Trying out a blogging app on my iPod Touch. It is a thing of loveliness my iTouch and the app works off line as well which means you might get a few more blogs from me this year as I'll be able to write down stuff as the blogging groove grabs me.
Sorry I have not blogged in a while, for once it has not been blog ennui but rather because we have been rat arsed busy and I've not had the time/energy to do so. It has been all I can do to read other people's blogs and occasionally think of a pithy one liner, let alone conjure up several paragraphs for my own blog.
With the current lack of decent mortgages available to first time buyers and the increasing uncertainty a lot of people have about the jobs it is not surprising that we haven't been able to sell either of our flats so reluctantly we are heading down the renting them out and then finding somewhere for us to rent for when Junior makes an appearance. I say reluctantly because we would rather not have the faff of dealing with letting agents and the rest of the palaver. I've got a tenant moving in next week so we have spent all our time since the New Year getting it into a rentable state as opposed to a sellable state. It is now almost all over bar the carpet cleaning which we will do tomorrow, everything of mine is out of the flat except the white goods, a large bookcase and a step ladder which the tenant will need to change the light bulbs. Georgian building have high ceilings, the spiders get altitude sickness up there.
I got a surprise present from Simon for Christmas. It's a surprise present because Simon forgot that he had bought it for me, forgot to wrap it up and didn't give it to me until yesterday. But on the other hand it wasn't a surprise because Simon only remembered it while we were listening to Mark Kermode's review of the films of the year and they played an excert of Mark's review of Mama Mia!, on our way to Norwich. That was when Si pipped up, "Ohh I've got you a present."
Only problem is I'm very nervous about watching the film as I'm afraid that there is no way it is going to be as good as Mark Kermode's review of it.
Apologies to readers who are not based in the UK but you may well not be able to see the video.
I'm also nervous because you see, like the good doctor, I love Abba in a non post ironic way. The first album I ever got was Arrival, and I played it over and over again, I used to watch everything I could about them on telly, we used to play "Abba" in the playground at school. I was only 7 at the time and they made a big impression on me, I still have that LP somewhere. So I am incredibly wary of tongue in cheek "homages" to the group, or dodgy musicals with a plot created by listing Abba song titles in any old order, I still haven't really forgive Erasure for their cover versions. You don't mess with Abba.
I won't be watching the DVD with an "Oh look at me, aren't I being tremendously 'girly' and knowing in a slightly fag haggy sort of way" no, I will be watching to see if it lives up to the promise of Mark Kermode's review and with my Inner 7 year-old who always took her entertainment very seriously because that's what small children do.
I think Pope Benny has a big steaming pile of poo instead of a brain.
Homophobia
Transphobia
Misogyny
Slowness to act or speak out against abusive priests
Flirting with creationism
Continuing to condemn the use of condoms to stop the spread of infection even within marriage
and those are just a few things that came to mind while I was driving to the shops this morning.
To say that transsexualism or homosexuality is a threat to the future of mankind is so completely laughable it's not funny. Comparing that "threat" to the destruction of the rainforests just goes to show just how many green shield stamps short of a teasmaid he actually is. Because even if he was in any way remotely right, which he isn't I must hasten to add, we dull old heterosexual breeders are carrying on breeding as if there was no on coming gay apocalypse. (edit: and there is quite a bit of fabulous breeding going on as well)
But just underneath his LBGT phobias lies good old fashioned misogyny and patriarchal attitudes. According to the Guardian:
However the differences set out by nature aren't really that huge once you get beyond the obvious like boobies and willies. F'instance intellect and loquaciousness are the same between the genders and things like spacial awareness and what is called emotional intelligence vary more within each gender than they do between the genders. No, what he means by "this order, set down by creation" isn't what has evolved through natural selection but rather what the bible sets out. Where men are men and women are submissive, barefoot and pregnant. He's scared of the gays and lesbians and trans -men and -women because they show "this order" to be what all objectively thinking people know it to be: Bollocks.
So why is Benny coming out with this nonsense and who is he aiming it at? Well I don't think he's aiming it at us in Western Europe we are probably beyond the pale. No I think he's aiming it at Africa and South America, in both continents Fundamentalist Protestant Evangelists are making great headway by offering a simplistic black and white picture of the world and salvation which includes homophobia, transphobia and patriarchal views of the roles of men and women. Benny is just trying to out stupid the fundies. Next thing he'll be saying is that the bible is inerrant. However even taking the potential politics into account it still doesn't stop me from feeling ashamed that I was a cradle Catholic.
