First it was Opus Dei, then it was the Catholics. Now albinos have it in for Dan Brown’s bestseller:

As Tom Hanks’ “The Da Vinci Code� opening looms May 19, featuring an albino character as a murderous, self-flagellating monk, a Hingham-born albino moviemaker is set to screen his own film tomorrow in Boston that wryly attacks the myth of the “evil albino.�
“It’s another kind of evil or outcast depiction of a person with albinism,� said Dennis Hurley, 28, who was angered over the homicidal red-eyed character Silas depicted in the “The Da Vinci Code� best-selling novel. “There are regular people like me who happen to have this condition.�
The low-budget, nine-minute parody flick, “The Albino Code,â€? stars Hurley and pokes fun at the absurdity of a red-eyed albino assassin. Albinos are considered legally blind and don’t have red eyes. “The Da Vinci Codeâ€? is one of more than 60 films that portray albinos as “the butt of a joke, the loner or the outcast or the evil magical albino,â€? Hurley said……

Read On

Don’t have time to read all this article now, but it seems to have some good points:

Something terribly important has been missing from discussions orbiting around the Mohammed cartoons. It’s a simple point, but one whose recognition is utterly crucial to the functioning of a healthy democratic society. The avoidance of it is, I’m afraid, even by those libertarians who defend the cartoons’ publication, a measure of extent to which theocracy has advanced both in the US and abroad.
What’s been missing has been an acknowledgment that blasphemy isn’t just something that must be tolerated. It’s something that possesses a special political value of its own. Blasphemy, in short, is a good thing. It’s something admirable, noble, and, yes, even respectable. Why have we forgotten this?
The dominant response to the cartoons in the corridors of respectable opinion in the West has been a predictable two-track affair organized around craven calculations of interest. One track has laboured to quell the rage, minimize the damage to the struggle against Islamic jihadis , and prevent more violence. The other track has worked to affirm the principles of free expression—in principle.
The result has been something like a defence of the ‘right’ to publish the cartoons qualified by condemnation of this particular exercise that right. While one has a right to break wind in a crowded elevator, actually doing so is obnoxious……

I’ll try and read it all romorrow.

I get a regular email newsletter on SF literature from Dave Langford of Ansible.
Here’s one of the regular features – excerptsfrom SF novels that could have been rather better written:

Dept of Uncertain Albedo `Her shining hair absorbs all light.’ (Joan D. Vinge, _World’s End_, 1984) [BA]
Sheepish Metaphor Dept `The big destrier liked fire no more than Sandor Clegane had, but the horse was easier to cow.’ (George R.R. Martin, _A Clash of Kings_, 1998) [DG]
Neat Tricks Dept`I left him scratching his head with the circuit board wrapped up in the spare shirt in my backpack.’ (Brian Rideout, `Pupate’ in _Neometropolis_, June 2005) [DL]
Dept of Understatement`Lancinations of unendurable ecstasy ravened through his consciousness, starbursts of warring sensory impulses that slipped once more to coherent phenomena, an instant before his mind shattered to follow into final chaos.’ (Karl Edward Wagner, `The Dark Muse’, 1975) [BA]
Miss Manners Dept`The dragon’s drool splat upon the verdant ground, a hiss of steam spiraling up in its wake.’ (Michele Hauf, _Seraphim_, 2004) [BMS]
Dept of Martial Arts Truisms `It is obviously impossible for an unarmed man to kill a bigger one with his bare hands.’ (Margaret St. Clair, _The Games of Neith_, 1960) [BA]

….cos I haven’t got time for longs.
Waiting impatiently for my new motherboard to arrive. Caroline has paid for it – ta! It’s a good one too, better specs than the one that went bust.
I really wish now I had done some research last year, before I ordered all the computer parts from that shop. I trusted them to be nice and give me a fair deal; I’m realising now that they ripped me off with cheap substandard parts.
In the meantime, having to wait for B to let me have the odd hour on his machine, and he’s busy now with getting the 2007 Elfin Desk Diary together. So I’ve not been posting here – just haven’t had the time.

News in the last week:
We had a big leak in the central heating system – plumber came, fixed it, replace the faulty thermostat as well. The thermostat was wonky for ages, and I often suspected it was using far too much electricity. So, with luck, our lekky bill will be going down.
Son will soon be moving into Trevor’s flat – don’t know when exactly, as Letting Agent went on holiday for a week, in the middle of everything, and didn’t delegate anything to anybody in the office. So no contract has been drawn up yet. She did exactly the same thing last year, when Son was waiting to move into the Balmaclellan house. She seems to regard tenants as tiresome interruptions in her routine.
When Son moves in, I’ll glomm his computer into my wireless broadband network and he’ll pay half the monthly cost; we’ll both save money and he won’t have to keep coming round here to read his emails.
Daughter no.3 is now 7 and a half months on and still throwing up, but otherwise very healthy.
Daughter no.2 has set the date for her wedding: 25th May… 2008. She’s a Virgo, likes to plan everything well in advance!

So, basically, it’s all pretty postive news. Or at least, not bad news. Which is the best you can hope for, really.

This is a bit late but I’ve only just been alerted to it, courtesy of the Fortean Times Forum:

Professor challenges Mayan calendar opinion
Posted on Thursday, 16 March, 2006
The end of the world will come on Dec. 21, 2012. Or not. While some New Age authors and teachers are touting that date as an apocalypse, a Stetson University professor is challenging the reasoning behind it. At a public lecture at the Volusia County Library Center on City Island today, Robert Sitler plans to discuss “The 2012 Phenomenon: A New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan Calendar,” an article he wrote last month for Nova Religio, the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Sitler, an associate professor of Spanish language and literature, has been studying and teaching Mayan culture since arriving at Stetson in 1994. He contends the Mayan calendar has long been the subject of “gross misinterpretation” on several hundred Web sites and in a continuous stream of books. Those postings and printings are evidence of a growing public interest in the Mayan Long Count calendar, which had fallen out of use by the Mayans of Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, long before the Spanish conquerors had arrived…

You can read the full article here.

Finally, some common sense on the subject instead of “interpretations”, distortions, fantasy and cultural theft by New Age whackos.

Son has decided that he will move into Trevor’s flat. So today he set the wheels in motion by coming with us into town and going to see the letting agent – she handles both his and our tenancies. Agent was somewhat put out; but we fully expected this, as she always appears to be put out by having to attend to tenants’ needs. Anyway, she told Son that he would have to serve out a full two months’ notice before he could switch tenancies – unless he could find somebody who could move into his house straight away.
And Son remembered that Pauline and John had told him that the carpet-fitter who was putting new carpets into Trevor’s flat had mentioned that he had a son who was looking to rent a house locally. The carpet-fitter had a workplace a few streets away, so off we went, hoping to catch him. At the workplace, an assistant told us that Carpet-Fitter was in hospital with heart problems. But Carpet-Fitter’s wife was working in her shop around the corner. So Son dashed in there; her son was still looking for a house, she confirmed, and she would pass on the message.
So it looks like Son will be joining this little community very soon.

Today was one of my bad days. I’m starting to work out that my ill-health is linked to stress – any kind of stress, including poor sleep.
Last night, I couldn’t sleep much – too many worries going on, too much to think about. Last week, after having to empty out my change jar just to to be able to buy some basic shopping, I decided that I was well and truly sick of being poor. So I’ve been looking hard at ways of making money from websites and affiliated ads, making plans, putting various wheels into motion. So sleep and relaxation have ben hard to comeby – I want this project to succeed.
Anyway, today, it rebounded on me, and I’ve been dreadfully tired and breathless again. But, I’m very hopeful that my project will start making me money eventually.

Another new religion!
First Church of Xenu
Attractive, exciting, just a little bit dangerous. But, somehow, I still feel an affinity with The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Lucky Lancashire witches! They now have their own bus service!

…Finally got the hard-copy Transit off to the printers. Still have to sort out the web version, but that’s just mostly a matter of formatting; I’ve got another ten days or so for it and I can get it done in an afternoon.
The hard-copy had to go off a little early, and this morning was a real panic. I was an article short – one of my regulars hadn’t sent in anything. (He had a reason for it, but I won’t go into that here; it’s enough to say that my telephone conversation with him left me slightly upset for the evening.) Anyway, the wonderful Jenni Harte stepped in with extra material, and I also made good use of Paul Newman’s cartoons.
Of course, getting it all laid out wasn’t the end of it. I then had to convert it into a PDF for emailing. First, the program’s PDF converter refused to embed the cover title font, even though I’d already checked that it would. So I had a last-minute redo of the magazine cover with a more aceptable font. Then the software refused to do the conversion. Thirty minutes trawling tech-help forums suggested a couple of answers; another twenty minutes of fiddling with the program settings eventually solved it.
So it’s finally been emailed to the printer, in good time. Huge sigh of relief, and every finger crossed.

But i can’t relax – I now have to get on with the Elfin Diary!
Once that’s out of the way, I can do something about the business/creative project that’s buzzing around in my brain.

We went to Trevor’s funeral today. Me, B, Son & Pauline – C couldn’t make it and John had to stay at home and mind the grandkids they have staying this week.
It was held in a bright new crematorium just outside Dumfries – a light-filled wooden building beside a lake, with a view of fields and forest. There were only two other people there – the couple who run the cat shelter that Trevor did volunteer work at.
Trevor’s mother, we discovered, isn’t dead after all, or even particularly close to dying. She was too frail though for the journey up from Cheshire. We also found out from Pauline a bit more about the days leading up to his death.
Before his cat died, Trevor had kept himself together, making some attempt to control his alcoholism by drinking only canned beer and lager; in a typical alcoholic’s piece of self-deception, he had persuaded himself that beer isn’t really alcohol. After the cat went, he started drinking vodka and wine. Additionally, the week before he died, he had told everyone that he was going to spend a few days in hospital for tests – this was denied by the hospital.
John and Pauline had long kept a close eye on him (Pauline often bought him hot meals) and would have checked his flat if they hadn’t seen him for a day or two; it was because they thought he was in hospital that it was a full three days before they became worried.
Suicide, anyone?

His mother is a devout Christian, and had requested that the service be Christian. Trevor wasn’t in the least bit religious, and I think would have been highly offended, but he was in no position to object. I’m a Pagan, but I’m happy to sit quietly and respectfully through the service of any other religion – it’s what I’d expect non-Pagans to do at a Pagan ceremony.
The minister started off by running rather quickly through Trevor’s life – he was adopted (another surprise), a successful grammar school student, sociable, a businessman. The less positive aspects of his life – his divorces, his fraud conviction, his womanising, his drinking – were either not mentioned or only lightly touched upon. That took about five minutes. For the next fifteen minutes or more, the minister then then gave us an evangelistic sermon lauding the life, works, death and resurrection of Jesus. By the end, I had to stop myself from standing up and demanding to know who was in the bloody coffin – Trevor or Jesus?
This service was supposed to be all about our friend Trevor – why was the minister so arrogant and frankly rude as to spend most of it talking about his friend Jesus?
I was fuming. Outside, as we all chatted for a few minutes, the minister revealed that he had been converted to Xtianity at a Billy Graham rally. It figured – he had been converted by having this Jesus propaganda stuffed down his throat, so that was the way to get everyone to turn Christian.

Still, that wasn’t enough to stop me from silently saying goodby to a basically decent, terribly flawed friend.