Friday 27 April 2007

Thursday 26 April 2007

hugh grant threw his beans
weapons of mess destruction
and plastered the world


The A-Z of Rationalism

F is for Fundamentalism (n.) Fundamentalists are a strange bunch, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary of the absolute literal truth of whatever book they’ve put their faith in. You can explain till you’re blue in the face that if Noah actually did have an ark in which he managed to fit all the species of animals in the world it would have to have been the size of Lancashire, with another two arks following on behind carrying the relevant supplies. And were there Chinese, Indian, African, Aztec and Aborigines on the ark, or did they have arks of their own? You won’t get any straight answers on this from our Fundamental friends, mainly because I suspect, they are scared of actually thinking it through in a rational manner.

Irrationality comes in all forms. Hugh Grant lost his usual posh amiability this week and went to war on the paparazzi, armed only with a tub of baked beans. There’s something almost biblical about this in its precedence; Samson slaying the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, David felling Goliath with a slingshot and a conker, and now Hugh, son of Grant, belting the Paparazzi with a boot and a tub of beans. It’s not inconceivable that a priest of the Church of Grant will be telling an embellished version of this tale in a thousand years, standing before a stained glass triptych of Samson, David and Hugh.
In another act of irrationality, I was verbally abused on the way home by a woman outside Brixton Tube.
‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t’
‘You Fat C**t!’ she said, and disappeared into the crowd before I could summon up a suitably destructive riposte.She was only half right. I have never really thought of myself as being fat.

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