Dead Jew On A Stick

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As a sign of how increasingly eccentric and silly a place to work our office has become, one of our colleagues had organised a massive easter egg hunt on Thursday. While sofa cushions were upturned and coffee jars emptied in a desperate hunt for hidden chocolate, I was reminded of two things; first, that our office is peopled exclusively with adults who turn into overgrown children with the appetites of a cluster of super-massive black holes whenever sugar-heavy goodies are made available, and, second, that none of the traditional symbols of this apparently christian festival have got anything to do with christianity. Forever dodging the questions of exactly what relevance the eggs and bunny rabbits of the pagan celebrations usurped by Team Carpenter have to easter, they will instead try to divert your attention to the one and only symbol they have got; a symbol of the boundless love that the one true god (apart from all the others) has for anyone prepared to devote themselves to his service in perpetuity – a half-naked, Palestinian torture-victim nailed to a tree. …

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Rock me, sexy Jesus

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Before you get the wrong idea about me, I’m not planning to use this post as a forum for expressing some kind of deep and abiding physical attraction towards christianity’s premier long-haired hippy prophet. Although the messiah is, according to some, a very naughty boy (and, under normal circumstances, I would be inclined to question therefore whether I should get to know him better), neither the more plausibly accurate, “Osama Bin Laden in his student days” image of Jesus, nor the white, WASP-ish, lightly-bearded pretty-boy that most christians falsely imagine him to look like, could ever be really described as being “my type”. No, this week’s post was inspired by a casual tweet from @Rati0nality that got me thinking about religion and popular culture; specifically, I was given cause to consider the idea, accepted almost universally as true, that “christian music is shit”. …

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Acts of Sod

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We have a thing in Britain called Sod’s Law; it’s a simple axiom that states, “anything that can go wrong, will”, and is often exemplified by the frustrating way that dropped toast always lands butter side down. Some people know it as Murphy’s Law, particularly outside the UK where the word “sod” is not as commonly used; regardless of how you refer to it, it’s still a good way of describing those situations where you can’t for the life of you shake the feeling that the universe is royally taking the piss out of you. I got a little taste of that this week when I was rudely awoken on Monday morning as the torrential rain we were enjoying stubbornly refused to stay out of my bedroom. Sadly, while I was out, first at work then at a friend’s funeral, the situation worsened, and I returned home to find a small paddling pool with a headboard where I normally keep my bed. On the plus side, I am at least able to claim for the damage on my insurance by taking advantage of a clause which points the finger of blame squarely at a non-existent sky pixie. …

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Women: Know Your Limits!

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I was inspired this week by a post from Xanthe Wyse on her God Confusion blog (you should definitely head over there and say “hi” – tell her I sent you, and don’t forget to come back! Hello? Oh … okay, fine, be like that). In “Good Christian Wife” Xanthe talked about a subject that’s been on my “To Rant About” list for some time; religion’s attitude toward women. If you happen to be a woman (it’s okay, I don’t mind, I hear it’s quite acceptable these days), then I’d like to ask a question of you for which I’ve never received a satisfactory answer. How could any woman, regardless of background, ethnicity, or education level, belong to any of the major faiths and still maintain a molecule of self-respect? Why would you ever refer to, or even think of, yourself as being a christian or muslim, for example, when it’s quite apparent from the research I’ve done that your religion HATES you? …

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Whoops, apocalypse!

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If I had to be honest I should probably say that I wasn’t the least bit disappointed when I woke up last Sunday morning to find that the rapture Harold Camping had promised, nay guaranteed, hadn’t actually materialised, and it’s not because I felt a sense of relief that his prediction of impending armageddon turned out to be total bollocks. I know that I probably should have been annoyed at the failure of the world’s supply of gullible nitwits to mysteriously disappear while I slept (in much the same way their critical thinking skills had vanished the moment each of them they joined that ridiculous club), but the truth, however, is that I wasn’t disappointed because I was too busy trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. …

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