The House Husband

I’m getting quite keen on embedding video in blog posts. So, today, we have an odd little film about Day-z.

I called her and then started filming. She came to me then turned straight back to Mirinda when she realised I wasn’t serious. The thing is, Mirinda had a bowl of cereal. Day-z is quite committed to bowls of cereal. A little later in the day, following study and gardening, she watched me intently from Mirinda’s knee.

Day-z keeping a keen eye out for the appearance of anything edible

I’m not sure what she was expecting but she didn’t get it.

It was Good Friday today. Everything was open in Farnham (albeit some establishments opened later than usual) so it was just like any other day. This is quite good for an atheist. Easter Sunday, on the other hand, is going to be a right pain because everything will be closed. This means I have to plan food a day ahead. This is not something I enjoy.

And there was a lot of religious hoo ha on the radio. Radio 4 seemed to highlight Jesus every time I turned it on and then, in the afternoon while I was gardening, and before I fell asleep in the sun listening to the football, I switched to Radio 4 Extra and what was on? The bloody Life of Jesus! And so I put the football on (Crystal Palace and…someone else) and then fell asleep it was so interesting. Naturally I’m blaming Radio 4 for not finishing in the garden.

Talking of religious appropriation…today I went looking for a simnel cake. I’d never heard of them but Mirinda had some during the week and loved it. I was despatched to find some. I didn’t and so I’m going to make one tomorrow but that’s not the point. It seems that simnel cake has become yet another symbol of Easter.

Originally made in Medieval times, young girls in service would bake a simnel cake for their mothers and take it to them on Mothering Sunday. Since appropriation, eleven little balls of marzipan have been added to the top. These represent the eleven apostles, Judas being left out because he was a little too interested in money. Actually I’ve never been convinced with Judas committing suicide. It seems very unlikely and highly suspicious.

No-one knows why the simnel cake is called a simnel cake. The best anyone can come up with is that it derives from the Latin word simila, meaning fine, wheaten flour which was used in making it. Why the church decided to steal the idea and make it their own is anyone’s guess but it probably involves treachery and an attempt at boosting attendance with a familiar symbol.

Speaking of Easter traditions…I listened, agape (one of the guys Mirinda works with is a total gaper and I just love the idea) the other day while one of the girls in Starbucks related for us the Czech version of Easter. Apparently (and I’ve verified it elsewhere) the boys in her village would go around with these light whips and try and whip the girls legs in exchange for chocolate (it was eggs originally but, understandably, people prefer chocolate now). It was seen as an indication of how gorgeous you were if a lot of boys whipped you a lot. However, the biggest and bestest was if they grabbed you and threw you in the river. Nice.

Now the rabbits I understand when it comes to Easter. It is, after all, a festival time to celebrate the renewal that arrives with spring. For some reason, rabbits popping out and nibbling away at the new growth is a strong springtime image. And eggs as well. Obviously the result of springtime friskiness by the birds. A lot of countries have eggs as Easter symbols.

But why did they become chocolate? When was it considered a good thing to introduce confection to both the Rite of Spring and the Death of Jesus? I love chocolate as much as any other normal person but really…I don’t see it. Was it a fiendish piece of marketing genius by Cadbury’s back in Victorian times? I could probably find out by Googling “why do we have chocolate eggs at Easter” but I’m not going to. I like to think it’s a big conspiracy by the capitalist overlords, perpetrated on the poor and weak. That’s more fun.

Carmen trying to resist my hugging her

I’m just going to finish with this delightfully affectionate photograph of me hugging Carmen. She is clearly enjoying it a LOT!

I looked around the room. I didn’t see any obvious physicists. It was baffling. Tonight was our first Humanist meeting. We didn’t know what to expect and, seriously, how could we have expected what we sat through tonight.

So, what is a Humanist, I hear you asking. Well, thanks for asking. Basically, a Humanist tries to make sense of the world without resorting to silly myths, fairy tales or other religions. A Humanist takes a human-centric view of the world. It sort of really fits well in my ideas of life. I really hate the way that people blame things on invisible creations of primitive humans. People are flawed because they are flawed, not because God made them that way. Religion is not a catch all, excuse bucket. Though many use it as one.

But I don’t want to debate the wrongs of religion because I’m pretty sure my mother would stop reading pretty soon. I want to talk about tonight’s meeting because it’s much more entertaining.

But before I do…a picture of a deflating balloon…

A Virgin hot air balloon that landed in Farnham Park

It fell to earth as we walked along the path into Farnham for our date with the Humanists. It had nothing to do with god, it just landed where it landed because…because of gravity.

So, into the Hop Blossom we marched and then wandered out the back where a nice sized room was waiting with lots of chairs arranged in a circle. We took a couple after chatting with two of the committee and waited.

This bit is going to be a bit tricky because Mirinda told me to be nice. This basically means I can’t say very much. Actually all I can say is that if this was the first Humanist meeting I’d been to and I didn’t get to chat to a really nice guy who convinced me otherwise, I would NEVER go back. It was really, really bad. The sort of thing that gives Humanists a bad name. Sort of like the Catholics during the Inquisition. OK, not REALLY like that but it sure did give them a bad name.

We had two discussions (and I use that word in it’s broadest sense) from members of the group. One on Art and the other on…I’m really not sure what the second one was about. It wandered everywhere and never really came back. Both discussions were way too broad in scope (the scope in the second discussion was so broad it met itself coming back around the curvature of the universe) and when it was question time, made it impossible to ask a question. Though that didn’t stop everyone.

There were questions. And there was some lively debate among the group, not just agreeing and cheering the speakers. That was refreshing.

Next month there will be a guest speaker from the Skeptics in the Pub group which should be a whole lot better.

As I sat in Starbucks this morning, merrily reading The Uses of Literacy by Hoggart (a book recommended by Prof Frank Webster, which looks at the sociological aspects of the working class of Britain in the early 1950s), an idea struck me regarding the success of religion.

In a simplistic sense, the rich need the poor to survive on very little in order for them to maintain their wealth. What better way to keep up the status quo than to assure them that they will have a better life after they die if they suffer a lot beforehand. To cement this, the wealthy (or those in power, who, generally speaking, are always the wealthiest) put in place rules such as “workers MUST attend church on Sunday!” after working the rest of the week. They must be devout. They must pray and be absolved any sins. And so on and so forth. In this way, earthly suffering will be rewarded with eternal pleasures. A bilblical instance is the fact that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why does being wealthy exclude you? You may still be a good person. Just another way of subjugating the worker class. They can cock their snooks at the rich! Yay!

And then we have the wonderful situation where the wealthy had to pay the church in order to assure their places in heaven! An excellent way to maintain the livelihood of the priesthood while still controlling the others. Classic.

Further, and more fundamentally, Jesus said that the meek shall inherit the earth and this merely solidifies this. Naturally the powerful will push this one. Stay meek, stay religious, keep your belief in a hereafter and everything will be wonderful when you die. What a great motivation to maintain a worker class. It’s the donkey and carrot on a stick analogy and it works. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the majority of humans just want to relax and know everything is being taken care of. Which gives veracity to my theory of how religion started.

As we left behind our nomadic life and built great settlements which became towns and then city states, the results of our labours were stored in bigger and bigger amounts. You can imagine a small settlement going out each day to forage and hunt, returning to their huts to find they’d been robbed by some leftover group of nomads or animals or flood or fire or…well, any number of things. The brightest spark in the village declares that someone should be left behind to keep watch. He (or she) could be smart AND lazy or, perhaps doesn’t hunt or gather very well. Next time the settlement is left, this person remains behind, ostensibly to guard the wealth.

Clearly not an onerous job, the guardian kicks back and invents new ways to get out of work. It’s not a long way to imagine stories growing from such an idle profession. Eventually these stories turn to supernatural things which he (or she) has saved the settlement from. This is not a long way from the high priest, demanding food and wealth from his followers in order to guarantee their safety. The idea of a heaven came later and, I believe, was a natural extension when the priest realised he couldn’t actually control the weather.

On Saturday, Professor Fagan introduced me to the Guatemalan pyramid at Tikal. Here was a structure from which the high priest would emerge and proclaim that he (for it was always a he) was the sole representative of the gods on earth (sort of like the pope). It was he alone who could ask the gods to be lenient, to bring good weather for the crops.

However, looking carefully at the pyramid reveals that four deep channels along each side collected rainwater, passing it along to the irrigation systems (they collected rainwater in the same way that our gutters do today). This was clearly a technological and scientific invention which had nothing to do with gods or priests and was made specifically for this purpose. And this is made quite clear by the fact that when the droughts came and the people were starving, they would kill the priest and install someone new because the old one was clearly out of favour. Not a great career move in this instance. Surely if the powerful truly believed in their gods, they wouldn’t have bothered with the channels and irrigation systems, knowing that their gods would provide.

Heaven, of course, creates a great escape clause for the priests (as well as that wonderful old saw that God works in mysterious ways), putting an end to, basically, putting an end to the priests!

Anyway, lecture over.

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The woman in Waitrose was much happier today. When I asked her why she was so miserable yesterday, she told me about a horrendous fall she took outside the bank. Her long list of injuries, combined with the fact that she had to contnue working more than adequately explained her misery.

In the Just Too Ridiculous box, I have found the following item. Apparently, a Christian group in America have organised to send hundreds of solar powered bibles to the people of Haiti. Now, apart from the bizarre, what really strikes me as odd about this is how Christians should be selflessly helping these people with things they need. Perhaps if the solar powered bibles also had a torch in them, it would help a bit. I am truly mystified that these people could be so ridiculous.

You can read about it here, on an Australian news site. I read about it in a blog I subscribe to called J-Walk, which is here. Though I should warn you, it gets pretty controversial and is not religion-friendly.

Being Tuesday, Nicktor came to stay so we could finally go and watch Aldershot. The pitch was lovely and green, the crowd was noisy. We played very well and so did they (Rochdale). At half time the score was nil all but it had been fast and furious. A quick half time beer and back to the terraces.

Rochdale scored! We fought hard and in the dying moments of the game, snatched one back. And so it ended. 1-1. Well deserved. The crowd was happy.

We caught the bus home and are about to watch a movie and have a few drams.

It was a beautiful day today.  The skies were crystal clear blue and it didn’t get any hotter than 5 degrees.  All change for tomorrow though.

Mirinda still sick.  She sleeps for three hours then wakes up for an hour.  Sleeps for another three hours.  And so it goes.  Her newest symptom appears to be a headache.  And being tired.

Starbucks ran out of hazelnut syrup!  I had the last drops yesterday.  I had to make do with almond syrup today.  It’s just not the same.

I can safely say nothing of any import happened today.  I went shopping, had a coffee, went home, worked on my JavaScript for DITA, made lunch, took the dogs for a walk.  Ho hum.  Doesn’t give me a lot to blog about.  but then I read a very good article about the guy who tried to blow up the plane on Christmas Day.  And that had me thinking.

The only reason we have suicide bombers is because they think they are going somewhere after they die.  Being an atheist, I think this is stupid but it’s true, nonetheless.  Who, in their right mind, would blow themselves up if they knew they were just going to die?  And there was nothing else?  What is the point?

Now I don’t care what religion someone follows, but if they claim to be expecting to go somewhere after they die, I think they’re listening to just so much hockum.  What is wrong with THIS life?  Live it, love it, die without regrets.  I guarantee, without religion, less people would go round killing other people as readily as they do now.

But that’s the trouble with religion.  You can’t convince someone who’s been convinced by someone else that the impossible exists.  Otherwise, what do they have to look forward to?  Think about it:  a miserable life in some poor, desolate mud hut with little to eat and some guy comes and tells you about the wonderful things waiting for you after you die.  Who wouldn’t want to rush things along a bit.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!  I hate it!  Stupid, stupid humans.  I don’t see any gorilla’s worshipping the Great Pineapple.

Anyway…I’ve finished my JavaScript and uploaded it.  I am now very happy.  Not that I’ve finished my assignment but the worst is over.

If you want to read the article, it’s here.

Lovely blue skies over snow white land and quite chilly.  Paths slippery!

Today we were due to journey into London (Mirinda being off work over Christmas) to meet Karen and Nigel to see the new wing at the V&A.  Last night, Mirinda started coughing and hacking and generally sounding ill which could have had something to do with the lack of buttons on her coat and getting covered in sleet and snow.  All that added up to me going into London and leaving my sad and sorry wife snuggled up in bed as I ventured forth into the freeze.

I had watched a feature on the new gallery on The Culture Show a few weeks ago and was really keen to see it.  When I mentioned it to Karen, she suggested we all meet and see it.  A sort of final day out I guess.  It is fantastic.  For someone like me who is into just about everything but particularly religious iconography, mythical sculpture and St Sebastien, it was pretty much close to heaven.  As we strolled through the rooms, I mentioned to Nigel that it was exactly like any of our tours of Europe – me and churches!

Karen, it seems, does not like religious iconography, finds it unpleasant to look at.  I told her it was because she didn’t know how to read them; didn’t know the stories behind the images.  I described a few of them to her but she remains unconvinced.  I, however, loved every minute.  Well, except for the carpets.  I really cannot get particularly excited about carpets.

The were two Saint Sebastiens though!  One glorious little statue in silver and gilt by Hans Holbien the Elder.  Here’s a picture of it.

San Sebastien

The fine detail is wonderful.  It only stands about 300mm high.  It is exquisite.  It was my favourite piece in the whole gallery.

In saying that, there were a couple of honourable mentions for best in gallery.  The first goes to the oddly named Bartmann Jugs.  I thought the name was a joke and had something to do with The Simpsons but no, these things came first.  They were vessels which depicted bearded men, looking quite serious.  The head was generally at the top, beneath the neck of the jug, and the body of the jug was the man’s body.  They were generally of quite generous proportions!  Clearly very well fed with the contents of the jug.  They seriously looked quite odd.  I’ll post them on the site later along with the other V&A photos I took.  I have and they’re here.

The other honourable mention and equally odd, was a carved tufa fireplace decoration.  It showed hunting scenes and had lots of animals and people doing all sorts of hunting things.  Nothing unusual there at all.  Until you looked really closely.  One of the men had the bottom of his trousers ripped off and was showing his pants which, on close inspection, appeared to be a pair of frilly French knickers!  I kid you not.  It was made between 1510 & 1530 in Padua, Italy.

We spent quite a long time in the gallery so it’s possibly a good thing Mirinda stayed in bed!  About half way through Karen popped off to see another exhibit while Nigel and I finished.  It was then off for lunch.

When I used to visit Karen at work and we’d go for lunch, we had taken to visiting a nice little French place, not far from the V&A.  It served vast quantities of salmon and scrambled eggs and the staff were always pleasant.  We decided this would do for lunch.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered it had changed into an Italian place with a window full of cakes.

According to the manager, it was originally the Italian place then changed to French and has now returned to what it should be.  They now have pizza.  I was once more in heaven.

Karen told us a funny story as we ate.  They, naturally, have been extremely busy packing up, cleaning, selling and generally dispersing their worldly goods to all manner of places, in preparation for their return to Australia.  One box of stuff was destined for a charity shop and was safely situated in a cupboard, waiting for it’s trip downstairs.  On Sunday, Karen and Nigel came over, bringing with them their last bits and pieces, wine for Christmas day and Christmas presents.  I didn’t put the presents under the tree as Carmen was a little too interested in them.  Apparently, there are no present for me in the bag.  They were taken to the charity shop by accident and distributed to the ends of Wimbledon.  Because Karen always buys me odd things from odd places around the world, she couldn’t possibly re-buy them.  They are likely to be quite rude so I’m a tad concerned about some frail old volunteer opening the box and getting a fright

It was sort of a sad day, really.  Though we’ll see them on Christmas day, I realised today how much I’m going to miss Karen.  Still, she’ll only ever be an email away!