Rick's b.log - entry 2022/12/04

Advent calendars and semolina

Lidl's Christmas jumpers

Lidl have released their own Christmas jumpers but... I don't think they entirely thought this through.

Lidl Christmas jumper
(scan from publicity flyer)

That's not a Christmas jumper, that's an advert. A gigantic brightly coloured advert for Lidl that costs €11,99...

Saturday shock

Esta es la hora de los muertos no de los vivos!

One thing I'll miss if Twitter should die

It just HAS to be said.

Nothing quite like the immense satisfaction of watching somebody with a brain in their head putting a complete cockwomble in their place.
The Official eater of souls and pies (mainly pies) is just telling it like it is. ☺ ☺ ☺

BTW: I'm being hopefully optimistic. With half the staff laid off and half of those that weren't choosing to leave, it's a testament to the built-in resiliance that it's still going without problem. But without the staff, and a nutjob in charge who seems to interpret freedom of speech as "say what you want as long as it's not about me", it's only a matter of time.
The eater of souls and pies is also on the elephant-like mammal, but there's no amusing politics as the cockwombles aren't there.

God, what a mess

Interestingly, they only seem to have a category for "Non-believer". The thing is, there are different categories of non-believer just as there are different categories of believer. For example, an atheist is somebody who firmly believes there is no God, while an agnostic generally doesn't believe there is but neither do they believe there isn't.

Maybe in a world where the Chancellor breaks the economy to give bonuses to bankers while nurses (teachers, postal workers, civil servants, firefighters, security workers, lecturers, bus drivers, train drivers...) and where the Prime Minister talks about the need for stability while refusing to acknowledge that it was his predecessors who messed things up, where a minister gung-ho for inflicting Brexit chaos on the country wants to "sunset" thousands of pieces of EU legislation which will include all sorts of employee rights and environmental protections, and where a person can crater the economy and cause misery and chaos to everybody with loans and mortgages while walking away with little repercussion and the right to a cushy ex-PM pension, where people are right now choosing between heating and eating, and others are skipping meals so their children can eat, and schools are having to decide whether to pay their staff or heat classrooms all thanks to a largely failed energy policy that has seen energy prices go nuts, when the number of people using food banks and in actual poverty really ought to be a national embarrassment...
...with all of that, and the knowing that there's only more misery on the way, what place is there in modern Britain for a mystical beardy bloke in the sky?

None. That's the answer. And to ram this point home, one of the most prominent Catholics in the country is probably Jacob Rees-Smog, who is surely enough to make you question the value of the morals that believers are supposed to have. As for the Protestants, look who is the Defender Of The Faith nowadays. At least The Queen had integrity. Can't say the same for the bloke currently occupying the throne. Nor his bit on the side (never a Queen of any sort to me).

The country is a disaster. The architects of Brexit have done quite well financially from it, while you all suffer. But you won't know that as they'll ensure that the latest most up to date numbers of "illegal immigrants" will be shouted from every scummy right wing paper (which is most of them), themselves mostly owned or run by foreigners, so people will believe that about half the population is an immigrant (no, it isn't), the place is filling up with Muslims (no, it isn't), there are certain places where white natives cannot go (no, there aren't).
People will expend so much energy ranting about this and hating on random "foreigners" that they'll fail to understand that those who they look up to (the likes of Johnson and Farage) are hoodwinking them. Johnson has a net worth of about £1.67 million (source: Evening Standard), Nigel Farage is about £4M (source: Daily Express), Rees-Mogg is in the order of £100-150M if including his wife's inheritance (source: Tatler), so these are not people who will ever worry about heating or eating or paying other bills or mortgage rate rises. These are the people running the country into the ground for their profit whilst expecting you to pick up the tab.

There's no place for God in that scenario. No place for delusions. Only cold hard scary reality.

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J.G.Harston, 4th December 2022, 18:40

And many of the people ticking Christian will be people who went to Carols at Christmas at a church once.

Rick, 4th December 2022, 18:47

Hmmm. I go to the remembrance service every 1st November, but it's a gesture I do for mom. I'm not Christian nor would I ever think of myself as that.  I believe in science (hmm, wonder if anybody wrote that as the "Other" option?) with a dash of Wicca thrown in (if you're going to celebrate something, might as well be the bloody great ball of fire in the sky), plus a dash of Shinto (any belief with the concept of making a cat a "god" [*] is fine by me).    Didn't I do a blog article on this a few months ago? I forget...    * - A "Kami" isn't quite the same as a God as it is generally understood, but I guess the various Greek Gods are the closest analogy that works.

Rick, 4th December 2022, 18:50

...yup, I talked about it on the 1st of October. Conveniently after Ghost Day. 🎃

Gavin Wraith, 4th December 2022, 19:08

On the topic of faith I was pleased to find this online: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/carp/  Augustus Carp, the autobiography of a good man. I remember when I was little my parents, aunts and uncles rolling on the floor when reading this book. It expresses my feelings about the pious Xtian with pinpoint accuracy.  Tis the season of seasonal saccharine trash from the USA on the telly. My wife, who has a stronger stomach for it than I, has observed, after watching dozens of films, that all of them are essentially the same: the drinking of the hot chocolate, the happy townsfolk round the municipal Christmas tree, the whining children, the misunderstanding between lovers, the soppy music, ...  I am sure you understand. Is that a tic I see on Wednesday Addams' brow?  Happy Christmas Rick.

Rick, 4th December 2022, 19:29

Yeah, Netflix seems to have quite a lot of formulaic movies which are best described as "cute but essentially dumb American girl bumps into handsome looking bloke, they seem to like each other, HE'S A PRINCE, Christmas trees, snow, blah blah".  Yeah, I know Europeans have Royal Families but the number of Princes just wandering around is staggeringly low. Probably single digits for the entire continent.  (plus, as a Brit, I must observe that half of ours are over leftpondian ways where cute-but-clueless only needs to fall out of her front door to have as much chance of bumping into a Prince as us Europeans).

VinceH, 5th December 2022, 01:01

Hmm. Semolina. I haven't had that since it was on the menu for lunch... At school. I used to quite like it, so now I fancy keeping my eye out for some. 👍    Yes, I'm on Masty, but I'm not at all taken with it. I'll keep the account going, but if Twitter doesn't survive the Elongated Musket's handling of it I can't see myself using Mastodon as much as I did that.    On the subject of atheism, for a while I tended to point out that it's not that I believe there's no god, but that I don't believe there's a god - a lack of belief that there's something isn't the same as a belief that there isn't. The key point being a *lack* of belief; without it.    But when I did that, I was getting labelled as agnostic - and for me that's far, far worse. Especially when tolerating evangelical types, for whom someone they think is agnostic is someone they think has more potential to be persuaded, so they try harder.    So now I just snarl a bit. Much easier.

Rick, 12th December 2022, 19:26

Just to let you know, I'm still making and uploading the advent videos every day.  I'm just not doing a daily blog entry as well.  Subscribe to my (YouTube) channel for notifications, or just view the above video and click on the username for other videos...

J.G.Harston, 15th December 2022, 13:05

How old is Prince George? When William becomes King, George will be the most highly desireable early 20s batchelor in the world! :D

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