BBC Bullshit

I can't remember reading anything on the BBC website more annoying than this. Honestly, it genuinely made me rage and cringe at the same time. If you're too lazy to clink the link it's an article regarding a performance "artist" and her "art". Here are a few gems from the article;

The performance artist is spending 512 hours interacting with the public at the show, held in three completely empty rooms.Phones, cameras and even watches are banned, as Abramovic takes people by the hand and encourages them to spend time focusing on the bare white walls."Take in the silence," she whispered to one. "Just be present."

Fuck.

Participants closed their eyes and rocked on their heels, some assumed meditative positions, while others followed Abramovic around, hoping for a personal interaction."I really wanted to connect with her, so I said a little prayer," said Sophie, a student sculptor from London."Connecting with her presence was really special. She said, 'stay here as long as you like, take deep breaths, be present'."It was perfect, really." 

Me.

Geraldine, an art lecturer from Kensington, had arrived at 06:30 BST to be amongst the first to see the performance."It was like being at a very beautiful party where nobody talks," she told the BBC. "It may push me into doing some meditation, which is probably very good for me, so it changed my life in a very positive way." 

 Hulk smash!

It is her first performance work since The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she sat motionless, six days a week, looking directly at whoever sat down in a chair placed opposite her.

.....

Both shows lack the startling drama of her earlier performances, including one in which she systematically stabbed her hand with knives.In another, she whipped herself, before cutting a five-point star in her stomach with a razor blade and lying on a cross made of ice.

For fucks sake, this isn't art. This describes the ravings of a lunatic. An armed lunatic at that.

There's loads more of this kind of new-age, hippy type twaddle in the article, including references to religious experience's and the phrase "art of nothing" (not to be confused with the art of fighting without fighting). But my favourite quote comes from the "writer" of the "article" :

During the first hour of the first day of her performance, Abramovic seemed to be playing a giant game of cosmic yogic chess, with the public as her pieces

You may need to read that quote a few times and let it really sink in. I suggest reading it two or three times and then going to take a nice shower or bath, maybe enjoy a glass of decent red, or, if it's sufficiently late, a good single malt.

Then read it again. Out loud.

512 Hours runs at the Serpentine Gallery in London until 25 August.

UK Porn Filtering

I'm calling right now, this will be a fucking disaster. Total, complete fucking shambles. An on-by-default system run by your ISP at the behest of a government nobody voted for; yeah, hard to see how that could cause problems.

All these hair brained schemes, dreamt up by people in power, simply serve to underscore what I've been saying for some time now; these people are hopelessly and completely out of touch will reality and in this demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the problem on a fundamental level. To put it more succinctly, we have politicians in place who are being asked to solve problems that they simply do not understand.

This is the equivalent of replacing CERN's Brian Cox with a chimp and expecting detailed analysis of the Higgs Boson, then showing surprise that the Hadron Collider is covered in banana peel and shit.

Remember when the Pirate Bay was blocked in the UK? The original work around using VPN's or proxies and magnet links took no more than 5 minutes to work out and about 2 minutes to use correctly and that was before the Pirate Bay setup the reverse proxies.

Our war against terror is a farce, our war against drugs is a total shambles and now they want to enter into a struggle against porn. On the internet. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. On a website.

Mobile Blogging v 3

Last post failed to post so here we go again with pic of Bluetooth keyboard and glass of Zinfandel.

The Year Of The Paedophile

I'm going to call it now, but I think 2013 will be the unofficial year of the paedophile, in the UK at least. With yet another TV celebrity caught in the net that is Operation Yewtree, it seems likely that the entire UK TV establishment has been shaken like a ripe fruit tree and the harvest has been bountiful. Sadly it's a harvest of sexual deviants.

But I can't help but think that if the powers that be had setup a similar operation looking into the Catholic church in the UK the harvest would have produced a bumper crop this year. I can understand looking into Jimmy Savile, although not really surprised they waited until he was dead, but that is one guy who was thought to be a suspicious character, heavily insinuated in rumour. But the Catholic church is bulging with child molesters and has official policy to, not only, cover this up but to assist in relocating these monsters around the UK thus enabling them to predate on children again.

In fact it would appear that the furore surrounding the, presumably still ongoing, disgusting revelations about the Catholic church's behaviour has completely vanished from the UK media and, by extension, the public consciousness.

Not that there was a great deal of coverage regarding the Catholic church's policy of dealing with criminals within it's own ranks.

To borrow a phrase from the late, great Christopher Hitchens "you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend".

And he is still not wrong.

I'm speechless I say! Wait, What?

A 2011 Census shows that Maerdy, Rhondda is one of the least Religious places in England & Wales. I sympathise - if I lived there I'd struggle to reconcile it with an all knowing super being.

The same place held a sit in at the local church when it was threatened with closure. It then shut. One can only imagine what damage to your religious psyche your local church closing does, I can only imagine it from the point of view of an alcoholic if odd bins went to the wall.

Maybe if they'd have held a pray in rather than just a sit in then maybe God would have interevened.

The only reason I mention this at all is a great line, intentional or not I have no idea, in a BBC online article regarding the Census findings;

Peter Blake, who was a member of Friends of All Saints Church in Maerdy and a one-time church warden, said the figures left him "speechless".

It truly is a miracle.

Rational Response

A US film has recently been released which shows Islam in a less than favourable light, I'm not sure there's too much choice in how it can be shown so lets take a look at how it adherents are aiming to dispel these untruths and slanderous lies.

UK, London - US & Israeli flags burnt outside US Embassy.
Netherlands, Amsterdam - US Consulate & two schools closed due to planned protests.
Libya, Tripoli - US Ambassador & 3 US citizens killed.
Tunisia - American school burnt.
Egypt, Cairo - Tear gas used on protesters attempting to storm US Embassy.
Lebanon, Tripoli - KFC restaurant burnt to ground.
Iraq, Baghdad - Protesters chanting "Death to America"
Yemen, Sanaa - Protesters US Embassy stormed by protesters & set alight.
Afghanistan, Jalalabad - Afghans gather to chant "Death to America"
Kashmir - Over fifteen thousand protesters gather in a dozen locations to call Obama a terrorist.

Well, you cant argue with logic like that.

Hocus Pocus, Alakazam!

Shazam!

eBay has banned the sale of spells, potions, curses and Tarot card readings as conflicts between buyers and sellers of these services are proving tricky to resolve.

Fuck me, where to start with this. Spells ? Who the fuck is buying spells ? Spells people, spells! Like fucking Gandalf.

Potions, not just homepathic nonsense, but actual magic potions. Wait that is homepathic nonsense, isn't it?

Curses! Ha ha, curses, like fucking voodo I'd imagine. Who provides curses? Witches? Secret covens of witches, who's only remaining outlet for their evil is eBay. Wait, is Craigslist still up?

Tarot card readings, that's like pyschics without the need for any special powers, the cards do all the work right? Just buy the fucking cards then you idiots.

Its hard to recocile the fact than in the same year NASA puts a 4x4 on Mars, people in the developed world are still buying spells and potions. You gullible cunts.

The Religion Of Peace Strikes Again

Text below taken from the BBC News website, link below.

Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy

Pakistani police have arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old girl after a mob accused her of desecrating pages of the Koran.

The mob demanded the Christian girl's arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital Islamabad, local media say.

Officials said the girl could not properly answer police questions.

Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.

It is thought that the girl has Down's syndrome.

Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known to have a mental disorder and that it seemed "unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran".

"From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran," he said. "This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes."

He said more than 600 people have fled from the Christian neighbourhood.

Rights activists have urged Pakistan to reform its controversial blasphemy laws, under which a person can be jailed for life for desecrating the Koran.

Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs, while politicians who advocate a change in legislation have also been targeted.

Last year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law.

His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098

Jesus, fucking Christ. On a bike. When will these fuckers step into the 21st Century? Fuck, can we at least get them into the 19th century?

Raspberry Pi

If you look down below you'll see some pictures of my Raspberry Pi complete with its case, courtesy of Mod My Pi.

Executed By Allah

An Afghan woman has been raped then executed by Taliban just outside Kabul. Her crime was that she was raped by Taliban. If she had been killed by Taliban, would they have raped her as punishment?

Durka durka mohammed jihad.

Minecraft; Y U So Scary?

Why do I find Minecraft so very scary? It fucking terrifies me. I have no idea how TobyGames or XXNoRegretzXX make their various Minecraft vids although Tobuscus does seem to scream quite a bit. I don't even get that far. At the first hint of danger I'm straight back to my house to stare at the rain through the window.

I beginning to think I should play this on Peaceful.

You Fucking Lying Liars

As any regular reader would surely agree, I'm a reasonably easy-going individual with a relatively free attitude to other people and the choices they make. But there is one thing that really makes my blood boil and it's liars, or more specifically fucking lying liars.

Especially those fucking lying liars who prey on the weak and vunerable. Like mediums or those fucking lying liars who try to flog alternative medicines to sick, desperate people.

I started thinking about this when reading an electronic notice board posting that read "After a number of disappointments, my wife has found a really nice lady who offers High Quality and reasonably priced holisitc therapies in the Chesterfield area."

Now, where the fuck do we begin with that? Lets start at the beginning and work through it.

"After a number of dissapointments . . . . "

This part of the sentence alone is going to take some analysing. A number of dissapointments implies that this poor woman has been stung quite a few times by these fraudsters, but kept at it. I think it was Einstien who defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". This kind of thinking was also, now famously, covered by George Bush "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] — shame on you. Fool me — [pauses] — You can't get fooled again"

"High Quality and reasonably priced holisitc therapies . . . ."

How can you put a price, reasonable or otherwise, on nothing? It's like saying my losing lottery ticket was reasonably priced. I mean come on people, The Emperors New Clothes not ringing a bell?

I can't really get that angry with the woman who found these bargains. My vitriol is reserved for the fucking lying liars that sell these "services".

After laughing at the irony in the original post I deceided to Google holistic just to see what kind of crap it is and boy Google did not dissapoint. http://www.healthk.co.uk/holistic.htm is about top of the list of propoganda for this shite, which makes some quite frankly incredible, but easily refuted claims.

Here are a sample of some of the claims that set-off my Bullshit meter -

1. The Appeal To Authority.

The claim that stood out for me was that Aristotle was the Father Of Kinesiology. Kinesology is quoted by the aformentioned webstite as -

"Kinesiology means "the study of movement". As a treatment system, it involves testing muscles through their range of movement and correcting any weaknesses detected. Because muscles are linked to internal organs and to meridians in the Chinese model of medicine, disturbances in muscle function will flag up problems in internal function and energy flow round the body. Correcting a weak muscle will improve energy flow in the related meridian and function in the related organ."

"Kinesiology stems from work done by an Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr Robert W.Lovett, from Boston, Massachusetts in 1920′s, although kinesiology itself originates with Aristotle (384- 322 B.C.) who is named the ”Father of Kinesiology”."

Now lets start with some facts, even though Aristotles father was a doctor he was dead by the time Aristotle was 10 years old. At 17 or 18 Aristotle had joined Plato's Academy, where he studied and eventually taught before leaving after 20 years, some say because he was dissapointed the direction the Academy took after control was passed to Plato's nephew upon his death or that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiment. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology.

 There is no mention anywhere of Aristotle being the father of anything other than offspring. The Father Of Kinesiology claim is mentioned only on these bogus health websites.

2. Old Earth Wison or Old Wives Tales.

The aforementioned website also repeats these old chesnuts -

"Holistic Therapies have been around for thousands of years. The Chinese have known about the energy flowing through the meridians for over 4,000 years and developed acu-puncture to tap into and unblock the energy flows. Chinese Medicine uses acu-puncture and herbal remedies while from the Indian sub-continent we have Ayurveda - 'the Science of Life' - a system that has been around for 5,000 years"

Now then, as anyone who's ever looked into acu-puncture will know it'ws complete bullshit. It has been shown to work no better than placebo time after time in clinical trials. Also Herbal Medicine? We use this everyday, it's called Aspirin, it's produced from willow bark extract and can be traced back to Hippocrates in 400BC. I know nothing about Ayurveda and I honestly can't be bothered to research it. But the following graph sums up the effectiveness of these ancient "medicines".





To sum up, the above website defines In Health Kinesiology™ as -

"(HK)BioEnergy corrections are done by gently holding or tapping acupuncture points with the fingertips."

I think it's more accurate to say the only effective tapping here is the tapping of peoples wallets.

Man City Win Title

 As the rest of the country yawned with disinterest Manchester City bought their first Premier League title. A four year spending spree of over £360 million has finally paid dividends as yesterday Man City collected a trophy made from half a millimeter of silver.

With a team bulging with local talent, including some as close as Columbia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Italy and Wales, Man City secured the win against ten man QPR with two goals in injury time. It is yet to be declared just how much this injury time cost.

London 2012

I honestly couldn't care any less about any subject as I do the Olympics. It really is the highlight of the mediocre calendar, week after week of banality, commentated over by a selection of squawking heads. Apparently this will cost the taxpayer an estimated £12 billion, or as I prefer it written £12,000,000,000. Makes you wonder what kind of impact that money could have on schools or hospitals doesn't it?

And the events! I mean have you seen some of the so called sports that feature in the Olympics ? Never mind the obvious distain for Syncronised Swimming, what about Handball, I dont even know what that is! Taekwondo? Surely Michael Flatley will easily take gold for Ireland? There's even an event for shooting. Have the organisers not noticed we've been at war on two fronts for a decade, who do they think is interested in seeing people in lycra shooting at paper target with some old ass rifle when I can flick on BBC news and watch the fucking Royal Marines in action?

Comedian and UFC host Joe Rogan once pointed out that 'there's a reason the Olympics is held every four years; if it was on every weekend nobody would watch', and he's right. Some of these events are people throwing things into a field, spears, concrete on chains, frisbees, it really is like a giant Monty Python sketch gone way over budget.

That said here's a list of the events and my breakdown of what they entail;

Archery - Last relevant 1066

Athletics - School Sports Day

Badminton - Ok I like this

Basketball - Gay Five A Side Football

Boxing - Windmilling for 3 minutes
Canoeing - Poor mans rowing
Cycling - For delivering papers
Diving - Proves Gravity

Equestrian - Pedigree Chum here we come

Fencing - Last relevant 1066

Field hockey - Shit Quiditch

Football - Amatuer

Gymnastics - Really?
Handball - What?

Judo - Not as gay as wrestling

Modern pentathlon - Do lots so people don’t realize you're not good at any of them
Rowing - We have speedboats now

Sailing - Sport?

Shooting - We are fighting two wars
Swimming - We have boats now
Synchronized Swimming - Jesus

Table tennis - Ping Pong

Taekwondo - Riverdance
Tennis - Dullest event in the world
Triathlon - Pick One

Volleyball - Awesome

Water polo - How did this even happen

Weightlifting - Sport?

Wrestling - Bit gay

Fucking Steam

Who's idea was this fucking thing and how in gods name did it catch on ?

I swear to God, this may well be the must frustrating bit of software I've ever used. I Tried for hours to get the Skyrim HD DLC yesterday, but it just kept telling me that I already own the HD DLC. It had clearly grown weary of my questions as after a few hours it simply refused to allow me access to Steam saying "you are not configured correctly".

"Not configured correctly"? I'm configured correctly enough to access every other part of the fucking internet, but aparently Steam is special and sits astride the normal internet like some sort of forgotten Norse God of fuckups. Like Loki's hidden half brother; Cunti.

Well it's lesson learned, in future I'll be using the simpler, cheaper, faster and less bug prone system called The Pirate Bay.

Fuck you Steam, fuck you Bethesda and thank God for Minecraft.

Mobile Blogging & Tweeter

Is it Tweeter? Anyways, the Tweeter App on my phone simply refuses to post pictures, informing me that the tweet has failed and that it has saved to drafts. Mobile blogging with pictures is a complete debacle, so much so that I poo-pooed the idea months ago.

I did think the tweeter thing would work mind.

The Hunt For Noah's Ark

A Scottish man has gone missing whilst searching Mount Arafat for, wait for it . . . . . . . Noah's Ark. Donald Mackenzie, from Lewis, vanished whilst searching for the Ark in a race to beat a Chinese group.

Here's a tip for any budding Ark researchers, if someone tells you they are close to finding Noah's Ark you can safely ignore them as it is as likely as finding Peter Pan's penis pump. That is to say, it'll never happen. Why you ask ? Because it's a fucking fairy tale, a myth, a big fat lie.

Listen people, there never was an Ark built to hold all types of animals with the aim of species survival and re population after a global flood because there never was a global flood. Didn't happen.

Here's a small list of other things that never happened;

Superman.
Iraqi WMD program.
Pyramids Built By UFOs.
Anything Built By UFOs.
UFOs.

I remember a flood when I was a lad. The park was submerged to the point where you could barely see the tennis courts. No Ark though.

Mobile Blogging

I'm posting this from my new mobile phone the Sony Ericson X10 Mini Pro and it's a lot easier than i'd have thought.

Next month; I take a shit photo and blog about how I can't figure out how to post the fucking thing.

Office Monkey QR

Football, Hotels & Sexual Assault

I really don't know what it is about footballers nowadays, a week rarely goes by without the news of a footballer being investigated for banging a hooker, sometimes a teenage hooker, sometimes a fifty-something hooker, but a hooker none the less. If it's not banging a hooker, it's crashing a car or assaulting someone in a bar, being caught on CCTV, and still managing to avoid prosecution.

I've now just read that Titus Bramble has been arrested on suspicion of rape. He now joins a rather large, and seemingly ever expanding, list of footballers who've fallen foul of the law or journalists recently. Steven Gerard punched some guy in a bar, Wayne Rooney can't stop fucking hookers, Peter Crouch apparently paid a large quantity of cash to bang some, frankly, rather average looking slut in Spain, Ashley Cole who was banging Cherly Cole mind you, managed to blow that by sleeping with some other chick. Joey Barton spends more time in prison than he does in the box.

I used to play five a side football during my lunch hour and not once did we ever stop off on the way back to the office for a quick rape or violent assault. We also managed to avoid crashing whatever car we were travelling in, usually mine as I remember.

But then I was never a professional footballer.