So the Koran burning story smoulders on, with no real indication of what is going to happen next. Except that regardless of whether books are burned or not it's going to create a shitstorm. As if our people out in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't have enough to contend with. Two forces of stupidity railing against each other to find out who is the most stupid. It's as dumb to burn a book that people find Holy as it is to think that a book is so Holy that it is worth killing over if one copy of it is destroyed. Presumably quite a few copies of the Koran were burned up during 9/11, so I hope the Muslims who will protest about that too and maybe go and kill the terrorists who planned this terrible burning of some books (because of course if some books were destroyed this is much more terrible then the deaths of some actual people).
I still hate Pastor Terry Jones most though. What a massive prick he is. He's like a puny man continually shouting "Gaylord" at the pub psychopath. Really he should be ignored, because what he is doing is pathetic. but a sane person wouldn't do this because they know what would happen. You would think the fact that he was a Christian would make him behave better, not worse, but then it increasingly seems that many religious figures don't believe in what they preach. The terrible child abuse that
has been going on in Belgium certainly suggests that the people in charge of the church don't believe in any of the stuff they are telling us about. After all if they really thought there was a God and a Hell, would they even consider behaving in such an evil way? But then given the bloke in charge of them has such a low regard for the tenets of his religion (
Brilliantly summarised here by Johann Hari, maybe it's not a surprise that they can stray so far away from what ordinary people would think was acceptable.
Of course most authors are delighted to have people burning their books, not just because of the PR, but because the books have to be bought in the first place to be burned. Allah is laughing up his sleeve at all the royalties he is going to make. If anyone wants to burn my book please do so, perhaps protesting about the mistreatment of champagne bottles.
Buy as many copies as you can and then burn them and encourage your friends to do the same.
In other news on the way to the gym this afternoon I noticed that the pile of rice had completely gone and yet the packet it came in was still there. You would think if someone had cleaned up the mess they would have taken the packet, so the rice has probably been eaten by some creature or other. Or maybe some elves, who like to be paid in Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice for whatever task they have done for the people of Hammersmith. That's the most likely explanation.
There are a few Collings and Herrin live gigs coming up.
Details are here.
