I Often Feel Like This

Depeche Mode are without a doubt the Greatest Band of all time.

Their versatility and innovation are unique.

The Lyrics are pure poetry- Martin Gore is a modern day Keats.
And David Gahan has an amazing voice.
And I have no problem about idolising him, because fortunately, he's the spit of me.

If you don't own any Depeche Mode, I have to say, why not?

Time And Tide Wait For No Man

It's amazing how people will spend considerable time budgeting their money, but no one pays much attention to budgeting their time.

Time.
It's so precious.
Time is money.
We only have so much.

And like money, the important point is, how much you have now.
Timeflow is as crucial as cashflow.

I was listening to a work colleague some time back discuss how she planned her shopping, by working out what was cheaper where.
By my reckoning, the shopping trip must have involved a four hour journey, a full tank of petrol and five supermarkets.
Is it worth it for a twenty pound saving a month?
For three times as long as just going to the nearest one?

Do you think you are selling your free time well?
I don't.

The fact is, there are one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week.
Factor in travelling time and other randomness, you can fairly allocate fifty to fifty five hours to work.



Take out Shopping, Eating, The Bathroom, Domestic Chores and other essential life tasks, you are left with around a hundred hours.

That might sound a lot.
But fifty hours or so is considered a good week's sleep, and thirty five is really a bare minimum.
You can't get by with much less.
Not if you are able to keep going.

And Life is like a never ending stream of bills, eating into our overdraft.
You never have the time you think.

Factor in somewhere between ten to thirty hours on friends. It depends on the week, but these are the rough guidelines.
Factor in ten to fifteen hours blogging- It IS time consuming, but if you are reading this, you know these figures are accurate-ish.
Factor in five hours television or DVDs.

Now looking at the upper limits of these demands, we have already lost our hundred hours.

In weeks where social life demands the full thirty, there isn't much room for anything else.

And here come the unexpected bills, we forgot about before we worked out our budget.

There is your mother you never visit.
There is your grandmother you never visit.
There are the interesting places you never take a Saturday afternoon to visit.

And now the football season has started.
That's another four hours a week at least!

And where could you fit a relationship in?
Long term?
You can juggle it for a bit, after that you are in trouble.

Something has to give.

For me, it's usually sleep.
I really don't sleep enough.
Four to five hours, most weekdays.
I try to catch it up at weekends, but I always wake up on Monday STILL feeling exhausted.



Is it like this for everyone?

Thank God for the Bank Holiday Weekend.
Nice Long Baths, Nice Long Sleeps...

Home Alone- No Thanks

Living with other people can be a pain sometimes, but living on your own is pretty miserable.
We all sleep better knowing there's someone nearby, even if not in the same room.

Myself, I freely admit, I don't like being accountable to anyone. I do what I want, when I want.
But living on my own?
Not for me.

Living with other males, is a recipe for a general trend towards squalour and excess.
Living with a woman, creates a balanced existence.
I don't think women live well together either.

Problem is when the woman you live with, is also your girlfriend. There's just something about the sleeping together thing that makes living together hell.

So I live the perfect solution.
I have a female flatmate and there's never been anything sexual between us.

We got to know eachother intially because I WAS trying to bed her at that point, but something deeper and more important emerged.
A real friendship.
We didn't end up in bed, but we cried on eachother's shoulders.
We both had things to cry about.

And we ended up getting a flat together. We realised it would work.
And it does.
It's in my name, but she gives me slightly less than half the costs. I don't expect half, I have the advantage of having the place furnished to my liking, can decide what goes on the stereo and the TV. I earn slightly more as well, so it's only fair I put in more.

Fact is, I prefer company. I don't like being on my own for much over an hour. I get a bit nervy. I need someone to talk to.
I can only do solitude with the aid of the stereo.

I HATE Home alone.

She's the only person I've lived with, who hasn't had me yearning for some space.
She looks after me as well.
I never have the eternal laundry crises that seem to be a perpetual feature of males sans females.
She'll also tell me if I probably shouldn't do something.
She also puts up with a lot.
You have to be fairly broadminded to be in our living room at weekends.

She takes it all in her stride.

It's the little things as well, that shows she knows me.
Like this conversation, which took place on Sunday.

ME: I bought some fags earlier at Spar, you haven't seen them, have you?
HER: Did you buy anything else?
ME: Sausages, Eggs.
Her: did you put them in the fridge?
ME: Already checked.

Still no idea where they went.

She means a lot to me. Like a kind of sister.
And we don't even bicker about the bathroom!




So I was a little upset to come home and find her in tears yesterday.
She works for a pair of utter charlatans. Worse, their mentality towards women is fairly adolescent.
They think ringing her extension and asking her if she is in to back door action is amusing.
Not all day long it isn't.

The power of the payer.
Some abuse it.
These two scumbags make a good living out of a fairly dishonest, but just about legal operation and by exploiting their staff to a completely appalling degree.




But she daren't leave. She needs the money.
I took her out to calm her down a bit, hence the lack of blog visiting last night, I had already arranged to meet someone else later.

I'm quite angry with how people like this sleep at night.
She's looking for something else quick, she just can't take any more of it.
I admitted to her, I should have noticed weeks ago she was upset, but we haven't had too much of a chance to talk of late.

I did feel guilty, as if I'd not been there for her when she needed me. I haven't been.
I wish the Beatles were right, and we did have eight days a week. Then we'd have time. As long as the extra day wasn't another work day.

So over the bank holiday weekend, a little research in to possible job opportunities for my flatmate may be an idea.

I'll look after her while she's around.
I'll miss her when she goes.
As one day she will.

Social Convention- What You Make it, Nothing More

The Laws of Chivalry still resonate today, as the idyllic code of perfect bahaviour, a true code that all codes since are a mere dilution of.

We believe that don't we?

Sir Galahad and the Quest for The Grail.
The ideal of ideals.

Medieval knight would meet for a battle, not play dirty, and not charge before the signal from the other side. Just like sport today.

No dirty tricks, you had to show the enemy what you were doing.
No camouflage, make sure you are brightly coloured.
And never strike from behind.

Peasants do not fire their bows at knights, only peasants.
Knights do not mow down peasants, they only fight knights.

When Henry V broke these rules at Agincourt, it was the medieval equivalent, morally, of the Behaviour of the Nazis in the Second World War. Every Warcrime, rolled into one.

But the other side of the coin.
If you offered a city the chance to surrender, and it refused, should you take it, you put all the males to death, and rape all the women.

If you defeat a knight in combat, who has a lady with him, the lady is yours.

Trial by combat, is a a legitimate mode of trial, much preferred by the nobility to trial by jury.

So it wasn't all that great.

Our modern system of manners are likewise a social convention.
It's interesting to see how some of our odd customs evolved.
Table manners, for example.

Cardinal Richelieau introduced the table knife, because his high sensibilities were offended by people picking their teeth with sharp blades.



But more was to come. Ever wondered the point of a fish fork?
The answer is, not much. Most of this cutlery is nineteenth century invention. These complicated codes came in, due to the pressure of the times.
The industrual revolution meant that people born in the gutter ended up richer than descendants of the Conquerer's knights.
How to tell the sacred blood of the Norman, from the peasant blood of the Saxon?

By whether or not you knew which silly knife to use.
By whether you were born in a household to learn the difference.

Conventions serve the need of the society they exist in.
We follow them, because we want to get along with others.

That also affects our word usage.

At one time, only religous oaths offended people. There weren't any taboo words which weren't an oath of some kind.
Sex, the toilet and other 'vulgarities', weren't talked about if you didn't need to, but the ordinary words for these things, were not in themselves considered offensive.

This again, is a late eighteenth- early nineteenth development.
It served a function, to sort out the decorous, from the vulgar.
Let the common people, use common words.
We'll talk about powdering our noses.



Now I'm not stupid enough to think that I don't need to follow these conventions.
I have to make a living.
I don't speak offensively at work, I don't here either.
But at home with my mates, or down the pub, I actually speak quite coarsely and quite vulgarly.
I can affect class, it doesn't come naturally to me.

Words are just words. The power to offend is all in the perception of the hearer. When talking to anyone in everyday life about f**king, I use the word, as it stands. If I'm proposing it to a woman, I use the word. I've not known one take offence at it's use either.
That's the word for that activity. Perfectly good verb. What's the problem with it?
Don't you think now, even five years olds know what the word means?

Who really is offended by it?

These social conventions were in place to maintain a class system.
In an era of mass communication, not only is their maintenance impossible, it is completely pointless.

But hey, as long as you want to maintain them, I'll follow them when I need to, as I do here.
But I certainly don't take any offence at people using the f**k word.
I think there's something very endearing about a woman who doesn't feel men need to stand on ceremony around them.
These conventions get in the way of genuine human interaction, because they stifle us.
We use them in life when we HAVE to, but there's no need to give them support.

People express themselves as they see fit.

But then again, I'm pretty common.

Would God know if he Didn't Exist?

Fairly evenly split on the Islam issue.
Islamophobes- seventeen.
Islamophiles- sixteen.

For the record, I voted for the losing side.



This week's poll is actually going on to be on the biggest issue of the lot.
Does God exist?

But before you cast your votes, consider the question.

I always say that it is one of the two questions where people answer a different question to the one being asked.

The other is 'Do you believe in Aliens?'

The question is not, in fact, 'Do you believe in Grey Aliens and that a UFO landed at Roswell?'
But people answer it as if it is.

Likewise, the question asked here, isn't 'Do you believe the Bible is all true?' or 'Is there an afterlife?'

It actually means 'Do you believe the universe is directed by a conscious intelligence, capable somehow of communicating with us?'

Now, the universe certainly has a fabric. It is one spacetime. The fact is, there are only two possible explanations in Physics for the ability of our universe to produce us in the first place.
Both, of necessity are equally unprovable.

But they ARE the only two explanations.

This is the only universe, and it directs itself to form itself in this way, because it is conscious.

There are an infinite number of universes.

So I don't quite see why the Atheist believes his belief any more scientific than mine.
I would say that there are factors, which to me, show at least SOME evidence in favour of the first, as in, th huge number of people throughout History who have INSTINCTIVELY felt it to be right, as if it was something we KNEW.

I would point out something else.
We see ourselves as being conscious and intellignt.
Both of those are ultimately simply the product of electro-magnetic transmission of information.
The same way a computer works.
We of course, are much more sophisticated than the computer, having been designed by millions of years of natural streamlining.

But this is all produced by the way the universe works.

Since it has been transmitting electro-magnetically across itself for thirteen billion years, is it not natural to assume that it has evolved intelligence and consciousness over that time that we can only dream of.
That it is capable of directing itself.
And directing the course of evolution.

Not intervening, but setting the courses.
And transmiting our yearnings and desires into us.

Even our consciences.

So I always roll my eyes to heaven when Atheists who know nothing of physics presume to tell me Science has no need of God.
Notice that the most Atheist of Scientists are those stuck in the nitty gritty of Biology.
Most Physicsts are either Agnostics, or loosely Theistic- Forty percent of US university Physics Professors believe in God.



Off topic a bit, I was a good boy and went to mass yesterday, over a month since I last went- and I was late, getting there on the first reading.
Worse, I wouldn't have gone if my flatmate hadn't woke me up. Though she's not religous herself, she knows I always feel better about going when I do go, it's just I love my bed on Sunday mornings.


Now here's wierd. Found this over at Finding Life Hard.
My favourite colour is blue.
Why am I red?

You Are a Red Crayon

Your world is colored with bright, vivid, wild colors. You have a deep, complex personality - and you are always expressing something about yourself. Bold and dominant, you are a natural leader. You have an energy that is intense... and sometimes overwhelming. Your reaction to everything tends to be strong. You are the master of love-hate relationships. Your color wheel opposite is green. Green people are way too mellow to understand what drives your energy.

What Color Crayon Are You?

Well, there you go.
Find out your crayon and colour, then ponder the existence of God.
Then...

Have your say!

How Much of Ourselves Do We Give?

Mutley occasionally runs Guest posts which are different to your average Guest post.



The key difference is that the Guest posting blogger usually forgets that he has written the post.
In fact sometimes, they may be quite off topic.

But let me tell you something, I can name at least one blogger, who thought I actually did write this.

I'll tell you something else.
When I saw it, I was taken aback.

Because it was uncanny. Like looking in the mirror.

This scared me, it did, no doubt about it.
To be able to be that accurate, you need to have an image in your head of that blogger, which must be quite close to the mark. You have to have something to work with.

Mutley summed up three things which, standing back, must be obvious to anyone who reads this.

Firstly, there is the obscure, somewhat theoretical subject matter which probably often comes across as only slightly less arcane than this 'guest post'. I suspect much of what I write often comes across as either cloud cuckoo land or just plain bizarre to many of you, but there is a joined up theory linking my political/philosophical posts, which I could write a book on, but probably never will.

If you had the misfortune to be one of my close friends, you would also be familiar with my tendancy to talk on this vein, at length, some would say, ad nauseum.
I write pretty much how I speak, except typeface doesn't actually convey the fact that I have a very annoying habit in real life of emphasising random words. In the last sentence, I would have intonated 'speak', 'typeface', 'actually', 'convey', 'very', 'habit', 'life' and 'emphasising'.
That's just how I talk.

Well, I shouldn't mind that Mutley is so accurate here now, should I?
What's the problem, you say?
Nothing.

But Mutley also parodies the posts which were never originally meant to appear here. The posts where I admit to being a real person and not a spambot.
And here again, he's bang on. My attempts to apply any theoretical and logical principles to my own life are largely a complete disaster.

I use a pseudonym for a few reasons. The main ones are these. I like to able to discuss my opinions with people and get feedback on them. I like that discussion to be on the merits of the ideas themselves. Personal matters have crept in here, and I guess that is obvious that whilst I might have very nice theoretical principles, I don't live my life in a manner the majority of people would find commendable.

Sometimes I do find it helpful to blog on personal matters, your advice is impartial and it has a confessional feel to it.
I am aware that probably shows a side to me that is colder, harder, more cynical and manipulative, than you might expect from some of my other posts.
Both sides are true.
My principles are based on my rational thoughts.
My life is based on a fairly shallow 'live for the day, for tomorrow we die' approach.



This of course, is the other reason I use a pseudonym. Only The Baker and my flatmate know the URL. The fact that I know they can read any post, and comment if I was dishonest, means I have to be relatively honest on this blog, but I can trust them not to comment at it. I really do not want people who know me by name reading and commenting here. Whatever truly decadent activities I get up to- and many of them would seem completely decadent to many of you- they have no place on this blog, and I don't want references to them in the comments section.

I have nice readers, like Welshcakes and Ruthie.
And his Lordship thinks I'm bad enough as it is.

Which brings me to the alarming bit, the end paragraph.
A perfect send up of the vain, self-opinionated way I do fling myself around in real life.
What scares me, is how does Mutley know?
Am I that transparent?

Not overly so, I can take comfort in that. One highly intelligent blogger who shall remain nameless has long nursed a theory regarding me which amused me when I discovered the theory. Let's just say, it was pretty wide of the mark, and not something anyone would think likely who knew me at all.
Likewise, those bloggers who have contacted me for whatever reason, have given me some confidence in the effectiveness of my filter, by making initial assumptions about me which are wrong.

But I do worry sometimes, how much of what I hide from you, do you see?
And since what I hide is in itself a mass of contradictions, I'm a very multi-faceted person, WHICH facet do you see?

More worrying is how far we ourselves can trust other bloggers. I don't mean that other bloggers are willfully deceitful, though it happens. I mean that I try hard to ringfence this blog, so that it remains uncontaminated by my real life.

Here is where we come to the grey area. There is a twilight zone where the identity of this blog merges into my own real life identity. Several of you have entered into discussions with myself, regarding posts I have done, which have progressed to a degree where I am comfortable dropping the mask.

I take a risk when I do this. In the long run, it is only possible to do this if the other blogger can remember the distinction between me and my blog.
Let me put it this way. Bloggers may well form personal friendships with other bloggers.
But if a Blogger wants to keep his or her blogging identity separate from his or her real identity, then that personal friendship must stay out of the bloggosphere.
Bloggers who know eachother by name, must still behave online, as if they only know eachother by what they have put online in the public domain.

I get alarmed when people leave comments, not to Crushed, but to me. It poses a real threat.
I get alarmed when people leave comments that show they have had conversations with me outside the bloggosphere, that they know me as a real person and have a connection with me as an actual human being.
It's not a problem that they see me that way, it's just that this should stay private. Nobody else who reads the blog should be aware of it.

Because their relationship is with the blogger, not the blog.

I'll be honest, these are things which keep me awake at night. They do.

Because I do enjoy this medium, but I can only do so if my real identity and personal life are kept at arms length. There has to be a very real separation between me and this blog.

Because I don't want people who know me to read it.
Or people who read it knowing me, beyond what I feel comfortable putting here.



Trust me when I tell you, this blog puts me through Hell sometimes.
But I do also find it very rewarding, it helps me get a lot off my chest, and it allows me to put across my worldview over time, possibly the only time I'll ever write any of this stuff down.
There are some things in life I enjoy doing, there are others which are worthwhile.
This is the only one I can think of which is both.

But one day keeping my real life and this blog separate will involve so much life energy, it could drive me to a nervous breakdown.
And that day, I will post no more.

I hope it's not any day soon.
But I'm starting to face reality here.
It could be a year away, it could be a week away.

So till then, I shall blog each day as if it is my last.

Evolving Towards Perfection

I have faith in the future of mankind.
Unlike the extreme element of the environmental lobby, I do hope for a bright future of glass, concrete and steel.

I just hope we can find a way to do it.

My general religous/political outlook can be confusing to people, until I explain it.
I would seem, at first glance to hold some incompatible positions.
I think it's worth enumerating the key elements of my outlook.

1. I agree with most of what Nietzche writes.
2. I agree with most of what Marx writes.
3. I believe firmly in evolution, indeed it is fundamental to my world view.
4. I am a practising catholic, and theologically am quite traditional, supporting the Tridentine Mass, not having much time for John XXIII, and admit candidly to being a keen admirer of the current Pope.
5. I actually vote Conservative and was a party member for years. I left because they didn't elect Michael Portillo as leader.

How do I reconcile these points?

Firstly, let me say I believe in a God.
Not a personal, God, I simply believe the Universe is conscious and has purpose.
I believe Evolution to be the only mechanism a benevolent and all powerful God would use.
Surely an Omnipotent God wouldn't sit down and design everything.
He'd just set in motion a Universe that eventually, produced perfect intelligence.

We are part of that motion, but we're not there yet.

I believe we are evolving towards something, and that is God-made-Man, or Man-made-God, however you choose to view it.



I believe Christ was who he said he was.
I believe his message was a message to show us how to reach perfection.

I believe the Church was set up to guide us.
When Christ came we were little better than animals, but I believe his teachings HAVE driven us forward.
People may not go to church any more, but who now would question the Sermon on the Mount?

If we did all live the way Christ taught, then Communism WOULD work.
Odd that Marx was an Atheist.

Nietzche too, helps sort the wheat from the chaff.
Nietzche shows us the ideal man, the superman that I believe is what we are evolving towards.
Nietzche shows us how the mind of perfected man must work.

I don't believe in an afterlife as such, though I can see why it was necessary to bribe Man to be nice to eachother with this bargain.
One day, we will learn to live that way, because it makes THIS life better.

I do think ONE DAY, we will have EVOLVED to live as a technologically advanced collective species, living in a state of free love and communism.



But we are nowhere near that yet.
And we shouldn't strive too fast.

I think the Church has always done what it had to do to keep Christ's message alive.
I do think the day will come, maybe 2200AD, or so, when the Pope will call an end to the concept of sexual immorality.
But not yet.
Because WE are not ready for the concept, and I believe Popes only announce what God thinks we are ready for.

Likewise, I have always supported the Tories for sound pragmatic reasons.
They have atrocious social attitudes, but they tend to run the country better.
Labour just never works.

Because state control isn't the answer.

Communism failed, not because it was wrong, but because mankind isn't grown up enough yet, it is still in it's Capitalist adolescence.
Maturity will be when we learn to live differently.

When Conscience and Reason become one.

God didn't create man in his own image.
God gave man an image of what he intended man to evolve into.

That's basically my worldview.
That's what my faith AND my politics are based on.

And, yes, I do genuinely have faith in this.



What else could a loving God want for us?