Living for Disco

I don’t usually do memes, as I have said before. However, this one is in aid of Clare, who is stuck in the Big Blogger house, and needs votes. Mind you, so does my other incarcerated friend Papersurfer. So, go vote. For someone.

(1) Tell your readers three things about you that would make you the Ideal Housemate if you were imprisoned in a house with ten random strangers for weeks on end. Then three things that’d make you the Housemate From Hell.

(3) Tag as many people as possible with this meme. Quickly! The voting ends at midday on Mon 2nd July!

OK. Why would I make the perfect housemate? Well:

1. I have a history of sharing accomodation with complete lunatics. I’m serious. I know there’s a rule that says if there’s three or more of you in a house, and you think no-one is weird, or nuts, or scary, then the weird/nuts/scary one is you. However, that’s never happened to me. This means that if you live in a house with me, not only will you have a shining example of how to be normal, but you’ll never be bored, because I am a magnet for freaks.

2. I always make sure that number 2s are fully flushed before leaving the bathroom.

3. I am excellent at sharing bottles of wine with people. Therefore anyone sharing a house with me will always have a convivial, erudite and witty drinking companion for those post breakfast lulls in conversation.

And as for my faults, there are but few. However, if I dig really hard, I can tell you that:

1. Darlings, I live alone. Anyone else occupying my space does so on the proviso that they become a slave to my whims.

2. I refuse to eat anything that has mayonnaise in it, or near it. I am usually fairly dramatic about this (convulsions, retching, turning blue), and this could put other people off their food.

3. All chocolate in the house is mine. Mine. Do you hear me? I’ll defend it with my life, and I have very sharp nails.

So, anyone else want to answer these questions? Please feel free to be tagged.

Yes, I’m off on holiday again. This holiday is one of the reasons I haven’t been posting much. I’m very excited about it, and haven’t really been able to think about much else, really. Not that there is anything of interest going on.

My mail has yet again failed to arrive, I’ve been battering my liver with fine wines and trying to keep out of the cold. And in Namibia itself, there’s been the usual spate of shootings, lootings and rapes - the papers are full of them. In Keetmanshoop last week, believe it or not, a 36 year old man was run over on the road, and not only did the car fail to stop, but so did the two cars that also ran over the body while it lay in the road. You see why I’ve been uninspired.

Anyway, my holiday. Much more important, I think. I’m leaving on Sunday, and will return to the blog on Monday 25th. In the meantime, if there is anything else you’d like to know about me, or Namibia or the world, once again, bung the qs in the comments box.

Ta luvvies. Back in a week.

There is a big party going on in my head. The glitterati of the planet Blah have got all dressed up in their finery and are having a riot. When they have calmed down and gone away, I will be back. Until then, I’m off to find some nurofen.

My colleague, with whom I share a tiny office, has a speaking voice that you can hear from space. He is one of the natural wonders of the world, I swear.

I am sitting here, listening to him trying to explain over the phone how to use a computer. The person on the other end has never used a computer before. I have been advocating for training in basic computer skills for all our staff, because none of them really knows how to use them for anything other than downloading music and propagating nasty viruses. Of course, now the computers have been delivered, but the training hasn’t.

This is what I can hear (at 1,000,000 decibels):

“Now you need to put the reports into Microsoft Word.”

…..

“Microsoft word. It is on the new computer. You need to open it.”

…..

“OK, switch the computer on. Now, did you get the CD I sent you?”

…..

“Put it in the computer.”

….

“There is a place in the box where you put in the CD.”

….

“No, you need to press that button.”

And he hasn’t even managed to open Word yet. Hours of time wasted, trying to work out how to click into tables and enter information. And it will be a matter of days before the thing is full to bursting with trojans and worms or whatever, and we have to get the IT guys out again to clean it up.

Sigh.

A few things are making me a bit cross today. One of them I will write about tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d like to give this article a bit of a skewering. I don’t know why I’m bothering really, because he skewers himself quite nicely, with what is an outpouring of overblown, fantastically generalised, badly argued rhetoric, but I’m cross, so I will.

Apparently, according to Theo Hobson, ‘Atheism is pretentious in the sense of claiming…to know what belief in God entails, and what religion, in all its infinite variety, essentially is’. In addition to this all atheists fundamentally object to religion, and are on a mission to eradicate it from the face of the earth. He is taking as his example Christpher Hitchens, who has just publisehd a book entitled “God is not great: How religion poisons everything”.

He makes these pronouncements, and then negates any reasonable argument (for example on the grounds that an atheist is godless, or denies the existence of god, and doesn’t necessarily conform to any ideology surrounding that denial) by saying, in essence “Well, atheists would say that”. That’s mature, Theo - I haven’t used that kind of argument since I was in primary school. Would you please explain to me why that makes me wrong, or why it vindicates your ignoranct generalisations?

He then goes on to say that atheism in itself is a faith. I actually don’t understand how he can have arrived at this conjecture. Just because Christopher Hitchens believes that standing up to dogma will encourage people to use their brains does not mean that all atheists have faith in the fact that this will make the world a better place. My personal beliefs are about a lack of faith in a God. If I agree with Hitchens, does that mean I take his book and those of all other atheist philosophers as my bible? That I am therefore by default on some kind of anti-religious crusade? I don’t think so. I’ve been accused here before of laughing at people’s faith and of thinking it stupid. Perhaps to some extent I do, but people are entitled to believe what they want - although when it comes to things like honour killings and violence against abortion practitioners and faith-based conflicts I’ll hold my hands up and say that I think this aspect is harmful. It’s not just atheists who think so.

And as for the feeble joke about ’sexual repression’, shame on you Theo. You should know better than that. Women have been repressed by the pronouncements laid down in religious texts for thousands of years. It happened. Accept it.

And finally, he says “I consider the atheist’s desire to generalise about religion to be a case of intellectual cowardice. The intellectual coward is one who chooses simplicity over complexity and difficulty.” Oh bravo. I completely agree. Would you care to reread the what you just wrote? I know he says he’s talking about militant atheism, but it doesn’t sound that way to me.

It’s not religion that I have a bug bear with. It’s people like Theo who presume to tell me what I do or don’t believe, because believe me, they couldn’t be more wrong.