Dog Bites (Royal) Man

Shamefully, the Guardian sees fit to include 'Will Beats Kate in Boat Race' in its rolling news banner.

Really? 'Male military officer beats slender female at strenuous physical activity' counts as news?

The best I can do is quote the quite conservative 19th-century republican and atheist, Charles Bradlaugh, an attitude which perfectly fits the recent royal wedding obscenity:

I have only pleaded against the White Horse of Hanover [Victoria's family]… I loathe these small German breast-bestarred wanderers, whose only merit is their loving hatred of one another. In their own land they vegetate and with unnoticed; here, we pay them highly to marry and perpetuate a pauper prince race'. 

Against Bradlaugh's atheism, Churchill's father Randolph had this to offer:

atheists are 'for the most part… the residuum, the rabble and the scum of the population; the bulk of them persons to whom all restraint - religious, moral or legal - is odious and intolerable'.  

Having returned from my lunch bespattered with the fluids of various species - mine, other humans', several endangered creatures sacrificed to the vigorous demands of my unrestrained urges, I cannot in all good conscience disagree with Lord Randolph. I am unreasonably proud of the foulest (and fowlest) depths to which, I have discovered, a determined and imaginative atheist can sink within the confines of a mere half-hour. My limbs ache, my clothes are irreparably ruined, as are the reputations and parts of my bestial co-conspirators. Passers-by will never recover from what they witnessed this noontide.

And all because I got off my knees.

Taking the moral and intellectual high ground

If you haven't discovered the delights of Conservapedia yet, then you should abandon all thoughts of work for the rest of the day. Imagine an encyclopaedia with most of the facts taken out and replaced with snide, rightwing, dishonest and disingenuous commentary (e.g. it presents George Washington as an orthodox Christian rather than a deist: he and the other Founding Fathers accepted that there was a creator, but that he'd since lost interest). 

The site is an object lesson in 'playing the man not the ball'. If you're an atheist, for instance, Conservapedia is very keen to link that to your perceived moral or physical failings. Rather dangerously for an American website, given that nation's unfortunate tendency towards ponderousness, it thinks that the most damning thing it can say about any atheist is that they're a little porky because they aren't Christian. Here's a selection from the list of Atheists

Dara Ó Briain is an Irish comedian and he is an atheist.^[201] A 2008 picture of an overweight Dara Ó Briain can be found HERE

Walter Block is an atheist economist. A picture of an overweight Walter Block can be found HERE.

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE,(born 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. Carol Ann Duffy is an atheist.^[202] A picture of an overweight Ms. Duffy can be found HERE

Edmund White is a author, literary critic, homosexual and an atheist.^[203][204] Photos of an overweight Edmund White can be found HERE and HERE.

The Bible declares lesbianism to be a sin (Romans 1:27) and lesbians have significantly higher rates of obesity.^[214]Since the Bible declares gluttony and lesbianism to be sins, no doubt there are obese people and/or lesbians who reject Christianity, despite the abundant evidence for Christianity, and decide to become atheists rather than repent and become Christians. 

That last entry is accompanied by a photo of Beth Ditto. Perhaps they've got it in for Buddha… and footnotes.

Snow joke

I'm happy today. Despite the fact that the Ultimate Authority of the Hegemon got a 7% pay rise (from £213,000 to £228,000) while lots of us lost our jobs and the institution was fined several million pounds by the government, and there's still lots of marking to do, it's snowing, which always makes me happy. I've also received the latest Stile Antico recording (John Sheppard's Media Vita and other music), and new albums by The Imagined Village and Spiers and Boden.

Another happy man is Pharyngula, the militant atheist and biologist, who's come up with a cunning plan. Institute a state religion in the US by means of a game show like Pop Idol. One of the rounds involves giving each faith a terminally ill child: to win, you have to get said child to recover through prayer! More fiendish details here.

Meanwhile, here's some Morton Feldman, in honour of his birth 84 years ago today.

Grouch

What a rotten day it's been. I'm tired, grouchy and deaf. I should have been sparkling before an invited audience of sixth-formers gathered for a conference, or at least acting as Zoot Horn's lovely assistant, but instead I sat in a walk-in health centre (yet again, three cheers for the NHS) and then spent the day frantically trying to organise things for the fencing competition I'm taking a team to at the weekend. If I'd been OK, I'd have been discussing James Joyce, Heaney, Betjeman, Langston Hughes, St. Vincent Millay and Armitage - all my favourites. I feel genuinely bad about not pulling my weight.

Do I go home and mark essays, or go to the English department Christmas dinner, even though I can't hear anything?

Meanwhile, Mark, Neal and others are having fun at this wonderful event, populated by all my favourite people:

Morning has cracked, rather than broken

Another day dawns, grudgingly, over Wolverhampton. Yesterday finished in a mixture of joy and tears: my mother was meant to appear with various household items, but instead spent several hours by the roadside waiting for the AA, having filled the diesel tank with petrol - a very expensive error. No doubt my dad is slightly peeved, but he's done it more than once, as I hope mother reminds him.

After that, it was off to Marcus Brigstocke, and his God Collar routine. He is, quite simply, a very funny man with an interestingly varied career for a posh bloke. Eating disorders, working on oil rigs, podium dancer at the Ministry of Sound, Oxbridge and an excellent line in angry, witty liberalism. That's harder than it sounds, by the way: it's easy to be an angry, witty lefty, but expounding satirical disappointment with the world while trying to see every point of view can leave you in danger of having no clear line. Not Marcus. He'd like to believe in god, but can't quite manage it - the show is essentially his exploration of apologetic atheism and the various inconsistencies which mark religion as a bundle of common sense mixed up with weirdo mumbo-jumbo. Highly recommended. He does have a thing about circumcision though, and plots to make the interval specially uncomfortable for the gentlemen by asking them to check, while standing at the urinals, who's been telling the truth…

Thanksgiving be to God

Last weekend I went to my American friends' house for a Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. I still don't know why Canadians celebrate a different date… 

We had the driest martinis known to man (3 drops of vermouth in several inches of gin), leading to an outbreak of unconsciousness later, delayed only by glorious turkey, roast sweet potatoes and homemade pies of pecan and pumpkin, while being regaled by tales of NYPD wit. Photos will be forthcoming. 

On Sunday, we went to Evensong at Worcester Cathedral. An atheist Catholic, a fairly lapsed Anglican and a non-observant Jew. There probably is a God: Evensong was off the menu and instead of glorious, resonant music rolling round that great space, a couple of pompous toffs droned unintelligibly for half an hour, using colons like sledgehammers…