Goodbye, No More Mr Nice guy

Sad, but old news, one of my favourite bloggers No More Mr Nice Guy has stopped blogging. You can read his last post here.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Busy Busy

I've been very busy lately as so have barely had the time to browse the web much less post any links.

Of course there has been loads of ridiculous things happening here and the world over so I must try to rant more..

Nyarlathotep

I love a lot of geeky things and one of them are the statues from Sideshow Collectibles and this little fella on the left is one of their latest offerings.

I've been getting into Hellboy recently (both movies and graphic novels) and so it really struck a cord.

Tagged, my answers

Edit: I was tagged by No More Mr Nice Guy, it took me a while to post my answers and then I forgot to mention the context. Doh!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist? Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

I can, I was in work and I whispered to myself “there is no god”. My heart started pounding and I felt a mixture of guilt/sin/relief.

I was born and raised am Irish a-la-carte Roman Catholic and for most of my youth I just believed it. I did run into difficulties as I was a big fan of science fiction and as a child I loved dinosaurs. There’s nothing like vast quantities of time and space to undermine a faith so for the most part I just ignored the problem (think doublethink). It wasn’t until the sex scandals involving the Catholic church that arose during the early 90’s that I really started to question my faith. The initial transition away from Roman Catholicism was easy – the church was full of men and since all men are mortal corruption was bound to set in, but I still believed in god, albeit a slightly fuzzier all rounder (Christian) type god than the one I had grown up with. I stayed this way for quite a long while, most of my 20’s I would think, but gradually and surely it was chipped away. I think this is what got me interested in religion, due to these doubts I tried to confirm my belief but, of course, this had the opposite effect and the whole thing snowballed.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?)

To be honest this one is a bit vague for me. During my de-conversion I did have moments of ‘weakness’ where I wanted there to be a god and for prayers to work. However I found the experience a bit like holding my breath, the rational always burst through.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

In a way it did, like I mentioned above the sex scandals showed the utter hypocrisy of the church and made it easy to leave them behind. But I always had wide ranging interests and you can’t doublethink forever.

Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

No, as a matter of fact superstitious believe was the first to go. Even the most forgiving critical eye can spot superstition for the nonsense it is and masters like James Randi provide excellent entertainment while disproving it. The fuzzy god (good, distant, vague) was much harder to dismiss.

Do you want to be wrong?

Good god no! If the Christian/Muslims etc are right I’m really for it!! ;-)

Also, it would be a profound disappoint to learn that the most supreme being in the universe is a dick!

Holy Crap!

I haven't posted anything since the start of July!

Well to be fair I was in Italy for most of July (I really must post about it) and I've been incredibly busy at work since my return. Still, I must return to bitching about the world.

I hate ad’s

I hate ad’s, I do just about everything to avoid them. When an ad break comes on TV I surf, put on the kettle, go to the loo – anything to avoid watching them. But of course I still see them, read them, watch them. I’m bombarded by hundreds of ad’s a day, they are impossible to avoid and that is one of the reasons I hate them. But over the past few years I’ve notice a huge increase in ads that encourage selfishness and I find this really troubling.Advertising is not a passive force – people's actions are affected by it (why else would _anyone_ drink budweiser?), so a constant drumbeat encouraging selfish and petty behaviour is something to be worried about. But are people becoming more selfish? More petty? To be honest I don't know, I think they might be and besides, why glorify selfishness? I think the way advertising is carried out must change. At the very least I think advertisements should not encourage bad behaviour (I feel I would be qualified to define 'bad' in case your wondering ;-).

Off the top of my head here are some of the slogans I’m talking about, I’m not going to link them to products as that would be advertising and besides, more than one product uses each slogan.

"Too Good to Share"

"Just For You"

"It's Mine"

In an ideal world an advert should only be able to clearly define the what the product is and what it does, so for example any advert for bottled water would look something like this -

ProductName : Bottle Water, It will rehydrate you.

A picture of the product could also be shown but not any people, scenery or cute furry animals.

While thinking this post I came across a “controversy” I didn’t know existed – ad-blockers. Apparently people other than vendors and advertisers think they are evil! Don’t believe me? Check this out . I love this quote

“So what about when you install an ad-blocker? That’s bad news, folks, really bad news.”

Now to be fair the author probably thinks its not as bad as say, war or famine, but its pretty darn close by the sounds of it – as far as I was concerned it was all I could do to stop myself running screaming into the hills. This brings me to another thing that annoys me about advertising – the notion that it pays for things - as if sport, the Internet and news papers didn’t exist before advertising. Maybe advertising makes (some) things cheaper (pun intended - it certainly makes them glossier) but this cap-in-hand gratitude we’re supposed to have is infuriating. I know there are always going to be ad’s, I just want them toned down a bit --- ok a lot.

So this is 2008 then?

This is my first day back at work after 10 straight days off and it is dragging. Those ten days flew by but these lousy 8 1/2 hours have become an eternity - it may have something to do with the early morning followed by the complete lack of alcohol but I'm not sure ... I suppose it could be anything? Its just as well I never got into drugs, after 10 days of eating, drinking, reading and watching tv I just want to do it again. I'll probably be back to normal by tomorrow but right now I'd love to be slouching at home watching Fraiser repeats.