A Day Not Reading - #Oktoberfest #19 - Starbucks - A

Yesterday I sort of didn't read, I had finished the 400 page "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins which I have passed on to a friend and this morning I have started Philip Pullman's "The Secret Commonwealth" clocking in at close on 700 pages. After "The Illuminatus Trilogy" (800 pages) it seems I have been taking fairly hefty tomes to read.

The odd thing about "The Secret Commonwealth" is that it is the second in "The Book of Dust" Trilogy , the follow up to "His Dark Materials" but "His Dark Materials" is bookended by "La Belle Sauvage" and "The Secret Commonwealth" , this is not a problem , just unexpected.

I'm actually telling a fib because yesterday, as a respite from big books, I dipped into "Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt", poetry by The Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke which is always entertaining.

#Oktoberfest continues with a brand name that is generally associated with coffee, but sell anything they can these days, that is Starbucks. The song is "Starbucks" by the band "A" from the album "Hi-Fi Serious" who with a name like that are impossible to search for on Google (a bit like "!!!") . The song is more about the company's dodgy employment practices rather than the product but the product association will do for my #Oktoberfest sequence.

Dis Pepsi Max - #Oktoberfest #17 - Drink It Up - Negativland

Yesterday I decided I had a motherlode for #Oktoberfest in the songs of Tom Waits, which is obviously true enough, but I don't think I've touched The Pogues, The Dubliners , Thin Lizzy and many others and I saw an ad for Coca Cola and this reminded me of one of my favourite albums ever "DisPepsi" by Negativland and fantastic discontruction of advertising and the Pepsi / Coke war. It is a bit difficult to track down now but it is available at the time of posting on Youtube here. An absolutely essential listen.

It's chock full of subversive tunes that are probably more relevant today that when it came out around 1990, still often played by me and I am listening to it as I type this, "Happy Hero" is so pertinent to Trump, Johnson and Michael Jackson.

The song I've chosen is "Drink It Up" which mainly refers to Pepsi but lists lots of other promoted beverages, but the whole album is an essential listen but I have never heard it on the radio on any station.

So what else?

The blog has hit 20K visits for this month and we are just approaching half way so it would seem it's very popular (with robots). I'm even getting the odd comment (though mostly advertising links) which I may or may not remove.

I have finished "The God Delusion" and is has hardened my attitude to religion significantly but it's time for another book now. I would still accept God if that God turned up and demonstrated that was actually what he was.

Time for Tea.

Fridaying - #Oktoberfest #12 - Malt and Barley Blues - Mcguinness Flint

For some people Friday at finishing time is the best part of the week, you have the night ahead, you don't have to get up tomorrow (or the day after) and work is suddenly a distant memory. However a lot of my friends have to work weekends and the concept of a weekend is gone for them, a horrible side effect of our 24/7 society. I do remember shops shutting for a half day on Wednesday and I think Saturday and everything was shut on Sunday. It didn't really cause a problem but now people expect everything on tap.

That should have really come from technological advancement, but it's just coming from people having to work whenever they are needed and the gig economy. There is a place for zero hours contracts but not as permanent jobs.

Ironic that the Sunday Day of Rest has it's recent existence due to the Catholic Church and this at a time when my tolerance for religion is very thin thanks to the arguments and facts presented by Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion". Religion is like a signal flare in the hands of a child, it may be used to light the way but more often than not it does irreparable damage.

So because i am still run down and suffering from a cold I will leave you with "Malt and Barley Blues" the second single from McGuinness Flint (their first hit was "When I'm Dead And Gone" which would have been appropriate while talking religion), so enjoy this on your Friday night.

Armed - #Oktoberfest #9 - Tequila - Terrorvision

One of the things that reading "The God Delusion" does is arm you with plenty of logical constructs when someone comes at you with "... but The Bible says ..." . I actually do find Richard Dawkins ironically evangelical at times but given the power being wielded by Right Wing "Christians" and other religious extremists we are more than likely to find ourselves in that situation.

Don't get me wrong, a great deal of people find comfort in their religion and beliefs and do not force it on others and use it to force their will on others. It can also provide a life discipline, but for a lot of people going to church has been replaced by going to garden centres or going shopping.

Anyway here's the next #Oktoberfest song, and it was bound to come, we have "Tequila" by Bradford's Terrorvision. I originally spelt that as "Yequila" which is why I will never be able to touch type as I cannot trust what my fingers do.

My God! - #Oktoberfest #7 - Spill The Wine - Eric Burdon & War

When I started "The God Delusion" it was Richard Dawkins stated aim to polarise my views towards the non existence of God. While my opinion on the existence of God (I'll believe in God if it turns up and does something genuinely miraculous to prove it's credentials, in my 62 years I've yet to see anything) has not changed Dawkins has pointed out the harm that religion has caused over time along with  singular and mass situations from child murder to genocidal wars plus slavery and misogyny as the norm.

Until th World Trade Centre was destroyed I was unaware that Islam and Christianity worshipped the same god, and as has been recently if there was one god there would be one religion. Dawkins book has made me considered my opinion of religion, as while for some people it does provide order and comfort, but for others it is a method of control and  division often used to implement abuse and harm.

Holy books were written by women and men to provide a way to implement their desired methods on people's way of life. I was also surprised to find out Mormon was as much a made up religion as Scientology ( a tax evasion by L Ron Hubbard) .

Ian Anderson on the cover of "Aqualung" in the text to "My God" put it perfectly.

"And In The beginning, Made Created God; and in the image of Man created he him"

Aqualung

So with that, I move on to #Oktoberfest and an appropriate piece would be "Spill The Wine" by Eric Burdon and War.

Have a good Monday everyone.

Junk

I woke up from another intense dream about taking an exam. I hate exams as I can never remember anything. I don't have any exams coming up and have no intention of taking any, so an odd subject to invade my dreamspace.

I've just read a (to me) complex section on genes and memes in "The God Delusion" but luckily this was interspersed by an excellent illustrative story of building an origami Chinese Junk which helped illustrate what Richard Dawkins was talking about fairly well to me.

This was swiftly followed by the concept of "Cargo Cults"  which show how quickly a cult can actually spring up, and this bit piqued my interest about Mormonism when it was given as an example along with Scientology of "Intelligently Designed" religion. I knew Scientology was set up by L Ron Hubbard ("Barefaced Messiah" is a brilliant book on the subject by former Scientologist Russell Miller) , a second rate science fiction writer and first class con man  / charlatan because he found out churches didn't have to pay taxes. It turns out that Mormon was a similar exercise by Joseph Smith.

This is an excuse to play "Junk" by Paul McCartney from his debut album from nearly fifty years back.

Have a great Monday everyone.

Guess What?

It's either a certain TV program or continue wit "The God Delusion" or write a blog post, so I've chosen the latter.

Yesterday I posted a couple of short videos of the vinyl copy of "This is The Moody Blues" which reminded me of the excellent "Bluejays" album by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. A fellow fan sent pictures of their copy of the album, and I remember the single "Blue Guitar" was ok but not brilliant but I loved "I Dreamed Last Night" and love the coda from "When You Wake Up" which I will include and am playing as I write this.

I used to use MusicMatch but couldn't get it to run under Windows 10 , so have drifted between iTunes and VLC and VLC seems to have just died so I've got the the "Bluejays" album playing using Windows Media Player. That has reminded me just how many versions of Windows I have been through since I started this blog, but probably best not to think too much about that because I am sure there will be another one along at some point.

Though every upgrade seems to make the computer a bit slower, but maybe that's just psychosomatic, so anyway I shall listen to the rest of the album, though the thing about digital is that it is extremely convenient, you don't even have to look for the disc, of that means it's a lot easier to skip , skim and completely miss stuff on albums.

The thing is a lot of kids these days can't even listen to more that 20 seconds of a song before they get bored, I don't suppose they will ever enjoy classical or progressive music, but each to their own. Years ago a friend to me to watch X-Factor for the best new music. Grudgingly I did and someone was covering "Nights In White Satin" (a five minute song written by Justin Hayward for The Moody Blues' "Days of Future Past" album) and it finished on two minutes.

I remarked on this that the song was not original and it was curtailed and was told they did that with all the songs. I never bothered again.

Enjoy your Sunday evening.

Breadfan

September this year seems a bit weird for me. I feel there's a least a week left in September but it ends on Monday meaning that Tuesday we're into October and incidentally my birthday. Thought the week after it's my daughter's birthday and I always think I have more time to sort her card and present out and often end up consulting her Amazon wishlist the day before. I will do that this weekend.

The other day I went to the Strawberry and was thinking while I like their toasties I'm not really that much of a bread fan these days. Really if you are trying to keep the weight off bread is best avoided. That reminded of the seventies Welsh Metal band Budgie who had a song called "Breadfan" (covered by, among others , Metallica who do a more than decent cover) and thought that would be a good title / subject for a post. Some more of their excellent titles include "In The Grip of A Tire Fitters Hand", "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman" and "Crash Course In Brain Surgery" (Budgie not Metallica).

Still on "The God Delusion" and it is teaching me a lot about Cosmology and Physics and I'm finding it more scientifically instructional than anti God / Religion although Dawkins has no time for ignorance and using God as an explanation for things we don't yet have an answer for.

So it's Friday morning , time for work, and I'll leave you with "Breadfan" by Budgie with excellent static Roger Dean cover.

Anthropic

When you are reading a book it helps if you know what the words you are reading actually mean and I am still sort of getting my head round The Anthropic Principle which basically means that if the universe were not capable of supporting life then we wouldn't be hear to wonder about it . This is the weak version, follow the link or search google for more information.

It is coming up a lot in "The God Delusion" where I am up to so far and does sort of make sense to me but I also feel it's far above my intellectual level (which is not very high anyway, 2 "A" Levels , 5 "O" Levels and something in Business Studies) but I wont let it stop me from reading this book.

The blog visits are probably going to hit 300K in the next month and at this rate half a million could happen in the next six months. That is something that I didn't expect as the Feedburner thing is continuing unbroken this time, although it may stop after two months, but we shall see.

September has seen 34K visits which is an all time record following the previous record of 27K last month and 25K in June which smashed the previous record of 10K in October 2013.


So we'll go for "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" by Pink Floyd from "A Saucerful of Secrets" which seems vaguely appropriate for me with a suitable video. Apparently Stanley Kubrick wanted to film an adaptation of Dune with a soundtrack performed by Pink Floyd... it would have been 14 hours long. This song was the only one to feature all five members of Pink Floyd Phas I

I'll set my mind to understand more.

Bore

I keep wanting to write a really short post , one or two words to see what happens, if it causes any reaction, but as you can see it's not going to happen in this one. I once saw a blog where every post was just a link, I don't know if it was paid links but there was no description so it seemed a little pointless although if it was a pay per click link that could be lucrative if robots actually count as clicks.

This blog has links to Amazon as you will see from the strib at the bottom , plus Google ads that pay me about a pound a week,  and links to Topcashback who give me £7.50 if you join and sign up. These days that's about it. Amazon however keep introducing more rules not to pay, but this is after it becomes so integral to your site that it's more hassle to remove them than just leave them in.

I've sort of decided that I want to hit another annual record for posts but we shall see if that happens, I need to post about 25 times a month til New Years Eve.

This must rate as one of the most pointless, uninformative, boring posts I've ever done because it tells you nothing interesting or outside of my life bubble.

I am a quarter of the way though "The God Delusion" and Dawkins is currently pointing out the glaring error that are the various bibles which the historical inaccuracies and the the scriptures that were deemed "not good enough" (ie  too ridiculous).

6Music music played something from Penguin Cafe now led by Arthur Jeffes since the sad death of his father and have dropped the Orchestra part of the name. I went to their site and found this fifteen minute Tiny Desk Concert which is very good. I love the brilliant use of repetitive motifs in their music which continues their sound in an almost hypnotic fashion. I counted four "Peaky Blinders" caps in the video

So it it turns out that I did find something worthwhile to include in this post.

Have a great Saturday.

Satellite

At the current rate of views I will have had 300K visits by mid October. The Feedburner boost is still continuing so I'm getting more than a thousand visits a day. This is a huge surprise but do wish it would translate into actual followers or something, but what the hell SevenDaysIn is popular with someone or something.

I wasn't going to write this, like I wasn't going to write the last post, but I am feeling weirdly tired but also wide awake. I think my mind is tired and so is my body , but my body does not want sleep, it wants to keep doing things, hence the fingers to keyboard causing this bog post to take shape. I am expecting maybe a hundred words or so then I will crash into bed and fall asleep maybe.

This morning when the alarm went off I was in some kind of deep sleep state and I really did not want to leave my bed, but, as always, I did and crawled to the bathroom still wanting to turn around and sleep.

Stepwise I hit 17.5K steps today that's about  five and a half miles.

I heard the sing "Satellite" by The Hooters today and it is still brilliant taking it out of the televangelists so sort of appropriate given I am reading "The God Delusion".

So before Saturday comes I will share this nugget of prose with you.

Connection

I'm just writing this to share a great song which I heard on the Warner Brothers Music Show compilation that I bought for 59p on vinyl when it first came out, and to be quite honest every song on it was, and still is, excellent. The song is Montrose's cover of The Rolling Stones' "Connection" and is a universe away from the dreadful "Insania" by Peter Andre that I shared in my last post.

"The God Delusion" is providing a lot of thought provoking entertainment, and it's shots are mainly at organised religion, which mostly has as it's foundation an unquestionable belief in a God with an evidence free existence. Richard Dawkins just listed a few or the reasons given supporting the existence of God with a full list here

It's Friday morning and time for work. I know this is very short but I really couldn't get motivated to write, but also wanted to share the Montrose song and would highly recommend that LP if you can play vinyl. You should be able to pick it up for a fiver.

Have a good day.

Spiderversary

I don't know where that title came from. Maybe it was wandering past Be More Geek the other day. Add that to the Spiderverse that I know nothing about apart from it's something to do with Spiderman  but it's another area of Marvel Comics that loses me , along with the DC rivalry. It's a way you can extend and make up words the "verse" bit obviously taking me to "adversary" / "anniversary" . Peter Andre would be proud.

Really starting to enjoy "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and was surprised that his seven point scale from Total Theist ("I Know God Exists, I Don't Need Evidence") to Total Atheist ("I Know God Doesn't Exist, I Don't Need Evidence") I'm at the same level that he puts himself, level six where on the evidence so far there is no God but if he turns up I will change my mind because that would be hard evidence.

My Google Pixel phone just took an age to update to Android 10 so we will see if anything changes with that. It took quite a long time and the download size was 1 Gigabyte which is fairly hefty especially over wifi.

So I am tempted to use Peter Andre's "Insania" because he was so proud that he'd "made up a word" but good taste says that I should not include such trash, but then I love trashy music and film so that says I should include Peter Andre.

So why not, we will have Peter Andre's "Insania". I've just realised that this will be the first time I've ever heard it I think. I may have just blanked the horror of it from my memory though. Listened to it and it is bloody awful ☺

It's also National Talk Like A Pirate Day and Lambchop have a song to celebrate that. I only just found that out. C'est La Vie.

Enjoy Thursday.

Alarm

Is there anything more disappointingly annoying than waking up warm and in the dark, checking the time to see it's one minute before the alarm is meant to go off, then do you wait, switch it off , get up or what? I waited.

Continuing on "The God Delusion" and the treatment of atheists is absolutely disgusting bry religious zealots and idiots. We are seeing this is the USA today where Christianity has been engineered as a power grabbing money making machine and woe betide anyone who questions it. One example was an atheist who wanted to protest against a faith healer who was telling diabetics to throw away their insulin and cancer sufferers to stop their treatment and pray for a miracle. He contacted the local police department about protection from the faith healer's supporters and was threatened in no uncertain terms by everyone in the police department because he was questioning "god's work".

I keep using a lower case "g" for god because in my sixty one years I have yet to see any evidence of a god, though seen plenty of evidence of the harm caused by religion.

It looks like another cold but bright day today and I was surprised to see that I was up to series five of "Parks and Recreation" so still 55 episodes to go but a lot nearer the end than I thought, and thoroughly enjoying it.

So this weekend Sky Arts are screening a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film of "Quadrophenia" and to be honest I have never watched it, although I love the album and thought the classical version with Alfie Boe in the was very good. I will be recording all the Sky Arts programs and will get round to watching the film which one of the many unwatched films in my DVD collection.

So we will go for a live take of "The Real Me" the opening song from the the "Quadrophenia" album.

Answer

I am enjoying, if that's the right word, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins but seems to be more against  organised controlling religion and by extension the monotheist "god" which is the focus of most religion. I'm a tenth of the way through the book and think that at some point he will take aim and my own belief that evolution won't waste our consciousness but I have no evidence or reason to believe that, but you can never satisfactorily prove the non-existence of something, and also the fact that we cannot explain something means we have not found the answer. I couldn't really explain how a plane flies but it's not supernatural, magic or the will of god.

Also I wonder if Richard Dawkins would have a problem with people who worshipped the Earth and believed when they die become one with the Earth. He couldn't really argue with the basic premis.

Often religion is a search for "the answer" and two books spring to mind that provide the solution.

The first being Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" which gives that answer as 42 but the tells us you need to know what the question was.

The next is "Venus on the Half Shell" written by Philip Jose Farmer under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, a creation of the amazing Kurt Vonnegut. Basically the protagonist is searching for God to ask, in his opinion, the ultimate question:

Why are we born to suffer and die?

Through many adventures he eventually comes face to face with God and asks his questionand God answers:

Why Not?

A great ending to the book.

And just a thought, why doesn't the Christian God have a proper name? It's like calling your dog Dog (ironically a palindrome of God) and what the heck is the Holy Ghost ?

So what to go with this morning , maybe "Converted" by The Alabama 3 from "Exile on Coldharbour Lane" which my friend Tom glared at me as they broke into the chorus "Let's Go Back To Church* but by the end of the gig even he was converted.

Atheist

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and the foreword tells me that anyone reading this will be an Atheist if they finish it. This is the sort of evangelical preaching that annoys me about Richard Dawkins. I ton't like being told I am wrong without empirical evidence and I almost want to say I believe in God just to spite him.

I was made to go to church  by my parents until I was ten then it was my choice. I went to Catholic schools and some teachers every week tried to trip you up on what had happened in mass and certain pupils would tell teachers that you hadn't been to Church which resulted in various fors of denigration and punishment.

Jesuits taught me at secondary school and some of them were extremely logical by admitting that only faith could justify their position. That earned my respect because they were fine with people who were "unbelievers" .

Through my life I have come across lots of great religious people and none of them have tried to convert me.

In 62 years I have seen no evidence of God but I am always open to be proved wrong, that's PROVED wrong not told I'm wrong.

And I do have faith, faith that the sun will rise, faith that the light will turn on when I flick the switch, faith that the kettle will boil when I switch it on, a little less faith that I will get a phone signal or Amazon Prime will work when I want to watch a prong.

Because of evolution I believe that our minds continue after death, so it doesn't really bother me, but evolution tends to keep the good adaptable bits and in a lot of humans the mind is the most interesting and flexible part.

So "The God Delusion" is four hundred pages and quite a large book so think this will take me about a month to finish.

I'm still getting a thousand hits a day on the blog so the Feedburner thing  (something to do with syndicated content) is still working although a side effect is lots of visits from France for some reason though I can't say I'm complaining.

To go with this I'm going with "Faith" by George Michael just because I like it.

Morning

Is Saturday better than Friday? Friday has the anticipation of the two day weekend combined with the fact that it's the last day of work , whereas Saturday you can get up when you want , you don't have to go to work but you only have one more day before Monday comes around. This is not true for many people who work in retail, banks , call centres and the like so apologies to all those.

I once read of an American car shop who noticed that most of their sales came on Friday afternoon and Saturday so they changed their working week from Monday to Friday to Friday to Monday (that doesn't seem to make sense but it does) so employees went from a five day week to a four day week for the same pay and profits increased. This model wouldn't work for everything but is definitely an example of how you should always look to improve situations in a way that benefits everybody.

As I said I finished "Brief Answers To The Big Questions", the final Stephen Hawking book in around a week and it is a very interesting, easy and thought provoking read which I would recommend to everybody. My next book is going to be "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a far heavier tome but I do like Dawkins' sensible and logical arguments although he does, ironically, get a bit evangelical at times. Still I will see how it goes.

I;ve been enjoying the single "Ibtihaj" by Rapsody with GZA . I though "Ibtihaj" was some kind of acronym but it's actually the name of Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first female Muslim-American athlete to earn a medal at the Olympics. The chorus, male backing vocals sounds like a eerie Bowie song like say "The Bewlay Brothers". It is a great sound and I heard it again on Radcliffe and Maconie on 6Music this morning but Chris Hawkins has also been playing it.

Take a listen and definitely check out the books.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Books

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is finished and I had my eyes on three books to read next:

1. How To Stop Time by Matt Haig
2. Brief Answers To Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
3. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno by David Sheppard
4. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

That was roughly how they had ordered themselves in my mind so of course I chose "How To Stop Time" by Matt Haig. I started reading it and thought this sounds familiar, I then dipped into the various parts of the book and it came back to me. I have read it before. It's a great story, pure Matt Haig , but I don't need to read it again. I either must have another copy or I have given it away to a friend or charity shop. I'm sure someone else will benefit from this great book.

So next on the list was the Stephen Hawking book , his last published work and it is remarkably refreshing even with the forewords from Eddie Redmayne and Professor Kip Thorne the Hawking stars writing.... about stuff I do find difficult getting my head round but the analogy I have to use after "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is like I've been swimming in the weeds and rubbish at the bottom of an undredged canal, yes it's interesting and keeps your attention but is probably the lyrical equivalent of bog snorkelling, then coming to the Stephen Hawking book is like surfacing ing into clear , warm water that brings joy if unfamiliarity. There is still work to be done but it has become a lot more inviting and pleasurable.

The book is only 230 pages so will be finished this week but everything I have read by Stephen Hawking is always easy to read if not to understand. It makes you think and that is always and pleasure.

For some reason the song "Back To Life (Back To Reality)" came to mind so obviously that is what we will continue with on this beautiful Sunday.