Religion, death and snow

Terri Schiavo dies
God incandescent with rage
Kills Pope in revenge

The above haiku was this week's summary from The Friday Thing (the subscription to which was probably the best £15 I've spent this year). For those who haven't heard, The Friday Thing is a fiercely independent weekly email comment sheet. And it is by far the best political and current affairs analysis (from a British perspective) that I get in a week; it's like the Daily Show only as an email and British.

On the subject of Terri Schiavo, I found this article from the BBC really rather illuminating. It's always nice to see a correspondent equally willing to stick his boot in the ribs of America and praise it when The system works. (The system in this case being the separation of powers, and the fact that, despite the politicians wrangling, the courts stood firm.)

One thing that I learnt from the article was that down in northern Kentucky, just a stones throw from Cincinnati, they are building a Creation Museum. This is the museum that attempts to answer Bill Hicks's one word question to creationists, "Dinosaurs?". (On the subject of Bill Hicks — he seems to be cropping up here quite a lot lately — am I cruel to think of his line about creationists looking really un-evolved when I see this guy?) Now I'm not at all sure that I'm still going to be here in 2007, but I'd like to encourage you all to dig deep in to your pockets and donate to this project, so that I can go down to Kentucky and have the most bollock achingly funny afternoon of my (soon to be damned) life. Or, alternatively, you could donate your money to a worthwhile cause.

On Wednesday it was hot and sunny — I even walked home in just my t-shirt, well I was wearing jeans and shoes, but you get the point — while yesterday it was snowing. Fucking snowing. In fucking April. I was not best pleased. And my ears got cold.

During the last week I've been to see two films about cities ravaged by death and destruction, Gunner Palace and Sin City. I'd heartily recommend either film. Gunner Palace, I found particularly interesting as it really was a completely different view of the Iraq war than that which we're force fed by our nightly news. I wouldn't say that it was particularly pro- or anti-war, it just followed a bunch of US soldiers around and showed what their lives are like. Most of the time I found myself with a lot of sympathy for everyone, US and Iraqi, involved. Although, having said that, there were a few times where I physically cringed at some of what the young soldiers said. Sin City, on the other hand, is two hours of beautiful decadence and destruction. A gorgeous slice of near-mindless entertainment.