More stuff and nonsense when I wanted to be asleep

So, another night where I sat in bed for a while, wide awake. I decided not to just sit there until 3am this time, so that the inner monologue demons could get to work and mangle up my brain, so, I got up. I might as well make use of my time for something at least vaguely constructive if I'm going to be awake, even when I do have to be up in about four and a half hours (1.45am now), for my final day before having to return to work on Thursday. Lots to do.

Since getting up just before 1am, I put all the washing up away, wrote some details for part of what I need to do tomorrow, designed a flyer for an upcoming release one of my bands (Diascorium) is involved with, ready to print out and hand out at the weekend, replied to a couple of messages, updated the Sloth Hammer website with a few images, details of a release and general overhauling, ate a banana, drunk tea and listened to chilled out, slow, atmospheric black metal (in the shape of a Swedish band called Lustre and Ukrainian geniuses Drudkh).

All highly crazy stuff I'm sure you'll agree.

Talking of demons, I recently watched the film 'The Rite', and rather enjoyed it. It has Anthony Hopkins and Rutger Hauer amongst the cast, and, basically, is about a young priest doubting his religion and calling, being sent to Italy by his superiors to take a course to become an exorcist. Hopkins (almost as ever) is brilliant, and it is generally a very well done film, with a reminiscence of the style of the 70s intense thriller style pictures, not much music, quite slow moving in parts, but gripping, plenty of bits referring back and forth to each other, so you've got to keep watching, and nothing too cheesy.

Apparently it is based on a real priest who went through the course in Rome, at the Vatican, and there are 14 registered exorcists. I'm obviously skeptical about the whole thing, what with my not believing in God, Satan and any related malarkey, but it's always an interesting subject to see in films and documentaries. There were a few exorcism audio recordings kicking around a few years ago and, sonically it is absolutely harrowing stuff, and from what I've seen it is too. It shows how deranged the human mind can convince itself to be, and what a hold it has over someone's body too.

Anyway, it's now just after 3am and finally I am starting to feel tired, so I'll call it a day for now and hope to get three hours sleep at best. I may expand on this in the future, but I'll simply post up some links for you to read.

IMDb link for The Rite
L.A. Times article about 'the real' exorcist
Wikipedia page about exorcism, includes a list of films about it

At least I can add on making another post to the blog when I didn't expect to be for a few days to the list of things. Small consolation for not sleeping!

The History of the Devil, Nathan Barley and bloody insomnia!

So, it's half three in the morning. I can't sleep. My brain won't shut up. It's been saying horrible things to me since about midnight. I decided once it got to 3am that it's not going to get any better or nicer, so I had to get up.

I wasn't too tired when I got in bed, but thought watching a bit of visual stuff would help see me to sleep. Watched a few episodes of the magnificent Nathan Barley, a genius piece of work by those mad comedy scientists Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris, two of the most important people on the planet. The temptation to chatter lots about this one-off series is quite high, but I'll leave that for now. All I'll say is, if you've seen it, you know how clever it is, if you haven't, go watch it, and then come back to me and we'll talk about it.

If you don't know about it, you really should. Click this very active lovely link to read more...



After that I watched a program I randomly found, 'The History of the Devil', an hour long documentary about how the myth of Satan has become what it is today, where it started, the various guises it's taken throughout the ages, religions, cultures and scriptures. Pretty interesting stuff. The closing line of it made me quite angry though, from the Rt. Rev. Richard Holloway (Bishop of Edinburgh - retired). I agree with the most part of the statement, but then the man completely missed the point of everything! The part in bold is what got me!

'It's embroidery, it's myth making, it's poetry. It can be good fun except that it has produced great evil. A human invention, but one that's rebounded on us because it's given us permission to do terrible things to each other, which is why I think that we should close Hell down and finally banish the Devil and get rid of him.'

YOU IDIOT!! You almost got it right. If you'd have said that 'we should close religion down and finally banish both to being just small bit part characters in a small chapter in the huge history books (certainly longer than any bible would have you believe). Religion causes too much fighting, war, suffering, injustice, delusions and many other terrible things and we should get rid of it' then you would have got it right! You can't have one without the other, and SURELY as a Reverend he should have known that?! Surely people can see the amount of fighting that goes on in the name of God? Mind you, this guy isn't anywhere near as much of a mouth-breathing, drooling idiot as the soldier who speaks just before him, or the General that President, (or should I say after watching George Carlin enough times) Governor Bush put in charge of fighting Bin Laden after 9/11... he said that the enemy of the US is 'a guy called Satan' and not the physical people who carried out the attacks. I despair for our culture, I really do. Absolutely brainless idiots.

The Reverend also said this, which is why the closing line enraged me more, because this says it all about how people who follow God use it all as an excuse for their terrible actions... 'If you're fighting a war against evil, what begins to happen I think is that you turn into the evil you are fighting.'

Absolutely bang on Reverend. It made me start thinking maybe he was retired because he finally realised that religion is complete nonsense and a scourge of our planet, but it seems he wasn't quite on the right wavelength judging by what followed. Oh so close.

As an antitheist, I don't believe in God, or the Devil, or in fact religion at all. I am vehemently opposed to it as it does more damage to the world than anything else. It annoys me though that someone who can renounce the Devil, or say that the Devil doesn't exist can still believe in God, which is the precise same kind of non-existent entity. It's all just one big controlling myth, given simply as a metaphor for good and bad.

I am all for people having faith in something, each to their own, whatever gets you through. It's just completely and utterly not for me. I just don't understand how someone can have blind faith in something that has caused so much bad to happen, even more so than its 'bad' counterpart.

Despite my thoughts on the closing line, the rest of the program is presented pretty well, unbiasedly and interestingly, although it does miss out on quite a few bits it could have addressed, maybe they didn't have enough money to make it twice as long, as it should have been. It's definitely worth a watch though.

YOU CAN STREAM 'THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL' completely for free in its entirety here...



I guess, despite how completely different the two programs are, they both include messages about 'The Rise of the Idiots' and how they are so stupid they don't even realise they're idiots.

Well, it's now 4.25am, and I'm listening to the lush, chilling, ambient sounds of The Orb in an attempt to make me tired. I'm not sure it's working. I have 3 hours of them lined up in Winamp so hopefully it will have some effect. I'm going to try and sleep now anyway as this is ridiculous. This post took too long to write, but at least that little nugget of anger is out of my system.

Here is the vastly shortened version of the majestic ambient piece 'The Blue Room'... Click the logo.