I was looking back over some old posts last night having spent a few hours in the pub with Harry, and came to the rather distressing conclusion that this blog used to be quiet good and is now fucking shite. Gone are the days when I’d happily describe a squalid life of heavy drinking, wanking and spending half of Sunday’s hangover with my bowel open like a basking shark’s gob featuring long and graphic descriptions of what subsequently emerged, these day’s it’s all, well, cheery –save the odd rant.
I can only apologise, I suppose this is what gives when you find yourself stepping off the gallows and running off into a meadow full of wildflowers and no wasps. Someone once said they stopped reading this blog (last year) because ‘I wasn’t having enough accidents’ anymore. Even the vague tension brought on by the selling of my London shed has, for the time being at least, ended in a tentative thumbs up. This could all come crashing round my ears but things for the now are okay, good even… apart from work, of course, that remains an abhorrence, a drawn curtain over whatever spark of creativity existed before it occurred to me I’d financially entombed myself. I’ll make no bones about, the reason you’re reading this shit is because it justifies my day, this isn’t an exercise in ego -I mean who really gives a cunts wink what I had for my tea, I don’t- this, dear readers, is a Pressure Valve.
Cool, so I’m going to vituperate now. Today, flagship news programme on Radio4, (worth the license fee on its own if you ask me) has been broadcast for 50 years and from day one it’s featured a slot called ‘Thought for the Day,’ you’ve probably heard of it. Thought for the Day, on at 7.45am everyday save Sunday, is exactly 2.45 minutes of faith-based guff featuring the dulcet tones of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist thinkers. I catch it rarely but when I do I always listen as it opens a gateway into something I don’t subscribe to at all, or know, and on occasion the featured religion can act as a catalyst for something quite nice about the world in which we live, but largely it’s just a load of old bollocks.
To date there has been no place so far for secular or atheist viewpoints but Radio4 controller Mark Damazer has said that the rules for who can speak on Thought for the Day may be up for grabs. I think this is a mistake. For a start having some faith-led numpty waffle on about stuff they believe in is a good enforcer of precisely why one shouldn’t blindly adhere to a conditioning and proscribed existence. But more of a concern is who exactly will replace the antiquated doctrines of the vapid and frankly trite bores that occupy the TFTD slot.
Whilst it’s a given we’ll be subject to lily livered ‘humanists,’ exasperated Darwinists, Dawkinites, lefty do-gooders, we could also be exposed to the screaming guts of creationists, intelligent-designists, Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Satanists, Zoroastrians, Mormons, Wicca’s, Druids… fuck, anyone with a bloody soap box happy to pontificate about the human condition and how we’re all going to Hell/ Hel/ Diyu/ Anaon/ Uffern/ Pekloo/ Mictlán/ Gimokodan/ Kalichi/ Hetgwauge/ Adlivun/ Metnal/ Jahannam/ Avici/ Naraka/ Shobari Waka/ O le nu’u-o-nonoa or Slough in a handcart.
At least the present line-up of weaklings represent established faiths that wield genuine and, at times, terrifying power over millions. It’s sort of good to know what’s going on, like reading The Sun to see what the majority of the nations are digesting with their Golden Nuggets.
