded as being in exquisite taste and at the time the empire finally crumbled and the Visigoths strolled off with the loot it was Christian.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals.

Er... pretty much like the church did for about 1800 years then.

Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

Disregarding the fact that our present government seems to be keen to pass as many laws as possible to specifically stop people being free at all we're back at the amazing power of bottysex again! Let the gays get wed and suddenly those promises that you and the Mrs made all those years back are suddenly null and void so you might as well just get a divorce and get the years of bitter argument over child custody under way right now.

"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.

So how come God can't just judge those he doesn't like and leave the good citizens of Doncaster who, lets face it, didn't have a whole heap of input into the formulation of the Civil Partnerships Act, alone. I dunno, hit Battersea Park with a tidal wave on gay pride march day or something?

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".

Hang on a minute here? What's with the environmental judgement thing. God, being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent can (with allowances for human free will depending upon your theological position on predeterminism) do anything he damn well pleases so surely whistling up a flood the trashes the naughty and spares the innocent is a walk in the park? Either that or he just unleashes the environment to do what it wants - doesn't sound like a very loving act to me?

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

So was the Boxing Day tsunami the poor nations of the East being punished; look at all those dead fuckers, he must really be ticked off at them. And what are they being punished for, giving western tourists poor service at the poolside bar? And how come all these poor countries get hit with natural disasters all the time? In the UK last year the number of fatalities from flooding was about three, in Bangladesh it was in the thousands.

On the same subject we last had a major flood with loss of life in 1953, around 300 people died. No global warming then and I really can't think that God was upset about the government passing the Agriculture (Ploughing Grants) Act in 1952 (mind you the old Witchcraft act was repealed in 1951 so maybe it was that and God just had a lot on in the early 50's)

Somebody desperately needs to give Bishop Dow a few whacks round the head with his crozier, might jump-start his brain if we're lucky.

At least there was one minor note of sanity...

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

Well yes... except that it was your lot who told us for years that the we humans were touched by god and above all that natural world stuff which was ours to do with as we pleased and the pagans who kept saying we had to respect the natural world. Nice to see at least some of you are coming round; about 18 centuries late but at least you're getting there.

Jumping on the "offended" bandwagon

I really never thought I'd see this day. I was a practising Pagan¹ for a good number of years and though that's no longer the case I did meet, chat and occasionally sleep with some very intelligent and level headed people who were happy to get up at three in the morning to watch the sun come up in a field.

So as every other fuckwit with a holy book and an inferiority complex leapt on the "This is an offence to my religion, stop what you're doing at once" bandwagon the Muslims started rolling along I at least thought that the folks in the Pagan community would remain aloof from all this and get on with the serious business of casting the quarters, doing handfastings for people and their pets, and getting bladdered in the service of the Goddess.

But no, the Pagans have turned into yet another bunch of whiny, "offended" tosspots and have protested that a couple of F-list celebrities with all the talent, presence and loveability of a dickcheese sandwich have arsed around on a "sacred pagan site", namely the Long Man of Wilmington.

I'm not surprised to see Arthur Pendragon involved in this as he's a complete self-publicity whore and loves nothing better than getting his sword out when there's a journalist in the vicinity (I think he's making up for having a small dick or something). Once I was on the same bill as him, both of us giving a talk at, of all things, a Pagan/Christian interfaith gathering and all he did was whitter on about his little "warband" of warrior druids and bored everyone to sleep. I did meet his warband a little later, all four of them, and all they seemed up to fighting was their way to the bar for more ale.

The best bit though is this

We, the Pagans, would not in our wildest dreams consider putting female breasts and clothing on effigies of any of the Holy Prophets, be it Jesus Christ, Buddha or any other revered figure of another faith.

These clueless wastes of DNA haven't even got the wits to work out that the Wilmington figure is only about 300 years old and therefore about as sacred as the short-term carpark at Heathrow Terminal Three. Last I looked Pagans didn't have any set representations of the male divine either so are we going to get Arthur and his jolly boys wandering over and getting rat-arsed every time someone takes a pot-shot at a stag or cuts a tree down? Didn't see you guys getting all pissy when those pro-hunt protesters defaced the White Horse of Uffington either so I can only assume that you're just doing this because the telly people might turn up.

Hell's teeth if I hadn't left paganism by now this would be making me pack my chalice and athame and looking for the next bus out of town.

I notice that Leah's folk don't do this... but I reckon they are keeping their powder dry for the first time that some comedian makes a knob gag about an icon.







¹ I had to practice very hard at it as a little voice kept saying "You know, this is just as much horseshit as all the other religions" and in the end I just went "Ah, fuck it, you're right" and cracked open a beer.

Oining the Xtians

Keen students of this blog may remember a while back I had a somewhat forthright exchange of views with a Christian on whose website I left a comment to the fact that wanting cancer so you can glorify God through your pain was not so much warped and curved through l-space on four or five higher dimensions.

Well it's turned out that our little discourse generated a blog post of its own which you can read over here (Hey she gave me a link, only fair I return the compliment) on the subject of swearing.

Apparently I'm possessed by demons, which would explain a few things.

I did leave a comment mentioning how I found it amusing that Xtians do seem to have this rather convenient excuse of blaming anything bad they do on demons, satan or whatever; you'll notice its never the fact that they might just, well, not be nice people.

She's turned comment moderation on though so I doubt it'll ever see the light of day.

UPDATE: Well credit where it's due, the comment went up. We're chatting about horses now. Maybe I can introduce her to Epona.

Take the Stanstead Express, when your life is a mess

Well that was my week off done with. Dog didn't make it (boo!), friend came over (yay!) and I totally failed to do even a half of the things I had planned which is about normal for me taking time off.

Anyway today finds me on the lovely Stansted Express as I dropped my friend off at the airport this morning at very early o'clock and rather than drive the rest of the way in I took the fast train. All fine in the morning as it was me and some half asleep commuters we picked up at Bishop's Stortford but this evening's train is packed with people you expect to be going to an airport served by Ryanair, EasyJet and a host of other budget carriers. Actually kind of reminds me of my student days getting the boat train out to Harwich for the ferry (you never see student inter-railers on that boat any more, guess everyone goes by plane now).

However this would not be a Grumpy Dragon blog post without a nark so here it comes.

Lots of plod and pretend plod milling around on the platform for the train and stopping people. Fair enough, the ragheads are trying to kill us all again so we have a heightened sense of security.

However what do we know. We know that all the current bunch of people were middle eastern followers of the "Religion of Peace"; of this much we are certain.

So can you explain to me why the four people who were being stopped, searched and of course filling in the racial profiling form were:

* A white man in his 50's in a business suit.
* A young black woman with a baby in a pram
* A Caucasian student, eastern European by his accent
* A bag of salt and vinegar crisps.

OK so maybe not the last one, but certainly nobody who looked, you know, a bit, well, muslim.

Here's a tip. If you are ever stopped and they ask you what your race is, tell them to put "other". It fucks up their "see, see, we don't do racial profiling, honest" figures and if everyone stopped complying with this piece of NuLabour shite we might be able to free the plod up to stop and search those who, on the balance of the evidence, would be more likely to be wandering around carrying explosives and looking for a few dhimmis to personally introduce to Allah.