Friday – hot and sunny.
Lazy morning. Drive over to Thouars for Lidl and Eleclerc experience. Oh the excitement.
Now I’ve got a theory. Well actually I’ve got a lot of theories but for now we’ll stick to this one.
Muslim Desensitisation Theory – you know how the Muslim always seem to throw their toys out the pram, kick off, riot, burn and kill if anyone says anything to offend their insecure religion of peace; draws a few cartoons; make a film or anything else. Well I believe we should desensitise them to it by repeated exposure to these petty irritants. In psychology, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. At the same time we should be standing up for Free Speech and fighting this PC / Muslim trend towards blasphemy laws.
Lets face it Christians and other religions don’t get uptight. When Monty Python did the Holy Grail and other sketches they didn’t kick off. It seems that their god and belief is secure enough and has broad enough shoulders to just ignore it.
So here’s what we need to be doing for ALL religions, not just Muslims, and don’t forget the agnos and atheists – they’ll just love it. None of this should promote hatred or violence.
1 All daily papers to have a religious cartoon every day. There’s plenty of scope.
2 For those papers that already have a cartoon strip then they should start a religious one.
3 Oscars to add a nomination for best religious send up film.
4 UN to sponsor a competition for the most irreligious film of the year with a hefty prize for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.
5 Public broadcasting services to be mandated to carry some “desensitising” material for at least 30 minutes a week.
6 Monty python team to be resurrected to produce to make three films “The Life of a Taliban”, “Monty Python and the Noisy Minaret” and ” The Meaning of the Koran”. Can you imagine re-running these during various religious festivals just like the re-runs we get over Xmas of Monty Python.
7 Netflix, Sky and others to have a Religious Film channel especially for Golden Oldies that have caused silly dissent in the past.
8 Introduce a weekly comic with an anti-rligious hero (DarcAngel) who defeats blasphemy laws, religious hatred, extremism and violence.
9 Salman Rushdie to head up a group of authors to promote books aimed at desensitisation.
I’ll keep taking the medication.
It is a deep irony that France, the country lampooned by Americans as the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in 2003 for refusing to go to war with Iraq, is now the one standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States.
Saturday – rained overnight, grey day.
Set off on a bike ride but Wendy had a sore foot and she claims she felt 3 drops of rain. Abandoned. Visit the Boulangere for some bread instead. Bread and cheese for dinner. Yipee!
The French have taken their own precautions against Al Qaeda. To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag, and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house.
Why wouldn’t the Statue of Liberty work in France? Because she has only one arm raised.
Rules are there to be broken
While the French want a big state to take care of them, they don’t like to abide by its rules. It’s difficult to write about France without including some clichés, so it’s quote time again:
In England, everything is permitted, except what’s prohibited.
In Germany, everything is prohibited, except what’s permitted.
In France, everything is permitted, even what’s prohibited.
In the USSR, everything is prohibited, even what’s permitted.
Q. How many Frenchmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. It doesn’t matter; if you’re depending on the French to do the job, it’s screwed anyway.
Sunday – warm and sunny.
Lazy day. Wendy has swollen foot but no pain.
Barry and Dot and cat on a lead arrive, but they’re keeping the riff raff down the other end of the site.
Wendy’s ankle gets more swollen. Decide to go to A&E.
French A&E experience:
1 No one speaks English. Now there’s a surprise. But as I point out to Wendy we are in France.
2 Seen straight away. Taken into examining room. Flash my E111 card, fill in all our details.
3 I explain the problem and answer the nurses questions. Explaining is relatively easy but understanding them is the usual English ears don’t ear French trauma.
4 Doc zips in. Has a look and issues a prescription. Uses a nifty app on his iPhone to speak into and it produces an English translation.
5 That’s it, back on the road in 45 minutes. Can you imagine that on a Sunday evening in Blackburn. Have to say the place looked a bit run down but couldn’t fault it.
6 Drive to next small town to get to the only open pharmacy. Can’t believe it will be open but after ringing the bell they open up.
7 Wendy starts taking the suppositories for piles. Yes, my French was that good. Only joking she got some antibiotics for an infected foot.
In honour of the excellent service received in casualty there will be no French jokes today. But, don’t think I’ve gone soft on them, normal service will be resumed ASAP.
More PC terminology:
Foreign Food – Replaced by Ethnic Cuisine. The word foreign is generally used when one wishes to refer to something that alien to ones own country — something that is not normally found within the jurisdiction of your own particular political unit. But with the increasing power of multinational organizations (such as the U.N. and large corporations), nothing can be said to be truly ‘foreign’ anymore. In a world where you can find a McDonald’s in Moscow, a Disneyland in Japan, or a single currency throughout Europe, the word ‘Foreign’ is losing its meaning.
The word ‘ethnic’ provides a more accurate way to refer to these cultural traits which are continually growing fainter as we move away from the world of the past, in which different areas of the world were actually unique.
Girlfriend/Wife – Replaced by Unpaid sex worker
Handicapped – Replaced by Physically Challenged, or even worse, handicap able.
Syria – forced conversions out of Maaloula. As of today, the Christian village has now been officially captured by Islamist rebels after government forces have been forced to retreat. Residents are reporting that Christian homes and churches have been attacked by Islamsts, now numbering as many as 1500 in the town of only 3000. Christians have been shot and killed, and others are now being threatened to either convert to Islam, or be beheaded..
As T H Lawrence (of Arabia) once said “So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people – greedy, barbarous, and cruel…” – so true.
Monday – warmish but grey, windy and some rain.
Hunker down for the day and get some of the small jobs done. Still not fixed the sliding door Wendy buggered up.
Afternoon and evening turns out quite pleasant.
Barry and Dot come round for drinks on our patio. 3 bottles of wine later – thankfully Wendy wasn’t drinking, she was content with sipping her antibiotics – and some ribald humour we call it a night.
Sandwiches for dinner.
A Bangladesh court has indicted four bloggers for their supposedly inflammatory writings about Islam and the religious character Muhammad.
This will be the first case to be tried under Bangladesh’s recently amended Information and Communication Technology Act, enacted after widespread violent street protests demanding the blood of atheist bloggers. The new law features extreme punishments of up to 14 years in jail.
Bring on Worldwide Desensitisation.
More PC stuff:
Home-ec (Home Economics) – Replaced by Family and Consumer Sciences, and I’m really not sure why. These classes have been taught in school since the early 1900’s after Ellen Swallow Richards, an old-time feminist and the first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, formed the American Home Economics Association in 1909. But I suppose that the reason for the change has something to do with the fact that Home-Ec is generally considered a ‘girly’ class, and is therefore sexist.
Housewife – Replaced by Domestic Engineer. This is to remove the necessity of marriage from the task of raising children.
Illegal Aliens – Replaced by Undocumented Immigrants. The phrase ‘Illegal Aliens’ implies that these people are a bunch of law-breaking creatures from outer space, while ‘Undocumented Immigrants’ suggests that they are good old-fashioned immigrants that simply have not gone through the hassle of being ‘documented’ yet.
Janitor – Replaced by Custodial Artist. No matter what you call it, this is a person who is paid to clean up shit.