sad spineless wimps

[izmeina]

Izzie is a bit peeved. Always has oodles of ideas for squiggles until she gets her scaly paws on a computer - and then she's brain dead. Ends up lurking and surfing for ages and in spite of having all those ickle green ideas, they end up going nowhere.

Uncle Vernon came back yesterday from overseas after a five month absence. He is alive and well and happy to see all the monsters.
He visited the Izzie sister in Amsterdam who gave him an owl to bring to Izzie. Among other things she sent an utterly adorable calendar with all the moons for 2004 - most important for this werewolf wannabee. But the piccies are utterly adorable. It's called "Play with your food" and never ever has Iz seen veggies with such personality. Snowmen made of mushrooms, a happy papa pepper and even a reindeer shaped ginger dragging a pepper santa with a cauliflower beard and beans for eyes. Then there is the sea scene with bananas masquarading as dolphins swimming around a bed of coral lettuce. There are also a couple of habanero clownfish.
Iz will go googling and post the piccies if she finds some.

Today was more champagne tasting. All Froggie non vintage stuff. It was all very nice and the tasting was free but the bottles are certainly not worth the ridiculous quantities of silver sickles that they cost to buy especially when there are so many utterly delicious red wines to be got for one third of the price.
After that, Iz planned a picnic at the beach but while it was not too hot today, there were way too many flies lurking. Iz must hang some green baubles off her hat to scare them off.

Today's papers were full of letters about the schools who have decided not to celebrate Christmas for fear of offending folks who aren't Christians. Iz is ever so amused. This sad business of feeling the need to eternally apologize for our existence is becoming more and more prevalent among certain sections of the chattering classes
If people really insist on feeling threatened by those who dare to be different from them then that is their problem not mine. And most likely they are either indifferent or think Christmas is a great excuse for a party anyway.
No one suggests that Saudi Arabia should tone down Ramadan because it might upset the Christian minority so why should it be any different here? Izzie missed her bottlies on that trip to Kuala Lumpur but was not offended by the lack of alcohol and even if I had been - well I should pick a more congenial location for the Izzie hols.
It is not as if anyone is being forced to celebrate or shop or whatever.

I myself have far more respect for people who follow their own beliefs and remain true to themselves than those who constantly worry what the neighbours may think. And mostly it is not the Muslims, Buddhists or atheists who are complaining but the so called self appointed thought police who know better than you do yourself what is good for you. And asking your opinion is certainly the last thing they would ever dream of doing. They project their own wishy washy wimpiness onto everyone else.
Surely the real issue is that as long as some one's belief does not involve restricting the freedom of others who do not hold it and it does no harm to others either - then there is no need to apologize for it or indulge under cover of darkness for fear of upsetting some sad fragile egos.

Many moons ago Iz heard a most interesting academic on the radio. His name was Ali Mazuri and he specializes in international politics. He made a documentary about various historical figures that was shown all around the world - Europe, the Middle East, Africa and so on. Well the show goes to air in the USA and suddenly all hell breaks loose over one single line where he is next to a statue of Karl Marx and proclaims that Marx was the last of the great Jewish prophets. Well of course the usual lobby groups and apologists accuse him of antisemitism, Nazism, defamation of the Jewish people and such similar accusations. He was most amused, especially as the very same programme was shown in Israel and there wasn't any fuss at all.
These pompous patronising gits projected their own problems onto his program and never even bothered considering the opinions of the 'poor little victims' that they felt so bound to defend without even being asked to.
In fact, Iz thought it was such a memorable and interesting idea to put Marx in such a grand context that I went and searched London high and low on a visit in order to find both this particular book and another by D L Sayers. Enjoyed both of them immensely. It was extremely interesting to read about American and British history and contributions to world culture from the point of view of a Muslim academic based in Nigeria.
While being totally against imposing a fatwah on Salman Rushdie for "The Satanic Verses" (He is more in favour of using the pen rather than the sword and taking the piss out of the guy instead) he did offer an interesting explanation for all the fuss. Imagine - he said that some eminent public figure proclaimed that the US Constitution was really written by King George (No..not the present King George W but the other one)

Actually - the possibilities for conspiracy theories could be most amusing indeed.

Now who REALLY wrote those evil satanic Harry Potter books?

Comments

everything is relative ;)

[cat-irix.livejournal.com]

In Soviet Russia, calling Karl Marx a great Jewish prophet would be a huge *compliment* to all the Jews ! Marx, Engels, Lenin - 3 founders of the one true ideology :) But as far as I remember, his Jewish roots were not usually discussed, for exactly this reason, so Jews won't be too proud ;) It's funny to hear it being perceived in an exactly opposite way.