If you have reading this blog over the past few years you’ll
know that I’m not a big lover of religions. It’s only a personal view, but I
can’t see us progressing very far as a human race until we ditch the lot of them
and the irrational need that some of us have for them. It seems to me that they
are all bad including:
THE ZOMBIE CULT
PEDOTHOLOSISM
THE RELIGION OF PEACE.
GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE
Recently I have been entertaining myself by watching videos
from “The Atheist Experience”, a public service (free) broadcast from Austin
Texas, right in the American “Bible Belt” of fundamentalist Christianity. They
have got over 700 videos on YouTube and they are great entertainment.
The format is simple. Two presenters sit in a studio taking
phone-calls from the public about atheism. The people who phone up want to convert
them to Christianity in order to save their souls, preach, threaten, object to the fact
they are on the air, give personal testimonies of how God came in to their
lives, or to explain to the presenters how they have just got it all wrong.
The callers start of with all the confidence in the world
with the information that they have been brainwashed with at their local
churches, only to find themselves slaughtered with science, common sense and
logic. To them it looks so easy when their preachers do it on a Sunday morning,
literally preaching to the converted. It’s a harder job trying to convince sceptics
about creationism, miracles and hell etc. Even harder still is being put on the
spot to justify the slavery, human sacrifice and genocide etc, that’s in the
bible. It’s a significant fact that none of these people’s preachers take up
the offer of phoning in.
The presenters, like most atheists, have to have a better
knowledge of the bible that your average Christian (the best way to become an atheist
is to actually read the book). In addition, to have more than a passing
knowledge of; evolution, logic, circular arguments, biology, physics, geology,
brainwashing, psychology etc, etc, etc.
I’ve seen so many of these now that I feel I have got to
know the presenters. They are all are good, I like laid back Russell, but my favourite is Jeff. Jeff will be
polite and suck it up until someone tells him that he’s going to hell, at which
point he goes ape shit. “That’s a threat”, “Are you threatening me?”, “So you’re
going to pray for me, does that mean your OK with sending me to hell?”, “So if
I don’t do as you say, you and your God are going to punish me for eternity,
are you OK with that?””So you want me to be tortured for eternity for what I
think?”
Americans need to be careful of what they wish for. Big subjects in the US are the
separation of church and state and religious education in schools. We’ve got
them both....that’s why no one here believes any of that shit any more.
Freddy isn't fat any more, as you can see by the above image. A healthy diet of alfalfa seeds, brown rice and magic mushrooms made the weight drop off years ago. He's pictured here at a "Be in", with his "Old Lady" of 40 years, Pixi Cactus Flower. They live together on their....er...farm in Southern California.
Freddy sees the other two occasionally for the odd reunion gig. Freewheelin' Franklin is a an venture capital fund manager. Phineas changed his name and is hoping to win the next presidential election for the Republican party.
Fat Freddy's cat, or "Scat" as he is better known, still lives with him and has developed an in interest in....er....chemistry.
I've stopped watching regular TV. Why bother, when you can see TV shows streamed from all over the English speaking world (99% US, 1% Aussie and Canadian) on the net. Cop shows come and go. They usually start off being a little different (CSI, Mentalist, Criminal Minds etc.), then after a while blend in with the rest of the mush. One show that has stood out for me is "Person of Interest", It's not being shown in Britain, but if you like cop shows, watch it. I think it's an original, it's in a gendre of it's own. The "HOWSTOPEM".
The plot involves John Reece an ex-Special forces officer who is presumed dead and has gone off the grid and living as a tramp in New York. Reece is recruited by wealthy Harold Finch, who is also supposed to be dead. Harold is the designer of a super surveillance computer which he sold to the Government which spies on the whole population 24/7. The Government use the computer only to find terrorists suspects. Finch has a "back door" into the computer in which he finds crimes affecting ordinary people. When he detects the person involved he then sends in Reece to protect them. Reece and Finch don't know if the suspect is the victim or perpetrator. Their task is to stop the crime. The biggest star of the show is the computer itself, who's graphics run through every episode.
Every week the episode always starts with the computer identifying people with Finch's voice saying:
"You are being watched. The Government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn't act so I decided I would, but I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up....we'll find you."
It's a bit like the A-Team for grown ups, only you don't find them, they find you and they do it for free, you don't have to hire them. When CBS took audience samples following the pilot, the show got the highest ratings for 15 years, then replaced CSI on the schedules.
TV crime series have to centre on a small range of occupations; police (FBI, CIA,), private eyes, doctors, forensics and lawyers. This is because only these jobs come into contact with crime on a weekly basis. In Person of Interest the computer randomly spits out the crime to stop. That's what separates it from the rest.
It's a winning formula because the new Kiefer Sutherland series "Touch", which is being shown here, has pretty much the same plot construction, where an autistic kid replaces the computer, leaving the hero to stop the crime. We'll probably see a whole flurry of shows with similar plots. In the meantime, enjoy it for the original show that it is.
