By the power of greyskull!

Today was a bank holiday, meaning I was pretty happy to be at work in place of Jonathan, as I got time-and-a-half pay. In addition to this, it also meant that for a few hours it was much busier than it has been for weeks. There was a strange air about the store today, though, in the quieter times, with Matt and Nick constantly fighting, and the three of us having really heated theological debates: something that is always guaranteed to go badly when the three parties are Christian, Pagan and borderline Atheist/Agnostic. It did briefly lean towards blasting Matt's pagan beliefs, but I soon realised that I far more agree with those than Christianity. Not so much to blast Christianity; I don't like religion at all: I feel it has done much more bad than good, with wars being fought all over the world from hundreds of years ago to present day because of it. I also don't like the way you are told what to believe and simply have to accept that; I am unable to simply accept something without proof/evidence which immediately rules me out, but I also strongly believe in individual ideas and such; I personally see that most religion forces people to blindly conform to a set of beliefs rather than letting people have their own thoughts and feelings on topics. This approach leads to a lot of ignorance, such as people in developed countries, with access to anything they desire, saying without any irony that people starving in Africa, or dying in Haiti for example, are all doing so to pay for our sins. I know this is not the belief of every single Christian in the world; likely even a minority figure; but it is for such extremists, but things like this are prevalent nowadays and completely destroy my views of religion. One point that "normal" Christians, if you will, tend to make is that it's core foundation is as a set of morals by which to live your life, i.e. the ten commandments. There's no way of disagreeing with this, but to me the commandments are basic common practice for me, and I don't feel that anyone should require a religion to make them comply, with the promise of some sort of overlooking presence which will decide their fates based on whether or not they obey these laws. I think religion is one of those things that are great in theory, but once it is in practice, people corrupt it and askew it beyond recognition until it achieves the polar opposite of the original intention. Much like Communism, but I'll save that for another day where I have little to write about.

Back to my trivial anecdotes, I watched the Comedy Gala on Channel 4 tonight; it was fantastic. Obviously there were a few people who missed the mark, such as Shapi Korsandi (sp) whose segment was barely watchable, and Patrick Kielty's Michael Jackson jokes going down a treat in the 02 arena he was set to perform in, also making the connotation of Sick Children being the two most outstanding legacies of MJ. I have always been a fan of Jackson, but I was rarely offended by the jokes surrounding his death; these however missed the mark of being humorous and went out for 100% malicious shock value. It was nice to see Patrick squirm to regain control of his set before making it entirely nosedive by jokingly attempting to launch a Christian 9/11 retaliation targeting the towers in Dubai. As sick as it sounds, he had a discernible talent of removing what humour there is in this thought, replacing it with material that made me uncomfortable; someone who has an extremely dark sense of humour. Bill Bailey was great as usual, Noel Fielding had me crying with laughter, and there was so many other great sections of the show. Well Done, C4.

I think this post has become long enough, so I'll look forward to my day off tomorrow (well earned I believe), and shall bid the internets a good night.