Who's the best Christian?

Why, it's the Christian who best wields a broom of course!

Nothing says that you're really following the teachings of Christ better than being able to beat the living crap out of another group of people who say that they're following the teachings of Christ.

Then again, being agnostic I probably don't understand the moral aspects of this kind of behaviour, and I clearly have no idea about whether or not it's right to attack people with violence. Sure I'd say that it's not right but these people are religious and so have a much better grasp of these things than I do.

Happy whatever you want it to be!

Whatever it is that you’re up to I hope that it works out the way you want it to.

And actually that doesn’t just apply to today.

As long as it’s nothing scary like being a machete wielding nutjob… in which case I hope that what you’re planning doesn’t work out. It’s for the best, I promise, you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

HAPPY WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE! 

This girl knows where it's at

Seriously.

My milkshake brings all the bots to the yard

Well, it's brought a second bot to, OK not my yard, but my barely active Twitter account, so... uh... my profile brings two spambots to the barely active Twitter account.

Anyhoo.

Now the first bot was all "let's fuck or something" but this bot is a bit more playful. I like that this bot's treating me with a bit more respect; it gives me a bit of faith in the spambots of the future. This bot has the statement "I'm 19 years old and I want to experiment with a lucky guy (YOU!). please follow me." which, upon reading it again, could actually be rather sinister.

No, I do not mean left-handed, no-one uses "sinister" in the latin sense any more so I really don't know why you brought that up. You are so difficult sometimes mental foil, you really are.

Great, now it's reminded me of that "we want overweight guys for a medical trial" targeted Facebook advert that I saw, and I don't really want to be experimented with thank you very much.

That's brought me right down has that.

I really wanted some cake

Sadly there was no cake in the house. Clearly I can't go out again, it's late, and then I'd have to see and interact with people, ew.

I chose to get over this setback by eating a third of a tub of Phish Food straight from said tub.

I can't help but think that I may not be in the best of moods.

I am beginning to think that I may actually be a dumped female lead in a romantic comedy. This is an odd development if true. Thankfully I did not eat the ice cream while wearing pyjamas so I think I may be OK.

I'm almost serious about this

I could quite happily turn this blog into something where I just post this clip every single day.

I don't think that I'd ever really regret that decision.

It bears repeating

I think that due to it being Saturday night and with me sitting here, spooning Phish Food into my mouth straight from the tub, that I should inform everyone that I am so friggin' rock 'n' roll.

Just in case anyone needed reminding.

Edgar Alien Poe

I've just thought that I'd probably like to do an animation where you take a picture of Edgar Allen Poe but then make his jaw drop down, kind of how Terry Gilliam used to do on Monty Python, and have the inner mouth of the Alien come out or something.

Sadly I know full well that by the time I even started to learn how to animate anything I'd have forgotten why I was doing it.

You'd think that if I was going to be this lazy all of the time that my brain would at least have the good grace to stop popping up with ideas that entertain me but that aren't any use without putting some effort in.

Shit brain, get it together, for real.

The Edgar Allen Poe Museum could be improved

I was just chatting with a friend on Skype and they told me that they were going to the Edgar Allen Poe Museum.

I have decided that I want to go to the Edgar Alien Poe Museum where an exhibit has a lead-in where you're convinced that there's a tell-tale heart and then BAM! It's John Hurt, something bursts out of his chest, and then it makes a break for it and the doors to the room your're in lock all around you and you hear sounds of something moving.

The Tell-Tale Xenomorph.

I'm too lazy to write anything about it. I just like the name Edgar Alien Poe.

Oh Twiterspambot! You're so smooth!

Now I'm pretty happy with what I generally see on gmail (well, since I changed it back from the new view, that's going to upset me all over again when they force me to switch) but this time I've seen something upon logging in that made me a bit sad.

It's not the immediate thing that makes me sad. The fact that a spambot has latched on to an account I use purely for following about three people and never update doesn't bother me at all. I actually find spam to be rather amusing. However this time I did actually go along to see what was going on. I mean, wouldn't you respond to something that said: "I'll probably get horny and want you to fuck me but lets see where we can take this.!! please follow me."? (I've removed the link that was at the end of that quote as I'm pretty sure it's not going to go anywhere good.)

As I say I wandered over to the profile to see what this spambot was about and, as predicted, there was a picture of a youngish lady smiling (I don't know but I'd guess that she's looking for a nice, maybe English, gentleman to connect with or something) and no tweets whatsoever but the main thing that I noticed was that while the bot was following 171 people (when I got the e-mail, I've just looked and it's now up to 765 a few minutes later) there was actually someone silly enough to follow back (still only that person following back at this time).

Then again, maybe I'm being unfair and this is someone who was entertained by the idea of having a spambot on their list to see what it would say, but having had a quick look at their profile and tweets I can't help but think that they actually responded in earnest.

Then again again, given the way that a lot of men approach women I suppose they may have just thought "finally, a woman who just gets to the point, I knew I was right!"

If for no other reason then my sanity I think I'm going to go with they just automatically follow anyone who follows them. Thoughtlessness is a lot less depressing than the alternatives.

Why do I even wonder about these things?

So we shouldn't be persuading young people to hate themselves?

In a more nuanced approach to photo-manipulation in magazines and the like a couple of computer scientists have produced a piece of software that measures, against a 1-5 scale, how much an image has been digitally altered so that a reader/viewer has an immediate reminder beat themselves up when they look at an image.

As the article says there have been moves in a few European countries to label any images that have been altered but I have to say that this seems a much better idea. Anything that can be used to help to minimise the levels of self-loathing that large amounts of advertising produces in people has got to be a good thing for people. A proposal that allows for a grading system means that it's a lot harder for image producers to say that it labels everything they do as wrong and it also makes it easier for people to remember to pay attention if it's not always the same label at the corner telling them the same thing.

As a male of the species I am obviously bombarded by this kind of garbage a lot less than females and it's true that one can say "but why do you let them make you feel like crap?" but environments are pervasive and they do shape people. It's got to be a good thing to try to create an environment that's less hostile to people being, well, people.

Having to fight is tiring so let's try to ensure that future generations don't have to fight against as much bullshit as we do.

Things are a little clearer

In my last post I was a little confused as to exactly what it was that was going on in relation to my reaction to those that own Reborn Dolls. I think that I am now a little less confused. Well, about this anyway, probably not about things in general.

I think I've managed to reconcile my liking of Lars And The Real Girl with all of this and I suppose it's really quite easy now that I wrote a bit of it out: I rooted for Lars in that film to get the fuck over it.

So yes, I'm at a place where I realise that they're not doing any harm, but I can't help but think "why don't you just get some cats like a normal weirdo?"

I also walked into a door-frame this morning.

Clearly I am smart.

And I thought that The Brothers Quay did creepy things with dolls

And they do of course. But, as creepy as the dolls utilised by the good brothers themselves undoubtedly are, they are not as creepy as Reborn dolls which are really very creepy indeed.

Well, I say that they're creepy but it's more that people actually keep them as babies. Now once again I'd like to make it clear that I don't want to tell these people how to live their lives. They're not actually doing anyone any harm by having these things around the house, cradling them, and spending time doting on them. It's just that it creeps me the fuck out.

I don't want it to. I want to be all groovy and accepting of this totally harmless activity but it just makes me a little uneasy.

I think that it's mostly because it makes me think of guys who have Real Dolls and that this could, at least in part, be a way for someone to have a doll family. They could have a real doll for a while, then add a reborn doll to the family, and then... oh I don't know... move on to torturing small animals or something. Sorry, that was wrong of me, I shouldn't have typed that.

I'm a bit worn down.

The world and its people are not there to make me comfortable. They are not there to make me fool good about myself nor are they there for me to judge.

Ryan Gosling was a guy I was rooting for in Lars And The Real Girl so I guess I can root for these people too.

Or just ignore them. I should probably do that.