Five things you don't know about me

Apparently, this is a very cute-good (is that sarcasm dripping from my mouth?) idea, started by someone, continued by someone else (in my case, itelli), to be ended by someone like me. Initially someone wrote on their blog 5 things that people don't know about them, and also named 5 more bloggers to do the same, and so on. Unfortunately for the game, there aren't 5 bloggers that read me (not even if I include myself), so I suppose this will be the end. Anyway, here goes:

1) I absolutely, utterly and completely hate this type of "game". As if I wasn't bored/busy enough on my own, I have to deal with other people's crappy "ha ha, we are all so joyful, and also such a strong community" type of ideas.

2) In the above point, I nearly wrote down "mental vomiting" instead of "ha ha..". Bet you didn't know that.

3) When you ask yourself why, oh why, since I hate this type of thing I still participate in it, I suggest you take a look at yourself and try to find some piece of clothing/electronics/sports item/pen/candle/torture instrument that has not, in one way or another, made this planet a worse place environmentally, socially, humanitarianly. People in Bangladesh suffer so you can type your blogs. Children in idea have made your clothes. Coral reefs in Australia are disappearing so you can watch football on your TVs. More children will die so you can go on cheap holidays. Do you like that? Do you want to stare in the face of the destruction you caused? Do you hate poverty/global warming/destroying of the planet/social inequalities/x children dying every second? You do? And yet you still use laptops/clothes/lights/power etc. Why? You hate all this, why become part of it?

4) I am not included in the previous point, since I am perfect by any standards. I make my own clothes and shoes, have assembled my laptop out of old cardboard boxes and golf balls, never get on a plane (but I do fly), heck, I even breathe my own air. Why? Read on.

6) This should be number 5. It's not. Number 5 reveals to the world that I'm Superman, so I took it out. Number 6 is not allowed, however, so I'll include no useful information here.

Well, that's it. If there's any bloggers out there that read this and want to contribute, please feel free to. If not, I just might be the Omega of this game.
The end is nigh!

A quick comment...

I find that the spontaneous photos I take are usually much better than the pre-planned ones. By that I mean that, whenever I carry a camera around with me without a specific plan for taking photos that day and do end up taking some shots, I much prefer them to the ones I take after careful planning and consideration.

All this is not too important. Just take a look at my new gallery, where I'll put shotos I took on my mobile without really planning to.

Bye for now!

Religion as we know it will expire in...

I've been watching this very interesting documentary about the Secret Gospels and the whole history behind them. Don't worry, I won't go about analysing the fine theological points that rise from accepting that these documents are indeed what their name implies, and what could the reasons behind the Church not accepting them as genuine might be. I shall spare you that, and perhaps write about it in a future post. Or not.
What impressed me was a phrase by the narrator about the importance of something having to be old to have credibility. I'd better explain this.
Apparently, back in the 2nd (or maybe 1st) century A.D., a scholar/theologist started thinking about the apparent contradictions between the God in the Old testimony and that of the new testimony. His explanation was that, in fact, it was two different gods (or should I write "Gods"?), and the new one came to save the world from the old. His suggestion then to define the christian faith (as that was the argument back then, how to define a specific set of sources from which christians would get their common beliefs, a necessity in any religion and belief, I think) was to exclude the old testimony, with all the jewish influences and references to a vengeful God, and just keep bits and pieces of (what was to later on become) the new testimony. So far so good, a man's opinion is a man's opinion. The narrator then proceeds to say that, indeed, the God of the old testimony had posed certain problems for the early church in relation to how He appears through the words of Jesus Christ, so the thought of scrapping the old testimony altogether came about. He then proceeds to saying that this did not happen, as the link to the old testimony is necessary to create a link to the past (the very beginning of all, according to the old testimony in fact), which is necessary to give credibility, status and a sense of history to christianity, which would otherwise appear as a religion that started with Jesus. Which it is, really, but the point was that if it had all been foreseen and expected for thousands of years by prophets etc it would mean that people would treat it as a religion with a long past and, hence, quite worthy of respect, trust and, well, belief.
So my question is: why is that? I mean, why do old things appear to have a different gravity and importance? Why are, for example, old universities considered better than new ones? And I mean old, not just twenty years old. I do accept the fact that the more time a certain person or institution has been around for, the more experience they have, but certainly after 100 years, why should it matter? I am attending a university that is one of the oldest in the UK (oldest in Scotland, which doesn't necessarily mean that much, but there you have it), having been around for, oh, almost 600 years. Is it better than a university that's been around for 200 years?
Let's go back to the religious argument again. Old religions get more respect, yes? Well, actually not quite. The older a religion is, the more credibility it has, until it hits some limit, after which it becomes a thing of old and fades away. Did you say something? Let me refresh your memory. Christianity, old and all, right, but has been around really for a little more than 2000 years. What about the religions before that? What ever happened to the roman religion? The ancient greek religion? The celt gods? The viking gods? The aztech/inca gods? And I'm sure there's about a million and one different religions that escape my memory. Please also note that I am referring to western religions, as there lies my personal experience - although I'd be curious to see what's the story with eastern religions as well. Anyway, there seems to come a certain barrier previous to which things are not considered worthy of respect, but relics of the past.
So, old things are considered good up to a certain point, and then are discarded off. Think of a (rather) lame example, such is technology (before anyone points out to me that this is different to religion, as technology is a product of man, I'll quickly point out that religion - not necessarily the belief in the existence of divine beings, but definitely religion as a set of determined rules and practices- is exactly the same, a man-made construction), whereby things go from being new and swanky to old and better to antiques admired by some to heaps of worthless junk. Is that the fate of religions as well? Historically speaking, it would seem so. It seems possible that people in the future, believing in Llama Almighty or whatever will look back on christianity, budhism, hinduism etc and just wonder what all the fuss is about.
But is it really? Or has science covered mankind's need for change so effectively that the need for more steady pillars of continuity makes us turn to religion, thus leading to the prolonging of religion's life expectancy? And, if that is the case, what will the future hold for us? Has anyone ever thought that the reason why religions seem to sometimes struggle with the present times, or with the new conditions of the world, might just be because they weren't meant to last this long?
Is the end (of old religions) nigh indeed?

Just a quick one...

"Van Helsing" is a crap movie. Says I. It's a Thursday night, and it's on the TV, and it's bad. Car crash bad. German reggae bad. Quite simply, one of the worse movies I've seen - and I've seen bad movies, trust me. And this coming from someone who used to play the "Vampire" RPG - pen and paper.
Anyway, how's it going? Y'all good? I'm good. Alfred's good, he says hello. Alfred is my butler, the one I'll have when I'm rich and I'm also Batman. I've said before that, if I were to wina lot of money in the lottery, I'd become Batman. In St Andrews. I'd buy a cheep grey Batman outfit (did anyone watch the old b&w TV series? The one where Batman had a beerbelly... No? Oh well), get the new MINI (version with a Union Jack on the hood - no reason), and go jumping from roof to roof, occasionally beating random people up - because they're worth it! Batman, ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra!
Oh, and 80% of TV adds are retarded. Hey, maybe this can be "George's Law": At any given time in (advertising) history, 80% of all adds are retarded.

Anyway, as I said, that was just a quick one. More later.