Would you buy a used apocalypse from these people? More information here."By Monday, the Stones’ house stood empty, its front door ajar and two dogs still tied up in the muddy yard, which was littered with dilapidated furniture, a washing machine and tires."
If you have a scrap of rationality and the merest modicum of scientific knowledge, here's a video which will make you laugh until you weep. You just have to get to it before the lawyers pull it down.A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.
As I continue to enjoy - and lose weight on - my protein-based diet, may I gloat, just a little, at this news?
Much as I admire the Some Hope trilogy and its sequel Mother's Milk, this novel, written between the two, is an odd - and to my mind unsuccessful - book. It's concerned with the adventures of a group of people who would probably term themselves spiritual seekers as they drift from one feelgood farm to another, from Findhorn to Esalen, from tantric sex to psychedelic release. The book is full of detail; praised by one reviewer for the depth and breadth of its research, it seems to me though to be over-researched. Page after page is devoted to the kind of irony-free information about basically cranky new age theory that wouldn't be out of place in a self-help bestseller, but sits oddly in a book that also appears to have a satirical purpose. In fact, one of the problems I have with the book is to understand exactly where it stands. At times, it reads more like Waugh's The Loved One, than anything else, and many scenes draw on the same kind of viperish superiority that's implicit in that novel. St Aubyn's justifiably lauded style is undoubtedly at its best when it's taking the piss out of the over-rich airheads and yearning geriatrics who fall prey to the sort of nonsense offered by these alternative modern-day spas. Debarbed, it works less well and there's a soft, slightly sticky core of sentimentality that St Aubyn would never have contemplated in the trilogy or Mother's Milk. My reading may be influenced by my own attitude towards what I see as the irretrievably phony world of the privileged soul-searchers described. St Aubyn, though, seems to want to have his soulcake and to eat it too.
It's not often I feel like applauding Wigan Council (or even mentioning it, despite my being half Lancastrian). But the news that it's refused permission to a group of wealthy wingnuts who wanted to build a creationist theme park on the site of an old B & Q store brings joy to my heart. The promoters, AH Trust, apparently think that multimedia displays of the world being whipped up out of nowt in six days will stop young people from binge drinking. Well, it's a fond, but foolish, hope. In the meantime, the Trust is still looking for somewhere that wants its "two interactive cinemas, a cafeteria, six shops and a television recording studio, allowing it to produce its own Christian-themed films and documentaries." I can't wait. (Thanks to the Guardian for this.)Peter Chappell, whose work will feature at a conference organised by the Society of Homeopaths next month, makes dramatic claims about his ability to solve the Aids epidemic using his own homeopathic pills called "PC Aids", and his specially encoded music. "Right now," he says, "Aids in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio."
I have a thing about camels. I love their stoicism and superciliousness, as though their hump or humps contained not only life-maintaining fat but also life-enhancing forbearance. I have a small gold camel round my neck; I stroke it often, for inspiration. There are days, I admit it, when I aspire to camelhood.
If you think that the state of the world today has anything to do with some roundabout interpretation of Leviticus - congratulations, you're right. In fact, if you go to pretty much any epoch in the entire span of human history, even those that predate Christ, I bet you can find SOME evidence that backs up the idea that the End Times are at hand.
If you'd expand your hilariously myopic view of reality, you'd see that, among many other things:
1. Fires are extremely common in Southern California, even ones of this magnitude. I'll bet all of the past ones coincided with some sort of homosexual legislation, come to think of it. I bet they also coincided with a homosexual being discriminated against or being hurt in a hate crime. Which one is God punishing us for?
2. Homosexuals are everywhere. There is always SOME sort of Gay Agenda being enacted, be it anti-discrimination law or affirmative action, and this happens all across the nation - and indeed, the world. Why God would set San Diego on fire for a few days as a message to anyone regarding homosexuality implies that God is weak or stupid, or self-defeatist, none of which are possible.
3. Regarding the Coincidence post: Yes. Yes, it can be mere coincidence. That is exactly what it is. If you looked for the entire body of current events, you would see a whole hell of a lot that these fires coincided with beyond one or two points of political correctness. By whatever logic you arrived at your answers with, I could as easily blame these fires on the Red Sox winning the World Series. (God is omniscient, he can start the fires ahead of time to coincide with their coming back from a deficit against the Indians.)
Get over yourself. God isn't punishing anyone for anything, because he doesn't exist, and even if he did he wouldn't bother killing and evicting innocent people - in his own house no less! - with a poorly-aimed fire because somebody, somewhere, is marrying men to each other. Your beliefs are utterly senseless, and you're insane. Good day.
"Am I ever going to have a better relationship with my father?" another woman asks.
"No," Sylvia replies. "He's narcissistic. He has sociopathic tendencies. Forget it. There's a darkness there."
"Thank you, Sylvia," she says.
Sylvia seems to be psychically diagnosing a lot of people with narcissistic personality disorder today.
"Will you tell me exactly the time and place my father died?" the next woman asks.
"Ten years ago in Iowa," Sylvia says.
"Iowa?" says the woman, surprised.
"I'm the psychic," Sylvia snaps. "I'm telling you. Iowa."
"Thank you, Sylvia," the woman says, cowed.
The next woman asks, "What happened to my dog? Is she still alive?"
"No, honey," Sylvia says.
The woman bursts into tears.
If you'd like to know a bit more about a certain Denise Pfeiffer, media consultant to Silver Ring Thing (see previous post) and erstwhile lingerie model, click here. 
A flickering image of a small naked boy, lying tied-up on the bare floor of a room, was the clue that drew the Czech Republic into a tale of child abuse, obscure sects and a mysterious vanishing girl that has shocked and baffled the nation.
The picture was spotted by a father keeping an eye on his baby, when his video monitor received a stray signal from a similar device being used in a neighbouring house in the quiet town of Kurim, close to the south-eastern city of Brno.
